Consumers Commandeer the Smart Grid

October 28, 2009

Well, okay, they didn't really commandeer it, and it's really more about smart metering than smart grid, but, this is an interesting, inexpensive offering that helps you see how you're using electricity. The EnergyDetective (TED) provides instant feedback on your electricity consumption, which can help you trim electric bills by ten to twenty percent. To put a TED in my house would be about $240, so a ten percent utility bill savings would mean the TED pays for itself within a year.

Car Batteries, Dreamers and a Voice of Reason

October 17, 2009

The dreamers are dreaming up the Holy Trinity, a vision where electric vehicles, smart buildings and the smart grid come together in a synergistic marriage that transforms the way we use energy; that lets us ditch the oil-powered car. It is an intoxicating view that offers to solve multiple problems, and create whole new worlds of human enterprise and purpose. But the dream is hampered by at least this issue: finding a cost effective, production scale energy storage solution to help power those electric vehicles. Current thinking focuses on the lithium ion battery.

John Peterson, an energy sector lawyer focused on "guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process" offers a sensible, constructive critique that the electric vehicle actually derails our quest to end our oil dependency. 

Sequestering Carbon: the Answer Could Be at Our Feet

September 26, 2009

Went to a meeting of the North Texas Energy & Environment Club, a well attended affair with a nice mix of students, staff and faculty from the University of North Texas. Met Greg Hawk, who whispered in my ear that he knew a little something about a process (possibly carbon negative, possibly market worthy) that would sequester carbon in an agrichar (see biochar). I leaned in. He said "I'm sure you're familiar with pyrolysis." I nodded yes, because maybe this is something that I should be familiar with (and, assuming I caught the word correctly, I would look it up later, so when I nodded yes what I really meant was that I would become familiar with pyrolysis shortly).

Hmm? What? No one told me about a new, carbon negative way of sequestering carbon. The last time I paid attention to carbon sequestration, it was all about deep sixing CO₂ in the Marianas Trench or the Norwegian North Sea, which came with big price tags and fretting about the CO₂ leaking from its sequestered places. Now it appears we can just burn up some agrichar and throw it in the dirt, where it remains, inert and sequestered.

Appliance Makers are the Good Guys

September 15, 2009

Toby Considine calls himself an "integrator of the un-integratable." He works as an infrastructure analyst, an in-house consulting resource to the Facilities Services group at the University of North Carolina and occasionally advises building owners and engineering companies on business strategies.

In a recent blog, Energy Collisions and Autonomous Appliances, he points out that appliance makers, "are starved for information," particularly when it comes to pricing energy in applicances that work in a smart grid. As Toby sees it, the appliance makers are the good guys and the energy suppliers the curmudgeon defenders of old world, fixed-price electricity. The energy suppliers need to give it up, and provide the price signal information the appliance makers crave.

How to Buy the Road

September 14, 2009

The mileage fee is a sensible plank that belongs in any platform developed to remake the way we use energy. Among its other virtues, the mileage fee creates a way to incentivize efficient use of a constrained resource: the road.

In Bern Grush's dedicated to exploring the mileage fee (where he responds to this "PowrTalk") he identifies a complex of purposes that would try to shape road policy, then argues that the mileage fee is the one tool capable of addressing them all:

The Complex of Purposes

[1] The move to improved or alternate power plants makes the gas-tax less useful every day. Mary Peters put it best: “Relying on the gas tax is like relying on cardboard to keep the rain out – the longer you use it the less it works.”

Battery Swap, Time Me

September 13, 2009

Better Place has a deal with Japan's government and the country's largest taxi operator to work out the details of doing a battery swap on an electric vehicle. 

Two things worth noting:

• Government support creates a welcome landing spot for Better Place, that could foster opportunities for the hosting country to produce and enjoy the technology Better Place deploys.

• Using a taxi company makes sense because it subjects the battery swap testing to the rigors, to the discipline, of an operational business enterprise. There's an implicit litimus test of being at least as quick as a gas station fill-up, and a taxi operation will demand that the swap meet this test.

Photo: Better Place on flickr

How to Buy the Road

September 12, 2009

The mileage fee is a sensible plank that belongs in any platform developed to remake the way we use energy. Among its other virtues, the mileage fee creates a way to incentivize efficient use of a constrained resource: the road.

In Bern Grush's blog dedicated to exploring the mileage fee (where he responds to this old PowrTalk post) he identifies a complex of purposes that would try to shape road policy, then argues that the mileage fee is the one tool capable of addressing them all:

Big Fat Roof

September 01, 2009

Oh yeah, the guy with the big fat walls? He has a big fat roof too. Three quarter inch concrete shingles that contribute to his skinny little utility bill. 

When neighbors replace their roofs on account of hail damage, he doesn't. 

Big Fat Walls

August 31, 2009

Went Saturday to the house of a guy that's in the concrete business, and he has big, fat concrete walls. So big and fat that he says they have an R-value of fifty something (most commercial construction walls use materials that have R-values of, maybe, 19). (Which means the wall assembly has an R-value of less than 19 because of gaps between the stuff that's rated R-19--a concrete wall wouldn't have stud gaps and fewer of the other gaps that you get in a typical wall). 

He expected a five year payback, but got it much sooner (granted, he might of gotten a deal on his concrete supply). He said his utility bills are thirty percent of his neighbors, who have equivalently sized houses.

I'm interested.

His big, fat concrete walls were made with concrete insulating forms. The drawback? It's hard to move walls if you didn't think things through.

The upside, though, is pretty tantalizing.

And, consider this: you'd probably be more comfortable in a big fat wall house if you were Alyssa Danigelis trying to live without AC for the summer.

Photo: ramon2002 on flickr

Mecca Still Searching for the Holy Grail (An RMI Trip Report)

July 29, 2009

Went to mecca last week: the Rocky Mountain Institute's World Headquarters -- missed the turn, again: least pretentious entrance to the most important place, ever (below left).

And while RMI HQ is much transformed from an initial visit in 2007 (added photovoltaics, battery backup upgrades, piped in borrowed light for RMI's previously darkish corridor), here's what struck me: even the place that houses the premier think tank on how to get from here to there with energy, isn't there, yet. To wit: they have two spaces reserved for plug in electric vehicles, but no plug ins, yet (below right).

They put in a Johnson Controls building automation controls system to measure the things that use energy in the building (a Smart Grid precursor) but aren't pressing limits, yet, in a robust, smart grid kind of way. 

Maybe RMI is so busy launching fresh ventures the world over that they scarcely have time to make their own place a leading edge showcase. Or maybe the hardware of the Holy Grail (smart cars, smart buildings, smart grid) is so fresh, that RMI's headquarter's is even yet at the front of the pack. 

RMI appears to be working the holy grail out intellectually, but still doesn't have the grail in its grubby hands. We are at the daunting moment when the future is tangible, but not yet implemented.

The iconic RMI greenhouse bananas, also waiting to ripen. 

Photos: Me, or Bochman on flickr