Green Wombat

illustration: Inland Energy

The California Energy Commission has greenlighted an application to build the U.S.’s first solar-natural gas hybrid power plant in Southern California’s High Desert. The plant will be built on a former Air Force Base outside Victorville – about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles – and would integrate a 50-megawatt solar trough power station into a 500-megawatt natural gas-fired plant. Solar energy would produce 10 percent of the plant’s electricity during peak demand times to lower greenhouse gas emissions from the facility, according to the application. The project is being developed by Newport Beach’s Inland Energy for the city of Victorville. "We felt there was a direct analogy between the way renewable resources are used and hybrid cars," Inland Energy executive VP Tom Barnett told Green Wombat.  "Electric cars have their limitations but hybrids have taken off. We felt same concept applied to a power plant. We have a solar power plant with the reliability of a combined natural gas cycle plant. We set out to figure out how to integrate solar thermal with gas."

The Victorville 2 plant will use solar trough technology. Fields of parabolic mirrors heat oil or another liquid to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. Several solar trough power plants built in the nearby Mojave Desert in the 1980s and ’90s by Luz continue to operate. Some of those plants use natural gas to extend their operating time – say, when its cloudy or when the sun begins to set. So why did Inland Energy decide to make solar a relatively small part of its plant rather than the main power producer? Reliability, says Barnett. "We really didn’t like that idea because we wanted the ability to provide a baseload plant." In other words, Victorville 2 will generate power 24/7. While the plant will supply electricity to the local area, it also will connect to the grid operated by Southern California Edison (EIX), the utility that powers Los Angeles. "We have the best solar resources in world located in close proximity to one of world’s largest cites," Barnett notes.  "The fact that we’re just over the hill from L.A. makes this a valuable resource."

And building a solar-powered conventional natural gas plant means that that it may qualify for a federal investment tax credit. The solar component will also be attractive to California’s investor-owned utilties, which must get 20 percent of their electricty from renewable sources by 2010 and 30 percent by 2030. "We hoped initially that we would have been able to put a much larger solar
facility in the overall plant, but we felt 50 megawatts was the optimal
ratio," Barnett says, noting it may be possible to eventually expand the size of the solar fields at the plant, set to begin operation in 2010. He sees opportunity to build more hybrid plants or retrofit existing plants that supply power to PG&E (PCG), San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) and other utilities. "There’s a land rush on for solar," he says. "Everyone’s looking at this."

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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.

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California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in to his second term today and, fittingly, the week’s inaugural celebrations  highlighted green power.  The governator, of course, has shown how a red politician in a blue state could win a landslide re-election by turning green. Thus, Thursday’s "Leading the Green Team" event was reportedly carbon neutral. Electricity was supplied by a generator powered by bovine biogas – methane extracted from cow manure at Joseph Gallo Farms using digester technology from Microgy. The company earlier this year signed a deal to supply bovine biogas to California utility PG&E (PCG). Additional power came from a second generator fueled by biodiesel made from soybean oil and a 3-kilowatt solar panel array from Silicon Valley company Akeena Solar. According to PG&E – a Schwarzenegger supporter and backer of California’s landmark global warming law – the alternative energy sources cut in half the greenhouse gases usually emitted at such events. To make the inaugural shindig completely carbon neutral, PG&E said it was purchasing carbon dioxide reductions from van Eck Forest, a Humboldt County woodland certified as a carbon sink. Now if they could just do something about the governor’s Hummers. 

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photo originally uploaded by ukidlucas

The California Energy Commission has released a report on a program that transforms cow manure into power by extracting methane – a potent greenhouse gas – from bovine poop and using it to fuel electricity-generating turbines. The conclusion: Cow power can make money for dairies and make them energy self-sufficient as well as provide electricity to the grid. But – there’s always a but – the Byzantine regulatory structure that favors entrenched utilities is frustrating the widespread adoption of bovine biogas.

Cow power is an alternative energy fuel that should be the perfect solution to a host of environmental problems. It takes cow manure, a widespread source of global warming – there are a couple million cows in California alone – and an environmental waste that costs farms millions of dollars a year to dispose of, and turns it into a clean, green source of electricity. As Green Wombat wrote about Vermont’s use of cow power, there are also other environmental and financial benefits.

The California Energy Commission report shows that there’s cash in cow crap. For instance, the 9,900-cow Hilarides Dairy outside Tulare in the Central Valley has installed a state-subsidized methane digester system that could provide all its electricity from cow manure. In November, the dairy saved $15,547 in electricity costs. But as was the case with other dairies reviewed by the report, the Tulare farm has been reluctant to fully ramp up cower power. Why? For one thing, there’s no system in place that lets dairies sell excess power they generate to Pacific Gas & Electric (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and other California utilities. That discourages dairy owners from spending the money to operate methane digesters. Second, the state’s "net metering" law – which credits dairies for excess electricity they generate – is so convoluted and stacked in the utilities favor as to make investments in cow power a risky bet.

The bottom line: If you’re going to invest in alternative energy like cow power, you need to make an equal, if not greater investment, in making sure there’s a level regulatory playing field. When it comes to energy, there’s no such thing as a free market.

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