by Adam James

This is the second article in a series examining the debates around the Smart Grid raging inside what are often highly technical circles. The Smart Grid is going to influence almost every aspect of daily life. So it’s important to get a grip on the potentially controversial decisions that will be made over the next few years in creating this new web of energy consumers and suppliers.

Issue 2: The Fast standards vs. The Right standards

What are ‘interoperability standards’ and why do they matter?

In the last issue we discussed how the “smart” in Smart Grid are the revolutionary communications technologies that allow different parts of the grid to communicate with each other. Interoperability standards are the rules of the road that make this communication possible, and ensure that the technologies are able to work in synchronization.

As a consumer, you want the product you purchase to fit into the overall package of energy efficiency for your home. For example, if you purchase a smart thermometer, you would expect it to be able to signal temperature changes to your AC/heating system. You would also expect those changes to be reflected in your energy use as tracked by the meter. Unless the companies who make all those technologies conform to a standard, nothing can function effectively. Interoperability is like the universal remote for operating all these technologies.

Getting the technical details right, particularly for issues like Phasor Measurement Systems for time synchronized energy prices, are going to be essential in moving forward in every aspect of the grid. Without corresponding technologies, new pricing structures can’t take root. And while regulatory bodies are doing their best to establish a framework for demand response compensation (the mechanisms which help curtail consumer demand at peak hours), there have to be fundamental changes in our system to make the right things happen.

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by Adam James

Talk about the promise of a Smart Grid has exploded. While progress has been solid, it is also incremental, with projects spreading across clusters of markets and communities at different levels of sophistication.

While President Obama’s Grid 21 and Better Buildings Initiative prove this issue is being taken seriously, the wildfire spread of the discussion has outpaced a general understanding of what the Smart Grid is and what some of the key debates are. This series will highlight some of the big sticking points and the arguments that underlie them.

A Quick Definition of the Smart Grid

The phrase “Smart Grid’” can be misleading, since that implies we are working to a particular endpoint. What is actually happening is that we are progressively developing a smarter and smarter grid as new technology development and policy mechanisms spark changes within the system. For example, widespread smart meter roll out has been happening nationwide for some time. Incorporating renewable energy into the existing electricity generation structure has been steadily gaining momentum. The development of newer and better batteries has revolutionized storage capacity. That’s not all; the proliferation of Energy Star rated appliances shows efficiency is becoming a higher and higher priority among consumers.

Tying all those elements together in a coordinated way is what makes the Smart Grid truly “smart.”

Issue 1: Secure vs. Accessible Data

The “smart” component to the grid is the communication between its various parts. These communications will yield vast amounts of data about electricity users. Where utilities used to collect 1 data point about each consumer per year, they will soon be collecting over 6,500 per consumer, per year. All this information, paired with unclear ownership rules, creates a quandary for those in the Smart Grid field.

On one hand, this data can be mined to create inferences about your preferences, behaviors, and desires, which many Americans are uncomfortable having shipped out to the highest bidder. What appliances you use and when, what you watch on TV and search for on the Internet, when you are home and how often; all of these variables can be extracted from careful examination of electronic signatures.

On the other hand, this data unlocks massive potential for consumer empowerment. Real time information about energy use will make each user the master of their domain. Adjustable settings for your home can ensure that the AC and heating doesn’t run when you aren’t home, that your refrigerator gets power 24/7 but your TV does only when you use it, that you will allow your thermostat to ‘float’ an extra degree or two, for which you will receive monetary compensation for alleviating peak demand.

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by Melanie Hart

There is no way to get around this fact—China aims to modernize its energy infrastructure at home and dominate clean energy technology markets abroad. At the 2011 Smart Grid World Forum in Beijing late last month, China’s State Grid Corporation announced plans to invest $250 billion in electric power infrastructure upgrades over the next five years, of which $45 billion is earmarked for smart grid technologies. According to its three-stage plan, China will invest another $240 billion between 2016 and 2020 (including another $45 billion toward smart grid technologies) to complete the build-out of a “stronger, smarter” Chinese power grid.

When complete, this system will improve energy efficiency, lower carbon emissions, and give Chinese consumers more control over their utility bills. Chinese leaders are betting that upgrading to a smarter electricity grid will also drive technology innovation and move the country up the manufacturing value chain. The Chinese view smart grid technology as the next industrial revolution—and they want to make sure that once other countries start upgrading their own grids, they will buy most of their equipment from China.

This issue brief details why the United States should take note of China’s ambitions and step up our own smart grid efforts. We, too, need a stronger, smarter electricity grid, and in many smart grid sectors, our enterprises are already producing the best technologies. All they need is a bit more policy support at home to speed up interoperability, to drive down equipment prices, and to ensure the smart grid revolution will be a market driver not only for China but also for the United States both at home and in export markets abroad.

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This month, San Francisco launched a new program to build business co-ops to deploy distributed solar power, key to greening California’s power supply. The City and County of San Francisco Department of the Environment and the World Resources Institute has launched Solar@Work to “help Bay Area businesses obtain affordable solar electric systems”:

Solar@Work is a commercial solar group-purchasing program that was created to secure discounted solar pricing for commercial building owners, provide an affordable solar financing option, and stimulate local economic development.

“California Gov. Jerry Brown set a lofty new target this week: to generate enough clean green energy from rooftop solar panels and small wind turbines to power 3 million homes statewide by 2020,” SolveClimateNews’ Maria Gallucci writes. “Speaking at a UCLA clean energy conference on Monday, the governor said that 12 gigawatts, more than half of California’s 20-gigawatt renewables goal, should come from local, distributed generation.”

“For most people the act of buying and having a solar PV system installed is very inconvenient and loaded with uncertainty,” the Cost of Energy’s Lou Grinzo writes. “Are you getting ripped off by a local contractor? Does the outfit really know what they’re doing, or are they leaping into the solar market without giving their installers and salespeople proper training? And how big a system do you really need? The questions multiply very quickly when you go from the initial, abstract concept of ‘let’s put in a solar PV system’ to the messy details of how to make that happen.”

Government-backed solutions to solve these market failures — like power purchase agreements and solar co-ops — Grinzo writes, “dramatically simplify the buying process” and “you get green electrons, often at a slight discount, the company makes money (in part thanks to government subsidies), and everyone wins.”

In yesterday’s Twitter town hall, President Obama spent a significant amount of time describing his vision for a clean energy economy. He said “we know” that clean energy manufacturing “is going to be the future,” and emphasized that his administration made “the largest investment in clean energy in our history through the Recovery Act.” He also mentioned the need for a smart, efficient electric grid and reducing tax subsidies for oil companies.

In a response to a question about oil dependence, Obama complained that “we have not seen a sense of urgency coming out of Congress.” He said he was “committed” to increasing domestic oil drilling, although the United States “can’t drill our way out of this problem.” With that caveat, the president called for a goal of reducing oil use in steps, mentioned his higher fuel economy standards, and said the Detroit bailout involved having the companies “start focusing on the cars of the future instead of looking at big gas guzzlers of the past.”

In an oblique, mangled reference to global warming pollution, Obama said reducing oil use would “drastically cut down on our carbon resources.”

CLEAN ENERGY INVESTMENT

We’ve got to have a top-notch infrastructure to support advanced manufacturing, and we’ve got to look at sectors where we know this is going to be the future. Something like clean energy, for example. For us not to be the leaders in investing in clean energy manufacturing so that wind turbines and solar panels are not only designed here in the United States but made here in the United States makes absolutely no sense. We’ve got to invest in those areas for us to be successful.

So you can combine high-tech with manufacturing, and then you get the best of all worlds.

ADVANCED BATTERY MANUFACTURING

I want to promote alternative energy everywhere, including oil states like Louisiana and Texas. This is something that I’m very proud of and doesn’t get a lot of attention. We made the largest investment in clean energy in our history through the Recovery Act. And so we put forward a range of programs that provided credits and grants to startup companies in areas like creating wind turbines, solar panels.

A great example is advanced battery manufacturing. When I came into office, advanced batteries, which are used, for example, in electric cars, we only accounted for 2 percent of the world market in advanced batteries. And we have quintupled our market share, or even gone further, just over the last two years. And we’re projecting that we can get to 30 to 40 percent of that market. That’s creating jobs all across the Midwest, all across America.

And whoever wins this race on advanced battery manufacturing is probably going to win the race to produce the cars of the 21st century. China is investing in it. Germany is investing in it. We need to be investing in it as well.

SMART GRID INFRASTRUCTURE

It’s estimated that we have about $2 trillion worth of infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt. Roads, bridges, sewer lines, water mains; our air traffic control system doesn’t make sense. We don’t have the kind of electric grid that’s smart, meaning it doesn’t waste a lot of energy in transmission. Our broadband system is slower than a lot of other countries.

OIL SUBSIDIES

The debt ceiling should not be something that is used as a gun against the heads of the American people to extract tax breaks for corporate jet owners, or oil and gas companies that are making billions of dollars because the price of gasoline has gone up so high.

REDUCING OIL DEPENDENCE

Reducing our dependence on oil is good for our economy, it’s good for our security, and it’s good for our planet — so it’s a “three-fer.” And we have not had a serious energy policy for decades. Every President talks about it; we don’t get it done.

Now, I’d like to see robust legislation in Congress that actually took some steps to reduce oil dependency. We’re not going to be able to replace oil overnight. Even if we are going full-throttle on clean energy solutions like solar and wind and biodiesel, we’re going to need oil for some time. But if we had a goal where we’re just reducing our dependence on oil each year in a staggered set of steps, it would save consumers in their pocketbook; it would make our businesses more efficient and less subject to the whims of the spot oil market; it would make us less vulnerable to the kinds of disruptions that have occurred because of what happened in the Middle East this spring; and it would drastically cut down on our carbon resources.

So what I — unfortunately, we have not seen a sense of urgency coming out of Congress over the last several months on this issue. Most of the rhetoric has been about, let’s produce more. Well, we can produce more, and I’m committed to that, but the fact is, we only have 2 to 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves; we use 25 percent of the world’s oil. We can’t drill our way out of this problem.

What we can do that we’ve already done administratively is increase fuel-efficiency standards on cars, just to take one example. That will save us millions of barrels of oil, just by using existing technologies and saying to car companies, you can do better than 10 miles a gallon or 15 miles a gallon. And you’re starting to see Detroit respond. U.S. car companies have figured out, you know what, if we produce high-quality electric vehicles, if we produce high-quality low gas — or high gas mileage vehicles, those will sell.

And we’re actually starting to see market share increase for American cars in subcompact and compact cars for the first time in many years. And that’s partly because we increased fuel-efficiency standards through an administrative agreement. It’s also because, as part of the deal to bail out the oil companies, we said to them, start focusing on the cars of the future instead of looking at big gas guzzlers of the past.

BIOFUELS

I’m a big supporter of biofuels. But one of the things that’s become clear is, is that we need to accelerate our basic research in ethanol and other biofuels that are made from things like woodchips and algae as opposed to just focusing on corn, which is probably the least efficient energy producer of these various other approaches.

And so I think that it’s important for even those folks in farm states who traditionally have been strong supporters of ethanol to examine are we, in fact, going after the cutting-edge biodiesel and ethanol approaches that allow, for example, Brazil to run about a third of its transportation system on biofuels. Now, they get it from sugar cane and it’s a more efficient conversion process than corn-based ethanol. And so us doing more basic research in finding better ways to do the same concept I think is the right way to go.

A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

First Solar Wins Loan Help

The U.S. Energy Department said it is offering to guarantee about $4.5 billion in loans for First Solar Inc. to finance three renewable energy projects in California that the solar-panel maker is developing.

The government’s conditional offer to support the projects drew funds from the stimulus-funded loan guarantee program, which expires on Sept. 30 and currently has less than 25% of its funds remaining.

Once built, First Solar, of Tempe, Ariz., said that two of the projects would be the largest capacity solar-panel farms in the world.

First Solar’s California plan includes two 550-megawatt plants in Riverside and San Luis Obispo counties that will be supported by $1.88 billion and $1.93 billion in loans, respectively, according to the Energy Department.

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In order to balance out varied frequencies on the grid caused by changing power supply, grid operators often ramp up natural gas plants for short periods of time. But one company believes this “spinning reserve” doesn’t need to be fossil based – maybe it could be truly spinning.

Beacon Power, a Massachusetts manufacturer and installer of flywheels – levitating, spinning wheels that turn electrical energy into kinetic energy and then turn it back into electrical energy on demand – is about to finish the largest storage plant in the world using the technology:

The company said today it plans to host a ceremony for the 20-megawatt energy storage system in Stephentown, N.Y., where the flywheels supply short bursts of power to maintain a steady frequency over the grid.

The expected completion of the plant is a milestone for flywheel-based storage, which has been used for tests and smaller, 1-megawatt systems. Beacon Power’s spinning flywheels, which are made of carbon fiber and levitated in a vacuum by magnets, absorb energy from the grid and discharge 1 megawatt for as much as 15 minutes.

Frequency regulation will is becoming more important as more intermittent renewables are added to the grid.

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The federal agency that ensures the stability of the electricity system has been shut down for two days due to a power outage in Washington.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s mission statement is to “assist consumers in obtaining reliable, efficient and sustainable energy services.” But Pepco, the utility serving FERC, is known as one of the most unreliable power providers in the U.S., according to a 2010 investigation by the Washington Post:

Pepco’s reliability problems are more pervasive. Some of Pepco’s most disturbing failures come quietly on days with no violent weather, according to The Post’s analysis of industry data, interviews with experts and a review of thousands of pages of documents.

For the second day in a row, FERC employees have been told not to come into work because Pepco has been unable to restore power.

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Glenn Beck, the conservative ideologue whose show is mocked by fellow Fox News anchors, recently attacked plans to modernize our electric grid. After Carol Browner, President Obama’s climate and energy adviser, said that a smart grid means “we can get to a system where an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won’t operate at its peak, you’ll still be able to cool your house, but that’ll be a savings to the consumer,” Beck argued that would lead to “one-world government” with “Czar Browner” in charge of everyone’s air conditioners:

I can’t wait for the 97 degree day in August when Czar Browner in Washington decides it’s in my country’s best interest to make sure I’m not cooling my house. . . . There’s no way the government would turn down the air conditioning at the wrong place and kill someone.

On Fox News, Beck snorted, “Gosh, that would be great if I could just keep turning the air conditioner up and the government won’t let me do it. That’s fantastic.” Watch it:

In reality, Browner was describing demand-side management technology, the kind of grid modernization that corporate executives from Wal-Mart’s Lee Scott to American Electric Power’s Mike Morris have called an essential advance. Our antiquated power grid, a national embarrassment which threatens our energy future, needs to be upgraded to a digital network just as the analog phone system gave way to the Internet.

Beck’s rant assumes that an “electric company” and “the government” are one and the same. In fact, eight-four percent of the United States retail electric power market is provided by private companies. Over 120 million customers are served by the private market, versus 21 million served by public utilities, most of which are small municipal entities. The concept that Carol Browner would have control over a national thermostat is frankly bizarre:

During his diatribes on his Fox News show and his radio program, Beck also called cap-and-trade — which would establish a multi-billion-dollar private market in pollution allowances — “one of my favorite socialist ideas.” Although global warming is increasing the deadly heat waves that worry him so, Beck further claimed “the only thing that has become incredibly clear on the science of climate change is that they can’t decide whether to call it global warming or call it climate change.”

It’s not surprising that someone who can’t tell the difference between capitalism and socialism doesn’t understand much about science either.