Energy Exchange

EDF Energy Innovation Series Feature #14: Home Energy Management From Consert

By Jim Marston / Published: November 15, 2012

Throughout 2012, EDF’s Energy Innovation Series will highlight around 20 innovations across a broad range of energy categories, including smart grid and renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency financing, and progressive utilities, to name a few. This series will demonstrate that cost-effective, clean energy solutions are available now and imperative to lowering our dependence on fossil fuels.

Find more information on this featured innovation here.

If innovation is where expertise and opportunity intersect, then San Antonio-based Consert Inc.(Consert) is a perfect case study.

Founded in 2008 by veterans of the telecom industry, Consert’s Virtual Peak PlantTM provides an energy management solution that gives consumers control of the highest energy-consuming electrical devices in their home or business and provides utilities with a low-cost way to tap into an unused energy source during key peak demand periods.

“We find the key is to offer a simple solution to consumers that also benefits utilities,” said Jeff Ebihara, vice president of Consert. “Our goal at Consert has always been to facilitate a mutually beneficial relationship between the consumer and their electric provider.”

The result is cutting-edge technology that connects, monitors and controls high energy-consuming devices including air conditioners, water heaters and pool pumps, which can represent over half of the total load for electric utilities during times of peak demand. The devices in a “Consert-enabled house” are linked using the wireless technology “ZigBee,” creating a Home Area Network (HAN) that can either be controlled remotely or configured to make decisions based on user preferences or outside weather conditions. Utilities may call upon this load during peak hours to reduce stress on the grid, with the consumer never losing comfort or control.

According to Consert, its home automation system can save consumers 15-20 percent on their energy use. When consolidated, these homes add up to a considerable amount of unused energy that utilities do not have to buy, sell or deliver.

Credit: Consert Inc.

This “negawatt” concept isn’t new – a megawatt of energy that is NOT used through demand response is just as helpful for a stable energy supply as a megawatt of new generation. However, the consumer appeal of Consert’s products is more personal and customizable than traditional load control measures. Customers can control their energy consumption 24/7 from any web-enabled device, such as laptop, tablet or smartphone, but most configure the system to work automatically.

The development of a consumer-friendly service that helps save money – and provides some “coolness” while requiring no sacrifice in comfort or convenience – is an important achievement as we look for new ways to reduce energy consumption and increase efficiency. Reducing electricity demand and making more efficient use of electricity is very important both environmentally and for electric grid operators. But beyond the appeal of doing the “right thing,” or the novelty of controlling appliances, there had previously been little to no incentive for consumers to make it a priority. Cutting their energy bill, Ebihara said, has proven a strong incentive.

“Of course there is a small segment of the market that wants to control every last part their energy use,” Ebihara said. “And we are happy to provide that level of control. But we are finding that most people want to “set it and forget it.” They want to save on their energy bill and they might like the convenience of remotely accessing their programs, but they don’t want to have to think about it all the time and they certainly don’t want it to be a hassle.”

Appealing to a broad market has been one of the challenges of HAN products. The industry is young, and products are either complicated or expensive. It may be obvious that Consert wants its product to be ubiquitous, but such products will have to be deployed in large numbers to make a meaningful contribution to peak demand management.

Consert’s systems are available through utility companies, most of which offer the equipment free when customers participate in conservation measures. Others sell the equipment at a deeply-subsidized price. In San Antonio, CPS Energy will deploy Consert systems in 140,000 homes at no charge to the customer, reducing peak demand by 250 megawatts.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Energy Innovation / Comments are closed

Smart Technologies Allow For Improved Resiliency During Catastrophic Texas Weather

By Marita Mirzatuny / Published: November 8, 2012

As we continue to reflect on Superstorm Sandy and its devastating aftermath, it is encouraging to point out how smart technologies can aid in lessening the impacts. While a smart grid will not prevent massive natural disasters from wreaking havoc on communities causing power outages and destruction, it can help lessen the consequences and quicken recovery.

My colleague Miriam Horn wrote a piece earlier this week and said, “We’re already seeing proof these [smart grid] investments can reduce recovery time, keep crews and customers safer, and save lots of money. Thanks in part to federal stimulus grants, a number of utilities are embedding sensors, communications and controls across their networks. On the power lines that it has helped prevent cascading disasters like the one that knocked out power to 55 million people in 2003, when a single Ohio tree fell on a power line. Automated systems can detect a fault, cordon it off and reroute power flow around it.”

Furthermore she states that “digital smart meters, capable of two-way communications, have also proved their worth: providing utilities real-time, granular visibility into their networks, without resorting to (often failing) phones or trucks dispatched on wild goose chases.  Programmed to send a “last gasp” signal when they lose power, those meters have enabled rapid diagnostics – pinpointing exactly which homes or blocks were out, where the break had occurred – and expedited repairs.”

In the DC area, “when the storm struck Monday, Pepco, the utility serving the nation’s capital and its Maryland suburbs, began getting wireless signals from smart meters on its network registering where individual customers had lost power, said Marcus Beal, senior project manager for Pepco’s smart meter program. One of the first movers to install smart meters, Pepco has 725,000 in place and had activated 425,000 of them before the storm struck. Instead of relying solely on customers to call in outage information on specific neighborhoods, Pepco dispatchers can track damage based on smart meter signals that are automatically linked into the utility’s outage map, guiding priorities for deploying repair crews, Beal said. As repairs proceed, the utility is also able to “ping” meters remotely to verify where and when power has been restored. ‘They certainly improve recovery time,’ Beal said, ‘without a doubt. They help to improve the efficiency of the restoration.’”

Here in Texas, we are prone to two main types of extreme weather conditions: hurricanes on the coast and tornados on the plains. Over the past few years we have witnessed the increased intensity of both in Texas and across the US. In 2008, When Hurricane Ike struck Houston as a Category 4, nearly 99 percent of residents lost power, which is about 2 million people.  After 13 days one-quarter of the residents of the fourth-largest U.S. city still did not have electricity.

In 2010, CenterPoint Energy, the utility in the area, began rolling out smart grid updates and said that future hurricane-related electric power outages should be shorter because of smart meters and other grid improvements. In comments filed by the City of Houston to the Public Utility Commission (PUC), a Task Force Report assembled after Ike identified the installation of intelligent grid technology as the ‘best return-on-investment to improve grid resilience and enable storm recovery system-wide’.  Therefore, the Task Force recommended the acceleration of CenterPoint’s intelligent grid deployment in the Houston area. A more intelligent electric grid, combined with smart meter technology, improves reliability by enabling automated self-healing of the grid, which results in fewer outages and faster restoration times for customers. This is crucial for public safety along the Texas Gulf Coast, and in the Houston area, specifically.

For other non-coastal areas in “Tornado Alley” Texas, cyclones can be truly terrifying and unpredictable, like the tornadoes that swept through the Dallas area in April of this year.  While images of tractor trailers and school buses being lifted and thrown like toys are scary, Texans can at least be encouraged by the example of Alabama Power, “which was slammed in April 2011 by 30 tornadoes across 70 miles with winds up to 190 mph. The twisters left 400,000 without power and thousands of poles, wires and substations damaged or destroyed. But by using its 1.4m smart meters to locate the outages and prioritize repairs, the utility restored all of its customers within a week. It also drives 4 million fewer miles each year.”

Across the country, smart meters and grid technologies are being installed, providing more reliability and efficiency in the event of disasters and during normal operations. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission estimates the percentage of meters in the United States using the new digital technologies increased from 6.5 percent in 2009 to between 13 and 18 percent last year. The IHS consulting firm projects that, by the end of this year, one-third of all meters in North America will be advanced smart versions with two-way communications capability.

Luckily, Texas has 1 million smart meters already installed and is well on its way to 7 million by 2013.

With novel ways of planning, new technologies and innovative infrastructure – from the potential of microgrids enabling community self-sustainability by disconnecting from damaged main grids, and distributed renewable generation letting consumers power back up, to electric vehicles allowing people to avoid the long gas lines and shortages – the future can allow us to be more resilient in the face of catastrophe.

Posted in Climate, Grid Modernization, Texas / Comments are closed

Hurricane Sandy: A Lesson In Risk Planning For The Power Industry

By Miriam Horn / Published: November 5, 2012

Living in New York City through a week of Sandy and her aftermath was a reminder of just how critical electricity is to our lives.

Electricity is the difference between feeling safe in well-lit buildings and streets, or vulnerable in the dark. Between food kept well-preserved in refrigerators and water pumping through pipes, or dinner spoiling and taps gone dry. Between communications and productivity, or isolation and economic losses — which are now forecasted, from Sandy alone, to reach $50 billion.

For some, electric power is literally life or death: heat on

(Credit: Master Sgt. Mark Olsen/U.S. Air Force)

a cold night, access to vital medical services.

The responsibility for providing these essential services rests on utilities. And the gravity of that responsibility – along with a reliance on long-lived and costly assets – has led to a culture of caution. One that has given the power industry pause in moving away from the tried and true methods it has used to generate and deliver power for the past 100 years.

But what the increasingly intense storms rolling across the country reveal is that – sometimes – what seems the cautious path is in fact the most risky.

With an estimated 9.5 million homes and businesses having lost power thanks to Sandy, the utilities faring best at restoring their customers to warmth and safety are those that have begun modernizing their grids with advanced information technologies, and using those “smart grids” to build resilience and reliance on community-based energy resources. I spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this week to discuss our outdated grid and the crucial need for modernization.

We’re already seeing proof these investments can reduce recovery time, keep crews and customers safer, and save lots of money. Thanks in part to federal stimulus grants, a number of utilities are embedding sensors, communications and controls across their networks. On the power lines that it has helped prevent cascading disasters like the one that knocked out power to 55 million people in 2003, when a single Ohio tree fell on a power line. Automated systems can detect a fault, cordon it off and reroute power flow around it.

Digital “smart” meters, capable of two-way communications, have also proved their worth: providing utilities real-time, granular visibility into their networks, without resorting to (often failing) phones or trucks dispatched on wild goose chases.  Programmed to send a “last gasp” signal when they lose power, those meters have enabled rapid diagnostics – pinpointing exactly which homes or blocks were out, where the break had occurred – and expedited repairs.

Baltimore Gas and Electric, for instance, has installed about 10 percent of its planned 1.3 million smart meters. Linked to a “smart command center” borrowed from sister utility ComEd of Illinois (with whom EDF has been working on developing a set of performance metrics for its grid investments), the meters are telling them when their power restoration efforts have been successful or when further troubleshooting is needed. Without smart meters, they’d have to phone customers to ask if the power is back on. In storm conditions, according to Jeannette Mills, BG&E’s VP of Customer Operations, two-thirds of those calls go unanswered, which means they have to dispatch crews block by block across the region. This time, they’ve been able to ping the meters, asking “are you on?” Mills reports “a much higher rate of success getting through to smart meters than we do reaching customers by phone” enabling far more efficient dispatch of crews.

Utilities with smart grids have also kept customers better informed. A Pennsylvania Power and Light customer described to Smart Grid News how the real time tracking enabled by smart meters allowed him not only “to check on repair status for my own home (with crew on site info and estimated time to repair) … but also remotely online check the status of our two rental houses without having to physically drive to each to check them out.”

One of the first utilities to demonstrate a smart grid’s resilience was Alabama Power, which was slammed in April 2011 by 30 tornadoes across 70 miles with winds up to 190 mph. The twisters left 400,000 without power and thousands of poles, wires and substations damaged or destroyed. But by using its 1.4m smart meters to locate the outages and prioritize repairs, the utility restored all of its customers within a week. It also drives 4 million fewer miles each year.

The security benefits of a smarter, more resilient grid have caught the attention of the U.S. military. It has begun installing smart grid technologies on bases so they can function as “microgrids”: decoupling from the commercial grid in the case of a natural or manmade disaster and maintaining vital homeland security operations. The bases will also become reliability resources themselves, capable of supplying power to the grid, or reducing demand, at times when the grid is stressed.

Most importantly, these smart grids will enable the military to meet its aggressive goals for shifting to low-carbon, domestic energy resources, particularly renewable energy on or near bases. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has set a goal for the service to get half its power from renewable resources by 2015. A smart grid will be absolutely critical to enabling the integration of millions of smaller, regional resources, and for managing the on-again, off-again character of the wind and sun.

The Secretary’s leadership reflects his recognition of the greatest risks that come from sticking to our tried and true ways of making and delivering power:  the national security threats posed by climate change. These include the threats we’ve seen this last week, again, from rising seas and extreme weather, as well as the casualties incurred by troops having to protect vulnerable fuel supplies, and the acceleration of instability and conflict warned of in a 2010 DOD report. When it comes to power, the greatest risks will come from failing to be bold.

Posted in General / Read 7 Responses

Watch EDF’s New Video On The Triple Bottom Line Benefits Of Clean Energy

By Jim Marston / Published: October 22, 2012

We launched a compelling video today that illustrates how clean energy is strengthening our economy, creating American jobs, allowing for energy independence and lessening our carbon footprint.

This video shows how clean energy is thriving and seeks to arm policymakers, entrepreneurs and clean energy advocates with success stories to back that statement up. The video features interviews with Helen Brauner, Senior Vice President of Marketing & Strategic Planning for Green Mountain Energy; Congressman Lloyd Doggett, U.S. Representative for Texas’ 25th Congressional District; and Stephen Frank, Electrical Engineer for Xtreme Power.

Like innovations in medicine and telecom, energy innovation shouldn’t be a political issue. But clean energy has suffered from some expensive negative attacks recently.  Not surprisingly, these attacks have mainly come from those who stand to profit from today’s fossil fuel industry – which receives 75 times more subsidies than clean energy sources.

Despite the fact that clean energy has become the “modern-day whipping boy,” it is indeed alive and thriving.  The clean energy sector now creates more jobs than the fossil fuel industry and, just last year, grew nearly twice as fast as the overall economy.

Earlier this year, EDF launched the Energy Innovation Series to promote the role innovation has played in the energy industry and highlight clean energy technologies and new business models that hold the promise of revolutionizing the way we create, transport, manage and use energy.  Throughout 2012, we have highlighted innovations across a broad range of energy categories, including smart grid and renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency financing, and progressive utilities, among others.

See the video and learn more at edf.org/energyinnovation.

After you’ve watched the video, please click here to ask EDF Clean Energy Analyst Colin Meehan any questions you may have. Colin will answer you via Facebook tomorrow, October 23rd, from 4:30-5 pm Eastern Time.

Posted in General / Read 1 Response

Standing Or Elbow Room In The Energy Sector?

By Jamie Fine / Published: October 16, 2012

GridWeek 2012 convened earlier this month in Washington D.C., and as a first time attendee, I left breathless and hopeful – yet confused – by inexplicable lingering complacency.  Unbeknownst to me, by agreeing to be a panelist in two sessions, I was setting up a comparative experiment. For the first panel, I spoke on “New Utility Business Models” to a packed room of the glimmer-eyed new energy intelligentsia, which is what makes GridWeek so exciting. In the later days of the conference, about a dozen GridWeek participants interspersed amongst a room of mostly empty seats to hear my panel presentation on “Smart Grid’s Role in New Air Quality Standards.”      

It would seem that I, and the handful of attendees at the air quality panel, see the productive overlaps between air quality standards compliance, smart grid and new utility revenues.   There are several ways that smart grid provides a value proposition for utilities faced with increasingly stringent air quality regulations, most recently the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule. Here’s a short, but by no means comprehensive, list of both synergies and potential tensions:

  • Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS): Smart grid supports achieving higher and higher proportions of intermittent, non-dispatchable renewable electricity generation.   Achieving high levels of RPS will be expensive unless we can use new strategies to manage intermittency and power quality.  New pricing structures for utility services can provide incentives to invest on both sides of the meter, and open the door for historically hidden utility services (such as voltage regulation) to be priced and sold.  For incumbent utilities, there is an opportunity to identify and price network services that traditionally have been bundled into rates.
  • Electric Vehicles (EV):  EVs are an important new frontier for utilities, and like most frontiers, offer both promise and peril.  Overloaded distribution networks might keep the utility engineers up at night, while the emerging new customer class has utility shareholders thinking like venture capitalists.  Though still small in number, EVs are quickly driving utility planners and system operators toward a fork in the road. Do we provide safe reliable service to new and existing customers using expensive dirty methods of the past (i.e., more big power plants) or do we take a deep breath (of cleaner air) and trust in the power of the people by embracing distributed energy resources?  
  • Distributed Energy Resources (DER):  Rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and demand response, collectively known as distributed energy resources, unquestionably can provide the low cost, clean pathway towards both energy independence and a sustainable economy.  However, DER is harder to plan and dispatch, and it threatens the traditional utility business models of incumbent institutions.   In California, net energy metering policy has been an important ignition switch, fueled by the California Solar Roofs Initiative, but these successful policies need to evolve to achieve DER at larger scales.   Again, the key is precisely pricing the goods and services on both sides of the meter.  Utilities should be paid for power quality and storage services provided to owners of rooftop systems, while electricity from those rooftops should be priced fairly to provide incentive to invest.
  • Clean air standards:  Oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter, acidifying compounds and carcinogens, such as mercury, are the power sector’s long-time emissions concerns.  Across the nation, electricity generators must hold permits to pollute and tradable emissions allowances that must be acquired at nontrivial prices.   Starting in 2013, California electricity generation that emits global warming pollution will have an associated cost –carbon allowances in the state’s cap-and-trade program.  Already, polluters in Southern California must acquire emissions allowances for the RECLAIM program, and power plants nationwide must comply with the acid rain emissions allowance program established in the Federal Clean Air Act .  Similarly, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) program puts a price on carbon emissions for nine northeastern states, and the Western Climate Initiative is endeavoring to do the same for West Coast states and Canadian provinces.  These programs use emissions allowances that are fungible and tradable, yet they represent real costs – and thus economic opportunity when avoided.  Pollution pricing is changing business models throughout North America.    But there is more to come.  For example, improved environmental performance enabled by smart grid technologies, such as increasing DER, presents new avenues to meet air quality requirements.  For the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other oversight agencies, the ability to measure, verify and enforce DER is key to granting compliance credit, and such capabilities are increasingly cost-effective with smart grid deployment. 
  • Consumer empowerment:  The mobile phone revolution is a prelude to what may be possible once consumers and producers begin to see true pricing in the energy marketplace.  While load-serving entities can find new revenues through services, consumers and entrepreneurs will be motivated by new ways to make a buck, or avoid spending bucks through unnecessary energy waste. 

The new smart grid business frontier has, in fact, many frontiers.  The California Public Utilities Commission conceived of an electricity ecosystem comprised of smart consumers, smart markets and smart utilities.  Utilities are trying to find their new niche within the ever changing food web, and all ears are perked for new opportunities.  That’s why only standing room was available in the business model panel session at Gridweek.

Meanwhile, in the air quality session of GridWeek, there was plenty of elbow room.EPA is considering flexible strategies for meeting new emissions standards for carcinogens.  Many utilities are operating in permit constrained areas that fail to meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards.  Enlightened utilities are seeing demand-side strategies as increasingly viable with smart meter deployment, and a means to improve returns to shareholders.  Performance-based rate of return can be structured to both reduce sales of energy to customer and to improve utility earnings. 

Gridweek revealed to me that many are educating themselves about new business opportunities, but precious few have the connected the dots to air quality improvements.   If I could, I’d bet on the folks who attended both sessions.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization, Renewable Energy, Washington, DC / Read 1 Response

New Study To Provide Important, Direct Measurement Data On Methane Emissions From Natural Gas Production

By Steven Hamburg / Published: October 10, 2012

While natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels when combusted, methane leakage from the production, transportation, and use of natural gas has the potential to undermine some or all of those benefits, depending on the leakage rate.  Methane is the main ingredient in natural gas and a greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutant many times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal contributor to man-made climate change.

In other words, leaks during the production, distribution, and use of natural gas could undermine, and possibly even overwhelm, the greenhouse gas advantage combusted natural gas has over coal and spell major trouble for the climate.

Up to this point, direct measurement data on methane leakage rates has been limited and subject to wide interpretation and debate.  Some studies have estimated the leak rate to be as high as 7.9%, while others have estimated the leak rate to be as low as 1% for some aspects of the drilling process.  Methane leakage matters, and has clear implications on whether natural gas can be seen as a lower carbon energy source.  To help overcome some of the debate, EDF is working with leading academic researchers and industry leaders from across the natural gas sector to take direct measurements of leak rates to help better define the natural gas leak rate across the natural gas supply chain in the United States.

In partnership with the EDF and nine leading natural gas producers, today the University of Texas Austin (UT) announced the first part of this study, focused on emissions from natural gas production.  The study will help provide a clearer picture of methane leakage rates occurring at natural gas drilling sites around the country.  It is particularly relevant because drilling and completion processes have evolved rapidly in recent years – thanks to breakthroughs in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing – and the knowledge about the methane leaked during this shift has not.

The main objective of this study on production emissions is to obtain scientifically rigorous data from multiple gas producing basins. The study will focus on quantifying emissions from well completions, gas well liquid unloading and well workovers, in addition to other more routine well-site fugitive emissions, the areas of the production process with the greatest leak rate uncertainties

The study is unique in that it brings multiple, key stakeholders to the table to make measurements of emissions at the well pad that will be shared when completed. If natural gas is to become an accepted part of an energy independence strategy, while supporting a clean energy future, it is critical to work together to quantify, and where ever possible lower, the existing methane leakage rate. Such an approach could yield enormous added environmental and health benefits from existing and future natural gas infrastructure.

A research team led by UT, including engineering and environmental testing firms URS and Aerodyne Research, is conducting the extensive field study. Project partners include EDF, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, BG Group plc, Chevron Inc., Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc., Pioneer Natural Resources Company, Shell, Southwestern Energy, Talisman Energy, USA, and XTO Energy, an ExxonMobil subsidiary.

For more information on ways to get sustained benefits from natural gas, EDF published a paper earlier this year titled, “Greater focus needed on methane leakage from natural gas infrastructure.”  Find more at edf.org/methaneleakage.

Posted in Methane, Natural Gas / Read 3 Responses