Energista - Wind - Comments

great commercial :)

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:39:25 -0500

not really sure why his accent is french, if it's a german commercial, but the premise is great!

Penn State

christopher — Tue, 01 May 2007 13:06:33 -0500

Reminds me of the story I put up awhile ago - about Penn State going green with 20% of its electricity purchases.

How Tepid of him!

christopher — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:08:51 -0600

Reducing energy intensity is a nice way of saying, don't stop business as usual technological development. Energy intensity and water intensity has been going down naturally along those lines naturally for decades.

Non-petroleum based transportation reductions? Awesome! We need to switch our oil importation with natural gas importation.

Given the gravity of the looming energy situation, I think the past 6 years will be known as the do-minimum President and do-nothing Congress. I hope this new Congress changes that.

Not so much suspect as preposterous

nickmark — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:42:47 -0600

Your post equates 250 kWh with 4,000 lb of CO2. In other words, it assumes an electrical system that's pumping out 16 lb CO2/kWh. That's an order of magnitude too high; even in MN, where we get on the order of 70-75% of our juice from coal, we've got a statewide average of 1.7 lb/kWh. Looking at your numbers, I think the trouble isn't in converting coal to CO2, as that proportion seems about right, as the idea that generating 250 kWh requires 2100 lb of coal. Fossil-fired generation is inefficient, but not that inefficient.

As far as the equation with driving, the 4,000 lb of CO2 is about right (that is, equal to about 4,300 miles) if we assume the car gets about 20 mpg.

RES Penalty

christopher — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:22:08 -0600

Thanks Jesse, I've been trying to follow what you all are doing out there as well. At a committee hearing, a deputy commissioner from the Department of Commerce said the $.05 per kw/hr was becoming a standard more or less for the standards.

We also have the offramp provision in some RES bills, I'm trying to write an article about that now.

5 cents/kWh penalty

nobody — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 14:03:06 -0600

Thanks for the update on RES efforts in Minnesota, Christopher. I'm actively involved in working on crafting and passing an RES in Oregon (the bill will go to committee in the Oregon Senate in a week or two), and it's interesting to see what other states are doing.

As for the 5 cents/kWh (or $50/MWh) penalty being a bit steep, I think that is pretty standard for states that have adopted penalties (as opposed to alternative compliance payments, or other options for dealing with utility shortfalls). In Oregon, we are considering a $45/MWh penalty, although that may give way to an alternative compliance payment, or ACP instead (or both might be included in the bill, under the assumption that utilities will never actually pay the penalty, the ACP being the more attractive option.

(An ACP allows utilities to pay into an escrow fund instead of facing penalties if they are short in their compliance efforts. The ACP would be set at some incremental amount above the market rate of renewables, say 125% of the average cost per MWh of the most recent contracts acquired by the utility, so as to make it the least attractive option for compliance. It would thus only be used when utilities' good-faith efforts to acquire renewables fail. The escrow funds would be controlled by the PUC and would be used to fund future projects for the utility's compliance, or to fund other renewables projects).

Also, I was interested to see that the proposed REO allows the PUC to move or waive compliance targets for utilities. We considered that option in Oregon, but thought that such a provision would create giant loopholes in the RES. Plus, we'd have to trust the PUC to be strict about it's interpretation of what was "not in the public interest." We instead opted to include a specific cost cap offramp provision that lets utilities off the hook if the combination of the above market costs of acquiring renewables (either power or renewable energy credits), or paying the ACP, would equate to 4% above the utilities total revenue requirement - that's all pretty 'wonky' I realize, but essentially the provision would prevent rates for any utility from increasing by more than 4% due to the RES, unless the utility wanted to do so voluntarily (and got PUC approval). We found that writing an explicit cost offramp into the bill was preferable to leaving it up to the PUC.

Anyway, great to see that not only are more states adopting Renewable Energy Standards, but states with existing RESs are also expanding and strengthening them (i.e. California, Texas, Arizona, and now hopefully Minnesota). Cheers,

Jesse Jenkins

please share

nobody — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 15:21:14 -0600

If you have more accurate numbers, please let me know. I used a set of numbers from the EPA that might be out of date now.

Shea

Other podcasts

nobody — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:34:23 -0600

Another resource for podcasts about sustainability is Social Innovation Conversations at www.siconversations.org. Enjoy!

Info

christopher — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 13:25:25 -0600

I plan to focus on this and comment on it as soon as I finish my work for the semester (with luck, will be done on Friday). Until then, you can listen to Pawlenty's podcast on this energy initiative (12 MB mp3) which I found via his podcast list.

C-BED? CREB actually

Timothy DHT — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:51:54 -0600

The St. Peter schools are not actually C-BED projects. They are getting funding through another program called CREB - Clean and Renewable Energy Bonds - which allows them to get large amounts of low interest bonds for the large equity requirements of a large renewable energy project. It's basically a loan, except it's from the government (not sure state or federal) and the term is very well set and interest rates are low, so it's a very good deal. This system does not involve equity partners, it raises the equity itself from the bonding program, and is very good for public entities or other large non-corporate developers - public schools are a great fit.

So it's not really the same as what we're doing at macalester, but whatever the case; Rock on youth wind!

I think there's a cause and effect problem here.

nickmark — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:46:29 -0600

jfarrell is definitely right that it comes down to your goal. The C-BED vs RES stuff caused a big split in environmental groups at the legislature, based on whether they liked wind for environmental or rural development reasons.

That said, I'm not sure I'd see C-BED as slowing down progress towards meeting a hypothetical RES, for a few reasons. One of those is the price. Remember that the C-BED tariff is a _ceiling_, not a floor, so the utility never gives a C-BED project more than 2.7 cents/kWh (NPV). But the real reason is the difference between the policy tools. Remember, the utilities don't have to buy power from C-BED projects; there's no setaside for them (they have to publish a standard C-BED tariff, but they're explicitly not required to enter into those contracts). So they're not going to be diverting cash from other projects in a major way -- C-BED is designed to lower some of the transaction costs for community wind, but not at the expense of utilities.

So my take is, while C-BED might not be a driver for massive expansion of wind in the way an RES would be (it has a different goal, after all), it's not going to be a significant brake on things either (except to the extent that the community development crowd decides they don't need to work on pushing an RES now that they have C-BED, but that's another story). True, if you need 100 MW of wind to meet your RES, you're unlikely to buy it from a series of C-BED projects -- but the existence or non-existence of a series of C-BED projects doesn't change that. As a utility, you're going to enter into C-BED contracts because you like what they're selling. You're going to buy a significant share of wind because the RES says you have to, and you're going to find the cheapest way to do it. Maybe that'll be C-BED and maybe it won't, but I'd say that's more likely to lead to RES-driven purchases driving out C-BED contracts rather than the other way around, but ultimately I suspect it's a wash.

As to the PTC, it's probably more of an issue for larger projects than small ones, given the nature of the credit, but it's definitely going to be an issue for both.

Economies of scale may favor small scale

jfarrell — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:55:48 -0600

I think what it comes down to is your goal, because that definitely changes your perspective. If you want 20% of electricity from renewables, then you're interested in the most efficient way to add large numbers of utility scale turbines to the grid. In that case, the control issues you mention may be the most pressing (sadly, I don't really have an answer). I have read a few reports that suggest that, overall, anything less than 20% generation from wind will not overly stress the grid, but that may not answer which is easier to handle (large wind farms vs. distributed generation).

However, there are a few other ways to look at renewables. Cost effectiveness is one perspective, and there's a great report I've spent some time with on serving large metropolitan areas with wind power that looks at the issues of transmission costs. [Factor, Tom and Tom Wind. “Delivering 2,000 MW of Wind Energy to the Metropolitan Centers in the Midwest.” (Iowa Department of Natural Resources, March 2002).] They find that, in some cases, the extra efficiency at the turbine can be eroded by long transmission distances, especially given the substantial hardware upgrades required. In other words, a local wind farm (even at lower wind speeds) can be more effective.

There's also the question of who benefits. While there's an excellent argument (climate change) for pushing the 20% (and more) as quickly as possible [having just watched an Inconvenient Truth, I have a renewed sense of urgency], there's something appealing about knowing that the revenue from renewable generation (via CBED) will accrue to local landowners. Maybe I've never met Farmer Schmoe from Podunkville, MN, but paying him for my WindSource instead of Xcel Energy is definitely worthwhile. Plus, smaller scale wind production can often make use of excess capacity on local lines or offset local usage. The cost savings from shorter transmission distances and the avoided cost of using eminent domain to claim land for new transmission lines is a substantial savings.

Anyway, at the very least, it seems we can do both. Xcel or Great River or GE can build a 300-turbine wind farm in SW Minnesota and make giant strides toward 20% in one fell swoop, but 100 MN farmers with turbines can do add a small portion while providing rural economic development. It's a win-win.

Wind energy at MN High Schools

nobody — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 13:43:12 -0600

Not wholly related, but:

http://www.proctormn.com/placed/story/11-29-2006elec.html

one small correction

nobody — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:38:42 -0600

Oregon has also decoupled...

Great post.

Speaking of NJ

shadoweyes — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 22:39:02 -0600

If interested in what New Jersey is doing with solar power, a recent Renewable Energy Access podcast discusses the New Jersey Clean Energy Program (CEP). The link has both the audio file, which you can listen to on your computer, and a text blurb about the discussion.