Working For Jobs

The village of Oak Park might seem indistinguishable from its neighbors. A suburb on the western edge of Chicago, it shares a street grid with the city and a sustainability plan with a bordering village, River Forest. But this community of 50,000 people has a historic character all its own — and is the hometown of an impressive range of talent, including Homer Simpson voice actor Dan Castellaneta, Ernest Hemingway, actress Betty White, political advisor David Axelrod, and journalist Tavi Gevinson.

Last year, Oak Park bundled its residential electricity accounts and went out to bid for a new energy supplier. Not only did it end up with a more favorable rate, but the deal included 100 percent renewable energy credits, adding 170 million kilowatt-hours of wind power into the regional grid.

And now, the village has volunteered to be a testing ground for “smart grid” technology that could someday revolutionize the way we generate, transmit, and use electricity. And we’re not talking about just smart meters here — rather, a thoroughly digitized, completely transformed system that is tied into a network of renewable sources like wind and solar, and is capable of “self-healing” during storms and outages.

“Literally every piece of equipment along the way changes,” says Oak Park’s sustainability manager, K.C. Poulos.

The project, which will include a network of small solar-electric systems on residential roofs, is projected to cost between $5 and 6 million, and half of the cost will be covered by the Korea Smart Grid Institute. Oak Park is working with the International Institute for Sustainable Design to secure funding for the rest.

I talked to Poulos for Knope and change, our series about the women behind green changes in our city governments. Here’s an edited version of our conversation about their smart grid experiment. Hat tip to Oak Parker Doug Burke for the suggestion.

Q. Why are you working with the Korea Smart Grid Institute?

A. They did the demonstration on an island in South Korea called Jeju Island. It’s kind of like their Hawaii — it’s a resort area. They were able to put up a demonstration that showed how distributed generation like solar can be connected to a network operations center. All of these houses got battery storage so when you weren’t using your solar power in the house, you could store it in a battery system. When the grid on that island became overloaded with demand, the network operating system could send messages to those households saying, “You need to use to your battery. We’re going to take all of the energy from your solar panels for the next four hours and put them right on the grid. And then we will send you a check next month. Thank you very much for letting us buy your power for four hours.”

Q. You might not even know your house is making you money?

A. Correct, but the system network operating has the ability to send messages to those houses. So you could get a text message on your phone.

Q. For the Oak Park demonstration, do residents have to pay to install the solar panels and smart grid systems?

A. There’s going to be no out-of-pocket expenses for the homeowner. In return, they are agreeing to have the system put in place, to have workers come and work on their houses, and to also give up their energy information to the operating center and to the people running it so we can study how you use your energy given this new system.

Q. What will you be studying?

A. Minute to minute, this system will be collecting data on which of the 200 houses are using what kind of energy. We’re less concerned with, “Oh so-and-so uses her hair dryer from 7:15 to 8.” [Eds. note: So-and-so is either all of Twisted Sister or needs a new hair dryer.] It’s more a matter of what’s the pattern of peak usage; how is the house reacting to different weather conditions; and is the home owner changing his or her behavior?

Q. This is a Glenn Beckian nightmare. Agenda 21! Chicago political machines! How does it feel to be taken over by a foreign entity?

A. This is a collaboration. It’s not the government itself of South Korea that’s working on this — it’s their research institute and their smart grid companies. Their business mission is to create a business model that would allow for the sale of their products. It’s less about Big Brother “we’re going to watch you use your energy” and more about “Hey, what can we sell you?” It’s very consumer-oriented.

Q. Have you gotten much backlash?

A. No. I’ve received hundreds of phone calls from residents who want to join. Keep in mind we’re still finalizing the project. It will be interesting to see what kinds of questions and concerns come up around that very topic of data privacy. That’s a valid issue.

Q. How will the solar and battery energy interact with the grid?

A. There are a couple scenarios a homeowner can choose in terms of how to use it. The one that we talk about the most is this idea of collecting the solar energy during the day and storing it in the battery and then having the house run on the battery at night so you’re completely offline at night and the battery provides a phantom load — your clocks, TV. Your energy load is pretty low at night but that means you’re not taking anything off the grid. So you’re reducing your bill right there.

Then let’s say there’s an outage in your neighborhood. What we want these systems to be able to do is operate off the battery so these houses can stay somewhat energized. It’s only a three kilowatt system on the house so it’s not like you could have every appliance running at the same time. You’ll have enough for lights, fans, and the refrigerator or A/C. But at least you’re online still and you’re not losing an entire freezer of meat.

Q. How often does Oak Park experience outages?

A. The way the utility provides that number is by average number of minutes out per year per capita. The number for Oak Park is 45 minutes per year. What the number doesn’t tell you about is the stories I hear when [residents] call up on day three of still not having power. Then I get calls from restaurants. You’re talking about an entire week’s or month’s inventory gone.

Q. With climate change, that’s bound to get worse as days and nights heat up and stronger storms knock out lines.

A. This is about climate adaptation too — we’re not just looking at consumer benefits. You want the most resilient local grid system you can get. As temperatures rise, the accumulative effects just keep getting worse and worse. It’s not going to wait for us to make up our minds about whether or not we want to update this stuff. It’s going to keep on coming and we are going to be left holding the bag if we don’t have a system that’s redundant, self-healing, and [monitorable].

Q. Why hasn’t aging electrical infrastructure become a national issue?

A. It’s a sleeper priority that flares up in citizen awareness when something goes wrong. For example, Hurricane Sandy: You’re still hearing about sections of Long Island that are not receiving reliable power. Long Island suffered for days and days and days and there are some irate residents out there. But as the power is restored and you get back to your normal life, it goes into the back of your mind again until the next emergency hits. We can’t live like that.

For me, from a national perspective, we need an energy policy that prioritizes infrastructure rehabilitation and reinvestment. Smart grid investment and infrastructure have the potential to provide even more savings and even more efficiency for business owners and residents beyond what you can do in your own building in terms of smart appliances and energy management and putting renewable energy on the building. Having a whole smart grid infrastructure is just like what we went through in terms of changing from landlines to cell phones. Think of all the things we do now with our phones that were not even conceivable in the 1970s.

Q. Why should the average American should care about this stuff?

A. Do I go for the emotional argument? It’s about the children.

Q. It’s always about the children.

A. You want your house to work as smart as your phone works. You want it be intuitive and you want it to be clean energy that’s coming through. We are creating that possibility.

Filed under: Article, Cities, Climate & Energy

View full post on Grist

The unexpected storms that knocked out power to millions in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic last month highlighted how fragile America’s electric grid is. But while front-page photos of fallen trees and utility repair trucks capture people’s attention, there’s a much more grave and fundamental threat to our electric grid.

The U.S. grid system was born in the 1920s, and has seen few major upgrades since the 1960s. With America’s growing population and exploding demand — bigger houses, A/C units, TVs, iThings — we have serious congestion and inadequate capacity on our nation’s power lines. This has led to more frequent power outages, which cost the American economy well over $100 billion each year [PDF]. The inefficiency of our old-fashioned grid also leads to enormous waste through “line loss.” In 2010, 6.6 percent [PDF] of the electricity generated in the U.S. simply disappeared before it could reach consumers. That’s $25.7 billion worth of electrons, lost into thin air.

Investing in grid modernization would clearly save American consumers tremendous amounts of energy and money. So why aren’t we doing more of it?

One reason is that these projects are just plain difficult to carry out. Siting and constructing power lines usually requires a utility to go through environmental regulators and public utility commissions for each state they cross, as well as federal regulators and local governments. Regulations are intended to provide important benefits or protections for ratepayers, communities, public safety, and the environment. But they rarely line up well with one another and are, at times, contradictory.

An equally complicated barrier to grid modernization is figuring out exactly who should pay for it. The power grid is owned and operated by about 500 individual utilities, some large, some small, some private, some public. And the grid is totally interconnected, so if one utility does work to improve its segment, the benefits often flow to utilities and consumers somewhere else. It’s the standard “freeloader” problem.

Despite these challenges, one particularly creative transmission project appears to be threading the regulatory needle –and could possibly serve as a model for other desperately needed grid improvements. If it receives final approval by state and federal agencies, the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) will connect up to 1,000 megawatts of wind and hydro power from Canada and upstate New York to energy-hungry New York City. This renewable energy, when added to the clean nuclear and natural-gas plants that already power the city, will reduce congestion and other strains on the grid — improving service for families and businesses in this service area. In addition to creating 2,000 jobs [PDF] in New York state, this project is expected to reduce acid-rain pollutants by hundreds of tons and lower New York’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 9 percent [PDF]. And perhaps most importantly, CHPE will directly benefit consumers, saving ratepayers a whopping $600 million each year [PDF].

All of the costs of developing the CHPE will be paid by third-party investors who will be repaid by power generators that utilize the lines once the project is finished. This financing method avoids the stalemate that often results when utilities are left to cover costs and seek reimbursement through politically complicated rate increases. Knowing the “not in my backyard” resistance generated by giant transmission towers normally used for such projects, CHPE’s owners chose less-intrusive infrastructure to smooth its regulatory path. Their system will consist of two power lines roughly the diameter of coffee cans running 333 miles — mostly buried in Lake Champlain, the Hudson River, and along railroad tracks — using construction techniques that garnered the approval of local environmental organizations. So by planning ahead and collaborating with major stakeholders over a period of four years, CHPE’s investors have found a way to streamline compliance with multiple regulations, expedite permitting, and ultimately save money.

The U.S. needs to resolve the state and federal regulatory issues that make siting power lines and recovering the cost of grid investments prohibitively difficult. Our interconnected grid system can no longer be regulated as it was a century ago, when each utility operated its own power lines. To manage a regional system, we’re going to need regional coordination and authority that, in limited situations, supersedes that of the states. Until this type of legislative fix is made, let’s hope that CHPE and other equally creative projects are able to thread that needle.

Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy

View full post on Grist

By John Farrell

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

In a New York Times SundayReview piece, “Drawing the Line at Power Lines,” Elisabeth Rosenthal suggested that our desire for clean energy will require significant trade-offs:

There are pipelines, trains, trucks and high-voltage transmission lines. None of them are pretty, and all have environmental drawbacks. But if you want to drive your cars, heat your homes and watch TV, you will have to choose among these unpalatable options …

Perhaps the answer is simply that in an increasingly crowded powered-on world, we’re all going to have to accept that Governor Cuomo’s so-called energy highway is likely to traverse our backyard.

I disagree.

The future of American electricity policy is not about trade-offs, but rather a chance to trade in an obsolete, centralized paradigm for a local, clean energy future. Utilities would have us believe that new high-voltage transmission lines are necessary to get more wind and solar power. But the truth is that the American electricity industry refuses to embrace the fundamentally different nature of renewable energy: Its ubiquity means that Americans can produce energy near where they use it, in an economically competitive manner, and at a community scale.

The 20th-century electricity system was centrally controlled and centrally owned, a necessary evil when coal, gas, and nuclear power plants had significant economies of scale and required enormous capital investments. The supply lines for these power plants were equally large, connecting far-off mines, oil, and gas fields via rail and pipeline to these remote power plants, and big transmission lines in turn carried the electricity from these power plants to big urban centers.

An electricity system primarily powered by wind and solar is fundamentally different. Turbines and panels are always right at the fuel source, whether on a rural farm or an urban rooftop. And because their scale is substantially more amenable to community ownership, renewable energy can be built near and provide economic benefits to the communities it powers.

The fundamental shift means Americans should trade in an obsolete model of centralized energy generation for one that matches and builds support for the local energy opportunity.

Local ownership and its economic benefits should play a significant role. For example, researchers in Germany recently surveyed local support for expanding wind energy production, comparing two towns with nearby wind farms. When the local turbines were absentee-owned, 60 percent of residents were opposed to more local wind power. Opposition dropped by 45 percentage points when the wind farm was locally owned. It’s no different from the fight over the Badger-Coulee transmission line in western Wisconsin, where locals have raised hell knowing that they will be asked to pay as much as $5 billion for new transmission lines that will earn utilities an 11 percent (or greater) return with questionable local economic benefit.

Locally owned wind power is in short supply, however, because federal and state energy policy make it extremely difficult. Community ownership could be best achieved through cooperatives, schools, or cities, but federal wind incentives are for taxable entities, not these rooted community organizations. Furthermore, federal tax credits require wind power project participants to have “passive income” from investments, ruling out the vast majority of Americans. When community wind projects succeed, as did the South Dakota Wind Partners, organizers admit that repeated success is unlikely in light of the legal and financial complexities.

Community-scaled wind and solar projects also struggle against an electricity system stacked against small-scale or “distributed” generation. A recent study in Minnesota, for example, suggested that the state could meet its entire 25 percent by 2025 renewable energy standard with distributed renewable energy projects connected to existing electric grid infrastructure. Incumbent utilities have focused on transmission instead, likely because building new power lines (and not maximizing existing infrastructure) earns them a statutory 11 to 13 percent rate of return.

This myopic focus on big infrastructure may prove doubly expensive as the cost of solar power falls rapidly. Within 10 years, one-third of Americans could install solar on their own rooftops and get electricity for less than their utility charges, without any additional power lines. But under the current electricity policy, these same Americans will likely be paying a few dollars each month for new utility-conceived, high-voltage transmission lines even as they increasingly produce their own local, clean energy.

The future of American energy policy is not a trade-off between new clean energy and new transmission. Rather, it’s an opportunity to trade in an obsolete, centralized model of development for the alternative — a democratized energy system where Americans can be producers and owners of their energy future.

Filed under: Article, Energy Policy

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By Christopher Mims

One and a half billion citizens of planet Earth aren’t connected to the power grid, and if Aquion Energy has its way, they will remain so forever. But not because they will be turned into Soylent Green! If that’s what you were thinking.

Aquion specializes in making large batteries, cheaply. They don’t look like much — they live in a former TV factory outside Pittsburgh, and you’ll probably never buy any of their products. To the world’s poor, however, they’re working on something that could make a profound difference to their quality of life, reports Kevin Bullis at Technology Review.

To store [solar] power generated during the day for use at night, these communities need battery systems that can handle anything from tens of kilowatt-hours to a few megawatt-hours, says Scott Pearson, Aquion’s CEO. Such a system could make long-distance transmission lines unnecessary, in much the same way that cell-phone towers have allowed such communities access to cellular service before they had land lines.

Power storage is the other half of the solar-will-replace-the-grid story emerging from the developing world. It’s already taken off in Bangladesh, spawning a cottage industry of solar-powered lighting solutions and a billion-dollar commitment from Norway. In a world in which we’re rapidly burning through our one-time endowment of fossil fuels, it’s starting to look as if, for once, models for sustainable development might first get a toe-hold among the planet’s have-nots.

Filed under: Business & Technology, Cities, Cleantech, Climate & Energy, Energy Policy, Fossil Fuels, Infrastructure, Renewable Energy, Solar Power, Sustainable Business

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by John Farrell.

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project.

Solar
grid parity is considered the tipping point for solar power, when
installing solar power will cost less than buying electricity from the
grid. It’s also a tipping point for the electricity system, when
millions of Americans can choose energy production and self-reliance
over dependence on their electric utility.

But this simple concept
conceals a great deal of complexity. And given the stakes of solar
grid parity, it’s worth exploring the details.

The cost of solar

For
starters, what’s the right metric for the cost of solar? The installed
cost for residential solar ($6.40 in 2011), or commercial solar ($5.20),
or utility-scale solar ($3.75)? Even if we pick one of these, it’s
difficult to compare apples to apples, because grid electricity is
priced in dollars per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity, not dollars per
Watt.

Enter “levelized cost,” or the cost of a solar PV array
averaged over a number of years of production. For example, a 1-kilowatt (kW) solar array installed in Minneapolis for $6.40 per Watt
costs $6,400. Over 25 years, we can expect that system to produce about
30,000 kWh, so the “simple levelized cost” is $6,400
divided by 30,000, or about $0.21 per kWh.

But people usually
borrow money, and pay interest, to install solar power. And there are
some maintenance costs over those 25 years. And we also use a “discount rate”
that puts heavier weight on dollars spent or earned today compared to
those earned 20 years from now. A 1-kW solar array that is 80 percent paid for
by borrowing at 5 percent interest, with maintenance costs of about $65 per
year, and discounted at 5 percent per year, will have a levelized cost of around
$0.37.

That means that “solar grid parity” for this 1-kW solar
array happens if the grid electricity price is $0.37 per kWh. But this
calculation is location-specific.

In Los Angeles, that same 1-kW
system produces 35,000 kWh over 25 years, lowering the levelized cost to
$0.31. The time frame also matters.

If we look back at the
Minneapolis project with a levelized cost of $0.37, but look at
the output over 20 years instead of 25 years, it increases the levelized
cost to $0.43, because we have fewer kWh of electricity over which to
divide our initial cost.

We choose 25 years because solar PV panels have a good chance of producing for that long.

We also use a lower installed cost than the U.S. average. Residential solar projects may average $6.40 per Watt, but there are some good examples of aggregate purchase residential solar projects costing $4.40 per
Watt. The levelized cost of solar at $4.40 per Watt in Minneapolis is
$0.25; in Los Angeles it is $0.21.

The following map shows the
levelized cost of solar, by state, based on an installed cost of $4.40
per Watt, averaged over 25 years.

This
map shows half our grid parity equation, the cost of solar. But what
about the other half, the grid price? It’s another complicated
question.

The grid price

Utilities like to compare new
electricity production to their existing fleet, which means comparing
new solar power projects to long-ago-paid-off (amortized) coal and
nuclear power plants that can produce electricity for 3-4 cents per
kWh. But this is apples to oranges, because utilities can’t get any new
electricity for that price, from any source.

A more appropriate
measure of the grid price is the marginal cost for a utility of getting
wholesale power from a new power plant. In California, this is called
the “market price referent,” and it’s around 12 cents per kWh. The
figure varies from state to state.

But while the market price
referent provides a reasonable comparison for the cost of utility-scale
solar, it’s not the number that matters for solar installed on rooftops
or near buildings. In those cases, the power is used “behind the
meter,” and depending on the type of state policy for net metering,
the customer can essentially spin their electric meter backward when
their solar panels produce electricity. That means that solar power is
really competing against the energy cost on a utility bill, known as the “retail price.”

The following map shows the average retail
electricity price by state across the U.S. It ranges from 8-10 cents in
the interior to 15 cents per kWh and higher on the coasts.

In
general, the residential retail electricity price is the generally
accepted grid parity price. With this price and our previous map of the
levelized cost of solar, we can assess the state of solar grid parity.
The following map shows the ratio of the levelized cost of solar to the
grid parity price in each state. Only Hawaii has reached solar grid
parity without incentives.

As
time rolls ahead, and grid prices rise while solar costs fall, the
picture changes. In five years, three states representing 57
million Americans will be at solar grid parity: Hawaii, New York, and
California.

There are other considerations in the grid parity calculation.

Time-of-use rates

Some
utility customers pay “time-of-use” rates that charge more for
electricity consumed during times of peak demand, such as when a hot
sunny day has everyone using their air conditioners. Under these rates,
a solar project can be replacing electricity that costs upwards of
$0.30 per kWh. Over a year, time-of-use rates can (on average) boost
the cost of electricity—at peak times, when solar panels produce a lot
of power—by about 30 percent.  Assuming every state implemented
time-of-use pricing (and that it was equivalent to a 30 percent increase
in grid prices during peak times), solar grid parity would be a reality
in 14 states in 2016, instead of just three.

Solar vs. grid over time

There’s
one other calculation. Let’s say that in 2011 solar still costs just a
bit more than the grid electricity price, but that the grid price is
rising at a modest rate each year. In this case, solar may still be the
right choice, because the lifetime cost of solar (at a fixed price) will
be less than the rising cost of grid electricity. We can use an
accounting tool called net present value to estimate the savings from
solar compared to grid power over 25 years, and we find that for every
percentage point annual increase in electricity prices, solar can be about 10 percent more expensive than grid power today, and still be at “parity.” We
find that with electricity price inflation of 2 percent per year, solar grid
parity shifts up two years using this method.

To further explain
the concept of solar grid parity, I’ve also created this slideshow. You can view more of my presentations here.

Solar
grid parity has enormous implications for the electricity system, and
the time is drawing very close for many Americans. I hope this post
(and slideshow) helps illustrate the complexity of the concept, and I’d
appreciate your feedback via email (jfarrell@ilsr.org) or in the comments below.

Related Links:

Forecast for 2012: More sun and wind

Here are the potential Solyndras of 2012

Sunflowers show how to capture solar energy more efficiently

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

GRID Alternatives/Riverside, CA (Inland Empire)

DEVELOPMENT OFFICER (INLAND EMPIRE OFFICE, RIVERSIDE, CA)

GRID Alternatives (www.gridalternatives.org) is a non-profit organization that empowers communities in need by providing energy efficiency and renewable energy services to low-income families. Our main program, the Solar Affordable Housing Program, installs solar electric systems exclusively for income-qualified families using a “barn raising†model where volunteers, job trainees, and the homeowners themselves all participate in the installation process under the supervision of GRID Alternatives’ construction staff.

We are looking for a full-time Development Officer for our GRID Alternatives Inland Empire office located in the City of Riverside, CA. The Development Officer will help lead our fundraising efforts in the Inland Empire.

Job Duties
• Obtain financial support from individual, corporate, and foundation supporters throughout the region, under the supervision of the Regional Director
• Solicit corporate and group donors for our sponsored workday program
• Manage grant proposals to local foundations, including researching opportunities, managing deadlines, writing proposals, and writing final reports
• Solicit individual participants and corporate sponsors for our annual Solarthon fundraiser/solar installation event, and manage event logistics with support from Headquarters and Regional Director
• Support the Regional Director in writing applications for local government funding programs
• Acknowledge donors and track donations using our Salesforce.com CRM database
• Represent the organization to potential donors, funders, sponsors, and the general community
• Implement local campaigns and cultivation events to raise individual donations from local individual donors
• Collaborate with GRID Alternatives’ fundraising team on statewide funding and communications efforts
• Assist the Regional Director with local communications, PR, and media relations efforts
• Report directly to the Regional Director, while regularly communicating with and coordinating with GRID Alternatives’ statewide Development Director

Position Requirements
• Minimum 2-3 years of nonprofit fundraising experience. Substituting other equivalent experience will only be considered for an exceptional candidate who makes a compelling case in their cover letter
• High level of comfort with directly asking individuals and institutions for money
• Excellent interpersonal, phone, and written communication skills. You must be able to meet directly with funders/sponsors and speak effectively, professionally, and passionately about the work of the organization, as well as communicate effectively and professionally via email, phone, and in formal written proposals
• Comfortable working as part of a team in an hard working, informal office environment
• Strong and broad computer skills (Microsoft Office Suite; database; graphic design programs)
• Strong entrepreneurial, critical and strategic thinking, and organizational skills
• Flexibility and willingness to embrace change, go the extra mile, and bring ideas and energy to a rapidly growing organization
• Willingness to work on evenings and weekends
• Valid driver’s license, clean driving record, and reliable vehicle
• Some travel outside the Inland Empire required

Preferred Qualifications
• Passion for renewable energy, sustainability, affordable housing, the environment/environmental justice, or just generally grounded in making the world a better place
• Existing relationships with potential donors/corporate sponsors
• Ability to understand, speak, read, and write Spanish

Office Location
Our office is located in the City of Riverside, 3 miles from downtown. Ability to travel throughout the Inland Empire is necessary (San Bernardino, Riverside, and Inyo Counties)

Compensation
$35,000 – $50,0000 per year, depending on experience; plus health, dental, 5-weeks paid time off, and optional 403(b) retirement

Travel and Work Schedule
Full-time, 40-hour per week. This position requires some work on evenings and weekends as well as travel to meetings, events, and job sites throughout the Inland Empire. GRID Alternatives provides travel reimbursement, but applicant must hold a valid driver’s license and have a reliable vehicle.

Start Date
January/February 2012

To Apply
Applicants must submit both a resume and cover letter online at http://www.gridalternatives.org/jobs. Mailed and emailed applications are not accepted. NO PHONE CALLS OR EMAIL INQUIRIES PLEASE.

Application Deadline
We are looking to hire immediately – position open until filled.

We are an equal opportunity employer.

Apply To Job

View full post on GreenBiz Jobs

by John Farrell.

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project.

Back for a second round, the Open Neighborhoods organization in Los Angeles has organized another group purchase of
residential and commercial solar PV, bringing the lifetime cost of solar
well under the cost of grid electricity even for individual
homeowners.

The savings from the group purchase are enormous. With prices are
around $4.40 per Watt installed for solar, Open Neighborhoods gets
residential solar for $2 cheaper than the average residential-scale solar prices reported by the Solar Energy Industries Association for the second quarter of 2011. That equates to a 6-cents-per-kilowatt-hour savings on solar over 25
years. Even though solar power is typically cheaper in California than
elsewhere in the U.S., the group purchase promises savings of as much
as 33 percent on a residential solar array.

The low group purchase price means that those who go solar will have
cheaper electricity from their rooftop panels than average grid
electricity by 2015 (assuming retail grid prices rise by 3 percent per year). If the solar user is on a time-of-use pricing plan, they’ll have
cheaper electricity from solar on day one, during peak hours. The
comparison assumes the homeowner accesses both federal tax incentives:
the 30 percent tax credit and the depreciation bonus (possible through a lease
or power purchase arrangement).

The following chart illustrates the cost of power from a
group-purchased rooftop solar array versus grid electricity over the
next 25 years:

The results are promising and show that economies of scale can be achieved even with residential solar, if folks work together.

Unfortunately, not all residential customers can get this
grid-beating price. There are two federal tax incentives, a 30 percent tax
credit and a depreciation tax deduction. The latter can’t be used by
homeowners who own their solar array, making the economics for them a
lot less favorable than for those who lease their system. The
following chart illustrates how much of the cost savings from solar are
lost when a residential customer can’t access the depreciation
benefit:

The potential cost reductions from group solar raise hopes for more
distributed solar power development, but residential solar may not
flourish as it could without changes to federal solar incentives.

Related Links:

Apple HQ could have the country’s biggest solar installation, and it still won’t be enough

Tokelau, population 1,500, goes renewables-only

Solar for Schools?  Not so easy with tax-based solar incentives

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

by John Farrell.

Related Links:

Don’t let Solyndra fool you: Solar PV is on fire

Why ‘market-based’ is poor criteria for solar policy

What can trick-or-treaters tell you about the health of your neighborhood?

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

by Melanie Hart.

Cross-posted from Center for American Progress.

There is no way to get around this fact—China aims to modernize its energy infrastructure at home and dominate clean energy technology markets abroad. At the 2011 Smart Grid World
Forum in Beijing late last month, China’s State Grid Corporation
announced plans to invest $250 billion in electric power infrastructure upgrades over the next five years, of which $45 billion is earmarked [PDF] for smart grid technologies.  According to its three-stage plan, China will invest another $240 billion between 2016 and 2020 (including another $45 billion
toward smart grid technologies) to complete the build-out of a
“stronger, smarter” Chinese power grid.

When complete, this system will improve energy efficiency, lower
carbon emissions, and give Chinese consumers more control over their
utility bills. Chinese leaders are betting that upgrading to a smarter
electricity grid will also drive technology innovation and move the
country up the manufacturing value chain. The Chinese view smart grid
technology as the next industrial revolution—and they want to make sure
that once other countries start upgrading their own grids, they will buy
most of their equipment from China.

This issue brief details why the United States should take note of
China’s ambitions and step up our own smart grid efforts. We, too, need a
stronger, smarter electricity grid, and in many smart grid sectors, our
enterprises are already producing the best technologies. All they need
is a bit more policy support at home to speed up interoperability, to
drive down equipment prices, and to ensure the smart grid revolution
will be a market driver not only for China, but also for the United
States, both at home and in export markets abroad.

What is a smart grid and why does China need one?

The main difference between a smart grid and a conventional grid is that smart grid components (similar to
smartphones) are upgraded to include sensors, computers, and a wireless
interface.  That means the bits and pieces of the electric grid—the
transmission wires, transformers, distribution wires, and usage
meters—transmit and distribute electricity more efficiently and reliably
to end users, and they can also report back on how that process is
going and adjust operations along the line to fit changing conditions.

This smart functionality is critical for integrating key elements of a clean energy future, such
as renewable power generation and electric vehicles. Unlike traditional
coal-fired power, renewable power can be decentralized (multiple wind
farms instead of one massive coal-fired power plant), and is often
weather dependent. Conventional grid systems are designed to transfer a
steady and predictable flow of power from point A to point B. When a
thunderstorm reduces solar panel output or increases wind turbine
output, those power fluctuations can trigger blackouts and burnouts in a
conventional grid system. But a smarter grid can adjust, either by
storing excess energy in batteries until it is needed, or by moving power
more efficiently across longer distances.

Smarter grids are also better at handling higher and more variable
demand loads, and that will be critical when more electric vehicles are
added to the system. Current consumer demand is very predictable, so
utility companies know exactly what times of the day to purchase and
distribute extra power to counteract daily peaks. Electric vehicles
likely will not follow traditional consumption patterns—meaning demand
peaks will be harder to anticipate—and that will create new operational challenges [PDF] that will be hard to address without a more automated system.

The Chinese need more clean energy to meet their escalating
electricity demand, and that will require a smarter grid. China is now
the world’s largest electricity consumer, and Chinese demand is expected to double over the next decade, and triple by 2035. Their current energy mix is heavily dependent on coal—around 70 percent of overall consumption in 2010—and coal supply and price fluctuations
are threatening economic growth. In 2011, for example, coal shortages
forced China’s national economic planner, the National Development and
Reform Commission, to begin rationing electricity in April, months ahead of the normal summer peak.

To comply with the rationing, officials in China’s power-hungry industrial regions cut off power to small enterprises from 5:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. daily, and to
medium-sized enterprises every few days. This forced many small- and
medium-sized companies to operate only at night or to rely on pricey
gas-fired power generators to keep their businesses running.

The only way Chinese leaders can keep their economy growing at
current rates is to bring in more renewable energy power onto their
national grids. Their latest targets call for the country to increase
renewable energy to 9.5 percent of overall consumption by 2015, and a smarter electricity grid will be critical for integrating those supplies into the system.

The Chinese are also grappling with a major geographic issue. Energy
supplies are concentrated in the west (including coal, natural gas,
hydropower, and large wind farms), but demand is concentrated in the
east, which creates major transportation challenges. China’s
west-to-east grid infrastructure is already overloaded, so coal supplies
are often shipped via rail and road. Problem is, transport bottlenecks are so bad that in 2010, coal trucks triggered a monthlong traffic jam on the Beijing-Zhangjiakou highway.

To relieve congestion, the Chinese want to shift more west-to-east
transport to the grid, so a large chunk of China’s upcoming grid
investments (around $78 billion out of the $250 billion mentioned above) will go toward cross-country ultra-high-voltage transmission lines.

Killing two birds with one stone: China’s international technology ambitions

As is the case throughout the green energy sector,
Chinese leaders are betting that if they can roll out a smarter
electricity grid before the United States, China can not only address
their domestic energy challenges but also get a head start on technology
standardization. And they see standardization as a critical step toward
moving up the value chain and playing a stronger role in global
technology markets.

China’s electricity market is divided geographically. China’s State Grid Corporation controls 88 percent of the country and serves more than 1 billion customers,
and State Grid wants to leverage that position to become a global smart
grid standard-setter. Smart grid networks involve hundreds of new
technologies, from wireless sensors and smart meters to high-voltage
transmission technologies, electrical vehicle charging stations, and
many others. State Grid is aiming to dominate many of those industries,
not only in China but also abroad.

In June 2010 State Grid issued its own proprietary equipment standards for 22 different critical smart grid technology solutions.  Equipment manufacturers must abide by those proprietary standards to become State Grid vendors,
and since State Grid is the biggest smart grid customer in the world,
equipment manufacturers have a strong incentive to comply.

In most markets, equipment based on proprietary standards such as the
ones State Grid would like to see developed for its forthcoming smart
grid do not have good economies of scale because their equipment is
expensive to produce and less competitive compared to equipment based on
global standards. State Grid is betting that the Chinese market is big
enough (and they themselves control so much of it, including both
transmission and distribution) that they can use their massive
purchasing power to achieve economy of scale and drive down
manufacturing prices on their own.

Then, once Chinese manufacturers (many of which are State Grid subsidiaries) are churning out
competitively priced smart grid products, they can export those same
products to overseas markets such as the United States—and if those products are based on State Grid
proprietary standards and intellectual property, the company will
profit from every unit sold.

It is not yet clear how strongly China’s national leaders support
State Grid’s one-grid-to-rule-them-all technology ambitions. Some in
China are calling for a new round of restructuring to make the market
more competitive and to reduce State Grid’s massive purchasing (and
therefore standard-setting) power. China’s National Development and
Reform Commission recently called for a new round of trials to experiment with splitting up electricity transmission and
distribution.  If they proceed with those reforms, that will take a big
chunk of the market away from State Grid.

No matter how they divide the market at home, however, Chinese leaders have already elevated smart grid development to a strategic national priority.  Smart grid technologies are also considered a “strategic emerging industry.”
Overall, that means that whoever drives the market, whether it is State
Grid acting alone or a more diversified group of Chinese enterprises,
Chinese leaders will provide strong policy support, and China’s massive
domestic demand will ensure that the country becomes a major player in
global technology markets.

Implications for U.S. competitiveness

China’s aggressive smart grid plan poses problems and promise for the United States. On the one hand, U.S. companies currently have
the most advanced smart grid technology across the value
chain—technology that could create big opportunities in China. State
Grid is already working with General Electric Co., Honeywell International Inc., IBM Corp.,
and other U.S. companies on joint standardization projects. If those
projects go well, then at least some of China’s smart grid investments
could go toward purchasing U.S. products and paying U.S. technology
licensing fees.

On the other hand, China’s indigenous innovation program calls for reducing the country’s dependence on foreign technology to 30 percent or below (down from the current 50 percent). That program
focuses particularly on strategic emerging industries such as the smart
grid.  That means we should expect the Chinese to favor homegrown
standards wherever they can, particularly when the foreign versions are
more expensive. That could make it harder for U.S. smart grid equipment
and services to gain a foothold, not only in China but also globally.

Where there are competing international standards, the Chinese will
face trade sanctions if they adopt State Grid’s proprietary, homegrown
solutions as compulsory national standards and blatantly shut foreign
technology out of their market. In mobile telecommunications, for
example, China developed a homegrown 3G wireless standard, but Chinese
regulators had to recognize and issue domestic operating licenses for
all of the major international standards, not just the homegrown technology. In the smart grid market, however, international standardization is moving rather slowly, particularly in the United States, and that
gives China more leeway to adopt homegrown solutions as their national
standards and to leverage their domestic buying power to drive down
costs and promote those technology solutions abroad.

The United States should not aim to compete with the Chinese on
electric infrastructure investment. State Grid’s investment commitments
are impressive, but a lot of that spending will go toward catching the
Chinese up to where the United States is now. Their grid infrastructure
is less developed than ours, so it is inevitable that they will have to
spend more, and it is inevitable that those expenditures will make China
a very attractive market for smart grid equipment manufacturers and
private investors.

One thing we can do to improve U.S. competitiveness is to speed up our own standardization program [PDF].
Most U.S. smart grid solutions are not yet based on common standards.
That means that just like the pre-interoperability computer era (when
your desktop computer, monitor, keyboard, and printer would only work
together if they were all from the same manufacturer), U.S. smart grid
technologies are hard to mix and match, and that drives up prices and
stifles competition.

The United States is working to improve interoperability [PDF], but the process is very slow. China boasts only two utility companies,
but there are more than 3,000 in the United States, and those companies
are not used to working together. Our utility regulators are also not
used to dealing with technology standardization.

The federal government can speed up interoperability by playing a
stronger coordinating role at the national level to help our state and
local utility regulators move toward common standards and interoperable
(and therefore cheaper) equipment. The United States has already figured
out how to do this in telecommunications and information technology; we
just need to apply the same lessons to the electricity sector.

One thing the Chinese get right is using policy signals to stimulate private investment, and that is something we can do in the United
States as well.  When Chinese leaders included smart grid development in
the 12th five-year plan and State Grid announced its ambitious spending
plans, those moves kicked off a new wave of private Chinese venture capital investments in their domestic smart grid technology companies.

We can encourage more private investment in our own smart grid
infrastructure and companies by sending stronger policy signals here in
the United States. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
was a big step forward—that funding [PDF] was the biggest driver of U.S. smart grid market development to date,
and it also jump-started the U.S. standardization process. But more work
is needed. We do not yet have a strong federal champion to coordinate
the different policy and industry stakeholders working on smart grid
technologies, and that coordination is particularly critical in this
sector, because these technologies cut across traditional regulatory and
industry divides (power generation, electric utilities,
telecommunications, and information technology).

We are also still working to fine-tune the existing investment
incentives. Some U.S. telecom companies complain that the Recovery Act
gives utility companies incentives to build out their own proprietary
smart grid wireless communication networks instead of utilizing the
existing wireless infrastructure, which is based on common standards and
interoperable equipment. The more we utilize common standards and
interoperable equipment, the more we can improve our economy of scale
and lower production costs for U.S. manufacturers—and that will lower
infrastructure costs here at home and make U.S. technology and equipment
more attractive in overseas markets.

Our path to a stronger, smarter electricity grid is actually much
easier than China’s. Since our grid systems are already more advanced,
we can target our investments toward developing and deploying the latest
and greatest smart grid technologies instead of playing catch-up. That
means our market can be a much stronger driver for technology
innovation, and we can get more economic bang for every smart grid buck.

To take advantage of this lead, we should work toward clarifying our
standard-setting process and removing existing policy bottlenecks to
smart grid deployment. Then, like the Chinese, we can leverage a
stronger, smarter grid to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, to
drive innovation, to create jobs, and to give consumers new options for
saving money on their utility bills.

Those are goals that we can all get behind.

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View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

Southern California Edison/Westminster, CA

Southern California Edison
SCE – NB61777816EA – Smart Grid Network Testing Engineer
Work Location: CA-Westminster

Basic Qualifications
Must have experience designing, testing and/or simulating solutions using one or more of the following technologies: IP networking and network management systems, wireless mesh networking and low power sensor networks, network performance measurement, RF propagation modeling and analysis, and embedded systems.

Core Competencies
- Bachelor's Degree in Electrical or Computer Engineering or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education, training, and work experience.
- Typically possesses three or more years of experience in Information Technology in IP networking, including wireless, and wired networks, performing analysis and providing recommendations.
- Demonstrated experience performing physical analysis and testing as input for communications solutions design.
- Demonstrated experience writing white papers and documenting communication tests and simulation results for publications.
- Demonstrated experience writing test scripts and plans for communication device testing.
- Demonstrated experience with network management, performance monitoring and optimization.
- Demonstrated experience with networking standards and/or testing tools and methods.
- Demonstrated ability to abstract the network architecture into different views and domains, apply critical thinking skills, technical ingenuity, creativity, and resourcefulness to ensure the network will continue to be viable.
- Demonstrated strong oral and written communication skills, and be customer focused to understand and appropriately respond to business requirements.
- Demonstrated the ability to interface effectively and collaborate with clients, peers, and management to develop solutions.
- Demonstrated experience using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Visio.
- Must demonstrate the ability to integrate work across relevant areas, develop the business and services to enhance customer satisfaction and productivity, manage risks and safety appropriately, develop and execute business plans, manage information, and provide exceptional service to internal and external customers.
- Must demonstrate effective resource and project planning, decision making, results delivery, team building, and the ability to stay current with relevant technology and innovation.
- Must demonstrate strong ethics, influence and negotiation, leadership, interpersonal skills, and the ability to effectively manage stress and engage in continuous learning.

COMMENTS: Additional testing may be required as part of the selection process for this position. Candidates for this position must be legally authorized to work directly as employees for any employer in the United States without visa sponsorship.

Preferences
- Demonstrated knowledge of Systems Engineering processes.
- Demonstrated experience working in the energy and/or environmental sector.

Typical Responsibilities
This position will be in the Smart Grid Systems Engineering group within Southern California Edison's (SCE) Information Technology & Business Integration (IT&BI) Business Unit. The successful candidate will support the Transmission and Distribution Business Unit's (TDBU) Advanced Technologies organization and will assist in requirements gathering, analysis and design and testing of the next generation of network systems and new communications technologies.

Typical responsibilities will include: Working in the Smart Grid communications lab executing test scripts and documenting results of tests on communication devices; performing network analysis and design for both Smart Grid research and related project purposes; using a spectrum analyzer and RF engineering tools to evaluate and capture findings of Home Area Network RF propagation characteristics as design input to HAN network design to support communications between SmartConnect meters and smart thermostats and electric vehicles; working with other IT divisions to ensure the SCE communication network can effectively evolve; engaging with the IT enterprise architects and Network Engineering group in IT Operations to transfer knowledge of expected HAN performance and potential technical support issues; working with senior architects, engineers and project engineers to ensure testing methods and technologies are consistent with the network architecture; following direction from senior architects and engineers to ensure HAN tests scripts are complete and reflect requirements necessary to deploy the new capability; participating in the Architecture, Engineering and Design Center of Competency, Smart Grid practice area on a regular basis; attending meetings, participating in activities and developing relationships with other architects and engineers working in the Smart Grid domain; and performing other responsibilities and duties as assigned.

Edison International and Southern California Edison reserve the right to close or cancel a posting at any time.

If you are interested in this position, please submit your resume in confidence by visiting www.edisonjobs.com.

Edison International is an Equal Opportunity Employer.


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