Energy Reduction Measures

The Experts: What Renewable Energy Source Has the Most Promise?

2013-04-21T09:55:00.001-04:00

To put it provocatively, this question is a request to handicap a race of the lame. All renewables are cursed with fundamental problems that make their future stand-alone (i.e. unsubsidized) viability as anything but a marginal energy source highly questionable.
With respect to electricity generation, the major renewables (wind and solar) are both intermittent and diffuse. These are obstacles inherent in the source of the energy that will be difficult to surmount. One illustration. Here in Texas, when it gets hot—and the demand for electricity spikes—the wind stops blowing. Given the fact that we need generation most when it is hot, this is a serious deficiency. Solar has greater potential, given the prospects for innovations that improve the efficiency of solar panels and reduce the cost of producing them. But even for solar, the vicissitudes of the sun (which vary by season and location) and the diffusive nature of solar power limit its potential.
What's more, the revolution in natural gas undermines the economics of these technologies.
Countries that have been quite aggressive in their pursuit of wind and solar have realized that their aspirations greatly outpaced the technology. Both Germany and Spain have announced that they will substantially curtail their government support for wind and solar.
With respect to transportation fuels, the outlook is even more problematic. Battery technology has proved a major constraint on the ability to turn electricity (including electricity generated from renewable sources) into an efficient transportation fuel. Ethanol produced from food crops is an economic monstrosity that would require far more space than available here to spell out in proper detail. Ethanol produced from nonfood sources (e.g., non-celluosic ethanol) does not suffer from some of the worst aspects of ethanol derived from corn, say, but has proved stubbornly resistant to commercially economic production. The idea for producing ethanol from wood dates from 1898. It was commercially uneconomical then. It is commercially uneconomical now. It will remain commercially uneconomical for the foreseeable future. That said, it is a technology that has more attractions than the alternatives.
And again, the potential for natural gas as a transportation fuel, and the revolution in natural-gas production, undermine the economics of renewable motor fuels.
Insofar as renewables have desirable environmental attributes (and some—notably corn-based ethanol—may not), the preferable approach is to price these attributes and let the market choose the technologies that produce the best balance between environmental and non-environmental considerations.
Craig Pirrong (@streetwiseprof) is professor of finance and energy markets director for the Global Energy Management Institute at the Bauer College of Business at University of Houston. He was previously Watson family professor of commodity and financial risk management at Oklahoma State University and a faculty member at University of Michigan, University of Chicago and Washington University.

Robert Rapier: My Money Is on Solar PV

Two renewable energy sources are already major energy sources. Hydropower currently provides about 16% of the world's electricity, which is greater than the percentage produced by nuclear power, and a far greater share than all other renewables combined. In fact, the largest power plant by capacity in the world, as well as four of the five largest power plants in the world are hydroelectric plants. However, most of the world's best sites for hydropower have already been developed, so global growth in new hydropower capacity is forecast to be slow.
The second major source of renewable energy is traditional biomass, which accounts for two-thirds of the renewable energy in the world. In developing countries, the overwhelming majority of the energy consumed is provided by fuel wood (often unsustainably sourced), which is generally the cheapest fuel option available. Fuel wood is the main energy source for cooking for most of the developing world, and is the primary source of energy for over 2 billion people.
Solar and wind power have both experienced explosive growth over the past decade, but both still account for a very small portion of the world's energy. Global wind power capacity grew from under 5 gigawatts (GW) in 1996 to nearly 240 GW by 2011—a nearly 50-fold increase. But that translated into only 2.8% of the electricity produced in the U.S. and 1.6% of the electricity produced in China.
Likewise, since 2010 solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity has been added in more than 100 countries, and the estimated global capacity at the end of 2011 was 70 GW—a tenfold increase over the previous five years. But this resulted in only 0.5% of the global electricity demand in 2011.
Solar heating—consisting of solar water heating, space heating for homes and industrial process heat—is often overlooked in discussions of renewable energy. However, global capacity of solar heating applications is far larger than that of solar PV. According to the REN21 Renewables Global Status Report, at the end of 2011 total global capacity of solar hot water and space heating was 232 gigawatts of thermal energy (GWth) (including a solar water heater on my own roof in Hawaii).
So there are some very-fast-growing renewable energy options, and there are also some that are well-established. But if I had to put my money on one option that will likely command a much larger share of energy production in the future, it would be solar PV.
Robert Rapier (@RRapier) is chief technology officer and executive vice president at Merica International, a forestry and renewable energy company. He serves as managing editor for Energy Trends Insider and is chief energy strategist at Investing Daily.

Iván Martén: Expect a Healthy Mix of Renewables

Several renewable-energy sources are technologically mature. Several already are making a significant contribution to energy generation, such as hydropower in Brazil, biomass in Finland, onshore wind in Denmark, solar photovoltaic in Germany or geothermal energy in Indonesia. Apart from hydropower, this strong footprint so far has largely been accomplished through strong regulatory support. Future growth of renewable energy will increasingly be driven by cost competitiveness with fossil-fuel based generation: The cost of renewables will continue to decline while the cost of fossil fuels is expected to increase further. Today, solar and wind have already reached this point in several countries that have abundant resources and high cost of electricity.
Moreover, an increasing share of fluctuating solar and wind energy will drive higher demand for flexible and dispatchable "green energy" sources. If electricity storage becomes cheap, as expected, that could be a true game changer.
In general, adoption of a diversified mix of different renewable energy sources including storage will benefit power quality and overall security of supply.
Looking at the global picture, therefore, I do not believe there will be one winning renewable technology. Rather, there will be a healthy mix that depends on specific regional factors. We expect that by 2020 there will be at least one major competitive renewable energy source in most countries. The exact future mix will vary by region, depending on the availability both of renewable resources and grid infrastructure and on their contribution to the local economy. Germany for example, whose government has defined a vision for the country's energy future that strongly emphasizes renewable sources and energy efficiency, is currently pioneering a total transformation of its energy sector.
Iván Martén is a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. He has been the global leader of BCG's energy practice since 2008 and previously was the European leader of the practice.

Jerry Taylor: The Best Prediction: Who Knows?

The prospect of economically competitive renewable energy is like the horizon; it continues to recede even as we march double-time toward it.
Proponents argue—correctly—that production costs in the electricity sector have declined markedly over time. But, alas, so have the costs of gas-fired electricity, renewables' main competitor for new plant orders. The revolution in hydraulic fracturing suggests that renewables are unlikely to win the race against gas in the foreseeable future. Wind energy would seem to be the most commercially viable renewable energy source at present, but even so, it's not competitive with gas. Solar energy is even less competitive either on a utility-scale or at the point of use.
In the transportation sector, we see something similar; corn ethanol—the main renewable in play—has become less expensive to produce over time but, alas, it is still substantially more expensive than conventional gasoline in wholesale markets. Last week, for instance, gasoline was selling for an average of $2.76 per gallon in U.S. wholesale markets. To get the same energy content that a gallon of gasoline will get you, one would have to pay $4.06 for ethanol in those same markets.
But past is not necessarily prologue. Technological innovations are possible and scientists and engineers tell plausible stories about how any number of R&D projects currently under way could radically change the economics of renewable power. Of course, we've heard these stories for years, but past failures to achieve breakthroughs don't necessarily guarantee future failures.
Which renewable has the best chance of breaking through? No one really knows because no one can reliably predict which of the many ambitious R&D projects—if any—has the best chance of success. And no one can confidently predict what will happen to conventional energy prices…the other important factor in this equation. Confident predictions have been offered in the past but, as Vaclav Smil demonstrates in his excellent book "Energy at the Crossroads" (MIT Press, 2005), those predictions have been, without exception, not worth the paper they've been printed on.
All we can say for certain is that the government has no better crystal ball than the private sector so the former should not be second-guessing investments made by the latter.
Jerry Taylor is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. He has written studies on energy taxes, the oil market, electricity regulation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable development and trade and the environment.

Michael Levi: Three Reasons Solar Will Succeed

If I had to bet on one renewable source ultimately making a very large impact it would be solar. There are three big reasons to look to solar over other renewable energy supplies.
Solar can take advantage of improvements in materials, computing and nanotechnology in ways other technologies can't do nearly as effectively. Energy innovation is at its most powerful when it can leverage gains in other sectors. Solar also has a host of initial niches it can grow in, from rooftop generation in places like California, to off-grid and micro-grid energy in often-sunny developing countries that lack good infrastructure. Having moderate-sized markets to grow in is critical to scaling technology and bringing costs down. Solar is also a much better match for our energy demand than wind is. Solar power peaks when it's hot—exactly when people want to crank up their air conditioners. Wind power peaks in the middle of the night when people are using a lot less power.
The biggest barrier for solar is probably the cost of installing it—even if solar panels were free, the technology still would often be uneconomical. That will need to change for solar to fully take off. As I argue in a new book out in a couple of weeks, it would be unwise to bet on any renewable energy technology as our energy savior, but it would also be unwise to write renewables off.
Michael Levi (@levi_m) is the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment and director of the program on energy security and climate change at the Council on Foreign Relations. His book, "The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future," will be published in April.

Mark Thurber: Look Out for Wild Cards

Wind and solar technology are already on a scale where they can be considered "major" in some jurisdictions (e.g. wind turbines in Denmark, solar PVs in Germany). However, almost all large installations of these technologies have occurred only because of strong (and costly) government incentives. Unsubsidized wind is borderline cost-competitive where wind resources are good, but solar remains far out of the money just about everywhere. (One mistake people sometimes make in declaring solar to be at "grid parity" is to compare the levelized cost of solar generation with the retail price of electricity, rather than to the levelized costs of other energy technologies.) Parts of developing countries that lack grid access and cheap fuel supplies may be an exception where small solar can already find a viable economic niche even without big subsidies.
Energy from intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar will continue to be disadvantaged by the fact that they can't be turned on whenever they are needed, at least until:
1) Electricity storage technologies become much cheaper, and/or
2) Regulators permit dynamic pricing of electricity that sends price signals to consumers to conserve when intermittent resources are unavailable.
Making progress in these two areas could help wind and solar become more important contributors to our energy supply, as could finding ways to expand transmission infrastructure from where renewable energy resources are best (e.g., for wind, in the middle of the U.S.) to where most people live.
The most intriguing renewable energy technologies are those that have the most room to improve. Continued incremental improvement in wind and solar PV technologies should keep adding up over time, but the fact remains that these technologies have been around for a long time and are comparatively mature. More surprises may come from wild cards with which there is less experience. Perhaps concentrating solar power can make significant strides as we learn from the first large installations. Maybe the same subsurface expertise that has made unconventional oil and gas economic can lead to breakthroughs in enhanced geothermal systems, in which a hydraulic-fracturing-like process is used to create channels in rock through which fluid is pumped to absorb the heat at greater depths.
Mark Thurber is associate director at the program on energy and sustainable development at Stanford University. His research focuses on the role of state-owned enterprises in fossil-fuel production as well as how to deliver energy to low-income populations.

Kate Gordon: It Depends Where You Are

This is one situation where the right answer really is "All of the above." Energy issues are inherently regional: Different parts of the country have different natural resources and energy needs. We see that in the oil-and-gas sector, with big new discoveries in North Dakota and California, but no major resources in the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest, for example. Same goes for renewables: Some parts of the U.S. are windier than others, some are sunnier, some have better access to hydroelectricity or geothermal resources…. You get the point.
But unlike traditional energy sources like oil, gas and coal, renewable energy can be "extracted" in every single state in the nation. In a paper I co-wrote last year for Next Generation and the Center for American Progress, we identified six distinct advanced energy regions in the U.S., each with its own unique strength in a particular form of clean energy. These regions have found competitive advantage in their ability to build on these strengths to innovate, manufacture, and deploy clean energy for their own residents, and for export to other regions.
As for the time frame: Renewable energy is already a major energy source. Even here in the U.S., where we have yet to make a national policy commitment to renewable energy (and where fossil fuels are still heavily subsidized), we're still deploying enough to make these technologies cost-competitive. Wind energy, for example, is already the cheapest new source of electricity in many parts of the country, and in fact more megawatts of wind energy were installed in 2012 than any other kind of generation, including natural gas. Solar, too, is booming: Citigroup C -0.13%recently reported that rooftop solar has already reached residential "grid parity" in California. And just imagine how cheap these renewable technologies would become if we decided to charge the real social cost of burning fossil fuels, which would add between 14 and 35 cents per kilowatt-hour.
We're beyond talking about the promise of renewable energy. It's a reality. It's time now to talk about how to make it a far bigger part of our nation's energy future.
Kate Gordon (@katenrg) is vice president and director of the energy and climate program at Next Generation. She previously served as vice president for energy and environment at the Center for American Progress.

Jeffrey Ball: Solar's Future Seems Bright

Most predictions about the future of energy turn out to be wrong. Oh, well. Here's one: Solar power could prove a big, though probably not dominant, energy source over the next couple of decades.
Solar today is a negligible part of the global energy mix. It provides a fraction of 1% of world-wide electricity, the International Energy Agency says. Moreover, solar companies now are suffering, and many more are likely soon to fail. The industry is being walloped by declining government subsidies for its subsidy-dependent products and by massive overcapacity, which is turning its profits into losses.
But those are short-term problems. Longer term, solar's future seems bright. The cost of producing polysilicon-based solar panels—today's dominant solar technology—has plummeted over the past two years. In a few spots around the globe—places with lots of sun and quite high electricity prices—solar today is starting to compete on price with conventional power (albeit when taking into account the tax breaks these energy sources get).
One sign of solar's emergence is that it's scaring many of today's dominant producers of conventional power. E.ON, EOAN.XE -0.76%the big German utility, reported a loss in last year's third-quarter that it blamed partly on solar. Enough E.ON customers were putting solar panels on their house roofs, minimizing their demand for peak-time electricity from E.ON's fossil-fueled plants, that E.ON's profits were materially eroding. And last month, David Crane, chief executive of NRG Energy, a big U.S. power producer, called distributed solar power a "mortal threat" to companies such as his.
Fossil fuels aren't going away soon. But huge innovation is under way to come up with new solar technologies that could prove game-changers. It's crucial not to get blinded by the light. But it's also worth recognizing what may be over the horizon.
Jeffrey Ball (@jeff_ball), formerly The Wall Street Journal's environment editor and a longtime energy reporter at the paper, is scholar-in-residence at Stanford University's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, a joint initiative of Stanford's law and business schools. He writes about energy and heads a project exploring the relationship among countries in the globalizing clean-energy industry.

Ariel Cohen: Energy Is Not a Matter of Religious Faith

Renewable energy is not going to come from one source, but from a number of technologies, including solar and wind, which for now appear to be the leaders in renewable electricity generation.
Different U.S. states and different regions of the world will have different energy mixes, including among the renewables. However, it is important to remember that for now these technologies are not competitive, BTU to BTU, with fossil fuels, if the government phases out the current tax credits. Energy is not a matter of religious faith, and technologies should not receive open-ended subsidies just because someone "wants to believe."
A separate issue is renewable transportation fuels. These may come from algae or a number of agricultural sources, but again, so far, these are not competitive. The fiasco of corn ethanol is widely known. The closest one gets to competition is sugar-cane ethanol, but only when oil-based gasoline is relatively expensive.
The 2012 U.S. Department of Energy renewable fuels study postulates that 80% of electricity generation in the U.S. by 2050 will be from renewable sources based on known technologies and excluding possible breakthroughs and novel technologies such as enhanced geothermal; ocean energy, including wave, tidal, current or ocean thermal; and floating offshore wind technology.
Dispatchability, the ability of suppliers to exercise control over an alternative energy plant's increase and decrease of supply, will remain one of the key challenges in wind and photovoltaic solar.
However, with the abundance of shale gas obtained through fracking and horizontal drilling and development of the global LNG markets, these renewable technologies are likely to face serious barriers to entry, or remain noncompetitive, unless governments introduce carbon taxes or cap and trade which would distort markets drastically. Such a high economic price for renewables appears unwise, especially as the debate over the human causes of climate change continues, and as major emerging markets polluters, including China and India, are unenthusiastic about joining an equitable and global carbon tax or capture regime.
Ariel Cohen (@Dr_Ariel_Cohen) serves as a senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies and international energy policy at the Heritage Foundation. He has published six books and monographs, 30 book chapters and over 500 articles.

Mazen Skaf: Hydropower's Dominance Will Continue

A renewable energy source that is already a major source of energy today is hydropower (global installed capacity of hydro exceeds 980 GW). Excluding hydropower, several renewable energy sources are on track to deliver an increasing share of total energy supply over the next 10 to 20 years. Specifically, wind, concentrated solar, biomass, geothermal and solar PV carry the most promise (with variations across markets depending on resource availability, policy programs, and competing energy sources).
By 2040, wind-powered generation is projected to account for about 7% of global power supply. Wind power is already among the most competitive renewable technologies. The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for new onshore wind farms ranges between $0.05 to $0.15/kWh (based on a cost of capital of 10%). In locations with good wind resources, onshore wind is becoming competitive with fossil fuel-based generation.
Solar-powered generation is projected to account for about 2% of global power supply by 2040. The costs of concentrated solar and solar PV are declining due to steep learning curves and large deployments in recent years. In the case of solar PV, for instance, it is estimated that every doubling of installed capacity will yield a reduction in module costs of about 22%.
Even as a relatively mature technology, hydro will continue to attract attention due to the advantages it offers: Lowest LCOE, grid stability, and potential for energy storage and complementarity with other renewables. Further, hydropower (including small hydro) provides options for building additional capacity at existing facilities or installing generation capacity at dam locations with no current generation at attractive marginal investment costs in the range of $500 to $800/kW.
The long-term projections for expansion in the use of renewable energy are sensitive to natural gas prices, innovation in storage technologies (including batteries), policy programs and the relative costs of alternative generation sources. It is important to take a portfolio approach to renewable energy sources and their share of total energy supply whether at the level of a specific geographic market or globally.
Mazen Skaf (@Skaf777) is managing director of the Europe and Middle East practice of the U.S.-based management consulting firm Strategic Decisions Group. He advises clients in energy and related industries on strategy, financial-risk management, negotiation analysis and deal structuring.

Todd Myers: Whatever the Market Decides

Let's imagine we are in the year 2025 and tidal power accounts for 10% of electric generation. That would be a dramatic increase. By that time, however, giving homeowners more control over their energy using the Smart Grid could reduce demand by a similar amount. If a penny saved is a penny earned, why would we focus more on "renewable" tidal power than technologies yielding the same carbon emissions reduction and energy savings?
Given a choice between algae-based biofuel or expanding high-speed Internet access to encourage telecommuting and reduced fuel use, which should we choose? Does it matter that one is a "renewable" energy source and the other isn't? This is the beauty of the free market. As long as there are costs to energy use and the impacts of energy use, the free market treats all approaches equally, without politics, as long as they effectively save resources. Given a choice between solving our energy and environmental demands by narrowing our focus to a few choices or expanding our vision to include any approach that conserves energy, we will be more successful by embracing all potential options.
This is the danger of politically chosen technologies. The perspective of policy makers is limited and it can never match the combined creativity of the many investors and inventors looking for the next opportunity to profit from their risk-taking in the marketplace.  For decades, we've been promised that solar energy would be price competitive. Just a few years ago, Congress expected cellulosic ethanol to blossom as an energy source. Neither occurred. Numerous other technologies have been touted and then have floundered. That is the nature of innovation. We are wiser to reduce the costs of taking risks in the process of discovering new technologies than to guess what technologies will emerge.
Todd Myers (@WAPolicyGreen) is environmental director at the Washington Policy Center in Seattle and author of "Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism is Harming the Environment." He also serves on the Washington state Salmon Recovery Council.

Real Estate Groups Release Study on Economic Impacts of Mandatory Building Energy Labeling

2013-04-19T14:46:00.001-04:00

Real Estate Groups Release Study on Economic Impacts of Mandatory Building Energy Labeling

March 28, 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(BOSTON AND WASHINGTON, D.C. – March 28, 2013) The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International and the Greater Boston Real Estate Board (GBREB) announced today the release of “An Economic Perspective on Building Labeling Policies,” a report co-authored by Harvard University Environmental Economist Robert N. Stavins that examines the extent to which mandatory building energy labeling results in reduced energy use. The research and the resulting report were sponsored by BOMA International and GBREB.

The project was prompted by increased interest in laws mandating energy scores and energy efficiency programs throughout the United States and in Massachusetts. The City of Boston is currently considering mandated reporting for office buildings, apartments and condominiums. It seeks to answer the question of the effectiveness of these programs. Although BOMA and GBREB are committed to energy efficiency and many other measures intended to protect the environment, both organizations are opposed to policies that arbitrarily intervene with market forces, assign market value to buildings, stigmatize property or otherwise interfere with transactions.

According to Professor Stavins and his colleagues from the Analysis Group, a Boston-based economic consulting firm who helped conduct the review, there is no credible evidence to date that a regulatory approach is effective in achieving these goals for which they are intended. The report analyzes the effectiveness of mandatory energy labeling for commercial buildings in the U.S. The results of existing programs are still to be measured but the report finds:

Building labels could affect property values, with properties that receive a “green” score seeing appreciation in their market value and properties receiving a brown score experiencing depreciation.
Building labeling programs that are now in effect in select cities throughout the U.S. vary in the quality and usefulness of the information developed and the requirements and costs imposed on property owners. There is insufficient history, therefore, for any city to employ best practice in this area.
Building energy labels differ greatly from the energy labels currently placed on many consumer products such as refrigerators and automobiles. While product labels provide consumers with information on the energy savings from their product decisions, building labels provide no information on energy costs or savings. Moreover, they provide no information on how building owners can cost-effectively improve their building’s energy use. Building labels are also unique to each building, thus making them more costly to produce and more prone to error.
The premium associated with labels may “overvalue” the underlying energy savings, suggesting that other factors could be affecting market decisions.
If building scores are concentrated in particular neighborhoods, it could affect property values across neighborhoods. Likewise, building sectors may see overall appreciation or depreciation if scores tend to be high or low within individual sectors.

“Mandatory benchmarking and energy labeling often adds expense to building owners without necessarily improving energy efficiency significantly,” commented BOMA International Chair Joe Markling, managing director of Strategic Accounts with CBRE. “The voluntary marketplace has been making great strides in reducing energy consumption. Imposing mandates will impose a big burden on many owners who may or may not see improved performance or a return on their investment.”

“Unfortunately, cities follow one another passing laws like this in their competition to be greener than the next. Boston should not be another guinea pig until some definitive evidence shows that laws like these actually work,” commented Gregory Vasil, President of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board.

***

About BOMA International
The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International is a federation of 93 BOMA U.S. associations, BOMA Canada and its 11 regional associations and 13 BOMA international affiliates. Founded in 1907, BOMA represents the owners and managers of all commercial property types, including nearly 10 billion square feet of U.S. office space that supports 3.7 million jobs and contributes $205 billion to the U.S. GDP. Its mission is to advance the interests of the entire commercial real estate industry through advocacy, education, research, standards and information. Find BOMA online at www.boma.org.

About the Greater Boston Real Estate Board
Founded in 1889, the Greater Boston Real Estate Board counts as its members more than 8,000 professionals engaged in all sectors of the industry. One of the local boards of the National Association of Realtors, BOMA International and the National Apartment Association, GBREB is considered unique nationally due to its varied membership base. The Board is comprised of five associations: BOMA Boston, Commercial Brokers Association, Greater Boston Association of REALTORS®, Real Estate Finance Association and the Rental Housing Association. Learn more at www.gbreb.com.

Contact
Courtney C. McKay
Manager of Communications & Marketing
BOMA International
(202) 326-6352 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (202) 326-6352 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
cmckay@boma.org

Patricia Baumer
Director of Government Affairs
Greater Boston Real Estate Board
617-399-7858 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 617-399-7858 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
pbaumer@gbreb.com

Free Commercial Biomass Boilers

2013-04-04T09:07:00.002-04:00

The growing demand for commercial biomass boilers isn’t surprising when you look at the energy savings that can be achieved by using one, compared to traditional commercial boilers. The actual savings that can be achieved from installing a commercial biomass boiler will vary and is dependant on the existing type of fuel used. The biggest savings come from transferring from oil to biomass, where typically oil was historically the only choice for building was off grid and typical savings can be as high as 48%. For electricity boilers this drops down to 30% savings and 20% savings for gas boilers.

Commercial Biomass boilers are more energy efficient than oil, gas and electricity and are operated with the use of wood chips or pellets. Consideration is needed for the storage facilities required for a biomass boiler as the wood chips or pellets need to be kept dry. The quality of wood chip can vary and generally will take up more space than using pellets and there are also higher maintenance costs associated with wood chips.

We would recommend the use of a boiler that uses wood pellet over wood chip as over the life of the boiler this is the most cost effective route. A commercial biomass boiler can be up to 50% more energy efficient than a traditional gas boiler.

So how do commercial biomass boilers fuel prices compare to other fuels?

Heating your building using a wood chip biomass boiler is 20% of the cost compared with using electricity and 48% of the cost compared with using heating oil.

Location of your commercial biomass boiler

The key factors for consideration when thinking about a new biomass boiler is the space required for your new boiler and the distance from the building. The most efficient route is to deliver the biomass in a containerised solution that also includes space to house the feed stock. This avoids the need for additional building works and also means that any existing boiler system remains in place. This provides fuel security as you will always have a secondary system to fall back on, and no alterations have to be carried out to your existing equipment.

Commercial Biomass Boiler

The pre-packaged plant rooms are ideal for a variety of applications from district heating to commercial premises, hotels, schools and nursing homes.

Exciting Ideas In Solar Energy From ARPA-E

2013-02-28T07:39:00.003-05:00

David Ferris, ContributorGenerally I have been disappointed by the lack of breakthrough

A miniature version of Georgia Tech's Solar Vortex.

Now in its fourth year, the summit of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) never fails to bring out the most cutting-edge ideas in renewable energy. This week’s conference in Washington D.C. is no exception. I walked the exhibition floor today and ran across some sexy new concepts in solar power.
Solar Vortex: Dust Devil Power
The Solar Vortex borrows its inspiration from dust devils, those miniature twisters of excited dirt that sometimes arise in the dusty and dry stretches of the U.S. Southwest. What gets a dust devil going is the difference in temperature between the scorching-hot ground and the somewhat cooler air above. The hot air rises, twists and gives rise to a momentary dust tornado.
Georgia Techis the leader of a consortium that aims to capture this dust-devil energy inside a stubby cylinder. The concept is simple: The cylinder sits upon a dark surface that absorbs lots of heat. The “walls,” so to speak, are angled vanes that take the hot air rising off that hot surface and twists it into a vortex. At the top, a set of fan blades sit in the path of the rising air. The fan blades turn, activating a generator that creates electricity.
The video below is a miniature model of the Solar Vortex on the exhibition floor. The cylinder sits on a plate that is, like hot pavement, almost too hot to touch, about 47 degrees Celsius (116 degrees Fahrenheit). The movement you see in the blade is solely from the force of moving air.
Georgia Tech has already purchased a site in Mesa, Arizona — plenty of heat there — and is a working to build a 50-kilowatt model by 2015. Final negotiations with ARPA-E for funding are underway. Arne Pearlstein, a professor of mechanical engineering who is a collaborator, told me that this commercial-scale version might be 10 meters wide but only two or three meters tall, and that the units would sit about 55 meters apart. These squat machines could bring renewable energy to regions that are bombarded by heat but don’t have much wind. (Though gusts of wind would only serve to make the turbine spin faster, Pearlstein said.)
Pearlstein estimated that the Solar Vortex could spin out electricity 20 percent cheaper than wind turbines and 65 percent cheaper than solar photovoltaic panels. One form of saving comes from its potentially straightforward maintenance. “You’re talking about somebody getting up on a stepladder instead of going hundreds of meters up into a wind turbine to deal with a gearbox,” Pearlstein said.

A model of Otherlab's heliostat, which goes by the name Sunfolding.

Sunfolding: Cheap Heliostats for Concentrated Solar
Two weeks ago, San Francisco’s Otherlab won a $1.8 million grant from ARPA-E to develop Sunfolding, a smaller, less expensive heliostat for solar concentrating technology. A heliostat is the mirror and assembly that bounces light onto a central point, creating heat that in turn creates steam and spins a turbine to generate electricity. Making heliostats cheaper could bring us closer to the day when concentrated solar energy is comparable in price to fossil fuels like coal or natural gas.
Heliostats are usually made of glass (or another reflective material) and steel, and are often quite sizable. They must stand up to high winds while maintaining a precise orientation. Simultaneously, in order to follow the arc of the sun across the sky, they need gears that can operate for years in dusty and hot conditions. Both are factors that increase costs.
The centerpiece of the Sunfolding is a new tracking technology that does away with a gearbox and replaces it with two air bladders that inflate or deflate to change the mirror’s angle. “All you need are two cheap pressure sensors,” said Leila Madrone, Otherlab’s project leader. The housing for those bladders is a section of extruded plastic that could be manufactured easily. The smaller size means it needn’t stand up to high winds or much structural weight.

A Raven drone decked out with MicroLink solar panels.

MicroLink Devices: Light, Flexible Solar for Drones
Lying on MicroLink Devices’ table at the ARPA-E conference is a Raven UAV, a small drone used by the U.S. military for local video reconnaissance in places like Afghanistan. The topside of the wings are covered with solar panels that, according to Vice President David McCallum, have in tests extended the Raven’s flight time from one hour to two.
Drones are a promising market for solar power, since solar panels don’t provide nearly the wattage necessary to keep a passenger plane aloft, but can do the trick when a craft (like the Raven) weighs only four pounds.
Lightweight, flexible solar panels have been available for a while now in the form of thin-film solar panels, but MicroLink says it can produce loads more electricity than thin films. Thin-film solar has demonstrated a maximum efficiency of 20.4 percent, while MicroLink says it can convert sunlight to electricity at an efficiency of 30 to 34 percent.
MicroLink’s strong suit is that it has figured out how to make triple-junction solar cells — ones that use multiple layers to capture different wavelengths of light — more cheaply than the competition. It does this in two ways, by growing its solar panels on indium phosphide, which is cheaper than the more standard material of gallium arsenide. The company has also figured out how to peel its completed solar panel off while leaving its substrate intact for future use, which again reduces costs.
In December, the company received a $3.3 million grant from ARPA-E with the goal of creating a concentrated-solar panel that has an efficiency of 50 percent or more

How Nest’s Control Freaks Reinvented the Thermostat

2013-02-17T08:55:00.003-05:00

Two men who created the iPod and iPhone founded Nest and injected new technology into the humble thermostat. Now they have their sights on the rest of your house.

By Tom Simonite on February 15, 2013

With computing and design savvy, Matt Rogers (left) and Tony Fadell may have done more than anyone else in Silicon Valley to reduce energy consumption.

In 2007, Tony Fadell believed he could see the future. He was an Apple executive who had created the iPod and was a leading figure on the team that had worked on the iPhone, which the company was about to launch. He knew people would soon form attachments to the Internet-connected computers they carried in their pockets, and he kept thinking about that as he started another major project: building an energy-efficient dream home near Lake Tahoe.
“I said, ‘How do I design this home when the primary interface to my world is the thing in my pocket?’ ” says Fadell. He baffled architects with demands that the home’s every feature, from the TV to the electricity supply, be ready for a world in which the Internet and mobile apps made many services more responsive. When it came to choosing a programmable thermostat for his expensive eco-friendly heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, Fadell blew a gasket: “They were 500 bucks a pop, and they were horrible and doing nothing and brain-dead. And I was like, ‘Wait a second, I’ll design my own.’ ”
Fadell, who soon left Apple at the age of 40, became convinced that his thermostat needed to be built like a smartphone and controlled from one. He wanted it to be smart enough to learn his routine and to program its own schedule accordingly, or to switch off automatically if he went out. A thermostat, he thought, could do that if it was really a small computer connected to the Internet. As he planned the features and design in his head, Fadell began to believe that his vision would appeal to other people too, even if their homes were more ordinary. With about 10 million thermostats sold in the United States every year, it could be a lucrative business. And because thermostats typically control half the energy used in U.S. homes, a better-designed one could significantly reduce power consumption. He sought out Matt Rogers, a precocious 27-year-old who at the time led iPhone software development, and got him to leave Apple to cofound Nest.
Fadell’s instincts turned out to be correct. Nest’s first model, a striking stainless-steel-ringed disc with a circular display, went on sale in October 2011 to widespread acclaim. The HVAC industry, a sector as unexciting as the thermostats it sold, was astonished by the fresh ideas behind the device, which learned from its owners’ behavior and could be controlled with a polished mobile app. The company released a second, more advanced thermostat in October 2012, and says sales of the two models have been brisk. The $250 product has kept owners from using 225 million kilowatt-hours of energy, the company estimates—saving around $29 million at average U.S. prices. This suggests that merely with elegant design and computing savvy, Nest might be having more impact than other Silicon Valley ventures trying to deliver on the promise of “clean tech.” Now the company is preparing to release another product. Details are scarce, but it seems that Fadell’s thermostat epiphany has launched a technological campaign that will make every part of your home more intelligent.
Reprogramming
Fadell has the energy and ready smile of a late-night talk show host, and a voice that is permanently loud. Rogers is quieter and more technically focused. The pair appear to be having enormous fun sweating the details of what is, at its core, just an on-off switch. They burst into a meeting room at Nest’s unremarkable offices in Palo Alto like two boys coming in from playing in the yard, breathless, in high spirits, and completing one another’s sentences. Between them, they have had significant roles in creating two of the most iconic technology products of recent history, the iPod and iPhone—devices notable not only because they are useful and fashionable, but because they introduced genuinely new technological ideas. Rogers and Fadell have done the same at Nest, delivering a product that is both easier to use and more powerful than those that came before. That approach has helped them make the thermostat, historically a product bought and installed by contractors, into something people buy for themselves in the same stores where they get gadgets like phones and tablets.
For half a century, the state of the art in home energy controls has been the programmable thermostat. The theory is that if people can schedule when their heating and cooling systems will kick in, they don’t have to waste energy by running the system at all times to be assured of comfortable temperatures when they wake up or return from work. But the HVAC industry has made programmable thermostats difficult to use, with unintuitive dials and sliders and cramped displays. Citing such “user interface issues,” the Environmental Protection Agency removed programmable thermostats from its Energy Star certification program in 2009. Studies showed that they didn’t reliably save energy; in fact, because many people end up switching their system on and off manually, programmable thermostats might cause most people to use more energy, says Kamin Whitehouse, a computer science professor at the University of Virginia. “People have a really hard time setting accurate schedules for their lives,” he says.
When faced with a problem like this, many technologists would seek technical solutions. Fadell and Rogers thought instead about simplifying the device. “We started with the basic principle that 99.9 percent of the time, the only thing that you do is turn it up or down,” Fadell says. “So what’s the simplest form? A knob or a dial.” More complex functions, such as setting a schedule, could be executed more easily through a mobile app. That freed his designers from having to accommodate the many buttons that appear on other programmable thermostats. The Nest became nothing more than a compact stainless-steel cylinder that you can turn once it’s fixed to the wall.
Fadell and Rogers have made sure that at every stage of installing and operating a Nest thermostat, you discover that potential problems have been solved for you. When you attach the device to a wall, there’s no need to drill holes or use plastic anchors to hold any screws. Nest’s engineers reviewed every screw on the market and then invented their own, with wide-spaced threads that can bite wood or powdery drywall without making it crumble. The device powers itself by leeching electricity from the control wires that connect it to your HVAC system, a feat that makes Rogers chuckle at his engineers’ audacity. Short- and long-range infrared sensors allow the device to light up when you approach and dim when you walk away—and to figure out that it was you, not the cat, who just went out, meaning it’s time to turn down the heat. Perhaps the biggest reminder of the thermostat’s intelligence comes a few days after installation, when you reach out to adjust the temperature and find that it has preëmpted you by learning from your earlier changes. “Think of a normal thermostat. Everyone turns it up, turns it down, a couple of times a day—that’s a pattern we can infer from,” says Fadell. “Instead of changing it fifteen hundred times a year, do it 10 or 20 times and the Nest thermostat can learn from that.”
Fadell can deliver animated monologues about products that don’t meet his ideals, an aspect of his personality that was probably strengthened by years of working closely with Steve Jobs. But he also remains open to taking instruction from hard data, drawing on evidence collected from Nest thermostats, customer surveys, and a group of around 1,000 customers whose thermostats are used to test new features. For example, Nest thermostats originally adjusted themselves to an energy-conserving setting in the morning two hours after detecting that human activity in a home had stopped. They waited that long in case the owner soon returned home. But anonymous data from Nest thermostats revealed that people reliably stayed out for quite a while when they left in the morning. So the company sent a software update to all the thermostats to take that into account. Now the devices turn themselves down after just 30 minutes.
Such responsiveness to data from users isn’t a quality typically found in the HVAC industry, which is dominated by a few large companies, such as Honeywell and Venstar, that sell to distributors and dealers, not consumers. It’s an approach more commonly found in Silicon Valley companies, reflecting the fact that Nest is staffed with dozens of engineers who helped Apple build the iPod and iPhone. Rogers’s former computer science professor Yoky Matsuoka, a winner of a MacArthur genius award, leads Nest’s algorithms group. As a result, if you were drawing the Nest thermostat on a technological evolutionary tree, it would be an offshoot of the smartphone line. Rogers says, “Tear apart a Samsung smartphone—it’s going to have a lot of the same components.” In another echo of the mobile computing business, where the biggest players are locked in court battles over patents, Honeywell sued Nest for patent infringement a year ago. “They’re one of the biggest companies in the world, and they feel threatened by a 150-person startup,” says Rogers. “That’s amazing.”
Soft Power
Nest is being watched by green-tech researchers and investors who believe it may lead a new wave of technologies that can significantly reduce power use in homes, which account for about 10 percent of U.S. energy consumption. The government allocates tens of millions of dollars per year for programs that reduce energy use in residential buildings. But many home improvements, such as insulation and storm windows, cost thousands of dollars per house and deliver energy savings comparable to what a better thermostat can generate for far less money, Whitehouse says.
Nest says that a home with its product will save $173 per year in electricity and heating costs compared to a home with an unprogrammed thermostat, depending on local climate and other factors—allowing it to pay for itself in under two years. (When the device appears in Europe, the payback time will be significantly faster because energy is more expensive there.) Most savings flow from the system’s ability to detect when the house is empty and learn its owner’s preferences, but Nest also saves energy by figuring out how to minimize the use of the air conditioning’s chiller and maximize the use of the fan. It also coaches people to use less energy; when consumption falls, they’ll see a green leaf icon on the thermostat and its mobile and Web interfaces. That leaf won’t appear if the energy use fell because of a shift in the weather. And Nest moves the goalposts so people must cut usage further to keep seeing the leaf.
Nest’s ability to change how people consume energy also appeals to utilities, because the device can smooth out spikes in usage. Eventually, the thermostat’s Internet connectivity could allow utilities to introduce smarter versions of “demand response” programs, in which customers get a discount in return for letting their utility adjust their thermostat in times of extremely high usage. Reliant, a utility in AC-dependent Texas, recently started bundling a free Nest thermostat with one of its plans.
Clearly, Nest’s thoughtful engineering could be applied elsewhere in the home, and its founders acknowledge that they plan to build more than just thermostats. “We have one of the best teams in the industry,” says Rogers—meaning Silicon Valley rather than the HVAC business. “They’re here for more than just one product.”
But Nest mimics Apple’s strict secrecy. My visit was limited to the sparse lobby and a meeting room just inside the front door because, as the director of communications put it, the company was on “lockdown” while a new product was developed. When pressed, Fadell dismissed a suggestion that it would be logical to expand into “home automation,” products today mostly pitched at enthusiasts that allow home appliances and lighting to be controlled remotely. “I’m not here to impress geeks,” he says, but to make simple home technology “empowering for everyone.”
The only thing clear about Nest’s future is that the thermostat, seriously as it was taken, was only a warmup act. The iPod Fadell created at Apple was the first of a series of products that reinvented the company, says Peter Nieh, who led the venture fund Lightspeed’s investment in Nest. “[Then] there was iPhone and much more. The thermostat is the iPod. It’s the beginning.”

Mitsubishi, PointSix Wireless Launch EMS Products

2013-02-17T08:49:00.003-05:00

February 15, 2013 by Energy Manager Today Staff

Mitsubishi Electric and PointSix Wireless have both launched energy management system (EMS) products.
Mitsubishi says its EMS technology responds to supply-demand conditions, tailoring power savings to each user depending on its capacity to reduce power use.
Customers consuming large amounts, such as operators of buildings or factories, report their power saving capacities depending on the time of day, and desired incentives to utilities. Mitsubishi’s EMS aggregates this information and predicts total power-curtailment capacities and incentives. The system then calculates the distribution of optimized power-saving requirements and incentives for individual users.
This helps stabilize supply, and prevents utilities from having to repeatedly ask customers to save power, the company says.
The system also calculates optimized incentives by taking into account fluctuating power-generation costs, market prices and the power-saving capability of each customer. It calculates optimal power generation volume, electricity transactions and power savings to achieve power savings and cost reductions for both utility supply and customer usage.
Additionally, the technology helps avoid the construction of costly and unnecessary power-generation and transmission facilities in electrical systems that would otherwise be required for power generation and distribution during periods of peak demand.
Mitsubishi developed the technology through its Smart Grid Demonstration Project initiative.
Meanwhile, PointSix Wireless has announced the first WiFi version of its Point Pulse Counter (pictured). The device provides wireless notification to detect power outages and track energy usage for seamless energy management even during an outage. Battery or line powered, the device counts, records and accumulates pulse outputs on gas, water and electric meters.
The Point Pulse Counter has over-the-air configuration and compatibility with existing building automation systems. Battery changes every three to five years are the only maintenance the sensors require. The device is available in single or dual pulse input channels and includes an integrated 802.11.g WiFi module.
Duke Energy has deployed the Point Pulse Counter to augment its energy efficiency programs and services, according to PSW.

Novel Designs Are Taking Wind Power to the Next Level

2013-02-10T08:36:00.006-05:00

New technology, including better control algorithms and communications, is improving the performance of wind turbines.

By Kevin Bullis on February 6, 2013

Superficially, wind turbines haven’t changed much for decades. But they’ve gotten much smarter, and considerably bigger, and that’s helped increase the amount of electricity they can generate and lower the cost of wind power.
GE’s new 2.5-120 wind turbine, announced last week, is a case in point. Its maximum power output, 2.5 megawatts, is lower than that of the 2.85 megawatt turbine it’s superseding. But over the course of a year it can generate 15 percent more kilowatt hours. Arrays of sensors paired with better algorithms for operating and monitoring the turbine let it keep spinning when earlier generations of wind turbines would have had to shut down.
The technology is part of a trend that’s made wind power almost as cheap as fossil fuels. In 1991, wind power cost 15 cents per kilowatt hour. The cost has now dropped to 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour, says Ryan Wiser, deputy group leader for Electricity Markets and Policy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in Berkeley, California. New natural gas power plants are expected to generate electricity at about 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour.
A new generation of more productive wind turbines that’s coming on line this year could be what it takes to make wind widely competitive with fossil fuels.
Indeed, last month the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said that the latest data on wind turbine performance and costs suggests that wind power is likely to be more cost-effective than natural gas over the next 20 years, and it could account for the majority of new generating capacity added over that that time in Texas. Before the council factored in the latest data, it had expected all new generation to come from natural-gas plants.
The biggest impact on electricity production comes from making wind turbines bigger. Increasing the size of a wind turbine’s blades, and making the tower taller, allows a turbine to capture more wind, especially at low speeds. Making wind turbines larger is getting difficult, in part because they’ve have grown so large that the wind conditions at the highest point of the blades’ sweep can be very different than those at the bottom. To compensate for the difference, GE had to develop control algorithms to respond to input from a variety of sensors as the blades spin. This helped the company step up from a 100-meter-diameter wind rotor to a 120-meter one.

Avoiding downtime from mechanical failures also helps boost electricity production. If something goes wrong with a wind turbine, it’s often shut down until technicians can arrive, climb the tower to assess the problem, and then make repairs—a process that can be especially difficult and time-consuming because wind farms are often located in remote areas. With its latest design, GE is networking its wind turbines to make them more resilient. For example, if the wind speed gauge on one wind turbine fails—say, because it becomes encased in ice—the turbine can use data from a nearby turbine’s anemometer (with algorithms for correcting for the different locations of the turbines), eliminating the need to shut down.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, is studying how the turbines within a wind farm can adjust their power production to maximize the power output of the entire farm. For example, if some wind turbines at the front of a wind farm produce less power than they’re able to, this could leave more wind for the other turbines. “It’s a shift from thinking about individual wind turbines to thinking about power plants,” says Fort Felker, director of the National Wind Technology Center at NREL.
Just over a decade ago, a typical wind farm with 2.5 megawatts of wind turbines generated less than 4 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. GE says its new wind turbines will generate 10 million kilowatt hours a year, more than doubling electricity production. (Increasing power output helps lower the price per kilowatt hour, as long as the cost of the installed turbine doesn’t increase proportionally.)
Technology improvements may have brought the price of wind within reach of that of fossil-fuel power, but the scale of wind will be limited by the grid’s ability to handle the inherent intermittency. Smarter wind turbine designs are helping with that as well. GE’s new wind turbine comes with battery backup. New algorithms, paired with weather-prediction software, determine when to store power in the battery and when to send it to the grid. As a result, wind farm operators can guarantee power output—but for just 15 minutes at a time. If wind power is ever to provide a large share of the total electricity supply, it may be necessary to have hours of storage—or else grid operators will have to maintain backup sources of power, such as natural-gas power plants.

Energy efficiency: Who gets it? Anybody?

2013-02-06T08:59:00.000-05:00

By Elisa WoodJanuary 30, 2013

It’s easy for those of us who ‘talk’ energy every day to forget that we operate in a bubble. Outside the bubble the average household is at best vaguely aware of the enormous technology revolution about to change the way each of us uses electricity.

Two recent studies provide some insight into how little of our bubble talk the consumer deciphers.

More than half of the consumers surveyed (54%) by Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC) have never heard the term ‘smart grid.’ (And to be fair, the precise meaning sometimes eludes energy insiders too, although they use the catch phrase widely. For households, smart grid generally refers to digital gadgets and technologies that give the consumer increased ability to manage energy more efficiently, such as energy displays and programmable thermostats.)

Women and African Americans are among those who show little awareness of the term, along with those who are not college-educated or earn under $50,000 annually, according to SGCC’s 2013 “State of the Consumer Report.”

“Billions of dollars are being invested in new technologies that are little understood by the people who are supposed to benefit and who are paying the bills,” said the SGCC report.

The good news is that people like the concept once they learn about it. Among those familiar with the term, only 13 percent perceive it in negative way, according to the SGCC survey.

This lends credence to the notion that education will boost energy efficiency efforts.

Meanwhile, Comverge found that two-thirds (62 percent) of those it surveyed spend less than 10 minutes per month reviewing their energy usage or bill. To put this in perspective, the average American spends 100 times longer each day on Facebook, said the Georgia-based demand-side management company.

Both SGCC and Comverge offer some specific advice on how the industry can make efficiency as alluring as Facebook – or at least more alluring than it is now.

SGCC has been at work for some time defining who we are as energy consumers. The organization has segmented the American consumer based on our attitudes, values, behaviors, motivations, lifestyles, technology know-how and other characteristics. SGCC then helps utilities tailor their marketing to each segment. Some groups respond to messages about saving money and energy, others environmental concern and global warming.

“The key to engaging consumers in smart grid is understanding how to appeal to them in terms that will resonate – how to answer their objections and make it easy for them to interact with new technology,” said Patty Durand, SGCC executive director.

For example, those who SGCC calls “Do-it-yourself and save” types are likely to show interest in programmable thermostats that require some planning on their part. And “Easy Streets,” wealthy individuals reluctant to change their behavior, might respond to marketing materials pitching automated thermostats of the “set and forget” variety.

In its research, Comverge found that Americans increasingly want a single location to manage their energy, especially those who are under 40 years old.

“As a society, we are very digitally savvy and much more conscious of how energy use impacts the environment. Couple these changes with an overall desire for simplification, and it should be no surprise that people want all of their energy information in one place, available on any device and easy to understand,” said Blake Young, Comverge president and CEO.

To that end, Comverge recently introduced a new one-stop ‘residential customer engagement solution’, which it describes as a software and services product that helps utilities reduce energy use by making householders more energy aware.

Others, too, are pushing the idea of centralizing home energy management. Virginia-based Opower and technology giant Honeywell rolled out an energy management platform this week that combines Wi-Fi thermostats and Akuacom utility management software with Opower’s interactive, cloud-based application. Homeowners are able to view and adjust energy use from anywhere using a smartphone or computer.

It’s crucial that the energy industry find the friendly talk and technology that captures consumer attention – because the innovators, investors and policymakers are creating an ever-expanding universe of energy management products, a sizable portion for the household. Utility spending on energy efficiency will double by 2025 to about $9.5 billion per year, according to a recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. That means substantial energy savings – and a lot of new ideas and technology for the consumer to master.

Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer whose free newsletter, Energy Efficiency Markets, is available at www.RealEnergyWriters.com

Solar Crowdfunding Startup Lets Ordinary Investors Own A Piece Of The Sun

2013-01-27T08:21:00.006-05:00

Future so bright Mosaic founders Billy Parish and Daniel Rosen gotta wear shades. Photo: Eric Millette

Don’t hold your breath, but the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission could finalize regulations this year to implement the JOBS Act, the 2012 law that lets startups raise funds directly from mom-and-pop investors.

Mosaic isn’t waiting. The two-year-old Oakland, Calif. firm already won approval in California and New York to allow individuals to invest directly via its website. The twist is that the investments are loans, not equity, and the money goes (for now) only to new solar power developments. In the past ordinary investors have been shut out of the solar boom, as most projects obtain equity or debt financing from banks and corporations, which lately are not so eager to lend for solar projects.

“Anything that introduces new sources of cost-effective capital is valuable,” says Reyad Fezzani, a former BP executive who is now chairman and managing partner of Energy Finance Company in Manhattan Beach, Calif. In late December he raised $350,000 from accredited investors through Mosaic’s website for a 470-kilowatt photovoltaic array that his company installed on a New Jersey convention center. He says he’s saving 200 to 300 basis points over banks with Mosaic.

Even not particularly green-minded investors might be tempted by Mosaic’s returns of 4.5% to 6.5%, well above CD rates. Residential solar projects tend to have default rates as low as 0.2%.

“One of the fastest ways to build the clean energy economy is to allow more people to benefit from it,” says Billy Parish, Mosaic’s 31-year-old cofounder and president.

Similar to peer-to-peer financing site Lending Club, Mosaic puts the burden on investors to assess the risks in project prospectuses. If they like a deal, they can get in for as little as $25. No money is transferred if a deal isn’t fully financed. The developer pays back the loan with interest from income generated by the sale of electricity to its customers. Mosaic takes 100 basis points of the interest rate (along with an origination fee and annual platform fees) and passes the rest to investors.

Mosaic is far too small to scare any investment banks, but it can get deals done quickly. Within the first 24 hours of going live in January, Mosaic’s new website raised more than $300,000, including $227,875 for three loans for solar arrays on three affordable-housing complexes that offered returns of 4.5%. Mosaic has now raised a total of $1.1 million for all projects. Parish says profitability is “within sight.”

Anthony Kim, a solar analyst with research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance, questions whether Mosaic can attract a big enough pipeline of investors to fund large solar projects. “For now, I think it’s a relatively niche product,” he says.

The startup hopes to build on its current 7,000 potential investors via social media referrals and by targeting foundations, financial advisors and corporations.

Mosaic board member Marco Krapels, a renewable energy financier with the Dutch bank Rabobank, has his eye on the $17 trillion that sits in U.S. retirement accounts. “If you could put a Mosaic note in an IRA, I think the opportunity is just massive,” he says.

Fezzani says he’s investing his own money in Mosaic’s offerings. “I know many people who say they want to invest in solar, but there’s just been no option before.”

Taller Wind Turbines Boost State Energy Self-Reliance

2013-01-24T07:11:00.003-05:00

By John Farrell
January 22, 2013 |

A story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune highlights the increasingly common use of 100-meter wind turbines for new wind power projects, up from the previous 80-meter standard. The technological change grabs more wind energy, with consistently higher wind speeds at higher altitudes, meaning states can get even more power from a similar number of turbines.
In our 2010 report Energy Self-Reliant States, we illustrated the potential for state self-reliance on wind power with the following map, using NREL data that assumed turbine heights of 80 meters (and a minimum capacity factor of 35%, to be conservative). The following two maps show the potential state self-reliance on wind power at the previous 80-meter turbine height and at the new 100-meter turbine height (with a minimum capacity factor of 30 percent or greater). See the original article for a handy mouseover option.
The taller turbines mean that five more states are able to get 100 percent or more of their electricity from wind power (for a total of 27) and 30 states could get at least half their electricity from in-state wind power alone.

This post originally appeared on ILSR’s Energy Self-Reliant States blog.

Lead image: Wind turbines via Shutterstock

Wind Power

The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.

Offshore Wind “Backbone” Project Moves Ahead

2013-01-21T08:01:00.003-05:00

The Atlantic Wind Connection project to lay undersea cables and transfer offshore wind to the eastern U.S. plans its first phase.

An offshore wind farm in Portugal. Despite having a large resource, the U.S. does not have any offshore wind installed. Will a transmission network speed development? Credit: Principle Power.

An ambitious power transmission line project to tap the offshore wind resource off the east coast U.S. is taking steps toward actual construction.
A consortium of companies called the Atlantic Wind Connection this week said it intends to lay transmission lines about 12 miles off the coast of New Jersey as the first phase of a multi-year plan. Today it said Bechtel was chosen as the engineering and design contractor and Alstom as technical advisor.
The ten-year project would bring an undersea high-voltage direct current network for transferring power from offshore wind turbines located from Maryland to New Jersey to the on-shore transmission network. Having transmission lines in place will provide the infrastructure to attract offshore wind developers and allow New Jersey to take advantage of its offshore wind resource at a lower cost, Atlantic Wind Connection says.
The New Jersey link project will use high-voltage direct current technology, which is considered essential to exploiting renewable energy sources at large scale. Direct current transmission lines are a more economic way to carry power over long distances, such transferring solar power from the desert or offshore wind, to cities and other load centers. (See, ABB Advance Makes Renewable-Energy Supergrids Practical.)
Alstom will supply the equipment to convert between alternating current, which is used through most of the electricity grid, and direct current. Most wind turbines today connect to the AC grid at 34.5 kV, an Atlantic Wind representative explained. In this projet, there will be a series of offshore converter stations to convert the alternating current from turbines into DC and step the voltage up to 320 kV for transmission to the onshore grid, where it will be converted back to AC.
The announcements are a sign that the offshore wind “backbone” project, first announced in 2010, is moving beyond initial planning stages. Transmission project developer Trans-Elect heads up Atlantic Wind Connection. Atlantic Grid Development is the project developer and Google, private equity fund Bregal Energy, Japanese conglomerate Marubeni Corp, and Belgian transmission operator Elia are investors.
Atlantic Wind Connection says the main cable buried under the ocean will be able to carry 3,000 megawatts of power. That’s a few times larger than a full size power plant, although the output of wind farms is not consistent as nuclear or fossil fuel plants are. The company says it plans to begin construction and put the first New Jersey phase into service in 2019. In addition to carrying wind onshore, the network will provide alternate routes to the land transmission network and improve the reliability of New Jersey’s grid.
The proposed transmission line, called the New Jersey Energy Link, will need to be approved by regulators and the cost recovered by rate payers, the same way that other regulated lines are paid for, explained Trans-Elect CEO Bob Mitchell.
The company is moving ahead now to secure support from the state government and include the transmission lines as part of the regional planning process. “Once it is built, it will be able to move power north to supply power where and when it is needed. This relief of congestion will cause prices to be lowered—it will be adding supply when there is demand,” Mitchell says.
Lack of transmission has been a bottleneck for large onshore wind farm projects and establishing a transmission backbone in place would greatly simplify offshore wind development.
Winds in the ocean are stronger and steadier but the U.S. doesn’t have any offshore wind for technical, regulatory, and financial reasons. (See, DOE Grants Try to Crack the Code on Offshore Wind.) The Department of Energy estimates that the U.S. has 4,000 gigawatts of offshore wind available, or four time the country’s current generating capacity.

Offshore Wind Projects Could Provide Refreshing Energy Source

2013-01-20T09:02:00.002-05:00

The Atlantic Wind Connection would take place over at least 10 years and would have the potential of delivering 7,000 megawatts of wind energy to states along the East Coast, some of which have set renewable portfolio standards. That would increase the venture’s attraction despite being considerably more expensive than on-land generation.
“The Atlantic Wind Connection provides a significant alternative to land-based upgrades to the grid,” says John Nathman, a retired naval officer before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “Indeed, the project can be an important step in strengthening our national security through improvements to the electric grid.” The venture’s partners are not just Google but also Trans-Elect, Good Energies, Marubeni Corp., Bregal Energy and Elia, which are moving ahead. They have combined to invest $5 billion.
The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management granted its permission to build the underwater line that could eventually stretch 380 miles from Virginia to New Jersey. The agency’s review concludes that no other similar competitors exist in that region that would object to giving the developers rights-of-way. Other federal and state permits are still necessary.
The project, of course, can’t avoid the comparisons to Cape Wind, which has been encumbered in legal battles for more than a decade but which may start producing power in 2014. The Atlantic wind deal has broader public and political support.
Still, the cost of the project could end up being enormous, or potentially twice as much as a land-based deal. The investors, though, are factoring in potential subsidies and tax benefits as well as tougher environmental regulations dealing with carbon emissions.
Under the National Offshore Wind Strategy, the U.S. Department of Energy wants to have 10,000 megawatts of offshore wind generating capacity by 2020 and 54,000 by 2030. Those scenarios include development in both federal and state offshore areas, including along Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts as well as in Great Lakes and Hawaiian waters, the agency says.
While the regulatory headwinds that are keeping offshore wind production at bay are easing, the bigger gusts involve getting the financing needed to go ahead, as well as to conquering some of the technical hurdles. That’s why the U.S. Department of Energy is working to remove some of the barriers to entry by funding some of the research and development.
“Offshore wind energy can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, diversify our energy supply, and stimulate economic revitalization,” says Secretary Steven Chu. “The Department of Energy is committed to working with our federal partners to provide national leadership in accelerating offshore wind energy deployment.”
The best known among the offshore wind proposals is that of Cape Wind, which got approval to operate in 2010 after nine years of regulatory battles. The power facility, which would operate off the coast of Massachusetts and deliver electricity to the residents of Nantucket Sound, must still resolve some legal issues.
The deal has been helped along by the courts, which have recently upheld a power purchase agreement it had with National Grid to buy half of the power that it would generate. That makes financing the project more feasible. If it comes to fruition, it would generate 468 megawatts, providing most of the power there. And while the project has jumped through every regulatory hoop, environmental opponents of the wind farm have filed multiple lawsuits to try and stop it.
Why are Google and company so confident about the approval process while the Cape Wind project has languished for years? Cape Wind, designed to offset fossil fuel usage in the area, would be located in waters where the politically powerful surround. The proposed super-grid in the Mid-Atlantic is enjoying broad public support from the politicos and its would-be patrons.
That’s because the Atlantic has shallow waters relative to most other potential off-shore sites, meaning the wind mills could be located far enough away so as not to be an eye-sore. At the same time, the four on-land connection points are much less hassle than the number that would be required if a 350-mile transmission system was built on land.
Still, the cost of the project is said to be about 50 percent more than if the generation was land-based. The investors, though, are factoring in potential subsidies and tax benefits as well as tougher environmental regulations dealing with carbon emissions. Once built, meanwhile, the transmission system would get federally-regulated rates of return.
A Pike Research analysis indicates that offshore wind has high associated costs. The price of such generation is greater than that of onshore wind, adding that in some cases it is two to three times more.
NRG, for example, won’t go forth with its wind deal off the Delaware coast until it can find dependable investment partner. Meantime, Spanish wind developer Gamesa is suspending its plans to build off the Virginia coastline, citing the need for financing at a time of political uncertainty. It had wanted to build a small prototype but will now wait a few years.
The challenges surrounding offshore wind are enormous. To get there, costs must come down and technologies must improve, which would make it easier to attract capital. But if it can be cost-effectively achieved and subsequently replicated, the projects would provide a refreshing new source of power to residents along the East Coast, and elsewhere.

Advanced Energy Now: The Economic Impacts of Advanced Energy

2013-01-16T06:55:00.002-05:00

Advanced Energy Economy Institute (AEEI), AEE's educational and charitable affiliate, commissioned Pike Research, a part of Navigant, to perform, for the first time, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the advanced energy markets in the U.S. and globally. Their report, The Economic Impacts of Advanced Energy, identifies seven broad industry segments, which are further broken down to 41 distinct subsegments representing specific technologies, products, or services.
The report draws upon over 60 previously published Pike Research studies, as well as information maintained by Navigant’s Energy Practice, to build an assessment of advanced energy markets measured by revenue generated by the individual product categories, globally and within the United States. Key findings include:

In 2011, global revenue from the seven advanced energy segments reached nearly $1.12 trillion.
The U.S. advanced energy market reached $132.0 billion in 2011, representing nearly 12% of the global market. The domestic advanced energy market is expected to grow to an estimated $157.0 billion in 2012, with the U.S. share of the global market expected to rise to 15%.
The U.S. advanced energy industry contributed $13.9 billion in federal tax revenue in 2011, plus another $6.7 billion in state and local tax revenue, for a total tax contribution of $20.6 billion.
Globally, advanced energy is larger, by revenue, than pharmaceutical manufacturing, and roughly 2/3 the size of telecommunications.
In the U.S., advanced energy is larger than the trucking industry that distributes goods throughout the country, and more than twice the size of the commercial casino industry

Shale Gas Will Fuel a U.S. Manufacturing Boom

2013-01-10T18:20:00.004-05:00

Chemical producers abandoned the U.S. in droves. Cheap natural gas is luring them back.

By Kevin Bullis on January 9, 2013

People predicting a manufacturing renaissance in the United States usually imagine whirring robots or advanced factories turning out wind turbines and solar panels. The real American edge might be in something entirely more mundane: cheap starting materials for plastic bottles and plastic bags.
The plummeting price of natural gas, which can be used to make a vast number of products, including tires, carpet, antifreeze, lubricants, cloth, and many types of plastic, is luring key industries to the United States. Just five years ago, natural gas prices were so high that some chemicals manufacturers were shutting down operations here. Now the ability to access natural gas trapped in shale rock formations, using technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, has led to a surge in natural gas supplies that have lowered American gas prices to a fraction of prices in other countries (see “King Natural Gas”).
Over the last 18 months, low U.S. gas prices have prompted plans for the construction of new chemical plants for the production of ethylene, ammonia for fertilizer, and diesel fuels. Dow Chemical, for example, plans to spend $4 billion to expand its U.S. chemicals production, including a new plant, due to open in 2017, in Freeport, Texas. The plant will make ethylene from the ethane found in many sources of natural gas. (The last such plant to be built in the U.S. was completed in 2001).
The impact of the resurgence is being felt most strongly in the $148 billion market for ethylene, the world’s most high-volume chemical, and the foundation for many other industries. It’s used to make bottles, toys, clothes, windows, pipes, carpet, tires, and many other products. Since ethylene is expensive to transport over long distances, a new ethylene plant is typically integrated with a facility to convert it into polyethylene for plastic bags or ethylene glycol for antifreeze.
In the U.S., it currently costs $300 to make a ton of ethylene, down steeply from $1,000 a few years ago. According to an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, it currently costs $1,717 to make it in Asia, where plants depend on high-priced oil instead of natural gas, and $455 per ton to make ethylene in Saudi Arabia, using a combination of ethane and butane. (Ethylene plants are also being built in Qatar, which, like the U.S., has very cheap natural gas.)
Over the last two years, manufacturers have announced plans to add 10 million metric tons of ethylene capacity in the United States by 2019. Those plans represent a 10 percent increase in global ethylene production and also account for close to half the industry’s planned expansions in all countries.

The impact of cheap natural gas on manufacturing could extend beyond the production of various chemicals. Using natural gas as an energy source, rather than a chemical feedstock, could significantly lower costs for manufacturers who use a lot of energy, such as steel makers. (The steel industry is booming already for another natural gas-related reason—it’s supplying gas producers with pipes.) What’s more, cheap natural gas is prompting a shift away from petroleum based-fuels for trucking. Some companies are switching to trucks that burn natural gas directly. Eventually, even diesel trucks could be using fuel made from natural gas. The South African company Sasol plans to build a huge $14 billion plant in Louisiana partly to convert natural gas to diesel, potentially lowering fuel costs for conventional vehicles as well.
Overall, cheaper chemicals, cheaper steel, and cheaper transportation could make the U.S. a far more attractive place for a wide range of industries.
Michael Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says energy doesn’t exceed 5 percent of costs in most industries—not enough to make gas prices decisive for most companies choosing where to build manufacturing plants. Where cheap energy could matter most, he says, is giving existing U.S. factories a new reason not to close or move offshore. “Cheap natural gas might do more to keep existing manufacturing plants open than it will to get people to build new ones,” says Levi.
Just how long U.S. natural gas will stay relatively cheap is not clear. For capital investments to pay off, say analysts, oil prices need to stay high, and gas prices low, for years to come. That means chemical makers could still shift their plans. For instance, Sasol will reassess the economics of its planned plant for converting natural gas into diesel in 2014 before it breaks ground.

Industry Update: Microgrid Backbone Generation Assets, Part 1: Gen-sets Saturday, December 8th, 2012

2013-01-08T19:46:00.002-05:00

Note: This is Part One of a three-part series that will address several options for backbone generation in a microgrid. This post will focus on generator sets, a traditional form of auxiliary power. The second and third parts of the series will focus on up-and-coming alternatives: microturbines and fuel cells.

Introduction

Last week a major blackout cut a wide swath across Cambridge, MA, where I live. As I left the bright lights of Boston and biked across the Longfellow Bridge on the way home from work, the transition to the darkness of Cambridge was quite stark. Other than the lights of the cars stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic caused by the disabled traffic lights, the streets were pitch black. Seeing Massachusetts Avenue in total darkness was eerie, and I was not looking forward to the possibility of a cold evening in my electrically heated apartment.
However, as I turned into my building’s driveway, I saw the welcoming glow of lights from the building’s windows and heard the deep rumble of two large diesel generator sets unobtrusively situated in the corner of the parking lot. Considering that I do not live in a luxury apartment building, I was a bit surprised by this unexpected amenity, and I am still trying to figure out why the management company spent money on providing full standby power for the ~120 units in the building. Grid power was restored after only a few hours, so the generators were somewhat unnecessary in this case, but it is nice to know the building has them.

A picture of a typical diesel gen-set. The engine and generator are housed inside a protective enclosure.

These types of generators, technically known as generator sets or gen-sets, are not only for emergency standby power. They can also be used as a form of backbone power generation for a microgrid. (In fact, so-called “wind-diesel” systems are common in many remote communities throughout the world from Mongolia to Alaska – see for instance this paper from NREL: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy02osti/31755.pdf)
We start with a brief overview of what a generator set is and how it works before delving more deeply into how a gen-set can be integrated with a microgrid. I will then provide a brief analysis of the main types of 100+ kW gen-sets (diesel, natural gas, and propane). This post, along with the two that will follow in this series, is intended to provide readers a starting point for understanding the tradeoffs among different backbone generation assets for a microgrid.

What is a Generator Set?

A gen-set at its most basic level consists of a prime mover connected to a generator. The prime mover (engine) converts the energy stored in fuel (fossil fuels like diesel, natural gas, propane, gasoline, coal or biomass like wood pellets or straw) into mechanical energy that turns the generator crank to produce electricity. As the load on the generator increases, more fuel is fed to the prime mover to match the supply of electricity with the demand for electricity. The concept behind a gen-set dates back to the early 1800s when Michael Faraday discovered the principle of electromagnetic generators that is now known as Faraday’s Law.
The diagram below provides an excellent overview of the main components of a typical gen-set:

A diagram of the main components of a gen-set. Source: http://www.dieselserviceandsupply.com/How_Generators_Work.aspx

The vast majority of gen-sets installed around the world are “backup” generators used to supply power to a single building in the event of a grid failure. Most of these gen-sets are “dumb” in the sense that they do not interact with the grid and only run when the grid goes down, or when they are given their annual checkup. These standby gen-sets run for just a few hours per year, sitting idly by for the other 8,000+ hours per year. This represents an enormous asset (capital expenditure plus fuel inventory) sitting idle on institutional balance sheets – and unused even as “reserves” for the grid. As energy markets mature, these backup generators may evolve into valuable generation assets that can be monetized by their owners.
By incorporating a gen-set into a microgrid, the gen-set can interact with the grid and is no longer “dumb.” This “smart” generation asset can now dynamically interact with the grid, ensuring higher electricity reliability for loads on the microgrid and also providing a source of revenue throughout the year by enabling participation in a variety of demand response programs.

Integrating a Gen-Set with a Microgrid

Every microgrid must be built on some form of backbone (or “baseload” or “dispatchable”) generation capacity to ensure power is available when needed. Renewables like wind and solar are great, but they are not fully dispatchable. Batteries are dispatchable, but they are also very expensive at this time – it’s much cheaper to store energy in a gas tank or a pipeline.
Therefore, most microgrids incorporate one of three form of dispatchable generation: gen-set, microturbine, or fuel cells. As long as these units have access to fuel and are properly maintained, they can operate for many years (although as Hurricane Sandy reminded us, getting gasoline or diesel can sometimes be a challenge even in New York!).
Given the wide range of gen-set sizes (10 kW up to 1,000+ kW) and the relatively low upfront cost ($300-$600/kW installed), gen-sets are a popular choice for the backbone of a microgrid. One or more gen-sets can be incorporated into a microgrid as required to meet the expected load. These gen-sets can then be supplemented with renewable energy generation assets, and the (expensive) battery portion of the system can be reduced substantially. When renewable energy is available, the microgrid control software intelligently decreases the load on the gen-sets to allow for electricity from the more efficient forms of generation to flow.

Diesel vs. Natural Gas vs. Propane

Gen-sets in the ~100 kW size are most commonly fueled by one of three fuels: diesel, natural gas, or propane. However, for any gen-set larger than approximately 200 kW, the only real fuel choices are diesel and natural gas. Propane simply does not have the energy density (like diesel) or the extensive network of pipeline distribution (like natural gas) to make it an attractive choice for gen-sets much larger than ~150 kW. The frequency of fuel deliveries and the size of the fuel storage tank for gen-sets larger than ~150 kW would make such a gen-set a poor choice. However, for small standby gen-sets for individual homes, a propane gen-set is an excellent choice.
In deciding between a natural gas and a diesel gen-set there are several key factors that should be considered. First and foremost, is the availability of fuel. In some cases, natural gas is simply not an option because the site may not have access to a natural gas line. However, when natural gas is available, it will often provide a more secure and reliable source of fuel in the event of a regional natural disaster that may significantly disrupt road transportation and consequently the delivery of diesel. As we saw in Hurricane Sandy, the natural gas network suffered minimal disruption while diesel and gasoline supplies were significantly limited in certain portions of the Northeast. To provide extra reliability, a dual fuel gen-set could be used with natural gas as the primary fuel and diesel as a secondary fuel (with a limited amount of diesel stored on site in the event that natural gas delivery is disrupted).
A second factor to consider is the capital expenditure of the gen-set. Although each installation will vary in cost, a reasonable estimate for both natural gas and diesel gen-sets is in the $300 – $600/kW installed range for a gen-set of 100+ kW (based on data from this Department of Defense microgrid study). The difference in price for comparable natural gas and diesel gen-sets for a given site will likely be insignificant.
Third, operational expenditures (primarily fuel cost) should be considered. Based on a survey of the specifications for natural gas and diesel gen-sets, I created the following chart comparing the average cost of fuel per kWh:

A comparison of the fuel cost to generate a kWh of energy from diesel and natural gas based on a variety of fuel prices.

As the chart illustrates, the fuel cost per kWh for a natural gas gen-set is almost on par with the price of retail power! (Of course, this is not a full LCOE analysis, but that is beyond the scope of this blog post). Interestingly enough, the efficiency, defined as energy out divided by energy in, of an average diesel gen-set (33.5% efficient) is significantly higher than the efficiency of an average natural gas gen-set (25.0% efficient).
One should note that shale gas has caused the spot price for natural gas in the US to fall dramatically in the past two years (currently about $3.50/mCF). Regardless, enormous price movements on both sides would be required before the fuel cost of generating a kWh of energy from a natural gas gen-set would ever be equivalent to one from a diesel gen-set.

Conclusion

In many areas of the US, based on excellent fuel availability and low operating costs, a natural gas gen-set is the technology of choice to serve as a backbone generation asset for a microgrid. A natural gas gen-set also provides the added benefit of producing less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the next blog post, I will explore microturbines in the context of backbone generation for a microgrid and how they compare to using a natural gas gen-set.
Maybe the town of Cambridge, MA will put one in, and it will be easier for me to bike home next time there is a blackout!
If you have any questions about the topics discussed in this blog post or how Riverview can help your organization explore microgrid options, please send us an email: info@riverviewconsultinginc.com
-JJ Augenbraun and the Riverview Consulting Team

Cisco Dives Into Home Energy Management With AT&T

2013-01-08T07:16:00.003-05:00

Cisco’s multi-communications control panel to connect AT&T Digital Life home automation service

Jeff St. John: January 7, 2013

It looks like rumors of Cisco’s departure from the energy-connected home space have been a bit exaggerated. On Monday, the networking giant jumped right back into the home energy fray with AT&T, announcing at CES that it has built an all-wireless control panel for the telecommunication giant’s Digital Life service.
Cisco’s control panel comes with five radios (one-way and two-way radios, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi and 3G), along with HomePlug AV wire-line capability, making it about the most communications-versatile home energy device I’ve seen. It’s also a mini-computer, capable of advanced diagnostics and power management and 24-hour backup, and using Cisco’s OSGi software to carry out many of the computations that go into sensing and controlling a home’s energy use.
Of course, it’s also connected to the cloud. Cisco’s providing the back-office provisioning and applications life-cycle management system, which connects the various cameras, smart thermostats, light controls, smoke detectors, door locks and other such home security and automation gear, and allows homeowners to monitor and control them via smartphone, tablet or PC.
In short, it’s about the most interoperable piece of hardware deployed to date for home automation -- which brings up the question of how much it costs. Cisco and AT&T didn’t reveal pricing details for the device or the Digital Life service, though AT&T said it plans to launch it in eight U.S. markets in March, with up to 50 additional market rollouts planned in 2013.
AT&T is a bit late to the party here. Verizon has been offering home automation and security devices to its FiOS broadband internet customers since October 2011, and Comcast’s Xfinity home automation service launched in mid-2011 and has been expanding to new markets ever since.
Home security companies such as ADT are also getting into the business, though their customers tend to view energy savings as an afterthought to safety. Alarm.com raised $136 million in VC for its connected home services in July, and Vivint, a home automation company that has been adding third-party-financed solar to its offerings, was bought by private equity firm Blackstone Group for $2 billion late last year.
As for Cisco, it de-prioritized home energy management back in 2011 to refocus on commercial buildings via its EnergyWise line of business. That technology, based on its 2009 acquisition of building energy software company Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence, has mostly been applied in data centers to date.
The home requires a much different approach than the instrumented and managed commercial building sector, however. Cisco has long talked about the need to distribute much of the intelligence for “endpoints” on the grid like homes and offices, to keep network traffic to a minimum and allow each home to more or less do the right thing on its own most of the time -- but that requires a good deal of computing power for in-home devices.
At the same time, companies like EcoFactor, Nest, Energate, Silver Spring Networks, Honeywell and a plethora of others are using cloud computing to do much of the heavy IT lifting, so to speak. That model collects data from semi-smart devices and multiple other sources, crunches it to figure out what the home devices should do, and then sends the commands back. No doubt Cisco will be applying both methods in its partnership with AT&T.
At the same time, Cisco has taken a lead in smart grid, networking everything from distribution substations to smart meters. But its Monday announcement didn’t make any connection between its smart grid work and the AT&T project -- which makes sense, since it’s a completely different channel to the home.
Few utilities have offered up the same kind of home automation gadgetry as the big telcos and home security providers have, though some are starting to enable third-party devices that connect to smart meters, demand response signals and other utility systems

Apple's wind turbine technology uses heat, not rotational energy to generate electricity

2013-01-04T07:01:00.001-05:00

Apple's wind turbine technology uses heat, not rotational energy to generate electricity

2013-01-04 05:45:50.0

By Mikey Campbell

In a rare non-computing related patent filing discovered on Thursday, Apple proposes a wind turbine that generates electricity from converting heat energy rather than rotational energy created by the rotation of the unit's blades.

Source: USPTO

While Apple is best known for inventing, and patenting, technology for computers and mobile electronics, the company also dabbles in seemingly radical ideas for an OEM. Such is the case with a an application published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the "On-demand generation of electricity from stored wind energy," an invention wholly dedicated to solving problems of variability associated with the alternative energy production method.

The application, filed for in June 2011, notes that most contemporary wind turbines convert kinetic energy from wind into mechanical energy, or in some cases electricity. Basic windmill technology is well known: wind energy is asserted on a mill's sails or blades and is converted into rotational energy through a drive shaft, which then powers machinery or, more recently, electric generators. It is apparent that the process is dependent on a steady supply of wind which, as Apple's filing notes, is highly variable.

To mitigate these inconsistencies, the filing proposes a system that converts rotational energy from the turbine into heat, which is then stored in a "low-heat-capacity" fluid. From storage, heat can be selectively transferred to a "working fluid" that is used to generate electricity during lulls in wind activity.

In some embodiments, heat is generated from the friction created between blades connected to the rotor shaft and the low-heat-capacity fluid, such as mercury, ethanol or an inert gas, in which they are immersed. Thermal energy is stored in an insulated vessel. A thermally insulating component like a radiator or conductive rod can be used to selectively transfer heat from the low-heat-capacity fluid to the working based on electrical demand. Finally, the working fluid boils and creates steam which rotates a turbine connected to an electric generator.

Heat from the low-heat-capacity fluid (110) stored in the thermally insulating vessel (202)
is transfered to the working fluid (114) through a thermally conductive component (204).

According to the patent application, the "on-demand" electric generation system can reduce costs associated with natural variations in wind supply. Further, the method can be used as a replacement for current conventional energy storage methods such as batteries.

Whether Apple plans to deploy such a wind turbine system is unclear, but Cupertino is investing heavily in alternative energy sources like solar and natural gas "energy servers," as seen at the company's Maiden, N.C. data center.

Why some NYC buildings are more efficient than LEED-certified ones

2013-01-04T05:01:00.002-05:00

Why some NYC buildings are more efficient than LEED-certified ones

By Sustainable Business News

Some of New York City's oldest buildings are more energy efficient than LEED-certified buildings.

Although the recently built 7 World Trade Center trumpets its LEED-Gold rating to lure renters, it isn't as efficient as the Chrysler Building, which was constructed in the 1930s.

While 7 World Trade Center gets an Energy Star score of 74 -- just below the minimum allowed for that certification -- the Chrysler building scores 84, thanks to extensive efficiency upgrades. The Empire State Building has a score of 80.

That's because old structures tend to have thicker walls, fewer windows and less ventilation. They also don't lend themselves to massive data centers that consume lots of electricity.

It's also because of energy consumption by tenants. Tenants at the World Trade Center tend to be more data-crunching oriented with firms like Moody's, whereas nonprofits and other firms that require basic computing tend to occupy highly efficient buildings.
Not all older buildings score well, of course. The MetLife Building, built in 1963, scored 39, and the Seagram Building, built in 1958, scored 3.
Those numbers will change for Seagram, which will soon get extensive energy upgrades.
"Some scores will not be flattering, but identifying buildings with the most opportunity to improve is a big part of driving energy savings," Andrew Burr, a performance expert at the Institute for Market Transformation, told the New York Times. "It does put energy on the radar of real estate consumers."
Next page: More surprising numbers
In 2009, NYC passed a first-in-the-nation law that all privately-owned buildings must measure and report on energy consumption. This is the first year that buildings were required to publicly disclose that data.
Some of the information they must divulge includes energy and water use per square foot (energy intensity), greenhouse gas emissions and Energy Star scores.
Eighty percent of the city's carbon emissions come from heating and cooling buildings. NYC wants to cut by a third of these emissions by 2030 as part of PlaNYC, its sustainablity plan.

The data shows that the biggest buildings -- which constitute 2 percent of the city's one million buildings -- consume 45 percent of the city's energy. If they all reached median levels of energy intensity, the city would cut energy consumption 18 percent and greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent.
Still, NYC buildings generally consume less energy and water than the national average.

Why would LEED-certified buildings score lower?
Not all LEED-certified buildings score lower, such as the Empire State Building, which is both LEED-Gold and Energy Star certified. But some buildings do score lower because LEED covers many green building criteria, not solely energy efficiency.
To get LEED certified, building designers can choose from a raft of environmental features, such as the kinds of materials used, water systems and proximity to public transportation.

But one of the criticisms of LEED is that buildings are rated before tenants move in. Once tenants occupy a space they may leave lights and computers running 24 hours a day, for example.

Read NYC's benchmarking report here.
Photo of Chrysler building provided by Songquan Deng via Shutterstock.com

follow our lead!!!

2013-01-03T09:24:00.000-05:00

http://www.linkedin.com/company/2861563?trk=NUS_DIG_CMPY-fol

Wind Tax Credit Survives in Fiscal Cliff Deal

2013-01-03T07:40:00.002-05:00

Wind Tax Credit Survives in Fiscal Cliff Deal

The tax deal brokered in Congress extends a wind energy tax credit for another year but manufacturers had already begun to scale back due to the uncertainty and slowing growth.

Siemens set up manufacturing operations in Kansas to meet demand for the wind industry boom last year, but laid off workers earlier this year due to an expected slowdown. Credit: Siemens.

The last-minute tax deal passed by Congress yesterday includes a one-year extension to a tax credit for wind industry, keeping a subsidy in place for wind energy projects.
The package includes a “tax extender” that provides a 2.2-cent per kilowatt hour tax credit for energy produced at wind farms. The extension covers all wind projects that start construction in 2013, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the industry’s lobbying group. President Obama is expected to sign the bill.
AWEA estimates that the move will save up to 37,000 jobs at 500 factories in the U.S. but the possibility that the tax credit would not be extended has already caused wind manufacturers and their suppliers to scale back and lay people off.
Turbine manufacturers, including Siemens and Vestas, had set up manufacturing operations in the U.S. to supply the rapidly growing industry, but cut back in the middle of the year. (See, Siemens Layoffs Portend U.S. Wind Slowdown) About 70 percent of wind turbines used in U.S. wind projects are made in the U.S., according to AWEA. Project developers, meanwhile, were racing to finish up their installations before 2012 ended because it didn’t appear that the credit would be extended.
The wording of the one-year tax credit extension, which is said to cost $12.1 billion over ten years, effectively means that wind energy projects that are not finished until next year will still qualify for the subsidy. “On behalf of all the people working in wind energy manufacturing facilities, their families, and all the communities that benefit, we thank President Obama and all the Members of the House and Senate who had the foresight to extend this successful policy, so wind projects can continue to be developed in 2013 and 2014,” Denise Bode AWEA CEO said in a statement.
Forty four percent of the new electrical generating capacity came from wind this year, more than natural gas. Without extending the wind production tax credit, the US. Energy Information Administration and others projected very little new capacity in 2013.
While the wind industry can breath a sigh of relief, there will be continued pressure to eliminate the subsidy. In December, AWEA proposed extending the credit in 2013 and then phasing out the credit over five years, a position designed to avoid the boom-bust cycle that’s characterized the U.S. wind industry.
Utility-scale on-shore wind development is mature, but 2013 could be a significant year for advancing offshore wind technology. The DOE last month announced a plan to provide $47 million in grants over four years to demonstrate direct-drive turbines and new types of foundations for offshore wind. There are 4,000 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in the U.S. but so far no projects developed. (See, DOE Grants Try to Crack the Code on Offshore Wind.) The tax extenders deal includes investment tax credits for offshore and community wind projects.

Why Solar Installations Cost More in the U.S. than in Germany

2013-01-02T08:01:00.002-05:00

Why Solar Installations Cost More in the U.S. than in Germany

A new report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory points to specific areas where costs could be lowered.

By Kevin Bullis on December 26, 2012

In 2011, residential solar system installers paid a little over $1.80 per watt for solar panels in both Germany and the United States. In Germany, installers added $1.20 to the cost of the solar panel to complete an installation. But in the U.S., they tacked on $4.36 per watt, more than three times as much.
A report released this month by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory explains why.
The most obvious difference between the United States and Germany is the total amount of solar power installed in each country—there’s five times as much installed in Germany.
The study concludes, however, that the learning curve isn’t enough to explain the price disparity—it might account for only half of it. Instead, based on a survey of U.S. and German installers, it seems that there are some fundamental differences in the U.S. and German markets that could keep prices higher in the U.S.—unless something is done to address them.

The most marked difference is in the cost of acquiring customers. German installers spend seven cents per watt of installed capacity on things like marketing and designing systems for specific customers. U.S. installers spend 10 times that amount. Costs for permitting, connecting the systems to the grid, and having them inspected are also far higher in the United States. The Germans spent only three cents a watt on these things, while U.S. installers spend 20 cents, in part because of larger amounts of paperwork and the fact that U.S. installers have to pay permitting fees.
U.S. installers also spend more on labor during actual installation (in some cases, higher winds force more expensive installations).They pay more in sales tax (German installers are exempt). And they pay more for overhead (which is closely related to economies of scale).
The report lists some more line items. Part of the difference, for example, is due to higher costs for inverters in the U.S. But the report comes short of explaining the entire price difference—about $1.30 of the price difference remains unaccounted for. The researchers speculate that some part of that difference is coming from U.S. installers taking higher profits.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative is funding projects aimed at reducing the non-hardware costs of an installed solar system. One part of SunShot is a $12 million program is aimed at cutting red tape. Earlier this year it announced a $10 million prize to be given to companies that can lower total non-hardware costs of an installation to below $1 per watt. And this month it announced $21 million for the development of a “plug-and-play” system for solar panels that could reduce installation costs (see “Redesigning Solar Power”).

The biggest lever for reducing solar costs remains reducing the number of solar panels needed per installation, which in turn reduces labor costs (see “Alta Devices: Finding a Solar Solution”). But for solar to compete with fossil fuels, directly addressing the soft costs will be key. “We will see a substantial improvement, even if we just replicate the practices in Germany,” says Ryan Wiser, a staff scientist at LBNL and one of the authors of the new report

A net-zero-energy prototype for a large school district aims for top results across the board.

2013-01-01T09:20:00.005-05:00

A net-zero-energy prototype for a large school district aims for top results across the board.

By: Deane Madsen, Assoc. AIA

For more than 15 years, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has had to deal with degraded classrooms, often putting up temporary trailers to house ever-growing student populations. Now, however, even these temporary structures are due for replacement. With energy costs increasing and the state’s budgets suffering, LAUSD issued a call in 2010 to architects to develop “the most creative, aesthetic, flexible, and efficient structure that can be replicated and site-adapted to multiple campuses and multiple uses.” Swift Lee Office’s Net Zero Energy K–12 High Performing School Prototype was selected as one of three winners.
Going beyond the competition brief’s requirements, Swift Lee Office (SLO) designed its two-story, 30,000-square-foot NZE prototype to be flexible enough to be LEED-certified, with the level of certification varying with each project, and to consume net-zero energy in any of the configurations that the kit-of-parts design allows. Given that the LAUSD’s replacement buildings would have to house a variety of different programs—with a total capacity for 350 to 500 students each—the architects felt that integrating customizable components into the design would produce the most adaptable structures. “Economies of scale were a top priority for us,” says principal Gloria Lee. “We started with a long-span moment frame and added a performance layer to account for context.” Beneath the steel skeleton, SLO designed nonstructural, demountable interior partition walls optimized for maximum flexibility, with exterior performative skins that are customizable for each deployment’s climatic conditions. Using Autodesk’s Ecotect Analysis software, the architects will determine optimum site-responsive solar screen materials and opacity for the modular system to allow natural light intake and to reduce heat loss or gain.
To bring in additional natural light, SLO developed a light chimney by combining rooftop parabolic skylights with motorized ventilation louvers, light-directing glass, spectrally reflective lining, and airflow and daylight dampers. The solar arrays chosen for the roof will be determined by the prototype’s site. “We’ve provided enough free roof area so that the building can produce as much energy as it consumes in a year,” Lee says.
With schools already a prime candidate for net-zero energy based on their normal use schedule—during daylight hours, and not during the hottest months of the year—the implementation of the daylighting and ventilation mechanisms would further reduce schools’ energy consumption. The remainder of the prototype’s heating and cooling needs are met through displacement induction via active chilled beams, with the chimneys serving as exhaust for the thermal buoyancy-driven ventilation system.
Although the economic forecast for California remains somewhat bleak, LAUSD hopes to begin production of the NZE prototypes in 2014.

Proof from UC Berkeley that Green Label Buildings Increase the Market Value of Commercial Properties.

2013-01-01T08:36:00.001-05:00

Proof from UC Berkeley that Green Label Buildings Increase the Market Value of Commercial Properties.

12/29/2012

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The University of California Berkeley has conducted a study that shows that green labeled buildings command higher market rents per square foot resulting in higher selling prices and values of buildings. Conclusions of this study are found below.

The results clearly indicate the importance of a green label in affecting the market rents and values of commercial space. The results suggest that an otherwise identical commercial building with an Energy-Star certification will rent for about three percent more per square foot; the difference in effective rent is estimated to be about six percent. The increment to the selling price may be as much as 16 percent.

These effects are large, and they are consistent. As noted above, at prevailing capitalization rates of six percent, the increment to effective rents (estimated in Table 3) implies that the value of a green building is about $5.5 million more than the value of a comparable unrated building nearby. From Table 4, the incremental value of a green building is estimated to be about $5.7 million more than that of a comparable unrated building nearby.

To view the whole study click here

2013-01-01T08:09:00.000-05:00

30 Under 30 - The Future Of Energy Is Nuclear

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leslie Dewan, 27

With fellow MIT Phd candidate Mark Massie, 26, Dewan is working to develop a new nuclear reactor design. The Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR) will utilize liquid fuel consisting mainly of the "spent" fuel rods from the nation's fleet of Light Water Reactors, which Dewan says still contain enough energy to power the entire U.S. for 70 years.

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Welcome to the second-annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list of rising stars in the energy sector. Please check out the slideshow to see pics and bios of this year’s bunch.
In looking over this year’s list and trying to see what themes emerged, a few things stood out.
First of all, old-school fossil fuel companies have virtually no representation on this list. That’s not because they don’t have talented young people working for them. But it’s harder for them to stand out, and many big, Borg-like enterprises are not enthusiastic about identifying them. (Prove me wrong Big Oil. Let’s identify the crop of young engineers who will lead the future.)
Second, the people who did make the list are primarily this: nerds who love science and are not only driven to solve problems but who also possess the entrepreneurial spirit to turn their inventions into companies or nonprofits.
Third, taken as a whole, if we were to apply all the ideas of these inventors, academics and entrepreneurs to the global energy grid, we could save oceans of fossil fuels and prevent mountains of carbon from entering the atmosphere.
Some examples:
Yaniv Scherson of Stanford has invented and installed a system that creates electricity from sewage by capturing ammonia from sewage treatment plants, converting it to nitrous oxide, then burning it to generate power.
Priyanka Bakaya, with PK Clean, is perfecting a technology that can glean 4 barrels of diesel fuel out of each ton of plastic trash.
Gene Berdichevsky at Sila Nanotechnologies is figuring out how to get more energy out of lithium-ion batteries. While Qichao Hu of SolidEnergy Systems is working on polymer ionic liquid lithium metal batteries that will be safer, smaller and hold more energy than lithium ion.
With his colleagues from Northwestern University, Chris Wilmer has invented an algorithm that has already been used to discover and synthesize new porous materials that have been shown to store more natural gas in small spaces than any other material. Vital for devising long-range natural gas-powered vehicles.
In solar power, Eden Full, with Roseicollis Technologies, is deploying her SunSaluter solar-tracking system in Africa. While Patrick Walsh has devised a solar-recharged LED light that he’s distributing to poor families in India to help replace smoky kerosene lamps. Manuel Weichers Banuet has installed small solar-charged batteries on the homes of more than 1,000 poor families in Mexico — providing a reliable source of light at night. Daniel Schnitzer with EarthSpark International is doing something similar in impoverished Haiti.
Then there’s the nuclear engineers. Nuclear power is, of course, the world’s only large-scale source of reliable baseload power generation that emits zero greenhouse gases. The lingering drawback is that it creates nuclear waste, and, with older reactor designs there’s a small, but material, risk of a catastrophic meltdown.
Several of this year’s 30 are working to revolutionize nuclear power. Taylor Wilson built his first working nuclear reactor at age 14, is the recipient of a Thiel Fellowship, was the subject of this longread and is having a movie made about him.
Then there’s Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, MIT Phd candidates and co-founders of TransAtomic Power, have a plan for a reactor design that if rolled out nationwide could have the potential to power the entire country for 100 years and run on our existing mountain of nuclear waste. They call it the Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR). Instead of solid uranium fuel rods used in common light water reactors, the core of the WAMSR will contain liquid fuel — predominantly consisting of “spent” fuel rods from old reactors dissolved in a salt solution. “Nuclear waste is not really waste at all. It still has a tremendous amount of energy in it,” says Dewan.
In fact those old fuel rods still contain 95% of their radioactive energy, meaning that by Dewan’s calculations America’s stockpile of nuke “waste” could power the whole country for 100 years. What’s particularly appealing about the WAMSR concept is that the reactor has a passive failsafe system, meaning it could never suffer a meltdown. How it works: At the bottom of the vessel containing the churning molten salt reactor core is a “freeze valve” where a plug of the same salt is electrically cooled into a soild plug, like a bathtub stopped. If a disaster were to knock out electricity to the plant, the plug would quickly melt causing the reactor solution to pour out into a non-critical configuration that would cool into a solid over a few days. With no risk of meltdown, no carbon emissions, and powered by nuclear waste, Dewan and Massie’s design could change the world. They hope to have a pilot plant built by the end of the decade. (Plus, they’re exceptionally charismatic and well spoken: check out their captivating TED talk here and Leslie Dewan’s new interview with Forbes here.)
Nuclear engineer Robert Petroski is helping to advance a similar objective at TerraPower, a company launched by Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures company and backed by Bill Gates. TerraPower aims to build something called the Traveling Wave Reactor — which would start off being fueled by a dose of low-enriched uranium, to which additions of depleted uranium (useless in today’s reactors) would occasionally be made. According to the company: “A TWR can sustain a fission chain reaction given only non-fissile fuel such as depleted uranium because it sets up a slow-moving wave in which neutrons produced by fission reactions in the power-producing region convert adjacent fuel from fertile isotopes (such as U-238) into fissile isotopes (such as Pu-239).”
Petroski has worked at TerraPower since its formation in 2007. Since earning his Phd at age 25, he has been one of the principal designers of the reactor’s core. TerraPower’s CEO John Gilleland has said the TWR “can represent a nearly infinite supply of low cost energy – carbon free energy – for the world”
It might take some time, but given TerraPower’s big backers, we can hope that the TWR will be built — if not in the U.S. then in China.
Speaking of China, I’m sure there are plenty of promising young engineers in China, India, Germany, Brazil, Australia, and all over the world looking to solve the world’s energy problems. Naturally, as broad a net as I and my Forbes colleague Todd Woody cast in looking for nominees, I’m sure we’ve overlooked some precocious superstars out there. If you know of any (or are one), please leave a comment below with your nominations for next year’s 30 Under 30. And if they’ll be too old by then, then let us know anyways — we’re always looking for fascinating people and head-scratching breakthroughs to write about on Forbes.com.

Cuomo Orders Energy Retrofits in State Bldgs

2013-01-01T08:08:00.003-05:00

Last Updated: December 28, 2012 01:31pm ET

Cuomo Orders Energy Retrofits in State Bldgs

ByPaul Bubny | Northeast

Cuomo says the plan will cut greenhouse gases by eight million metric tons.

ALBANY-Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday ordered New York State agencies to increase energy efficiency by 20% in seven years, putting teeth into the order with a plan known as Build Smart NY. The plan is intended to use state building energy data to prioritize projects by their projected energy savings per dollar spent.
Under the plan, the largest and most inefficient state government buildings will be addressed first with whole-building improvements, according to a release. These range from new lighting fixtures and controls to automated energy management systems. The program will also ensure that cost-effective improvements for energy savings factor into all of the state’s capital project planning.
The New York Power Authority, which is assembling a central management and implementation team to manage the plan, has committed $450 million in low-cost financing for the Build Smart NY initiative. On most projects, no upfront capital spending will be required because agencies can repay the loans through the projects’ energy savings, the release states.
“Improving energy efficiency in our buildings is a smart investment in our present and future,” Cuomo says in a statement. “Through Build Smart NY, state government can produce significant savings for New York taxpayers and generate thousands of jobs, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than eight million metric tons—which is the same as taking one million cars off the road for one year.”
The program has gotten a head start, with energy use data already collected on over 180 million square feet of buildings and campuses, representing about 95% of the state’s building stock. Work has gotten under way on 30 million square feet of real estate, the release states.

About Our Columnist

Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City. Contact Paul Bubny.