What is this thing called Grid?

Philadelphia Treehugger John Laumer acknowledges some controversy from his claim that distributed power is “a more useful and important concept than ‘green power,’ per se.” This blog sees as somewhat useful and important to consider and not dismiss such controversy as spin, especially since Treehugger the Blog is not known as a Koch Sock Puppet, although of late, we see Shell ads, similar to Scientific American encroachment. Game, Set, End of Life on the Planet as We know It, Lamb Chop.

For the purpose of discussion, Laumer begins anew with trying to define distributed power. Being a nuts and bolts kind of guy, e.g., eschewing sociology and demography, he quickly runs into trouble. Paraphrasing Laumer: “The intricacies of power grid connections make it difficult to come up with a simple definition [for distributed generation]. Most would agree that there is no direct connection from a distributed power source to a transmission network.”

For help Laumer turns to Ackermann (“Electric Power Systems Research 57 (2001) 195-204; Ackermann et al) for some examples that show distributed generation is diverse.

A Combined Heat & Power (CHP) system is located on a large industrial site and the industrial customer is directly connected to the transmission network. In this case, the CHP system can be described as distributed generation as it is connected on the customer side of the meter.

A medium-sized wind farm is directly connected to the transmission system, due to the capacity limit of the local distribution network. In this case, the wind farm cannot be described as distributed generation.

The produced energy of a wind farm is almost totally used within its own network; however, during nights with very low demand and high wind speeds, the wind farm actually exports energy back into the transmission system [which would make it only half compliant with common definitions].

The net result (hee-hee) of Laumer’s rumination is the observation that distributed power is either connected on the customer side of the meter, or to the local distribution network, or can switch to both. He forgot to add “if allowed”.

Autonomous generating, storage, and load control technologies typically are on the customer premises and operated for the customer’s benefit.

Unfortunately, as this blog has noted before, not all power companies are being accountable. Instead of taking responsibility for their impact upon catastrophic climate change, electric utilities reinforce the precepts of Business As Usual And Above All Else.

As this blog noted before utility-scale, renewable energy development primarily is wind or solar thermoelectric, since local conditions and ingenuity influence micro-generation. Distributed power development is more likely to occur where fossil fuels are less preponderant.

Where Emperor Fossil calls the shots, few oppose central control that wastes two-thirds of the energy source while degrading the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans and poisoning the populace.

Although a distributed power source may range from kilowatts to megawatts, its power is not centrally dispatched. (A utility does not primarily control it; although, I wonder if ‘smart meters’ will challenge that assumption.)

Well, John, the shape of the future grid certainly is an intriguing question, as is the how, and the who or what. Changes in China may offer some inkling.

Some Earlier Treehugging posts on Distributed Generation.

3 Comments

jcwinnie

Posted 2010-12-2 at 8:19 pm | Permalink

John Laumer brainstorms with 8 reasons to expand DP (Distributed Power) over centralized power generation.
- Proven technologies for DP are widely scalable. Obvious example: a wind farm can be incrementally built in multiples of approximately 1.4 mW.
- Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean “cheaper” for DP. Customers can match the DP capacities to precisely known needs and not have to over-buy equipment. (see Figure 1 in What Is Distributed Power Generation? for examples of scale). Quite the opposite for big utility-scale thermal generation plants , which have to design to support all projected growth and pay up front for capital equipment needed for future growth.
- Copper is expensive and dirty to make and string overhead. The mining, benefaction, and smelting of copper ore typically have severe environmental impacts and are very energy intensive – these days the impacts of copper production are mostly felt in developing nations – and anything done to minimize the need to build new transmission corridors or to expand distribution networks helps.
- Expansion of transmission corridors is necessarily going to screw up a great deal of land in parks and national and state forests. Eminent domain will be used to take private homes farms and ranches and people are going to be mad as hell about it. DP can help minimize this.
- All power generation investment poses financial risk. Investment in facilities that produce thousands of mega-watts each, however, can leave much money on the table for a very long time. (Subsidies for big nuclear or for “clean coal” put the burden of financial risk on taxpayers who weren’t even alive when the decision was made to invest!) DP, especially small scale projects, allows for more of a pay-as-you-go investment approach.
- Combustion-based DP technology – doesn’t matter if it’s a coal fired, gas fired, or biomass fired – is of a scale and environmental character that “waste heat” can be cost-effectively put to use in district heating schemes, or for industrial HVAC or processing, or for aquaculture – to cite but a few examples. Putting the waste heat from power generators to use can raise the total fuel efficiency of a thermal DP technology by 30% or more. (Conversely, the central distribution generation units pull in millions of gallons per day of surface waters needed for condensing and cooling. This can simply overwhelm fish and aquatic life in all but the largest bodies of water, while DP units can use storm water runoff to satisfy some of the cooling needs.)
- A municipal Combined Heat and Power system (CHP) system – a traditional and very common form of DP in Europe and North America – can be owned and operated by a community; or, it can be operated by a contract service supplier; or, it can be owned and operated by private investors. DP is, in theory, ideology blind. (Conversely, most central generation facilities are outside their respective municipal areas and only are amenable to ownership by entities capable of taking long-term financial risk.)
- Say you own a business that’s energy intensive. Got rooms full of servers, or factories that depend on steady lighting and pumping to keep workers and the surrounding community safe? Mission-critical operations can continue even if the grid goes down from ices storms, floods, or whatever other mayhem you can imagine – if you invest in DP.
Note: “Order does not denote priority or cost-benefit ratio.”

Update: I forgot to include an historic overview of electric power development in the USA. When canals and locks were built in the late 1800′s, industrial and residential development bordered rivers and harbors, densely. Later, when railroads were built, new towns and factories clustered by the rail corridors, often at distance from major waterways. When the interstate highways were built, new development skipped the rails and rivers entirely for being around the highways and municipal bypasses.

Coal and nuclear plants remain by the rails and major waterways, to take advantage of bulk hauling by rail and barge and/or to get access cooling water. Today’s and tomorrow’s demand growth, however, is far from those places – stranded away from the water and rails. That’s a major reason why DP is positioned to leapfrog central power’s grip.
jcwinnie

Posted 2010-12-2 at 8:27 pm | Permalink

Which scales better, wind or photovoltaics?
jcwinnie

Posted 2010-12-3 at 6:37 pm | Permalink

When President Obama last year proposed a “historic commitment” to empower Americans with a clean energy education program, his speech appeared to have reminded Chinese leaders of their own educational needs.

A few months later, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, gave a speech in Beijing, calling for creating more world-class scientists here to work in cutting-edge fields. And clean energy topped Wen’s list.

But their similar pitches had different outcomes: The proposed $170 million American energy education program, called “RE-ENERGYSE,” is still on the launching pad in Congress, which rejected it last year and appears to be in an even more tightfisted mood this year. Meanwhile, in China, newly established programs focused on clean energy are sprouting on campuses like bamboo shoots after the rain.

After it led the world in clean energy investment last year and manufactured about one-third of the global solar panels and wind turbines, China has been moving full-speed toward creating more clean energy professionals, from Ph.D.-level engineers to well-trained technical operators.

“The Chinese government and Chinese firms are using a number of different strategies to attract and develop talent in clean energy,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, an associate professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School who follows China’s energy and climate policy.
Moreover, Western technology giants have come to help. As their research centers mushroom in China, they are fostering Chinese researchers in advanced clean energy technologies.

While China may not be at the cutting edge in terms of having the best talent yet, its knowledge base in clean energy is growing rapidly, said Gallagher. And compared with Europe and the United States, China has a key advantage in aiming to deliver a generation of new professionals and workers who are literate in the demands of clean energy. “No other nation has so many engineering professionals [as China has], and so this provides a strong foundation for development,” she said….

In March, China’s Ministry of Education urged universities to establish more educational programs focused on advanced technologies, clean energy among them. Less than half a year later, dozens of universities set up clean energy faculties and scheduled to enroll undergraduates starting from 2011.

Meanwhile, Chinese universities that already offered degree programs in clean energy are expanding student enrollment. Lin Boqiang, director of China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University — which provides studies in clean energy economics — said their enrollment in 2010 alone almost caught up with the total enrollment number in the previous years….

“China’s solar industry grows fast … but it lacks vocational programs to create skilled work force that the industry needs badly,” Zhang Qingyu, the college’s president, said of why Himin Solar opened its wallet to support education….

To groom more Chinese to become solar energy professionals, Zhang’s college provides a three-year vocational program free of charge and offers scholarships to those from poor families. In 2009 alone, Himin Solar poured more than $2.5 million into education incentives. With such support, the number of students there climbed to nearly 2,300 this year, up from fewer than 100 in 2007, when the college had just started.

Himin Solar may have a significant role to play in filling the green-collar labor pool, but it is not alone. Other Chinese clean energy companies have also taken action. LDK Solar, a NYSE-listed solar photovoltaic producer, provides technical training courses at a local college in central China.

Besides its direct support for education, China has found shortcuts to get the country’s brightest minds more quickly engaged in clean energy innovation.

China, which recently surpassed the United States to take the position as the world’s largest energy consumer, declared that 15 percent of its power supply should come from renewable energy by 2020. Such market potential, together with cash-rich local manufacturers who are hungry for technology, is luring Western companies to come and launch research centers.

That, in turn, helps Chinese get trained by international giants and acquire knowledge of the world’s more advanced clean energy technologies.

“[General Electric Co.'s] huge research center in Shanghai’s Pudong district is staffed by smart young Chinese engineers and scientists, and they are getting lots of practical training by working for GE,” said Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Along with the GE team that currently tests materials used to make solar panels, “there has been a lot of international investment and effort to develop China’s clean energy education,” said Turner.

The latest news came from Denmark’s Vestas, a world leader in wind energy. In October, Vestas celebrated the establishment of its new research center in Beijing.

EENews via Climate Progress

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