Tuesday, October 27, 2009

To solve pollution problems, planners examine steam heat in Fairbanks
by Christopher Eshleman/ceshleman@newsminer.com
10.26.09 - 02:30 am
FAIRBANKS — The roots of downtown’s largest plant tunnel under much of the city, thick steel pipes twisting beneath intersections and sidewalks on their way toward the city’s biggest buildings.

Instead of absorbing water, however, these roots deliver it, and are a major unseen space heating supplier.

Private and public utility specialists have for years looked at expanding the pipe network — a district heating system that feeds the bulk of downtown’s commercial landscape with cheap heat. Any expansion would cut community-wide heating costs. Aurora Energy, which owns the network, estimates the system replaces the need for 2 million gallons of fuel oil per year, and say it could easily expand two- or three-fold.

But it could be awhile before any such expansions occur. A study early this year estimated the work needed to connect the grid to Hamilton Acres, Shannon Park, Island Homes and another neighborhood just south of Aurora’s downtown power plant could cost more than $200 million.

“It’s obviously just way too big of a project to build at once,” Buki Wright, president of Aurora Energy, said earlier this month. But Wright said the company sees potential in expanding the underground system slowly, particularly if work is coupled with nearby construction projects.

Unseen power

The report was part of a look by Aurora, which is owned by the Usibelli family — operators of the Interior’s biggest coal mine — and the borough government at how the system might grow and whether it could take a bite out of chronic wintertime air pollution. Aurora bought the district heat system and its parent power plant when city officials privatized Fairbanks’ utilities 11 years ago.

It has expanded the system significantly since then. Borough officials, who were facing federal environmental problems because of air pollution in Fairbanks, chipped in more than $20,000 last year to study expansion options.

The underground system consists of insulated steel pipes carrying hot water away from the power plant and returning cooler water to the plant.

Older pipes carry unconverted steam. Much of the system is housed in downtown’s one-story utility corridor, which offers visitors an impressive tour.

The city built the corridor, a sort of underground hallway, before the utility privatization. Aurora was able to expand district heating largely because of that investment, which eliminated the need to dig trenches.

Under the corner of Second Avenue and Lacey Street, the corridor’s floor drops, deepening the hallway to roughly two stories as the heating system’s welded steel arms and elbows bend this way and that on their way to customers’ basements.

“When they built this, it was like building a ship in a bottle,” said Steve Ferree, who manages Aurora’s power plant. “It was really tight.”

A cleaner option

The pipes originate from the coal-fed electric plant, which produces roughly 30 megawatts of electrical power. A large boiler incinerates the coal, heating water and turning it to scalding steam pressurized to more than 800 pounds per square inch. The steam powers the turbine that eventually produces electricity.

But that’s not the only usable energy. When the steam has cooled to roughly 300 degrees, less than one-half its original temperature, it leaves the turbine rooms still carrying enough energy to heat offices, homes or buildings. Much of that heat is then transferred to the insulated pipes leading to and from large customers such as the 12th Avenue federal building. During winter cold snaps, the district heat system produces about 75 million British thermal units — enough energy to heat an Olympic-sized swimming pool from 32 to 147 degrees — after electrical power generated at the plant is excluded.

The dual benefits coming from one energy generation process makes the plant a “cogenerator,” where steam, as a byproduct of electrical generation, supplies heat without producing any extra carbon emissions or air pollution. (The University of Alaska Fairbanks also heats largely through its own district heating system.)

Aurora says its heating system could expand significantly — up to another 130 million British thermal units, or 38 megawatts, of heat power — with little or no loss of electrical generation. That would be enough to heat another 1,500 to 2,000 homes in dense neighborhoods. The study, however, said such an expansion could cost $240 million to build. District heat construction is expensive because it often involves tearing up streets and sidewalks and laying two lines — a feed and a return — of welded, insulated pipe in each direction.

“It’s likely the project would need to be constructed in many phases based on available funding for a given year,” a synopsis of the study reads.

Common alternative

District steam or water systems often heat entire communities in northern climates around the world. Ferree speculated they are particularly handy where high taxes on petroleum products make district heat prices competitive. Outside the United States, governments often remain involved with operations and it can be profitable as a stand-alone enterprise. The Seattle Steam Company, which serves about 200 customers with steam heat, has burned fuel oil or natural gas to produce steam heat and recently converted a boiler to combust biomass.

Customers in downtown Fairbanks continue to sign up for hot water heat, which costs about two-thirds to three-quarters as much as fuel oil. Ferree said Mt. McKinley Bank, the Morris Thompson Center and part of the state railroad’s property have all hooked up in the past two years.

In 1982, the district heating system, then owned by the city, expanded to include its water-based lines, as a demonstration project, after a multimillion-dollar grant arrived from the state. Energy specialists reported spending more than $2 million to prepare public buildings including Ryan Middle and Lathrop High schools and the public library for hot water heat. The switch cut heating costs at those buildings by $100,000 within months, and the project was expected to pay for itself within seven or eight years, according to a 1983 Daily News-Miner article. Homeowners hooked to the project said they saw a 40 percent drop in their heating bills, an engineering report from the following year stated.

The engineers also, however, found that it could cost far more to keep expanding lines to homes — up to $50,000 per house. Ferree said changes in technology have since cut that figure in half, enough to make district heat’s large construction costs affordable to larger customers or properties near main lines.

http://newsminer.com/printer_friendly/4142937

Striving for green answers
Group that helps unemployed focuses on energy efficiency for businesses, buildings
 
By ERIC ANDERSON BUSINESS EDITOR 
First published: Saturday, October 24, 2009
COLONIE -- There were eight of them, holding instruments not much larger than an iPod and pointing them at light fixtures throughout the Albany Marriott Hotel on Wolf Road.
On Friday, three of them returned to reveal what they had learned: By replacing its incandescent lights with light emitting diodes, the hotel could save $9,000 on its monthly electric bill.
The group has been trained by Strive, an organization in East Harlem that equips the unemployed to get and keep meaningful jobs.
They work for Eco Answers US, which provides energy audits, among other "green" services.
On Friday representatives of Strive and Eco Answers were at the Marriott, addressing the annual Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise conference of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York.
Theirs was part of a larger presentation on the effort to construct buildings that are energy efficient and environmentally friendly.
Strive was founded nearly a quarter-century ago and has trained more than 40,000 workers, said Eric Treworgy, its CEO. Last year, it saw the need for green skills training, which includes everything from brownfield remedia, tion to energy audting and installing photovoltaic systems.
Bill Thomas of Eco Answers told of his company's initiatives, including energy audits of New York City subway stations and a facility in Fall River, Mass., that has begun producing LED-powered tubes to replace fluorescent lights.
"One of the techniques that is the low-hanging fruit is lighting," Thomas told the audience.
The Dormitory Authority, which finances construction not only of dormitories but also laboratories, health centers, libraries and other government and nonprofit buildings, is striving to make new construction as green as possible.
"We have a policy that every project we do will be at least LEED silver," said Jodi Smits Anderson, director of sustainability programs for the Dormitory Authority, referring to the certification program of the U.S. Green Building Council.
Nancy Goshow, managing partner of New York City-based Goshow Architects, described how her office used computer-controlled lighting fixtures, paints and furnishings free of volatile organic compounds, and nanotechnology-based coatings that are antimicrobial on such things as keyboards, phones and door handles.
"We're living in a healthy, clean environment, and that makes me want to go to work every day," she said.
While LEDs and other energy-efficient products typically have higher upfront costs, Thomas said the return on investment can be measured in months.
With the state pushing for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2050, Thomas and others are counting on a growing market that will also be a generator of new jobs.
It's "the birth of a new industry," Thomas said.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=856814


Regional Study of Green Buildings First of Its Kind to Study Post Occupancy
Results of LEED Buildings in Illinois



CHICAGO, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Illinois has been an early leader
in green building construction, currently ranking sixth in the number of
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) buildings built, with the
City of Chicago itself having more LEED(R) certified buildings than any other
city in the country. This leadership continues with release of a report from
the U.S. Green Building Council - Chicago Chapter (USGBC - Chicago) that
provides a first look at post-occupancy performance of LEED buildings on a
local scale.

The Regional Green Building Case Study Project: a Post-Occupancy Study of LEED
Projects in Illinois report summarizes the first year of a multi-year study to
analyze the post-occupancy benefits of 25 LEED(R) certified projects in
Illinois related to: energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water use,
construction and operating costs, cost of building green, health and
productivity impacts, and occupant comfort. The study was funded by the Grand
Victoria Foundation and is a collaborative endeavor between the USGBC?Chicago,
U.S. EPA Region 5, the City of Chicago, Delta Institute, and the Center for
Neighborhood Technology, which was the lead researcher for the project.

The study found that sustainability does not stop with building design and
construction. While a building may be
designed to be sustainable, it is often ongoing operational issues that affect
the amount of energy, water, and other resources it consumes. Accordingly,
ongoing performance evaluation is a key component of long-term sustainability.

"Sustainability must be integrated into ongoing operations and maintenance
practices," says Kathy Tholin, CEO of the Center for Neighborhood Technology,
whose Chicago LEED Platinum building was a part of the study. "Constructing to
LEED(R) Platinum was a natural choice given CNT's long-standing commitment to
sustainable development," explains Tholin. "But our job is far from complete.
Now that we're utilizing the space, sustainability means focusing on ongoing
operations and maintenance. We're striving for continuous improvement."

The U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is the nationally accepted
benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance
green buildings. LEED provides a roadmap for measuring and documenting success
for every building type and phase of a building lifecycle.

Doug Widener, Executive Director of the U.S. Green Building Council - Chicago
Chapter emphasizes that "with an understanding of operational issues, tenant
behavior, and maintenance practices, building owners and managers can
implement ongoing changes that lead to increased building performance and
sustainability over time." Mr. Widener adds that "this report is an important
step towards achieving our mission of leading the regional transformation of
the built environment to become ecologically sustainable, profitable, and
healthy."

The report compliments the U.S. Green Building Council's recently launched
Building Performance Initiative. Beginning this fall, it will analyze energy
and other resource use data from LEED buildings and provide this data back to
building owners to allow for ongoing sustainability improvements over time. 

The study also found that resource use varies in LEED buildings. Many
participating projects performed better than conventional commercial interiors
and buildings, with projects that focused on energy conservation as a part of
their LEED strategy performing better in relation to energy use and
conservation than projects that focused on other areas of sustainability.
Given that LEED is a multifaceted system that rates a building's
sustainability on a variety of factors (including site, water efficiency,
energy efficiency, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality),
projects that focused on energy conservation performed better in this area
than projects that did not. All buildings in the first year of the study were
certified under older versions of LEED. Newer versions of the rating system
mandate, as well as incent, higher levels of energy efficiency. 

The results of occupant comfort in surveyed projects were very high,
especially related to indoor air quality and lighting. The study also found
that construction costs varied greatly, as do construction costs of
conventional buildings, and that these are largely driven by programmatic
issues. The average premium reported for building green was 3.8 percent; in
line with the national average.

For the second year of the study, 25 additional Illinois LEED projects will be
added to its sample for a total of 50. "We are excited by this initial year of
the study, but are even more excited for the second year when we will add
buildings certified under newer versions of LEED to see if these newer LEED
buildings perform better," notes Widener. "We are also collecting a second
year of data for our first year projects. It will be interesting to see if
operational changes made as a result of the study will result in improved
efficiencies in these buildings."

For the full report and case studies please visit the Chapter web site at:
www.usgbc-chicago.org.
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS171154+26-Oct-2009+PRN20091026

Calif. utility wants to buy more solar power
LOS ANGELES — California's largest utility said it plans to boost the amount of solar power it buys from residents and businesses as the state pushes for wider use of alternative energy.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger predicted that Monday's proposal by San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric Co. would open the way for more companies and homeowners to install rooftop panels to generate power.
Schwarzenegger last month ordered utilities to get a third of their power from renewable sources by 2020, the most aggressive green energy standard in the nation.
To meet the threshold "we have to really use every means to get there," the Republican governor told The Associated Press. "We all know that the more you give financial incentives, it leads people in that direction.
"We should encourage people to do everything that they can to put solar on the roof," he said.
About 50,000 homes and companies across the sun-splashed state generate solar power. When solar panels produce more electricity than customers need, they can return the excess to a utility and receive credits to offset their electricity use when the sun isn't shining.
Under recently enacted state law, a customer can be paid for those credits at the end of the year or carry them forward to offset future electricity use.
In some case "you can zero-out your electric bill," said Susan Kennedy, the governor's chief of staff. "It makes the cost of installing solar panels pay for itself."
Schwarzenegger also plans to push to end limits on the amount of solar power purchased by utilities from customers. He said those limits chill investment in solar energy.
The company's proposal must be approved by state regulators. Last year, solar power accounted for less than 1 percent of the electricity generated in California.
"We will continue to pursue additional clean renewable resources for our customers as we strive to meet the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals," the company said in a statement.
PG&E provides natural gas and electric service to approximately 15 million people in northern and central California, according to its Web site.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hNrxNoE5QUed-KsxnHx7ZiOhCgWwD9BJE1V81


Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Cape Business News


Energy Efficiency Forum Launched

The South African Property Owners Association (SAPOA), working in collaboration with the South African Council for Shopping Centres (SACSC), Eskom and the City of Cape Town is launching a new Energy Efficiency Forum for commercial property owners and managers on 21 October at the Civic Centre in Cape Town.


This forum is also supported by the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA), Provincial Government of the Western Cape and Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). 


The Energy Efficiency Forum aims to provide owners and managers of offices, shopping centres, hotels and other commercial and public buildings with practical knowledge on energy efficiency solutions, and will also serve as a platform for collective action and shared learning.


Vuyani Hako, Chairman of the SAPOA Western Cape region says, “Energy efficiency has become increasingly critical in the context of rising electricity tariffs and a medium-term shortage of supply. The economic recession, forthcoming legislation and the need to reduce environmental impact are also important considerations that call for a concerted effort towards finding solutions and working with other commercial property owners to improve energy efficiency.”


The formation of the Energy Efficiency Forum follows a recent SAPOA workshop, held in September 2009. This workshop was well attended, with excellent participation from commercial property delegates. And it was here that it was decided that there is a definite need for a regular forum to address energy efficiency issues and provide ongoing education on energy related matters.


http://www.cbn.co.za/print/daily/4169.html

Reuters.com


Green Cities California Unveils Best Practices Website

Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:00am EDT
Green Cities California, the collaborative of 10 cities and counties acknowledged as sustainability leaders, launches a website today that's to serve as a resource for other communities striving to go green.

The website, www.GreenCitiesCalifornia.org, is designed as a repository of best practices and other tools for policymakers who are trying to improve the environmental performance of their locales.

"Certain cities have already blazed a trail (toward sustainability) and it would be so much easier if that information were available to others," said David Assmann, who is the deputy director of San Francisco's Department of Environment and a member of Green Cities California's steering committee.

"There are obstacles and issues you have to look at," he said. "In virtually every area there are stumbling blocks, and the site enables everyone to learn from each other."

The site addresses seven key areas identified by the United Nations Urban Environmental Accord: energy, waste reduction, urban design, urban nature, transportation, environmental health and water.

Say you're trying to develop a zero-waste policy for your town and you want to know what other local governments have done to wipe out waste, but you don't have a big budget for research or a lot of time to do it. The Green Cities California site summarizes zero-waste efforts in Oakland and San Jose -- and provides 15 documents that can be used as templates as well as links to sites that can serve as models for your efforts.

Access to the site and downloads of its material are free. And though focused on California, the site is intended to be replicable and expandable, Assmann said.

The online resource currently has 50 best practices posted. The organization is working on the next 65, which will include some from out of state, he said.

Green Cities California was established in October 2007 with eight founding members. The group has since grown to 10 cities and counties: Berkeley, Los Angeles, Marin County, Pasadena, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Barbara and Santa Monica. Each member has adopted a sustainability plan, the U.N. Urban Environmental Accord and the U.S. Conference of Mayors Protection Agreement. Representatives work with their governing bodies to adopt the organization's Sustainability Accord, and each member city or county pays membership dues that range from $3,000 to $11,000 a year.

The group's best practices website was about a year in the making and in active development for six months, Assmann said. The Full Circle Fund, 11th Hour Project and Blackstone Ranch Institute provided funding and technical help for the project.

Earlier initiatives by the group have saved their local governments more than a $1 million and have helped avoid millions of pounds of CO2 emissions.

For example, the group’s pledge in spring 2008 that only 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper would be used for their cities' and counties' operations has prevented the release of the equivalent of 8.6 million pounds of CO2 emissions and saved at least 19.6 million gallons of water, 11.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity and 67,000 trees, the organization said. The total annual paper expenses for the group typically amounts to $5 million a year.

Last fall, the group banned the use of public funds for bottled water. The move prevented 1.633,302 plastic water bottles from being sent to landfills and saved more than $1.6 million, according to the organization.

http://www.reuters.com/article/gwmEnergy/idUS52727597920091021

Wiser wires

Oct 8th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Information technology can make electricity grids less wasteful and much greener. Businesses have lots of ideas and governments are keen, but obstacles remain


Getty Images
WHAT was the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century? The motor car, perhaps, or the computer? In 2000 America’s National Academy of Engineering gave a different answer: “the vast networks of electrification”. These, the academy concluded, made most of the century’s other advances possible.
But whereas cars, computers and so forth have become ever more sophisticated, power grids have remained, in essence, sets of dumb wires. Thomas Edison, a pioneer of electrification in the 1880s, would be able to run them. Power is fed into the grid from power stations in the hope that it will arrive in factories, offices and homes. To this day most utilities rely on consumers to tell them that the power is out—and may then have to put in a lot of detective work to discover the cause.
This may be changing at last. A global movement is afoot to make grids “smart”. This means adding all kinds of information technology, such as sensors, digital meters and a communications network akin to the internet, to the dumb wires. Among other things, a smart grid would be able to avoid outages, save energy and help other green undertakings, such as electric cars and distributed generation.
Governments have earmarked parts of their stimulus packages for smart grids. Utilities have started to spend serious money. In recent years American venture capitalists have put more than $1 billion into smart-grid start-ups, even if investment this year has not matched the heights of 2008 (see chart). Two of these start-ups, GridPoint and Silver Spring Networks, raised $220m and $170m respectively.
Big electrical-engineering firms and information-technology giants are joining in too. Siemens hopes to win orders worth €6 billion ($8.5 billion) in the next five years. Smart grids are a big part of IBM’s “smarter planet” vision. Cisco, the world’s biggest maker of networking gear, expects that the underlying communications network will be “100 or 1,000 times larger than the internet”. Google and Microsoft also want to join the party.
Smart grids are neither a surprising nor a new idea. It is well known that systems transmitting and distributing electricity are exceedingly wasteful and vulnerable. Huge amounts of power are lost to technical problems or theft: up to 10% in America and Europe; more than 50% in some big cities in developing countries. Outages cost the American economy $150 billion a year.
With smart grids, there should be no need to send out lorries and ring doorbells when the power fails. A few mouse clicks may do the trick, or the equipment may even fix itself. Sensors on transmission lines and smart meters on customers’ premises tell the utility where the fault is and smart switches then route power around it. That is similar to the internet, which redirects data packets if they get stuck.

Take what is called “demand response”. Some big companies have long agreed to throttle back their consumption at times of peak demand. With a smart grid, all consumers would be able to do the same. In a basic version, they would get real-time information about their usage and could then turn off the tumble dryer or other energy-hungry appliances. Pilot projects show that this alone would reduce consumption by 6.5% on average, says Ahmad Faruqui of the Brattle Group. If prices also varied with a grid’s load, rising when demand was heavy, customers would cut back by 10-15% during peak hours. That number would double again if smart meters could turn appliances off automatically should rates rise above a certain point.A more resilient grid, however, is the less important half of the story. All told, estimates the Brattle Group, a consultancy, the benefits from a smart grid could amount to $227 billion over the next 40 years in America alone. Just as the original grid facilitated the industrial innovations of the 20th century, the smart grid should support the green advances of the 21st. “Without it, most of the other green technology won’t work,” says Ben Kortlang of KPCB, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm that recently invested in Silver Spring.
With peak demand lower, utilities would no longer have to hold as much expensive backup capacity. Mainly because so many of its customers have air conditioners, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), a Californian utility, needs to be able to deliver more than 20,000 megawatts (MW) in the summer months—almost twice the average demand. Eliminating only the top 10% of electricity usage through demand-response and efficiency programmes would save customers more than $100m annually, says Andrew Tang, who oversees the utility’s smart-grid project, one of America’s biggest. PG&E is installing 10,000 smart meters a day and wants to equip 5m homes by the end of 2011.
More intelligence in the grid would also help integrate renewable sources of electricity, such as solar panels or wind turbines. As things stand, the trouble is that their output, being hostage to the weather, is highly variable. A standard grid becomes hard to manage if too many of them are connected to it; supply and demand on electricity-transmission systems must always be in balance. A smart grid could turn on appliances should, for instance, the wind blow more strongly. Added intelligence would also make it much easier to cope with the demand from electric cars by making sure that not all of a neighbourhood’s vehicles are being charged at the same time. Although this is still many years away, the cars’ batteries could even be used to feed electricity back into the grid if needed, and so act as a vast electricity-storage system.
The Guardian A smarter cup of tea
Some countries are further ahead than others in developing smart grids. Italy (surprisingly, perhaps) is a pioneer, at least in smart metering. In the early 2000s Enel, the country’s biggest utility, started installing smart meters in most households so that it could clamp down on theft and cut off non-payers remotely. Sweden has recently become the first country in which every customer has a smart meter, because the government made it mandatory. In America, Texas has led the way.
Behind the latest push, though, are several forces common across countries. Grids are ageing, giving utilities an incentive to invest in modern replacements. The technology has become cheap enough to be worthwhile. Rising energy prices mean consumers want more control over their bills. Governments, worried about both recession and the warming of the planet, have become more active. America’s Department of Energy will soon start to dole out the $3.9 billion earmarked for smart grids in the country’s stimulus package. In Germany, smart meters will be compulsory in new buildings from next year. Britain plans to complete a rollout of such devices by 2020. China has a five-year plan to make the core of its grid cleverer.

Switching on, stacking up

However, as a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF), a think-tank and conference organiser, and Accenture, a consulting firm, argues, smart grids’ features will continue to vary with local circumstances. In some places, such as New York City, the focus will be on making the grid more reliable, to avoid blackouts such as that of 2003. Islands and self-contained cities, such as Malta and Singapore, will invest more in upgrading distribution, to cope better with renewables and electric cars. In areas with high-tech clusters, such as Silicon Valley, the quality of power is a priority, because of the damage voltage surges and brief interruptions can cause.
Whatever the characteristics of individual grids, it is easy to see why firms are lining up to build these systems. Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, predicts that the smart-grid market will grow from $20 billion to $100 billion in 2030, a compound average rate of more than 8% a year. Within this market, there are three different strata of technologies, known as “stacks”.
The first stack is called “advanced metering infrastructure”, or AMI. It is at the heart of every smart grid and is the most vibrant part of the market so far, which is good news for makers of smart meters, such as General Electric, Itron, based in Washington state, and Landis+Gyr, from Switzerland. Their products are rather like smart-phones: they have a powerful chip and a display, and are connected to a communications network. More than 76m will have been installed worldwide by the end of this year, forecasts ABI Research, a market-research firm. By 2013 the number will rise to 155m.
However, just as in the computing industry, the technologically more interesting and economically more promising bits of AMI may not be the hardware but the network: the software that makes the smart grid tick, and the applications that run on it. This field is dominated by start-ups, some of which were financed at first by Foundation Capital, a venture-capital firm that spotted the trend towards smart grids much earlier than better-known Silicon Valley competitors.
The main task of a metering system is to get information reliably into and out of meters—for example, how much power is being used, when and at what price. In Europe, this is mostly done by using power lines to communicate. But in America this would be too costly. The grid’s architecture does not allow it to be turned into a data network easily. Using a public mobile network would also be hard. A meter cannot move to get better reception, for instance. The best approach is to use wireless mesh networks, in which data are handed from one meter to the next.
Such networks, which automatically reconfigure themselves when new meters are added, are at the core of the wares sold by Silver Spring Networks and Trilliant Networks, both based in Silicon Valley. Yet as well as providing the communications infrastructure of a smart grid, they also want to offer its software foundation. So far Silver Spring is the more successful of the two, having several American utilities on its customer list, PG&E among them. But Cisco is likely to enter this market, probably through acquisition.
For applications that run on smart grids, it is still early days. EnerNOC gives a hint of things to come. The speciality of this American firm, whose share price has more than quadrupled in the past 12 months despite the crisis, is demand response. It promises utilities to supply them if they need additional power and is paid as if it were keeping physical plants ready. In fact it has agreements with many firms, which it pays for the privilege of being allowed to shut down their non-essential gear if need be, thus freeing up capacity. As of June 2,400 customers, from steel plants to grocery stores, had signed up. They represent 3,150MW, the output of about 30 peak-power plants. But EnerNOC also wants to use the equipment it has installed and the data it collects to offer something called “continuous commissioning”: making sure that big buildings, for instance, do not start to waste energy.
The other two technology stacks of a smart grid are more straightforward, but no less promising. One is all the technology a utility needs to manage the usage data, combine it with other information and set rates depending on demand. The leading start-up in this area is eMeter, from Silicon Valley, but Oracle, a database giant, offers similar software. IBM helps utilities connect their disparate systems, build applications for smart grids and analyse the huge amount of data they produce.
The third stack is the “home area network” (HAN)—industry-speak for all the smart-grid technology in the home, behind the meter. There is general agreement that it will include things such as wireless displays that show the household’s power consumption at that instant, thermostats that are connected to the meter and smart appliances that can be switched on and off remotely. The big question is how all these devices will be connected and controlled. Will the HAN be dedicated to regulating electricity consumptions, for instance, or will it also control home security or stream music through the rooms?
More than three dozen firms are peddling products. One is Control4, based in Salt Lake City. Just like Silver Spring, it aims to provide the dominant underlying software in its part of the smart grid. The start-up’s devices allow consumers to control almost everything in a house that runs on electricity. A Silicon Valley rival, iControl, which recently raised $23m from venture-capital firms, comes at the HAN from a different direction. Its gear—cameras, sensors, wireless hubs—is mainly used to keep burglars out, but can also be put to work managing energy consumption.
Some technology heavyweights also want a piece of the pie. Cisco is likely to enter this market too. It already offers a line of wireless consumer-electronics and recently bought a start-up that has developed a device called Mediator, a central hub to optimise the energy consumption of big buildings. Entering the territory of start-ups like GridPoint and Tendril, Google and Microsoft have launched web-based services, called PowerMeter and Hohm respectively, that allow households to track their power usage—and, at some point, their operators to sell more advertising.
Given the infantry of start-ups and the artillery of corporate giants, you might think it cannot be long before smart grids are widely deployed, at least in the rich world. Alas, things are more complicated, for three main reasons. The first of these is that the technology is not ready yet. Granted, most of it exists in some form (with the notable exception of ways to store energy efficiently when demand is low). But many products are not widely available or still need honing. Smart grids are also said to be vulnerable to cyber criminals. At a recent conference, a security consultant showed how a large number of meters could be hacked and shut down.
Getty Images To be switched on after bedtime
What is more, many standards have yet to emerge and the technology is still in flux. Understandably, utilities are hesitant to make big bets on products that could soon be obsolete. Before settling on Silver Spring, PG&E had picked a different metering infrastructure, which turned out to be too limited for many applications. It took some time to convince regulators to approve the additional investment, which has driven the cost of the project from $1.7 billion to nearly $2.2 billion.
This case points to the second obstacle: politics. Power grids have lots of interest groups, from utilities to consumers. Mark Spelman, Accenture’s global head of strategy and an author of the joint report with the WEF, says sharing costs and benefits will be the subject of difficult negotiations.
Moreover, regulators are often still stuck in the era of the dumb grid. In America, states’ public utility commissions do not allow much of the benefits of a smart grid, such as more efficient power distribution and lower carbon emissions, to go to a utility’s bottom line. Nor does it help the business case for such an investment, that smart grids by definition reduce demand—and thereby revenues and ultimately profits. Only a few states, such as California, have decoupled both, making utilities no longer concerned about selling less power. The risk, says Adam Grosser of Foundation Capital, is that many utilities will go only halfway, and will not build a complete smart grid that reaches into the home.

Consumers in control

Third, no one can be sure how consumers will respond. Some studies are encouraging. One is a survey by IBM, of 1,900 people from six countries, which concluded that consumers would become more active in the next five years, as they have in media and entertainment. In some countries “passive ratepayers” are already outnumbered by “energy stalwarts” seeking more information and control, says Michael Valocchi, one of the study’s authors.
Yet where variable rates have been introduced, they have not always been a success. When they were tried in Seattle a few years ago, most suburbanites liked the idea at first. They duly resisted turning on their dishwashers and so on until 9pm, the magic moment at which the local utility, Puget Sound Energy (PSE), started to charge less. But the mood quickly soured when it turned out that many households on the “time of use” rate plan actually paid more than ordinary ones. Consumers quit the programme in droves. In November 2002, only 18 months after it was introduced, PSE cancelled it with the backing of regulators.
To avoid a repeat, utilities and regulators in many states prefer not to touch dynamic pricing. The resistance to it is likely to stiffen as more such schemes are introduced. Consumer advocates will have understandable concerns—some consumers may find the change hard to cope with. Others will portray smart grids and dynamic pricing as evil government tools to spy on citizens and tax them. Still, unless rates are linked to the level of demand, much of the benefit of smart grids will fail to materialise, says Mr Faruqui of the Brattle Group. He estimates that dynamic pricing accounts for more than $45 billion of the $227 billion of savings on offer. To avoid a backlash, he says, utilities and their regulators have to move slowly.
That does not mean that smart grids will never be widespread. But just like other new technologies, they will first go through what Gartner, a market-research firm, calls the “hype cycle”. After a peak of inflated expectations, there comes a “trough of disillusionment” before the technology reaches the “slope of enlightenment”. And perhaps more than with other technologies, how steep this slope turns out to be will largely depend on what people, from politicians to business leaders to consumers, make of it.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14586006

Sunday, October 18, 2009


October 19, 2009
GREEN INC. COLUMN

Local Assaults on the Global Climate Problem

NEW YORK — This month, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, a city of about 500,000 inhabitants in the American Southwest, became the 1,000th local leader to sign on to a climate change agreement under the United States Conference of Mayors.

In signing the compact — initiated in 2005 by Greg Nickels, the mayor of Seattle and the president of the conference — local leaders commit to reducing their cities’ carbon emissions in concert with the national goals laid out by the Kyoto Protocol: a 7 percent reduction over 1990 emissions levels by 2012.

As with the country-level signatories to the Kyoto agreement, many cities will fail to meet this goal. But with prospects dimming that world leaders will agree to a substantive successor treaty to the expiring Kyoto accord at the global climate summit meeting in Copenhagen in December, local endeavors like Mr. Nickels’s mayoral agreement would seem to take on a whole new measure of import.

“Locally elected officials can create ripples — and maybe even waves — in the fight against global warming,” Mr. Nickels wrote in the introduction to a report, published this month, highlighting the efforts of 16 mayors in various American cities. “What we do in our cities,” he continued, “whether it’s constructing green buildings, establishing electric car charging stations, planting urban forests or creating legions of good-paying green jobs, can serve as a model for state governments” and for Washington.

In a telephone conversation over the weekend, Tom Cochran, the executive director of the U.S. mayors’ conference, put it this way: “In my experience, mayors have always quietly changed human behavior — from civil rights to recycling,” he said. “You’re affecting things globally and nationally, but you start out locally.”

It is a sentiment echoed by local leaders across the globe — many of them frustrated by the partisan bickering and national chauvinism on display among nations involved in global climate negotiations.

“Advocacy for the role of local governments is not a luxury,” Bärbel Dieckmann, the mayor of Bonn, said in a video address to a global conference of mayors last June in Edmonton, Alberta. “It is the key to the sustainable future of billions of citizens of cities and towns worldwide. And who can show this commitment better than us, the world’s mayors?”
The winds of demographic change are certainly behind them.

Two years ago, researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia, working with United Nations data, estimated — somewhat lightheartedly — that the planet officially became more urban than rural for the first time on May 23, 2007.
The specificity of the date was, of course, largely symbolic, but the thesis was clear: More people are living in cities and urban areas than ever before. Indeed, the United Nations has estimated that as many as 60 percent of the planet’s inhabitants will be living in urban areas by 2030, compared with 14 percent a century ago.

Just what this means in the context of a roiling climate debate is unclear. Organizations like the United Nations and the Clinton Climate Initiative, for example, have made broad claims about the role of cities in contributing to a warmer planet.

“Cities occupy two percent of the world’s land mass yet contribute more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions,” begins the Clinton Initiative’s online explication of its C-40 program, which unites large cities across the globe in a commitment to reducing greenhouse gases.

Other metrics have cities consuming 70 percent or more of the planet’s energy resources and contributing as much as 80 percent to greenhouse gas emissions.

But other researchers — including David Satterthwaite, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London — have challenged those numbers, claiming that they are at best exaggerated and in reality unknowable.

Writing in the March 2009 issue of the United Nations Human Settlements Program’s flagship magazine, Urban World, Mr. Satterthwaite and his colleague David Dodman, drawing on the most recent figures of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, estimate that cities contribute somewhere between 30 and 41 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

And even that estimate, the authors argue, is something of a wild guess:
“The data do not exist to provide an accurate figure,” they write, “which is probably why the I.P.C.C. made no estimates for the relative roles of cities, other urban centers and rural areas.”

Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Dobson argue that overstating the urban contribution to global warming diverts attention from the “real problem”: the consumptive, carbon-intensive lifestyles of individuals in rich nations — be they urban dwellers, suburban commuters or owners of a cabins in the woods.

Blaming cities “misses the point that well-planned and governed cities are central to de-linking a high quality of life from high levels of consumption,” the authors write.
“Most U.S. cities have three to five times the gasoline use per person of most European cities,” the authors note in elaborating their point, “and it is difficult to see that Detroit has five times the quality of life of Copenhagen or Amsterdam.”

Setting aside the antagonism of such an assertion, it follows a familiar logic: Like politics, all action on climate change is ultimately local.

“These are not issues that are dealt with by a president signing something,” said Mark Roseland, the director of the Center for Sustainable Community Development at Canada’s Simon Fraser University and the author of the book “Toward Sustainable Communities: Resources for Citizens and Their Governments.”

Rather, Mr. Roseland said, they involve “mobilizing societies so that people are changing the way they deal with carbon in their lives.”

That means getting people out of their cars; investing in mass transit; providing incentives for personal efficiency; encouraging recycling and providing the ways and means to do it; and otherwise driving home the notion that individual actions matter.

It is also about recognizing, Mr. Roseland said, that the uncertain prospects for a global treaty in Copenhagen mean that local communities will need to lead the way on climate change — a problem that, at this late date, permits little room for dithering.

“I think there’s a lot of people who recognize that if we don’t have an agreement at Copenhagen, we can’t wait,” he said, “and this stuff will be very much driven from the bottom up, until senior leaders get their act together.”


Customers say new PG&E meters not always smart

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Kelly Shaughnessy had never paid more than $230 for electricity at her Bakersfield home last year. Then she got a SmartMeter.

Designed to track electricity and gas use with precision, SmartMeters relay their data to the utility via wireless, without the need of a meter reader.  After Pacific Gas and Electric Co. installed one of the devices at her house this past spring, Shaughnessy's monthly bills started to climb. In August, her bill hit $458. Throttling back the air conditioning didn't help.

"I kept the AC at 85 degrees, to the point I had sweat running down my nose while I was inside my house," said Shaughnessy, 44, who teaches junior high school. "Bottom line is, my bills went through the roof."

Across Bakersfield, other PG&E customers experienced the same shock. And like Shaughnessy, they started questioning the SmartMeters' accuracy.

PG&E now faces a revolt in Bakersfield over the SmartMeters, which the company has been installing throughout its territory since late 2006. Angry homeowners repeatedly booed PG&E representatives during a public hearing on the meters earlier this month. State Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez has demanded a moratorium on their installation. State energy regulators last week agreed to investigate the meters' accuracy, although they stopped short of agreeing to a moratorium.

"People think these meters are fraud meters," said Florez, D-Shafter (Kern County). "They feel they're being defrauded. They're getting no benefit from these things."

The issue is larger than Bakersfield, or even California.  Many energy experts consider installing the meters an essential first step in building a "smart grid," an electrical transmission system that is more flexible and reliable than the one we have today. Meters that let homeowners monitor their electricity use hour by hour could be a key tool for cutting energy consumption and fighting global warming.

"For this state and this nation to go where we want to go, we need smart meters," said Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission. The commission, which approved the meters' installation, said Wednesday that it would require independent testing of the devices. PG&E representatives say they will work with the commission on the tests.

Weather and rates

PG&E executives say the meters aren't to blame for the problems in Bakersfield. The weather is. So are recent increases in electricity rates.

A rate increase last October and another in March substantially raised the price of electricity for those who use large amounts. For some customers - those using the most juice - the rate increased a total of 22 percent. Few people noticed in the spring. But when unusually hot weather hit Bakersfield this summer, bills jumped.

"It's primarily a heat and rate issue," said Felecia Lokey, PG&E senior director of customer engagement. The utility will inspect a meter at the customer's request, but so far, the company hasn't found any malfunctioning meters, she said.

"Not to my knowledge, of all the investigations we've done," Lokey said.

PG&E, based in San Francisco, has installed 3.7 million SmartMeters to date - 1.7 million to measure electricity use and 2 million for gas. The total will rise 10 million by the time the $2.2 billion program wraps up in 2012.  Installation started in the Central Valley. Some parts of the Bay Area - including Concord, Hayward and stretches of the Peninsula - have already received them. San Francisco and Oakland will be among the last cities to get the meters.

The SmartMeters being installed now aren't the ones that PG&E started with. Earlier this year, the utility switched to a second generation of meters. Some Bakersfield customers received the first-generation meter only to have PG&E replace it later on with the second-generation model.

The current meters are made by General Electric, Landis+Gyr and Silver Spring Networks. The manufacturers are required to test all of them before delivery to PG&E, said William Devereaux, the utility's senior director for the SmartMeter program. PG&E also has inspected 1,700 meters in the field this year, he said.

Some customers say PG&E's explanation that rate increases and heat caused the high bills makes sense.

Suspicions

Ron Hunter's electric bill reached $1,363 in July. His suspicions about the meter grew in September, after a blackout hit his Bakersfield home. The Web page that allows SmartMeter users to see how much electricity they consume, hour by hour, showed that his electricity use actually rose during the blackout.

It took time to get an answer. But PG&E eventually told him that the Web page displays an estimate of each customer's typical use when it stops receiving data from the meter.
"I don't think they're cheating me," said Hunter, 56, a partner in an environmental consulting firm (that has not worked for PG&E). "I think the public utilities commissioners are the people who screwed us, the consumers, with these rate increases, and I think PG&E should have communicated those increases better. But I think I'm getting what I'm paying for."

Not everyone is convinced.  Liz Keogh has been keeping records of her home's electricity use since 1983. PG&E installed a first-generation smart meter at her house in September 2007, and the use it showed matched her expectations. Until this spring. Then the recorded use started rising, sometimes by dramatic amounts. For example, according to the meter, she used 37 percent more electricity in July than she had in July 2008.

"It just seems to me that somehow, in my case, in the spring the meter started measuring more than I was actually using," said Keogh, 66, a former social worker for Kern County. "Right now, there is nothing on in my house, except the refrigerator. And that's the way it is most days. I wasn't doing anything different this year."
E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/18/BUJI1A658S.DTL

Friday, October 16, 2009

London Mayor proposes move towards more decentralised energy

Wednesday 14 October 2009

London Mayor proposes move towards more decentralised energy
Boris Johnson has a target to supply 25% of London’s heat and electricity from local sources by 2025 
The Mayor of London has today (October 14) detailed steps to boost locally generated energy to cut carbon emissions, create 'green collar' jobs' and save money off fuel bills.

Boris Johnson today outlined a package of initiatives designed to attract investors as well as help developers and borough councils to build more local energy schemes, which could included renewable sources and combined heat and power (CHP) stations. This follows on from the ten Low Carbon Zones the Mayor announced in September (see this NewEnergyFocus story).

The Mayor's office has a target to supply 25% of London's heat and electricity from local sources by 2025, but currently, the vast majority of London's energy comes from power stations miles away from the city, which can see up to two thirds of it lost before reaching its point of use.

Today, the Mayor launched a prospectus showing the potential for more decentralised energy in London, a 'London Heat Map' to help investors pinpoint specific areas for decentralised energy, and a 'Decentralised Energy Centre of Excellence' to provide expertise and support to boroughs.

Mr Johnson said: ‘I want to position London as the world's leading low carbon economy. There are massive opportunities flowing from the shift away from our fossil fuelled lifestyles including new 'green collar' jobs and financial savings from becoming less wasteful.

"We are working hand in hand with the business community and London's boroughs to create the ripe conditions to revolutionise the way we power our city. This is a fertile alliance between private and public organisations which will reap significant dividends for Londoners," he added.

Measures

The London Development Agency has allocated up to £16 million for decentralised energy projects over the next four years and is currently working on 14 projects across the capital, including the London Thames Gateway Heat Network, which is set to capture low carbon heat from Barking Power Station to supply up to 120,000 homes and properties with their heating and domestic hot water requirements.

Separately, Guys and St Thomas' hospitals have launched a CHP system that is set to deliver £1.5m a year in cost savings and cut carbon emissions by 20%, while the building housing TfL and LDA staff set to have a CHP system including a hydrogen fuel cell operational later this year, reducing the building's carbon emissions by 30% from its building regulation target levels.

The Mayor hopes to build on these projects with the prospectus announced today, entitled 'Powering Ahead'. It is aimed at the private and public sector, and sets out the potential for more decentralised energy in the capital as well as containing information and advice for organisations who want to implement local energy schemes.

Councillor Sean Brennan, London Councils Executive Member for Sustainability said: "There is huge potential to get investors on board in the fight against climate change and this prospectus will prove vital in informing them about the benefits of decentralised energy and how they can get involved."
The Mayor added that a 'Decentralised Energy Centre of Excellence' within the London Development Agency (LDA) would help boroughs identify potential opportunities for decentralised energy generation, as well as providing ongoing support on procurement, legal and financial considerations to delivery the projects.

Also announced was the London Heat Map, an interactive web-based map designed to help public organisations, property developers, registered social landlords and private investors identify the potential for decentralised energy opportunities in specific areas of London.

The map includes details of major energy consumers, energy supply plants and community heating networks and heat density. It will be regularly updated and allows users to contribute content to the map.

The measures were welcomed by Baroness Jo Valentine, chief executive of London First and the Combined Heat and Power Association (CHPA)

"A low-carbon energy infrastructure can help to secure a sustainable future for London. Locally generated power at sufficient scale will notch up a sizeable chunk of the carbon savings London needs, to meet national and European targets," Baroness Valentine said.

Graham Meeks, director of the CHPA, said: "The measures announced today should be applauded. They are another addition to a long and growing list of examples where effective coordination and collaboration by partners across London has enabled development of decentralised energy schemes for the mutual benefit of residents, businesses and the environment alike."

"By bringing local energy generation into communities across the capital, London has set itself on a trajectory to become a world leading low carbon success story," he added.

http://www.newenergyfocus.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=1&listcatid=32&listitemid=3096&section=Heat#

Thursday, October 15, 2009


SunRun First to Offer Affordable Home Solar Power in Colorado

Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:00am EDT
New Colorado Policies Allow Leading Residential Solar Company to Offer Easy and
Affordable Solar Leases to Colorado Homeowners
DENVER--(Business Wire)--
SunRun, the leading national residential solar company, today announced the
expansion of its affordable solar service to Colorado homeowners, becoming first
in the state to offer homeowners a solar lease. Colorado homeowners who have not
yet considered solar panels for their homes due to high initial cost or
questions about panel maintenance and repairs will now be able to easily get
solar power through SunRun`s solar service. 

With SunRun, homeowners pay as little as $1,000 for a one-time system
installation fee, and then pay a low, monthly bill to have solar energy at home.
SunRun provides complete monitoring, repairs, insurance, and a performance
guarantee for all its customers, making it a simple option for homeowners who
don`t want to think about solar equipment or pay a high upfront cost to switch
the source of their electricity. Thousands of homeowners in California, Arizona
and Massachusetts currently use SunRun`s solar service. 

SunRun`s announcement comes on the heels of strong support for residential solar
from Colorado`s government. In April, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signed a law
allowing solar companies, such as SunRun, to own and maintain solar panels on
residential roofs. This law allows homeowners to pay for solar power through a
lease, instead of purchasing solar panels, reducing upfront costs to get solar
by tens of thousands of dollars. Now, for the first time, clean energy is truly
accessible to Colorado homeowners. 

SunRun`s unique business approach is to partner with leading local solar
companies to design and install systems for its customers. In Colorado, SunRun
will partner exclusively with Namaste Solar, REC Solar and Real Goods Solar,
three of Colorado`s largest and most trusted solar installers. Since SunRun
makes residential solar realistic for a greatly expanded group of homeowners, it
often has a significant and positive impact on job creation at its local
partners. In some markets, SunRun has helped its partners grow available jobs in
sales, construction and design by as much as 100 percent. 

"I am pleased to welcome SunRun to Colorado as the newest member of our growing
New Energy Economy," said Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. "With great support
from the Legislature, we`ve passed some of the most forward-thinking legislation
in the country to help us attract companies like SunRun to Colorado. And not
only are we creating sustainable jobs, we are lowering energy costs, increasing
energy security and leading America toward a new energy future." 

"Most people would like to have clean energy in their homes, but it doesn`t
always make financial sense for them to spend a lot of money to get started.
SunRun makes it really easy to have solar panels. Most people will see payback
from their initial installation fee in less than three years," said Lynn Jurich,
president and cofounder of SunRun. "Governor Ritter and his staff are some of
the country`s leading green thinkers, and we`re excited to be working with them
to develop clean energy solutions that make financial sense for homeowners and
taxpayers." 

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS110433+13-Oct-2009+BW20091013