Green Wombat

For my Business 2.0 story on the "Interactive, Renewable Smart Power Grid," I had the chance to sit down with Hal LaFlash, director of renewable energy policy and planning for California utility PG&E (PCG). Once the scourge of environmentalists, PG&E has transformed itself into one of the greenest and most forward-looking big utilities in the nation. Which makes perfect sense: During California’s disastrous experiment in deregulation, PG&E largely got out of power production business and now focuses on power transmission. The utility’s revenues are set by regulators so it has no incentive to increase consumers’ consumption of electricity. That means LaFlash spends his time thinking about where PG&E is going to buy its electricity in a carbon constrained world, especially now that California’s global warming law bans utilities from buying power from out-of-state coal-fired plants, currently the source of 20 percent of the Golden State’s electricity. While natural gas-fueled plants will continue to play a big role in providing power – PG&E just broke ground on a 530-megawatt plant, it’s first new power plant in two decades – alternative energy from wind, solar and biomass will be a growing part of the company’s power portfolio as it faces a deadline to source 20 percent of the electricity it sells from renewable energy sources by 2010. But LaFlash is thinking decades down the line, when the power grid looks more like the Internet – distributed, interactive, open-source – than the dumb, one-way network of today that pushes dinosaur molecules from a carbon-spewing power plant to your home.

Take cow power, for instance. California is home to some 1.7 million cows and more than 2,000 dairies, concentrated in the state’s smoggy Central Valley. PG&E has agreed to buy biogas from dairies that have installed methane digesters. The digesters extract methane – a potent greenhouse gas – from cow manure and use it to power electricity-generating turbines to run the dairy or send it via pipelines to power stations.  That in turn will improve the Central Valley’s air quality. "We’re also looking at using orchard trimmings to supply smaller, decentralized biomass plants," LaFlash says. "We’re also doing a lot with marine technologies and wave energy up the coast." He envisions the day when cities themselves become power generators as skyscrapers are built or retrofitted with solar cells integrated into walls, windows and roofs.

One of the more intriguing PG&E initiatives is a program to develop technology to tap plug-in hybrid cars to power the grid during peak demand. (The utility has been talking to Toyota (TM) about building such a car.) Here’s how it would work: if you participate in the program, PG&E’s technology would know when you plugged in your car for recharging – whether at home, work or at grandma’s house. When electricity demand surges, the grid would tap the car’s battery to avoid having to bring power from non-renewable sources online. "It’ll take millions of them to have an effect," LaFlash says of plug-in hybrid cars. "But the size of the California auto market makes this the place to start." Such technology would be part of the coming smart grid, which will communicate with sensors embedded in washing machines, air conditioners and other household appliances to allow power to be distributed where it is needed most.

One renewable energy source you probably won’t see grow in California anytime soon is nuclear power. State law prohibits the construction of new nuke plants until there’s a place to put radioactive waste.