Massive, Explosive ... Micro-Curtailment

July 06, 2009

This is a story about how you can curtail people's AC without them noticing, and the big opportunity this represents to do a little micro-curtailing.

We had an air conditioning problem in the pretty new building we'd just turned over (fried a variable frequency drive motor on the building's only air handling unit). The building occupants were sweating, we were sweating. 

We fixed the problem, but the following morning it was already 75 degrees in a couple of rooms (in Texas in June); temperatures were forecast above the century mark that afternoon. Our panicked owners were concerned that we hadn't really fixed the AC, and that those rooms would get into the upper seventies as they hosted a national theology conference. It was simply unacceptable that they'd have rooms with temperatures in the upper seventies.

Dirt Bag

July 01, 2009

Mostly I don't go to ads that sit blog-side (do you? how many people actually click into an ad, and then how many of those actually buy something? do internet ads generate enough revenue to justify?). Anyway, the Sun Chips ad drew me in, and next thing I knew, I was watching this video, which explains that in 2010 it will be okay to put the Sun Chips bag in a compost heap.

Widespread compostable packaging. What if Americans started using five such bags a day? That's 1.5 billion bags a day, 548 billion bags a year. Shovel these bags into the dirt around the house instead of hauling them to the landfill, and that is some decent amount of garbage truck gasoline not used, with the receiving soil being the richer for it.

The bags also promise to use less during manufacturing, as this Packaging Digest article suggests: "The company anticipates that the switch will lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the production of the packaging and the elimination of petroleum-based packaging material."

Less petroleum to make it. Less petroleum to make it go away. 

(Responding to urges, I bought Sun Chips two times in two weeks, after not buying them for two years. Look down and to the right. Is the Sun Chips ad there? I think it makes people buy Sun Chips.)

Photo: Fallout75 on flickr

The Present Gale of Creative Destruction

June 27, 2009

Incessently destroying the old, incessently creating the new...the perennial gale of creative destruction. What if Joseph Schumpeter's core tenant of capitalism, creative destruction, is working us on intertwined fronts, with failures of:

• organizations, as Schumpeter originally applied the concept
• systems: financial, manufacturing, state and national governments
• paradigms, particularly our energy paradigm

Maybe the pain and dislocation we are currently experiencing is a welcomed course correction, necessary to adjust to the inexorable tectonic shift taking place beneath us.

Photo: Katherine Sanderson on flickr
  
  

Matchmaking, Better Place and the Mileage Fee

June 21, 2009

Here's a little marriage that wants to be arranged: the Mileage Fee and Better Place's software platform.

The Mileage Fee offers a unique opportunity to put the traffic jam on a diet, and it is gaining traction as a way to deal with dissappearing gas tax revenues as people drive less, drive more fuel efficient cars, or eventually drive cars that don't use gas at all (read the preceding link commentary to feel the gaining traction part). To be deployed broadly, however, the mileage fee needs GPS systems to be manufactured into new vehicles.

Shrugging Atlas*

June 19, 2009

The weight of the world is on our shoulders these days it seems, considering the burden of the seemingly intractable energy issues we bear:  swelling populations that harbor swelling aspirations to dramatically increase their energy use, national security insecurities and doubts about the security of energy supply, the depletion of finite fossil fuel resources, climate change and the things we might not know about costs to the natural systems that sustain life, wild swings in the price of fuel. Ugghh.It's bad. Really bad.

But maybe bad is the best thing that could happen to us. Maybe being hemmed in by problems sets the stage for particularly excellent creative response. As Margaret Boden suggests in her Stanford treatise creativity and unpredictability: "constraints, far from being opposed to creativity, make creativity possible. To throw away all constraints would be to destroy the capacity for creative thinking."

Twitter is the New Blue Jeans

June 16, 2009

The thing about blogging about energy is that you can talk about anything you want and it will somehow end up being a discussion about energy. 

It appears twittering is helping to do the dirty work of fomenting dissent, and dissatisfaction with the status quo, in oil-rich Iran. Like blue jeans helped to tear down the walls of the Cold War Soviet empire. 

Solar Endowment

June 10, 2009

Learning last week that an entire sports stadium in Taiwan is to be powered by solar made me dig up an concept from way back in 2003 (when renewables weren't really on the public radar yet) to put solar in a performing arts center project. The only occasionally used public facility is the perfect venue for the net plus facility (net plus being a building that exports power, whereas the zero energy building aims to not import power). Here's the bones of the concept:

I Have a Secret

June 02, 2009

There's a growing story out there that wants to be told: how the electric vehicle, the green building and the smart grid are inexorably coming together, making something as bold and transforming as the personal computer and the World Wide Web. The modern day equivalents of Timothy Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are out there now, launching this big huge vibrant "it." 

So where is this story amidst all the rehashed, twice baked, lame-o stuff on the TV and internet? How come no one is scrambling to get this story out? Who will tell this story?

Solar-Powered Sports Coliseum Gets Net A-Plus

May 31, 2009

Here's an idea for a power plant: the solar-powered sports coliseum. What if you skinned an entire stadium with solar such that it could satisfy its own ginormous appetite for power when filled with spectators, but when idle (which is usually often) its solar panels could still be at work, making and feeding electricity to the grid? Sports facility as power plant. A colossal idea not likely to be done anytime soon; a rich fantasy beyond the pale.

Feebate Debate

May 21, 2009

With a new national fuel economy standard that will require cars to achieve 39 miles per gallon by 2014, comes the issue that vehicles will cost consumers an additional $600 to $1,300, and automakers will struggle to make money on the gas misers they'll need to sell to meet the standard. Even though the vehicle purchase cost would be partially offset by fuel savings, this is typically not part of the car buyer's calculus.

Could the feebate be of assistance here? The fee in feebate goes to the gas guzzler, rebate to the miser. The feebate is applied (in concept at least) so that fees and rebates are balanced; it's revenue neutral. No one gets rich here, but no one gets hurt either (thinking about automakers in particular), and the fuel economy standard becomes a little more achievable.

Smart Garage

May 17, 2009

Consider these rather large silos of development:

• the electrification of cars
• renewable energy 
• smart, interactive buildings that use less energy (and sometimes even produce energy--the trend towards net zero and net plus)
• a smart, interactive electrical grid

The Big Payback

May 13, 2009

    

David and Barbara Spires are now enjoying electricity made by solar panels that hang over a shade pergola at the back of their house. In Texas. Where electricity is cheap and you don't see much solar. But with new utility rebates and federal tax credits, solar is starting to make sense in Texas. Here's how David explained their cost:

"Our 3500W system ... cost about $25,000, or about $7.15 per rated watt, including installation.  That's gross costs.  The Oncor rebate amounts to $2.46 per watt, reducing the net to about $16,500.  The federal tax credit of 30% further reduces the net to about $2.60 per watt...about $9,000."

Converging on the Road We Go

May 10, 2009

Robert Samuelson's Washington Post op-ed "The Bias Against Oil and Gas" articulates a divide on how we see our energy future: oil versus clean energy. Samuelson draws an implied "choice between promoting renewables and relying on oil" from Obama's statement that "we can remain the world's leading importer of oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of clean energy." But really there is no divide. Really, each is focusing on separate elements of the same, integrated challenge. Like blind men calling out their impressions of the elephant, Samuelson has his arms wrapped around a sturdy leg; Obama, the trunk. Getting from here to there relies on legs and trunk. We need both.

It's Sunny in Texas

May 01, 2009

Solar is everywhere these days it seems. The Pope's getting it. California put up a record 78 megawatts last quarter. Chicago Southside is readying the largest urban install to date. But it was surprising to learn that widespread solar may come to Texas, where sunshine is abundant, but electricity is cheap. Two people in one week got me to thinking that solar, which has always had trouble making the payback cut, might be ready for Texas.

On Tuesday David Spires (a structural engineer who I'd worked with on a project) sent a link to TV channel coverage of the PV installation at his house, part of local utility Oncor's demand side reduction program. On Thursday, I met Anthony Fernandez, who I'm working with on a project (his company, Axium Solar, does building automation controls wiring, but also does renewable installations, including, coincidentally, David's). 

Get You A Good Energy Broker

April 23, 2009

How's it going to work with the Smart Grid, cars plugged in everywhere, and little mom and pop energy producers all over the grid, just tryin' to make a buck? There's a growing concern that it is a little more sinister than the affable scarecrow on the wires is singing it to us. An article in Business Week notes that consumers are worried that the Smart Grid, and the fluid pricing it implies, creates an opening for utilities to enrich themselves at the expense of the consumer: hey're leery of giving utilities the ability to change electricity prices on the fly, jacking rates up on hot summer days, for instance." Utilities, on the other hand, may be leery of giving up their warm, safe fixed rates, which give predictability to their business modeling and forecasting.

Fritz to Barack: "Buy My Volt"

April 19, 2009

If I were new GM CEO Fritz Henderson, and I had Barack Obama breathing down my neck , I'd stick it back in his court:

"You want a substantive recovery plan for GM, you want to end our dependence on foreign oil, you want to address climate change, you insist that there will be an American automobile industry, and you own the largest vehicle fleet in the world, so...

Buy my Volt."

One big fat obstacle to getting electric vehicles out there is that auto makers need to know demand is going to be there. So why not get the one organization that can guarantee plenty of demand to buy in, even as it slays some of the other hefty dragons on its slate? 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Power Company With More Brains, Less Brawn

April 18, 2009

When electricity comes from distributed renewables, there is less for the power company to do. In a distributed renewables world, people make their own power and for the most part use it where they make it. But power companies exist to make and distribute that power, so the bothersome renewables are encroaching squarely on the the power company's raison d'etre. Where is the business model, the profit motive, for the power company in such a world?

I'm not sure power companies have this figured out, which puts the exciting scent of opportunity in the air. Is it possible that those who do figure it out profit handsomely, maybe even as consumer costs go down? What if power companies became more like banks? Power companies might end up making better money managing and distributing power that is created by others (just as banks seem to make excellent money managing and distributing the stored value, the cash, that is created and owned by others).

Right? For the utility, there's less heavy lifting (building and operating and maintaining power plants and transmission lines) but more thinking (analyzing and efficiently and dependably allocating the power from so many distributed production points). Add to this the additional layers of thinking required by the Smart Grid, by electric vehicles, by an electrified rail system, by the often intermittent and increasingly diverse sources of supply offered by renewables, and you start to see the utility of the future as more brains, less brawn...a scrawny, geeky, googilian smart power company that is laughing all the way to the bank.

Photo: Kevin Corrigan on flickr . See why Kevin's friend Jake wears The Flash uniform here.

Fifteen Percent is Much More Than Five Percent Bigger Than Ten Percent

April 11, 2009

An email from the yahoogroup SolarAustin makes this observation:

"Starting this month, Wal-mart’s Texas stores are meeting 15% of their energy needs with wind power. Austin — with decades of effort in clean energy — today has only about 10% of its energy mix from renewables."

If you had to choose one to be the clean energy point leader, Walmart would be the choice, given its volume, geographical reach, and the fact that its business model gets so much attention. 

Walmart's fifteen percent is more than Austin Energy's ten percent, and probably leveraging by example to be much more. 

The Most Important Mistakes Are Made On the First Day

April 04, 2009

"The most important mistakes are made on the first day of the project." This durable piece of thinking from the world of the architect and builder underscores the importance of setting off in the right direction. The cost of being a few degrees off, of setting up on the wrong bet, can multiply painfully as a project progresses. 

We are at the whistle clean beginning of so many monumental projects: the Smart Grid, the recharge grid for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, an array of renewable options, electric rail, the mileage fee; none existed at any sort of scale, even in our imagination, at the turn of the century. Yet all are being conceived and planned and implemented at a torrid pace, right now. We are ripe for making our biggest mistakes... RIGHT NOW.

Take the vehicle recharge grid. Several companies are developing charging stations and the attendant infrastructure for cars (Better Place, Electricite de France, Portland General Electric). If they got distracted by their focus to emerge from the array of technical possibilities with the best solution, or to be victors in the marketplace, we might make the important mistake of overlooking what is best for broad implementation of a charging infrastructure for cars. 

For example, not standardizing the charging station interface (the plug and the receptacle) to let any car use any station, the world over. Different car makers, different grid operators, maybe dozens of plug and receptacle types. A confounding interoperability impediment avoided simply by clicking a few degrees right or left, by agreeing to collaborate around a standard.  From the missed opportunity to collaborate, a recharge grid with features so messy and costly that a decade and a million charging stations down the road it is dismissed by the fickle consumer, with no marketplace victors.

Hopefully, attitudes like Better Place founder Shai Agassi's will permeate these undertakings. (When Wired asked Shai whether he was worried that competitors might steal his ideas, he responded: "The mission is to end oil, not create a company.") From such visionary underpinnings, the ventures launched today may well be driven by minds geared to avoid the most important mistakes. 

The most important mistakes are made on the first day of the project.

We are on the first day of the project.

Photo: W.J. Cendak II showing just a little of the iron and muscle that follows the first day of the project, bringing up a tower crane.

Blessed Are the Deal Makers

March 29, 2009

We are in the creative throes of bringing on new ways to fund renewables: feed-in tariffs, towns directly purchasing the means to produce wind power, corporations making large, direct purchases of wind from utilities. So will a burgeoning market for renewables entice more deal makers into the ring?

I spoke with Kevin Meyer, who creates deals on behalf of the independent crude oil producer, and who harbors notions of transforming a company from being strictly an oil and gas dealmaker to, more broadly, an energy dealmaker. Kevin spends a good part of his day reviewing market conditions (NYMEX prices, commodity futures, local and regional trade differentials) to get the best market value for his clients' crude. While they focus on producing the oil (and ranching and whatever else they do during the course of a day), Kevin works the details of getting their oil to market (arranging trucks to haul it from ranch to refinery, inking the deal between producer and refiner, making sure his producers get paid), in addition to fetching the best price for their stuff.

Here's the opportunity Kevin is toying with: the land that produces oil is often the very same land that could produce  wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy. There's an opportunity to bundle his services. The resources he expends to develop a relationship with an oil producer could do double or triple duty on behalf of deals for, say, wind and solar produced from that same land. Two or three deals for the price of one. What's more, as oil productions ramps down (oil production reached its peak in the U.S. in 1970), renewables can ramp up, providing stability and continuity for the energy maker and the dealmaker.

Here's how Kevin sees it:

"In order to be competitive in the rapidly changing energy market, I would like to find ways to market the pending alternative fuels industry to prospective clients, municipalities, or whatever lies ahead. By using the land that the crude oil and natural gas fields encompass, there is a great potential to involve potential investors and producers to piggyback wind, solar, geothermal sources to aid in both energy demand, and to jockey for increased revenue from renewable resources.  Crude oil/natural gas will not disappear overnight, but by using foresight and creative business modeling, ensuring profits for the future of our company and our clients, we can find a way to incorporate old and new sources of energy to provide a seamless future."

Not a bad deal for the deal maker, and all the rest of us who would benefit from his dealings.

Photo: Georg Hoermann on ipernity