This is the most money ever awarded for clean energy in a single day from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act!

Obama spoke at the opening of the Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center (the nation’s largest PV electricity center) to announce and discuss the various benefits of this project.

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A big factor limiting solar and wind power growth across the US is the current transmission network. It is disconnected. A new project proposed by Tres Amigas LLC in New Mexico would link the nation’s main power grids and, therefore, give hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of households links to already existing renewable energy sources.

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So we have all heard by now that Google is getting into the power management game, Cisco and IBM are coming to play too, but are the mega-stars of the VC and IT worlds going to be creating the new terms of energy management, or will local management solutions be more effective as the method for some markets? The easy answer is that it depends. Local grids can be made up of energy generation near recipient towns, cities or villages, just as energy can travel from another portion of a state or country, but increasingly there will be local power generation which will need to be brought intelligently to local customers on a block by block or building by building scale. ‘Micro-grids’ as they have come to be known, will likely serve most readily and immediately rural populations, who will bypass the need for state-electrification and develop power-management systems on their own because it is easier to implement than waiting for infrastructure build-out.

Many of the major players in the space have been basing their assumptions for growth not upon this notion, but upon a Western model of electrification. While the hardware developed by major California smart grid firms such as Trilliant and Silver Springs Networks will rightfully be applied toward the lucrative state or utility scale projects, these projects will only deal with the needs existing within the existing grid framework. The growth of the space will need innovation in power-management for those who either do not currently have access to an electrical grid or those who can benefit from opting-out of one altogether.

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Scientists at Pennsylvania State University have discovered a solution to the problem of reliable storage for alternative energy: a bacteria that can convert electricity to methane when combined with CO2.

Any surplus power from wind, solar, or tidal sources is fed into the bacteria and combined with CO2 from the atmosphere to create methane for storage. Methane is a clean-burning gas and 80% of energy fed into the process was retained at the end.

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The world suppliers can do better for us. The latest technology, smart grids or “SmartGrids”, provides a far more attractive 60% efficiency. How it works? “A smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability,” explains Wikipedia.

My state, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is theoretically on board. MA electricity providers responded to Governer Deval Patrick’s request for smart grid proposals. The Boston Globe’s interview with Stephen Connors, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative, explains the attraction. Environmentalists and others have been pushing for smart-grid technology for over a decade because it will enable consumers to use less electricity and benefit the environment. “Eventually, smart grids will also incorporate renewable energy - such as wind and solar power, and even electric cars - and feature software applications that reduce consumption during peak-demand times, as well as help power companies identify outages.” For example, the technology will note when you are not home and shut down nonessential components.

The two specific Massachusetts electricity service providers serving the highly populated eastern MA region have proposed the following pilot programs:

1. National Grid’s two-year pilot proposal installs approximately 15,000 meters that read energy consumption almost in real-time. “Customers could access the information via the Internet, by a thermostat readout, or through text messaging, and use the data to change their consumption patterns,” reports the Boston Globe. The cost of the program for the 1.3 million customers would be approximately $ 57 million dollars, which represents less than a dollar per month cost to customers, but an approximate savings of $70 dollars per year.

2. “NStar’s plan, meanwhile, calls for partnering with Tendril Networks Inc., a Colorado energy-efficiency company, to provide nearly 3,000 customers in Newton and Hopkinton [Boston area cities] with energy-consumption information - accessible on the Web - gathered from electricity meters every 15 seconds. Two-way communication between NStar and consumers will also allow the company to eventually ask customers to help reduce electricity consumption during peak-demand periods.”

Obviously, the application of smart grid technology is sustainable on several levels, so we can hope that it is adopted in MA and worldwide pronto. For faster progress, call or email your local legislator to encourage this positive corporate behavior.

Spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on environmental projects being debated in Congress right now already includes $100 billion in ‘green stimulus.’ But because of the stated preference for so-called ‘shovel-ready‘ infrastructure projects, long-term infrastructure projects like mass transit and a smart grid may suffer.

The bill already includes spending for incentives for clean energy; the retrofitting of public buildings and public housing; low and moderate-income home weatherization; clean water and environmental restoration projects. But mass transit and smart grids require the kind of planning and long-term investment not encapsulated by that tidy new buzzword, ’shovel-ready.’

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PG&E may be installing millions of smart meters in Northern California, but the nation of Malta (pop. 400,000) is about to become the world’s first smart grid island. IBM is building the island’s national smart grid network, which will consist of 250,000 smart meters placed in homes around the country.

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The company has created a battery control-management system, that when paired with a lithium ion battery, can store up to 20 kilowatt-hours. The system can then deliver a full 4,000 discharge cycles.

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The proposed offshore grid would be more than 3850 miles long, and connect more than 100 wind farms, containing a total of 10,000 turbines to seven countries, including Britain, Denmark, France, Norway, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The plans, based on a report written by Greenpeace and environmental consultants 3E, assume that 68.4 gigawatts of capacity, across 118 identified wind farms, will be in place across the North Sea within 10-20 years, and could meet an impressive 13% of the annual energy needs of the countries involved.

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Use One Heavy Power Load at a Time

15 years ago, my power system consisted of one solar panel, one golf cart battery, one DC light, and one DC car stereo. Today, I live in a modern off-the-grid home complete with many large energy-using electrical appliances, such as a washing machine, air conditioner, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, and baseboard heaters. Using these appliances off the grid is only possible by limiting their usage to one at a time, with the exception of the refrigerator (which remains on 24 hours a day). Unlike grid-connected homes, where it is common to see multiple large loads running simultaneously, most people living off the grid cannot run their washing machine while vacuuming, their heaters while washing dishes, etc. Alternative home energy systems are limited to the amount of power stored in the battery bank and what is being currently produced via wind, water, and/or sun for available power.

By only using one large power appliance at a time, these systems can keep up with home power demands. What if grid power users followed a similar model of power usage? What if people only used one large power draw at a time, thus using less power for longer periods of time, rather than using a lot of power over a shorter duration? Living in California, we are constantly reminded of rolling blackouts during peak power usage months. The "Flex Your Power" campaign advises grid users to wait until after 7:00pm, when there is less demand on the grid, to do laundry, wash dishes, etc. They call this "using appliances wisely." If everyone used heavy power loads with caution, perhaps our power grid would be less strained and function at a smaller energy producing capacity.

Monitor Your Meter

One prominent feature in every off the grid home is a meter within the living quarters. These meters often measure amps and volts, and allow the user to know how much power is available to them, and how much power is being used at any given moment. Gazing often at this meter becomes a part of life off the grid. As Dale Kittleson, interviewed on PBS NOW, said, "First thing in the morning, come down the stairs, look out the window, see if the sun is shining, look at the meter and see how far the batteries are from full." I look at my meter first thing in the morning, while using heavy power-using appliances, before I go to bed, etc. How often does someone living on the grid look at his or her meter? I would think that if people could see their meter spinning rapidly during high power usage in their home, they would use electricity more wisely. What if grid-connected houses’ meters were in the living quarters? Having the meter in a convenient location makes monitoring energy usage easy. No one wants to go outside in the rain or snow and gaze at his or her meter 10 times a day!

Kill the Phantoms

This sounds like good Halloween advice: Kill the phantoms! Electrical devices draw phantom loads when they are "off." TVs, computers, printers, etc. draw small loads of power when shut down, and these phantom loads add up. Every person I know living off the grid uses electrical outlet strips for phantom loads. They may not turn them off all of the time, but when the batteries are low, the phantoms are removed from their power source by flipping the power strip switch. If US grid homes turned off their phantom loads, it is estimated that a billion dollars would be saved on energy bills and enough power would be conserved to power Vietnam, Peru, and Greece!

These three simple ideas from living off the grid could help Americans use power more wisely. By using one heavy electrical load at a time, monitoring your meter, and killing phantom loads, grid users can learn from the over 200,000 US homes off the grid how to be more energy efficient. Sometimes, changing a light bulb just isn’t enough.

Global warming concerns, government policies, and money-saving efficiency benefits have spurred clean energy systems to spring up all over the world. But a giant wind farm in the middle-of-nowhere North Dakota doesn’t do much good if there aren’t transmission lines to connect the power with the more populated areas that need it.

Europeans are facing similar distribution and reliability issues with their burgeoning renewable energy growth, and some see a continent-wide grid as the solution. Dr. Jurgen Schimd of ISET, a renewable-energy institute at the University of Kassel in Germany, says a transmission system that stretches across Europe is the answer. It could, for example, move electricity generated from a Spanish wind farm to the Netherlands where the wind is not blowing.

Norway is key to Dr. Schmid’s plans, as the Scandinavian nation is well-supplied with hydroelectric plants that can store energy from sources like the wind. For instance, the wind power is used to pump water up into the reservoirs that feed the hydroelectric turbines, so the power is “on tap” when needed. According to Dr. Schmid, even if the wind died and wind farms shut down all across Europe, Norway’s hydropower would leap to action and fill in the gap for up to four weeks.

This continent-wide transmission system for renewable energy has also sparked a renewed interest in direct current (DC). Over 100 years ago, when power grids covered shorter distances, alternating current (AC) transmission was favored because it loses less electricity than DC. However, as transmission lines have grown longer, high-voltage DC lines now suffer lower loses than AC. So using a DC transmission system would allow electric grids to be restructured more efficiently, losing less energy while transmitting it from Point A to Point B.

Some nations have already started work on a DC transmission system. A group of Norgwegian companies have begun building high-voltage DC lines between Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Germany. An Irish wind power company called Airtricity proposes what it calls a Supergrid that would link offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean with customers in northern Europe.

The electric grid in the U.S. is in sore need of an upgrade, and we should consider ideas that utilize the different forms of renewable energy abundant across the country (like hydroelectric in the Northeast, wind in the Midwest, solar in the Southwest). It’s a combination of these renewable sources – along with crucial upgrades in efficiency – that will provide a clean, reliable network of distribution in the 21st century.

Thanks to Working Dad at Housekept for the tip.

The Economist
Wikipedia

This Fourth of July, Fat Spaniel Technologies and the mayor of San Jose celebrate green as the new red, white and blue. On Monday, I headed south for a good old block party with a seriously high-tech twist.

Fat Spaniel founder and CTO, Chris Beekhuis, invited people to his house to charge up everything from electric vehicles to laptops using the excess power created by his solar energy system. Right now, if you use less electricity than your solar panels produce, you're exporting extra energy to the grid. However, you can't get a check from the utility company – you can only get a credit. This Energy Independence Day, Chris decided to share his sizeable solar credit with his neighbors and friends. He hasn't paid an energy bill in years because he got in on solar's ground floor.

He says, "In 1998, we installed a solar electric system on the side of our house. It was the second house in San Jose to do so. At that time, the utility did not have any standard testing procedures and we were expecting a return of something along the lines of 37.5 years. It was an act of passion, what I call Cleantech 1.0. Today things have really changed – our payback time has significantly improved."

Fat Spaniel Technologies was born and raised in Silicon Valley. Chris, a dataphile at heart, decided he wanted to measure exactly how much solar electricity his system was producing. So, he invented a software system that would make the revenue-grade information visible and accessible in real-time from any web-enabled device. Soon, the Fat Spaniel offering evolved into a highly visual dashboard displaying critical energy production information as well as fun tidbits like greenhouse gases avoided.

On this particular Monday afternoon in San Jose, it was so sunny that Chris couldn't give away enough energy to import anything from the grid…even though (true to Silicon Valley form) there were Blackberries, Trios, and electric vehicles galore sucking solar juice from the system. In a gratuitous effort to use up the three excess megawatt-hours of power, people brought vacuum cleaners to clean up the driveway, hair dryers (just in case the eighty degree weather wasn't enough) and an electric guitar for a solar-powered concert.

Mayor Chuck Reed touted solar's current reality and future potential:

We want to demonstrate the technology that's now available in Silicon Valley, where we are going to be the solar technology capital of the world. 95% of San Jose is already built. So that retrofit market is really important to achieve our overall goals of energy independence and getting as much energy as possible distributed in a way that it doesn't matter if the grid goes down, we're not out of business.

Try as we might, we only got to see 5% of Chris' extra clean power count down, but I would still say the event was a great success.

Stifle that yawn! The exciting news is that its new administrator is gung-ho on wind power. Tim Meeks took over the top spot last week, and pointed out to the Closed Circuit newsletter that the percentage of Federal hydropower WAPA is providing is decreasing because of customers’ growing needs for energy. But wind power can help alleviate this need:

Another area we are focusing on is integrating wind into the existing transmission system. Wind energy is here. It's a renewable resource that is getting a lot of attention both from consumers and politicians. Wind energy is the world's fastest-growing energy technology. We need to do what we can physically to make it easier for wind generators to connect to the system.

This is important because a big issue with new wind power is making sure that there is enough room on the wires – the transmission system – to handle the extra power. Having a major power administrator welcoming wind and committing to getting more of wind on the electric grid bodes well for a continued, booming expansion of this vital energy source.

Western Area Power Administration
Closed circuit newsletter