electricity grid

A smart grid, yes. A new national grid, no.

The new mantra in energy circles is "national smart grid."

In the New York Times, Al Gore insists the new president should give the highest priority to "the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid." President Barack Obama, responding to a question by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, declares that one of "the most important infrastructure projects that we need is a whole new electricity grid ... a smart grid."

We lump together the two words, "national" and "smart" as if they were joined at the hip, but in fact each describes and enables a very different electricity future. The word "national" in these discussions refers to the construction of tens of thousands of miles of new national ultra-high-voltage transmission lines, an initiative that would further separate power plants from consumers, and those who make the electricity decisions from those who feel the impact of those decisions.

The word "smart," on the other hand, refers to upgrading the existing network to make it more resilient and efficient. A smart grid can decentralize both generation and authority. Sophisticated electronic sensors, wireless communication, software and ever-more powerful computers will connect electricity customers and suppliers in real time, making possible a future in which tens of millions of households and businesses actively interact with the electricity network as both consumers and producers.

Advocates of a new national ultra-high-voltage transmission network offer three main arguments:

1. New high-voltage transmission lines are needed to decrease electric grid congestion and therefore increase reliability and security.

There is indeed congestion on some parts of our distribution and transmission networks. Congestion reveals a problem; it doesn't demand a specific solution. It can be addressed by reducing demand through increasing energy efficiency or by increasing on-site or local energy production. Both strategies are often less costly and quicker to implement than building new transmission lines. An analogy from the solid-waste sector may be appropriate. Exhausting nearby landfills does not inevitably require us to send our garbage to new and more distant landfills. We can emphasize recycling, composting, scrap-based manufacturing and reuse.

2. A new national high-voltage transmission network is necessary to dramatically increase renewable energy.

President Obama wants to build new transmission lines because, "I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago." Writing in Vanity Fair, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants a new high-voltage transmission system to "deliver solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy across the country."

But do we really need to deliver renewable energy across the country? The distinguishing characteristic of renewable energy is its availability in abundant quantities virtually everywhere.

There are two ways of improving the electrical grid, each with its own politics and challenges

Two years ago, nobody was talking about the nation's electricity grid; today it's so prominent in the national conversation that Barack Obama mentioned it in his inauguration speech. For energy wonk types, it's pretty amazing.

Lots of politicians and pundits are sort of waving their hands toward the grid as an energy solution, without being very specific about their goals or the policies needed to get there. To add some clarity, it's worth distinguishing two distinct grid issues, each with its own technological challenges, regulatory issues, and political implications.

To simplify matters, think of the grid like the nation's waterways. There are a few big, primary rivers -- the high-voltage, long-distance lines that compose the transmission system. Then there are thousands and thousands of smaller tributaries -- the lower voltage lines that carry electricity from the transmission system to individual homes and businesses, called the distribution system. (I guess the homes and businesses are ... lakes? Ponds? Frankly I haven't thought the metaphor through that far.)

With that distinction in mind, we can discern two grid-related subjects of interest to energy/enviro types:

The National Grid

This has to do with extending the transmission system to address two problems:

• First, there aren't many high-voltage lines that go to the places where renewable energy is most abundant (e.g., the Southwest for solar, the Midwest for wind).

• Second, right now there are (depending on how you count) anywhere from three to seven distinct regional grids that make up the national grid, and they aren't very well connected. While juice circulates relatively freely within these grids, it's difficult to get juice from one grid to another.

The wide grid refers to the effort to build a truly national transmission system: a new high-voltage backbone, with lines spanning the length and breadth of the country, able to carry electricity from anywhere it's generated to anywhere it's needed. Wide grid advocates argue that linking the entire nation together would mitigate the problem of intermittency -- the fact that sun and wind are variable (as opposed to baseload sources that can be turned on and off at will). The more intermittent energy sources are linked together, the more stable and reliable the whole system becomes.

Green Energy Act introduced to Ontario's provincial parliament; feed-in tariffs key mechanism

The following is a guest essay by author, advocate, and renewable energy industry analyst Paul Gipe. His latest book, Wind Energy Basics, will be published by Chelsea Green in early 2009.

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On February 23, Ontario's powerful Minister of Energy and Infrastructure George Smitherman introduced into provincial parliament in Toronto Bill 150, to be known as the Green Energy Act.

The massive and far reaching bill -- the summary alone is eleven pages -- tackles renewable energy, energy efficiency, and building codes as well as streamlines project permitting.

Among its many provisions is the Ministers ability to use feed-in tariffs as a key implementation mechanism. Unlike the German Renewable Energy Sources Act, Bill 150 does not include specific feed-in tariffs. The tariffs will be determined in a separate administrative process.

Minister Smitherman is not only the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure but also Deputy Premier. As such, Smitherman is second only to Ontario's premier Dalton McGuinty in the cabinet.

In recent public presentations, both Minister Smitherman and Premier McGuinty have emphasized that they intend for the Green Energy Act to push Ontario to the forefront of renewable energy development in North America. Most ambitiously, they have said that the Green Energy Act will create 50,000 new jobs in the province within three years.

Ontario has been hard hit by the collapse of the auto industry. Before the financial crises, there were more people employed in the auto industry in Ontario than in the entire state of Michigan. Since the middle of 2008, Ontario has been shedding tens of thousands of auto industry jobs.

The government hopes to turn some of the now idle factories to manufacturing green products such as wind turbines and solar panels.

In Ontario's Westminister form of parliamentary rule, a majority government can almost guarantee passage of a bill introduced with the support of the cabinet. Amendments may be offered and debated but passage of the bill is almost certain.

Grid reliability statistics look good, if you don't consider the flaws

Refashioning our electric grid to move generation closer to load creates a host of benefits. (Two-hundred and seven, according to Amory Lovins.) Among them is an increase in grid reliability, since generation closer to load necessarily reduces the need for transmission to connect remote generators to that load. Carnegie-Mellon has estimated that we could free up something like 15 percent of our total grid capacity if we moved to a locally generated system.

But you wouldn't know that from the way some utilities calculate reliability statistics. The Columbus Dispatch reports that in spite of a wave of recent outages due to winds knocking out power lines, reliability statistics still look surprisingly good. Why?

The reliability statistics themselves are controversial. Major storms, such as the September wind storm that knocked out power to 700,000 AEP customers, are not included on the list. Utility officials contend, and regulators agree, that major storms would cause breakdowns in even the best systems, and are therefore not helpful in measuring overall reliability.

That means the September wind storm, the January ice storm, and this week's high winds will not be considered when the PUCO puts together reliability statistics for AEP.

"For analysis purposes, you've got to remove the anomalies," said Selwyn Dias, vice president for regulatory and finance at AEP Ohio.

So rather than build a more reliable grid, we will simply assume the grid we have -- and its innate exposure to weather-related outages -- is immutable.

Tomorrow: I'm favored to be the top pick in the upcoming NBA draft, once you remove the anomalies of my height, 30-percent shooting percentage, and lack of credible crossover move.

The game plan: The mother of all energy bills

(hat tip to Joe Romm for the title) The next big green priority after stimulus will be energy. It is possible that some of what I describe below will be broken out into separate bills — for instance, Markey and Platts in the House and Bingaman in the Senate have put forward freestanding Renewable Energy […]

ITC to build $12B in wind farm power lines, JCSP study finds $50B savings from wind

Wind power is coming of age as the U.S. becomes the global wind leader and probably the biggest source of new jobs in the energy industry.

ITC Holdings announced Monday plans to build a $10 to $12 billion power transmission network to move 12,000 megawatts of electricity from the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Iowa to the Chicago area.

ITC called the plan, depicted above, the Green Power Express, saying it could:

result in a reduction of up to 34 million metric tons of carbon emissions, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of about seven to nine 600 MW coal plants.

ITC made its announcement the same day a major study, the Joint Coordinated System Plan, was released by the Midwest grid operator and other U.S. regional grid managers was released. It concluded that to increase wind power to 20 percent of electricity production by 2024 (requiring some 230 GW of wind) would require some 15,000 miles of new transmission costing $80 billion. The total cost of the wind would be some $1 trillion.

The WSJ reports this as "New Grid for Renewable Energy Could Be Costly." But in fact the study found that "increasing wind's share to 20 percent of U.S. power production would yield annual net savings of $12 billion annually by 2024 based on wind's low production cost compared to the fossil plants the turbines would replace," as Energy Daily (sub. req'd) explained.

Moreover, JCSP projects that the 20 percent scenario would save 3 billion tons of carbon over the next 16 years, which would generate in 2024 an annual value of some $40 billion a year at carbon prices comparable to that which the European Union has seen over the past year -- and several times that if the price of carbon to reaches levels needed to stabilize at 450 ppm.

One reason I say wind power has come of age is because the announcement and the study don't come from your traditional pro-wind trade groups or think tanks. Far from it.

Big is beautiful if it breaks our dead-dinosaur addiction

I've heard arguments lately for local photovoltaic solar power (PV) from rooftops, roadways, and parking lots as a primary source of electric energy, mostly accompanied by arguments against long distance high-voltage transmission lines (HVDC). I keep picturing a revised Treasure of the Sierra Madre with bandits telling Humphrey Bogart: "Transmission lines? We don't need no stinking transmission lines!"

I think the key to this argument is whether you are satisfied with slow incremental growth in renewable energy that gradually rises to providing 20 percent of electricity use, or if you want renewable electricity use to grow large enough to displace coal, natural gas for electricity, and even natural gas for heating and oil for transport (via ground source heat pumps and electrified transport).

Let's look at data from the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center for one [PDF] PV system for one day in Prescott Arizona.

click image to zoom

Against the so-called 'need' for new long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines

The following is a guest post from Carol A. Overland, a utility regulatory attorney and electrical consultant based in Minnesota and Delaware, representing clients in energy dockets including transmission projects, wind, gas and coal gasification generation, and nuclear waste.

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Transition ... transmission ... transition ... transmission ...

That old Bowie hook is on my mind as I represent individuals, community organizations, and local governments opposing high-voltage transmission lines. Today we're at a crossroads in energy, a transition point where the decisions we make, like electricity itself, are binary. What we choose will determine how we use electricity in the future. The first step is to carefully define "need."

Transmission doesn't produce electricity. It is passive infrastructure that just sits there, conducting energy from one place to another. At its worst, though, it's an enabler of dysfunctional energy planning and profit-driven projects that are against the public interest. Claims that we "need" transmission are end-stage conclusions of a many-step planning process that we as a society have not yet consciously begun.

"Need" is a term of art, and the crucial task for energy planners is to define the need. We need energy when we flick the switch, and when we do, that's a utility's need for service of local electrical load. We also need renewable generation, and we have an equally compelling need to reduce the CO2 emissions, pollutants, and toxic waste of electrical generation (a need not readily recognized in energy planning). Energy planners plan for peak "flick of the switch" need, those few very hot summer days or very cold winter nights. How much "flick of the switch" energy do we need? It depends.

Prior to assessing local load-serving need and making demand projections -- before "need" is considered -- the first and unarguably least-cost step is conservation. We can easily make up for an annual projected increase in demand of 1.5 percent through conservation, and can probably cut today's "need" by 10 percent or more, though compound conservation gets more difficult as we cherry pick the easy stuff. The next step before analyzing need is to enact energy efficiency, demand-side management, and load-shifting to cut the peaks and level out the dips. This is also a comparatively least-cost means of meeting demand.

When that's done, and not before, it's time to assess our need for electricity -- the supply side. Utilities, which are in the business of selling electricity and building their infrastructure -- for which we pay, routinely promote sales and exaggerate growth in demand. Because of their overstatements of need in similarly recessionary times, we overbuilt in the 1970s, to the extent that many proposed plants were ultimately canceled. Still so much was built that we haven't needed much utility infrastructure since. We've been through this before, and should be mindful in making investments.

On the verge of revolutionizing the U.S. power grid

Rachel Maddow, a kindred spirit whose heart beats a little faster at the word "infrastructure," has been campaigning recently for more infrastructure spending in the stimulus package. Pointing to the mass blackouts caused by Midwest storms, she asked the other day on her MSNBC show, "Can I put in a request for a grid that works, even in the snow?"

Yes, Rachel, you can! What you want is a smart grid rich in distributed energy resources.

First, it is important to be clear that we have two power grids: a transmission grid, which consists of the big lines carrying power from distant generating stations, and a distribution grid, which carries power in the local area to homes, businesses, etc. Failures on the transmission grid, that's T to us geeks, lead to the really big blackouts like that in the Northeast in August 2003. But most failures -- around 90 percent -- happen on the distribution, or D grid, and they are usually not well publicized.

Electric Power Research Institute estimates that, overall, blackouts and other power disturbances cost the U.S. economy in the range of $119-188 billion (see p. ES-3 [PDF].) By comparison U.S. power customers paid a total of $343.7 billion for electricity in 2007.

The shocking fact is that the costs of an aging and technologically backward power grid adds something like one-third to one-half to our annual electricity costs. Ghost Town Louisville is a poster child, but most power problems do not receive national publicity.