[Graeme]

Distributed Grid And Integrative Design in China Could Be Energy Gamechangers

In Part 1 we explored one of the gamechangers that would allow China to transition from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and renewable supply—oil-free mobility. In Part 2, we explore two other gamechangers that would allow China to reinvent fire—adopting integrative design for efficiency in buildings and industry, and redefining the future of the electric grid.

Gamechanger 2: Integrative Design

The factories and buildings that use roughly 90 percent of China’s energy can save more energy than previously thought, yet at lower cost, by a new technique we call “integrative design.” It rigorously applies orthodox engineering principles, but achieves radically more energy- and resource-efficient results by asking different questions in a different sequence to yield a different design logic. Optimizing whole systems for multiple benefits, not individual components for single benefits, can often yield expanding rather than the normal diminishing returns to investments in energy efficiency, making very large (even order-of-magnitude) energy savings cost less than small or no savings.


Gamechanger 3: Redefining the Future Electric Grid

Needing less electricity would ease and speed China’s—and thus, the world’s—shift to renewable electricity. Once radical energy efficiency has minimized the electricity needed by buildings, industry, and a newly-electrified vehicle fleet, a right-sized grid can be architected to meet customers’ exact demands. Options for that right-sized grid could be fully centralized, or hybridized with local, distributed energy resources.


An 80-percent-renewable grid
While China’s grid has its own unique needs and attributes, the flexibility and security of a more distributed grid and the possibility of a highly renewable future are both worth considering—especially since China is the world leader in at least six renewable technologies. Interactive two-way smart grids that can use demand-side resources to balance grid generation, such as Tianjin is currently piloting, are another important building block of China’s secure electricity future. And more distribution-level intelligence including autonomous controls can integrate microgrids and balance the complex network of loads and generators.

Achieving an 80-percent mix of renewables may be decades away, but in 2012 more added Chinese electricity came from non-hydro renewables than from all new fossil-fueled and nuclear sources combined, so the shift is gaining momentum. Indeed, in 2013, China added more photovoltaic capacity than the United States has added ever since it developed that technology 60 years ago.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

SunPower Earnings Preview: Utility-Scale And Distributed Generation Projects In Focus

SunPower, one of North America’s largest solar companies, is expected to publish its Q3 2014 earnings on October 29, reporting on a quarter that saw healthy global solar installations and stable average selling prices. The company has guided non-GAAP revenues of between $600 million to $650 million and expects to recognize sales of between 325 megawatts and 360 MW of capacity. Adjusted gross margins are projected to come in at between 17% and 19%. During the second quarter, revenues fell by around 12% year-over-year to about $508 million, while adjusted net income fell by around 30% to about $44 million. In this note, we take a look at some of the factors that are likely to drive the company’s earnings for the quarter.

Utility Projects Could Drive Earnings: We estimate that SunPower derives over half its revenues and most of its profits from its solar power systems business. The business has higher margins compared to the panels business, since it involves the sale and installation of panels along with balance of systems equipment, enabling the company to capture additional downstream value. Much of SunPower’s profits over the last several quarters have come from its utility-scale solar projects in the United States and the trend could continue into Q3, driven by the Solar Star project that the company is building in California. As of Q2, SunPower had completed and connected 228 MW out of the projects total 579 MW planned capacity to the grid. On the international projects front, the execution of the 70 MW merchant power plant that the company is constructing in the Atacama region of Chile could also aid results.

forbes

[Graeme]

Five Principles For Taming the Wild West of Beyond the Grid Clean Energy Policy

Misguided and inappropriate safeguards threaten to handicap some of the most dynamic and innovative approaches to ending energy poverty for 1.3 billion people around the world.

That's the finding of Sierra Club's latest report -- Expanding Energy Access: Beyond The Grid -- which proposes five policy principles to ensure clean energy access markets thrive.

If we don't fill the vacuum of safeguards that exist for companies serving those living beyond the reach of the grid, we threaten the long term viability of these beyond the grid clean energy markets. These approaches are already pioneering cutting-edge Machine to Machine (M2M) technology, dynamic financial innovations like pay as you go (PAYG), and even big data to unlock clean energy for low-income populations. That's all while unlocking tremendous economic opportunity in a $12 billion market.

But all of that is threatened if policymakers don't set appropriate rules of the road. Without rules, we all but ensure that those most in need of energy solutions pay the price for the most expensive electron -- the one that isn't delivered. An outcome no one wants to see because without access to electricity, communities may suffer from poor healthcare and restricted opportunities for economic advancement.

In order to ensure these markets continue to grow rapidly and deliver for low-income populations, we've identified five principles for policymakers to abide by:

1. Energy Services Not Electrons: It was the LED light bulb, not just the falling price of solar, that unlocked clean energy for low-income populations by bringing down the size of all components in a solar home system. It's vital we apply that principle -- that energy efficiency unlocks clean energy for low-income populations -- to the next steps of energy service delivery. That means supporting the deployment and development of highly efficient appliances and agricultural equipment.

2. Build Markets From The Bottom Up: Starting with 'pico' power -- like solar lanterns and solar home systems -- populations get onto the energy ladder by displacing existing expenditures on dirty kerosene lighting. Lighting, however, is the beginning, not the end, of energy access. As people move up the energy ladder to higher levels of access, policymakers should transition deployment support to full access technologies like mini-grids and larger solar home systems.

3. Level The Playing Field With Fossil Fuels: Right now, clean energy access providers are getting hit both coming and going. Their competitors -- fossil fuel companies -- are highly subsidized, but clean energy companies are taxed. Policymakers should seek to direct fossil fuel subsidies directly to low-income populations and gradually eliminate the fossil fuel industry's support over time (see Michael Liebrich's paper on this here). At the same time, policymakers should focus on reducing taxes, like value added taxes (VAT) on solar products, which hinder our ability to end energy poverty.

theenergycollective

In 2064, This Is Your Life As An Energy Generator

Alger has showcased Sadoway discussing the renewable energy landscape of tomorrow in a six-minute video, in which he divulged the inspiration behind his liquid metal battery. We were also intrigued by how the new battery technology could fit into the “every user could be a generator” theme that he articulates near the beginning of the video.

That basically means pairing wind and solar with energy storage, including pumped hydro and thermal storage. Pumped hydro and thermal have limitations in terms of siting, scalability, and mobility.

Sadoway went in search of a more flexible, scalable form of energy storage with a low cost supply chain with the widest possible global reach.

That’s why Sadoway sent his research team literally digging in the dirt for battery materials, as described in the video.

What they ended up with is the “liquid metal battery,” consisting of three common, inexpensive substances: magnesium, a salt compound, and antimony. The three materials readily separate into three distinct layers in a liquid state, which Sadoway’s MIT team achieved through a process inspired by the century-old technology for aluminum smelting.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

One grid to rule them all: Is a national transmission system coming to America?

A bold idea to interconnect the nation’s three grids is just a financing agreement away

A project that would transform the U.S. grid’s three isolated segments into a national transmission system could be financed and working on construction by the end of 2014.

Two major concerns regarding the much-hyped Tres Amigas interconnection have been answered. Utilities and other potential investors are gathering, and power producers throughout the Southwest are checking in regularly.

“It’s a really bold idea,” said former FERC Chair James Hoecker. “But interconnecting the country’s three major grids seems like the logical step toward a national bulk power network.”

Tres Amigas will be the first interconnection of the Eastern, Western, and Texas grids. Sited on 14,400 acres in Clovis, New Mexico, at the edge of the three systems, it will modernize the carrying capacity of the world’s biggest machine, the 120-year-old U.S. transmission system.

Tres Amigas will also establish a power exchange, much like the markets now operated regionally. And through the exchange, new energy resources will become available nationwide.

Using state-of-the-art power electronics, the interconnection will allow power trading with price differentials that justify Tres Amigas’ $1.8 billion cost, explained Tres Amigas Chief Operating Officer David Stidham.

utilitydive

GRID WARS: The Battle to Control Your Electricity

Rarely has a major U.S. industry reached a crossroads as stark as that facing today’s electric utilities. EPA’s recent proposal for regulating carbon emissions from power plants is just one part of a broader trend, as the century-old model of centralized fossil fuel burning electricity generation moves towards obsolescence.

While policy and regulation are accelerating this transition, the fundamental drivers are a changing marketplace and evolving technology. Rates are increasing for electricity delivered from large, centralized utility power plants. Meanwhile, advancements in "distributed" on-site energy resources — solar energy, combined heat and power, biomass, advanced engines, fuel cells, energy storage, efficiency, demand management, microgrids and advanced information technologies — are driving down costs, fundamentally shifting the economics. Beyond direct cost savings, distributed energy resources create other major benefits: reduced vulnerability to power interruptions caused by extreme weather events; improved physical security and cybersecurity; deferred utility capital investment requirements; grid optimization; reduction of climate threats and harmful air pollution; and economic growth and job creation.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, more than $2 trillion will be invested in new power generation over the next 20 years. Add to this at least another $1 to $2 trillion in necessary transmission and distribution upgrades. The question should be: How do we as a nation want to invest this capital? On patching an old central power plant model (think mainframe computers) or on a modern distributed electricity system supporting entire new industries (the energy equivalent of smart phones and the cloud)?

Enabling distributed energy will require more than new business models. The U.S. electricity regulatory framework developed over the last 70 years is focused primarily on centralized power. It is insufficient to support a modern distributed grid. Serious reforms are needed to achieve the promise of 21st century energy technologies.

EPA’s power plant rules and a series of orders issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) offer important progress towards energy modernization. A handful of states, including California, New York, and Hawaii, are actively developing the “utility of the future,” and many other states are considering policies that will support deployment of more distributed energy resources.

But these efforts are caught in the middle of a broader battle being waged by coal interests and other well-funded political groups. One such organization is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which launched a multi-million dollar strategy to repeal existing policy frameworks and oppose new proposals supporting distributed energy in state legislatures across the country. Incumbent interests have filed lawsuits against grid modernization policies. Earlier this year, in a case brought by industry trade associations, a federal court in Washington, D.C. struck down a key FERC directive that spurred innovation by opening new markets for advanced energy management providers.

renewableenergyworld

[Graeme]

Electric vehicles could stabilize large disturbances in power grid

Today when an electric vehicle is plugged into the grid, it's almost always in charge mode, meaning it consumes power. But it's also possible for an electric vehicle to operate in discharge mode, in which it acts as a giant battery and injects power into the grid when needed. Several recent studies have shown that plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) operating as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) devices can offer advantages for the grid such as backup power for renewable energy sources, power regulation, and load balancing.

Now in a new study, researchers have found another potential advantage of using PEVs as sources of power for the grid: they can improve stability when the grid is subjected to large disturbances. Large disturbances are caused by a wide range of problems, such as abrupt load changes and line tripping. Among their negative effects, they can damage sensitive appliances and, if not cleared within a specific time, the system may be unable to resume stable operation.

The researchers, Andrej Gajduk, et al., at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Skopje, Macedonia, and other universities, have published a paper on their findings in a recent issue of the New Journal of Physics.

phys.org

[Graeme]

Comparison of Grid-Connected and Off-the-Grid Houses

Energy efficiency for buildings did not become an issue until after the 4-fold increase of crude oil prices in 1973. The owners of buildings, seeing major increases in their heating and cooling costs, consulted with engineers to make energy surveys of buildings, which, after implementation of the recommendations, usually resulted in at least 50% decreases of energy consumption.

Such efficiency improvements regarding houses did not take place until much later, and then only on a case by case basis, because politicians were, and still are, very slow to upgrade building codes. For them it is so much easier to be for heavily subsidized, highly visible, renewable energy, than for lightly subsidized, invisible, energy efficiency.

Because CO2 emissions are one of the factors affecting global warming and climate change, it would be desirable to have buildings meet the goal of "net-zero-energy and near-zero CO2 emissions". Below are two energy, CO2 emission, and cost reduction alternatives for houses; one goes only part way towards the goal, the other goes much further.

The first alternative is having a standard, code-designed house to which is added a grid-connected PV solar system with sufficient capacity to charge a plug-in vehicle. This alternative would achieve CO2 emission reductions, but would be a long way off from the desirable goal of “net-zero-energy and near-zero CO2 emissions”.

The second alternative is having a very energy-efficient house to which is added a PV solar system with sufficient capacity to charge a plug-in vehicle, plus an electrical energy storage system and a thermal energy storage system. This alternative would achieve “net-zero-energy and near-zero CO2 emissions”.

theenergycollective

[Graeme]

Bridges To New Distributed Solar Business Models: New Report Released

Distributed Solar’s Continued Growth Requires Aligning Interests of Utilities, Solar Companies

“Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar” is perhaps the most widely cited solar market statistic today. But while that number is impressive, it doesn’t give a sense for just how quickly distributed solar PV has scaled in the U.S. In 2006, one new PV project was installed every 80 minutes. Ten years later in 2016, industry analysts forecast this rate will approach a new installation every 80 seconds.

This market growth is driving a fundamental shift in distributed photovoltaic (DPV) economics and operations, with rippling effects across the electricity sector’s value chain more broadly, including high-profile conflicts between stakeholders whose alignment and cooperation will be necessary to support DPV’s continued growth into the future.

For example, solar policy frameworks to date have typically focused on customer-centric DPV value accruing primarily to the individual customer and/or third-party solar companies who install DPV systems. Meanwhile, under existing business models, utilities have negatively associated DPV with transaction costs, grid operation challenges, and revenue loss. To wit, heated policy debates in solar-resource-rich Arizona have become a focus of national attention, with nearly $5 million spent on communications efforts in 2013 alone, while similar debates are playing out in states as diverse as Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and California.

Creating a sustainable long-term DPV market will require aligning the interests of utilities, solar companies, technology providers, and customers. With support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative, a new Rocky Mountain Institute report—Bridges to New Solar Business Models: Opportunities to Increase and Capture the Value of Distributed Solar Photovoltaics—looks at enhancing legacy solar business models or building new ones by creating an expanded value pool, one that makes DPV affordable and accessible to far more customers, bridges beyond individual customer-centric DPV value to include value delivered to the grid and society, and allows the electricity grid’s myriad stakeholders to share in that value.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

Big Step Taken Toward a More Coordinated Grid

On November 1, 2014 the move toward a more coordinated Western U.S. grid took an extremely important step forward when the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and PacifiCorp (a utility in the Berkshire-Hathaway Energy family) launched a six-state Energy Imbalance Market (EIM). The EIM facilitates rapid trading of the electricity needed to balance out the fluctuations from both renewable power plants and consumer demand, allows for the sharing of reserves between participating utilities, provides access to complementary renewable resources located far from each other (the wind is usually blowing somewhere in the West when it isn’t in others), and enables a much more efficient use of the transmission system in the western U.S.

The market is the first in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council footprint to include a utility outside of the CAISO control area. CAISO runs the grid operations for the California’s investor owned utilities. California utility customers use around a third of all the electricity consumed in the WECC.

theenergycollective

Net Energy Metering -- Are We Capitalists Or What?

[Graeme]

A $48 Billion Opportunity for US Electric Customers

Electricity customers in the U.S. got good news last week.

A new report from Accenture highlighted a potential revenue loss for U.S. utilities of $48 billion per year by 2025 due to distributed solar and energy efficiency. But where does that money go? If we pursue a democratic energy system as outlined in ILSR's new report (also released last week), it goes right into the pockets of utility customers.

Read on for an explanation of how we can achieve energy democracy out of the turmoil of today's electricity system.

A System Under Stress

Why are U.S. electric utilities facing huge revenue losses? Because their business model, built around a 20th century centralized command-and-control electric utility, is increasingly outdated in an age when we can produce power on rooftops from ubiquitous sunshine and manage energy individually on ubiquitous smartphones.

See the following timeline released in ILSR's new report to understand the changes being wrought.

renewableenergyworld

Valuing Solar Energy: Two Models to Use

For every state beginning to wrestle with the value of solar and how it should be reflected in net metering, standby charges and future cost-of-carbon deliberations, just about every one is conflicted by politics, especially where there is a dominant investor-owned utility in the mix with a monopoly over its service territory.

Four energy analysts at ICF International, a consultancy in Fairfax, Virginia, have taken a stab at how to establish “the true value of solar” (aka distributed photovoltaics, or DPV). It is certainly one of, if not the most credible and holistic, methodologies developed to date. For both solar advocates and utilities wary of having to compete with, or serving, their customers, their approach merits a close look.
The Rocky Mountain Institute created these categories (table) for estimating the benefits and costs of solar energy. Table courtesy of ICF International.

The analysts are: Vice President Steven Fine, who has performed studies for the Edison Electric Institute, American Wind Energy Association and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and three colleagues: Ankit Saraf, Kiran Kumaraswamy and Alex Anich.

At first blush, the ICF analysis won’t please most solar advocates in part because some of solar's

benefits currently are difficult to monetize. That is largely because solar is just now getting traction beyond the early-adopter states such as California, Colorado and New Jersey. ICF’s work is a realistic approach that tries to value solar from multiple perspectives: ratepayers, utilities and regulators.

theenergycollective

[Graeme]

Decoupling and Distributed Energy

One of the main reasons utilities fight distributed generation like rooftop solar is that it erodes demand for their centrally generated electricity. Reduced demand is annoying for any business, but it’s especially bad for traditional monopoly utilities. It’s especially bad because much — even most — of the cost of producing a kWh of electricity doesn’t go away if you don’t produce that kWh of electricity. These so-called “fixed” or “non-production” costs come from multi-decade financial commitments to big pieces of infrastructure — the power plants, transmission lines, and distribution systems.

So when you put solar panels on your roof and reduce the amount of electricity you need to buy from the utility, there’s a little bit of fuel that doesn’t get burned, and a little bit of money saved on the utility side (but as we’ve pointed out before, they don’t actually benefit from that cost savings), but a lot of the money that the utility spent to be able to provide you with electricity if you needed it is already spent. This is problematic because most electricity rates are designed to recover utility costs in proportion to the amount of electricity you buy (this type of rate is known as a “volumetric rate”). So utilities have an incentive (known as the throughput incentive) to ensure that their electricity sales increase, or at the very least don’t decline.

If lots of people start buying much less electricity, this reduces utility spending on things like fuel, but it doesn’t have any effect (in the short term) on the fixed or non-production costs. To stay solvent, the utilities then go back to their regulators and say “Hey, we’re not getting enough revenue to cover our costs. Give us a rate hike!” and if the regulators agree, allowing the utilities to recover the same fixed costs from fewer overall kWh of electricity sold, this just makes it even more financially sensible for people to put solar panels on their roof, to avoid buying the more expensive electricity. (And in our fantasy world, one could also imagine savvy regulators taking measures to decrease fixed costs, by forcing early retirement of risky, uneconomic fossil generation…)

This is the essence of the Utility Death Spiral that’s gotten so much attention over the last year or two (including a speakeasy we hosted), and which Dave Roberts did a great job of exploring in his Utilities for Dummies series over at Grist. From the Utility’s point of view the Death Spiral can be short-circuited with revenue decoupling… up to a point. With decoupling, they don’t have to go to regulators and ask for a rate hike — they can recover the fixed costs in a formulaic way, and so decoupled utilities are able to invest in energy efficiency without worrying about lost revenues. They’re also likely to be less opposed to modest amounts of distributed generation.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine a climate-aware utility of the future that isn’t decoupled. We need to get away from utilities treating electricity (and energy more generally) as a commodity, with profits tied to the quantity of product they sell. Instead, we need to move toward treating energy as a service — Amory Lovins’ famous hot showers and cold beer — with an incentive to provide high quality service using the least possible amount of underlying energy.

theenergycollective

[Graeme]

No Long-Term Future For Large Centralized Electricity Generators & Retailers, Says CEO

The head of one of Australia’s biggest electricity networks says he sees no long-term future for large, centralised electricity generators, nor for big electricity retailers.

Rob Stobbe, the CEO of SA Power Networks, says both business models will be made redundant – the generators by the increased use of localised, mostly renewable generation, and the retailers because, well, they just won’t be needed any more.

Stobbe’s remarks, made at the company’s investor day presentation last week, challenges the bedrock of Australia’s electricity network – which is dominated by three big “gentailers” – Origin Energy, AGL Energy and EnergyAustralia – who combine the two very services Stobbe says will no longer be needed.

It also shapes up as an intriguing power play between the network operators who deliver the energy services, and the retailers who deal directly with the customers. Now that consumers are being empowered with solar and storage, and becoming “prosumers” in their own right, the dynamics and the services they need are changing. They may even be able to trade their own electricity.

Stobbe’s theory is that solar PV uptake will increase dramatically – even from its current level of one in four houses – and so too will battery storage as its costs follow solar down the cost curve. Networks will be still be required, however, to move the electrons around between homes and communities, and from individual and collective storage devices.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

Can Distributed Resources Replace $1B in Substation Upgrades? New York Will Soon Find Out

Last week, New York took a first step toward its vision of turning utilities into operators of distributed, customer-centric power grid assets. Now it’s up to Consolidated Edison to prove it can harness the power of these new assets on time, and at the right price.

On Thursday, the New York Public Service Commission approved Con Ed’s Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management Program, first submitted in July. The plan calls for replacing about $1 billion to upgrade its Brownsville No. 1 and 2 substations -- something the utility says it would need to do by 2018 to avoid potential overloads -- with a cheaper set of distributed alternatives.

Specifically, Con Ed will spend about $200 million to incentivize customers in the area to enroll in demand response and energy efficiency programs, to get them to shave a total of 41 megawatts of energy use at the moments when the substations are under the most stress. Another 11 megawatts of utility-side battery storage will provide additional stability for the substations, which have to contend with an unusually long 12-hour peak period.

Con Ed expects to spend about $150 million for the customer-side resources, or about $3.7 million per megawatt, as well as another $50 million on its utility-side battery projects, or about $4.5 million per megawatt.

As Con Ed notes in its filing, “these per-MW unit costs are generally higher than previous network-oriented programs due to the complicated nature of the network conditions and the demographics of the area,” with lots of residential and small commercial customers and fewer big power-users available for big chunks of load.

theenergycollective

Utilities a Growing Threat to Residential Solar Installers

If you're residential solar installers SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY ) or Vivint Solar (NYSE: VSLR ) , you've built a business being the utility alternative for customers interested in going solar. That's why this week's ruling that two utilities in Arizona can build and own their own residential solar installations has to be concerning.

Arizona was the country's second largest solar market at 421 MW last year and even though it's slowed in 2014 it was still the second largest residential market at 22 MW last quarter. This is even with utilities fighting tooth and nail to keep solar installers out. If utilities are now allowed into the market it could eat into residential solar installers' market and potentially undercut them on price and convenience. It's an area investors need to keep a close eye on because Arizona should be one of the top solar states in the country.

fool

[Graeme]

5 reasons 2015 will be the year of the energy tipping point

There’s been a lot of talk in 2014 about the “utility death spiral” and suppositions that utilities as we know them will cease to exist. I’m not entirely sure we’ve seen the last of the utility industry, but I feel certain a year from now we’ll look back on 2015 as the year a lot shifted in how each of us individually acquire and manage our energy consumption. Here’s why.

1. Americans are growing increasingly dissatisfied with their utilities
According to our ongoing Pulse studies, satisfaction with utilities is down drastically over the last 18 months — the percentage of those less than satisfied climbed from 43 percent in January 2013 to 55 percent as of August.

2. They’re willing to switch to non-utility providers
Now, that doesn’t mean everybody’s looking to leave their utility in droves. Even in states where customers have choices and could buy from another utility, only about 19 percent of people have made the switch. What’s interesting is that 64 percent of the people who say they’d switch would switch to a non-utility provider, such as Google, Comcast or SolarCity. Global studies put the “likelihood to switch number” as high as 70 percent, and the preferred companies to buy energy from include retailers, phone or cable providers, and online entities such as Amazon and Google.

3. The rise of the “do it for me/do it now” movement

greenbiz

[Graeme]

Utility-Scale Solar Installations Surged For 5th Consecutive Year, Passed 10 GW

Worldwide utility-scale solar energy installations surged for a fifth consecutive year in 2014, as per new provisional figures from Wiki-Solar.org.

This continuing surge in installations was aided by notable growth in the South American and African markets, but the big dogs were still Asia and North & Central America.

The new solar capacity added in 2014 topped 10 GW according to the figures. This number is likely to rise somewhat as the official figures come in — these should be available to the public in March.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

SMART GRID: A GRID SUITABLE FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY

The conventional electric grid is a network of transmission lines, substations, transformers and more that deliver electricity from power plants to homes and industry. However, with increasing global industrialization and population growth, the grid is being stretched, resulting in the increased likelihood of failures during peak load hours.

In addition, the current grid has difficulty accommodating variable sources of power like wind and solar energy. As these resources begin to supply increasing percentages of power to the grid, integrating them into grid operations is becoming increasingly difficult.

Consequently, there is a need for the development of a highly reliable, self-regulating and efficient grid system which will allow the integration of renewable distributed power generation. The answer lies in the smart grid.

Smart grid: the ‘Energy Internet’

A smart grid provides power utilities with digital intelligence to the power system network. It comes with smart metering techniques, digital sensors, and intelligent control systems with analytical tools. It enables the two-way flow of energy from power to plug to be automated, monitored and controlled.

The smart grid has been described as the ‘Energy Internet’, which can turn the electric power infrastructure into a two-way network built on a standard Internet Protocol (IP) network. It uses a large number of smaller, discrete distributed plants instead of single high-producing plants, so reduces the risk of attacks and natural disasters. Even if such a major problem should occur, the smart grid, being a self-healing network, will restore itself quickly by isolating the particular line and re-routing the power supply.

Multiple advantages

leonardo-energy

[Graeme]

Net Metering for Rooftop Solar: How to Fix the Problems

Summary: Net metering policies are effective at supporting solar power adoption but can threaten the financial stability of electricity distribution companies and result in cross-subsidies between electricity users once solar penetration grows. The solution is to align network charges with the real drivers of network costs.

A widely adopted method to encourage distributed solar photovoltaics (PV) may cause real problems once solar adoption reaches high levels, according to a new paper by researchers from the Instituto de Investigación Tecnológica (IIT) at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid and the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft).

Under "net metering" policies adopted across most of the United States, Spain, and other jurisdictions, owners of solar can offset their charges for electricity consumption by feeding excess energy back into the grid. In some cases, net metering can reduce electricity bills to close to zero.

Net metering has proven effective at incentivizing solar adoption, but as solar penetration rises, these policies also give rise to new problems.


The solution, according to the researchers, is to align network charges with the real drivers of network costs. That would include a blend of capacity charges based on a network user's contracted or measured peak in electricity consumption and production and smaller volumetric charges for electricity consumed from or injected into the grid. To support solar PV adoption, implicit net-metering subsidies should be replaced by explicit supports for solar production or investment.

theenergycollective

[Graeme]

4 Key Business Indicators Electric Utilities Need To Address

Recently, there have been a lot of questions around the uncertain future of utility business models. Can we definitively state that the current business model is dying? Could we have seen this possible demise sooner? What contributes to the end of a business model? We can look at four main indicators to help answer these questions.

Every company offers a value proposition, typically a product or service that enables the customer to do something better, cheaper, faster, or easier. The company’s business model is its method of capturing value in providing that product or service—how it receives revenue, how it defines its customer base, how it obtains financing, etc. There are four leading indicators to know if that business model is failing:

#1 – Product Indicators

Product indicators usually revolve around technology. What is the difference between the last generation of your product and your new offering or competitors’ offerings? Is it an incremental improvement? Are you no longer able to provide significant enhancements to the offering? This is often the case, but not always identified as a major problem. Internal leadership is generally going to believe that they are providing a better product that their customers want. But are they really? It’s important to be honest and critical when looking for this early warning sign. When the next version of the iPhone is just a slightly better camera, a tad more memory, and a marginally bigger screen, customers will likely become unimpressed and begin to view the iPhone as a commodity smartphone and thus expect price decreases.

#2 – Customer Indicators
#3 Macro-trend Indicators
#4 – Financial Indicators

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

How Rooftop Solar Can Stabilize the Grid

Rooftop solar power systems are picking up a second job on the distribution grids that deliver electricity to California homes and businesses. Right now, their photovoltaic panels just generate electricity (meeting about 1 percent of the state’s consumption), but within a few months some systems will also start moonlighting as junior grid regulators—a role that could keep them busy even after the sun goes down.

While the development in California is the result of a state-specific standard, approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in December, it is also part of a global movement: Germany, Japan, and other countries where solar is booming are implementing a similar change to empower rooftop solar installations to regulate voltage levels and perform other grid-support tasks.

Solar’s expanding role is the result of upgraded inverters—the power electronics that link distributed generators such as rooftop photovoltaics to the grid. The inverters convert direct current from PV panels into a wave of alternating current that is synchronized with the AC grid. Inverters can also synthesize reactive power—AC whose current wave leads or lags the voltage wave—which grid operators worldwide use to control line voltage. Adding reactive power with leading current boosts AC line voltage. Subtracting reactive power (by adding power with lagging current) pulls AC voltage down.

ieee

[Graeme]

Transmission Line That Could Bring Wind And Solar Power To Millions In West Gets Go-Ahead

On Saturday, the federal government approved a major renewable energy transmission line that could help open up the West to stranded solar and wind assets and enable up to 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy — enough to power over one million homes — to feed into the grid. The $2 billion project, overseen by SunZia, will span 515 miles across New Mexico and Arizona, and support more than 6,000 jobs during construction and more than 100 permanent jobs according to the Department of the Interior.

“SunZia will help carry New Mexico wind and solar to larger markets in the West,” Mariel Nanasi, executive director of New Energy Economy, a New Mexico-based clean energy and low-carbon economy advocacy organization, told ThinkProgress. “There is so much possibility with the advance of both utility scale and decentralized renewable energy generation to displace fossil fuels that are threatening our climate, health and economy.”

The SunZia Southwest Transmission Project, which will tap wind resources in New Mexico and solar and geothermal in New Mexico and Arizona, was proposed in 2009. In 2013 it encountered serious pushback from Republican leaders in New Mexico who argued that the route could disrupt the country’s national security efforts. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez sent a letter to the DIO warning that the route could interfere with the Army’s White Sands Missile Range. She argued that a 45-mile stretch of the route interfered with a region where missiles were tested.

thinkprogress

[Graeme]

Graph Of The Day: How Utilities See Themselves In 2030

Power utility businesses around the world are finally, and rapidly, waking up to the enormous changes taking place in the global energy market. That is what we have been noticing here in Australia, and that is the major message from the latest PwC global power & utilities report.

The report, released on Wednesday, shows that over two-thirds (70 per cent) of senior energy industry executives they surveyed (and they surveyed 73 of them, from 70 different companies and across 50 different countries) expected significant or very significant market model change by 2030 — a huge increase of awareness, or acceptance, from 2014, when less that half of survey respondents

(41 per cent) said utility business models would be ‘completely transformed’ by then.

But how? What shape will future utilities and energy markets take? PwC asked their energy executives a variety of questions about this, and the answers – illustrated in the chart below – are pretty illuminating.

cleantechnica