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Tag:

electric grid

5 Energy Trends that will Change the Balance of Power

5 Energy Trends that will Change the Balance of Power

written by CleanTechies.com Contributor

We no longer fret over taxes on tea, but there’s another American Revolution forming in our great nation today. Like the colonist uprising 241 years ago, it’s fueled by a need to stand up against an outdated system that threatens our way of life.

It’s a battle over the future of American energy and our antiquated electric grid. And it centers around the way consumers, utilities, and investors interact with this vast network of powerlines, substations, and plants.

As Cheryl Roberto, who leads Environmental Defense Fund’s Clean Energy program, notes, “The U.S. is poised to spend around $2 trillion over the next two decades replacing our outdated electric infrastructure.”

That’s a lot of coin and a tremendous opportunity.

We’ve detected five emerging trends that may forever change how we produce and consume electricity. It will be an American approach to energy that wastes less, pollutes less, and, as Cheryl likes to say, “puts customers in the driver’s seat.”

It’s made by, and for, you and me.

Trend #1: Utilities think quality, not quantity

Power companies, like people, respond to incentives. The current regulatory framework in the United States incentivizes utilities to invest more in power stations and infrastructure than in building value for consumers and the environment.

If they are to survive the Revolution, utilities need to re-think the model, and the regulatory framework needs to change to support utility investments in renewable energy and energy savings. It sounds daunting, but it’s already happening in New York State.

Trend #2: Clean energy finance takes hold

While rooftop solar panels are becoming more common, securing financing for these and other energy investments and retrofits can be tough. Clean energy is more than a way for homes and businesses to lower bills and protect the environment; these upgrades also represent a serious investment opportunity.

Today, states are beginning to connect investors with programs such as on-bill repayment for large and small residential projects. Commercial properties are getting in on energy efficiency, too, thanks to the Investor Confidence Project which brings standardization and quantifiable metrics to energy efficiency projects in the commercial building sector.

The result: lower operating costs, higher market value, and a significantly lower carbon footprint.

Trend #3: Everyone gets a stake in the grid

Going back to incentives, energy-savings programs like demand response help consumers adjust their power consumption during peak times by offering a financial reward for doing so. By empowering consumers (forgive the pun) we can use resources far more effectively and efficiently.

Distributed energy is a related concept, calling on smaller-scale clean energy resources such as energy efficiency, energy storage, and local, on-site generation to complement traditional sources. California is at the forefront in this area.

Trend #4: Vastly improved batteries open new doors

Rapid advancements in battery technology are making batteries a surprisingly disruptive – for the better – force in the modern American Revolution. EDF’s Midwest Clean Energy Director Dick Munson reports that improved batteries could put renewable energy sources in the lead.

“When the wind stops blowing or the sun goes behind a cloud, batteries are able to provide back-up power until those resources are back online,” he writes.

Until recently, battery cost was prohibitive, with systems costing as much as $1,500 per kilowatt hour. Today the average is between $500 and $700, and dropping. Bonus: Someone has to build these batteries, and that means jobs. Just ask North Carolina and Illinois.

Trend #5: Coming: Federal policies to support it all

All of these trends are independently worthwhile, but the Clean Power Plan may be the glue that binds them all together. In addition to putting the first-ever limits on power plant emissions, the plan offers states impressive freedom to choose how to meet their emissions goals, and the trends above will play out as states exercise that freedom.

Freedom is the hallmark of any true American Revolution, after all. As is our quest for a stronger, better, and more innovative nation.

To take a page from the classic 1980s cartoon He-Man: Americans can be masters of our energy universe. We…have…the power!

Article by Dan Upham, Editor, Environmental Defense Fund Energy Exchange Blog.



November 5, 2014 0 comment
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Germany’s Energiewende Proves Electricity can be Clean and Reliable

Germany’s Energiewende Proves Electricity can be Clean and Reliable

written by CleanTechies.com Contributor

Since 2004, the year of the first major revision of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG), the country has added at least 35 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 35 GW of wind to its electric grid – enough to offset upwards of 35 coal plants. What’s more impressive is during the first half of 2014, close to 29 percent of Germany’s electricity came from renewable sources. For perspective, America’s renewables percentage, at about 14 percent, was half of Germany’s during this timeframe.

Meanwhile, the country has improved its status as a grid reliability leader, causing the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Energy Transition blog to conclude, “Clearly, installing the equivalent of 100 percent of peak demand as wind and solar capacity does not bring down the grid.”  Renewables International further asserts, “Renewables have not yet reached a penetration level that has detrimentally impacted grid reliability.”

This success runs contrary to the predictions of Energiewende’s critics, who have sounded the alarms about investing in “too much” renewable energy. Some of these concerns are more valid than others, but the truth is, most of these claims are blown out of proportion, fixable with solutions that are not overly complex, and/or based on no empirical data.

How did Germany do it?

The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) measures the average interruption time per electricity customer, and it is the foremost metric used internationally for assessing electric grid reliability.  This past August, Germany’s Network Agency announced that the country’s SAIDI value dropped from 15.91 minutes in 2012 to 15.32 minutes in 2013.

This improvement is especially impressive considering Germany’s 2012 SAIDI score was the third best in Europe and less than a tenth of the value of 244, the most recent statistic from the United States (see graphics below).

The indicator that most strongly correlates with grid reliability, and could explain why Germany outperforms the United States, is the level of undergrounding of low-voltage (LV) and medium-voltage (MV) cables. As the name suggests, underground electricity wires are buried and sheltered from inclement weather and thus more reliable than aboveground electricity transmission. Over 70 percent of both LV and MV cables are underground in Germany (see figure below).

By contrast, 2012 survey results from the Edison Electric Institute indicate that underground cables only serve about 39 percent of homes in the United States (see below).

Critics are not always right

Despite this success, the Institute for Energy Research asserted just last month that “the outcome [of the Energiewende] for Germans will be a higher potential for blackouts” due to an increased number of grid intervention events. From 2010 to 2012, grid intervention events increased fourfold in Germany. Similarly, Nature Publishing Group claims,

“The rapid rise in wind and solar power has created a nightmare scenario for grid operators, who face surges when the wind blows and the sun shines, and shortages when they don’t.  In 2011, more than 200,000 blackouts exceeding three minutes were reported – and experts warn of a growing risk of major power failures.”

But this criticism is shortsighted. SAIDI specifically measures blackouts exceeding three minutes, and since 2006 Germany’s solar and wind capacity have increased by 70 GW while its SAIDI has improved from 21.53 to 15.32.  Furthermore, as argued by Craig Morris for the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Energy Transition blog, all ‘grid intervention’ events mean is that “instead of merely sitting there looking at screens, the engineers now have to press buttons”; as a result, there is a “slightly” higher likelihood of human error.

The most valid concern

Of all the criticisms against Energiewende’s reliability success, the issue of cost is the most valid. As it turns out, upgrading the electric grid to a state-of-the-art, 21st century machine is pretty expensive, and that cost is mostly borne by utilities.

Too rapid an increase in generation from renewables is financially weakening German utilities, which make only a fraction of the revenue dispatching renewable power as from conventional sources. The value of Europe’s top 20 utilities has fallen from €1 trillion (USD $1.3 trillion) in 2008 to €500 billion (USD $630 billion) in 2013. According to The Economist, European grid upgrades by 2020 are expected to cost up to €1 trillion, and “companies worth €500 billion cannot finance anything like that amount… In their current state, utilities cannot finance Europe’s hoped-for clean energy system.”

Thus, crippling these utilities is potentially problematic for reliability because it lowers the potential for investment in the modernized grid. This concern, however, has yet to erode Germany’s electric grid reliability in practice.

Solutions exist

According to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, “even the strongest proponents of Energiewende agree that Germany needs to reform its energy system to accommodate the next influx of renewable energies.”

However, solutions exist to this problem that are not revolutionary. For example, a shift away from the “energy-only” market, in which utilities are only paid to produce and deliver energy, to one that is more profitable for utilities as renewables take over the generation mix. Potential structures include “capacity” and “capabilities” markets.

In a capacity market, utilities are not compensated for the energy they produce, but instead for what they have on reserve for immediate use when faced with reliability challenges. But this model does not give preference to any particular energy source. A capabilities market, however, attempts to prioritize power generation that guarantees low CO2 emissions. Natural gas-fired plants, energy storage, demand response, and renewable energy resources are just a few examples of the reliability measures that might be prioritized over a coal-fired “peaker” plant when trying to meet the demands of a strained electric grid.

The highest quality data supports the conclusion Germany’s grid reliability during Energiewende has been an unequivocal success so far. Opponents levy negative commentaries on this subject, and there is certainly still room for improvement regarding energy markets, but there is no doubt the German experience, as an international model, proves a clean grid can also be a reliable one.

Article by Peter Sopher, Clean Energy Policy Analyst, appearing courtesy Environmental Defense Fund Energy Exchange Blog.



October 21, 2014 1 comment
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Backing Up Wind Power: The Policy Issues Associated with Hydroelectricity

written by Walter Wang

What happens when there’s no wind and wind turbines stop turning? What provides the back up power for this clean energy source on calm, windless days?

While wind may be the fastest growing renewable energy source in the US, in order for us to rely on wind power, there needs to be some backup

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June 28, 2013 1 comment
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New York Rising

written by Walter Wang

Some big solar news from New York! This week, in his 2013 State of the State, Governor Andrew Cuomo made some significant solar proposals. Proposals that will work to fundamentally transform the state’s solar market while broadening access to solar, enabling the industry to scale and reducing the cost.

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January 10, 2013 0 comment
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The Natural Gas Revolution – Good or Bad for Energy Efficiency?

written by Walter Wang

If there were an equivalent in the energy industry to Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, natural gas would be this year’s winner.

The dramatic rise in natural gas supply, and fall in price, has reconfigured the energy scene in the United States, suddenly creating a bounty of domestic energy, driving down wholesale power prices and speeding retirement of polluting coal-fired plants.

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September 20, 2012 0 comment
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Why Alaska Might Be the Best Place for Electric Cars

written by Walter Wang

Let me first preface this piece by saying Alaska may not, in fact, be the best place to own and operate an electric car. Confused? Let me explain. A new study (pdf) by the Union of Concerned Scientists explores the often asked but rarely answered questions surrounding the issue of whether some geographic regions may be better than others for electric cars in terms of their

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May 1, 2012 0 comment
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Using Telematics to Attract Gen Y

written by Walter Wang

There’s been plenty of bad news recently in the world electric vehicles, mostly related to start ups like Fisker and Azure. Adding to the mix, Deloitte has released a survey showing that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are not very popular with Generation Y (ages 19-31).

The reasons appear to be multiple, including high

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April 23, 2012 1 comment
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China’s Wind Energy Capacity Reached Record Levels in 2011

written by Yale Environment 360

China installed a record 18,000 megawatts of new wind energy in 2011, boosting its total capacity to nearly 63,000 megawatts and widening its lead in the global wind energy sector, according to the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).

The U.S., which was passed by China for total wind

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March 15, 2012 0 comment
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Protecting the Nation’s Electric Grid from Cyber Threats

written by Walter Wang

Protecting the electric system from cyber threats and ensuring its resilience are vital to our national security and economic well-being.  This is exactly why cybersecurity is one of four key themes in the White House’s Policy Framework for a 21st Century Grid. For obvious reasons, the private

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January 10, 2012 0 comment
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Top Ten Cleantech Initiatives of NYSERDA

written by Walter Wang

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, commonly referred to as NYSERDA was established in 1975 and is known as a public benefit corporation offering information and analysis, technical expertise, programs, and funding to assist New York in increasing the use of renewable energy

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August 29, 2011 0 comment
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U.S. Electricity Generators Can Handle Burden of Plug-In Cars…For Now

written by Walter Wang

One of the key concerns with the growth of electric vehicles is whether the United States electric grid will be able to manage the growth of vehicles plugged in. This is particularly a concern in areas that have experienced rolling brown and black outs during summer months when the air conditioning is cranking on high. Add to this, potential fresh concerns over nuclear power

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March 25, 2011 0 comment
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Your Electric Meter: A Villain or Hero?

written by Elisa Wood

Before energy became a hot topic, no one cared about the electric meter. It was the box on the house we all ignored except the guy from the utility who dodged the barking dogs to take a reading from it once in awhile.

It is a sign of our times that this box now inspires enough emotion for people to take

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February 24, 2011 2 comments
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U.S. Commits $50.5 Million to Promote Offshore Wind Industry

written by Yale Environment 360

U.S. officials say they will spend as much as $50.5 million to promote the growth of offshore wind energy in a push to achieve 54 gigawatts of electricity from offshore turbines by 2030.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the new initiative will seek to reduce the costs of

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February 8, 2011 0 comment
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Building the Clean Energy Economy

written by

Since taking office, President Obama and his Administration have taken unprecedented steps to build a clean energy economy in this country. You may have already read about the events and announcements across the Administration in October on this front. I wanted to highlight a few items from the last couple of weeks:

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November 23, 2010 1 comment
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