Blog Archive for November, 2011
Is the window closing for South Dakota’s wind industry?
A wind turbine near White, South Dakota.
South Dakota’s wind-power export opportunity could be permanently bottle-necked by transmission issues if the state doesn’t act soon, an industry association is warning.
The South Dakota Wind Energy Association (SDWEA) is holding its annual meeting today in Watertown, where it’s releasing a pair of new reports on interstate transmission issues that give a new sense of urgency to the state’s industry.
The good news for the industry: The reports conclude that it could be economical to export South Dakota wind power to other electricity markets like Chicago, Detroit or St. Louis.
The bad news: If wind farm planning and development doesn’t accelerate in South Dakota, it could permanently miss out on the economic opportunity.
“It’s a lost opportunity, forever, and a lot of people don’t understand that,” says Steve Wegman, executive director of SDWEA.
A wave of new long-distance transmission projects, such as CapX2020, is on the horizon across the Upper Midwest. But new capacity on those lines will be assigned on a first-come-first-served basis, says Wegman. Because neighboring state’s policies have been more supportive of wind projects, those states have more projects in the pipeline and could absorb most of that new capacity.
“It appears that North Dakota could take all of South Dakota’s transmission,” says Wegman. “Once they put an interstate past your house and they don’t give you a ramp on it, you ain’t getting on. Ever.”
South Dakota has among the nation’s best wind resources — enough to theoretically generate half of the nation’s electricity needs. Even with its superior wind, however, it lags Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and other states in total installed capacity. As of this summer, it had 784 megawatts of capacity compared to 1,424 megawatts in North Dakota, 2,518 megawatts in Minnesota, or 3,675 megawatts in Iowa.
One factor limiting the state is its small population. The installed wind capacity it has now is enough to generate up to 26 percent of the state’s total electricity demand (more than half the state’s power comes from hydroelectric dams). In recent years, some in the state have started looking into exporting electricity as a way to grow the wind industry.
A 2010 study commissioned by SDWEA and the governor’s economic development agency estimated that a project to export 1,000 megawatts of new wind power would create 5,360 new construction jobs and generate $538 million in total economic activity. It would also require building more than 83 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and other transmission grid upgrades.
Transmission line projects can take decades to plan and build. If South Dakota wants to sell its wind power to other markets, Wegman says its best, and perhaps only, opportunity to do so is by getting wind developments lined up in time to be included on transmission projects that are already in the works.
Miss out on those and South Dakota could be waiting for another generation for similar transmission opportunities. Even then, it’s likely those markets to the east will have already secured all of the power resources they need, says Wegman, noting that electricity demand has been falling. That, he fears, could leave South Dakota’s great untapped wind potential permanently unclaimed.
Wegman says he hopes the report signals to transmission developers that connecting South Dakota wind to eastern markets is economically viable, but the other audience is state policymakers.
“You have to get good government tax policies,” says Wegman. “Just because you have high wind doesn’t mean they’re going to build a wind project here.”
Read the reports:
SDWEA Wind Energy Transmission Economics Assessment – Final (pdf)
SDWEA – Transmission Input from CapX v7 (docx)
Photo by windimages via Creative Commons
A 500-mile electric car?
At the risk of oversimplifying, the reason the vast majority of cars on the road today run on gasoline is a simple matter of energy density. That is, gasoline packs a lot of power into a small space.
Batteries, at this point in time, don’t have the energy density of gasoline. While automakers can now produce electric cars that provide the same comfort and safety of gasoline-powered cars, they simply can’t go as far on a full tank. That’s fine for a daily commuter car, but for people who need to occasionally travel longer distances, an EV may not be a practical option.
Researchers at IBM are attempting to solve this problem by increasing the energy density of batteries, with a goal of producing an electric car capable of traveling 500 miles on a single charge. EnergyNOW has the story:
Efficiency programs aim for our inner Captain Kirk
Energy-efficiency wonks are gathering in Washington, D.C., this week for the annual Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference.
The four-day event is a chance for behavioral scientists and energy-efficiency program managers to swap notes and ideas on the best ways to motivate people to change their light bulbs or upgrade their appliances.
Among the scheduled speakers is Neely Crane-Smith, communications coordinator for Minneapolis-based Center for Energy and Environment. (Disclosure: CEE is a member of RE-AMP, which produces Midwest Energy News; also, my wife has participated as a volunteer in its neighborhood outreach programs.)
“When you look at the history of energy-efficiency programs, these programs tend to have been designed for Spock. The idea is that if you just give people the right information, it’s logical that they will then implement that information,” says Crane-Smith. “But we’re not like Spock. In fact, more people are little more like Captain Kirk. We have lives and families and a lot of things going on and it’s hard to focus just on energy-efficiency, especially if the information is boring or overly technical or difficult to implement.”
Many energy-efficiency programs are now trying to better incorporate behavioral science, or at least the experience of their peers, into their design.
Crane-Smith is a scheduled panelist for a session called “Success Stories of Behavior Programs in Residential Buildings.” She’s planning to share a summary and results from CEE’s Community Energy Services program, a partnership with Xcel Energy, Centerpoint Energy and the City of Minneapolis.
In Minnesota, among people who have a home energy audit conducted, less than 5 percent typically follow-up with a major upgrade, says Crane-Smith. CEE set a goal of getting 25 percent of participants to make a major improvement after their energy audit. They surpassed that goal, achieving an upgrade rate of around 30 percent.
The success starts with free community presentations before any energy audits are conducted, says Crane-Smith. The meetings give people a chance to ask questions and see that others in their community are doing the same thing. Another motivating factor, they believe, has been limited-time rebates for things such as insulation. As the rebate expiration date nears, more people decided to upgrade. The group provides lists of contractors that are qualified to do the work, and they follow up with homeowners by phone after the audits to see if they have new questions.
“When we leave your house, that’s not the last time we’re going to hear from us,” says Crane-Smith.
There are similar home energy audit programs across the country, but they all vary in their approach, from the upfront cost to the homeowner to the size of rebates available for upgrades. One thing Crane-Smith said she and others will be interested in is how those different numbers drew different responses from participants, and whether they can collectively identify a sweet spot that extends program dollars and motivates participants.
A Black Friday sale powered by green energy
A rooftop solar array at a Kohl's store
When shoppers line up for midnight Black Friday sales outside Kohl’s department stores this week, the lights they stand under will very likely be powered by the wind.
Kohl’s, based in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, was recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this month as one of its Green Power Partners of the Year.
The retailer quietly ramped up its renewable-energy purchasing in recent years, from approximately 850 million kilowatt-hours in 2009 to more than 1.3 billion kWh in 2010 — enough to meet 100 percent of its purchased electricity needs.
Among retailers, it’s now the largest buyer of renewable power, beating out companies like Walmart and Whole Foods that put a lot more marketing muscle into their green image. In its rankings, the EPA includes on-site generation such as rooftop solar, as well as renewable energy credit purchases and participation in utility wind and solar programs.
The company’s stores also host more solar arrays than any other retail chain. More than 100 of its 1,100-plus locations generate 20 to 40 percent of their power from on-site solar, which collectively generating around 15 million kWh of power annually.
Like Walmart, Kohl’s is also working with its merchandise suppliers to track sustainability measures. More than 300 suppliers submit quarterly surveys on energy-efficiency and renewable power use.
The company’s sustainability website has an interactive map that lets you look up the location of its LEED-certified, Energy Star-labeled, and solar powered locations. The map below shows states with solar installations:
Pumped hydro not a magic bullet for energy storage
By one estimate, we'd need 2,500 of these to provide storage for the nation's electricity needs.
Pumped-hydro energy storage is a century-old technology that’s increasingly being seen as a tool that could help the nation meet its future energy storage needs.
But it’s likely to play a limited role, according to a UC-San Diego physicist.
As we reported today, researchers at the University of Minnesota-Duluth have spent the past year studying whether abandoned mining pits on the state’s Iron Range could be used for pumped-hydro energy storage. The systems work by using cheap or excess electricity to pump water uphill into a higher-elevation lake or reservoir. The energy can be recaptured later by reversing the flow and sending the water through hydro turbines on its way back down to a lower reservoir.
Tom Murphy, an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, wrote last week in a blog post that pumped-hydro works well in certain locations, but a closer look at the numbers reveals serious practical concerns about its scalability.
As we rely more on intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, we’re going to need a similar increase in energy storage capacity to avoid blackouts and inefficiencies. Murphy thinks we need “a nation-sized battery” that can store seven days worth of renewables to withstand a worst-case scenario of persistent clouds in the Southwest and lack of wind in the Midwest.
Murphy’s magic number (which he explains in more detail): 336 billion kWh.
Pumped-hydro energy storage is efficient in the sense that energy it stores doesn’t degrade over time and the hydroturbines give back more than 85 percent of the power you spend pumping water uphill. What it lacks, though, is density. “For example,” Murphy writes, “to get the amount of energy stored in a single AA battery, we would have to lift 100 kg (220 lb) 10 m (33 ft) to match it.”
In short: it requires a lot of water.
The existing 22-gigawatts worth of U.S. pumped-hydro facilities only gets us 1 percent of the way toward Murphy’s national battery. Achieving the other 99 percent through pumped-hydro alone would require hundreds if not thousands of projects on a scale never before seen, says Murphy.
One hypothetical option: build 170 large 12-gigawatt pumped-hydro systems, each one larger than the Grand Coulee dam. Another way to get there would be with more than 2,500 smaller, 600-megawatt systems. Even those would stand taller than the Hoover Dam and use 19 million cubic meters of concrete each.
The energy cost of the concrete alone would exceed three years of current U.S. energy consumption, Murphy estimates. And the amount of new surface water created by the projects would equal Lake Erie. Then there’s the question of where that water comes from, he notes.
Murphy admits his calculations rely on some assumptions, and that some people believe his seven-day battery is overkill. But pumped hydro’s limitations remain, he writes:
The fact that just one of the ‘small’ dams considered here has as much concrete as the Three Gorges and Grand Coulee dams combined is humbling. I would be impressed if we made one. I would be astounded if we made 25. And this just gets us to 1 percent of our need (or 7 percent if you still bristle at a 7-day battery).
Let’s be clear that I am not making any claim that large scale storage at the level we need is impossible. But it’s far more daunting than almost anyone realizes.
Photo by Brian Norton via Creative Commons
The Bakken boom towns
While the game-changing oil boom in North Dakota is undoubtedly one of the biggest energy stories of the decade, it’s also fundamentally a story about change.
Part of the appeal of life in the rural Great Plains is solitude and constancy. Lack of economic opportunity and isolation are some of the downsides. North Dakota is rapidly gaining more of the latter and losing the former. When a rural area changes this quickly, tensions are bound to erupt.
This week’s episode of EnergyNOW includes a segment on Williston, North Dakota, the closest “big city” to the heart of the oil boom, where the population has already doubled, hotels are booked solid, and fast-food restaurants are having to bring in foreign students to man the counters.
The Minot Daily News also found similar growing pains in the small town of Alexander, with an official population of 200 people and a steady stream of as many as 8,000 trucks traveling through each day going to and from the oil fields.
The comment thread on last week’s “Bakken from space” post is starting to attract some North Dakota residents, and it’s clear that not everyone is happy with the pace of change. For instance:
“ND is going to burn through the oil fast, a few companies will make loads of money, and the folk who were there AND the folks who moved there will be left in the dust when the oil runs out.”
“They should take our way of life into account. All the state and local officials care about is how we are finally the shining star of the US.”
“Unfortuately, I’ll probably never see this town the way it was again, which is kind of a touchy subject that doesn’t get brought up very much.”
“Growing pains are always hard. Be involved in your communities to make possitive changes instead of whining about “the way things used to be” or maybe you want to return to horse and buggy days too?”
At a minimum, “progress” appears to be in the eye (or, more specifically, the bank account) of the beholder. What are your thoughts?
Video: Lisa Jackson on EPA’s role in power grid
While new EPA regulations have been decried by some critics as a “war on coal,” administrator Lisa Jackson explains in this interview with EnergyNOW that the agency’s role isn’t to determine the source of the nation’s energy.
“First off, EPA doesn’t require shutting down of any plant,” Jackson says. “Once EPA sets [pollution] rules, the business has to look at their portfolio and make a decision about whether to invest in [existing power] plants or not.”
“What EPA’s role is to do is to level the playing field, so that pollution costs are not exported to the population.”
The post read ’round the world
Monday’s post on the lights from the Bakken oil field being visible from space has taken on a life of its own.
Former colleague Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio was the first journalist to pick up the post. Then someone submitted it to Reddit, the popular link-sharing site, and the post subsequently showed up on news sites in the UK, China, and Romania.
And German TV news program, Focus, even put together this video segment:
At least, I think that’s what they’re talking about…
Army goes solar at Minnesota training site
Pole-mounted solar installation at Arden Hills Army Training Site (Photo courtesy All Energy Solar)
One of the Midwest’s largest — and tallest — pole-mounted solar installations is being completed this week at a Minnesota military site.
More than 370 solar panels shade, but don’t obstruct, the grounds of the Arden Hills Army Training Site, just north of St. Paul. The 89-kilowatt system will supply an estimated 15 percent of the facility’s power needs.
The solar installation is part of an ambitious, nationwide investment in clean energy by the Army, which announced a goal last fall of achieving ‘net-zero’ energy use by 2030.
The panels were installed atop 31 utility poles, each one standing between nine and 11 feet tall and holding a dozen panels. Most pole-mounted solar systems are only about six feet off the ground, but this installation was taller in order to meet the military’s requirements that the panels not obstruct sight lines or get in the way of military vehicles.
“They want to be able to see everything underneath all of the arrays,” said Michael Allen, co-founder of All Energy Solar, the Prescott, Wisconsin, company that designed and built the solar system.
The array is the largest installed in Minnesota in 2011, and Allen believes it’s one of the largest pole-mounted systems in the Midwest. The raised systems are more expensive, so they’re typically only used where there’s insufficient roof or ground space. The Army hasn’t released a cost figure for the Arden Hills project.
A recent report by The Pew Charitable Trusts, “From Barracks to the Battlefield: Clean Energy Innovation and America’s Armed Forces,” (pdf) highlights a surge in energy investments by the military. U.S. Department of Defense spending on energy-efficiency and renewable energy projects grew from $400 million in 2006 to $1.2 billion in 2009.
What a transmission control center looks like
Back in August, I had a chance to visit MISO’s St. Paul region transmission control center, where engineers and analysts monitor and manage the Upper Midwest’s electricity grid 24-7. They wouldn’t let me take pictures, which was too bad because it was a pretty cool sight, with a two-story tall video screen stretching 30 feet wide across the front of the room.
EnergyNOW! reporter Lee Patrick Sullivan must have asked nicer or been more persistent. The program has a video tour posted on its website of MISO’s Carmel, Indiana, control center. It looks bigger but otherwise similar to the St. Paul center I saw.
My visit was to learn about how wind forecasts are used in planning power generation for the hours and days ahead. In the video, Richard Doying, MISO’s vice president of operations, shows the charts they use to monitor wind forecasts and generation and explains how they have to react to inaccurate wind forecasts much like they would for a generator outage. Watch below:
