Recently in the Smart Grid Category
Feb 16 2010
A typical "D" battery stores enough energy to deliver five watts of power for one hour. Now imagine more than five million such batteries strung together, and you get a sense of the storage capabilities of an advanced sodium-sulfur battery that PG&E plans to install later this year on its grid to support customer needs. It will be the largest battery storage system in California.
I guess that's what they mean by the term "utility scale."
The goal of PG&E's battery storage project isn't to operate five million flashlights or clock radios, but to provide backup power to customers in case of a power failure, improve power quality by smoothing out small variations in voltage and frequency, and help manage the ebb and flow of intermittent wind and solar power so the utility can handle more renewable energy.
PG&E's planned battery installation, which just won funding support from the California Energy Commission, will have a projected life of 15 years. It will also support a 36-month demonstration project to study the value of storage in the utility's distribution system.
"Energy storage will become critical as we migrate to California's future 'smart grid' and integrate renewable energy sources, manage peak demand, and relieve transmission line congestion," said James Boyd, vice chair of the Energy Commission. A 2008 report by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers said "massive energy storage . . . is a key to making the use of renewable energy possible on a broad scale."
Besides the Energy Commission, PG&E's partners in the project include the Electric Power Research Institute, which will help design and analyze results of the pilot project; NGK Insulators Ltd., which makes the batteries and promotes their use in a wide range of utility applications; and S&C Electric, which is handling design engineering and construction services.
Sodium-sulfur batteries run too hot to use at home or in your car. But they store a great deal of energy in a small space and have a long life, making them ideal for utility installations. In the United States, such batteries have been tested or used by American Electric Power, Long Island Power Authority and Xcel Energy.
PG&E is still working on the details, but plans to install the 4 megawatt battery at a site in Silicon Valley, where it will be easily accessible for study and where customers will appreciate its impact on service reliability. The goal is to have it operational by the fourth quarter of 2010.
Batteries are only one form of storage open to utilities. PG&E has long operated a pumped hydro facility, which generates power during the day by running water from a mountain reservoir through a turbine, then pumps the water back up into the reservoir at night when demand falls and power is cheap. PG&E is considering adding more such storage to its system.
PG&E also won funding last fall from the Department of Energy to pursue a project that will store energy during off-peak hours in the form of compressed air held in porous rock formations underground. As the air is released, it can be used to help spin turbines that will generate electricity. The project will be well-suited to storing excess wind energy generated at night.
Feb 09 2010
A belated kudos to a couple of PG&E employees--CEO Peter Darbee and Senior Director Andrew Tang--for making GreenTechMedia's list of 100 Movers and Shakers of the Smart Grid.
The list comprises people the clean-tech blog believes are "influencing this market on a daily basis, be it through innovating, regulating, evangelizing, planning, deploying, benchmarking, architecting, standardizing, investing, developing, etc."
The list spans the alphabet from Shai Agassi, founder of the electric vehicle charging company Better Place, to Liu Zhenya, president of State Grid Corporation of China.
Darbee previously made Earth2Tech's list of the "top 15 most influential people in the smart grid space," so he's used to this sort of honor. On GreenTechMedia's irreverant list, he's sandwiched between Desh Despande, chairman of battery maker A123 Systems, and Rodney Dangerfield, who unlike others on the list, never got much respect.
Tang, who heads PG&E's Smart Energy Web program, makes the list for his ubiquity and congeniality as well as his vision. His expertise is widely sought on issues like energy information devices, home area networks and electric vehicle charging.
"When we say that Mr. Tang is everywhere, what we really mean is that he gets around the smart grid industry circles," the blog explains. "He's a true visionary for the market, not to mention a very nice gent."
Jan 06 2010
They say there's power in numbers. Well, PG&E has just proven that the cliche is literally true.
With the help of two thousand customers who participated in an experiment this summer, the utility has shown that voluntary reductions in electricity use, particularly for air conditioning, can reliably replace expensive and polluting peak power generators for balancing supply and demand on the electric grid.
As described previously in NEXT100, this pilot test of the utility's ability to work with customers to shape their demand in a timely and predictable fashion addressed what the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has called "the 'killer application' for the smart grid."
Programs to reduce peak loads can save money (by avoiding the need for generators that sit idle most of the year), reduce the risk of system overloads and cut down on air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions.
Equally important, utilities could use such programs to support the integration of more renewable resources, by synchronizing demand with the fluctuations of wind and solar energy.
PG&E's voluntary 
SmartAC program provides customers with free radio-controlled thermostats or on-off switches that can be directed to turn down air conditioners during periods of peak energy demand, usually without sacrificing customers' comfort.
Until now, however, operators of the state grid could not be confident that the program would deliver load reductions quickly or reliably enough to replace traditional peak generation.
Working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory this summer, PG&E recruited 2,000 SmartAC customers in Antioch, Fairfield and Fresno for a test.
PG&E also invested in sophisticated telemetry infrastructure to monitor, in near real-time, the impact of air conditioner controls on system loads. This was a critical addition to the SmartAC program, needed to prove its true value as a resource for balancing supply and demand.
Among the test customers, PG&E turned down their air conditioners for 15 minutes twice each weekday during the months of August and September--a total of 71 times.
The results were significant: "the average load reduction per device across all events was 0.65 [kilowatt] per device." That may not sound like much--but if extended across all 135,000 SmartAC-controlled devices, the program could replace as much as 80 MW of generation on most summer days, and up to 180 MW of generation during system peaks (equivalent to about two peak power plants).
Equally important, the pilot proved that the load reductions could be fast and reliable enough to meet the demanding requirements of state grid operators who must balance supply and demand.
Last but not least, despite the repeated curtailment of their air conditioning, almost nine in ten customers who took part in the pilot were satisfied with PG&E and only 17 percent even noticed that their air conditioning was affected.
The potential environmental and economic implications are huge.
As Reuters columnist John Kemp noted recently, if the California electric grid "could reduce demand on just the 2 percent of peak hours each year, it could avoid . . . the need to maintain more than 5,000 MW of idle [generating] capacity. [That] explains why demand response strategies designed to curb power use at peak periods have become one of the highest priorities for governments and system engineers on both sides of the Atlantic."
Dec 28 2009
When it comes to the next generation of Smart Grid technology, smart meters and customer-oriented devices like Home Area Networks and electric vehicle charging units have all the sex appeal. Energy storage technology attracts its share of geeks as well.
But according to a new report from Pike Research, smart meters "are really just the tip of the iceberg," in the words of Clint Wheelock, the market research firm's managing director. ""Our analysis shows that utilities will . . . devote the majority of their capital budgets to grid infrastructure projects including transmission upgrades, substation automation, and distribution automation."
The new study forecasts that global spending on Smart Grid technologies will total a hefty $200 billion from 2008 to 2015. Investments in advanced metering infrastructure, however, will amount to just 14 percent of that sum. Management of electric vehicles will capture a mere 2 percent over the same period.
In contrast, unglamorous grid automation initiatives will account for 84 percent of Smart Grid investments worldwide through 2015.
While PG&E hasn't announced projected Smart Grid spending plans over that period, it believes in laying the foundation for a smarter grid through transmission and distribution system automation. This fall, the utility won funding from the Department of Energy for a major Smart Grid project to monitor its transmission grid in conjunction with the Western Electricity Coordinating Council.
And in 2008, the utility proposed a multi-year program to upgrade the reliability of its electrical system. Called the Cornerstone Improvement Program, the proposal included significant investments in PG&E's distribution system to help "fully achieve the benefits of a Smart Grid."
If the program is approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, the utility hopes to install automated systems for "Fault Location, Isolation and Service Restoration" (FLISR), which can slash the duration of customer outages from an hour or more to a matter of only a few minutes.
By automating about 1,200 circuits in urban and suburban areas, PG&E projects that the average annual duration of customer outages systemwide could be cut 19 percent, and the frequency by 23 percent. (The full Cornerstone program aims to reduce those statistics by 25 and 33 percent, respectively.)
That may not be as sexy as programming your dishwasher to run only when electricity prices fall below a certain level. But it's a great example of how a smarter grid may keep electricity flowing reliably to your dishwasher, and all your other appliances, around the clock.
Dec 18 2009
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks Inc. scores $100 million in a new round of financing to expand in the U.S. and abroad, raising total funds to about $250 million. Silver Spring, based in Redwood City, Calif., installs networking infrastructure for smart grid applications and has contracts with utilities PG&E, Florida Power & Light, Pepco Holdings and American Electric Power.
The outlook for LED lights is brightening, according to semiconductor research company iSuppli. Global LED revenue is projected to grow by 10.9 percent in 2009 to $7.4 billion, up from $6.7 billion in 2008, and to jump up to $14.3 billion by 2013. LEDs are increasingly used in everything from street lights to flat-screen TVs and are beginning to penetrate the residential market as a replacement for incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs, the company said. LED manufacturers are releasing 40-watt replacement bulbs with the traditional Edison shape.
U.S. and Canadian wind energy associations say a literature review found no medical basis for health complaints that come up near large wind farms. There is no evidence that audible or "subaudible" turbine sounds and vibrations have physiological effects, the industry-financed study says. It concedes that some people are irritated by swishing noise from wind mills. A Canadian surgeon who belongs to a group fighting wind farms in Ontario says the study's authors were "picked and paid for by the wind industry."
Nov 24 2009
Good news for California clean energy: the U.S. Department of Energy today awarded PG&E $25 million to fund initial work on a significant energy storage project to support the utility's increased use of renewable wind and solar power.
The grant to PG&E was one of 16 awards, totaling $185 million, to "help fund utility-scale energy storage projects that will enhance the reliability and efficiency of the grid, while reducing the need for new electricity plants," according to DOE.
"Improved energy storage technologies will allow for expanded integration of renewable energy resources like wind and photovoltaic systems," it added.
Energy storage is a critical part of next-generation utility "smart grids" that the Obama administration is strongly backing with R&D and infrastructure grants.
Storage will contribute to grid efficiency, reliability and sustainability by smoothing out the fluctuations in power output from wind and solar plants. It will also reduce the need to build costly new fossil-fueled generation by absorbing excess wind generation during periods of low demand and releasing that energy at times of peak demand.
By one estimate, California will need four gigawatts of storage to meet its goal of achieving 33 percent renewable power by 2020.
The funded projects include advanced battery systems, flywheels and--PG&E's current focus--compressed air energy storage (CAES). Experts at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto say that CAES is the most cost-effective form of mass energy storage.
PG&E's $356 million compressed air energy storage project in Kern County will use night-time energy, when wind power is most abundant, to pump air into a porous rock formation deep underground. The compressed air will then be released to drive turbine generators as needed. The project will be big enough to deliver 300 megawatts of power--about as much as a mid-sized power plants--for up to 10 hours.
PG&E hopes to win approval before the end of the year from the California Public Utilities Commission and California Energy Commission for additional funds to match the DOE grant. The total should be enough to cover site planning, technology selection and project design. The utility will then put the project up for bid, with the expectation of it going operational by the end of 2014.
Supporters of the project include the Independent Energy Producers Association (IEPA), a California trade association representing many renewable energy developers, and the manager of the state's electric grid, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO).
"Energy storage promises to be a game changer for integrating renewable energy into California's resource mix," said Jan Smutney-Jones, executive director of IEPA. "This project will commercially prove-out compressed air storage leading the way for future projects."
"Large-scale energy storage technologies with multiple hour charge and discharge capabilities, such as compressed air storage, offer the potential to significantly help manage high penetration levels of variable renewable resources," said CAISO's director of system operations, Debi Le Vine.
PG&E is also considering a major expansion of its pumped hydro storage capacity, but that is expected to be a 10-year process, said Hal La Flash, PG&E's director of emerging clean technologies. Meanwhile, "We have thousands of megawatts of renewables coming on line so we also need storage technologies like CAES that can go into operation sooner."
Nov 06 2009
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
Smart grids. Smart meters. Now come smart thermostats. Silicon Valley startup EcoFactor will collect weather data to fine tune home air conditioning and heating systems to keep the occupants comfortable and energy efficient. The company has a three-year deal with Texas utility Oncor to test the program. EcoFactor plans to market the product on a subscription basis offered by utilities and companies selling energy management services.
Auto executives told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit this week that raising the gas tax will put more American drivers behind the wheel of fuel-efficient cars. Gradually raising gas taxes to where fuel costs at least $4 to $5 a gallon would do more to stimulate demand for next-generation cars like the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid than other policy initiatives like raising national fuel efficiency standards, auto execs said. Steep gas prices in the current fragile economy, however, would likely be extremely unpopular.
BusinessWeek has published a slide show of the "Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years," with the Toyota Prius showing up on the list along with some other good lookers like Ferrari Enzo and the Chevy El Camino, a combo car and truck that earns "one of the greatest cars of all time" honors from The Big Money.com. Among the ugliest: Pontiac Aztek, the Yugo and Cadillac Cimarron.
Nov 04 2009
They say all politics are local. So are many of the issues driving PG&E to invest in smarter grids, according to PG&E Senior Director Andrew Tang, who delivered a keynote address at today's GreenTechMedia conference on "The Networked Grid."
One of the major drivers behind PG&E's smart grid program is systemic: the need to manage and balance the large fluctuations in output from increasing amounts of solar and wind energy, as PG&E increases its reliance on renewable power.
But at least two other issues, which get much less attention, are intensely local.
One is the rapid but uneven rise in rooftop solar installations connected to PG&E's grid. Today PG&E has about 300 megawatts of customer solar capacity in its service area--almost 40 percent of the nation's total--and that figure is expected to hit about 1,000 MW by 2014.
But the distribution of customer solar installations within PG&E's network is "very lumpy and concentrated," Tang said. San Francisco has 1,520 connected to PG&E's grid; San Jose has 1,430 and Fresno has about 1,250. The median city in PG&E's service area has only 12.
Where rooftop solar is concentrated, grid management issues can arise. The passage of clouds overhead can lead to rapid changes in power output and voltage fluctuations. PG&E will need smart sensing devices to monitor such changes so they can be corrected--with flexible conventional generation, energy storage devices or demand response programs. The latter two are prime smart grid applications.
Another emerging issue is charging of electric vehicles. Tang said PG&E's service area could easily host half a million such vehicles by 2020.
An electric car that charges in four hours at 240 volts represents the same load as a full-sized house in San Ramon--or nearly three homes in San Francisco, where average residential power demand is much lower.
If large numbers of EV customers decide to plug in their cars when they get home from work, the result could be an unwelcome spike in system load in the late afternoon, requiring expensive new generation and distribution facilities.
That won't be a problem for some time in many parts of PG&E's service area. But in green-minded cities like Berkeley, where 18 percent of new vehicle registrations are already hybrids, electric vehicles could soon put a big strain on the local electric grid.
The answer, Tang said, will be a combination of smart meters and "smart charging" capabilities to deliver power to thirsty batteries only at night when other loads taper off.
"People have talked about home automation for two decades," Tang said. "We think some aspects of home automation are finally becoming feasible at reasonable price points. [PG&E's] role needs to be the enabler. Our SmartMeter(tm) has a home area network chip so you can know how much energy you are using right now and what the energy is costing you.
"We are also working on smart charging for EVs," he continued. "If we give people the technology to plug their car into the wall, knowing it will be charged by morning, it will be customer friendly." The key, he emphasized, will be educating customers about the benefits they soon will be able to enjoy from these smart grid programs.
Nov 04 2009
With billions of dollars now flowing into the "smart grid" market--from utilities, venture capitalist and now the Department of Energy--it's no wonder more than 400 people showed up today for a conference at PG&E on "The Networked Grid."
Organized by GreenTechMedia, noted for its reporting and market research on clean technology, the conference is covering current and planned utility deployments of smart grid technology, communications infrastructure, home area networks and the challenges of integrating renewable and distributed energy on a mass scale.
Rick Thompson, co-founder and COO of GreenTechMedia, kicked off the conference with preliminary findings of a new survey of North American utilities, which confirm the high level of ferment in the smart grid market.
Over half of utilities surveyed are now in the preliminary stages of planning or running pilots for smart grid applications; about half expect to deploy smart meters to a majority of their customers in the next three years; half plan to run pilot tests of charging electric vehicles over the next couple of years; and half plan to deploy utility-scale energy storage on their grids within five years.
The biggest benefit they see from smart grid is reduction in peak demand, which will limit the need for new power generation investments. Other leading benefits include energy efficiency (good for the environment and the pocketbook) and reduced outages.
The biggest challenges they see are regulatory barriers and the lack of technology standards, which are needed to ensure that equipment from various manufacturers will work together on the same grid.
Another major challenge is ensuring the security of utility communications networks that relay customer data or control grid operations. "We need intelligent security," said Erfan Ibrahim, a senior technologist at the Electric Power Research Institute. "Just building a big wall won't keep (intruders) out."
GreenTechMedia's Thompson said the single biggest concern of utilities is the challenge of managing, storing, protecting and effectively using the vast amount of data that smart grids will generate. Utilities, including PG&E, may need to dedicate entire datacenters just to andling and processing the hourly meter reads from smart meters, which replace the monthly reads of old.
Andrew Campbell, advisor to CPUC commissioner Rachelle Chong, noted that the regulatory body adopted a policy in 2003 that all electric customers should have smart meters. The commission's goal--well on its way to implementation--was to permit the introduction of time-varying pricing to induce customers to shift demand away from peak periods.
But as PG&E's Kevin Dasso noted, the many new capabilities of smart meters will require changing the traditional relationship between utilities and their customers. "We need to work with customers to help them take advantage of the meters' capabilities. . . . We have to make sure we are communicating with our customers . . . to help them make the transition to what smart grid can offer them."
Oct 27 2009
The Obama administration today issued a huge vote of confidence in the utility industry's commitment to providing customers with more reliable, efficient and sustainable electric service: It announced $3.4 billion in grants to leverage more than $8 billion in total investments in "smart grid" technology and systems.
The programs funded include mass deployments of smart meters, in-home energy displays and distribution and transmission automation systems. The White House predicts they will create tens of thousands of jobs across the country, reduce the frequency of power outages that cost American consumers $150 billion a year, and help make possible energy savings of $20 billion a year by 2030.
California utilities will receive $203 million in funds from the Department of Energy. Other large state recipients were North Carolina ($404 million), Florida ($267 million), Texas ($258 million) and Pennsylvania ($233 million).
Ultimately, all utilities--and more important, their customers--should benefit from the lessons these projects will provide in how best to implement high-tech systems that help people manage energy more wisely and sustainably.
PG&E, which leads the nation in smart meter deployments, did not receive funding for its proposed customer energy management project, in collaboration with IBM, Cisco, Stanford University, the city of San Jose and other partners.
However, with funding previously approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E still plans a project to demonstrate Home Area Network technology. As PG&E's Chief Customer Officer Helen Burt wrote in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, such technology will allow smart meters to "communicate with in-home displays that show customers how much energy they are using and at what price, and with smart appliances, which can be programmed to operate during hours when there's less demand for power and lower prices."
PG&E is also part of a consortium led by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), which won stimulus funds to improve monitoring and performance of the 14-state Western electric grid.
WECC's $108 million project--which will be supported by a $54 million grant from the Department of Energy--will install sophisticated sensors, called phasor measurement units, at key points around the grid and connect them with a new data communications infrastructure.
The sensors will help operators improve grid reliability, free up transmission capacity and facilitate greater integration of intermittent renewable generation, like wind and solar power, into Western electricity markets.
PG&E also has another proposal--to build a compressed air energy storage facility that will store off-peak wind energy and release it during peak afternoon hours--which is still being reviewed by the DOE as part of the smart grid stimulus funding program.
