PG&E launching campaign to raise awareness to time-of-use electricity rates

A big concern in the electrical grid is the peak demand which occurs (in the U.S.) on hot summer afternoons when the air conditioners are all cranked up.  Time of Use metering (TOU) is one of the solutions to shaving off the peak demand.  The idea is to increase the rate paid by electricity consumers during peak demand times, and charge them a lower rate other times.  By charging different electricity rates it should encourage electricity consumers to change their usage patterns.

An example of time of use metering is a recent proposal by the same PG&E over electricity rates for electric car owners.  Generally electric cars can be charged at night, and the time of use rate proposed by PG&E gives a huge incentive to do so.

PG&E Launches Awareness Campaign to Help Business Customers Transition to State-Mandated Pricing for Electric Service

Utility Also Proposes Giving Customers the Right to Opt-Out of Pricing Program

SAN FRANCISCO, June 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced today that that it has begun a comprehensive effort to educate its small and medium business and agriculture customers about a state-mandated pricing program change for electric services and how they can potentially take advantage of it to save money. At the same time, the utility is asking state regulators to give affected customers the right to opt-out of the new pricing program if they prefer to stay with their current plan.

At the direction of the California Public Utilities Commission, small and medium businesses will begin moving in November to time-of-use (TOU) pricing. With TOU, when electricity is used will be just as important as how much electricity is used. Rates are higher during weekday summer afternoons when electric demand peaks, typically noon to 6 p.m., May through October. In return, business customers will have lower rates at all other times.

The purpose is to better align prices with the cost of generating electricity at various times of the day, to help lower energy bills, prevent "brownouts" and other electric grid disruptions, and benefit the environment by reducing the need to run fossil-fueled power plants.

"Through an extensive program of customer letters, person-to-person outreach, local and community events, web-based seminars and targeted online advertising, PG&E is reaching out to help our business customers understand this significant change so they can better manage their energy usage and potentially save money," said Helen Burt, Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at PG&E. "We offer a wide range of tools and energy management solutions to help customers conserve energy during peak periods and lower their bills. Early and frequent education will help customers make the transition as smoothly as possible."

Burt added, "Although time-of-use pricing is an important element of the state's energy policy, we know that our customers appreciate having options, so we hope that state regulators will approve our proposal to let customers opt-out of the program and stick with existing flat-rate prices if they desire."

PG&E has asked the Commission to expedite its review of this opt-out proposal and issue a decision by Sept. 1, 2012, before small and medium business customers begin transitioning to the new TOU rates in November. Large commercial and industrial electric customers have already moved to similar pricing plans.

Businesses that do not draw heavy power loads during peak afternoon hours may automatically benefit from the change to TOU rates, and others may save money by taking simple steps to reduce peak energy use, such as pre-cooling work areas and charging batteries in the morning, adjusting employee schedules, and turning off some non-essential power draws in the afternoon, such as fountains and video displays.

An analysis by PG&E suggests that as many as six in 10 small and medium business customers would benefit or see no change from a shift to TOU pricing, even if they do not change their behavior. Only about two percent of such customers would experience a bill increase of more than $8 a month.

Business customers can learn more about TOU rates by visiting PG&E's web pages at www.pge.com/TVP or by calling a PG&E representative at 1-800-987-4923. PG&E offers a host of energy-saving tips and programs at http://www.pge.com/mybusiness/energysavingsrebates/.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation's cleanest energy to 15 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit http://www.pge.com/about/newsroom/ and www.pgecurrents.com.

SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company

How the Western US can implement large-scale implementation of wind and solar power

Most of us desire a clean environment, and desire electricity to be generated with no negative consequence. As it stands electricity generation has huge negative consequences from the coal emissions, to the mining operations to get the coal, to disposing of the coal residues, and the CO2 etc emitted from burning natural gas. It's a bad story that can be fixed through using more wind and solar energy. But wind and solar needs some sort of energy storage to balance out variability and the troughs in production.

Debra Lew, of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, gave a presentation at the Energy Seminar at Stanford University discussing models for how the Western US could adopt large quantities of wind and solar energy. One conclusion they came to is that large scale energy storage systems aren't as necessary as conventional wisdom would believe.

Wind power - mostly occurs at night - Solar power - mostly occurs during the day. Hence the simple assumption is you need to store energy from when generation is at its peak production and release stored energy when it's in a trough. That is, next to the wind farm you install an energy storage system that fills up overnight, and releases energy during the day.

However.. Ms. Lew says this isn't necessary, if the grid operators make some changes to how the business is run.

Observation: Wind and solar energy complement each other. One has its peak when the other is in a trough. Hence energy storage isn't required so much as having enough generating capacity. A factoid about energy storage systems is they're currently rather expensive. The grid operators will want to minimize energy storage systems, and the cheapest way to do so is to not buy it but instead by enough wind/solar generating capacity so that one system makes up for the other system's trough.

The Western US is covered by WECC which is an electrical interconnect zone. In most of WECC there is little cooperation between the utilities, leaving each utility on its own to balance its load.

Ms. Lew gives regional "balancing area cooperation" as a primary change to implement for renewable energy to make a big impact in the West. For example Wyoming has huge wind resources, and could be supplying electricity to the rest of the West if only there were enough cooperation and transmission lines.

She gave a bunch of other recommendations. The whole pile of them boiled down to: greater flexibility

Their study shows it's operationally feasible for the Western US to adopt Wind and Solar at a large scale.

She did say that historically this region has tried to set up more cooperation but ran into political problems. Essentially the individual utilities have resistance to their autonomy being undermined by a regional cooperative. But she went on to say that as they get more experience with renewable energy they'll realize regional cooperation is vital.

Links: 

http://energyseminar.stanford.edu/node/299

An Electric 'Game Changer' Gets FERC Scrutiny

A proposal to move large amounts of wind and solar power out of the Southwest by linking the three separate North American electricity grids with state-of-the-art switching terminals and superconducting cables is now in hands of federal regulators.

Tres Amigas LLC has petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for two key rulings ...

...The three terminals would receive alternating-current power from transmission companies in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, and convert it to direct-current flows using solid-state voltage source converters. The direct current would move between the three terminals to carry out any of six possible transactions: Power could flow into or out of Texas, for instance by way of the two interconnections, or it could move between the interconnections directly.

The use of direct current and voltage converters will overcome the current barrier to power transfers between Texas and the interconnections, each of which is operating out of sync electrically with the other, a condition that would destroy equipment if an alternating-current connection were made today....

...Harris said in an interview that he purposely did not seek Energy Department stimulus grants for the new technology and proclaimed confidence that the project can be privately financed through debt and equity investments....

Transmission providers can use the Tres Amigas connection to buy the cheaper power in one grid for sale in a higher-priced region, and Tres Amigas will profit by moving the energy, the firm's FERC filing says.

FERC's approval of Tres Amigas' flexible pricing proposal is essential, says Raskin. "To maximize the value of this facility, we need to have a combination of long-term and short-term pricing authority. We are pushing FERC's precedents."...

The Tres Amigas petition to FERC says that because energy is converted from an AC wave to a DC electronic pulse and then back into an AC wave synchronized with the receiving grid, the electrons in Texas are not "free flowing" into New Mexico or Oklahoma, preserving Texas' separation....

The Tres Amigas project stands to make an interesting and vital contribution to the state of renewable electricity production in the U.S. (see Tres Amigas Project in New Mexico promises more renewable energy through better electrical grid connectivity for more information) The south-west and especially west-texas regions have a lot of solar and wind power. The texas panhandle region has an especially strong wind resource. Further the regions are lightly populated. This makes them attractive for building wind and solar power installations but the problem is how to get power produced in those facilities to the market.

It turns out the U.S. electric market has three power regions. They are the Eastern Interconnection east of the Rocky Mountains, the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) west of the Rockies, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Further the Texas statewide grid that Texas is a jurisdictional thing maintained by Texas to prevent federal regulation of its utility industry. This is a remnant of Texas's past as an independent nation which chose on its own to join the United States.

The Tres Amigas project creates an interchange between the three regions so that power can be sold between the regions. Hence electric production facilities can be built in, for example, the Texas Panhandle area and then sell power to the rest of the country. If there were no power sale agreement or interconnect then a producer in the Texas Panhandle could produce all the electricity they want but could only sell it to Texas.

As explained in the linked NY Times article the project has to jump through a few hoops to retain Texas' status as having its own electric power grid that isn't subject to federal regulation. It converts the alternating current electricity used on the grid into direct current electricity for exchange in the Tres Amigas interconnect facility. By doing the AC-DC-AC conversion they avoid a "direct flow" of electricity keeping FERC's grubby hands off Texas' electricity.

Sigh.

from Ephermeral Technosanity Ruminations

Tres Amigas Project in New Mexico promises more renewable energy through better electrical grid connectivity

A criticism of renewable energy resources like wind or solar power is the places where it's abundant are places with few people, and the places with many people don't have much of either wind or solar power. Thus to utilize wind or solar power means long distance electrical transmission through what's been characterized as an aging and inefficient national power grid. American Superconductor aims to undo this bottleneck with the Tres Amigas project which intends to be a highly efficient interconnection hub for the three main portions of America's power grid.

The "Saudi Arabia of Wind" is in the U.S. mid-west region, primarily a corridor from North Texas, along the front range of the Rockies, and into Wyoming and Minnesota. Similarly the deserts of the South West are prime places for solar power installations. Lots of wind and sun with few people, meaning that electricity from facilities installed there has to travel a long distance to reach their market. Further for that power to reach the east or west coast requires traversing what are said to be inefficient transfers to the Eastern or Western Interconnect.

The design of the Tres Amigas project is a large triangle of underground superconducting cables connecting the three power grids. (get it? three power grids? tres amigas?) Each leg of the triangle can carry 5 gigawatts of electricity and the whole station will be on 22.5 square miles of land near Clovis NM.

A key component of the design is the "Superconductor Electricity Pipelines" product developed by American Superconductor. These pipelines have a copper core in a cryogenic environment maintained by a liquid nitrogen bath. Hence this form of superconductivity is created by supercold temperatures. The cables are buried underground by digging trenches creating an advantage over current long distance transmission using those tall towers which criss-cross the country. Their website is full of pictures of untouched rural landscapes which one supposes would result from widespread use of their electricity pipelines.

They claim the advantages of the "Superconductor Electricity Pipelines" include the following. However the claims are made for 1000 mile long transmission cables, and the Tres Amigas project is only due to cover a 22.5 square mile exchange point. It is not said whether this project includes any truly long distance transmission facilities beyond the exchange point.

• Higher efficiency (97% rather than 91%) resulting in less transmission loss
• Smaller land use impact (25 foot right of way versus 600 foot)
• Good esthetics (buried cables are out of sight)
• No electromagnetic field
• Efficiency and CO2 emissions savings (presumably due to higher transmission efficiency)

Tres Amigas LLC claims these advantages:-

• First system to connect America’s three power grids (Eastern Interconnect, Western Interconnect and Texas Interconnect)
• Enhances the capacity, reliability and efficiency of America’s power grids
• Assists the U.S. in achieving its renewable energy targets by carrying gigawatts of “green” power from region to region
• Creates the nation’s first renewable energy trading hub
• Utilizes the latest power grid technologies, including DC superconductor power cables, HVDC voltage source converters and energy storage systems

The project seems geared to tapping New Mexico's potential as a leading supplier of renewable energy. That and other state's of the South West have vast potential for producing renewably sourced electricity.

The information from Tres Amigas includes this curious statement: "Creates the nation’s first renewable energy trading hub". This raises echo's of Enron whose primary purpose was to operate an energy trading system.

Links: 

superconductor Electricity Pipelines to be adopted for America’S FIRST RENEWABLE ENERGY MARKET HUB

Links: 

American Superconductor

Links: 

Plan connects U.S. grids to transport solar, wind

Links: 

Tres Amigas LLC

Links: 

American Superconductor cables to power renewable energy hub

Links: 

Tres Amigas SuperStation would unite US grids

Utility companies preparing for electric cars?

A USATODAY news article suggests California utility prepares for surge in plug-in electric cars which made me wonder what the other electrical utilities are doing. Electrical utilities have a role in clean transportation as being the provider of choice of the electricity that would power electric vehicles. A couple concerns known to me are whether the electric grid can handle the increased demand for electricity, and what will be the environmental effect of increased electricity demand. Let's take a look at the situation.

Utility companies could be big winners in the shift to electric transportation. The money flowing to the oil companies is largely for transportation, and clearly the oil companies receive massive megadollars of revenue. This flow of money could be diverted to the utility companies. Electric vehicles are thought to generally be recharged at night when there is excess electrical generation capacity.

California ISO is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation charged with operating the majority of California’s high-voltage wholesale power grid. They therefore play a critical role in distributing electricity, and their website has massive quantities of information. The vast majority concerns the markets they run to handle payments between power suppliers and utility companies. There is not anything on the site directly concerning environmental concerns. Still there is very useful data that can be consulted to grok energy demand in California.

The Lassen Municipal Utility District provides a map of energy utilities operating in California. It shows there are three primary utilities, and a handful of smaller ones, and for this posting I'll only look at the three big ones: PG&E (central and northern California), SoCalEdison (LA Basin), and SDGE (San Diego).

PG&E's Environment program says they "we are committed to being an environmental leader and demonstrating this through our actions. We pledge to think creatively, work cooperatively and be results-oriented in our environmental stewardship efforts." What they're doing is:

• Putting Energy Efficiency First: Using energy more efficiently is the fastest, most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat global climate change.
• Clean Energy Solutions: exploring harvesting energy from the sun, ocean waves, tidal currents, and agricultural waste, and are involved in state-of-the-art, cleaner sources of fossil-fuel based power.
• Fighting Climate Change: reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and to providing customers with tools to shrink their "carbon footprint."
• Greening Vehicles: They apparently have a long track record of pushing for clean vehicles, for consumers and for themselves. They have a plug-in Prius (yes, just one). Most of their words in this section discuss supplying compressed natural gas (CNG) as a fuel to their own fleet plus other fleets.
• Promoting Stewardship: managing lands and waters in a responsible and environmentally sensitive manner. Their infrastructure traverses unique and sensitive habitat.
• Supporting Communities: Solar Habitat Program, Solar Schools, Partnering for a Greener San Francisco
• Buildings and Operations: Greening their own buildings

Let's look more closely at their green vehicles program. This is pretty disappointing.

They show a picture of their plug-in Prius, and the car has a sticker saying "100 MPG" and "I can't remember the last time I filled up". Okay that probably just means they drive the car around San Francisco within the battery-only range, right? It's disappointing that they have only one of these cars.

Most of the page is concerned with using natural gas as a vehicle fuel. Obviously PG&E sells both electricity and natural gas and they are leveraging their other asset, access to natural gas, as a "green vehicle" option. Are there emissions benefits from using natural gas in vehicles? Yes. For heavy trucks and buses, a new (Model Year 2004) natural gas vehicle can cut toxic soot pollution by 75 to 90 percent, while smog-forming pollution is reduced by about 25 percent compared to conventional diesel. Diesel soot is extremely toxic, containing over 40 chemicals that California has declared as toxic air contaminants. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates that diesel exhaust causes 70% of the state's cancer risk from airborne pollution.

They use both compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) for their heavy duty vehicles. They operate 37 PG&E-owned-and-operated CNG fueling stations supplying fuel to their own vehicles and various commercial fleet customers.

But the overall picture is they're doing very little in the way of studying electric vehicles or planning for accommodating them on the local power grid. They do have a 'Vehicle to Grid' (V2G) program but I couldn't find where it's discussed.

Southern California Edison is "committed to environmental protection".

• Environmental Commitment: Helping to protect the environment in which we work and live.
• Smart Grid: Nation’s most advanced neighborhood electricity circuit.
• Edison SmartConnect™: A smarter, cleaner energy future with our customers.
• Electric Transportation: Nation's largest electric vehicle fleet.
• Power Generation: Dedicated to operating safe and environmentally responsible facilities.
• Transmission Projects: Strengthening system reliability throughout our service territory.

Their various programs look interesting in various ways. The SmartConnect program offers customers more information about their power use supposedly to give them better awareness of their impact which may steer customers to making better choices. Let's focus on their electric transportation program.

Their Electric Transportation Vision is pretty well described and thought out. They obviously have spent some effort to understand the issues such as national energy security, environmental issues, etc. It's amusing that the picture leading the page shows lines of golf carts and fork lifts so their vision is to keep electric vehicles used only for low speed vehicles? C'mon, electric vehicles don't have to be boring golf carts.

• Near-Term
  • Vehicle to Home: Charging vehicles (mainly plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles) during nighttime (off-peak) hours, and using that stored energy occasionally for peak emergency backup or peak shaving to avoid higher electricity costs during critical peak usage days.
  • Home Energy Storage: Identifying and evaluating new stationary applications for advanced vehicle batteries, such as a home energy storage device.
• Mid-Term
  • Excess Grid Capacity: Using the electric grid’s nighttime excess capacity to charge volumes of plug-in and other electric vehicles, helping lower customer rates by spreading fixed generation plant costs over more energy use.
• Long-Term
  • Vehicle to Grid: Tapping into the potential ability to move stored energy from plug-in and other electric vehicles back into the electric grid as part of the “smart grid of the future,” helping enhance power grid quality, reliability and cost-effectiveness.

Their Electric Vehicle Technical Center conducts state-of-the-art testing and evaluation, they have a "garage of the future" evaluation platform to plan for recharging electric vehicles at home and they do cutting-edge work with electric-drive technologies.

• Tests battery-electric, hybrid-electric, plug-in hybrid, plug-in hybrid fuel cell and fuel cell propulsion systems for on- and non-road applications.
• Evaluates and tests advanced battery modules, battery packs, battery management systems and various types of chargers.
• Supports the development of more energy-efficient battery charging systems.
• Evaluates advanced batteries and other energy storage technologies for stationary applications, such as home energy storage, telecommunications and emergency backup power.
• Partners with government and industry to demonstrate hydrogen and fuel cells and understand the safety and electrical system impacts of hydrogen generation, compression, storage and delivery.
• Provides consulting services for industry.

This looks very good and comprehensive on their part. They appear to be doing all the right things to understand and plan for electric vehicles.

San Diego Gas & Electric Company's Environment program talks about "A Sustainable and Eco-friendly Future"

Their programs are:

• Going Solar
• Building Green with Us
• Producing Your Own Power
• Sustainable Communities Program
• Saving Energy Today
• Exploring Clean Transportation
• Learn about Renewable Energy
• Environment Home

Clearly one of San Diego's main assets is abundant sunshine. What's that song? Actually the first time I was in San Diego it was overcast and cold (for June) and rainy, so obviously it does occasionally rain in southern california. Their service area also includes the deserts to the west of the mountains, and I believe SDGE is investing in solar power plants in those deserts to provide electricity to San Diego.

Their programs for clean and electric vehicles look very weak, but still with a useful focus.

In Sept 2008 they announced results of study: Plug-In hybrid electric vehicles excel on MPG and emissions reductions, SDG&E study confirms "SDG&E tested the performance of two 2007-model standard hybrid vehicles and then converted them into plug-in hybrids, using a lithium-ion battery conversion kit. When compared with the standard hybrid, the plug-in hybrid achieved a 60-percent increase in gas mileage, a 37-percent decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) tailpipe emissions, and an 18-percent reduction in fuel costs. When compared with conventional gasoline-fueled vehicles that average 22 miles per gallon (MPG), the fuel cost savings jump to 57 percent. "

Unfortunately their page has very few specifics to understand what they're doing. They discuss electrification of the following useful areas to address, but with no details as to the actual programs being pursued.

• Non-road Electric Vehicles
  • Fork lifts, materials-handling equipment, personnel carriers and cleaners
  • Airport ground support equipment (electrification of ground support equipment at San Diego International Airport)
• Electric Idling Initiatives - Electric idling initiatives, which involve substituting electrification for petroleum-fueled idling operations, include:
  • "Cold ironing" (Port of San Diego cruise ship and cargo terminals)
  • Locomotive electric idling (San Diego Sante Fe Train Station)
  • Truck-stop electrification

Links: 

California utility prepares for surge in plug-in electric cars

Links: 

http://www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/

Links: 

http://pge.com/about/environment/

Links: 

http://www.sdge.com/environment/

External Media

Death of the cell phone charger...?

Eep, what a story this is. The story? That for decades researchers have dreamed of the ability to transmit power over long distances. It would remove the need for power lines etc. The dream goes back to the earliest days of the development of Electricity, as Nikolai Tesla himself worked on this idea. I first read of it in Heinlein's novel Farmer in the Sky.

According to the article the bugaboo was accuracy of the power transmission. The power would bounce off everything in sight making the power received at the device come at varying frequencies and power levels. This made it hard to build a reception circuit. Some researchers have focused themselves for a few years on this problem and come up with a small and very inexpensive solution.

The power levels are appropriate for charging a cell phone or similarly low power demand. It offers a way to keep portable electrical gadgets charged with few worries. No more worrying about charging your shaver, wireless keyboard or mouse, etc, because the power will be transmitted to them.

It doesn't say whether the device requires a power transmitter, or whether it will receive power from the ambient electrical noise that's already bombarding us. Modern society has seen fit to create a zillion different electrical transmissions going on all around us, so in a sense we're constantly in a soup of electromagnetic energy already. Perhaps the gadget will just draw its power from that soup?

Article Reference: 

Death of the cell phone charger