The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan offers states the opportunity to curb rising natural gas use in the United States and achieve steeper carbon-pollution reductions by investing more aggressively in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Source: www.americanprogress.org
>” […] In the United States, electric utilities are the largest source of carbon pollution. Therefore, the reduction of power-sector emissions needs to be a central component of any meaningful climate mitigation strategy. In June, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, released a landmark proposal to establish the first-ever carbon-pollution standards for the nation’s power plants.
This proposal, the Clean Power Plan, establishes a “best system of emissions reduction” based on four building blocks that combine to make the nation’s electricity system more efficient and less reliant on carbon-heavy coal-burning power plants. […]
One of the Clean Power Plan’s central elements is increasing the use of lower-carbon natural gas combined cycle, or NGCC, units to generate some of the electricity now produced by higher-carbon coal-fired power plants. States can use this approach to achieve relatively quick carbon-pollution reductions starting in 2020 while ramping up the deployment of programs that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency.
The EPA modeled two compliance scenarios to understand the costs, benefits, and potential energy-related impacts of the Clean Power Plan. This modeling suggests that the electricity sector’s natural gas consumption will increase sharply at the beginning of the Clean Power Plan’s implementation period as states shift power generation from dirtier coal-fired plants to cleaner-burning NGCC plants. The EPA also predicts that states will build new NGCC plants to replace retiring coal plants and to help meet their carbon-reduction targets.
By 2030, however, the EPA’s models forecast that more renewable energy and energy-efficiency programs will come online as states continue to implement the Clean Power Plan. Electricity generation from renewable sources will displace some generation from NGCC and coal-fired power plants. Energy-efficiency programs, meanwhile, will reduce electricity demand, slowing generation and curbing carbon pollution from the power sector as a whole. […]
While natural gas burns cleaner than coal, it is still a fossil fuel that releases carbon pollution. In addition, methane, a potent greenhouse gas, can escape throughout the natural gas production and supply cycle. For these reasons, several recent studies by prominent researchers have questioned whether natural gas can form the core of an effective climate mitigation strategy. […]
By acting decisively to implement ambitious renewable energy and energy-efficiency programs, states can help ensure that the United States does not overcommit to natural gas and that it continues on a path toward decarbonization of the economy. […]”<
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Advocates say doing more with less power may be an even more critical weapon in the fight against climate change than renewable technologies.
Source: www.nytimes.com
>” […]
“Some people call energy efficiency low-hanging fruit. I would even say energy efficiency is fruit lying on the ground. We only need to bend over and pick it up.”
Realizing those energy savings would be a huge boon to the climate, ease illness-causing air pollution, reduce many nations’ reliance on fuel imports and increase competitiveness by lowering costs, the advocates say. It creates jobs in fields like upgrading buildings, and is generally cheaper than the alternative of constructing new power plants and buying more energy, they argue. […]”<
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Turboden, a group company of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has implemented the first ORC-based heat recovery plant on an Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) in the world
Source: www.pennenergy.com
>” […] The heat recovery system was started up on December 2013. It is connected to the off-gas treatment system of the melting electric furnace. The recovered energy reduces net power consumption, allowing significant CO2 reduction.
In addition to electricity production, the remaining portion of the steam is fed into the Riesa Municipal steam supply system and used in a nearby tire factory production process.
Turboden designs, develops and implements generation plants, allowing reduction of industrial energy consumption and emissions containment through heat recovery from unexploited residual heat streams and exhaust gases in production processes and power plants.
This technology is best applied in energy-intensive industries such as glass, cement, aluminum, iron & steel, where production processes typically generate exhaust gases above 250°C.
These new plants not only provide advantages in terms of environmental sustainability, emissions reduction, increased industrial process efficiency and improved business performance, but they also represent opportunities for increased competitiveness.”<
The company has developed a marine Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system for waste heat recovery and power generation that could reduce fuel consumption by up to 10%.
Source: www.motorship.com
“> […] Enertime’s ORC system produces between 500kW and 1MW of electrical power depending on the available amount of heat. The unit is based on a tailor-made axial turbine and is specifically designed to work in the marine environment. The development work has involved shipyards, shipowners and a classification society, says Mr David.
“Compared to a steam power cycle, ORC systems need very low maintenance, display good part-load efficiency, high availability and can be operated without permanent monitoring,” he said. “Daily operation and maintenance can be carried out without specific qualification.”
The ORC system can work with any kind of heat source. The unit can recover heat from a number of different sources singly or in combination including low-temperature jacket cooling from engines, steam or thermal oil systems and pressurised hot water. Exhaust gas from engines or auxiliaries is the main available heat on board ships, and it can be collected through an exhaust gas heat exchanger and brought to the ORC unit using steam, pressurised water or thermal oil. […]
The ORC layout is flexible and the unit can also be installed as a retrofit where it is possible to adapt the layout of the machinery to specific constraints by splitting it on different levels, for example.
“This kind of system would be very interesting for bulk carriers, small to medium size oil tankers, ferry boats, small container ships… with payback time between two to five years,” […]”<
By Steven Nadel
” … a potential emerging trend that could have a large impact on many utilities: the reduction of the traditional mid-afternoon peak, and the growth of an evening peak. (Peak is the time when demand for power is highest.)”
Source: aceee.org
>” […] In many regions, evening peaks have been growing, as more consumers install air conditioners and operate them when they get home from work. But two other factors are augmenting this trend. First and foremost is the growth in consumer-owned photovoltaic systems. These systems generate the most power on sunny afternoons, which is about when the traditional early afternoon peak occurs. But when the sun goes down, extra power is quickly needed to replace this solar power. […]
There are many ways to address the growing evening peak, including the following:
In my opinion, the time of the peak will change in many regions. The shift will be gradual in most areas, so we have time to address it. Rather than trying to stop this change by restricting photovoltaic systems, we’ll be better off figuring out how to manage it, […]”<
FirstEnergy Corp. has a traditional view of wholesale electricity markets: They’re a competition between iron-in-the-ground facilities that can put megawatts on the grid when those megawatts are needed. Think coal plants, nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams. Missing from the definition is a consumer’s promise to turn off the lights when the grid is stressed — so-called demand response. Instead of creating energy during peak times, demand response resources conserve it, freeing up megawatts […]
Source: powersource.post-gazette.com
>” […]The idea is not new and has been expanding in the territory of PJM Interconnection, a Valley Forge-based grid operator that manages the flow of electricity to 13 states, including Pennsylvania.
FirstEnergy, which owns power plants and utility companies across several states, wants PJM to abandon the demand response concept.
The Ohio-based energy company says demand response, which doesn’t require any kind of capital commitment, is “starving” traditional generation out of its rightful revenue in wholesale markets.
“We feel that it’s going to lead to even more premature closures of power plants,” said Doug Colafella, a spokesman for the firm.
Specifically, FirstEnergy is fighting to get demand response kicked out of PJM’s annual capacity auction, which ensures there’s enough electricity resources to meet projected power demand three years in advance. The auction establishes a single clearing price that will be paid to all successful bidders, like a retainer fee, in exchange for their promise to be available to be called upon three years from now.
During the May auction, which set capacity prices for the 2017-2018 year, the clearing price was $120 a day for each megawatt of electricity bidders committed. About 6 percent, or about 11,000 megawatts, of the capacity secured came from demand response.
FirstEnergy’s Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant in Beaver County failed to clear the auction. The company has since postponed upgrades to the facility, which could jeopardize its functioning beyond 2016.
Capacity payments are a stable source of revenue for baseload generation plants, Mr. Colafella said, and a price signal to the market about which way demand is headed, giving generators some indication about whether new facilities will be necessary and profitable.
Demand response distorts that dynamic, he said.
Since May, FirstEnergy has intensified its efforts to drive demand response out of PJM’s markets, having seized on a related court case involving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
“FirstEnergy’s business model is that electricity consumption has been flattening, so they want to take a larger share of the market and how do you take a larger share? You bulldoze everybody out,” said Mei Shibata, CEO of The Energy Agency, a marketing and communications firm and co-author of a recent report on the market for demand response in the U.S. for GreenTech Media Research.
In May, the D.C. Circuit Court vacated a rule created by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2011 that said demand response should be treated the same way as power plants in wholesale energy markets. That meant demand response providers could offer to shut down a day in advance, when grid operators book electricity for the following day, and get the same price as megawatts from generation.
An electric power industry group sued the FERC claiming that the call to shut off electricity in exchange for payment is a retail choice and retail falls exclusively within state jurisdiction, not federal. The court agreed, setting in motion FirstEnergy’s challenge to demand response in capacity markets, which were not addressed by the court decision. If demand response is a retail product in one context, then it’s a retail product in all, the logic goes.
The same day the court issued its decision, FirstEnergy filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order PJM to recalculate the results of its May capacity auction stripping out demand response.
PJM objected. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, which intervened in that case, charged FirstEnergy with “jumping the gun” on its logic and called its proposal an “unprecedented and wholly unnecessary disruption of the capacity market auction process.”
Even if demand response is excluded from the daily wholesale market as the court decision wills, the market for this resource will continue to expand, said Ms. Shibata.
If, however, FirstEnergy succeeds in kicking demand response out of the capacity market, “that would be a much bigger deal,” she said.
PJM leads the nation in demand response resources, according to Ms. Shibata’s research, and anything that happens to demand response at PJM would likely trickle down to the other grid operators around the country. […]”<
Santa Barbara – Ice Energy today (Nov 5, 2014) announced it has been awarded sixteen contracts from Southern California Edison (SCE) to provide 25.6 megawatts of behind-the-meter thermal energy storage using Ice Energy’s proprietary Ice Bear system.
Source: www.ice-energy.com
>” […] Ice Energy was one of 3 providers selected in the behind-the-meter energy storage category, which was part of an energy storage procurement by SCE that was significantly larger than the minimum mandated by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC). SCE is one of the nation’s leaders in renewable energy and the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California.
The contract resulted from an open and competitive process under SCE’s Local Capacity Requirements (LCR) RFO. The goals of the LCR RFO and California’s Storage Act Mandates are to optimize grid reliability, support renewables integration to meet the 2020 portfolio standards, and support the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 20% of 1990 levels by 2050.
“SCE’s focus on renewable energy is critical to helping meet California’s long-term goals, and Ice Energy is proud to be part of the solution with these contracts,” said Mike Hopkins, CEO of Ice Energy, the leading provider of distributed thermal energy storage technology. “Using ice for energy storage is not new, we’ve just made it distributed, efficient, and cost-effective. The direct-expansion AC technology is robust and proven, which is important because SCE and other utilities require zero risk for their customers.”
In 2013, 22 percent of the power SCE delivered came from renewable sources, compared to 15 percent for other power companies in the state. The utility is on track to meet the state’s goal of 33 percent, and procuring energy storage helps them meet those targets while maintaining a robust and reliable grid.
Ice Energy’s product, the Ice Bear, attaches to one or more standard 5-20 ton commercial AC units. The Ice Bear freezes ice at night when demand for power is low, capacity is abundant and increasingly sourced from renewables such as wind power. Then during the day, stored ice is used to provide cooling, instead of the power-intensive AC compressor. Ice Bears are deployed in smart-grid enabled, megawatt-scale fleets, and each Ice Bear can reduce harmful CO2 emissions by up to 10 tons per year. Installation is as quick as deploying a standard AC system.
“Ice Bears add peak capacity to the grid, reduce and often eliminate the need for feeder and other distribution system upgrades, improve grid reliability and reduce electricity costs,” Hopkins said. “What’s special about our patented design and engineering is the efficiency and cost. It’s energy storage at the lowest cost possible with extraordinary reliability.”
Ice Energy’s proven Ice Bear system is the most cost effective and reliable distributed energy storage solution for the grid. The Ice Bear delivers up to six hours of clean, firm, non-fatiguing stored energy daily and is fully dispatchable by the utility. Ice Bear projects are job engines, creating long-term green jobs in the hosting communities.
Source: www.ice-energy.com
>” […] The Ice Bear system is an intelligent distributed energy storage solution that works in conjunction with commercial direct-expansion (DX) air-conditioning systems, specifically the refrigerant-based, 4-20 ton package rooftop systems common to most small to mid-sized commercial buildings.
The system stores energy at night, when electricity generation is cleaner, more efficient and less expensive, and delivers that energy during the peak of the day to provide cooling to the building.
Daytime energy demand from air conditioning – typically 40-50% of a building’s electricity use during peak daytime hours – can be reduced significantly by the Ice Bear. Each Ice Bear delivers an average reduction of 12 kilowatts of source equivalent peak demand for a minimum of 6 hours daily, shifting 72 kilowatt-hours of on-peak energy to off-peak hours. In addition, the Ice Bear can be configured to provide utilities with demand response on other nearby electrical loads – effectively doubling or even tripling the peak-demand reduction capacity of the Ice Bear.
When aggregated and deployed at scale, a typical utility deployment will shift the operation of thousands of commercial AC condensing units from on-peak periods to off-peak periods, reducing electric system demand, improving electric system load factor, reducing electric system costs, and improving overall electric system efficiency and power quality.
The Ice Bear is installed behind the utility-customer meter, but the Ice Bear system was designed for the utility as a grid asset, with most of the benefits flowing to the utility and grid as a whole. Therefore Ice Bear projects are typically funded either directly or indirectly by the utility.[…]
At its most basic, the Ice Bear consists of a large thermal storage tank that attaches directly to a building’s existing roof top air-conditioning system.
The unit makes ice at night, and uses that ice during the day to efficiently deliver cooling directly to the building’s existing air conditioning system.
The Ice Bear energy storage unit operates in two basic modes, Ice Cooling and Ice Charging, to store cooling energy at night, and to deliver that energy the following day.
During Ice Charge mode, a self-contained charging system freezes 450 gallons of water in the Ice Bear’s insulated tank by pumping refrigerant through a configuration of copper coils within it. The water that surrounds these coils freezes and turns to ice. The condensing unit then turns off, and the ice is stored until its cooling energy is needed.
As daytime temperatures rise, the power consumption of air conditioning rises along with it, pushing the grid to peak demand levels. During this peak window, typically from noon to 6 pm, the Ice Bear unit replaces the energy intensive compressor of the building’s air conditioning unit.
[…]
The Ice Cooling cycle lasts for at least 6 hours.
Once the ice has fully melted, the Ice Bear transfers the job of cooling back to the building’s AC unit, to provide cooling, as needed, until the next day. During the cool of the night, the Ice Charge mode is activated and the entire cycle begins again. […]”<
Old U.S. coal-fired power plants, the target of new anti-pollution rules, aren’t necessarily shutting down. Many are getting a second life as they’re “repowered” with natural gas.
Source: news.nationalgeographic.com
>” […] In the past four years, at least 29 coal units in 10 states have switched to natural gas or biomass, according to SNL Financial, a market data firm. Another 54 units, mostly in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest, are slated to be converted over the next nine years. The future and completed conversions represent more than 12,000 megawatts of power capacity, enough to power all the homes in New England for one year.
By switching to natural gas, plant operators can take advantage of a relatively cheap and plentiful U.S. supply. The change can also help them meet proposed federal rules to limit heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, given that electricity generation from natural gas emits about half as much carbon as electricity from coal does. […]
While conversion advocates say natural gas is a “bridge” fuel that buys time for a transition to clean energy, others argue its use is hindering renewables by delaying them. Many of the planned repowering projects will extend the already long service of fossil-fuel facilities. (Related: “Switch to Natural Gas Won’t Reduce Carbon Emissions Much, Study Finds.”)
“Do you pump a whole bunch of the public’s money into outdated, inefficient infrastructure, or do you say it’s time to move forward and invest in renewable energy and upgraded transmission to move that renewable energy around?” said Kim Teplitsky, deputy secretary of the Northeast Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Teplitsky’s group is opposed to the revivals of New York’s Dunkirk, Danskammer, and Cayuga power plants.
Power providers and regulators, on the other hand, point to the need for reliability, especially in extreme weather conditions. “The system requires a certain amount of megawatts and a certain amount of reserve margin to ensure that the system will be stable and reliable at all times,” said Gaier of NRG, which operates both renewable and fossil-fuel units. “The number of megawatts is simply not replaceable in the short term with renewables.” […]”<
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