Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Idle in Manhattan by Herbert London - City Journal

Idle in Manhattan by Herbert London - City Journal

Idle in Manhattan
Mayor Bloomberg’s attempts to control traffic have only made things worse.
27 September 2011

“What’s the easiest way to get across town?” a New York City traffic commissioner was asked in the 1950s. “Be born there,” he replied. That flippant retort has even more relevance today. In fact, not only is it difficult to travel across town in Manhattan; it is also virtually impossible to travel north-south without having to change your route to avoid obstacles. Seeking to improve traffic congestion in the city, the Bloomberg administration has declared war on the automobile.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Tax Plan to Turn Old Buildings ‘Green’ Finds Favor


September 19, 2011


A business consortium that includes Lockheed Martin and Barclays bank plans to invest as much as $650 million over the next few years to slash the energy consumption of buildings in the Miami and Sacramento areas. It is the most ambitious effort yet to jump-start a national market for energy upgrades that many people believe could eventually be worth billions.
Focusing mainly on commercial property at first, the group plans to exploit a new tax arrangement that allows property owners to upgrade their buildings at no upfront cost, typically cutting their energy use and their utility bills by a third. The building owners would pay for the upgrades over five to 20 years through surcharges on their property-tax bills, but that would be less than the savings.
The consortium is led by a company called Ygrene Energy Fund of Santa Rosa, Calif., which has already won an exclusive contract to manage a retrofit program for a half-dozen communities in the Miami area, with the city expected to join in a few weeks. It is in the late stages of completing a contract with Sacramento, and is seeking deals in other cities.
State and city officials are optimistic they may have found a way to tackle one of the nation’s biggest energy problems — waste in older buildings — without new money from Washington. If enough building owners sign on, private capital would be put to work paying for retrofit projects that promise to save local businesses money while creating thousands of new construction jobs.
“We are so used to reaching our hand out and saying, ‘Washington, we need this,’ and ‘Tallahassee, give us that,’ ” said Edward MacDougall, the mayor of Cutler Bay, Fla., a Miami suburb that took the lead in setting up the deal in that region. “This is really a home-grown mechanism where we don’t need to do that.”
The consortium was put together by the Carbon War Room, a nonprofit environmental group based in Washington set up by Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur and billionaire, to tackle the world’s climate and energy problems in cost-saving ways. With the United States government nearly paralyzed on climate policy, he said, his group is seeking a way forward.
“We see this as the first of hopefully many, many, many projects, and a big step in the right direction,” Mr. Branson said in an interview last weekend in New York.
In the past three years, half the states have passed legislation permitting energy retrofits financed by property-tax surcharges, and hundreds of cities and counties are considering such programs. While the situation poses some risks, and programs aimed specifically at homeowners have run into a snag, many jurisdictions are moving forward with plans to focus on commercial properties.
Environmental groups have lauded the trend as one of the most exciting developments in years regarding climate change. They point out that wide use of such programs could cut emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from power plants by reducing electricity demand.
“It’s a big deal,” said James D. Marston, head of energy programs for the Environmental Defense Fund, a group that has worked with Carbon War Room in developing the approach. Over the long haul, he said, “we’re talking about tens of billions of dollars in investments, and energy savings that are 10 times that amount. If you do this correctly, you would be able to shut down a third of the coal plants in the country.”
While that may take a while, there seems to be little question that the new approach could draw substantial private capital into the market for energy upgrades, which have historically been difficult for many midsize and smaller businesses to finance.
As envisioned for Miami and Sacramento, the plans will work like this:
Ygrene and its partners will gain exclusive rights for five years to offer this type of energy upgrade to businesses in a particular community. They will market the plan aggressively, helping property owners figure out what kinds of upgrades make sense for them. Lockheed Martin is expected to do the engineering work on many larger projects.
The retrofits might include new windows and doors, insulation, and more efficient lights and mechanical systems. In some cases, solar panels or other renewable power might be included. For factories, the retrofits might include new motors or other gear.
Short-term loans provided by Barclays Capital will be used to pay for the upgrades. Contractors will offer a warranty that the utility savings they have promised will actually materialize, and an insurance underwriter, Energi, of Peabody, Mass., will back up that warranty. Those insurance contracts, in turn, will be backed by Hannover Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies.
As projects are completed, the upgrade loans, typically carrying interest rates of 7 percent, will be bundled into long-term bonds resembling those routinely issued by governmental taxing districts. Barclays will market the bonds. Retirement funds have expressed interest in buying these bonds, which will be repaid by tax surcharges on each property that undergoes a retrofit.
Perhaps the most serious risk is that fly-by-night contractors will be drawn to the new pot of money, pushing energy retrofits that are too costly or work poorly.
“Contractors are cowboys,” said Dennis Hunter, chairman of Ygrene. He promised close scrutiny of the ones selected for the Miami and Sacramento programs.
Ygrene is one of about a dozen start-up companies around the country pursuing such deals. The company appears to have substantial momentum, but some of its competitors have already stumbled, telling property owners they qualified for retrofits but then failing to deliver the necessary short-term financing. Still, many people are optimistic this approach will get off the ground.
“This is a game-changer,” said John D. Kinney, whose company, Clean Fund of San Rafael, Calif., has raised $250 million to invest in such projects. The company just used the technique to help finance a large solar installation at a development called Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park, Calif.
Experts point out that, with modern techniques and equipment, a retrofit can typically cut a building’s energy use so much that the project pays for itself in as little as five years. The most famous recent example was the refurbishment of the Empire State Building, which cut energy use by nearly 40 percent, turning it into one of New York’s greenest buildings.
The new financing approach is called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE.
For decades, cities and counties have created special taxing districts to finance improvements that benefit private property, such as street lights or sewers. Bonds are issued to pay for the projects, then repaid with surcharges on tax bills. If an owner sells, the surcharge stays with the property.
Several years ago, the city of Berkeley, Calif., hit on the idea of using that approach to finance energy upgrades on private homes. The idea took off, and 25 states and the District of Columbia soon passed PACE legislation. One of the most successful programs to date has been in Sonoma County, Calif., where retrofit projects exceeding $50 million have been financed.
While the initial focus was on homeowners, those programs slowed last year when an arm of the federal government that oversees the mortgage market took a hostile stance toward such projects on residential property, on the grounds that they add risk to mortgages. In most states, a lien associated with a retrofit project would have to be paid ahead of the mortgage if the property went into foreclosure.
A legal and political battle is under way to try to force the Federal Housing Finance Agency to reverse its stand. So far, it appears that PACE programs for commercial properties pose fewer legal complications.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Congestion pricing looks to hitch ride again with plan that could earn $1 billion for city


Sunday, September 18th 2011


ALBANY - A coalition of influential interest groups is quietly shopping a new plan to revive the idea of congestion pricing for some Manhattan travel.
A draft of the plan says it would generate more than $1 billion in new revenue that would be dedicated for MTA service improvements, and targeted fare and toll reductions.
Among the transit, environmental, labor and business groups developing the plan is the labor-backed Working Families Party.
Under the "MOVE NY draft sustainable mobility plan," drivers entering New York City's central business district, from 60th St. down to the Battery, would pay a toll at 22 entry points.
The tolls would vary based on the time of day. Peak hours - between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. - would be in the same range as the Port Authority's bridge and tunnel tolls, and the cost would be lower overnight and on weekends.
Yellow cabs would not be subject to the tolls, but they would be slapped with a $1-per-trip increase to generate $180 million a year, with $20 million going toward the hacks' health care. Livery cabs would get a 50% discount, and  commercial vehicles would not pay more than once a day.
The plan would also chop tolls by 15% for the Whitestone, Throgs Neck, Cross Bay and Verrazano bridges, and defer by a year a 2013 MTA fare and toll hike.
The document stresses that "this is a draft plan that continues to evolve as we solicit feedback from stakeholders and elected officials from around the region."
The latest meeting with a handful of lawmakers and other parties is scheduled for tomorrow evening in Manhattan. Supporters say times have changed since 2008, when the Legislature nixed Mayor Bloomberg's congestion-pricing plan.
Those in the coalition say they learned from that failure by working the past nine months to include all major parties in developing the plan.
"Everyone we've spoken to across the region agrees that we need to find new funding for our transportation system and appreciates the effort we've made to test different ideas and solicit feedback," said Alex Matthiessen, an environmental consultant and MOVE NY campaign director. 
But congestion pricing still faces an uphill battle in the Legislature.
"I think there is zero appetite," one state lawmaker said. "They can dress this up all they want, but people just don't trust the MTA."


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/09/18/2011-09-18_congestion_pricing_looks_to_hitch_ride_again.html#ixzz1YLDN2ZBp

Thursday, September 15, 2011

How to Build a Greener City

Bike lanes, micro wind turbines, pneumatic garbage collection—and other ways to make urban areas more environmentally friendly


Wall Street Journal


Can cities be part of the environmental solution instead of part of the problem?
The question isn't an idle one. Urban populations around the world are expected to soar in the next 20 years, to five billion from more than three billion today. If the current rate of urbanization holds steady, cities will account for nearly three-quarters of the world's energy demand by 2030. Most of the increase will come in rapidly developing countries like China and India; China's cities alone will have to deliver water, housing, transportation and other services to 400 million additional urban dwellers by 2030.

"There's going to have to be new forms of energy, new ways of delivering energy and new forms of infrastructure," says Warren Karlenzig, president of Common Current, a consulting firm on sustainable cities based in San Anselmo, Calif. "All this will be necessary to allow cities to operate the way they do now."
So, cities aren't going to have be made a little greener; they're going to have to be rethought from the ground up. The goal: compact living environments that require less resources and that get the most out of the land, water and energy they do use.
It wasn't long ago that the idea of using "green" and "city" in the same sentence seemed absurd. Cities were considered a blight on the environment: energy-hogging, pollution-spewing, garbage-producing environmental hellholes. But in recent years, they've begun to be seen as models of green virtue. City dwellers tend to walk more and drive less than their suburban counterparts, and dense urban development encourages transit use. Apartment living generally means lower per-household energy use.
Building on these strengths, planners and developers are devising innovative solutions to meet urbanites' energy, water, transportation and sanitation needs well into the future.
Some improvements are fairly easy, such as switching to energy-efficient LED lighting in buildings and streetlights, or setting aside bike lanes and widening sidewalks to encourage alternatives to driving (although such moves aren't without political hazards, as a recent battle over bike lanes in New York shows). Others are more ambitious, requiring new construction or even an extensive rebuilding of city infrastructure—consider what is needed to add a second set of pipes for a water-reuse system.
Some of the most ambitious projects—and the greatest source of innovative ideas—are the dozens of "eco-city" developments in the works or on drawing boards around the world. Projects like the Songdo International Business District near Incheon, South Korea, are testing grounds for the latest in green technologies.
But green initiatives aren't just found on blueprints for new cities. Chicago, for example, has about 350 green-roof projects covering more than 4.5 million square feet.
Of course, many of these initiatives can be expensive, with high up-front costs. Urban planners say savings from lower energy bills and other operational efficiencies can more than cover the added expenses, but the break-even point can be years out. Still, cities—unlike the average homeowner considering rooftop solar panels—can take a long view and make investments with a decades-long payback.
So, how can cities—old or new—take green to a new level? Here's a look at some of the ways.
District Heating In a typical office building, heating and cooling account for nearly two-thirds of total energy use. So an alternative to traditional electricity or natural-gas HVAC systems can go a long way toward making cities greener. One solution: tapping the excess heat produced by nearby utilities or industry. A network of pipes distributes the heat, which can be used for hot water, space heating and in absorption chillers to provide air conditioning in the summer. These district heating systems are considerably more efficient—capturing up to 90% of the available energy—than in-building boilers. And they can tap any number of heat sources, including high-efficiency natural-gas turbines, large-scale solar thermal systems, biomass incinerators or furnaces in a steel mill. Common in Europe, high-efficiency district heating systems are being used in South Korea's Songdo IBD and are in the plans for other eco-city developments.
Micro Wind Turbines The giant windmills that dot the countryside aren't suitable for cities, where vibrations can rattle windows and the noise would be annoying. So developers are turning to microturbines. These small generators sit atop commercial or residential buildings and are designed to take advantage of the quirks of big-city wind patterns—lots of turbulence and frequent, sudden shifts in direction. The turbines are generally small, rated at one to three kilowatts each. But when installed in arrays and combined with high-efficiency solar panels, they can generate a large share of a building's energy needs, especially when the structure is equipped with a full set of energy-saving features. A handful of companies provide micro wind systems around the world, and the devices, while more expensive per kilowatt than bigger systems, have been installed at scores of locations, including PepsiCo Inc.'s Chicago office building.
Pumped Hydro Storage/Micro Hydropower Wind and solar power are notoriously fickle, producing more power than needed at some times and less than needed at others. A city that wants to rely on such intermittent sources needs to find a way to bank that power. One technique: pumped hydroelectric storage. When wind or solar power is plentiful, electricity is used to pump water to an upper reservoir; later, when power is needed, the water is allowed to flow downhill, turning turbines in the process. (The lakes have the added benefit as open-space landscaping.) Large-scale pumped-hydro systems are increasingly used for storing energy, and many isolated towns rely on small-scale micro hydro plants to generate electricity. Adding a pumped-storage capability isn't technically difficult, but it's expensive, especially on a small scale, and current technology generally requires a large "drop," or change in elevation to produce much power—though companies are working on lower-flow hydro turbines that can work in more level settings.
Walking and Biking When it comes to transportation, dense urban areas like Manhattan already have an advantage over suburbs: By packing people, jobs and services close together, they reduce the need for many car trips and provide the density to support bus and transit services. Green-city planners do even more, designing streets so that walking is safe, convenient and interesting—with wide sidewalks, landscaping and abundant crosswalks—and providing separate designated bicycle lanes. Songdo's 1,500 acres are designed so that most shops, parks and transit stops can be reached in less than a 15-minute walk, and the city also has a 15-mile network of bike lanes.

Personal Rapid Transit Not every urban trip can be made on foot, bicycle or public transit. Cities can encourage greener auto choices by providing electric-vehicle charging stations in parking garages. A futuristic solution: personal rapid transit, or PRT—pod-like, self-powered vehicles that can carry as many as six passengers. The vehicles can travel along dedicated roadways, like an automated airport transit system, or on streets equipped with buried magnets. There are no fixed schedules or routes; passengers pick their destinations, and a central computer guides the car without intermediate stops. Although still a novelty, PRTs are operating at Heathrow International Airport near London and at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Masdar City, an eco-city development in Abu Dhabi. Masdar, however, has put on hold plans to deploy the pod cars throughout the entire planned two-square-mile development.
Pneumatic Garbage Collection Even the greenest cities produce lots of garbage, which creates two problems: collecting the trash and getting rid of it. On the collection side, a centralized waste system, using an underground network of pneumatic tubes, can replace the fleets of trucks that block traffic, tear up streets and burn fossil fuels. The tubes can collect garbage from both households and outdoor trash bins and carry it to a centralized collection and sorting facility. Though some systems handle only food waste, others are set up to handle separate streams for paper and other recyclable trash. The systems are used in scores of cities world-wide; a pneumatic trash-collection system on New York's Roosevelt Island has been in operation since 1975.
Waste to Resources Getting to zero waste is as important to cities as getting to zero carbon. This doesn't mean just encouraging residents to recycle—cities also can deploy technologies to tap the energy and other valuable resources buried in the trash. Advanced anaerobic digesters process organic garbage waste and the sludge left over from treating wastewater to produce biogas, which can be burned for energy; more common in Europe, the technology is just being deployed in the U.S. for handling municipal garbage. High-temperature plasma-arc gasifiers can consume nearly the entire waste stream, making a synthetic gas that is burned to produce electricity; the leftover slag can be used in building materials. One novel approach under consideration by the PlanIT Valley project, an eco-city development planned for northern Portugal: Aluminum cans are processed with water and energy, producing aluminum oxide and hydrogen, which can then be used to power fuel cells. But because aluminum oxide requires tremendous energy to make aluminum, it may be more economically feasible just to recycle aluminum containers.

Green Roofs Rooftops, which take up a fifth of urban surface area, can be used to support solar panels or wind turbines, but they're otherwise underutilized. Covering the tops of buildings with grasses, shrubs and other plants can deliver a host of benefits. Though often more costly than traditional coverings, green roofs can provide insulation and trim a building's heating and cooling needs. They absorb rainwater, reducing the load on storm-water systems, and filter what water does run off so it can be used for many domestic needs. They also filter air pollutants.

Mr. Totty is a news editor for The Journal Report in San Francisco. He can be reached at michael.totty@wsj.com.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424053111904009304576535113877346554-lMyQjAxMTAxMDEwMjExNDIyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email#articleTabs%3Darticle

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Best Buy to sell home energy management gear

By: Martin LaMonica 


WASHINGTON D.C.--Best Buy plans to start selling home energy management products in stores later this year, creating a channel to introduce consumers to emerging grid technologies.

The consumer electronics retailer in late October will start a trial in which three stores will have dedicated areas to demonstrate and explain a range of home energy technologies, said Kris Bowring, senior director and platform lead for home energy at Best Buy, at the GridWeek conference here yesterday.

GE's Nucleus home energy management hub is expected to be one of the home energy products sold and demonstrated by Best Buy at stores.

The choice of products has not yet been finalized but there will be a variety, ranging from simple whole-house energy monitors to a combination of a home security service and smart thermostats. The products are geared at helping people improve home efficiency and get remote control to their homes from a Web portal or smartphone, Bowring said.

Best Buy has been researching home energy with consumers for about two years in preparation for the rollout, which will take place in San Francisco, Houston, and Chicago.
"This technology is coming. It's here. The energy monitoring and management--the understanding and capabilities are there. In fact, some of the systems deliver more information than the utilities could ever dream of," said Bowring. "It's going to be important."
The goal is to make home energy products approachable to more than just a small niche of users, such as consumers who are already very energy-conscious or cutting-edge technology adopters, he said. In doing research, Best Buy found that consumers didn't have a good understanding of how their energy usage compares to others or whether their homes were operating efficiently.

"Consumers were saying, 'I want to be energy efficient. I just don't know if I am. What is the pay-off for solar panels?'" Bowring said. "Once we started showing them products, they began saying this might have value."

One of the most desired features is the ability to remotely control the home, such as adjusting home thermostats, lights, or appliances. Another key is the ability to program a thermostat using a simpler user interface, such as a smart phone app or Web page, Bowring said.
One of the products expected to be part of the trial is General Electric's Nucleus energy management product. Priced at about $150, Nucleus is a simple gateway about the size of a cell phone charger that collects energy usage information and lets consumers control thermostats and connected appliances.

Other products likely to be part of the energy management offering are smart outlets. With those, people can go around the house to measure the power of different appliances. Through a smart thermostat, smartphone, or PC, the outlets can also be used to set schedules for lights or electronics.

A more high-end offering that would require Best Buy installation would be a combined home alarm and security system with a remote controlled thermostat. Some Best Buy stores are already offering home energy audits and surveys for consumers

Best Buy's move into energy management shows how different types of businesses other than utilities are getting involved in home energy management. But Bowring said that Best Buy intends to have a utility presence in stores to give consumers specific advice for making energy management products work appropriately.


http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20106217-54/best-buy-to-sell-home-energy-management-gear/#ixzz1Xym0WhEp

New York Chooses Company to Run Bike-Share Program


New York Times
Published: September 14, 2011


The Bloomberg administration has selected Alta Bicycle Share to bring an ambitious bike-share program to New York, the city’s latest foray into transforming its streets to make them more hospitable to cyclists and pedestrians.
The announcement was made Wednesday afternoon at a press conference at a pedestrian plaza in the Flatiron district, where a sample bike station — a kiosk and a rack of sturdy, utilitarian bicycles — was on display.
By the time the program is to officially begin next summer, it is expected to feature 10,000 bicycles available at 600 stations in Manhattan, south of 79th Street, and in select neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The company said it was exploring options for adding stations in other boroughs.
The city’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, has been anxious to bring New York up to par with global cities, including London and Paris, that have been praised for improving clogged city centers, partially through encouraging bicycle use. In the last four years, Mr. Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, has rolled out 250 miles of bike lanes, and the bike-share program was seen as another central element of the city’s plan.
New York’s program would become the largest bike-share effort in the country, but it also brings outsized concerns about the placement of thousands of bicycles and hundreds of rental kiosks in parks and on sidewalks and streets.
The program will require participants to purchase long- or short-term memberships that include an unlimited number of trips of as long as 45 minutes; additional fees would apply for longer trips. A yearly membership would cost $100 or less; other pricing details have yet to be finalized.
“We could not be more excited to bring our successful bike share system to New York City,” Alison Cohen, president of Alta Bicycle Share, said in a press release. “Bike share is a new form of public transportation that will help connect New Yorkers to their own neighborhoods, to other neighborhoods and to public transit.”
Alta will introduce a trial program in the spring, testing a smaller number of stations at locations yet to be chosen.
In November, the Department of Transportation issued a request for proposal seeking companies interested in running the bike-share program. But the requirements were high: bidders had to promise that the program would be self-financed and would not require taxpayer help. The bidder could not excavate streets to build its stands or allow the bikes to take up too many parking spaces. The contractor also had to consult with city officials on all of its sponsorship plans to avoid making these bikes look purely like two-wheeled advertisements (think Ricky Bobby in the film “Talladega Nights”). Most of all, if the winning bidder makes any money on this venture, it has to share profits with the city.
Six bidders submitted proposals in February, and city officials narrowed the finalists down to B-Cycle and Alta. Alta Bicycle Share, based in Portland, Ore., runs programs in Washington and Boston and in Melbourne, Australia, and its supplier of bicycles and related equipment, Public Bike System Company, provides the bikes in programs in London, Montreal, Toronto and Minneapolis. B-Cycle, which is affiliated with the manufacturer Trek, has been associated with programs in Denver and Chicago.
The selection process has not been without controversy. The Department of Transportation faced heated discussions with City Council members about whether the agency had inappropriately excluded them from the planning stages of the program. Council members argued that because the bike-share network would be run by a third-party vendor, it was considered a franchise, which requires the Council’s authorization to run.
On Friday, the Department of Transportation agreed to hold public hearings and briefings on the progress of the program with the Council

Can EVs solve wind power puzzle?


Electric vehicles outfitted with a $10 computer chip can help streamline the addition of wind power to the electric grid, according to a study that shows how the two types of technology could piece together the puzzle of our green energy future.
One of the biggest hurdles utilities face with the addition of wind power and other renewable sources of energy to the grid is where and how to store excess generation for use when people actually need it. Until that happens, if the wind blows when nobody needs electricity, for example, the energy is wasted.
"If I could wave my magic wand and have anything, new types of technology that allow you to store large amounts of energy cheaply would be fantastic," Steve Kern, a power supply and environmental affairs officer with Seattle City Light, told me along with a group of reporters this July on a trip sponsored by the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources.
Kern was speaking at a hydropower dam in the North Cascades that supplies 17 percent of Seattle's electricity. The utility occasionally lets water spill over the dam instead of through its turbines because there is no place to store the excess generated electricity.
Despite the storage limitations, Renewable Portfolio Standards require utilities to add more sources of energy such as wind to the grid. In the Pacific Northwest, 10 gigawatts of wind power will come online by 2019, for example. The conundrum is how to effectively manage the wind's fickleness.
EVs absorb the wind
The new study put out by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory shows that plug-in electric vehicles equipped with so-called Grid Friendly charging technology could help utilities better utilize this additional wind energy.
The technology essentially ramps up and down the rate at which the battery is charged depending on availability of electricity, Michael Kintner-Myer, a staff scientist at the lab and a co-author of the new report, told me on Monday.
The chip, which is added to the vehicle battery or charging station, reads the signal of the voltage and current at the outlet, he explained. Utilities in the United States try to maintain this metric, called frequency, at 60 hertz.
When there's more demand for electricity than is being generated, the frequency drops. When there is more generation than needed, like when the wind blows in the middle of the night, the frequency speeds up.
"We are evaluating what the frequency is … and in the over-generation mode we really ramp up the charging current to its maximum and if it is under generation, we ramp it down," Kintner-Myer explained.
This starting and stopping of the charging cycle allows electric vehicles to absorb the excess wind power when it is generated. Doing so reduces the need for backup power plants to keep the grid in balance, according to PNNL.
This grid-friendly approach contrasts with another, potentially more robust, load management system known as vehicle-to-grid technology, which maintains a two-way communication between the car battery and the electric grid.
In this scenario, the battery is a storage device as well as a generator, providing electricity to the grid when demand rises. This causes more wear and tear on batteries and requires a more complex and expensive integration with the grid, according to Kintner-Myer.
"From a cost-benefit process, I think we have a higher value," he added.
This benefit of the Grid Friendly approach comes if about 13 percent, or 2.1 million vehicles in the Northwest Power Pool, which covers Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, are equipped with the technology, according to the PNNL study.
In addition, about 10 percent of the cars would need access to charging stations during the day in order to absorb excess wind energy. "That means for utilizing these vehicles for grid applications, you don't have to have a one-to-one ratio of public-to-private charging stations," Kintner-Myer said, noting that has been a concern within the energy industry.
His team is negotiating with a public utility in the Pacific Northwest to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology, which he said is available today. In fact, similar chips were tested in home appliances on the Olympic Peninsula a few years ago.
No silver bullet
Kern, with Seattle City Light, told me today that the Grid Friendly technology can help, "but it is not going to be the silver bullet" he longs for.
One problem from the utility perspective, he noted, is an obligation to customers to provide power when they want and need it. And, for most owners of electric vehicles, that means when cars are parked in the garage at night.
So, if electric-vehicle owners plug in their cars but the wind's not blowing, "I still have to have the underlying supply to backstop that wind," he noted