by Keryn

The investor owned utilities and the State of Delaware are making a mockery out of the huge distributed generation potential of the Bloom Box.  In order to entice construction of a Bloom Box manufacturing facility in Delaware, state officials and Pepco Holdings subsidiary Delmarva Power have come up with a ratepayer-funded scheme to centralize clusters of Bloom Boxes and transport the power generated to end users via transmission lines.

According to the article, the Bloom Box isn't intended for this kind of deployment:

"One of the main benefits to customers is that the power is generated by units placed on their property, not delivered to them over power lines winding back to a coal- or gas- or oil-fired power plant. Bloom touts its generators as pioneer technology in the field of "distributed power."

In essence, customers get to go "off the grid," lessening exposure to rising costs for electricity tied to the volatile prices of fossil fuels, and vulnerability to grid outages."

Of course the utility conglomerates don't like that scenario because they lose control over previously captive customers, and that means they lose revenue.  One way to prevent that from happening is to pervert the technology into centralized generation:

"The Delaware plan to cluster Bloom Boxes on two sites in New Castle County turns that strategy on its head.

The two Bloom clusters adjacent to Delmarva substations would be centralized, generating 30 megawatts of power for sale onto the grid. That's enough electricity for 20,000 to 30,000 homes. By comparison, Calpine's natural-gas plant at Hay Road generates 1,130 megawatts."

This "strategy" is a really stupid plan that was most likely cooked up by Delaware's economic development and Chamber of Commerce-types, who are always in bed with big business.  Under this plan, instead of state or local economic development programs providing business-enticing incentives, a large portion of the cost of providing incentives to Bloom is going to be borne by electric ratepayers, as if electricity isn't already expensive enough. 

"The Bloom clusters actually would shut down if the grid fails, according to Delmarva testimony filed with the PSC, which is considering Delmarva's proposed tariff to pass along $4 million to $5 million annually in costs.

Delaware officials tout the Delmarva tariff, saying the incentive the Bloom cluster deal provides was necessary for an incentive package that landed the company here. The state also is providing $16 million in financial incentives from money set aside to promote economic development."

PJM Interconnection says the new generation is not needed.

"PJM Interconnection spokesman Ray Dotter said the two Delmarva substation sites near Red Lion and Brookside are not in congested areas in need of a supplemental power source, nor do they suffer from reliability problems."

Bloom supposedly had no comment, however:

"...any such business would be secondary for Bloom, a California startup that has looked to capitalize on anxiety about the nation's power system of big plants and power lines.

On its website, Bloom prominently defines its product as "a new class of distributed power generator, producing clean, reliable, affordable electricity at the customer site."

"Distributed power" can be anything, said Richard Hirsch, director of Virginia Tech's Consortium on Energy Restructuring. It can be solar panels, a wind turbine, fuel cells or even a dirty gasoline-powered generator. All forms locate a power generator on the site where current is consumed."

Delaware needs to come up with a better plan that doesn't involve Pepco's centralized generation ideology.  Their "incentives" only destroy Bloom's business model and foist the costs of economic development onto electric customers.  What a joke.


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by Keryn

The town of Vineland is keeping electric rates low for their customers by installing their own, local generation instead of relying on PJM's much more expensive supply of electricity.

"The utility has spent years relying on PJM, a wholesale electricity distributor, to produce energy during high-demand times because it is capacity short, but that comes at a cost, Vineland Municipal Utilities Director Joseph Isabella said.

Each of the new units, however, has the potential to save the utility between $6 and $8 million a year, Isabella said. That's money the utility now collects from customers to pay PJM, he said.

Once the new unit is in next year, a rate decrease could come by fall, marking the third rate drop since Isabella took over as director in 2008.

"My goal is to have the lowest rates in New Jersey and the cleanest utility in New Jersey," he said.

Vineland Municipal Electric Utility has spent the past four years moving toward clean, efficient energy production, Isabella said. That included adding the two turbines and 16 megawatts in solar projects that are either complete or will be by the end of the year.

Isabella also plans to seek proposals for 4 to 8 more megawatts of solar powered projects in a few weeks to further close the capacity gap.

"We want to be able to take care of our needs with our own units," Isabella said."

New Jersey is making great strides toward energy self-reliance lately.  The state has been bickering with Regional Transmission Organization PJM Interconnection and FERC over installation of two new gas-fired generation plants in the state, instead of relying on PJM and coal-dependent generators in the Ohio valley to supply the state with electricity via hugely profitable (for their coal-fired generation owning builders) new transmission lines.

New Jersey is taking real action to shape their own energy future and lower electricity prices for their citizens through self-reliance.  Bravo to New Jersey and the town of Vineland!


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by Bill

Last Friday, the Coalition filed our comments in response to FERC's Notice of Inquiry about their incentive program for transmission lines.  As readers of StopPATH WV and The Power Line will know, this federal boondoggle, created by the Cheney administration and paid for entirely by electric rate payers, is at the heart of what is wrong with US grid policy.  Needless to say, C4RP had a lot to say in its comments.

Here is a link to FERC's Notice of Inquiry, which includes specific questions to which they ask commenters to respond.  Here is a link to C4RP's comments that were filed Friday.  You will need to refer to the Notice of Inquiry to identify the questions connected with C4RP's comments.

The FERC comment process was limited to commenting on the transmission incentives themselves, but, as we pointed out in our comments, there are now much more pressing needs for our electrical grid than promoting long distance, high voltage transmission.

The highest priority right now should be small scale renewable generation into the distribution grid along with other small scale generation, including community based wind projects and community scale combined cycle natural gas plants.  The US Department of Energy has a program, Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS), which is specifically designed to promote this kind of integration.  You can find out more about what this kind of integration looks like at the DoE site here.
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by Bill

I had been planning to do a post about Matthew Wald's recent article in the New York Times, but I didn't have time right after the article appeared.  Mr. Wald was discussing the impacts of impending coal-fired power plant closings and their impact on grid operations.  The article was essentially a Xerox copy of coal industry talking points which dropped Mr. Wald, in my opinion, from journalist to media clown.

Yesterday, Ken Ward posted a story on the ever excellent Coal Tattoo about the plant closings controversy.  In the post, Ken referred to Wald's NYT article and another Xerox job by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein.

First, here's a comment about Klein's piece.  Klein wrings his hands about the looming disaster if coal's share of electrical generation falls from the current 45% level.  Ten years ago, coal fueled 50% of US electrical production.  Was that decline in coal use from 2000 to 2011 the disaster that Klein is predicting for future declines?  Unfortunately, this is the kind of silliness that we have come to expect from major news outlets that focus only on talking points from obsolete industries.

Now for Mr. Wald.  Wald expends a good deal of ink in his article saying that renewables cannot meet the challenge of fueling peak load, and that more transmission lines will have to be built into urban centers.  In his discussion, he writes only about wind power, and never mentions solar power, or, more importantly, rooftop solar generation in population centers.

Wald says that wind power cannot impact peak demand because wind is mainly still on hot summer afternoons.  He is wrong on two counts: (1) he never mentions the impact of solar production which is at its peak during summer peak electrical periods and (2) he makes no distinction between summer peak and winter peak, because wind power is often producing well during cold windy nights at winter peak.

Mr. Wald completely ignores the fact that widespread deployment of rooftop solar, in addition to creating jobs in a devastated economy, provides generation which is maximized at times of summer peak load, inside the population centers where power is needed most.  Let me repeat that: inside the population centers where power is needed most.

Because rooftop solar is a peak production at summer peak demand within the distribution system of population centers, what we really need to insure grid reliability a summer peak is (1) rapidly expanded deployment of rooftop solar generators and (2) a dramatically upgraded distribution system to handle this expanded generation capacity.

Here's an example of the problem.  The Washington, DC PSC has been pushing for years to deploy massive rooftop solar generation on the square miles of flat roofs of federal buildings in downtown DC.  The local utility, PEPCO has repeatedly told the PSC that this will not work because PEPCO's obsolete distribution lines and switches cannot handle large two way flows of electricity.

This is a distribution constraint, not a transmission constraint.  Mr. Wald and Mr. Klein need to stop basing their stories on power company PR and start talking to engineers and experts about these problems.  Until they do, I will continue to call them out as media clowns.
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by Bill

In order to respond to a shift in generation away from coal, and natural gas, to fuel free alternatives, a number of things have to happen.  One is that the current dumb hardware on both the transmission and distribution systems will have to get a lot smarter and the other is that electricity regulation and the connection of new generating sources to the grid must change away from the current system that favors the interests of large energy monopolies.

Here is a link to a recent article on smart transformers that if happening at NC State University.  Current dumb transformers do basically two things - they step down line voltage from larger lines to smaller ones or they step up voltage from smaller lines to bigger ones.  This is fine if electricity is basically flowing from one big power plant continuously out to consumers.  It will not work with lots of small producers scattered all over the distribution grid putting in electricity intermittently when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.  The dumb system will also not support the flows of electricity that will flow in two directions to and from the large grid scale batteries that are beginning to be installed by utilities.

The answer is to add capacitors, semiconductors and transistors to even the smallest transformers on the distribution grid to enable neighbors to share electricity and for grid managers to operate effectively with multi-directional electricity flows.  Those transformers are being developed right now at NC State.

The other big issue for small scale distributed generation is how to connect small producers to the grid and to encourage the installation of community-based renewable energy.  There is a national organization called the CLEAN Coalition.  Here's how the Coalition describes itself:

The Clean Coalition is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to accelerate the transition to cost-effective clean energy across the United States. The Clean Coalition believes that the right policies will result in a timely transition to clean energy while yielding tremendous economic benefits.

Here is a link to the first part of the Coalition's Local CLEAN Program Guide.  Here are two tables from the guide that explain what a CLEAN program is designed to do and what it does:

Table A: A CLEAN Program creates a stable market for clean local renewable energy projects by removing the main barriers to W[holesale] D[istributed] G[eneration] project development:

I. Procurement: The high risks and transaction costs of securing a contract to sell energy to the local utility is the first major barrier that each WDG project must overcome. By standardizing contract terms and rates, CLEAN Programs dramatically reduce the risks and transaction costs involved in the procurement process.

II. Interconnection: Gaining access to the local utility’s distribution grid is the second major barrier for WDG projects. Grid interconnection processes are generally opaque, expensive, and unpredictable. By making the process more transparent and streamlined, CLEAN Programs pave the way for a smooth transition to greater reliance on homegrown, renewable energy.

III. Financing: Attracting financing is the third largest barrier to WDG, because of the complexity, risks, and added costs associated with existing procurement and interconnection processes. By streamlining procedures, increasing procedural transparency, reducing transaction costs, and guaranteeing wholesale rates, CLEAN Programs make WDG projects attractive to investors and lenders, including new sources of financing, like well-healed commercial entities, that are repelled by the current complexities associated with developing renewable energy projects.

Table B: Key Features of CLEAN Programs

• Standard and guaranteed contract between the utility and a renewable energy facility owner

• Predefined, fixed rates for a long duration

• Predictable and streamlined access to the utility’s distribution grid

As the Guide points out, there are currently many obstacles to creating a real reliable electricity grid.  The biggest obstacles are the regulatory policies that the large utility companies have put in place to preserve their stranglehold over our electrical system.  This is especially true in WV, because of the total control that AEP and FirstEnergy exercise over our state's electrical system.

The CLEAN program provides clear instructions on how to build a new electrical generation system from the ground up.  We need to do it here in West Virginia.
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by Bill

The US continues to fall behind in energy technology.  Here is an article about the first functioning smart grid in the world in the Netherlands.
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Originally posted March 22, 2011
by Bill

Here and on The Power Line, I have spent a lot of time criticizing Allegheny Energy and its failed PATH project.  At the same time it was developing PATH, Allegheny Energy (now swallowed by FirstEnergy) was actually investing in research and development that would really increase electrical reliability.

Did it involve the transmission system?  No.

In 2008, Allegheny received a grant from the US Department of Energy to develop basic technologies that will strengthen the US distribution system.  The distribution system is the network of wires and transformers and switches that connect the big transmission lines with our homes and businesses.  If we are going to produce our own electricity and share it locally on resilient and reliable microgrids, this is the technology we need.

Here is a description of the Morgantown-based Super Circuit project.

We are rapidly approaching the point where we can begin to envision “net zero” communities that generate all their own electrical power.  In order to do this, however, we need a much more robust and flexible distribution system that allows power generators to share the electricity they produce directly with their neighbors.

US electrical engineers have relatively little experience operating microgrids like the experimental Super Circuit in Morgantown.  They need these demonstration projects to develop the skills as well as the techniques to make these microgrids work.

Here is another link that will give you a good picture of other microgrid developments in the US and a quote from the Fast Company article to whet your appetite:

The evidence is growing that privately owned, consumer-driven, small-scale, geographically distributed renewables could deliver a 100% green-energy future faster and cheaper than big power projects alone. Companies like GE and IBM are talking in terms of up to half of American homes generating their own electricity, renewably, within a decade. But distributed power — call it the “microgrid” — poses an existential threat to the business model the utilities have happily depended on for more than a century. No wonder so many of them are fighting the microgrid every step of the way.
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Copyright 2011 The Coalition for Reliable Power