Tag Archives: Utilities

Chicago Suburb Oak Park Joins International Solar-Powered Smart Grid Test

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See on Scoop.it – Green & Sustainable News

The village of Oak Park, a suburb west of Chicago, was recently selected from a list of competing volunteer neighborhoods to be the test site for smart grid technology.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

The project is a joint venture between the Korean Smart Grid Institute and the Institute for Sustainable Energy Development, and will involve placing a set of twelve or thirteen 3-kilowatt solar panels, along with a battery system, on the roofs of 100 residential and 100 multifamily buildings. They’ll also all be linked up to an electrical grid boasting smart meters, and once the test run of the system is over the building owners will get to keep the installations, worth $20,000 to $30,000 [each].

The [scenario for Oak Park homeowners] we talk about the most is this idea of collecting the solar energy during the day and storing it in the battery and then having the house run on the battery at night so you’re completely offline at night and the battery provides a phantom load — your clocks, TV.

The [average number of outages] for Oak Park is 45 minutes per year. What the number doesn’t tell you about is the stories I hear when [residents] call up on day three of still not having power. Then I get calls from restaurants. You’re talking about an entire week’s or month’s inventory gone.

See on thinkprogress.org

PowerTools App Helps SDG&E Customers Manage & Save Energy

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See on Scoop.it – Green Building Operations – Systems & Controls, Maintenance & Commissioning

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and Candi Controls announced that the PowerTools app is available for customers to download on their mobile phone or tablet…

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

“As a number of innovations for the home rely on the collection and use of consumer energy data, a self-regulatory program powered by independent third-party enforcement will ensure that participating companies commit to responsible practices,” said Chris Babel, chief executive officer of TRUSTe�. “With the Privacy Smart Powered by TRUSTe Seal, SDG&E sends a clear signal to its customers that it respects their personal information.”

SDG&E is a regulated public utility that provides safe and reliable energy service to 3.4 million consumers through 1.4 million electric meters and more than 840,000 natural gas meters in San Diego and southern Orange counties. The utility’s area spans 4,100 square miles. SDG&E is committed to creating ways to help our customers save energy and money every day. SDG&E is a subsidiary of Sempra Energy SRE +0.53% , a Fortune 500 energy services holding company based in San Diego.

See on www.marketwatch.com

CanSIA 2012-Smart Grid Breakout Session

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CanSIA 2012-Smart Grid Breakout Session.

“At CanSIA Solar Canada in Toronto I [Joshua LaForge] attended a breakout session that focused on developing grid technologies for the integration of solar PV and other renewables. The speakers covered a broad range of topics, including weather forecasting for solar load balancing (Rhonda Wright-Hilbig, IESO), economic modelling of renewable penetration (Justin Malecki, Clearsky Advisors), and PV-pilot projects in isolated communities (PJ Fernandex, ABB and Scott Henneberry, Schneider Electric).”

Smart Grid May be Shortest Route to Obama’s Green Energy Goals – Forbes

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President Obama’s inaugural address listed climate change and renewable energy as among his top priorities in his second term. But one of the most critical means by which to achieve those goals was never mentioned: the smart grid.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

[…] Collaboration is instrumental, although Yeager warns that some interests can deflect progress because they are unable to set aside their agendas.

“We have to change policies to enable innovation,” he previously told this writer. “Utilities will not do this by themselves. They will want more power sources and to make more money. They have no incentive to empower consumers. Until the incentives for utilities change, they will block the door and the public utility commissions will keep the status quo.”

Yeager likened it to the days before telecommunications reform: Innovation will remain pent up in a regulatory model that has no motivation to change. And nothing will happen unless regulators force utilities to adopt those smart grid technologies. …

[…] Whereas energy conservation has typically been a back-burner subject, today it is up front. That awareness in combination with a difficult economy means that people will continue to search out ways to cut energy consumption, and costs.

“It will get there, but the smart grid really is still being defined,” says Nosbaum, […]

The smart grid supports the Obama’s administration’s green initiatives. As such, the president allocated $4.5 billion in the 2009 stimulus plan to various projects. […]

Over time, DNV KEMA says that a total of $16 billion in incentives will be targeted to the smart grid. That, in turn, will multiply and create a total of $64 billion in projects tied to the efficient production, transport and use of energy. The consultancy adds that such investments will produce 280,000 new jobs.

See on www.forbes.com

Dynamic Energy – A Leader in Energy Solutions | Combined Heat & Power

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See on Scoop.it – Green Building Design – Architecture & Engineering

Dynamic Energy develops energy projects that reduce customers’ expenses, improve operating efficiency, provide an attractive return on investment, and help achieve sustainability goals.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

CHP Financing – Direct Purchase

There are many reasons why now is a great time for CHP. Dynamic can provide multiple financing options including:

Purchasing a CHP system provides many benefits including:
• Traditional bank financing
• Federal 10% Investment Tax Credit
• Accelerated depreciation (MACRS)
• Aggressive state level incentives
• Locked forward natural gas contracts
• Significant thermal & electrical savings

Power Purchase Agreement
A Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) provides the host customer power and heat at a discounted rate, with no capital requirement. A third party investor owns the CHP system and eneters into a long term power contract with the host. PPAs provide the following benefits to host customers:

• No upfront cost or capital required
• Projects are cash flow positive from day one
• Predictable energy pricing & hedge against electricity prices
• No system performance or operating risk and no maintenance
• Align with organizational sustainability goals
• Press and media outreach

[For example of financing options, not intended as a corporate endorsement.]  DT

See on dynamicenergyusa.com

Guest Post: The Future of Energy Management in Commercial Buildings : Greentech Media

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See on Scoop.it – Green Building Operations – Systems & Controls, Maintenance & Commissioning

Industry experts make predictions for 2013.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

…the developments of 2012 are indicative of longer trends affecting how we will occupy and operate commercial buildings in 2013.

Policy and Disclosure

2012 saw a number of industry “firsts.” Perhaps none is more significant than the adoption of energy disclosure laws, which require residential and commercial buildings to reveal — sometimes publicly — the energy performance of the buildings. To date, six cities have passed such laws, which require the use of EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager for buildings…

Utilities and the Green Button

Another major trend of 2012 has been the adoption by 35 electric and gas utilities of the “Green Button,” a voluntary, standardized data format for energy data. Green Button, a data standard developed by industry along with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and ratified by the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), is meant to provide customer data in a computer-readable format so that software applications can uniformly tackle energy problems and identify opportunities for savings.

Civic Government

2012 was also a major year for civic and federal governments, as energy efficiency was a focus for large portfolios of public buildings. While some cities have already made strides in improving their own building performance, there has been a faster adoption of new technologies and operations strategies, and more vocal public acknowledgement of their goals to reduce energy and save taxpayer money.

See on www.greentechmedia.com

The Negawatt Revolution — Solving the CO-2 [& Energy] Problem —

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Introduction

“My 1976 article entitled “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” which appeared in Foreign Affairs, suggested two ways in which the energy system could probably evolve over the next fifty years or so, using the United States as an example. If you divided by something like a factor of nine or ten, you would get Canada.”…

“If the U.S. spent only enough on efficiency to keep up with growth and demand for electric services, plus the net retirement of generating capacity, we would have almost enough capital left in surplus to double our rate of investment in durable manufacturing industries.”

The Importance of Electrical Efficiency

“Why do I concentrate on electricity? First, because it is by far the costliest form of energy. Each cent per kilowatt-hour is equivalent in heat content to oil at $17 dollars a barrel, roughly the world oil price. So the electricity we buy, even in Canada where it is quite cheap, is equivalent to heat at many times the world oil price. Therefore saving electricity is more financially rewarding than saving direct fuels. In addition, electricity has enormous capital leverage because central electric systems — the whole systems — are about 100 times as capital intensive as the traditional direct fuel systems (you know, Texas and Louisiana and Alberta oil and gas — the sorts of things on which our economies were built). In fact a quarter of all the development capital in the world goes to electrification.

“Also electricity has huge environmental leverage. Power plants burn a third of the fuel in the world. They account for a third of the CO2, therefore, released from the burning of fossil fuel. In my own country they release two thirds of the sulphur oxides and a third of the nitrogen oxides. What’s more, every unit of electricity you save at the point of use saves typically three or four units of fuel, namely coal at the power plant. And in socialist or developing countries that ratio is more like five or six to one.

So you get the most environmental benefit from saving electricity, as well as the most financial benefit.”

See on www.ccnr.org