Wind Power Exceeds 10% of Electricity Generation in Four States

The US added 10 Gigawatts of new wind power generation in 2009. Texas led the way with 2,239 Megawatts but 27 other states also added to their wind generation capacity last year. Four US states now generate more than 10% of their electricity from wind power. Iowa gets 20% of its electricity from wind, followed by South Dakota (13%), North Dakota (12%) and Minnesota (11%).

“Wind power projects accounted for 39 percent of all new electric generating capacity added in the U.S. in 2009," noted Ryan Wiser, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, "and wind energy is now able to deliver 2.5 percent of the nation’s electricity supply.” Berkeley Labs and the US Department of Energy released a study last week with more details on the state of wind power in the US.

Investments in wind power are creating good manufacturing jobs in the US. Seven of the top ten wind turbine manufacturers already have manufacturing facilities in the US. Two of the remaining 3 have announced plans to open manufacturing facilities here. And, of course, the actual installation and ongoing management of wind turbines create domestic jobs.

Wind power also creates competitive advantages for manufacturers by lowering electricity rates over the long term. While the up front investment is high (construction of wind farms costs about twice as much per MW as construction of coal-fired power plants), wind and other renewables are less expensive over the long term because they have zero ongoing fuel costs. This advantage will become even more pronounced if, as predicted by many economists, the costs of coal, petroleum and natural gas increase dramatically as the world economy comes out of the Great Recession.

Transmission remains a significant stumbling block. In Texas, 17% of existing wind generating capacity was not used last year because of inadequate transmission. Billions of dollars in investments in smart grid technologies will be required to pave the way for more wind and solar generation. (See DOE Says Grid Needs Upgrade to Handle Wind Power, Jan. 20, 2010).

The US accounted for 26% of all new wind generating capacity in the world last year. That put the US in second place after China, which accounted for 36% of all new wind generation capacity and is the world leader.

John Howley
Orlando, Florida

How Monitoring Dramatically Reduces Energy Costs

One of the most cost-effective ways to reduce energy costs is to monitor energy consumption in one minute increments and watch the trends over time. Almost every building will immediately find quick and easy ways to reduce energy costs by 5% or more. And knowledgeable professionals can often use the data to drive down energy costs by 20% or more and improve facility comfort and performance at the same time.

Let's take an actual example. Forward Energy Solutions recently subscribed to Continuous Energy Management & Optimization (CEMO) from Davies Energy Systems. The process involved two steps: (1) installing a real-time energy monitoring system from Noveda Technologies; and (2) having Davies Energy's engineers analyze the data and develop better ways to manage and optimize facility energy usage.

Here is the minute-by-minute display of electricity consumption that Foward Energy Solutions saw after just one day:


Notice the two distinct sets of spikes in energy consumption. The first occurred just before 4:00 a.m. when no one was in the building. The next set of distinct spikes started at 7:00 a.m. and continued until 5:00 p.m. Each of the spikes lasted only a minute or less and were not noticed by the people in the building. But over time they amounted to a significant increase in kwh consumption. They also may increase the peak demand charges on the company's monthly electric bill.

The culprits were quickly identified. A small refrigerator was malfunctioning and spiking the consumption at 4 a.m. An air-conditioning system in need of repair was causing the spikes during regular business hours.

Catching these types of problems generates immediate savings by reducing kwh consumption and peak demand charges. The avoided costs will continue to be realized each and every month into the future, often adding up to thousands of dollars in energy savings.

Identifying these types of problems early on also avoids the cost of more expensive repairs down the line. Without monitoring, no one would have noticed the air-conditioning problem until it stopped cooling the building -- most likely on the hottest day of the year. At that point, the company would have already wasted money on unnecessary energy costs, plus it would be facing the higher cost of repairing or replacing the air-conditioning system on an emergency basis. Not to mention the loss of employee productivity in a sweltering office until the repairs could be made.

Francis X. Lamparello, P.E., the Chief Technology Officer at Davies Energy Systems, says that he finds these types of issues in almost every building. But these problems are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to saving energy. "Buildings are living, breathing entities that must be monitored and adjusted on a continuous basis," he says. "For example, maintaining proper air pressure inside the building can keep warm air from entering in the summer, and letting in more cool outside air on a sunny Fall day can give you 'free cooling' to offset the heat caused by the sun shining on the windows." All of these energy saving solutions, he points out, are free or inexpensive once you have real-time monitoring and expert advice on how to manage the facility.

What's next for Forward Energy Solutions? Now that they have the data, they are working with Davies Energy on a number of additional ways to drive down their energy costs. More on that in later blog posts.

John Howley
Orlando, Florida

DOE Says Grid Needs Upgrade to Handle Wind Power

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory today released a major study of the technical, operational, and economic issues facing the integration of large amounts of wind energy into the power system.

The bottom line is: The existing grid serving most of the United States east of the Rockies would need a multi-billion dollar upgrade before it could handle even 20% wind-generated power.

The DOE's Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (EWITS) evaluates the impacts of wind energy penetration into the power system through 2024. The study encompasses the majority of the utilities in the Eastern Interconnection, one of the two major alternating current (AC) power grids in North America. The Eastern Interconnection reaches from Central Canada eastward to the Atlantic coast (excluding Québec), South to Florida, and back West to the foot of the Rockies (excluding most of Texas).

About a year ago, a Joint Coordinated System Plan study group concluded that a 20-percent wind energy scenario would “require 15,000 miles of new extra-high voltage lines, at an estimated cost of $80 billion, in addition to $1.1 trillion in total generation capital costs by 2024.”

The new DOE study increases those numbers to 22,000 miles of new transmissions lines at a cost of $90 billion. But it argues that the $90 billion cost for transmission upgrades is only a small percentage of the total cost to build the wind generation capacity.

The new study also cautions that wind farms must be spread out geographically so they will not account for a large percentage of power generation at any given point in the grid. According to the new DOE study, "increasing the geographic diversity of wind power projects in a given operating pool generally makes the aggregated wind power output more predictable and less variable, while also reducing the variation in load and increasing the number of generation assets that can be committed and dispatched."

Other highlights from the new DOE study include:

• There are no fundamental technical barriers to the integration of 20% wind energy into the electrical system, but transmission planning and system operation policy and market development need to continue to evolve in order for these penetration levels to be achieved;

• Without transmission enhancements, substantial curtailment of wind generation would be required for all of the 20% wind penetration scenarios;

• Although the costs of aggressive expansion of the existing grid are significant, they make up a relatively small piece of the total annual power system costs in any of the scenarios studied;

• Wind generation displaces carbon-based fuels, directly reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Emissions continue to decline as more wind generation is added to the energy supply; and

• Reduced expenditures on fossil fuel costs more than pay for the increased costs of transmission in all wind scenarios.
  

For more information about incorporating increasing amounts of wind energy into the power system while maintaining reliable grid operations, see the DOE's Wind and Hydropower Technologies Program's Renewable Systems Interconnection web site.

John Howley
Orlando, Florida

Distributed Generation? Try Distributed Storage.

One of the hot topics in renewable energy is "distributed generation." If every home and business would install some solar panels or small wind turbines to generate their own electricity, then any excess electricity could be sold back to the grid. Build enough small solar photovoltaic systems and windmills, the theory goes, and we won't have to build as many coal-fired power plants.

Those who support this concept make analogies to the internet, where the computing power and brainpower of numerous individuals and their personal computers can be harnessed via distributed computing and wikis and social networks into something really big and powerful.

Will the same concept work with “distributed generation” of electricity?

Not exactly.

Asa an energy efficiency measure, putting solar panels and wind turbines on individual facilities is a very good idea. It will reduce the need for that facility to draw power from the grid. But for large scale production of electricity and selling back to the grid, distributed generation does not provide the quality control and economies of scale necessary for the efficient generation and distribution of electricity. Let’s look at those two issues:

Power Quality. The internet works by allowing everyone to post whatever information they want, without any initial filter on quality. That won't work on the electric grid.

An efficient power distribution system requires that power quality (voltage, harmonics, etc.) be maintained at all times. That is difficult enough to accomplish with highly variable generation sources such as wind and solar. Every time the wind dies down or clouds start to cover the solar panels in one geographic area, the grid would have to find power elsewhere to maintain adequate voltage levels. That is a very difficult and complicated task when you are dealing with large wind and solar farms. It is even more difficult when the wind and solar power is being supplied by thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of different sources, each with its own variations in power quality.

Economies of Scale. Building small windmills and solar photovoltaic arrays is not very cost efficient. The number of workers required per megawatt -- and the gasoline they will use going from one site to another -- makes this a very inefficient process. And what about maintenance? Can we really afford a renewable energy system that requires maintenance crews to take care of generation capacity that is located at hundreds or thousands of different locations?

Does that mean our electric power systems will continue to be centralized? Yes, but only on the generation side. On the storage side, distributed networks may offer an excellent solution to the problem of matching generation with demand.

The biggest inefficiency in our current electric power system is caused by the need to build excess generation capacity to meet peak demand. Many electric utilities have generators that are used less than 40% of the time. They exist solely to provide extra power when it is needed -- like from 7 am to 7 pm when every office building has its lights, computers, fax machines and HVAC systems turned on. And on that very hot August day when everyone turns on their incredibly inefficient window air-conditioning units at the same time.

Power companies must build enough generating capacity to handle the highest possible peak demand for electricity. When we operate substantially below peak capacity (like, almost every night of the year), that peak capacity goes wasted.

The real problem is not generation, but storage. If we could use that generating capacity at night and store the electricity for the next day, then we would have a truly efficient system.

Fran Lamparello, my good friend and business partner, sees the future of energy storage by looking at the past. Fran has spent his entire working life in different aspects of the energy industry, from designing building controls systems to running a home heating oil distribution business. He envisions a time in the near future when the electric utilities will address energy storage the same way the home heating oil industry did. At the customer's home or business.

By putting storage tanks at each customer's home or business, the oil companies turned their customers into a "distributed storage" network. It was a very efficient system. The distributor could buy home heating fuel during the off season when prices were low, and then store it until the winter. The distributor did not have to pay for storage of large fuel inventories because it could store that inventory at the customer's home or business. Properly sized, an oil tank at the home or business also reduced the number of trips that had to be made to deliver fuel to the customer.

Fran and I predict that you will see the same type of distributed storage system with electricity. As the efficiency and cost of fuel cells and other storage mechanisms for electricity improve, you will see utilities offering to put that storage mechanism on site at the customer's location. It may be in the form of electric cars as Tom Friedman predicts in his book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded," or it may be in the form of fuel cells.

The real value of the internet model for electricity is not “distributed generation.” It is “distributed storage.” Do not put a solar panel on every roof. Put a hydrogen fuel cell in every backyard or basement! Or an electric car in every garage!

John Howley
Manila, Philippines

US and China Forge a New Path on Climate Change

Last week the US and China signed a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing to cooperate on climate change. Some have criticized the document as nothing more than an “agreement to agree” that failed to address the contentious issue of firm targets for carbon emissions reductions.

This criticism misses the point.

To begin, consider how far the US-China relationship has come in such a very short time.

In April 2001, just months after the Bush Administration took office, the US sent a military plane near Hainan Island in China. China responded by forcing down the plane and detaining the 24 American crew members for 10 days until the US apologized.

The message then was clear: Do not mess with us.

In stark contrast, China began its relationship with the Obama Administration by sending 150 senior Chinese officials to Washington to discuss the global economy and climate change. Before leaving Washington, they signed an agreement to cooperate on renewable energy, smart grid technologies, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration, joint research and development, clean air and water, and protection of natural resources.

A very different but equally clear message: We want to work with you on climate change.

Consider also the importance of a US-China consensus on: (a) the existence of a climate change problem, and (b) the need to address it.

Many in the Bush Administration – including Vice President Cheney – did not believe that we had a problem or that we needed to do anything about it. The official position on climate change was that America should not sign any agreements until China and other developing nations agreed to firm targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

China responded by arguing that they should not consider firm targets until the US and other developed nations first agreed to firm targets to remediate their much longer history of carbon emissions.

As Wu Changhua of The Climate Group in Beijing has noted, very little progress was possible when the US and China each “used the other as an excuse for inaction.” The agreement last week is meaningful because it signals an intent by both sides to find ways to work together. That is the essential first step towards any progress.

Equally encouraging are the reasons why the US and China are beginning to work together:

1. A solid consensus in the US on the need for renewable energy. This consensus rests on beliefs that transcend partisan lines, including: (a) that US national security requires a shift away from dependence on foreign oil; (b) that we are leaving a legacy of significant environmental damage for generations in the not-so-distant future; and (c) that economic growth in the US depends on becoming a world leader in new, clean energy technologies.

2. A recognition in China that it must move quickly to prevent environmental disaster. In each of the past five years, China has built an average of 70 gigawatts of electric generating capacity – about the same amount as exists in all of France. Most of these plants have been dirty coal plants with obvious environmental impacts. Remember when China had to shut down factories before and during the Beijing Olympics to make sure the air quality would not kill the athletes? China knows that it cannot continue on this path.

Does this mean that the US and China will agree on firm targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions in Copenhagen later this year?

I hate to disappoint you. But I think the answer is "No."

The underlying message of the agreement signed in Washington last week is that the US and China are going to forge two paths to address climate change. Yes, they will still argue with one another over how much each country should reduce its carbon emissions and by when. But at the same time, they will pursue a second path of cooperation towards achievable solutions with or without an agreement on targets.

Those looking for simple solutions to climate change will be very disappointed by the absence of firm emission reduction targets in Copenhagen later this year. But what would you rather have? A Copenhagen Agreement on firm targets without any agreement on how to reach them? Or a Copenhagen Agreement on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without firm targets?

Whichever you prefer, get ready for the latter.

John Howley
Manila, Philippines

Make No Small Plans

My problem with President Obama's stimulus package is that it lacks ambition. Especially when it comes to investing in the new grid we will need to support renewable energy.

We know that our energy infrastructure is at the breaking point. Yet the stimulus package allocates only $80 billion over a number of years for a wide range of energy projects. A lot of that money will go to basic energy efficiency upgrades like replacing old boilers and insulation in public buildings. All things that should be done, but these investments will not be enough to create a 21st Century energy infrastructure.

The problem is: We are making small plans with short-term objectives. This is no way to reinvigorate the most important economy in the world.

To understand why, let's look back at the successes of the 20th century.

Imagine what the US economy would have been like in the first half of the 20th century if we never built the railroads. Without railroads, we would have remained a predominantly agrarian economy in which most people lived their entire lives without traveling more than 50 miles from their birthplace.

That changed with the railroads. In the 25-year period between 1875 and 1900, almost 200,000 miles of new railroad tracks were built in the US. Because of this massive investment in the late 19th century, we started the 20th century with about 260,000 miles of track in the US, compared to about 280,000 miles of track in the entire rest of the world combined.

Building the largest railroad network in the world gave us a competitive advantage that helped transform the US from a mostly agrarian society to a diversified economic powerhouse during the first half of the 20th century.

Now imagine what the US economy would have been like in the second half of the 20th century if we never built a national highway system.

Beginning with planning during WWII, the national highway system has grown into 160,000 miles of roads connecting virtually every part of the continental United States -- making it the largest highway system in the world.

Building the largest road system in the world gave us a competitive advantage that was essential to our success as the most dynamic economy in the world during the second half of the 20th century. Do you think computers are important to the US economy? Remember that they would never have reached the store (or your home) without a truck on a highway.

Now imagine what the 21st century will look like if we do not invest in new energy infrastructure.

The electric grid we rely on today is not much different than the one we began building at the turn of the last century (and not much more reliable either). We use higher voltages, and we have some basic demand response programs, but our electric grid is still essentially as dumb (lacking intelligence) as it was when Nikola Tesla delivered his famous lecture on polyphase alternating currents in 1888. This grid based on a 100-year-old design is not capable of supporting the economy of the future.

The questions we face are pretty straightforward:

Will we continue to rely on a 19th century electric grid design to power a 21st century economy?

Or will the US make the investments necessary over the next 20 years to build the largest and smartest electric grid in the world?

Daniel Burnham, the Chicago architect, inspired many at the start of the 20th century with his admonition that we should "make no little plans." We need to adopt his charge today when it comes to investing in the future of energy infrastructure in the US.

Now is not the time to make small plans. We must make massive investments in our energy infrastructure starting today and continuing for a few decades. The number will be in the trillions, not the billions. That is the only way we will create jobs today. And it is the only way we will secure a future of prosperity for our children and grandchildren.

P.S. -- Here's Burnham's full quote:

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons [and daughters and granddaughters] are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big."

John Howley
Woodbridge, New Jersey