Comments Patrick Mazza has made

Standards

Have not been tracking the standards study ordered by the Energy Bill.  There was an uproar recently over a provision someone inserted in the stimulus to limit smart grid money to Internet-based systems, which would lock out other standards like Zigbee.  In general, we don't need standards to get moving, but should be getting at them as quickly as possible.  GridWise Architecture Council is the group tasked with this.

On the D grid I would start with Advanced Metering Infrastructure to really get a data flow and communications system going.  With that I would start a demand response program, probably engaging larger customers first.  I would also companion the effort with a energy efficiency/retrofit initiative backed with municipal bond funding and/or some other kind of patient capital and have the work paid on utility bills or property taxes.  Combine Boulder Smart Grid City with mass retrofit initiatives starting up in places like Berkeley and Boulder, and you have the beginning of urban energy transformation.  

Patrick Mazza

Warming describes trigger for change

Global warming is the trigger, but the total picture is better captured by climate change.  If the North Atlantic circulation shuts down, a lot of places will grow colder.  That is climate change.  

I use both terms.  I also use climate disruption and climate crisis. Radical climate change or climate destabilization also describes it very accurately, but a bit long.  Consider the number of syllables - 3 or 4 at most work for general public discussion.

There's also -
End of the world as we know it
Hell on Earth
Global FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition)

Patrick Mazza

Responding to Ron

For the relatively new biodiesel market, no dispute with Ron.  For the more mature ethanol market - the fuel which Tom's original post referred - BP estimates corn ethanol is competitive with petroleum at $48/barrel, and Brazil sugarcane ethanol at $22.  Ethanol actually has been selling lower than petroleum some times lately.

Patrick Mazza

This is a breakthrough

The long-envisioned smart grid has been appearing in bits and pieces around the U.S. and world in recent years, but has confronted obtacles because smart grid technologies have been introduced in isolated applications. Just as computers can do much more linked to the Internet than sitting alone, so smart grid technologies produce the greatest benefits when linked together.  So Xcel's announcement that it will build a smart grid network in a city of 100,000 represents a ground-breaking step forward. Xcel says this will be "the nation's first community with a fully integrated portfolio of smart grid technologies."

Xcel also recently announced a related smart grid effort with Seattle start-up V2Green to deploy networks of plug-in hybrids that can operate intelligently with the grid - charging at hours of surplus energy and offering energy back to the grid at higher usage hours.

Here is Xcel's "Smart Grid City" announcement:

Xcel Energy announces Smart Grid Consortium partners, intent to bring Smart Grid City to life

MINNEAPOLIS - The vision of a Smart Grid City will soon be realized, under the direction of the Smart Grid Consortium announced today by Xcel Energy.

The advanced, smart grid system is expected to allow Xcel Energy to work in tandem with customers to determine when, where and how they use their energy. Potential benefits include lower bills; smarter energy management; better grid reliability; greater energy efficiency and conservation options; increased use of renewable energy sources; and support for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and intelligent home appliances.

"We are on the verge of significant transformation in an industry that has seen relatively little change during its long history," said Dick Kelly, chairman, president and CEO of Xcel Energy. "I'm excited to work with our partners to reshape and define the future of our marketplace. Using the smart grid, we can provide innovative solutions to the environmental challenges facing all of us today."

In December 2007, Xcel Energy established the Consortium, bringing together leading technologists, engineering firms, business leaders and IT experts. Consortium members include Accenture, Current Group, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories and Ventyx. The influential group will provide guidance as well as the products and services needed to bring Xcel Energy's smart grid vision to life.

Among the Consortium's initial tasks will be selection of a mid-size community with a population of approximately 100,000 residents. The city will represent the consumer end of the smart grid, with a fully inter-connected system managing the various parts of the grid involved in producing power and delivering it to customers. The chosen city will become a test bed for emerging technologies and deployment strategies. The goal is to create an international showcase of smart grid possibilities and evaluate their environmental, financial and operational benefits.

"The analog grid has served its purpose for the last half century, but the future requires an integrated, digital smart grid. This next-generation grid will allow customers to better manage their energy consumption while optimizing the grid through real-time generation management and distribution controls," said Ray Gogel, CAO and vice president of customer and enterprise solutions of Xcel Energy. "Smart Grid City will be the nation's first community with a fully integrated portfolio of smart grid technologies designed to offer environmental, financial and operational benefits."

A number of technologies will be offered within Smart Grid City, including:

· Transformation of existing metering infrastructure to a robust, dynamic communications network, providing real time, high-speed, two-way communication throughout the distribution grid.
· Conversion of substations to "smart" substations capable of remote monitoring, near real-time data and optimized performance.
· Installation of thousands of in-home control devices and the necessary systems to fully automate home energy use.
· Integration of infrastructure to support up to 1,000 easily dispatched distributed generation technologies (including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with vehicle-to-grid technology; battery systems; wind turbines; and solar panels).

Xcel Energy has narrowed the site location for Smart Grid City to several cities in its eight-state service territory. The Consortium will announce the selected city in March 2008 and begin the building phase in April 2008.

Patrick Mazza

Gore's Nobel acceptance comments . . .

are an appropriate response to Ross, a dear old friend whose work on climate has been seminal to my own.  Here are some that are particularly on the mark:

"We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency - a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst - though not all - of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly."

"It is time to make peace with the planet. We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.

"Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: `What were you thinking; why didn't you act?' Or they will ask instead: `How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?'"

"We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. So let us renew it, and say together: `We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.'"

Fuller excerpts along this line at http://www.climatesolutions.org/?s=journal&aid=30

Patrick Mazza

Maybe yes, maybe no

There is no "the answer" and there are responsible answers to Ziegler.  But my point is not to open yet another debate on biofuels or sequestration, even though that is the temptation.  Let's try this another way - For the sake of discussion, let's just go ahead and toss out biofuels and "clean coal" and envision an economic agenda for the Midwest that reduces greenhouse gases while it ensures regional prosperity within these parameters. What can we agree on? On Midwestern governors sign greenhouse-gas reduction pact posted 2 years ago 6 Responses

Questions

". . . the fuel being served at this pump is far more environmentally destructive than the fuel it replaces. The peer-reviewed paper in Science says it will release about five times more carbon over a thirty-year period than if you had simply let the cropland grow into a forest."

The fuel from this specific pump is Canadian canola from long established cropland on the priaries that would never have been a forest and would be an unlikely site for a forest in any event.  The reference here seems to be to biodiesel from tropical forest that is cleared. So granting the point about the rainforest biodiesel, it does not seem correct to apply this to canola biodiesel.  Or do you have another read on the data that backs your statement?    

"The journal study (by a multinational team of researchers including a Nobel Prize winner) says it releases 70% more greenhouse gases (in the form of NO2) than diesel."

Another study that also looks at nitrous oxide and other agricultural emissions from Adler, Del Grosso and Parton, "Lifecycle Assessment of Net Greenhouse Gas Flux for Bioenergy Cropping Systems," (Ecological Applications 17(3), 2007, pp 675-91) find significant greenhouse gas reductions still, on the order of 40% for biodiesel.  Can you contrast the two studies for me and explain why they are coming up with such sharply different results?

Patrick Mazza

More Responses

Great comments all! Responses:

Ice storage in commercial buildings is actually an option for demand response and peak load shaving.  It lets building owners store cool by making ice on the off-peak and then use it on peak, also allowing further cycling down when a demand response is asked.  I've seen a study done for PacifiCorp that looks at it and finds its still a relatively high cost DR resource.  But ideas like this are definitely part of the picture.  

Price response probably will not be enough - that's right.  A bill working its way through Congress would require appliances to be built with smart chips that can offer demand response.  Costs will be nominal.  More on this legislation in future posts.

During the 2001 West Coast power meltdown significant demand response saved the grid from collapse.  The voluntary response was hugely effective, though this would be classed as non-firm and so is not a substitute for standard utility infrastructure. In the Northwest, Bonneville Power Administration operated a the Demand Exchange system which supplied hundreds of megawatts in demand response.  BPA notified customers a day ahead when grid steess was expected - a hot day.  Customers who optedc to supply reductions gained bill credit.  In some cases here, yes, workers were sent home.  But this was an emergency situation.

Sunflower and Pangolin - hugely great ideas and practices.  These go under the heading of energy efficiency, and demonstrate the immense potentials we have to reduce electricity demand.  To promote more of this we need to re-shape the standard utility model into an energy services business model that gives companies positive incentives to provide customers with efficiency as well as electricity.  The Delta Montrose Coop in Colorado, by  the way, finances geoheat exchange installations for its customers, similar to the model Pangolin suggested.  The old utility model of profit purely or mostly by kilowatt throughput is one of the toughest nuts to crack in bringing on the smart grid and efficiency, and I will post on this in the future

Patrick Mazza

Low level mudslinging from dezakin

No, I'm not lying when I contrast nuclear and wind figures.  The nuclear figures are based on latest construction experience and the figure of 8-11 cents new nuclear power was agreed to by all members of the collaborative including the nuclear industry.  No cooked books. The wind figures are also based on current constuction experience.  

Calling someone a liar because you disagree with their statements is low level mudslinging, dezakin.  You should learn some respect.  

Patrick Mazza

Waste, cost, etc.

The key issue with nuclear waste is not whether it has killed anyone to date.  A series of incidents surrounding Russian nuclear weapons materials operations at Chelyabinsk probably did.  The fundamental issue is whether material that will exceed the radioactivity of the original source materials for 15,000 years is a legacy we should leave the next 4,000 or so human generations.  That is a moral debate complicated by the fact that our fossil emissions are also leaving a long-term footprint on the future, from centuries of sea level rise to biodiversity losses prospectively unseen since the extinctions of 65 million years ago.  Ideally, we should choose energy sources that do not leave any such footprints.

There are geological structures we can project will stay stable for 15,000 years and much longer based on the geological record.  Unfortunately, Yucca Mountain is rife with uncertainties, including water in an oxidizing environment and seismic activity.  It was chosen as a product of politics, long before Harry Reid became Senate majority leader.  That gets to a very basic issue - Longterm geologic storage looks is technically feasible, but is it politically feasible?  (Finland is on track to complete a geologic repository, but their politics are different.) In the interim, waste will be stored in dry casks, and probably remain at over 100 little waste repositories at current, former and future (?) reactor sites indefinitely.  Those with an agenda for reprocessing waste will be secretely satisfied.

In response to deezakin, no, the factors that are driving nuke to 8-11 cents kWh are pushing wind to about 6.5 cents, and that includes grid connections and balancing resources.  Add another 2.5 cents to the nuke cost for a comparable figure.  Also note that wind prices are up not just because of the general run-up in materials costs, but because wind is booming and the supply chain is still being built.  

The test of the Westinghouse reactor linked in Charles' post will be if it can play in the marketplace.  Energy Act 2005 puts up $6 billion in production credits on the table for the first new nukes to be built in the U.S.  A number of utilities are circling around this and looking at Southeastern sites.  China also has major reactor construction plans announced.  Test of time and the market.  

Patrick Mazza

More responses

Kristina and Jason have it right - The Smart Grid can save money for Joe and Josephine Public.  By setting rates to more reflect the real cost of usage - more at the peaks - the ratepayer has incentives to shift use.  That reduces the need for peaking plants, poles and wires. The cumulative savings by cutting peaks could be tens of billions over 20 years in avoided infrastructure construction.  Even better than making Joe and Josephine think about when to turn on their dryer and dishwasher is to have smart appliances that receive signals from the grid and turn on when prices are lower.  More about this in future posts.

The high-temperature fuel cells to which Joe refers indeed hold a lot of promise, moreso than the pure hydrogen cells which require a specialized fuel stream.  Costs are still high, but installations are popping up all over the world.  Selling surplus power directly to another customer will require big changes in the regulatory system, which now bars this.  Selling to the utility, though, is already possible through net metering for smaller systems and PURPA avoided cost schemes for larger units.

In any event, high temp fuel cells are part of the emergence of competitive distributed generation which is going to force changes in the utility model, whether they like it or not.  An added and hugely important benefit is the opportunity to cogenerate, providing on-site heat and electricity, which makes for efficiencies far higher than central station generation.

Re broadband over power line, it's an intriguing idea.  But I hear the ham radio operators hate it because it bigfoots across their frequencies. Not sure how this is going to be resolved.  

Patrick Mazza