Declaring Energy Independence
Fearful that repeated electricity outages might keep it from delivering the service its well-heeled clients expect, the 220-acre Ojai Valley Inn & Spa is trying to unplug from California’s power grid.
The Ventura County resort is evaluating a plan to place natural gas micro-turbines throughout its property, using the electricity they produce to run the 210-room hotel and diverting heat to warm its water, said Brian Skaggs, the hotel’s director of engineering. The generators could supply the hundreds of kilowatts the inn draws from Southern California Edison’s power lines each day.
There are no technical obstacles to the inn’s plans, according to energy consultants. But businesses that wish to declare their energy independence are finding they can’t completely cut the cord. For one thing, they are required to pay fees to the utilities that maintain the statewide electricity grid.
These fees--which for Edison customers range from 65 cents to $6.40 a month for every kilowatt of self-generating capacity--should be revised or shelved, policymakers say. They see the fees as impediments to new on-site generation that would provide reliable power for businesses while reducing the burden on the state’s power grid.
State Sens. Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) and Dede Alpert (D-Coronado) introduced legislation Wednesday that would eliminate many of these fees. Additionally, their Omnibus Distributed Energy Resources and Clean Electricity Bill would require the California Public Utilities Commission to adopt simplified standards for the use of solar cells, micro-turbines and other technologies.
Both Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. declined to comment on the legislation. But they have defended such fees, which help pay for maintaining their power distribution systems, and pointed out that the utilities remain the backup for independent users.
“Utilities don’t assess charges on their own,” said John Nelson, a PG&E; spokesman. “These are charges that have been put in place by the Public Utilities Commission.”
“It is an easy shot to blame the utilities for everything these days,” Nelson said.
Steven Greenberg of RealEnergy, a company that equips commercial complexes with on-site generation systems, is lobbying for the bill in Sacramento.
“The utilities can’t even guarantee that they can supply standby power right now,” said Greenberg, the Los Angeles company’s chief energy officer. “They don’t have the ability to deliver what they are charging for.”
Businesses such as the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa are at the forefront of a movement that could transform California’s power system into an organic energy network.
In this utopian vision, an elaborate web would connect power plants, micro-generators, electric vehicles, businesses, homes and even individual air-conditioning systems, judging where electricity shortfalls and surpluses exist.
Internet-linked computers would manage this web, transferring power between regions, neighborhoods and even individual machines. Software would let users pick the lowest priced source of power minute by minute from myriad sources--everything from big hydropower turbines to residential fuel cells. Some consumers would play a game of electrical arbitrage, monitoring subtle changes in demand and pricing for power to decide when to turn on the micro-generation systems in their homes or businesses and sell surplus power into the grid.
“We are heading for the day when there is a fuel cell in the garage and solar panels on the roof and a computer inside monitoring power and turning things on and off,” Greenberg said.
There is no shortage of new ideas.
Alan Cocconi, president of AC Propulsion Inc. in San Dimas, wants electric-vehicle owners to be able to play a 24-hour energy trading game that could subsidize their vehicles by as much as $40 a day at current rates. His software allows a parked electric vehicle to charge its batteries during off-peak hours, taking power from the grid, and then to feed power back when demand is highest. The owner would net the difference.
According to proponents of the organic power system, regulatory barriers and utility reluctance--not technical obstacles--prevent California from reaching power nirvana.
“At this point we don’t have a completely deregulated market,” said Scott Tomashefsky, the California Energy Commission’s authority on on-site generation. “Big generators of power can compete, but consumers have almost no way to participate in deregulation.”
“What we really need is one set of rules for all 50 states,” said Tomashefsky. “What that would do is bring the costs of manufacturing down so that these devices would be more marketable.”
Change, however, comes slowly to a power system that was devised a century ago.
“None of this was conceived when the grid was created,” Tomashefsky said.
An organic power system--one that does not rely solely on central power stations that send electrons in a giant outward flow onto the grid--would require thousands, if not millions, of what the industry calls distributed generation sites.
These sites could be solar arrays, micro-turbines, natural gas generators, windmills and fuel cells widely disbursed throughout the grid. Each would have the capacity to contribute power to the home or building where it is located or to feed power into the electric system.
A Department of Energy study found that distributed generation offers the promise of increased reliability, uninterrupted service, energy cost savings and on-site efficiency.
The study examined 65 homes and businesses that attempted to install various forms of distributed energy and found that only seven cases reported no major utility barriers and were “interconnected,” or integrated into the grid, without delays.
According to the study, conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., most of those surveyed “believed that the utilities’ policies or practices constituted unnecessary barriers to interconnection.”
Utilities contend that they must review and supervise on-site generation proposals to protect their workers--who could risk injury if a faulty or mishandled connection were to send power onto the grid unexpectedly--and not to thwart such projects.
Certainly, unfamiliarity is a major factor in what proponents of distributed generation see as utility stubbornness. Utilities know how to connect customers to the grid. Only recently have businesses asked to disconnect.
But each new project gets a bit easier as utilities gain a better understanding of on-site generation, said Rick Cole, sales manager for Industry-based generator seller Valley Detroit Diesel Allison.
“The power crunch is starting to bring the utilities around,” said John Schaeffer, president of Real Goods Trading Corp., a Ukiah, Calif.-based seller of solar energy systems. “Now they see that a watt saved is one they didn’t have to buy for the grid.”
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Idea Power
Policy experts say one partial remedy for California’s power crunch is a greater reliance on distributed generation, created by businesses and homeowners installing mini-power plants on their properties to supply their energy. This type of generation ranges from wind power to solar energy to natural gas-fired micro-turbines. Here are two examples:
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Generating Power at Home: Micro-turbines
Micro-turbines operate on much the same principle as the industrial power plants, but they use combustion pressure rather than steam pressure to turn the turbine. Capstone Turbine’s refrigerator size power plant produces 30 kilowatts of power and can run on gas. The $30,000-to-$35,000 power plant can power small or medium-size business or a residential block of three to six homes.
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Fossil Fuel Burning Generators
Steam power plants produce most of the electricity generated in the United States. Most of California’s electricity is generated in natural gas-fired power plants that make superheated steam used to turn giant turbines that drive electrical generators.
Sources: David Macaulay “The New Way Things Work; World Book Encyclopedia; howstuffworks.com, North Carolina Solar Center, Capstone Turbine Corp.: Researched by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times
