Future of Electric Models

The past lessons have gotten us to this point. We know that the electric utility market is in a state of flux, and with this comes some pretty significant challenges, as well as opportunities. For the past 100 years, electric utilities have balanced safety, reliability, and affordability to provide service to their customers. The Regulatory Compact provides oversight, and in return, utilities are able to earn a return on the electric grade assets in which they invest. Some of the biggest changes include the influx of distributed energy resources, whose adaption is encouraged by tax credits, net metering, and other incentives.

The incorporation and integration of massive amounts of data and more active involvement from customers and third parties, including a potential competition to utilities, is also reshaping this market. At the same time, there is no room for error or slippage when it comes to providing electricity that is safe, reliable and affordable. The electric grid continues to be a major backbone in ensuring these three things. Right now, even as you're watching this, regulators are trying to figure out how to compensate utilities in the future for the value of the grid in a changing world.

We live in a wonderful time because there are so much technology and so many advancements being made. But at the same time, there are some that are affordable and effective that can be adopted early, and then there's others that the costs are high. But the technology keeps going on, and as greater production happens, the costs go down. So we live in a really exciting time. Technology is not free. And so it's a matter of which technologies to deploy, which one's are cost effective, and safe and reliable. 

There's been a lot of discussion by regulators, and utilities, about how an industry, that was
founded on a centralized approach, can accommodate or transform to include more decentralization. As you've seen, thinking about the complexities of how this industry works is really important. Preserving the electricity we have become so dependent upon. There are a number of business models already in place right now. Some electric utilities own generation, transmission, and distribution. That's a very traditional vertically integrated approach. Others manage only the transmission and distribution systems. And in Texas, independent power producers market electricity to users.

Many electric industry executives see value-added opportunities around distributed energy resources. But there is no clear path forward for a business model that makes the most sense. In the state of the electric utility study, utility executives were asked which model they thought would be the best for the utility sector moving forward. 28% said that they thought the vertically integrated utility model made the most sense. This means utility, again, on generation, transmission, and distribution and monitors reliability. 

Future of Electric Models

In this model, there is a regional transmission organization, OTO, or independent system operator ISO, of the transmission system. And that means there could be no preferential treatment given to the utility versus competitive generators. In fact, if you ever visit a utility that is vertically integrated, the transmission group is always kept physically separated from the other operations areas, as in, behind locked doors. Now, 24% of the executives picked the model that was specified in the New York plan. This means like the vertically integrated utility model, including a transmission that I described, and the utilities act as a platform provider for the distributed resources over the distribution system. Now the same proportion, 24%, picked an RTO/ISO model, and that means a regulated utility owns

the transmission and distribution. But unregulated companies provide generation. And then there is an RTO/ISO that operates the transmission grid. Fewer, 13% pick the retail
electricity market model.

This is the same as the RTO/ISO model I described. And then there are unregulated companies that provide electricity retailing services. Now 11% pick the IDSO model and that means the RTO/ISO model plus an independent distribution system operator. And they operate the distribution grid and
monitor reliability. Now in the same study utility executives were asked about what they thought was the best way for utilities to manage lost load from both distributed energy resources or from customers buying it from a third party. 38% recommended that the industry change rate structures to better recover those fixed costs. In other words, to reflect the value of the assets that are used. That's no small feat because you know how capital intensive this business is.

Some of the things they specifically gravitated towards were rates that varied in accordance with the time of use, meaning charging more during peak hours. Some also thought increasing the fixed charge would be the best approach. 27% said they thought it would make sense for utilities to offer customers renewable energy services, for example, community solar and green pricing programs. Coming in close behind, 26% said utility should petition regulators to change the traditional utility revenue model altogether. Electric utilities worry whether the ambitious approaches will be able to truly balance distributed energy choice with affordability, safety, and reliability.

Crystal ball, what's the future of the utility in the next, some people say 10 years, I think that's a shorter frame, as fast as technology is moving today, it could be three to five years what does it look like And at least for me, I'm already starting to see it with some of the projects that we're doing, and the small solar on the rooftops of a lot of our members. The grid used to be a one way grid. Power would come from the power plants, from out in the middle of nowhere, come into our substation, and
then flow down to the customer. And now we have little generators all over our service territory. So number one, our grid's got to be able to accommodate two-way flow of electrons, which it didn't need to before.

The other thing is we need to probably implement more of a storage. When we're making lots
of solar energy at noon, what we need to do is be able to store that energy, shift it six hours. So that when everybody comes home and they're watching television and cooking dinners, I can take that
energy that was made at noon and delivered to our consumers at six. It really is the key for renewables to turning it into gold. It's my opinion that movement of energy from one time period to another. I think the utility of the future is going to have to have that.

Basically, we're just a grid and I see us as being kind of the middleman with a bunch of people using
energy on our grid and a bunch of people producing energy on our grid. And we're the ones they're linking everybody up with everybody else. And that's a more sophisticated grid than what we have today. And we talk about infrastructure in this country, this is one of the infrastructures that
I think really needs to be focused on. It's also going to be a benefit to the solar industry because until I get this more sophisticated grid, I will have limits as to the amount of solar that I can bring into the system. At any particular location. So I would encourage that the solar industry actually helps the utility industry lobby government to support the infrastructure of the grid, improving it. Because at the end of the day, our improved grid means more solar can be deployed, which is helpful for
the solar industry at the end.

I think what we see in our society a lot are folks that are unhappy with the pace of change, and
folks want to change overnight. Typically though, decisions that happen overnight are rarely good and you look at the net outcome of where we're at, and utility space. We have the cleanest, most reliable, most economical, affordable and agile products and services in the electric utility space in the world. I think we're getting it right for both parts and we can continue to have some vigorous
debate on the margins about what on to change and where we need to head in the future. But, when you look at the end results, we're sitting here in the well-lit space right now. Students watching this, whether watching it home or watching it in a classroom. They're watching with dependable power
making it all happen at relatively affordable rates, depending on where they're sitting and that's a good thing.

To meet the utility of the future question, one of the things Xcel Energy has done here in the Colorado jurisdiction is, is we're broadly talking about what we're calling the R energy future initiative And we have three components of the Our Energy Future Initiative. And we sat back, and we looked at what do we think our utilities should be. What service should we be providing
to our customers five years from now, ten years from now. We came back and said there are three
things we really need to focus on. The first thing we need to focus on is customer choice. Being able to give our customers a little bit more control and little more choice about what they're looking at, how they're looking to consume their energy.

Giving them more information about it so they know more about how they're driving the costs of energy. Secondly, we need to be embracing the technology that's developing in our areas. So in our industry, we've had a lot of technological innovation in the past several years, and it's going to continue on into the future. How do we bring that into the fold in a way that makes sense for our customers and really embraces? And then finally, we want to provide those choices and we want to embrace that technology, but you've gotta balance that with economic development. We need to make sure that we're empowering our states to have strong and robust economic development to attract businesses so that our citizens can be employed by those businesses. And to attract people that can come and work in those businesses, and they want to live in our areas. So it's a balance of the three that we're really looking at and is really important to us. The utility of the future is going to
have more choices for its customers. It's going to be a little bit more adept and nimble at adopting those technologies and presenting those options to its customers in a way that makes sense.

The fact is that the cheapest integration solutions, the cheapest way of solving the intermittency problem if you want to see it as a problem, are obviously going to be found if you've got an entity that can look across the entire system, look at all of the resources available in the system. And integrate the different operating characteristics of all those resources, you need an orchestra conductor, which is I think the best way to understand one of the most important functions that utilities have. If you don't have an orchestra conductor, you end up with the absurd situation where the individual solar and wind developers are called upon to provide their own energy storage on their own sites. And in some parts of the world and in some parts of the country, that's actually happened. But it greatly increases the cost of the resource. And what on earth would be the reason for thinking that the onsight solution would be less costly than the whole cluster of solutions that are available to an orchestra conductor that can look out over a much bigger system?

So the future of renewability, as they say, is very bright. And we are really looking forward to continued deployment. It has been, if you look at the recent history, we've doubled the capacity of deployment every year and investment as well. So that I believe will continue and the technologies will continue to get cheaper, and more efficient, and more optimal. But I think one of the really interesting things about renewables is they become a greater and greater part of the energy mix is that we're really going to start seeing more decentralization and what some people have called the democratization of energy. So just as the internet has brought changes to the music industry and the transportation industry, it's bringing changes to the energy industry. And we're going to see
more distributive energy, people with solar panels in their homes, small wind turbines, utility building utilities scale power plants in different areas and communities.

Depending on the resources, we'll see geothermal, we'll see small hydro that takes energy from pipes and conduits in different ways from decentralized energy and we're going to see more and more of this become more of a community industry based mix. And people will really be able to understand how the energy is generated, they will be interconnected with how they use energy and then how it's actually generated themselves. So we going to see the utilities and the energy industry really
become much more dynamic, much more integrated, much more customer driven and customer focused. As the renewables and other types of energy become more and more part of our lives.

To sum it up, technology improvements and cost reductions, and distributed solar and energy storage, mean the likelihood of their increased integration into the existing grid. Electric utilities are looking at these and developing products and programs to benefit customers. At the same time, they know the importance of regulation to handle these changes in a way that protects reliability and affordability. The fact remains, we as customers demand all of this.

Read More

Clean Electrical Power Planning For the Future

One of the things to watch, because it will hold a significant impact on the future of this industry and
its model, is the Clean Power Plan. This plan was a cornerstone of the Obama administration's focus, on mitigating climate change. It has also has been a lightning rod. As you may recall from a previous lesson where we touched on it, the plan called for cutting carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired electric plants by 32 below 2005 levels. And states needed to meet this goal by 2030. A really critical part of the plan is that the EPA plans to regulate power plant emissions under this act. Each state has its own specific goals to meet under the Clean Power Plan. Almost half of the states
in the US are using. And the case against the Clean Power Plan is compromised of 38 separate cases. I know you're thinking that math doesn't add up, but the states aren't the only ones suing. Utilities and
coal companies have also issued lawsuits.

The states believe this plan is illegal and even unconstitutional, and feel that it is a way to
reorganize the US electric grid. They also believe it's an all-out attack on the coal industry that will drive electricity costs, sky high. The EPA fired back saying, the plan will lead to lower residential bills. Remember how earlier we talked about the fact, that states had jurisdiction over electricity generation and distribution? Well, this gets to the very heart of the controversy. The states are protecting their authority, to regulate carbon emission for their states. New Jersey Environmental Protection commissioner, sums up many of their concerns in three words, unprecedented regulatory overreach.

With the EPA, they're clearly looking at increasing and more restrictive standards, specifically on coal fire generation. But not just coal. When you look at where regulation is in the extractive industries, well that impacts any sort of baseload power we have in this country. And it drives cost. One of the frustrations I think the industry has with the EPA right now, is sort of the laundry
list of regulations.

Before one is finalized, you are met with an additional regulation. And there's no harmony between them. And the cross counting of benefits, counting the benefits of one regulation under the requirements of another. And really, that is an area where I think our country is really ripe for some reforms and just some common sense rethinking. That you can accomplish the same goals and achieve the same ends, without as being disruptive to industry and business as we are right now. because frankly, a lot of companies when they're looking at making long-term resource decision, their hands are tied. Because you just don't know what the regulatory future looks like in this country, because of the volume and diversity of regulations coming at US EPA right now.

The EPA defends its position saying, carbon emissions from coal fire plants represent a huge threat to the health and welfare of the US citizens, because of the impact on climate change. They support their right to do this because they have regulated other forms of air pollution from power plants, and other sources for decades. Now, on the other hand, some states, cities, and scientists support the plan. And they say that since pollution and emissions don't respect state borders, that the EPA's plan will help ensure emissions are truly reduced across the US. In February of 2016, the US Supreme Court
issued a stay of the Clean Power Plan. A legal stay means that a judicial proceeding is temporarily stopped. They can either be temporary or indefinite.

This means that the Environmental Protection Agency is not allowed to enforce any of the requirements of the rule until all of the lawsuits against it have been resolved. The outcome of this controversy will have considerable impacts on all of us. Meeting the standards would mean more renewables, greater promotion of energy efficiency and a greater reliance on natural gas. Of course, you know that natural gas is not without its own controversy, namely fracking. There's no magic bullet and the sound bites that come out of the media and social media, just don't do this issue justice. It's one that bears a closer look by all of us since the impact will be so significant.

Read More

NET METERING - Future of Electricity

We talked in an earlier article about distributed generation. As a reminder, this is when electricity is generated near the location where it's being used. We also talked about the fact that with some energy sources being used for generation being more intermittent, for example, the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow at the optimal speed all the time, you know that a connection to the grid is still needed. Otherwise, these customers would not have electricity 24/7. Another reason the grid is still needed is that many users sell energy back to the utility. And for this, you need a good connection.

They benefit in two ways, one is when their generation is not operating, obviously the greatest providing them power. But the grid also supplies them the capacity for their storage. Essentially, they're storing energy in the system and then using it when they have loaded and their generation is no longer on. So, there are two benefits there for customers with solar generation. 

Back in the 70s, there was a push by the government to increase penetration of rooftop solar. This is the genesis of net metering which is an approach to charging customers with rooftop solar. This approach was designed to encourage adoption and so it served to make rooftop solar more affordable through subsidies. Fast forward to today and solar rooftop penetration is going strong. So the question is being asked, does it still need government subsidies to grow, or could and should this market be able to stand on its own? At the center of the debate is the fact that those who don't have solar are subsidizing those who do. Let's dig into this in more detail.

So for a residential customer that has some solar generation, the watt outer meter runs forwards and backward, depending on whether or not the customer's using more load than the solar is producing or when the sun isn't shining. Or it runs backward when the load at the house is not enough for, is too much for, not enough for the solar capacity that's coming into the system. So the meter runs both ways. So, when the meter runs backward, there are negative kilowatt hours, and then when it runs forward there are positive kilowatt hours. So, according to the commission rules, customers can install a system up to about 120% of their annual kilowatt hours. So, if a customer has one these systems where it's designed and it actually produces 120% of their annual kilowatt hours, then the meter in large terms, ran backward 120% of the time. And so, what happens then is utility didn't get paid any money for the system that's being connected and then has to pay the customer for the energy that was produced in the system.

NET METERING

Net metering is approached a little differently in every state. Usually, here's how it works. Customers with rooftop solar or other distributed generation get credit for the extra electricity they sell back to the grid. Utilities are generally required to buy this electricity at the full retail rate. Now if that same utility were buying power on the open market from other utilities, they would pay wholesale rates. But net metering specifies that the utilities must buy the power at a retail rate or a premium rate

from net metering customers. The net, it's more expensive. Also, all of the fixed costs of the poles,
wires, meters, advanced technologies, and other infrastructure still has to get covered somewhere. So the bottom line is that the net metering customer doesn't pay for this stuff, but they use it. So, who pays for it? Customers without distributed generation or rooftop solar.

So when you take a look at the bill and it says a service charge, it's all over the place. Well, what's included in that service charge? And then we start talking about residential customers as it relates around to the energy rate. And this is where we get into a lot of these conversations about net metering, what's the cost-effectiveness? Who's paying for what? Are they paying their full share or not?

Right now there's a pretty heated discussion going on about the need to relook at net metering. At the heart of the discussion is how to ensure fair compensation for solar companies as well as utilities.

Then you turn the corner, evolution of technology, you come to the solar industry. You have the rooftop installations. They're using what is known as net metering. Net metering is you measure the amount of energy that's coming out of the home, you measure the amount of the energy that's being consumed by the home, and you get to net the two together. The problem is, is that the infrastructure
that's still behind that, that's based on them, how much is everybody using at the same time, is still needed, is still being utilized, but because of that netting, it isn't necessarily being paid for. And so that's, once again, back to that debate that's raging across the country right now on how do you really balance these factors and the benefits that come from the installations? What's going to happen? And we have, I think, still a number of years before we really know what the outcome of that debate is.

So the industry is changing. That puts pressure on the regulatory side. For the last 100 years, most of utility fixed costs have been recovered in variable rates because it worked. And because there was either consistent load or increasing load. With the distributed generation that turns it upside down and the variable amount of usage or sales is declining for many utilities which puts pressure on them to recover their fixed costs in different ways, and then that creates some backlash. 

The cost of producing solar power has gone down since net metering was first rolled out. The original purpose was to incent market growth. With that in mind, state legislatures and utility regulatory commissions are looking at outdated net metering policies. The solar industry has countered saying
that the subsidies aren't material and that the prevalence of rooftop solar helps to alleviate the strain on electric grids during summer days when demand soars. What we do know is that increased penetration of distributed energy technologies, particularly solar, is creating a fundamental shift in the US electricity system, and public policy must respond to this. Policy over the previous one way
street approach no longer suits this complex market.

Read More

Future Electric Vehicles Technology

Let's talk about another hot topic, electric vehicles. The US electric industry has significantly
focused on electric transportation. This includes electric vehicles and charging stations to modeling the way by changing out some of their own fossil fuel power utility fleet vehicles for those that require electricity to run. There are some plug-in hybrids that have an electrical motor powerful enough to produce electricity beyond just for use in that vehicle. That means the power can be exported, so there you have it, storage, PG&E in California has done some amazing work with their own plea incorporating vehicles that can service generators to power their worker's tools and potentially even an entire neighborhood. Right now utilities use generators in areas that are down and connect these generators to grid sections to bring neighborhoods online one at a time. And they're looking at the plugin hybrids to fill this role. While this is extremely exciting news, we do need to keep in mind that at this point, it's more for isolated applications.

Most people that are really earnest about climate change will say that the first step is to decarbonize
the electric sector. In other words, have a larger percentage of renewable resources so that the carbon footprint is fairly small. And we're already there in the northwest. The step two that they will usually
point to is electrifying transportation. If you really want to make an impact on the carbon footprint of our society, you need to go after transportation and electric utilities want to be part of the solution. And I think electrification of transportation is a worthwhile effort. There are a lot of institutional barriers though, that keep utilities from participating. There are, in some cases, laws or regulations that prohibit utilities from encouraging electrification. In some cases, there are regulatory tests of cost-effectiveness. Just how far you can go to try to promote electrification of transportation, so it's not an easy thing. But that's a realistic second step for making a significant impact on climate change efforts. 

National Renewable Energy Labs is doing some extensive research on EVs. I was able to take a look at one of these projects in their lab. 

So this vehicle in this lab is being used to understand how vehicles interact with a residential system. So when you're plugging your electric vehicle in, how does it interact with the grid? How does it interact with the home and a building? And so, that's why we have this little vehicle here in this lab. We do a wide variety of research on electric vehicles, everything from developing the battery systems, the drive trains, the overall system of the vehicle itself and to prove its efficiency. And then also how to improve the different types of charging operations as well.

We're working on building energy codes in our states and cities. We're working on transportation
policy to increase support for mass transit systems to increase support for electric vehicles which is
an energy efficient and clean vehicle technology that's just emerging in the marketplace. We're quite, Bullish on the future for electric vehicles. Moving off of petroleum fuels, on to electricity for our cars and trucks.  There's no doubt the future is getting more exciting when it comes to EVs. This is one for us to keep an eye on.

Read More

Future of Electric Storage

The concept of storing electricity is clearly not new. Since the 1930s pumped hydroelectric power has played an important role providing electricity here in the US and around the world.

The Energy Storage Association, which is a national trade association, identifies that storage falls into four main buckets. Those are number one, mechanical which is where pumped hydroelectric falls. Number two is thermal and ice is probably the most common in that area. Number three is electrical which is superconducting magnetic energy storage and capacitors. Try and say that four times fast. And number four is chemical which is basically batteries. 

We're going to talk about battery storage specifically since it's getting a lot of attention lately. With the influx of interment renewable energy sources, the possibilities associated with it are considered key to customer and utility cost savings. In fact, industry experts believe that the combination of energy storage solutions, smart grid, and renewable energy are key for our future. You already know that large-scale wind can be very challenging to integrate into the grid because of its intermittent nature. The wind tends to blow at night when demand for electricity just isn't as high. The hope is that storage can help smooth out the variability.

It becomes an issue of how you store the energy to make work, storing daylights power for night time usage is one thing. Storing summer power for winter usage is quite a different thing. So I think the pace of change will be different in different parts of the country.

You also know, probably even from looking around your own neighborhood, that people are using more rooftop solar as a way to lower their bills. You also know that these customers still rely on the grid. Otherwise, they'd be sitting in the dark come nightfall. At this point, there is no energy solution
storage that has been proven to work with solar that provides an affordable and reliable option.

 Electricity is this crazy on-demand resource. We don't have a place where we can just pump it and use it later, with the exception of pump storage hydro. And when you have for example say the wind picks up, the power has to go somewhere, so somebody else on the system has to back down. And that's typically again where you see the natural gas sort of in that intermediate role. Coming off the system and allowing those resources to come on to the grid.

The good news is that technology is evolving. It's getting better. You can do more ins and outs and in fact, we're experimenting with batteries here in Colorado as well. We have a project that we're doing for Microgrid where we're combining a battery and solar array. And then we have smaller projects where we're actually working with homeowners that have rooftop solar to install batteries and test how they can help with managing the system so that we can install even more distributed energy resources. We've got a few ways to go but it's good to learn the technology so that you can take advantage of it when it's cost effective.

While a lot of private companies, national labs, and electric utilities themselves continue to work on storage solutions that are reliable and affordable as well as scalable, it's still very much a technology that is evolving.

Read More

Electric Regulation and Environment

The state plays such an important role in this industry and in particular with environmental policy. Let's start with something called Renewable Portfolio Standard or RPS for short. Basically what an RPS does is it requires that a certain percentage of electricity that is sold to customers has to come
from approved renewable energy sources. These differ by state as you would have imagined. The state has different overall goals with some being mandatory and others being voluntary. Within states themselves, some different goals are applied based on the size of the utilities, whether or not they're an IOU versus corp or annuity. Often times the coops and the immunities have lower targets than the IOUs. But some common themes exist.

Most have some type of penalty if the utilities don't make the goal. They often have the option for the utilities to use renewable energy certificates or RECs to meet that goal. Let's hear more about RECs
from one of our experts.

So in terms of where we stand in the world, Colorado is a real leader. We have the National Renewable Energy Lab for the United States. They host hundreds of delegations from all over the world to go there and take a look at energy. In Colorado, we've also been a leader in terms of policy. In 2004, we're the first state in the United States to actually have the citizens vote upon an initiative to have 10% of our electric generated by renewable energy. So, we're a leader in terms of the renewable portfolio standards. Other states have followed, other states had renewable portfolio standards but didn't have it come from the voters. So it was a real Interesting to have a groundswell to earn a 52% vote to get that started. But again it comes back to Colorado has so many of all renewable resources and also a balance of fossil fuels. That we are, we're like a global petri dish. >> The Berkeley Lab publishes an annual report that details where states are with respect to having and meeting their RPS.

As a national lab this is a really good source of information. As you can see from this map, as of the time of this report 29 states have RPS policies in place. Most are well on their way to meeting them. In looking at this map you may think you can easily eyeball it to see which states are more aggressive than others but that's not really the case at a glance at least. You aren't really comparing apples to apples. More like comparing a combo platter to another combo platter. The requirements are so
different from one another. And this map doesn't necessarily, immediately lend itself to the discussion of what the incremental change would be for the states. Some states have more renewable or
other types of generation than others due to the problems of that resource located within the state boundaries. For example, Washington state has lots of water and, therefore, hydro.

Read also,
Learn Siemens PLC Programming (TIA Portal v13)
Learn Arduino UNO 
Learn Fatek PLC Programming

For those not intimately familiar with utilities, one of the tidbits of information I get about utilities is something that many states have called a Renewable Portfolio Standard. And that tends to increase over time and it defines an amount of renewable power that has to be part of their overall mix or
portfolio of power. That little bit of information can be misleading. For example, the state of Washington has a renewable portfolio standard says we have to get 9% of our power from renewable resources today. In 2020 that would grow to 15%. California will be at 33% in 2020. So you might expect that wow, California is much more renewable than the state of Washington. It's misleading though because the standard, at least in Washington and Oregon, and I know other states, does not include existing or older renewable resources. And so the state of Washington, based on reports to the state, something like 67% of the energy is renewable. But we're only 9% new renewable. And so it's a little misleading and a little confusing. So, we're actually more renewable, more sustainable power supply than California, but you wouldn't know that by just looking at the Renewable Portfolio Standard numbers.

We're focusing on the US but the RPS type approach is also found globally. Countries in Europe, Asia, and South America do something pretty similar. Now is a pretty logical time to talk about what a feed-in tariff is, which is also an approach found frequently abroad. A feed-in tariff guarantees
the purchase of all renewable energy, regardless of what it costs. The reason many people prefer the RPS approach over feed-in tariffs, as you can imagine, is because the RPS depends on the private market to make it work and supporters like the idea of this spurring competition and innovation. While the overall goal of the states is to protect the environment, how it's done is beyond
just the goal setting. States will have a different focus on carve-outs, multipliers, or some combination of the two. To keep it simple, a carve-out means that the state has specific requirements about the renewable energy source.

For example, there may be a solar carve out. This means that there is a specific goal for electricity generation coming from solar panels. Distributed generation is also a focus area of a number of carve-outs. You can see that carve-outs, either with or without a multiplier, are the most prevalent. A multiplier might exist to give more credit, and therefore, more attention, to certain ways of meeting the goals. For example, one might encourage early installation of renewable energy or in-state manufactured components. Another multiplier may assign a higher value, say, to solar or distributed generation, or maybe even wind. Critics of the multiplier say that this can cause an imbalance in the portfolio mix which, as you know, is not something that this market benefits from.

Read More

Utility Policy by State

We've talked a lot about some aspects of federal energy policy in terms of its impact on the electricity market. And it's really important to what changes will happen and what must occur. But if electricity regulation and policy were a wedding, state regulation is the bride. What do I mean by that? State regulators call many of the shots when it comes to electricity regulation. They often take center stage and it's always been like that. In the very beginning of this course, you saw that in the crash history animation lesson, that 100 years ago, this market was set up so that states could make the call when it comes to electricity within their state boundaries. This was done because of the natural monopoly status of the utilities and also as a way to make sure the local utilities met the needs of their residents and businesses. And they also wanted to make sure that the utility would continue to meet state goals, which generally include things like economic development and environmental protection.

So, Melissa Day, as you know, electricity was developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And what happens is, is they naturally formed as monopolies. And so in our society, we have many areas and sectors that are competitive, but we do have a few that are monopolies. And in these cases, many of the states, or almost all of the 50 states, have created public utility commissions that go again, way back to the 1800s, to go ahead and regulate these monopolies. Obviously, one company can't go ahead and build electric generation and transmission through the power lines and have everyone held captive and charge them exorbitant rates. So, public utility commissions go ahead and monitor the monopoly-like companies.

Read also,
Learn Siemens PLC Programming (TIA Portal v13)
Learn Arduino UNO 
Learn Fatek PLC Programming

State regulation, which is handled by the public utility commissions, is responsible for approving a lot of critical decisions. When I think about a license to operate for electric utilities PUCs are the first thing that comes to mind.

As a regulated utility, we have multiple layers of regulation. Primarily, you're going to be looking at the federal level, which they're looking at wholesale transactions. And then you have the retail level and the state level. So in Colorado, we have the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Each state across the country usually has some kind of public regulation commissioner, public utility commission. They may have a slightly different name in each of the states. 

PUCs are responsible for overseeing retail sales to end users, that's us. As well as the businesses that use the electricity, which is all of them, and that includes approving rates. They also oversee the low voltage distribution lines, where the power plants and transmission lines are sited, meaning where they're located. One of the biggest issues in this area is that neighborhoods can protest the placement of a transmission or distribution line. And they often do. We all want reliable electricity and most people want to live in a state that is growing from an economic development standpoint. But, often, we don't want to see the poles and wires in our backyards and parks. And as we've talked about before, burying distribution lines is not always possible from a technical or from a cost perspective. Interestingly, the PUC does not have responsibility for hydroelectric facility siting, licensing, safety, or recreational use. This is the responsibility of FERC. Even before the modern electric grid, the US federal government has overseen national water resources. 


Read also,
Learn Siemens PLC Programming (TIA Portal v13)
Learn Arduino UNO 
Learn Fatek PLC Programming


The other thing the PUCs oversee is the utilities for the portfolio of generation types to serve customers. A utility files a plan of what resources they intend to use, whether it's coal, natural gas, and/or renewable energy. The PUC is then responsible for approving the mix being planned by the utility. You already know that state government in the form of public utility commissions approve or disapprove what utilities can charge. 

So, we won't spend any more time on that, I know you've got it. So, who watches over the PUC? It's worth noting even the PUCs are regulated. Each state has a legislature that reviews changes to utility laws, rules, and regulations. It's a pretty extensive system of checks and balances. It's worth taking a deeper dive into individual state's focus on the environment which we will tackle in the next article.


Read also,
Learn Siemens PLC Programming (TIA Portal v13)
Learn Arduino UNO 
Learn Fatek PLC Programming

Read More

Federal Regulation & the Environment in Electrical Future Engineering

My guess is you may not have even heard about FERC or NERC until the preceding lesson. If I said
Federal Electric Utility Regulation, you'd probably think more in terms of environmental protection. I'm betting EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, is something that probably came to mind at some point. Speaking of which, the Energy Policy Acts are something you need to do know about.

There are two, one in 1992, and the other in 2005. Basically, these Acts created tax incentives to encourage the addition of more renewable resources. Supporters of the Energy Policy Acts, feel like it's a very effective way to encourage wind and solar and at the same time discourage the construction of additional coal plants. The other side of the coin is, that those who criticize it say that the government incentives artificially subsidize the cost of renewable energy on the backs of the public. Those who don't like it also say that because the Fed has focused on creating competition at the wholesale electricity level, introducing subsidies for renewable energy really makes for a distorted and unbalanced market. Where you stand likely has a lot to do with your extent industry knowledge and even your political ideology.

This is something that each of us will need to weigh for ourselves. What I can recommend, is that you do some digging and research to hear both sides of the story to make your own informed opinions. I would love to hear more about your opinion of this on the discussion boards. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has been around since 1970, and it was formed under President Nixon. The agency's mission is pretty lofty. It exists to protect human health and the environment. You probably hear about them when an organization is getting called to the carpet for violations. It tends to make the news. And it's also living proof that any publicity is good publicity, is so far from the truth. Electric utilities are not the only industry that this agency oversees, of course. And this agency does not handle every environmental concern. There are other federal, tribal, state, and local agencies that have specific areas of the environment they focus on, too. Like wildlife preservation, for example, is handled by another agency. So what do they focus on when it comes to electric utilities?

Well, they look at a number of things but let's talk about coal-fired plant emissions because that's a pretty hot topic right now and promises to stay that way. The EPA's Clean Power Plan is one of the things that is at the forefront right now and can be a heated topic. By, heated, I mean really, really heated. The goal of the plan is to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants. One of the biggest concerns of the plan has to do with roles and scope of authority. There's a large objection that the EPA is seriously overstepping its bounds into what the state governments responsibility is supposed to be. In fact, some opponents say the EPA has no authority in these matters and needs to let the states handle it. The less vehement feel like reducing greenhouse gases is good, but the timeline is just not realistic at all.

As you know now, in a heavily regulated market, costs need to be justified and demonstrate maximum value, which does not always lend itself to speed. Just as passionately, supporters applaud the plan and cite some of the costs that are hard to put a dollar figure to. The community's health, for example. They tend to stay away from the role discussion and the operational cost side of the equation and focus more on the benefits of environmental protection on health as well as the local geography, including aesthetics. In the summer of 2014, President Obama issued an executive order calling for coal-fired plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30% to compare to what they were in 2005. They have until 2030 to get this done. This executive order does give the states flexibility to figure out the way that works best in their states. So, they could add some energy efficiency programs or they could add more wind and solar to their generation mix. They could also buy and sell some
government-issued pollution permits. Basically, a cap and trade program. Supporters applaud the focus on reducing emissions stack pollution, which they identify as the main driver of global warming and health issues. Power plants are responsible for US carbon pollution. Right now mercury, arsenic, lead, and soot have been targeted as power plant pollutants that are being monitored and reduced. But carbon pollution has been later in the game.

The opposition says it will negatively impact the national financial vitality of this country, gross domestic product, GDP, employment and real household income. They also say the efforts will have
a very small impact on global CO2 emissions anyway. The Chamber of Commerce says that it would
only tackle 1.8% of global CO2 emissions. And then they ask the question, at what financial burden?

They say it would have some real consequences, reducing the GDP by $51 billion annually and increasing electricity cost by $289 billion. Decommissioning of assets will also come with a pretty hefty price tag. If you believe this, you know that this will also impact the price of the things we
rely on that are manufactured. Because the costs of those manufactured goods will go up. Regardless of where you stand on the issues, it makes sense, in this case, to do your homework. Paying attention to the sound bites on social media and other online sources, will not help you get a 360 view of this
very real balancing act as it unfolds.

Question: Do some digging! I've gotten you started by outlining what some of the supporters and opponents say about the Clean Power Plan. What is your informed opinion on where this plan succeeds and where it may fall short?

Answer in the comment box below.

Read More

Pace of Change, Technology and Regulation in Electrical Future

With a few article behind us, I know you've made the connection that 100-year-old industry that's
obligated to serve everyone. Whose business practices are shaped by its surrounding geography and climate, and is highly regulated, doesn't really lend itself to being an exactly bleeding edge. That's actually good news for us as consumers. We demand and let's face it, pretty much get reliable electricity 24/7. For Smartelectricfuture.blogspot.com web-blog of Electrical Engineering & it's future, I am going to write an article about the Electrical Future's pace of change, its technology and regulation. 

Think about when new technology comes out in other areas, there are always some hiccups. Patches on your software and phone apps, you tolerate them. Interruptions in your electricity? I'm pretty sure you're not going to be as generous of spirit, to put it nicely. 

I had the opportunity to go across the country and have conversations with various customers,
with various stakeholder groups. And one of the things that I hear quite frequently is well utilities are just so in the past. We're slow, we're large, we're lumbering, it takes us a long time to change. What I would say is that on two levels, one, sometimes that’s a good thing. Because in society when you're
talking about a life essential, you don't want it to change overnight. 

You also want it to be a reasonable cost to all of the citizens of the state and of the communities. You have to take into account the fact that everybody is treated as the same when it comes to electricity and provisions. But they don't all have the same incomes. So, you've got to make sure that it's accessible to everyone, or make it as accessible as you possibly can. So, when a utility makes a decision, it's not just to adopt the latest fad. And, you wouldn't want your utility to necessarily adopt the latest fad, because it might be too early in a process, and be too expensive. We look to balance both the new technology that's coming at us and the availability of it and the benefits that it brings
to our customers with the economics of that technology and how it's going to impact the cost in our customer's bills. Finding that balance is what is key when you're adopting new and different things. So while we may be lumbering at times, it's not necessarily always a bad thing.

But there is some movement especially more recently, and it is happening at a pace that industry
insiders agree is pretty quick compared to what they've seen in the past. Even if they don't agree on whether or not the Pace of Change is too slow or too fast, a lot of the Pace of Change is dictated by the regulatory framework And the availability of technology. Utilities, as you know, are subject to a lot of regulation. We dove into how rates are set, but that's just one piece of the puzzle. New technology is being developed, but can it handle the scale of what we require as customers? And are we okay with the potential increased costs and decreased reliability, at least initially? And something else that is very important is whether or not the rules are right to encourage utilities to adopt and integrate new technology given they need to balance environment, cost, and liability. The combination of these really dictates changes and the pace of those changes. 

For the upcoming posts, I'm going to focus on the United States regulatory framework primarily. focusing on the regulatory frameworks across the globe is really an enormous scope. And I don't know that it would lend much to our primary goal of helping you understand that for all electricity markets, the underpinning of regulation is a key driver of the pace of change. With that, let's begin our lesson and learn about how technology, customer expectations, and regulation, fit together.

For any query, you cancomment below. Watch this video lecture regarding this article for more clearification.

Read More

Electric is not your grandparent's Utility

How Somethings are Changing in the Electrical Industry

This module is called not your grandparents utility. And that's because it focuses on how some things are really changing in the electric industry. But I'm thinking if it wasn't such a mouthful, we might be better off calling it not your grandparent's utility and maybe not even yours. Because that's what we're going to be talking about in this section. It's going to be the possibility and the likelihood of some pretty significant changes occurring in the elective industry. We've already talked about the fact that for the past hundred years; this industry has run pretty seamlessly. In fact, probably if we ask the average person where's your electricity come from? They'd say, the outlet? The thing is, even though it's so important to our comfort, having a healthy economy and so much of what we do is dependent on it. 

Let's be totally honest,

we don't really give it much thought. I know I don't. I don't wake every morning and say yah. Thank you electric grid, and the utility that operates it. Without you my coffee maker wouldn't work, and I'd have no coffee, and people around me would suffer. I mean, the fact is, we probably don't think about it much at all, unless it's out, and then that's, pretty much, all we're thinking about, when is it going to come back on the values kind of hidden, we think more about the things that use the electricity like our cell phones, like our air conditioner, then the electricity itself. beyond when the power is out even if we look at our bills and some customers don't like one third millennials we may think about our electric company when we open our bill and we think it's just too high. But generally, thinking about electricity ranks pretty low, would not you agree? In the previous post I am hoping it really struck with you that well it appears pretty to us- there are a lot of moving parts, including the infrastructure and equipment, organizations and regulators that make it work.

There is so much changing right now and so many possible directions this industry may go, Of course, no one knows for sure, but I can say that what's coming will not be your grandparents' utility. In fact, what we'll see in the future isn't even likely your utility. 

Things are changing, and they have to accommodate new technology and customers' increasing interest in choice. And we all know that reliable service is non-negotiable You've earned your stripes by coming this far and learning some of the fundamentals of how this industry works. And I'm excited to open your eyes to more information about how this industry could evolve in the not too distant to future. 

There's a lot of confusion and debates. Experts argue over how the industry should evolve and what a realistic timeframe would be. No matter what the outcome, you can be sure that it will touch your life in some way, and that's why I'm glad you're joining me to learn more about it. I hope you enjoy watching this module as much as I enjoyed the process of creating it. See you in the next article with something new about the Electric Industry, it’s history and the future. Cheers and keep visiting at SmartElectricFuture.blogspot.com

Read More

Electrical Generation Portfolio - History and Current Situation

While each fuel source has advantages and disadvantages, what we expect from electricity is for
it to be there when we need it, to minimize the impact on the environment, and to be sustainable, as well as affordable, since it's critical to our economic, social, and physical well being. That's a tall order. While industry experts don't necessarily agree on what is most important or how we get there, they do tend to agree that a balanced approach is a way to go.

Renewable Energy System

Let's take a look at how our experts feel about it. So the thing about renewable energy is that you're actually generating the electricity where the resource is. So unlike oil and gas, where you're transporting the fuel or coal to a power plant, you're actually generating the electrons in location. So therefore from a global perspective, each country needs to think about what resources they have and create that mix that's going to work for their country. So say the Southeast, or the southwest part of the US, the Middle East, North Africa has tremendous solar resources. So that's going to be a large
part of their energy mix.

Other places have very high wind resources, so they're going to have a higher part of the wind, geothermal as well. So each country as they begin to develop and diversify their energy mix is going to be choosing the type of energies that work for their particular location. And this really is a global movement. Again, as prices have come down Countries are really beginning to look at these types of technologies to diversify their types of energy generation. It's very important that there is a mix. Obviously, wind doesn't blow all the time and the sun doesn't shine all the time. Sometimes water in hydro projects, if there's a drought, they may not generate as much electricity, so it is very important. I mean, coal will still have a double-digit percentage as far as I can see in terms of baseload generation where it's always there and it's always dependable, but there does need to be a mix.

Solar System and Wind Energy System

Many other states in the northeast, they have very little solar and wind, down in the south used to have a little solar and wind. Certainly, in the northwest part, there is very little solar, but they have so much more hydro, and then obviously in the southwest United States there's a lot of solar, not so much wind. But in Colorado, we're so lucky and blessed to have all of it. 

So, when it comes down to it, you want to make sure that you can support the economic development of your state. You want to provide customers with the energy that they're looking for, but at the most affordable price, while you're still balancing the environmental attributes and the factors associated with it. So it really is the balance between those various factors that determine what type of resource you can build where. So it doesn't make sense necessarily to shut down a fossil-based plant if it still has a long remaining life, just to simply replace it with a renewable resource, unless there's some cost-effectiveness there. What we've really been seeing is prices are coming down on the renewable side. We've been able to transition over as we've been meeting the needs of our customers, or plants have been retiring or other PPAs have been coming offline. So it's really about finding that balance and making sure you can do it in a way that's not going to negatively impact the economic development of the states that you're located in. What we've been hearing from our members is that they want a more balanced portfolio, and we firmly believe in trying to offer all the solutions, not just one. Whether it's not a coal solution or just not a solar solution, but a blending. Because this way we can get hopefully the advantages of all the worlds and be able to bring it together. So we always talk about, in our business, we have a balancing act that we focus on every day. That's one, delivering reliable energy 24/7 to our customers. It's keeping the cost of energy affordable, so our economy grows. And it's protecting the environment. And every single day, every decision that we make in the utility industry, is looking at those three legs of the stool.

They're just critical about how we move forward. Utilities are putting in renewables at amazing rates. That's what we do, we build things to produce energy, and renewables are a very important part of that. Right now we still have to use other sources of energy to deliver energy to the grid 24/7. Our economy counts on that, our business and residential customers want that electricity 24/7. Renewables are an important part of that.

I'm sure you noticed the word balance, as it came up again and again in the interviews. While based on where they sit in the industry the opinions differ, we can be relatively sure that having a balanced mix is what we need to have sustainable energy.

References and Important Links

Photo of geothermal plant
Photo of coal pile cropped to fit
Wind photos - U.S. Govt. Works
Solar photos - U.S. Govt. Works
Hydr photos - U.S. Govt. Works
Natural gas plant photos

For Complete Video Tutorial, Go here

Read More

Design & Future of Solar Energy For Electrical Generation

Let's move on to solar. I know you've seen solar panels because they're one of the most conspicuous forms of energy right now. But do you know how a solar panel actually makes electricity? Basically, the sun hits the panel and then converts the photons into electrons of direct current or DC electricity. These electrons float out of the solar panel and into an inverter. The DC power is then converted
into alternating current or AC.

AC power is what's used when we plug in our stuff. The cost of PV has gone down, and that means it's grown a lot. Solar can take a lot of forms, from utility-scale or large solar or community solar, that can power many homes and businesses. Two individual panels on folks' rooftops.

Rooftop Solar System

Let's start with just rooftop solar and that's where individual homeowners will decide to purchase a solar system, put it on their house. Normally, they're trying to offset their utility bill that we send them and that process works really smooth because of the convenience of the meter that we use for those systems either goes forward or backward. And you can be sitting in your house watching television and your television's being supplied by the solar. And then a cloud comes over, and all of a
sudden, you're being supplied by the grid. And you, inside your house, have no idea what that switch occurred, or it could occur many, many times.

There's no switches or anything, there's no blinks, flickers, nothing. It's seamless as to how the energy is supplied to your various electrical appliances. And that is important because most people don't want to be inconvenienced, they don't want their television show interrupted because a cloud came over or anything like that, so that kind of convenience is very important. Those home's systems typically get a nice federal tax credit. People do want to offset their utility bill, and that's primarily why they do that.

Now, community solar, and just for a moment I'll brag that United Power was the first community solar in the state of Colorado back in 2009, but in that particular case, we have a remote location where we have a little solar farm, and consumers can actually purchase those panels, lease those panels. And all of the energy that, that panel makes is credited on their normal home bill. So it's as if the panel was sitting on their house, but it's not and the benefit to that is, and I don't know the exact percentages but I'll say that maybe 20 to 30% of the homes in our service territory are solar ready which means that they have enough roof space, southern exposure, and no shading. That means that various people that couldn't participate in the solar because they don't own a home could actually buy a panel, or lease a panel on the community solar farm, and participate in solar, get the credit
as if it was in their home, and that's the other 70% that we were able to work with because of community solar. A pretty good idea, it allows everybody to participate in solar at some level no matter what. Now, the utility-scale solar and many utilities have a legal requirement to have a certain amount of renewable generation. They're encouraging utilities to put as many solars they possibly can on the system and we can agree with that.

However, on the other side of the coin, our members and customers still ask us to keep the rates as low as possible. And so, actually, the utility scaled solar as you see out in this field is really the most cost-effective and puts more solar on the system quicker than trying to support the small solar on the homes type thing. So, at least at United Power, we think of it as a balanced approach again.

We want to support the small solar on the homes because that is local jobs, local businesses, contractors, and individual members that are participating in that. We like the community solar because it opens up solar for the other 70% that can't do the rooftop solar. And we like the utility-scale too because it brings a lot of renewable generation onto the grid at the lowest possible cost which, at the end of the day, helps to keep our rates lower, and stabilizes our rates over the 20 year period that this particular farm is in operation.

As with wind, there's a lot of information out there that's taken out of context. Of course, saving the planet is a big reason people choose solar. Probably a bigger reason for consumers and businesses is that it costs them less. I say them because, like wind, there's more than meets the eye to it because of the subsidies in place to encourage adoption. Taxpayers and other rate payers are most often how these are funded. 

Really what we're seeing in solar energy is that the panels have dropped in, again 85% in price in the last eight so years and that's largely due to the fact that as the installations went up, the manufacturing processes improved to be less hands-on and more automated, and more a continuous process. So they're able to produce panels at a much, much lower price than they were before which then drives
the price down for the installations, which then increases the installation and the economies of scale. So these types of early stage incentives help get the technology into the market and achieve these economies of scale until it can reach them, basically, grid parity and compete fully with other types of technologies.

Of course like every other generation source, it's not without its faults. And I bet you know enough now to see what those might be. Like wind energy which is only available when the wind is blowing, solar panels only generate electricity while the sun shining. Evenings and cloudy days are a problem. So that whole base load backup issue remains with this type of electricity production.

Baseload is critical and what that essentially means is the power that's always on, always accessible day or night. I mean it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that when the sun is not out, you're not getting electrons from your solar panels. When the wind's not blowing, you're not getting electricity from the wind turbines. Really, what baseload is, is that power that's always on and always accessible throughout the day. Really, you get your physics folks in here that can talk to you about the need to sort of balance the system, that you need a constant supply of electrons on the system to keep it running and operating.

What's more important though than baseload really is that sort of intermediate power, that power you can bring on when these renewable resources come on and come off. We need to have resources that we can call upon at a moment's notice to meet that gap, that energy demand. You can see it in hot summer days as the sun begins to set and the infamous Duck Curve, if you're familiar with that out of California, where your solar power starts to wane off but your demand for the evening is starting to peak. They're not necessarily perfectly aligned. You need a resource to make up that gap and what we see in the space right now is that's natural gas. You have either peaking turbines or combined cycle units that you can dispatch quickly to sort of match and marry that gap, and the power that's either coming off or conversely when it comes on.

We'll take a summer month like June, which has a lot of sunlight hours. This particular single access tracking field will basically come up to full production around 7:30 in the morning, and it will stay there, if no clouds, but it'll stay there until 5:30, 6 o'clock at night. Maximum production during that entire period where the fixed panel system is more of the traditional bell-shaped curve. It slowly comes up in the morning, and it basically peaks for about a three to four hour period, maybe between 11 and 2 PM is when its peak occurs and then it starts to go back down again. So, just being able to get more hours at a higher production is where that additional energy comes from.

It also takes a lot of real estate space to generate electricity and many homes and businesses just don't have the room. Another complaint is you can't do much with the land that the solar panels are on. So you can't multi-purpose it like you can with the wind. There are some ways around that with community and utility or large-scale solar. I had the opportunity to visit a utility-scale solar project.

Let's learn more about how utilities are integrating solar into their operations.

Yeah, this is, actually I'm kind of excited, I don't want to get into a lot of technical detail, but this is a 13-megawatt solar field. It probably could serve maybe around 3,000 homes, their entire electric needs for the year. It's on about 130 acres, and I believe there are about 160,000 solar panels associated with this. One of the unique features of at least this field is that it's a single access tracker. So, it actually follows the sun throughout the day. And because of that, it can get probably 20 to 30% more
energy than a fixed panel system. And this is kind of the new wave of how these utility sized fields are being developed. Before it was a lot cheaper to just do the fixed panel. The actual tracking device is a mechanical device that has moving parts where they can get dirty and need maintenance every once in a while, and it just wasn't cost-effective to do the single axis tracker. Until now, and we are seeing this field, it's been in operation for a couple of months now. But the production that this field
offers us first is a fixed panel system that we did a couple years ago is remarkably different. Both good. One of the unique properties of this particular field is not only that it's a single axis
tracker but it's a load following. And what does that mean?

Most solar fields are just plug and play. You plug them in, whatever energy they produce goes on to the grid and gets dispersed among the homes and businesses in the general area. What happened here is we worked with our developer, which in this case was Silicon Ranch so that because electricity has to be used when it's made, there is no storage out here. So if we don't have the load to use the energy, then these guys can't produce it. And so, this particular field is not a plug and play, it's a throttled sort of field which is a bit unique in the industry. And so, if our load goes below the 13 megawatts that this field is rated, this field will actually throttle itself down to the 11 or 10 megawatt level to accommodate the load that happens to be on the lines at that time.

Now when the load goes back up, the solar field comes back up, too. But that's a very unique thing that we worked on the Silicon Ranch, the developer on this project, to have that kind of load following, putting a throttle on a solar field. And again, that is kind of unique but very, very, very valuable to us as a utility. Obviously, we only make electricity with solar when the sun is shining. People still want to watch television at night. So we would, obviously, have to have some
sort of other types of generation so that you could do that. And I think at the end of the day that is
part of the solution as we move forward, is a balanced approach.

We can't do 100% solar and wind. We don't want to do 100% coal and natural gas. But that it's a combination of all those things that, put together, complement each other and provide the
power to people as they want to use it.

If you're going to watch a topic area after this course, I would recommend keeping
your eye on this one. I know this is one of the areas that's going to change a lot, and is going to be a catalyst for major change in the industry. Let's end our discussion of renewable energy with two energy sources that get very little attention. Biomass and geothermal. They're relatively small so we won't spend as much time on them but biomass is the oldest primary fuel source. If you remember, it's also what early electric local utilities competed against, and it's still around. Biomass works by using organic waste, whether wood or even animal waste. The biomass feedstock is then burned in
a boiler and well, you know the rest.

So the biomass co-firing program involves principally taking wood fiber and adding it to the coal stream as we burn it in small percentages up to 5% so that we can safely combust it in the boilers with the coal. In terms of greenhouse gas savings, roughly, for every ton of wood we burn,
we generate a saving of just over one ton of carbon dioxide avoided from not burning coal.

So we have dedicated ourselves to develop technology that takes waste from another sector,
puts that into something valuable so it can move on and keep adding societal and economic value.


The benefits of biomass are that it uses stuff that would otherwise have not been very useful. Unless the waste is being produced on location, it has to be transported through. Incidentally, the pulp and
paper industry is known for using this form of electricity generation with the waste they generate on site. Geothermal energy also receives so much lesser attention than its brothers and sisters. You might not even know it if you saw it. It only accounts for about 3% of renewable energy electricity. It's not a new technology and it actually uses heat from the Earth's core. Here's how it works.


Hot water is pumped from a deep underground well. The water comes back up to the surface and the temperature drops. This makes the water turn into steam and the rest is all about that spinning turban and then the generator.

Geothermal uses the energy from the earth, typically it's in areas where they have a volcanic activity or have the Earth's heat very close to the surface and it's heating up the water. So geothermal actually collect that heat and runs a steam turbine with it. The beauty of geothermal, where you have that resource, is that it is a baseload power. I mean it's a consistent power. It's not like solar and wind where you have to worry about when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing but geothermal is always going to be working. So there are some countries that are nearly 100% renewable because of geothermal power. So, and now we are starting to look at more advanced geothermal where you can work it with lower temperatures, different types of drilling, and different areas like that. So, geothermal has been a base power for many places, many locations for a long time and it's really starting to advance in some new locations and new technologies.

Links for this post;

Delta Electric Energy productivity in action
Example of System prices recent history
Solar continues to grow - Berkerely national laboratory
Utility or large-scale solar
Comunity Solar Photo
Small solar PV photo
Duck Curve CALIFORNIA ISO
Biomass plant photo
Geothermal plants photo
Geothermal is relatively small U.S. Agency

For Complete Video Tutorial, Go here 

Read More