August 2009 Archives
Aug 31 2009
Many of us suffer from Chronic Information Overload Syndrome: books piling up on the night stand, magazines stacked in the bathroom and email overflowing our in-boxes. Still, that doesn't stop us from ever-optimistically creating lists of what we plan to read in the near future, just as soon as we finish the chores.
In that spirit, I was intrigued by news that the Humboldt County Library has more than 150 new books and other materials on the environment, "green" technology and energy efficiency, thanks to a grant from PG&E to the Humboldt Library Foundation.
I asked the library system for its list of new titles--they do, after all, serve one of the most environmentally conscious parts of the state, so their choices ought to give the rest of us excellent guidance on these popular, practical and important topics.
Here are some of the titles they thought well enough of to purchase at least two copies:
- Amann, Jennifer Thorne. Consumer guide to home energy savings.
- Bishop, Amanda. How to reduce your carbon footprint.
- David, Laurie. The down-to-earth guide to global warming.
- DeGunther, Rik. Energy efficient homes for dummies.
- Delano, Marfe Ferguson. Earth in the hot seat.
- Krigger, John. The homeowner's handbook to energy efficiency.
- Krupp, Fred. Earth, the sequel: The race to reinvent energy and stop global warming.
- McKay, Kim. True green kids: 100 things you can do to save the planet.
- Peppas, Lynn. Ocean, tidal, and wave energy.
- Reilly, Kathleen M. Planet Earth: 25 environmental projects you can build yourself.
- Rodger, Ellen. Building a green community.
- Sivertsen, Linda. Generation green: The ultimate teen guide to living an eco-friendly life.
- Thornhill, Jan. This is my planet: the kids' guide to global warming.
- Walker, Niki. Harnessing power from the sun.
If this list just whets your appetite for more, check out the lists on Amazon.com relating to the environment--all 1,956 of them!
Aug 28 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Rising temperatures over the next century could slash yields of three leading cash crops--corn, soybeans and cotton--by as much as 80 percent in the United states, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Despite these implications, "Democratic leaders are finding that resistance in the [agricultural] heartland is one of the biggest hurdles to Senate passage of climate-change legislation," according to the Wall Street Journal.
Southern California is likely to get not only hotter but muggier, according to researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Warmer ocean currents off Mexico's Baja Peninsula are increasing humidity, a trend that contributed to the severe summer heat wave of 2006 that caused the deaths of 600 people and 25,000 cattle in the state.
One of the world's top climate scientists has called for drastic cutbacks of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said he now endorsed a target of 350 parts per million, a goal endorsed by most of the world's poor and vulnerable nations. Current CO2 levels of nearly 390 ppm are already high enough to cause prolonged droughts, destructive storms and a measurable rise in sea levels.
Expert witnesses told a Senate subcommittee this week that global warming threatens to dramatically harm many U.S. national parks. Glacier National Park will lose its glaciers; Joshua Tree National Park may lose its Joshua trees; Rocky Mountain National Park will lose its tundra; and Ellis Island National Monument "could be lost to rising seas," the experts warned.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has long railed against the cost to business of unnecessary litigation, this week threatened to sue the EPA if it does not agree to hold a public hearing on the evidence for and against human-caused climate change. Likening it to the infamous Scopes monkey trial, William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, said, with unintended irony, "It would be evolution versus creationism. It would be the science of climate change on trial." The EPA termed the Chamber's demand "frivolous" and most climate scientists dispute the Chamber's skepticism about global warming.
Aug 28 2009
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
The Bag Wars continue, this time in San Jose, California's third largest city. In November, the City Council will consider a ban on plastic shopping bags at large grocery stores and big-box retailers. Paper bags with at least 50 percent recycled materials would be okay but bags would cost perhaps 10 to 25 cents each. Last week, voters in Seattle rejected a bag fee. San Francisco outlawed plastic bags in 2007, spurring a boom in sturdy cloth shopping bags.
Help Wanted! The next big corporate-level position may be Chief Green Officer and look to the Information Technology ranks for candidates, says the GreenBiz blog. Greening a business requires managing and monitoring a lot of data on energy use, carbon footprints and such and IT is best suited for the tasks. Cisco and other companies are producing hardware and software for greening companies and it's IT who will buy, maintain and use the equipment and software. IT folks eyeing a CGO post will need to focus on the business first and technology second.
Fill your gas tank with watermelon juice? A study to be published in the online journal Biotechnology for Biofuels says watermelons could be used to produce the biofuel ethanol. Twenty percent of the annual watermelon crop is ploughed under because of imperfections. A watermelon investigation indicates that "watermelon juice as a source of readily fermentable sugars represents a heretofore untapped feedstock for ethanol biofuel production," according to the study.
Aug 27 2009
Just how far are you prepared to go to fight global warming? Would you cover your home with algae?
That, essentially, is the intriguing proposal advanced this week by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a 160-year-old professional organization, based in London, devoted to sustainable energy and cleaner and safer transportation.
In a major new report, Geo-Engineering - Giving us time to act?, the organization argues that in addition to the usual climate-change proposals, governments need to consider geoengineering schemes to cool the planet before we experience "dramatic changes to our climate . . . which could jeopardise modern civilisation."
Unlike some science-fiction-sounding proposals, like firing millions of solar reflectors into orbit, the group's three favorites include making building roofs more reflective (a favorite of Energy Secretary Steven Chu), building millions of "artificial trees" to chemically absorb CO2 out of the atmosphere (an idea championed by Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner), and--most intriguingly--"algae-coated buildings."
This latter approach may seem a tad unappealing, but hear them out.
The idea is to install sealed containers of algae--photobioreactors--on the side of new or existing buildings. As the algae grows inside, it absorbs CO2 from the surrounding air, reducing greenhouse gases.
The carbon in the algae can then be "sequestered," or stored, by turning it into biofuel or into biochar, a soil additive used by farmers since prehistoric times, as discussed previously in NEXT100.
The algae-filled panels could use waste water or salt water, avoiding the need to tap scarce fresh water supplies. And by insulating buildings, they would reduce energy usage by occupants.
The institute concedes that the proposal is "very much at a conceptual stage," its technical feasibility remains unknown, and the cost of photobioreactors is at present "too expensive to be commercially viable." (And here's a question they don't answer: why would you install an algae photoreactor, with a photosynthetic efficiency of less than 5 percent, instead of photovoltaic building materials with twice that efficiency? ) But the group insists that many of the underlying processes are proven and the idea "is worthy of further research."
Any volunteers?
Aug 26 2009
Is he in your Rolodex? If so, says Earth2Tech, "you're probably in pretty good shape."
The noted energy and clean tech blog today named PG&E CEO Peter Darbee as one of the "top 15 most influential people in the smart grid space." This list, produced by Katie Fehrenbacher, calls PG&E "one of the most aggressive utilities, deploying smart meters and home area energy management tools."
Also today, IDC Energy Insights and Intelligent Utility magazine named PG&E one of the nation's five most "intelligent utilities," based on metrics quantifying productivity, renewable energy, smart initiatives, demand response/energy efficiency, and IT investment. The goal was to separate "smart grid hype" from reality.
"These metrics measure each company's efficiency, commitment to renewable energy, investments in developing smarter grids, enablement of their customers to manage their energy usage and costs, and their investment in information technology to enable business process improvement," according to the announcement.
The Earth2Tech story notes Darbee's extensive experience in the telecom industry, saying he "has a unique perspective on what the smart grid should provide for utilities in the U.S." It adds that he has "brought in and promoted executives with more of a Silicon Valley, think-outside-the-box mentality, compared to the traditional utility industry. His leadership shows, and PG&E has been partnering with tech-savvy startups like Silver Spring Networks and applied for smart grid stimulus funds to roll out home area network technologies."
Others on the list of leaders include Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Cisco CEO John Chambers, Silver Spring Networks CEO Scott Lang and Guido Bartels, IBM's top exec for energy and utilities.
Fehrenbacher's timing was impeccable--she posted just hours before PG&E announced its application for Smart Grid stimulus funding for an innovative new energy storage project.
Aug 26 2009
When the wind stops blowing or the sun goes behind a cloud, where will we get the clean, renewable energy we need for a sustainable economy?
From storage--batteries, fuel cells, flywheels or other devices that convert surplus electricity to chemical or mechanical energy, then feed it back into the grid on demand.
Cheap energy storage is sometimes called the holy grail of renewable energy and a key component of future "smart grids" envisioned by utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric Company. It's also one of the hottest areas of clean-tech investing.
Now PG&E is taking steps to make it a reality, applying today to the Department of Energy for a $25 million Smart Grid stimulus funding grant, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for a large compressed air energy storage (CAES) project.
The application follows a previous PG&E request this month for a $42.5 million Smart Grid grant for a Home Area Network deployment project, in collaboration with the city of San Jose, Stanford University and several leading technology companies. Building on the utility's advanced SmartMeter(tm) program, it will help customers lower their energy costs and usage by installing 75,000 in-premise energy displays and controllers at select mid-sized commercial and industrial customers.
PG&E also joined a Smart Grid grant application this month led by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council to install high-tech devices called synchrophasors to monitor and enhance the reliability and performance of the Western electric grid.
With its latest project, PG&E plans to pump compressed air into an underground reservoir, using mainly wind energy produced during non-peak hours, and then release it to generate electricity during periods of peak demand. The project has an output capacity of 300 megawatts--similar to a mid-sized power plant--for up to 10 hours. It will take an estimated five years to design, permit and build.
"Energy storage is a strategic complement to the generation resources that provide power to our customers," said Hal La Flash, director of emerging clean technologies at PG&E. "This project will help us maximize the efficiency and flexibility of our system while enabling the delivery of clean, renewable energy."
Large-scale energy storage holds tremendous promise for helping the environment, improving grid reliability and reducing energy costs:
- It will reduce greenhouse gas and other undesirable air emissions by enabling greater use of intermittent renewable resources and by reducing the need to use conventional fossil-fuel "peaking" plants to meet peak demand.
- It will improve asset utilization by absorbing excess generation during periods of low demand and reducing the need to add new generation for peak periods.
- And it stands to lower costs by storing energy produced when prices are low (off-peak) and returning it to the grid when prices are high, avoiding the need to buy costly on-peak electricity.
CAES has orders of magnitude more capacity than typical utility batteries and appears to be the most cost-effective form of storage, according to technical experts at the Electric Power Research Institute. The concept has been proven by projects in Alabama and Germany. Several utilities, backed by DOE and Sandia National Laboratory, are working on a major CAES facility in Iowa.
A massive study of CAES at Princeton University last year concluded that it is ideally suited to smoothing out the ups and downs of wind energy, which often peaks at night:
CAES appears to have many of the characteristics necessary to transform wind into a
mainstay of global electricity generation. The storage of energy through air compression
may enable wind to meet a large fraction of the world's electricity needs competitively in
a carbon constrained world.
This project isn't PG&E's first foray into energy storage. For many years it has operated a 1.2 gigawatt hydroelectric plant near Fresno, the Helms Pumped Storage Facility, that uses inexpensive power at night to pump water into a higher reservoir for release during the day, when power is more costly. PG&E received permits last year from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to explore two additional pumped hydro sites totaling up to 2 GW in capacity.
Other utilities are also beginning to incorporate storage into their operations. Ohio-based AEP is installing utility-scale batteries on its network and says it plans to install a total of 1,000 MW of storage in its system over the next decade. Beacon Power Corp. was awarded $43 million in loan guarantees from the DOE to complete a 20 MW storage project for National Grid in New York state using flywheels. Japanese utilities have installed sodium sulfur and vanadium flow batteries to integrate wind power into their networks. And Southern California Edison just requested a DOE grant to partner with A123 Systems to build the world's biggest lithium-ion battery assembly--32 megawatt-hours in capacity--to help balance out intermittent wind power in the Tehachapi Wind Resource Area.
Aug 25 2009
There's a reason home prices in San Francisco have held up so well during the current recession, while those in other California cities have fallen by as much as a third--and it goes beyond views, history and charm.
It's walkability--the ability to grab a latte, drop off your clothes at the cleaner and get your hair cut without once having to brave traffic to drive to a mall.
A new study sponsored by CEOs for Cities, a national organization dedicated to "sustaining the next generation of great American cities," documents the strong correlation between home values and the walkability of residential neighborhoods.
The report, Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in U.S. Cities by Portland, Ore.-based economist Joseph Cortright, found that more walkable neighborhoods typically command premiums ranging from $4,000 to $34,000 per home, controlling for other factors such as size, age, access to jobs and distance from downtown.
Cortright analyzed real estate transactions in 15 urban markets, including Fresno, Sacramento, San Francisco and Stockton. He assigned a Walk Score to each neighborhood, ranging from 0 to 100, based on the proximity of restaurants, schools, parks, stores, libraries and other services. For a typical neighborhood, each one-point increase in the Walk Score increased home values $700 to $3,000.
"Even in a turbulent economy, we know that walkability adds value to residential property just as additional square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms and other amenities do," said Cortright. "It's clear that consumers assign a tangible value to the convenience factor of living in more walkable places with access to a variety of destinations."
Want to know your neighborhood's Walk Score--or the score of a home you're thinking of buying? Check out the Walk Score website (of course), plug in the address, and you'll not only get the score, but a list of walkable destinations, a Google map with icons and details of the property, included estimated market value and property taxes. (Good news: my home scored 92 out of 100--a "walkers' paradise.")
Said Walk Score founder Mike Mathieu of the new CEOs for Cities study, "Walking the Walk shows definitively what we've always believed - that homes in walkable neighborhoods continue to be a good investment, and are one of the simplest and most effective solutions to fight climate change, improve our health, and strengthen our communities. Our vision is for every property listing to include a Walk Score: Beds: 3 Baths: 2 Walk Score: 84." (Walk Scores are now also available on Zillow.com, ZipRealty.com, and Postlets.com.)
So if you're a city planner, you may not be able to match the Golden Gate Bridge or San Francisco's Victorians, but you can work to deliver what residents are voting for with dollars and their feet: walkability. As Carol Coletta, president of CEOs for Cities, put it, "if urban leaders are intentional about developing and redeveloping their cities to make them more walkable, it will not only enhance the local tax base but will also contribute to individual wealth by increasing the value of what is, for most people, their biggest asset."
Aug 24 2009
Forget the economy, health care and Afghanistan. I want to know what the government is going to do about the weather.
Not the local weather in San Francisco, where the summer chill seems impervious even to global warming, but space weather--solar geomagnetic storms that have the power to disable satellites, disrupt radio transmissions and even knock out electrical power to wide areas, as when most of Quebec province went dark for hours in 1989.
As noted previously on NEXT100, a study group convened by the National Research Council reported this year that a really bad geomagnetic storm could black out most of North America, costing trillions of dollars in losses and requiring a decade for full recovery--if our social institutions survived at all.
The cost and complexity of dealing with the problem have stymied solutions and left modern civilization highly vulnerable. When I asked for details of current action plans several weeks ago, a spokeswoman for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which is tasked with preventing widespread blackouts, said only, "it's certainly an issue that NERC is looking into."
In a briefing paper released today on "Electromagnetic Pulse & Geomagnetic Storm Events," NERC concedes that geomagnetic storms "have the potential to physically damage electrical and electronic equipment throughout North America's critical infrastructure, notably including Extra High Voltage transformers and industrial control systems . . . The most significant electric reliability concern is the potential for simultaneous impact to large portions of the bulk power system, from which restoration and recovery may be challenging and prolonged."
NERC explains why the problem remains so great:
Essentially all of the system's critical conductive elements are exposed to this threat, as are many of its critical control elements. As a result, deploying controls and equipment that could prevent damage . . . may require considerable expertise, time, and financial resources.
NERC notes that a commission authorized by Congress to address the problem recommended several steps, including:
- Assure there are adequate communication assets dedicated or available to electrical system operators.
- Protect the use of emergency power supplies and fuel delivery, and importantly, provide for their sustained use as part of the protection of critical loads.
- Separate the present interconnected systems, particularly the Eastern Interconnection, into several nonsynchronous connected subregions or electrical islands.
- Install substantially more black start generation units coupled with specific transmission that can be readily isolated to balancing loads.
- Improve, extend, and exercise recovery capabilities.
In partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and in collaboration with the Canadian government, NERC says it is convening a committee of government and industry experts to further assess the risks and--at a workshop later this year or next--will "consider potential preventative and planning measures to minimize their impacts on bulk power system reliability."
In addition, NERC says it will "work to coordinate various planning and mitigation actions with North American governmental authorities and other critical infrastructure sectors. A comprehensive, crosssector approach will be needed to ensure North America is adequately protected from these threats."
Bottom line, as I read it: expect more studies but not a lot of action anytime soon. We have a long way to go before we can sleep easier about the impact of solar storms or nuclear bomb explosions that create similar devastating electromagnetic pulses.
Aug 21 2009
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
I was scanning the pre-season college football polls when some new rankings came in for a different kind of game -- the "greenest" universities. The Princeton Review test-preparation company recently issued it second "Green Rating Honor Roll" of 15 schools, including UC-Berkeley, Arizona State, Harvard, Yale, and my favorite just because of its name -- Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Ratings cover energy use, recycling, food, buildings and so on. Other groups also grade colleges, including the Sierra Club, which rated the University of Colorado at Boulder No. 1 among "eco-enlightened" schools. Oh yes, the University of Florida Gators are No. 1 in the USA Today football poll.
Seattle voters have rejected a proposed 20-cent charge for disposable paper and plastic shopping bags, with supporters blaming economic conditions and a $1.4 million anti-fee campaign by the plastics industry. The City Council adopted a bag charge ordinance last year but opponents got enough signatures to put it on the ballot. Despite the opposition in Seattle, bag bans are expected to grow. Here in San Francisco, City Hall briefly considered a bag fee before banning non-biodegradable plastic bags in 2007 without much fuss. Stores now offer reusable paper bags, and many businesses and groceries are slapping their names and logos on cloth bags and selling them for a dollar or giving them away.
San Francisco is pedaling a little closer to a citywide bicycle sharing program. With only two bike rental locations in a city with a population of more than 800,000, the Recreation and Park Department hopes to add more rental kiosks for residents and tourists as early as January. Officials from Montreal's new Bixi (bike+taxi) share system recently visited Golden Gate Park to show off their bikes and a portable pay station powered by solar panels. Montreal launched Bixi a few months ago with 3,000 bikes and 300 stations in the city's downtown core.
Aug 21 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Huge ice sheets in Antarctica are thinning four times faster than measured only a decade ago, and may last only another century, according to findings by British researchers who warn that sea levels could rise dramatically as a result. "By the end of the century, the accelerated melting could cause sea levels to climb by 3 to 5 feet -- levels substantially higher than predicted by a major scientific group just two years ago," said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
Arctic warming is releasing significant quantities of methane trapped in seabed sediments, according to another group of British researchers. Methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, may become an increasingly significant source of global warming if these releases continue, thus accelerating this dangerous feedback effect.
Hang on tight: global warming may cause the earth to tilt and wobble, according to a report in New Scientist. Melting of ice sheets in the Arctic is shifting the Earth's axis of rotation and moving the north pole at a rate of about 10 centimeters per year. And warming of the oceans is redistributing the Earth's mass enough to cause a new polar shift of about 1.5 centimeters per year toward Alaska and Hawaii.
A committee of the House of Representatives is investigating apparently forged letters sent by lobbyists opposed to climate change legislation, which appear to come from senior citizens concerned about rising electricity bills. The letters are similar to forgeries produced by a coal industry lobbying firm that were exposed two weeks ago.
A confidential memo from American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard, obtained and publicized by Greenpeace USA, calls on member companies to recruit employees, retirees and contractors to join "Energy Citizen" rallies to oppose climate change legislation. The first of the rallies was held Tuesday in Houston and was backed by Chevron.
Aug 20 2009
Yesterday we reported on a new study showing that music downloads are slashing the carbon footprint of traditional music distribution, considering the energy expended in producing and distributing CDs. Now researchers at Cleantech Group have documented how much digital book downloads can save in the way of trees, printing presses, truck trips and retail energy consumption.
As summarized by Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech, the study estimates that one e-book reader, like Amazon's Kindle, can save 168 kg of CO2 annually if the average user cuts back on the purchase of 22.5 physical books per year.
Said the report's author, Emma Ritch, "Multiplied by millions of units and increased sales of e-books, e-readers will have a staggering impact on improving the sustainability and environmental impact on one of the world's most polluting industries: the publishing of books, newspapers and magazines."
Based on the report's projections, e-book readers could save three million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2012, net of the emissions caused by production of the devices.
The savings will depend hugely on the pace of adoption, of course. Critics, such as The New Yorker's Nicholson Baker, have taken Amazon's Kindle to task for its high price, "sickly gray" screen, proprietary format and limited availability of titles.
Sony's competitive readers, which start at $199, lack wireless capability (for now), making them much less convenient. Other competitors, like the iRex iLiad, the Jinke Hanlin eReader, and CyBook by Bookeen, are largely unknown.
But the success of the Kindle has, ahem, kindled tremendous interest among electronics manufacturers (Samsung, Apple) and content providers (Barnes and Noble, Hearst Corp, Google), all but ensuring rapid growth of competition, price cuts and technological improvements to make this sector explode like the digital music industry. In fact, In-Stat projects that nearly 30 million e-book readers will ship by 2013, up from one million last year. That spells good news for the earth's environment, anyway you read it.
Aug 19 2009
According to a recent BBMG Conscious Consumer Report: Redefining Value in a New Economy, 23 percent of US consumers said they have "no way of knowing" if a product is green or actually does what it claims.
Perhaps that is why, just four months after its public launch, PG&E's Business and Consumer Electronics program boasts participation from key national retailers -- from Best Buy to Sears to Wal-Mart to Sam's Club to Target to Costco. The program provides participating retailers with co-branded utility and ENERGY STAR labels that advise customers to "Save" and "Save More" on the most energy-efficient and cost-saving electronic products.
"Best Buy sees this partnership as yet another way to help consumers choose electronics wisely, encourage them to use more efficiently and advocate for the development of increasingly efficient products in the future."
- Thad Carlson, senior manager of environmental affairs, Best Buy
PG&E publicly launched the Business and Consumer Electronics program with Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) in April, hoping to drive national retailer participation in the first utility-driven program designed to inform businesses and consumers about the benefits of energy-efficient electronics and introduce energy efficiency as an important consideration for these purchases.
Now, with top national retailers signed on, the program is well-positioned to deliver energy savings in the fastest growing segment of electricity use in PG&E's service area. (Electronics load already accounts for eight percent of PG&E's total electricity demand).
In total, PG&E estimates that the total savings potential of the Business and Consumer Electronics program is on the order of 158,000 megawatt-hours in 2010 alone. As the program continues to expand nationally, the United States could realize even greater energy savings if all national utilities execute similar electronics programs.
Now, that's what I call saving more. Check out energy-efficient electronics on CNET.
Aug 19 2009
It has been a while since NEXT100 covered our PG&E Food Service Technology Center (FSTC) so it's time to catch up with some news about a tool to save water and energy in restaurant kitchens and other settings.
The FSTC has verified a high-efficiency, low-flow, pre-rinse spray valve for dishwashing developed by Strahman Valves Inc., an 88-year-old manufacturing company based in Bethlehem, Penn. The Kwik Clean 3 nozzle joins a roster of pre-rinse spray valves verified by the FSTC to meet criteria based on the American Society of Testing Materials' test procedures.
Pre-rinse valves knock food particles off dirty dishes before the dishes are run through the dishwashing machine. The easiest way to save water and energy is to replace a high-flow spray valve of 2.5 gallons per minute to 5.0 gpm with a low-flow unit of 1.6 gpm or less. Strahman Valves says if used only three hours a day, the device still saves 60 gallons of water and sewage per day more than standard nozzles and provides an annual cost savings at current energy rates of almost $500. The nozzle is also for use in hospitals, mortuaries, pet stores, supermarkets and other industries.
FSTC, which is based in San Ramon, Calif., has supported the California Urban Water Conservation Council to actively promote low-flow, pre-rinse spray valves through its Rinse & Save program. The test center is funded by California utility customers and operated under contract to Fisher-Nickel Inc. The other utilities in the program are Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Gas Co.
Aug 19 2009
Without any apparent public concern, the earth is quickly being taken over by a strange breed of iPod-people who look human except for the tell-tale wires hanging down from their ears as they walk to work or jog on treadmills at the local gym.
These strangely detached iPod-people have already wreaked havoc on the traditional music business, crushing sales of high-margin CDs in favor of cheaper digital music downloads, which now account for 35 percent of all music sold, up from 20 percent in 2007. By next year, predicts NPD Group, sales of CDs and digital downloads "will be a dead heat." (Dan Tynan at PC World calls the failure of the recording industry to get out in front of the digital music revolution one of the "10 stupidest tech company blunders.")
But now it turns out that iPod people may actually be saving the planet. A scholarly new study prepared for Microsoft and Intel (hmmm, I wonder who's side they're on?) asserts that "purchasing music digitally reduces the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with delivering music to customers by between 40 and 80% from the best-case physical CD delivery, depending on whether a customer then burns the files to CD or not. This reduction is due to the elimination of CDs, CD packaging, and the physical delivery of CDs to the household."
Buying a CD at a retail store produces more than 3,000 grams of CO2, counting production, distribution and customer transport. Downloading the same music to your digital player can produce less than 500 grams of CO2. (The gap will widen if digital music distributors follow tips from PG&E about making their data centers more energy efficient.)
However, there's good news for retro-types who still like CDs: you can dramatically cut the carbon footprint of your music if you walk or bicycle to the store rather than drive. Better yet, pick up some groceries on the way.
The study, titled "The Energy and Climate Change Impacts of Different Music Delivery Methods," was authored by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews at Carnegie Mellon and Jonathan Koomey at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Aug 18 2009
Why is that when conservative industry groups sponsor economic analyses of environmental legislation, the results almost always turn out frightening (millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars lost), while similar studies sponsored by environmental groups show the opposite?
You don't need a Ph.D. in economics--or political science--to figure that one out.
Fortunately, there are some simple rules of thumb to help anyone with even a modest understanding of economics evaluate the seemingly authoritative (but contradictory) claims these groups make every time a major legislative issue is in play.
Let's take as an example the highly publicized study of the costs of climate change legislation released last week by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation, two conservative groups opposed to capping (or taxing) carbon emissions.
Their findings: Caps on carbon emissions, as called for in the Waxman-Markey bill, would raise electricity prices more than 30 percent by 2030, cut anywhere from 1.8 million to 2.4 million jobs, and shrink gross domestic product 1.8 to 2.4 percent by 2030.
Independent studies by the Energy Information Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Congressional Budget Office show much more modest impacts. How can a non-expert know who to believe?
The first point is that you can discount the job loss numbers in NAM's study almost entirely. Various sectors of the economy (like coal mining) will surely lose jobs, but others will gain. The numbers cited in the NAM study--2 million jobs lost over two decades--pales compared to the fact that more than four millions jobs are lost in the US economy every month (offset, in normal times, by even more hires). Bottom line: full employment is a result of proper fiscal and monetary policy, not the cost of some new law.
A second point is to beware the optical illusion of magnifying costs by looking over a long period of time. Shrinking GDP by 2 percent by 2030 sounds like a lot until you remember that's how much the economy grows in a single year. In other words, if you believe the hostile assumptions of the NAM study, the U.S. economy would reach in 2031 the level of GDP that it would otherwise achieve by 2030 without climate change legislation.
To put it another way, the NAM study projects that even with climate change legislation, the U.S. economy would grow by about $9 trillion by 2030.
The biggest flaw of all is looking only at the costs and not the benefits--a rigged test if ever there was one. The whole point of the legislation is to buy relief from droughts and crop failures, crippling storms, flooded coastal cities, species extinction and many other threats. True, the benefits are uncertain and depend on how many other countries follow suit. But as one group of noted California economists put it, "The most expensive thing we can do is nothing."
That's a lesson we can all appreciate, even without a Ph.D.
Note: click here for one economist's critique of the NAM methodology.
Aug 18 2009
Environmental consulting firms are looking at sewage-sniffing canines to help seaside communities in Maine and New Hampshire reduce the cost of their cleanup efforts by reducing the number of dye tests and follow-up lab work usually involved in detecting sewage.
One such dedicated dog is Sable, the three-and-a-half-year-old German Shepherd mix found at a shelter and trained to become a member of the field crew at environmental consulting firm Tetra Tech.
Where Sable comes in particularly handy is in cities with storm sewers that date back so far they have never actually been mapped. In these cases, the cost of cleaning up the underground network of pipes is significant. Because Sable is able to track the scent of sewage to where it originates upstream, there is no need for the labor and travel time associated with dye testing to navigate the storm system.
The occupational choice is not just a win for communities seeking to protect their shorelines from sewage. According to the dog's trainer, Sable is willing and eager to sniff out sewage every day -- all in a day's work for this doggy.
Aug 17 2009
One result of global warming is the ever-more-heated debate between alarmists and skeptics over what (if anything) to do about it. The latest burst of controversy concerns a favorite topic of NEXT100, geoengineering.
Geoengineering is the name given to schemes for planetary-scale interventions to change the earth's environment, particularly its climate. They include proposals to combat global warming by reflecting sunlight--for example, by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, seeding clouds over the oceans or sending reflective panels into orbit.
The latest contribution to the geoengineering debate comes from a source deeply distrusted by many environmentalists, the benign-sounding Copenhagen Consensus Centre, a Danish think-tank founded by Bjorn Lomborg, author of the controversial book, The Sceptical Environmentalist.
Lomborg's institute this month published a study claiming that "we might be able to cancel out this century's global warming by spending no more than $9 billion, and that climate engineering might be able to achieve as much for the planet as carbon cuts at a fraction of the cost."
The study supports an approach explored in detail in this blog: using unmanned ships to spray saltwater into the air to whiten marine clouds, reflecting just enough sunlight to stabilize the earth's temperature. They estimate the cost at a relatively trivial $9 billion, and the global benefits at a staggering $20 trillion.
Said Lomborg, who has criticized traditional policies for curbing carbon emissions as too expensive, "There's obviously more testing that needs to be done, but it is so cheap that it has to be worth looking at."
Predictably, the paper has provoked a firestorm of criticism, some related to the messanger and some to the message.
Lomborg's endorsement immediately made the thesis suspect in the eyes of many environmentalists. The fact that the paper was co-authored by an assistant professor in the Department of Petroleum at the University of Texas, and a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (a bastion of global warming deniers), didn't help its credibility.
Nor did the fact that geoengineering was endorsed as a "political ploy" by a spokesman for the British coal industry, who wrote, "The geo-engineering option provides the needed viable reason to do nothing about [human-caused global warming] now."
A more substantive critique is that geoengineering schemes that don't curb carbon dioxide emissions will permit rapid acidification of the oceans, devastating marine ecosystems.
Critics like Rutgers Prof. Alan Robock note many other problems. With an unchecked build-up of CO2, any lapse in geoengineering could cause rapid, catastrophic heating of the earth. Reductions in solar radiation would undercut solar energy. Attempts to impose geoengineering solutions might cause intense international conflict. And so on.
Out of all this debate comes one promising consensus view, however: while climate engineering is far too uncertain to be rushed into action, it deserves serious research support. It's time to turn down the heated rhetoric and turn up the science on geoengineering.
Aug 14 2009
The below story on the science of global warming caught our attention this week:
Flying frogs is more like it -- just one of the 350 new species found in the Himalayas over the past decade. And, that's not all. Some say that further study of the eastern Himalayas would lead to the discovery of even more new species.
Unfortunately, these new species are not impervious to the negative effects of climate change, which threatens the fragile habitat of the Himalayas, which the World Wildlife Fund calls one of the world's most biologically-rich regions.
Some of the new fauna include a miniature muntjac, which is the world's smallest deer species. Smaller than Bambi, the mini muntjac stands just 25-30 inches tall and weighs a mere 24 pounds.
Also found was a Rhacophorus suffry, aka the flying frog. This new species of frog uses its long, webbed feet to fly through the air.
By reducing human impact in these fragile habitats, we can continue our discovery of even more species -- leaping lizards!
Aug 14 2009
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and environmental responsibility caught our attention this week:
General Motors claims the Chevy Volt will get an EPA rating of 230 mpg - drawing cheers, jeers, a harsh line of questioning and this response from the EPA: "EPA has not tested a Chevy Volt and therefore cannot confirm the fuel economy values claimed by GM. EPA does applaud GM's commitment to designing and building the car of the future - an American-made car that will save families money, significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create good-paying American jobs. We're proud to see American companies and American workers leading the world in the clean energy innovations that will shape the 21st century economy."
Fuzzy...Wuzzy... and full of pesticides. A new study done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture places peaches on top of the "Dirty Dozen" list. The study finds peaches need and retain a very high amount of pesticides because of their makeup - including delicate, fuzzy skins and susceptibility to mold and pests. Although most pesticides in peaches were found at levels well below EPA tolerances, some scientists and activists remain concerned about even low-level exposure, especially to pregnant women and children. Click on the links to see the rest of the "Dirty Dozen" and the "Clean 15."
Leading the nation into the land of fresh veggies, President Obama can now brag to environmental groups about the low lead levels in his vegetable garden on the south lawn at the White House. Pre-planting work done to improve the soil's fertility helped reduce the lead levels, and new test results indicate that the levels are now so low (14 parts per million) that they are similar to those found in places where there are no automobiles.
One group is treading lightly around fragile reef ecosystems off the coast of Florida and gaining some presidential props. Nearly 40 years ago, around two million tires were placed in the ocean off Florida in an attempt to create an artificial reef and to enhance fish populations. After years of weathering currents and storms, the tires have shifted and many have even washed ashore. In addition, scientists say the tires still remaining are a threat to the sea life in the area. Click here to see how the White House is honoring those trying to clean up the reef.
Aug 13 2009
It's that time of year when migratory birds begin journeying to their winter homes. From August 15 through October 31, over 250 species of birds are expected to migrate through San Francisco along the Pacific Flyway, some traveling as much as 11,000 miles. Many birds migrate at night and can become confused by lights, particularly those on tall structures. It's thought that the lights on tall buildings affect the navigation of birds, causing them to collide with buildings or circle buildings repeatedly, suffer from exhaustion and die. Lights left on in tall buildings contribute to millions of bird deaths throughout the United States each year.
To help migratory birds safely make their way through San Francisco, the Golden Gate Audubon Society is teaming up again with PG&E and the San Francisco Department of the Environment to promote "Lights Out for Birds." With the start of another bird migration season (February to May and August to October), this program encourages tall building owners to review their nighttime lighting practices, including time clock and EMS settings, and make sure that non-essential, after-hours lighting is eliminated.
"We're very encouraged that the word is getting out about Lights Out for Birds since we launched this program in San Francisco last spring," said Noreen Weeden, conservation project manager for the Golden Gate Audubon Society. "Many migratory avian populations are already in significant decline, and this program will help make it safer for the millions of birds that are expected to travel through the Bay Area this season."
Lights Out for Birds has been successfully implemented in several cities, including New York, Chicago and Toronto, where participants help save energy and birds. In fact, one building operator reported a savings of $200,000 in 2006 alone. In addition to saving birds and money on energy bills, the reduced energy consumption decreases overall greenhouse gas emissions.
To learn more about how lights affect migrating birds, visit: http://www.flap.org/.
Aug 12 2009
Mona Yew, principal in PG&E's Emerging Clean Technologies department, just returned from Beijing, China, where she spent three months working with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to promote energy efficiency. NEXT100 asked Ms. Yew to offer her perspective on energy efficiency in China. Here are her answers:
What do you do at PG&E?
I work in PG&E's Emerging Clean Technologies group, which is part of the Renewable Energy department within our energy procurement organization. Our goal is to expand energy generation from renewable and clean energy resources in California. We investigate emerging renewable and clean technologies and find ways to help support and advance these technologies. I focus primarily on biomass technology and carbon sequestration.
What's your background in energy efficiency?
Prior to working with renewable technology, I've held various positions at PG&E related to energy efficiency program development and implementation.
What were you doing in China?
The NRDC has a long history of promoting energy efficiency in China, and PG&E has been a long-time supporter of this effort as a member of the China-US Energy Efficiency Alliance. I took on a three-month secondment at the NRDC's Beijing, China, office to provide training on demand-side management (DSM) and energy efficiency program administration and implementation. I helped NRDC develop a training program and provided training to members of NRDC's DSM Technical Center and their government partners. I also helped with designing implementation plans for regional pilot projects called "Efficiency Power Plants" that NRDC is working on with their provincial government partners.
What's an Efficiency Power Plant?
An Efficiency Power Plant or EPP is a "virtual" power plant that delivers "negawatts" through a portfolio of demand side management or energy efficiency projects. It is the term that is used in China to describe the energy efficiency pilot projects in the provinces.
What do you think most Americans would find surprising about China's efforts?
Most people in the U.S. don't realize that China has fairly aggressive energy reduction targets. They are seeking to reduce energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) by 20 percent from 2006-2011. They are also working to reduce discharge of major pollutants by 10 percent within the same timeframe. I think there is a perception in the U.S. that China has unchecked energy growth. There is no doubt that China's demand is growing and will continue to grow significantly, but they are also looking for ways to meet new growth through demand side management.
Do you think the energy reduction goals set by the Chinese government are realistic?
From what I've seen, most provinces are reporting that they are on track to meet the target. However, it's not an easy task. China has a GDP growth target of 8 percent for 2009. Many industries are struggling with finding the money needed to implement projects while still meeting the growth target in today's economy.
Any noteworthy differences between China and the U.S.?
The biggest difference I noted is in energy consumption behavior. Chinese households are very frugal, cost conscious and do a lot to conserve. For example, compact fluorescent light bulbs are widely used and many homes have washers but not dryers. Household appliances are smaller and require less energy. Homes are also smaller in comparison to the U.S., so the energy use is also lower. Of course, China is a developing country with a large population. So when you add everything up, it's still a very large number. And they are catching up - so one thing some people are concerned about is how to retain that sense of energy frugality as China catches up with developed countries.
One thing California has in contrast to China is dedicated funding for energy efficiency programs. The Chinese provinces that are implementing the Efficiency Power Plant pilots have had to come up with creative ways to fund the projects, such as by tapping into urban construction fees or seeking ESCO (energy service company) financing.
California also has over 30 years of experience in implementing energy efficiency programs. Even though there is a desire - a mandate - to reduce energy use in China, they don't yet have the infrastructure or the portfolio approach like we have here that provide a suite of comprehensive energy efficiency programs that range from audits and rebates to design assistance, education and training to help end use customers save energy.
This takes us back to my mission in China - by sharing best practices on how we implement energy efficiency programs in the U.S. and working with China to adapt the U.S. experience to Chinese conditions and design and implement suitable DSM programs, we can help China move closer to meeting their energy reduction target and help curb global greenhouse gas emissions.
Aug 11 2009
It's been a week since the Project Kaisei Expedition team departed from the San Francisco Bay in two vessels to study marine debris in the North Pacific Gyre. 
Located in an area of the Pacific, north east of Hawaii, the North Pacific Gyre is part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic and other waste that's 30 meters deep and twice the size of Texas.
Project Kaisei's goal is to determine how to capture the waste and to study the potential to detoxify and recycle the materials into diesel fuel. Part of the research they are conducting includes trying a variety of devices to capture debris on a small-scale to help determine the best large-scale methods for waste capture. As Next100 has reported, Project Kaisei joins a small, but growing list of organizations that are seeking to address the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and slow the flow of waste into the oceans.
On Day 7, the Project Kaisei team has traveled 1,100 miles due west of Santa Monica and has begun to enter the Gyre. As they observe on their blog, the amount of plastic they are encountering is overwhelming:
"A week into our voyage, our planned mission transitioned into a shocking reality. When we began our trip, to the elusive vortex, we were not sure what we would find. We gather data from twice-daily trawls, plus thirty-minute observations from the bow and main mast, counting the number of pieces of debris sighted.
The second of today's trawls yielded a preponderance of plastic, versus marine life. The tally of plastic pieces counted in the thirty-minute observations today increased from 115 in the morning to well over 300 in the afternoon."
To follow the expedition in real-time, check out the Project Kaisei Interactive Voyage Tracker at: http://www.projectkaisei.org/.
Aug 07 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
The aggressive efforts employed by the Chinese government to reduce emissions during the Beijing Olympics did significantly improve air quality, according to a Cornell study. In preparation for the Olympics, measures were implemented to regulate traffic density, encourage public transportation, halt construction, and replace coal with natural gas to produce electricity. Based on Beijing air quality data collected in 2007 and 2008, carbon dioxide decreased 47 percent, car emissions of black carbon were down 33 percent and ultrafine carbon-based particles decreased 78 percent. According to Max Zhang, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who led the research, "we hope our study can help or advise local regulators and policymakers to adopt long-term sustainable emission controls to improve air quality."
While "Cash for Clunkers" may be stimulating the economy, it is not impressing climate experts. The Associated Press estimates that the initial 250,000 vehicles that will be permanently retired will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 700,000 tons a year. When you consider that the U.S. emitted about 6.4 billion tons last year, it's just a drop in the bucket.
If you've been considering a trip to Alaska or Washington to check out the glaciers, there's no time like the present. Seriously. As further evidence of our warming climate, a study released this week by the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that three major glaciers in these states have thinned and shrunk dramatically. Although all three glaciers - Gulkana and Wolverine in Alaska and South Cascade in Washington - have distinct climates, they all display a similar pattern of significant mass loss.
Aug 07 2009
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:
A NASCAR track in Pennsylvania - Pocono Raceway - is joining the ranks of sports venues by adding solar panels to generate three megawatts of electricity for the track. The power plant reportedly would be the world's largest for a sports facility. Renewable energy and other green features are becoming standard in new stadium construction in the U.S. and other countries.
Here in San Francisco, PG&E helped the baseball Giants install one of the first solar panel systems at a sporting site. Wind power could be next, with London erecting a wind turbine to help power the summer Olympic Games in 2012.
Old factory towns and industries are getting a new lease on business through clean energy. Pulp mills in Maine and Wisconsin are retooling to make biobutanol and biodiesel from wood waste, and a steel company in San Angelo, Texas, has taken a joint venture stake in a wind tower plant. Pueblo, Colo., an old steel town, is developing a wind turbine factory. Stirling Energy Systems plans to use automotive suppliers to make components for its solar electric machines called SunCatchers, the New York Times reports.
South Korea's LG Chem Ltd. plans to build a battery cell manufacturing plant in Michigan to support 250,000 electric vehicles, helped by $151 million in "green" economy grants from the Obama administration. Most battery manufacturing for advanced vehicles is based in Asia. LG Chem's Compact Power subsidiary is supplying lithium-ion battery cells from South Korea for GM's plug-in Chevy Volt. The company also has a battery contract for GM's planned plug-in Buick SUV. The Michigan plant is to open in 2012.
Aug 06 2009
He hops off his bike and smiles. He is no longer a victim of angry mornings spent in bumper to bumper California traffic. When Grant Cameron arrives at work these days, exercise has his blood pumping but he is feeling both relaxed and refreshed. It wasn't always this way.
In Grant's life, pedals and an electric motor have replaced talk radio and the steering wheel. He now commutes to work on a recumbent electric bike that he invented - one he calls the "EV0." The name is a nod to GM's no longer in production electric car, the EV1, produced from 1996 to 1999.
Looking to help his mindset as well as his fitness and the environment, about a year ago Grant decided he would start cycling to work. Recognizing that the greenest commute is one powered by his own body, he initially tried to tackle the 30 mile daily commute over the hilly terrain in San Diego on a mountain bike.
"That was just too tough," he told me. "I love my bike, but I'm no Lance Armstrong. I can't sustain that ride five days a week, and to be honest, I don't have the time."
So Grant spent the time he had wearing his thinking cap. He bought a comfortable recumbent bike, an electric kit, a motor, throttle, controller and a lithium iron phosphate battery (LiFePO4). The result is his EV0; an electric bike that helps with the hills and still allows him the option to pedal when he wants some exercise or more power. For the technical specs and to see the bike in action, check out this video produced by Grant's filmmaker son, Hollis.
In a car, the commute from Grant's home in San Diego County to his job at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is traffic dependent and driving one way can take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. On his electric bike, the commute is consistently 50 minutes, but Grant has the option of reducing that time should he decide to push the pedals with more vigor.
When he's not inventing electric bikes, Grant studies wave patterns at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UCSD. He hopes his work will some day contribute to a smarter energy grid - one that is more reliant on things like wave power, and less reliant on carbon emitting energy sources.
Aug 04 2009
Over the past decade, obesity-related health spending in America has doubled to about $150 billion a year, according to a new study. A similar epidemic has afflicted our vehicles for the past three decades, putting at risk efforts to achieve climate stability, cleaner air and energy security.
Daniel Sperling, director of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, noted in a recent speech that average car weight has increased 29 percent since the 1980s. Thanks to much heftier engines, the average car today manages to accelerate from 0 to 60 in a speedy 9.5 seconds, down from a leisurely 14.5 seconds in the 1980s.
These trends help explain why auto and truck fuel economy, as measured by EPA, increased a mere 15 percent from 1980 to 2006.
According to Christopher Knittel at U. C. Davis, author of the new paper "Automobiles on Steroids," average mileage could have increased nearly 50 percent over that period if vehicle weight, horsepower and torque had stayed constant. In other words, the shift from light passenger vehicles to heavier and more powerful cars, SUVs and trucks almost completely masked some remarkable improvements in automotive efficiency.
This issue afflicts even cars that once exemplified thriftiness. For example, over the past 26 years, the venerable Honda Accord sold in the United States has increased in weight by more than 50 percent while tripling its horsepower.
This trend reflects in good measure the combination of low gasoline prices (cheaper than bottled water!) and Americans' love of power. The U.S. model 2009 Honda Accord gets at best a ho-hum 24 mpg, while British models, with smaller engines, get 31 mpg. The reason? Higher gasoline prices in the U.K. influence consumers to buy cars that economize on fuel.
With increasing weight, today's cars would be much more inefficient if automakers hadn't made great technological strides. Knittel estimates that a 3,000 pound car got about 10 mpg less in 1980 than in 2006. The problem isn't slow innovation but growing vehicle obesity.
Knittel concludes that the Obama administration's proposed new fuel economy standards are readily achievable if consumers would agree to put their cars on a diet. By merely shifting the mix of car and truck purchases back what they were in 1980 (fewer trucks, more cars), reducing vehicle weight and power gains since 1980 by just 25 percent, the average fuel economy of new vehicle fleets could meet 35.5 mpg with merely average rates of technological progress.
So the question is, will Americans rediscover the virtue of "small is beautiful?" The verdict is out--but the history of the late 1970s and last year's gasoline price spike suggests that Americans can see the beauty in more efficient cars when the price is right.
Aug 03 2009
What kind of magic would it take to convert millions of air conditioners into a cleaner, cheaper equivalent of gas-fired power plants? The magic envisioned in two automated "demand response" pilot projects that PG&E launched last week.
The basic idea is simple. Every electric utility must balance supply and demand on a minute-by-minute basis to prevent instability and power outages. Traditionally, power companies relied on fossil-fueled plants that could ramp generation up or down as needed to match the rise and fall of demand and the ups and downs of wind and solar power. These specialized plants are expensive (because they remain idle most of the time) and polluting (because they burn natural gas or coal).
In recent years, more and more utilities have experimented with "demand response" programs, which provide customers with incentives to curb usage during periods of peak demand, typically hot summer afternoons. While these programs help prevent grid overload, they generally aren't designed to replace combustion turbine plants for fine balancing of supply and demand.
That's about to change--and when it does, utilities and their customers stand to reap big rewards. "Demand response is clearly the 'killer application' for the smart grid," said FERC Commissioner Jon Wellinghoff last December. A report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) added, "Growing use of these (demand-side) resources to meet daily capacity requirements, as well as their critical role in supporting the integration of variable renewable resources, will only increase their importance as climate change initiatives progress."
On July 29, PG&E began a pilot program with large commercial and industrial customers to test the ability of automated demand response systems--which use high-speed communications networks to signal customer energy management devices to adjust air conditioning, lighting and other loads--to act reliably enough to help manage day-to-day grid operations. If so, customers could actually earn money for this valuable contribution to the state's electrical system.
In parallel, PG&E plans to test whether residential and small commercial customers can play in the same market by enrolling in the SmartAC program. This voluntary program provides customers with free radio-controlled thermostats or A/C switches that can be signalled to slightly reduce the amount of electricity air conditioners use during periods of peak energy demand, without sacrificing customers' comfort.
Currently, PG&E has amost 120,000 small business and residential customers actively participating in the program, translating into a total load of more than 87 MW.
PG&E has nearly finished recruiting two groups of 400 SmartAC customers in separate hot inland areas to test the feasibility of using the program as a kind of "spinning reserves," the capacity of traditional generation plants to step up output on a minute's notice.
The key question is whether PG&E's signals to customer thermostats can trigger a quick, reliable, and definable change in demand, or if the system is too sloppy for fine-tuned control. The pilot team also hopes to learn what kinds of communications networks work most reliably for such a task--for example, wireless paging networks or the Internet.
The success of these and other pilot projects will hasten the day, envisioned just last year by Rick Sergel, President & CEO of NERC, "when my home's electronics and appliances will automatically react to changes in price signals and wind forecasts on the grid, reducing my energy usage to help bring on more renewables and manage my bill. The innovation and technology to do this already exists. The challenge remains, then, for us to let it loose."
