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California licenses nuke-sized solar thermal power plant

Posted in alternative energy, energy, environment, green policy, renewable energy, solar energy, Solar Millennium, solar power plants, tagged , , , on September 17, 2010| 2 Comments »

photo: California Energy Commission

In Friday’s New York Times, I wrote about California regulators’ licensing of a 1,000-megawatt solar thermal power plant, which would be the world’s largest solar energy complex:

California regulators have licensed what is for the moment the world’s largest solar thermal power plant, a 1,000-megawatt complex called the Blythe Solar Power Project to be built in the Mojave Desert.

By contrast, a total of 481 megawatts of new solar capacity was installed in the United States last year, mostly from thousands of rooftop solar arrays, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.

“Given the challenge of climate change at this time, it is very important to reduce fossil fuel use by moving forward with the largest solar project in California,” Robert Weisenmiller, a member of the California Energy Commission, said at a hearing Wednesday in Sacramento after a unanimous vote to approve the Blythe project.

“We’re taking a major step toward reducing the threat of future climate change impacts on the state, and at the same time the other real challenge for the state is the economy,” he added, referring to 604 construction jobs and 221 permanent jobs that the Blythe project would create in an area of California where the unemployment rate was 15 percent this summer.

After years of environmental reviews, the California Energy Commission has in the past three weeks licensed solar thermal farms that would generate 1,500 megawatts of electricity when completed.

A commission spokeswoman said the commissioners anticipated making licensing decisions by the end of 2010 on additional solar projects that would produce another 2,829 megawatts. At peak output, those solar farms would generate the equivalent electricity produced by several large nuclear power plants.

Developers are racing to start construction before federal tax incentives for big renewable energy projects expire at year’s end.

If all the projects are built, they would create 8,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, according to the energy commission.

At peak operation, the Blythe solar complex would supply enough electricity for 800,000 homes. The multibillion-dollar project will be built in four 250-megawatt phases.

It is notable for being the first big solar project to be licensed that would be built on federal land. The United States Bureau of Land Management is expected to decide by the end of October whether to approve the Blythe complex.

The project will be constructed by Solar Millennium, a German developer, and will cover 9.3 square miles in Riverside County in Southern California with long rows of parabolic troughs. The solar reflectors focus the sun on liquid-filled tubes suspended over the mirrors to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine housed in a central power block.

You can read the rest of the story here.

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SolarCity, Tesla to test storing solar energy in EV batteries

Posted in electric cars, energy, environment, green cars, green policy, SolarCity, SunPower, Tesla Motors, tagged , , , , on September 17, 2010| 1 Comment »

In Wednesday’s New York Times, I wrote about two experimental projects in California to store solar energy produced by photovoltaic rooftop arrays:

In the garage of Peter Rive’s San Francisco home is a battery pack. It is not connected to Mr. Rive’s electric Tesla Roadster sports car, but to the power grid.

The California Public Utilities Commission has awarded $1.8 million to Mr. Rive’s company, SolarCity, a residential photovoltaic panel installer, to research the feasibility of storing electricity generated by rooftop solar arrays in batteries.

As rooftop solar systems provide a growing percentage of electricity to California’s grid, regulators and utilities are increasingly concerned about how to balance the intermittent nature of that power with demand.

One possible solution is to store energy generated by solar arrays in batteries and other systems and then feed that electricity to the grid when, say, a cloudy day results in a drop in power production. And when demand peaks, electricity generated from renewable sources could be dispatched from batteries rather than fossil-fuel burning power plants.

“As soon as distributed solar starts providing 5 to 10 percent of demand, its intermittent nature will need to be addressed,” said Mr. Rive, who is SolarCity’s co-founder and chief operating officer.

SolarCity is teaming with Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley electric car company run by Mr. Rive’s cousin, Elon Musk, and the University of California, Berkeley, to study how to integrate solar arrays and off-the-shelf Tesla lithium-ion battery backs into the grid. SolarCity plans to put such systems in six homes.

“We think in the years ahead this will be the default way that solar is installed,” Mr. Rive said. “Getting the costs down, though, is not going to be an easy task.”

Homeowners could potentially benefit by tapping batteries at hours when electricity rates are high or using them to provide backup power if the grid goes down.

The research has just begun, and at the moment SolarCity is testing the impact of charging and discharging electricity from the Tesla battery pack in Mr. Rive’s garage. His roof sports a three-kilowatt solar array.

“We’re at the point now where we can direct the battery to charge and discharge at specific times by sending a signal over the Internet,” Mr. Rive said.

Included in the $14.6 million awarded for solar energy storage research by the utilities commission was $1.9 million to SunPower for a project that will store in ice and batteries electricity generated by solar arrays at Target stores.

SunPower, a Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturer and power plant developer, will work with Ice Energy, a Colorado company that makes systems that use electricity when rates are low to form ice. When rates are high, air conditioning refrigerant is cooled by the melting ice rather than by an electricity-hogging compressor.

The Ice Bear system and a solar array will be installed at one Target store while battery packs will be used at two other stores in California.

You can read the rest of the story here.

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Department of Energy targets energy efficiency scofflaws

Posted in energy, Enterprise Holdings, green policy, tagged , , on September 15, 2010| 1 Comment »

I wrote this story for Grist, where it first appeared.

The federal energy efficiency cops are on the beat – finally.

For the first time in 35 years, the United States Department of Energy is moving to enforce decades-old energy efficiency and water conservation standards for products like refrigerators, light bulbs and shower heads.

On Monday, the Energy Department said it had filed enforcement actions against 27 companies for failing to certify their products comply with energy efficiency and water conservation regulations.

“As a part of its mission to help consumers purchase energy efficient products that will save them money, the Department sets energy efficiency standards for a vast array of consumer and commercial products,” wrote Scott Blake Harris, the Energy Department’s general counsel in a blog post Monday. “But when I arrived at DOE, I was stunned to discover that the Department had never systematically enforced DOE’s 35-year-old energy efficiency standards.”

“The problem, of course, is that lax enforcement of energy efficiency standards undermines the goal of increased energy efficiency,” he added. “When efficiency standards are not regularly enforced, bad actors soon learn that they can gain an unfair economic advantage over law-abiding competitors by falsely or improperly certifying the efficiency of their products. This not only distorts competition in the short-term, but it undermines the kind of long-term competition that drives innovation.”

The Energy Department filed complaints against companies ranging from ASKO, the Swedish maker of upscale appliances, to Duralamp.

But the enforcement actions announced Monday will hardly make chief financial officers tremble.

General Electric, for instance, faces a maximum fine of $252,140 for not certifying that some dehumidifier models comply with energy efficiency standards. But the Energy Department proposed a civil penalty of $36,500 and informed GE —  and other companies targeted for enforcement — that it would drop the case for $5,000 if the global conglomerate agreed to settle within 30 days and come into compliance.

Likewise,  Sanyo faces a maximum fine of $3.5 million for 58 violations involving its refrigerators and freezers. The proposed penalty is $316,333 but the Energy Department will settle for $10,000.

The Energy Department says that as a result of its enforcement program it has removed from the market 66 products that violated energy efficiency standards and filed a total of 75 enforcement actions to date.

“Before our effort, the number of products that had been removed from the market was zero,” noted the department’s general counsel.

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Sports leagues team with enviros to push solar on stadiums

Posted in alternative energy, corporate green, corporate sustainability, energy, environment, green tech, Natural Resources Defense Council, renewable energy, solar energy, tagged , , , , , , on September 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I wrote this story for Grist, where it first appeared.

Talk about sporting greens: On Wednesday, all of the United States’ professional sports leagues said they would distribute a guide on how to switch to renewable energy and urge their teams to solarize their stadiums.

The guide was prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation and marks a new alliance between environmentalists and the nation’s baseball, football, hockey, and soccer teams.

“It’s not a league mandate, it’s not a requirement for stadiums and arenas to install solar panels, but it indicates an important cultural shift recognized by professional sports that all arenas and stadiums in the country should at least consider and evaluate the opportunity that solar power might provide,” Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the NRDC, said during a conference call Wednesday.

“Frankly, sports matter. Sports matter a lot,” he added. “Sports is one of the most iconic and influential sectors of our society and frankly we need to have a cultural shift as well as a technical and economic shift if we’re going to advance and move to sustainability.”

In other words, if Jill Six-Pack sees that the Yankees have gone solar she might consider doing the same.

“We really have the ability to shift the dial,” said Darryl Benge, the assistant general manager of Qwest Field in Seattle, home to the Seahawks and Sounders. “We basically bring together small cities on game day.”

Representatives from the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and other stadiums said that economics as well as the environment were pushing them to go green.

Benge noted that Qwest Field’s electricity rates had jumped 18 percent this year, which played a part in the stadium’s decision to solicit bids to install a 600-kilowatt solar array.

In Los Angeles, the Staples Center flipped the switch on a 345.6-kilowatt photovoltaic system that has so far saved $100,000 in electricity costs, according to Lee Zeidman, executive vice president for operations for the facility.

The Staples Center has gone beyond solar to install waterless urinals that save seven million gallons of water annually, and switched to non-toxic cleaning products.

Other teams have tackled the waste issue. Scott Jenkins, the vice president of ballpark operations for the Seattle Mariners, said the team has saved $1 million over three years by recycling 80 percent of the waste generated at games.

Gary Betteman, commissioner of the National Hockey League, said 30,000 shopping bags were replaced with reusable totes during the Stanley Cup, and he noted that several NHL venues have installed solar panels.

Stadium managers acknowledged that sports’ biggest carbon footprint comes from fans driving to and from games. The challenge, they said, will be to get more fans to take public transportation as well as to build arenas in urban areas with accessible mass transit.

For his part, Hershkowitz said he was astounded that it has taken the environmental movement 40 years to forge a strong alliance with professional sports.

“If you want to change the world you don’t emphasize how different you are from everybody else,” he said. “You focus on your similarities.”

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Report: PG&E smart meters not to blame for high bills

Posted in energy, green grid, green policy, green tech, PG&E, smart grid, smart meters, tagged , , on September 2, 2010| 1 Comment »

On Thursday in The New York Times, I write about an independent report that finds that PG&E’s smart meters are not responsible for higher utility bills incurred by some customers:

After Pacific Gas & Electric, the giant California utility, began installing smart meters in the state’s Central Valley, the company was swamped with complaints from residents that their utility bills had increased.

But an independent review of the smart meters released Thursday found that the devices were functioning properly and attributed the high charges to a heat wave last year that coincided with their installation as well as poor customer service by P.G.&.E.

“They are accurately recording usage and throughout our evaluation we found no systemic issues,” Stacey Wood, an executive with the Structure Group, a Houston consulting company, said on Thursday at a meeting of the California Public Utilities Commission. “We did identify there were weakness in the focus on customer service.”

The utilities commission hired the Structure Group to conduct test P.G.&.E’s smart meters and conduct a technical review.

The digital devices wirelessly transmit data on a home’s electricity and natural gas usage to utilities while allowing residents to monitor their electricity consumption in real time. Smart meters are considered a linchpin for the development of a smart power grid and tens of millions of the gadgets are set to be installed nationwide in coming years.

But the rollout has been anything but smooth in California, where nearly 10 million smart meters will be deployed.

“By the fall of 2009, the C.P.U.C. had received over 600 smart meter consumer complaints about ‘unexpectedly high’ bills and allegations that the new electric smart meters were not accurately recording electric usage, almost all of which were from P.G.&E.’s service area,” according to the Structure Report.

The consulting firm said it then tested more than 750 smart meters in the laboratory and in the field and reviewed utility account records for 1,378 customers, including those that had complained of abnormally high bills.

“Of the 613 smart meter field tests, 611 meters were successfully tested, and 100 percent passed average registration accuracy,” the report stated.

The study attributed some residents’ higher bills to a 2009 heat wave in Kern County as well as increased electricity usage due to new swimming pools or additions to their homes.

Then there was P.G.&E.’s handling of the controversy.

“P.G.&E. processes did not address the customer concerns associated with the new equipment and usage changes,” the report said. “Customer skepticism regarding the new advanced meter technology was not effectively addressed by P.G.&E. on a timely basis.”

You can read the rest of the story here.

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California Legislature passes energy storage bill

Posted in energy, environment, green policy, green tech, PG&E, renewable energy, solar energy, solar power plants, tagged , , on September 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I wrote this story for Grist, where it first appeared.

The California Legislature has passed the nation’s first energy storage bill, which could result in the state’s utilities being required to bank a portion of the electricity they generate.

Assembly Bill 2514 now heads to the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has made climate change and green technology his political legacy as his final term winds down.

Energy storage is considered crucial for the mass deployment of wind farms, solar power plants, and other sources of intermittent renewable energy, as well to build out the smart grid.

On the West Coast, for instance, the wind tends to blow hardest at night when demand for electricity is low. If utilities can store that wind-generated power — and energy from solar farms — in batteries, flywheels, and other devices, they can avoid building and firing up those billion-dollar, greenhouse gas-emitting, fossil-fuel power plants that are only used when demand spikes.

AB 2514 won the support of Jerry Brown, the California attorney general who is the Democratic candidate for governor. The Sierra Club and union groups also support the measure. Various business organizations, including the California Chamber of Commerce, opposed the bill.

Sponsored by Assembly member Nancy Skinner, a Berkeley Democrat, the bill was stripped of its more stringent provisions by the time it emerged from the legislative sausage-making process on Friday.

Originally, AB 2514 required California’s three big investor-owned utilities — PG&E, Southern California, and San Diego Gas & Electric — to have energy storage systems capable of providing at least 2.25 percent of average peak electrical demand by 2015. By 2020 the target would rise to at least 5 percent of average peak demand.

The bill now only requires that the California Public Utilities Commission determine the appropriate targets — if any — for energy storage systems, and then require the Big Three utilities to meet those mandates by 2015 and 2020. Publicly-owned utilities must set energy storage system targets to be met by 2016 and 2021.

Still, AB 2514 is a significant step and could ultimately help jump-start the market for energy storage, which remains in its infancy.

PG&E, for instance, plans to build an experimental facility that would tap electricity generated during peak wind farm production to pump compressed air into an underground reservoir. When demand jumps, the reservoir would release the air to run electricity-generating turbines which are capable of producing 300 megawatts of power.

And last week, PG&E proposed building a “pumped hydro” storage system. As its name implies, the system would pump water from one reservoir to another reservoir at a higher elevation during times of peak renewable energy production. Water in the upper reservoir would then be sent back downhill to power a turbine when electricity demand begins to spike.

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Fannie/Freddie: Homeowners must pay off PACE solar loans

Posted in energy, energy efficiency, environment, green policy, renewable energy, solar energy, tagged , , , , on September 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

photo: Sonoma County

In The New York Times on Tuesday, I wrote about the latest nail in the coffin of Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, programs:

Many homeowners who participated in a program that let them repay the cost of solar panels and other energy improvements through an annual surcharge on their property taxes must pay off the loans before they can refinance their mortgages, two government-chartered mortgage companies said Tuesday.

The guidance came from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as efforts to resolve a dispute over the program — called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE — have failed.

Approved by 22 states, the programs let municipalities sell bonds to finance improvements in energy efficiency. Homeowners typically pay back the loans over 20 years through an annual property tax assessment. As is the case with other property tax assessments, a lien is placed on the home that has priority over the mortgage if the homeowner defaults.

In July, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie, effectively derailed the program when it issued guidance to lenders stating that the liens violated the agency’s underwriting standards. Fannie and Freddie buy and sell most of the nation’s home mortgages.

That guidance led to the halt of most PACE programs and left in limbo those homeowners who had already taken out energy improvement loans.

On Tuesday, Fannie and Freddie issued guidance to lenders stating that borrowers with sufficient equity in their homes must pay off the loans before refinancing. Those homeowners without enough equity to take cash out of their home to pay off the lien can refinance with the loan in place.

“Fannie Mae will not purchase mortgage loans secured by properties with an outstanding PACE obligation unless the terms of the PACE program do not permit priority over first mortgage liens,” according to the guidance.

The program’s proponents have argued that it overcomes obstacles to installing expensive solar panels and making other energy efficiency improvements that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while creating jobs.

In response to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s actions, the California attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit in July against Fannie and Freddie, as did the Sierra Club. Meanwhile, legislation has been introduced in Congress to allow the program to go forward.

“It’s absolutely clear now that the F.H.F.A. is not at all interested in working out a solution that would allow PACE to proceed — the agency appears intent only on obstructing the program,” Janill L. Richards, a California supervising deputy attorney general, wrote in an e-mail.

You can read the rest of the story here.

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California’s smart meter fears

Posted in energy, environment, green policy, PG&E, smart grid, tagged , , , on August 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I wrote this story for Grist, where it first appeared.

No one said transforming the century-old power system into a state of-the-art digital smart grid was going to be easy. But California already is getting bogged down in a growing fight over installing smart utility meters in homes.

The wireless devices are a linchpin in building the smart grid as they allow the two-way, real-time transfer of data about a home’s power use. Utilities need that information to balance supply and demand on a power grid that will be increasingly supplied with intermittent sources of renewable energy while facing new demands from electric cars.

For homeowners, smart meters and an expected proliferation of smart refrigerators, dishwashers, and other appliances will help them keep a lid on rising electricity costs while making better use of rooftop solar panels.

But from the get-go, smart meters have raised a ruckus in California. First, residents in the state’s hot Central Valley complained that their utility bills spiked after the meters were installed last year.

Then in the San Francisco Bay Area, a small but vocal contingent has been arguing that smart meter antennas are a potential health threat. Never mind that every other person here seems to carry an iPhone, and many, if not most, homes in this tech-centric region boast wireless Internet routers that continuously transmit electromagnetic frequencies through the ether.

At first smart meters appeared to be a fringe issue — at the Fourth of July parade in the Marin County hippie beach enclave of Bolinas, I saw people holding up ban-the-smart-meter banners. But last week, I spotted similar homemade signs at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market. Meanwhile, the Marin towns of Fairfax and Novato have moved to ban smart meter installations; Santa Cruz County is considering doing the same.

Lost in all the hullabaloo is what a smart meter can do for managing your home’s carbon footprint. There are all kinds of gadgets and services coming down the pike that will let you control your electricity use from your phone and pinpoint the power hogs in your home. But even the most basic information provided by a smart meter is a big leap from a once-a-month bill.

My utility, PG&E, installed a smart meter at my house some months ago but just the other week began to let me monitor my electricity use on its website. If you want to geek out, you can really get granular by charting your power use hour-by-hour, pinpointing spikes and seeing how your lifestyle affects your energy consumption.

This morning, for instance, I learned that 21 days into the current billing cycle I’ve used $11 worth of electricity and that my projected total bill is between $15 and $20. My daily electricity use peaks around 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. and I’m using slightly fewer kilowatts than this time last year. I also set up an email alert to be sent if my electricity consumption kicks me into a more expensive rate tier.

And in the keeping down-with-the-Jones department, I learned that my energy use puts me at the very low end of the Berkeley spectrum.

All this provides valuable insight for the building of the green grid. But as with other efforts to transition to a renewable energy economy, overcoming political obstacles to the smart grid may be just as crucial as any technological triumph.

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Solar eBay: California floats utility auction for green energy

Posted in alternative energy, energy, environment, green policy, renewable energy, solar energy, tagged , , , on August 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

photo: PG&E

I wrote this story for Grist, where it first appeared.

It’s been a big week for Big Solar.

On Wednesday, the California Energy Commission approved a license for the nation’s first new large-scale solar thermal power plant in two decades. Over the next month, the energy commission is expected to green-light three more big solar farms to be built in the Mojave Desert. The projects would collectively generate nearly 2,000 megawatts of electricity. At peak output, that’s the equivalent of a couple of large nuclear power plants.

Less noticed but equally momentous were developments this week on the small-scale solar front.

On Tuesday, an administrative law judge with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a proposed decision that would establish a world-first reverse auction system for renewable energy projects. The idea is to build 1,000 megawatts of decentralized energy generation by allowing developers to bid on projects that would each produce between one and 20 megawatts of electricity. Projects could include small solar farms built on vacant suburban land, or photovoltaic arrays placed on top of wastewater treatment plants or on any other large structures with unused rooftop space.

Think of it as eBay for green energy.

The goal is to accelerate the market for small-scale photovoltaic systems by requiring California’s three big investor-owned utilities to hold auctions twice a year where developers bid on projects that can be built quickly — within 18 months — and plugged into the existing power grid.

By letting the market essentially determine electricity prices rather than the government setting a premium rate to be paid for renewable energy, California hopes to avoid the boom-and-bust cycles that have whipsawed the European solar industry when subsidies have been cut.

“This mechanism would also allow the state to pay developers a price that is sufficient to bring projects online but that does not provide surplus profits at ratepayers’ expense,” utilities commission staff wrote in proposing the so-called reverse auction mechanism last year. “Providing a clear and steady long-term investment signal rather than providing a pre-determined price can create a competitive market.”

While the program would initially set up an auction for 1,000 megawatts, administrative law judge Burton W. Mattson wrote in his decision that that cap could be raised in the future if the auction system is successful.

The proposed decision now needs the approval of the CPUC, which seems a foregone conclusion.

In a sign that there will be no shortage of bidders for solar projects, utility Southern California Edison this week submitted for regulatory approval contracts for eight distributed photovoltaic farms that would generate a total of 140 megawatts.

Most of the mini-power plants will generate 20 megawatts and can be located near utility substations, avoiding the need for expensive new transmission projects.

Southern California Edison also requested approval of contracts for two small biomass power plants and three wind energy projects, one of which will generate 4 megawatts while the other two would each produce 20 megawatts at peak output. Altogether the power purchase agreements are worth $556 million.

The utility said that while it was soliciting contracts for a total of 250 megawatts, it received applications to build projects that would generate nearly twice that amount of electricity.

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California approves first big solar thermal farm in decades

Posted in alternative energy, energy, environment, green policy, NextEra Energy Resources, renewable energy, solar energy, solar power plants, tagged , , , on August 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

photo: Todd Woody

In Wednesday’s New York Times, I write about the California Energy Commission green-lighting the nation’s first big solar power plant in 20 years:

California regulators on Wednesday approved a license for the nation’s first large-scale solar thermal power plant in two decades.

The licensing of the 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project after a two-and-a-half-year environmental review comes as several other big solar farms are set to receive approval from the California Energy Commission in the next month.

“I hope this is the first of many more large-scale solar projects we will permit,” said Jeffrey D. Byron, a member of the California Energy Commission, at a hearing in Sacramento on Wednesday. “This is exactly the type of project we want to see.”

Developers and regulators have been racing to license solar power plants and begin construction before the end of the year, when federal incentives for such renewable energy projects expire. California’s three investor-owned utilities also face a deadline to obtain 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2010.

Still, it has been long slog as solar power plants planned for the Mojave Desert have become bogged down in disputes over their impact on protected wildlife and scarce water supplies.

In March 2008, NextEra Energy Resources filed an application to build the Beacon project on 2,012 acres of former farmland in California’s Kern County. Long rows of mirrored parabolic troughs will focus sunlight on liquid-filled tubes to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.

Some rural residents immediately objected to the 521 million gallons of groundwater the project would consume annually in an arid region on the western edge of the Mojave Desert. After contentious negotiations with regulators, NextEra agreed to use recycled water that will be piped in from a neighboring community.

“It’s been a lengthy process, an almost embarrassingly long lengthy process,” said Scott Busa, NextEra’s Beacon project manager, at Wednesday’s hearing. “Hopefully, we’re going from a lengthy process to a timely process.”

You can read the rest of the story here.

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