Utility Nightmares: Distributed Generation and Halving Electricity Consumption

While many utility executives attribute much of their predicted market challenges to the rise of photovoltaics and net metering, they actually have much more to worry about.

In a 2013 survey of global utility companies by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the results revealed that the utility industry leaders anticipate major changes to their business model in the near future. Ninety-four percent of international industry representatives surveyed predict that the power utility business model will be either completely transformed or significantly changed between today and 2030, while only 6 percent expect that the utility business model will stay "more or less the same."

In North America, 40 percent of respondents believed that utility companies' means of making a profit will see major changes over the next two decades. A strong majority — 82 percent — of North American respondents also said future energy needs will be met by a mix of traditional centralized generation and distributed generation, which feeds power from a mix of sources.

But while renewable on-site energy generation offers a major challenge to the electric utility business model, the lower capital cost energy efficiency approaches, will be the hardest hurdle. Not only because the initial capital costs are lower, the payback is faster, and the energy savings are huge. In fact just four effiency options can cut building electricity use by 50 percent, and there are many more options than what I cover here.

Smart Thermostats and Controls: 10 Percent Reduction

The city-owned electric utility, Austin Energy, (Austin, Texas), gave away 90,000 programmable thermostats over a dozen years, at $250 a piece, totaling $19 million, the largest thermostat giveaway in the U.S. Each thermostat unit had a radio controller that gave Austin Energy the ability to change the home's temperature., which wil help Austin Energy work toward a goal of shaving 800 megawatts off its peak load by 2020. A researcher at Lawrence Berkeley, said even the most perfectly managed thermostat can't reduce a typical home's energy usage by more than about 10 percent.

Since then, as David Ferris at EE News pointed out, the big boys have jumped into the market. Lowe's, a national home improvement chain, rolled out a $299 package that includes a front-door keypad, thermostat and door-opening sensors that can all be managed with an app. Comcast Corp. has a thermostat that it claims can lower a home's energy use even if the dweller never touches it. Home-security companies Vivint Inc. and Alarm.com are selling connected thermostats, as is ADT Corp., which thinks temperature control is key to its expansion into smart home networks. Most significantly, Google Inc. recently bought Nest for $3.2 billion, the second-largest acquisition by one of the world's largest tech companies. Ferris noted, “By comparison, Google paid only half as much for YouTube, the world's leading platform for online video. In the words of John Steinberg, a co-founder of EcoFactor, a Nest competitor, "Google wouldn't have paid $3.2 billion just to get a thermostat company."

Lighting: Minimum 10 Percent Reduction in Building Energy

But there’s more. A lighting technology revolution is underway with both LED lights, computerized lighting controls, and solar daylighting (the technology that uses lenses and reflectors to bring in full spectrum light without the heat gain).

EIA reports that early 40 percent of total U.S. energy consumption in 2012 was consumed in residential and commercial buildings, or about 40 quadrillion British thermal units, and over a third of that (34.6 percent) was for lighting in buildings.

EPA’s Energy Star states that LEDs use at least 75 percent less energy than incandescent lighting, saving on operating expenses and reducing maintenance costs becayse they last 35 to 50 times longer than incandescent lighting and about 2 to 5 times longer than fluorescent lighting — no bulb-replacements, no ladders, no ongoing disposal program. And for solar daylighting, the results are even greater.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) goes even further, stating LED efficiency is as good as or better than fluorescent lighting. The DOE estimates that switching to LED lighting over the next two decades could save the country $250 billion in energy costs over that period, reduce the electricity consumption for lighting by nearly one half, and avoid 1,800 million metric tons of carbon emission with over 20 LED studies.

Solar Water Heating (And Others): Minimum 9 Percent Reduction in Building Energy

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) also reports that 17.7 percent of our energy is for heating water. And solar water heating should meet 50-80 percent of that water heating load, according to the DOE. Waste heat from geothermal heat pumps or cogeneration and CHP systems can reduce that even further, meaning even more cost-effective options for consumers.

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Smart Grid Evolution: A New Generation of Intelligent Electronic Devices

The idea of a “smart grid” has taken center stage — an evolution of advanced technologies that make the availability of a smarter, more efficient electrical power grid possible. These technologies aim to address the complex challenges facing grid systems today, which stem largely from its aging infrastructure and a use case model that has evolved over the years. With power systems over a century old, the field instrumentation on the grid is quickly reaching its life cycle limit, which adversely affects overall grid reliability and efficiency.

With a use case model designed to support the needs of heavy machinery and light bulbs alone, traditional devices on the grid are not prepared to meet modern energy demands, increases in distributed energy sources or changing grid requirements and standards. As a result, there is a lack of support for modern advancements such as computers, fluorescent lights or electric vehicles. This is largely because the grid is based on vendor-defined and closed hardware and software platforms that make it extremely challenging to adapt as grid requirements and standards evolve.

Thus, a re-evaluation of current grid architectures is required where basic automation devices are brought to a higher level of intelligence to enable distributed data acquisition and decentralized decision-making. A new generation of intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) is rapidly being deployed throughout the power system. These devices are equipped with advanced technologies that make two-way digital communication possible where each device on the network is equipped with sensing capabilities to gather important data for wide situational awareness of the grid. Utilizing computer-based remote control and automation, these devices can be efficiently controlled and adjusted at the node level as changes and disturbances on the grid occur. Additionally, these IEDs not only communicate with SCADA systems, but among each other, enabling distributed intelligence to be applied to achieve faster self-healing methodologies and fault location/identification.

At the heart of these advanced devices for the smart grid lies the powerful technology of the FPGA. Once seen as a technology only available to engineers with a deep understanding of digital hardware design, the dramatic advancements in the capabilities and levels of integration of this technology are changing the rules of IED development for smart grid applications.

At the highest level, FPGAs are reprogrammable silicon chips that offer the same flexibility of software running on a processor-based system. However, due to their truly parallel nature, FPGAs are not limited by the number of processor cores available. Additionally, they do not use operating systems and minimize reliability concerns with true parallel execution and deterministic hardware dedicated to every task. Each independent processing task is assigned to a dedicated section of the chip and can function autonomously without any influence from other logic blocks. As a result, the performance of one part of the application is unaffected when additional processing is added.

Figure 1. FPGA circuit – includes a flexible hardware architecture with logic functions and DSP blocks

FPGAs exceed the computing power of computer processors and digital signal processors (DSPs) by breaking the paradigm of sequential execution and accomplishing more per clock cycle. With the ability to control inputs and outputs (I/O) at the hardware level, FPGAs provide faster response times and specialized functionality to closely match application requirements.

Furthermore, FPGA technology powers the embedded instrumentation and control systems for the latest generation of IEDs on the smart grid, yielding additional flexibility and reliability, which enables convergence of multiple functional devices into a single unit, lowering the cost of smart grid systems as a whole. As FPGAs are incorporated into virtual instrumentation platforms, this represents a fundamental shift from traditional hardware-centric instrumentation systems to software-centric systems that explore computing power, productivity, display, and connectivity capabilities of popular desktop computers and workstations. Virtual instrumentation platforms that utilize FPGA technology, such as National Instruments CompactRIO hardware, are able to incorporate future modifications to keep pace with power grid requirements that are continuously changing. Thus, as IEDs for the smart grid mature, functional enhancements can be made through the use of open software and modular hardware without the need to modify the board layout or replace the entire device.

Figure 2. Virtual Instrumentation combines productive software, modular I/O, and scalable platforms to enhance system performance and efficiency.

Virtual instrumentation platforms are being used to develop the latest tools and technologies for the most advanced power quality analysis, which ensures that the power going to electrical power systems are suitable to operate properly. Power quality is critical for the stability of power systems and proper operation of systems/equipment connected to them; without the proper electrical power quality, these systems/equipment can malfunction or fail. Thus, power quality is a major concern for everyone involved in electrical power systems including consumers (domestic and commercial), electrical utilities, industrial facilities, standards and research organizations, and instrument manufacturers.

As an example of a virtual instrumentation device used for electrical power system analysis, the measurement of synchrophasors has become significantly useful for real-time assessment of grid health. Phasor measurement units (PMUs) quantify the flow and phase separation on the grid by measuring the frequency, amplitude, and phase angle differences from multiple points on the grid as these are synchronized using high precision GPS time references. These synchronized measurements increase situational awareness across wide-area power systems, which makes it possible for grid operators to improve the evaluation of grid stability, detect and react to issues before outages occur, and “heal” the grid quickly when faults take place.

Traditionally small-scale and limited to transmission systems, PMU deployments were hindered by system complexity and other limitations associated with network communication, performance, and data management issues. However, with recent breakthroughs in smart grid technologies, advanced PMUs are being developed for deployment worldwide and for integration into distribution networks.

For example, at the University of Bologna, researchers are actively working to create PMUs that acquire data at higher sample rates and measurement precision/quality to accommodate the reduced line length and lower power flows present on the distribution grid. These PMU designs are based on CompactRIO FPGA technology, which provides the necessary high sampling rates and high-fidelity measurements combined with a real-time processor that can handle multiple tasks in parallel without compromise. Such a platform enables customizability that gives distribution systems the capacity to evolve and adapt to changing requirements down to the silicon gate array-level.

Through the advanced capabilities of the FPGA technology combined with tools such as NI LabVIEW system design software, developers at the University of Bologna were able to rapidly implement time-critical algorithms for filtering and signal processing into their designs so that their PMUs could be successfully used in a noisy, low amplitude power distribution infrastructure. Utilizing virtual instrumentation platforms based on FPGA technology and a graphical system design approach, researchers at the University of Bologna were able to achieve shorter response times, better bandwidth utilization, and faster functionality field upgrades, resulting in decision-making and intelligence that is truly integrated with the grid.

Advanced PMU technology is just one example of how power engineers are finding more effective ways to meet smart grid application challenges by adding more flexible and multifunction IEDs to smart grid systems. As smart grids evolve and continue to require real-time monitoring and control of the electrical power grid, experts around the world predict that in the next 3-5 years there will be an increasing need to embed distributed intelligence into transmission and distribution networks. From protection devices such as smart reclosers and sectionalizes to automated metering devices and substation asset monitoring systems, advanced IEDs will proliferate along power systems. Ultimately, providing additional insight into the real-time health status of the grid, enhancing control power/performance with self-healing capabilities, and optimizing response to grid disturbances with distributed intelligence.

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Report: 59 GW generation capacity coal-fired plants should retire; Could open door for renewable energy

The comprehensive report is one of the ten States with the most coal-fired generation plants, which should be taken into account for the final: Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Michigan, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, Mississippi and Virginia. (see graph below).

The report also shows that southern company, one of the largest private utilities in the country, followed by the State of Tennessee Valley Authority, Duke Energy, American Electric fired the most coal power and FirstEnergy owns generating plants for your retirement.

To determine the economic competitiveness of a coal plant, the UCS compared to coal-fired generation after the installation of a plant of modern pollution controls costs with the costs of the generation of a new natural gas-fired plant. If the cost of the coal plant was greater, it appeared ready to retire. Many in the report identi­fied ripe for retirement generators are more expensive than wind power with or without the extension of the production tax credit (PTC). The UCS considers even a modest price for CO2 emissions for the analysis.

See below diagram and description.

UCS analysis reveals that low natural gas prices and a price for CO2 have to expand the largest influence in the pool of the coal-fired generators as ripe for retirement and extend the federal tax credits for wind power is also important. Alternative scenarios could affect search three external factors, the coal-fired generating capacity as ripe for retirement. In the core analysis (far left) compares the low estimate (dark blue alone) the operating costs of coal generators with the operating costs of a new plant of NGCC; the high estimate (combined dark blue and light blue) compares the costs of coal generators systems with the operating costs of existing NGCC. The Middle three bars repeat the analysis for hypothetical scenarios in which natural gas prices could be lower 25 percent or 25 percent, or where could set a price of $15 / tonne on CO2 emissions. For the wind energy scenario (far right), the analysis shows that expires the capacity of coal-fired generators as ripe for retirement, when federal tax credits for wind power are permitted (dark green) or extended (dark green and light green combined).

"Our analysis shows that switching to cleaner energy sources and energy efficiency investments often more economical than billions to obsolete coal-fired plants, the life extend," said Steve Frenkel, co-author and Director of the UCS of the Midwest offices reports. "Regulators should more utilities to check carefully, whether the taxpayer through old coal-fired plants in the retirement and the promotion of electricity produced from natural gas and renewable energy sources such as wind would be better. "Issuance of billions of old coal-fired plants can easily upgrade be throwing good money after bad."

According to the UCS possible, this uncompetitive generators in the retirement presents a historic opportunity, a transition to a clean energy economy to accelerate the protection of public health, CO2 emissions and diversification the electricity mix.

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DOE reports potential for wave and tidal power generation

DOE published on 18th January two resource reviews indicate that waves and coastal tidal currents at the U.S. much could contribute electricity generation. Particularly high potential for wave energy development has the West Coast, including Alaska and Hawaii, while there are great opportunities for the wave energy on the East Coast. In addition, parts of both coasts have strong tides, which could be used to generate energy. In combination with other analyses, these evaluations show that water power 15% of U.S. electricity by the year 2030 could.

Of electricity per year about 4,000 terawatt hours (TWh) uses the United States. DOE estimates that the maximum theoretical electrical generation generated by waves and tidal currents around 1,420 TWh per year could be about a third of the country's total annual consumption. Although not all of the possible resource identified in these realistic assessments can be developed, a new water power development, highlighting opportunities still significant results are specific ways, to the 6% that already the nation power out to expand hydropower resources.

In addition to the wave and tidal resource reviews plans DOE of additional resources of assessments for ocean current, ocean of thermal gradients and new water power resources in the year 2012. To support the development of technologies that can tap into these massive resources, DOE's water is power program a detailed technical and economic assessment of companies to more accurately predict a variety of water power technologies, the opportunities and cost of development and deployment of this innovative technology. The program supports more than 40 demonstration projects that will advance the commercial readiness of these systems; provide first-of-a-kind performance data that will verify the cost of energy predictions in the water; and to identify ways for great cost savings. Progress, see the DOE attention and water power program website.

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Susanne Nies, one of Europe's Foremost Thought Leaders in Power Generation Gives her Findings on a gas Powered Future

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LONDON, October 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Susanne Nies, Head of Unit Energy Policy and Power Generation at EURELECTRIC, along with Anders Eldrup from DONG Energy and a prestigious faculty of many other senior leaders in Europe's gas-fired power generation industry, will be presenting an innovative conference programme at Gastech Specialist Events' Gas-to-Power Europe Forum, taking place in Berlin, Germany on 23-25 January 2011.  

The Forum will focus on both technical and commercial opportunities and challenges driving the growth of gas and will bring together leading European gas and power companies to discuss developments in an interactive and stimulating discussion.  The programme will focus on the latest projects that are underway or in operation, as well as strategies for future developments, taking advantage of the opportunities to maximise the growth of gas as a key resource for power generation.

Issues to be discussed include:

The future of European gas-fired power generation in the light of recent nuclear / shale gas developments and forecast of likely European new-build CCGT power plants
Quality of gas - securing reliable sources, assessing the impact of increased suppliers, the role of LNG and potential unconventional resources
Pricing and contract negotiation for gas infrastructure and feedstock - short-term / long-term implications and EU legislative influence
Potential "hybrid" developments with renewables, especially during peak time generation and the technology achieving this
Gas as a "clean fuel" amongst more carbon-intensive sources and the EU stance on renewables targets - is 40% renewable energy in Europe by 2020 feasible?
Technologies and practices to increase efficiency in CCGT and co-generation power plants  

Other high profile speakers include:
Achim Zerres, Head of Energy, Bundesnetzagentur, German Regulatory Authority; Arnoud Kamerbeek, Director of Projects & Business Development, Nuon Energy;  Dr. Gerald Linke SVP Competence Centre for Gas Technology & Energy Systems , E.ON Ruhrgas; Thomas Birr, Head of Group Strategy, RWE Group AG, and many more!

We recently interviewed Susanne for one of our Gastech Specialist Events podcasts, which will be available to download at the website http://www.gastopowereurope.com this coming Friday 7 October.

Follow us on Twitter energydmg

For all press enquiries call Neill Howard on +44-203-180-6508 or email neillhoward@dmgevents.com

SOURCE Gastech Specialist Events

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China solar energy generation boost

HONG KONG, Aug 26 Bernama)-China has a target 1 million kilowatts create concentrated solar power (CSP) by 2015, a plan which showed Government Friday as part of efforts to extend the use of alternative energy sources set.

Powered by commodity prices and concerns over air pollution, China has aggressively in the field of renewable energy invested, South of Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported.

According to the Chinese Government the development blueprint for the period 2011-2015 is the land of CSP plants in four Bezirken--autonomous region set up internal Mongolia, Gansu and Shinjang Uyghur of autonomous region of Tibet.

CSP plants produce electricity by converting the energy of the Sun in high-temperature heat with different mirror configurations. The heat is then channeled through a conventional generator.

The Chinese Government is planning to expand its CSP capacity to 3 million kilowatts by 2020.

Recently, China has developed world's dominant player of solar energy. Solar one, based many of the largest solar panel manufacturers in the world, like Suntech, Trina solar and Hanwha in China.

The world market led the low cost of Chinese solar panels it by almost 40 percent 2010 from almost zero in 2005.

The growth in the Chinese solar industry is to support the policy of the Government, due to low labour and cost of capital and aggressive competition.

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Saudi plans crude burn boost for power generation

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