Top 10 Renewable Energy Utilities in the US

Electric Power and Light just published the National Renewal Energy Labs (NREL) Top Ten list for Utilities selling renewable energy. Some familiar names continue to be on the list and some new names appear. One surprising ranking was the change in ranking of the top utility with renewable energy sales (megawatt hours /year), Portland General Electric (Oregon) overtook Austin Energy in Austin, Texas, in 2012, selling the largest amount of renewable energy in the nation through its voluntary green power program.

What I found interesting in this article is the wide geographical representation of utilities all over the US. While these utilities sell only a small fraction of the entire renewable energy sold in the US it is noteworthy that these programs are representative of volunteer programs where customers specifically elect to purchase renewable energy.

Here's the entire article

Texas Revises Legislation to allow more CoGeneration - Designers Awaken

If you don't know much about the power system in Texas they are about the only state in the 48 which has their own power grid isolated from their neighbors and it's been more blessing than curse to them. They don't worry about neighboring regional power glitches creating problems for them. Their energy policy is obviously driven by the oil and gas reserves they have which generates nearly all the power in Texas. But the folks in Texas aren't blind to the issues petrol-powered energy has and has a pretty aggressive policy to see a diversified energy production profile for the state.

Recently the legislators did something pretty bold for them, they lessened regulation on CoGeneration facilities. You see the Utility Commission has previously looked at these facilities as small utilities and as such it hampered the development of significant CoGen power where it could really help the grids in TX.

The Texas Legislature recently passed House Bill 2049, which removes regulatory barriers and improves the business climate for cogeneration facilities by clarifying language in the Texas Utility Code. "…this policy change will help the entire Texas grid by relieving grid congestion, increasing grid capacity and reducing the amount of water used in the generation of electricity," said Paul Cauduro, executive director of the Texas Combined Heat and Power Initiative.

See an article on this new legislation here from Fierce Energy

So how does this tie into the issues surrounding the Built Environment and my interests expressed here? Well it's pretty simple. While PV power is nice, it is designed as an add-on system to normal operations and is by it's nature diurnal. CoGen isn't. GoGen systems are designed to recover waste energy and increase overall efficiency by using that waste heat to create more power. Too many times we don't look at our buildings in terms of their waste energy profile. How much energy are our buildings throwing away with single-pass heating and cooling and even the recapture of excess heat in the summer being exhaled from our buildings by cooling systems.

The important thing to realize here these systems have been around a long, long time and even today there are emerging technologies which can absorb more and more excess energy to be either stored and used later or recovered and used immediately to generate power. We do have the technology now, we can use commercially available systems which are designed from residential scale to large industrial complexes. The problem is we are so in love with the PV solar story we have likely forgot some basics of systems design along the way.

My challenge to building design and execution teams is get educated about CoGeneration and it's advantages and educate your client base to it's advantages and quick paybacks and long-term benefits. Our neighbors in Texas have decided CoGen makes sense for their power needs, maybe the rest of us should start looking at CoGen harder and push for easier regulation and implementation in our own back yards.

Low Carbon Renewables as a Function of Area

Many of us have been intrigued by the possibility of alternative power sources to replace the dependence of petro-chemical sources due to their finite limits as opposed to the less finite and potentially more abundant sources from so-called renewables such as solar, wind, tidal and biomass. This past March in Warwick, UK there was a TEDx conference and one of the talks was delivered by Professor David MacKay, a physicist who thinks we should quit shouting at each other about the merits of one solution over another and step back a few minutes and look at the problem of replacing Petro-chemicals with renewables with some arithmetic.

He analyses the issue and creates a data set of consumption as watts/Square meter and then maps that against population density in different countries. A surprising result turns out to be that the UK could be a picture of what might happen to other countries in our world where the areas are small and population density continues to grow.

So, take about 15 minutes and watch the video and then we'll continue the discussion.
TEDx link

 

Liquid Metal Batteries, could they work?

Friday Special

There is a TED talk from the recent Long Beach TED conference presented by Donald Sadoway, PhD of MIT. Dr, Sadoway looked at the issues around electrical storage. His goal was to us common materials, readily available, easy to fabricate and requiring little or no maintenance. Sadoway invents to the price point of the electric utility market. so the results are quickly and easily deployed responding to immediate needs delivering immediate economic benefits. All this meets his mantra "We'll invent our way out of this economic downturn."