[RTC List] New record set yesterday for alternative energy generation

[Larry Goldberg]

You hit the nail on the head!  As a reality-hitting-home, PG&E is  
proposing a radical new pricing model (this should interest all market- 
based advocates).  The new pricing, specifically for industrial and  
commercial customers, is to move to "daily market pricing" - starting  
to move away from time-of-use and move to a spot market pricing  
structure!  This means that all commercial businesses will start to  
pay "spot market" prices at peak times - which could be as much a $1/ 
kWh in the Summer peak!  This is not trivial.

In a related note, I am now aware of a new electronic ballast which is  
controllable via WiFi.  The idea is that utilities are going to move  
to demand reduction strategies that allow them to dim lights, lower  
air conditioner temps and drop non-essential loads automatically.   
It's going to be a whole new world out there soon!

On Nov 12, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Dave Thewlis wrote:

> There is a fair amount going on in what is being called the "smart  
> grid".  The Obama Administration charged NIST several months ago to  
> put together a standards roadmap for implementing the smart grid  
> which will if followed through on have a major effect on energy  
> consumption.  See http://www.nist.gov/smartgrid.  This is all hugely  
> political of course because a lot of the vested interests in energy  
> production aren't wildly excited about changing anything.  But it's  
> got to happen.  The core of this is smart buildings which can manage  
> power usage based on how they are going to be used on more or less a  
> moment by moment basis (think hooking your scheduling system to the  
> building's energy management system), requirement aggregation,  
> dynamic requests and pricing.  Something like 50% of the energy  
> consumed in the U.S. today is consumed by buildings, and something  
> like 50% of that is wasted because of the lack of dynamic adjustment.
>
> Dave Thewlis
>
> William Van Hefner wrote:
>>
>> A topic that Larry briefly brought-up is at the real crux of the  
>> problem
>> when it comes to energy independence for the United States.
>> Infrastructure. We could potentially save many billions of dollars  
>> each
>> year by powering vehicles solely by electricity. The technology is  
>> there
>> today for cars that will fit the needs of most Americans without an  
>> extra
>> 1,000 lbs of engine to carry around, like hybrids have to. The  
>> problem is,
>> what would happen if even 10% of the people in this country bought  
>> one? As
>> soon as everyone got home at night and plugged their cars in to  
>> recharge,
>> our electrical grid would suffer a complete meltdown.
>>
>> The problem with wind, solar, hydro and most other "green"  
>> technology is
>> that energy generation is sporadic. Solar doesn't work at night.  
>> Wind only
>> works when it's windy. Hydro only works when there is enough extra  
>> water,
>> etc. All of today's modern generation facilities, whether they run on
>> natural gas, coal, nuclear, whatever... have one thing in common.  
>> They can
>> all output a steady flow of electricity 24/7. Our nation's  
>> electrical grid
>> is simply not built to handle large volumes of energy that are only
>> available "some" of the time. Unlike small home-based systems, the
>> nation's electrical grid has no "batteries" to store energy for  
>> later use.
>> You would need a battery the size of the empire state building in  
>> order to
>> provide enough back-up power for most parts of the country.
>>
>> Even if we had such as system, another part of the problem today is  
>> that
>> unless the location of these new power generation plants just  
>> happen to be
>> in the same place as the old ones, major upgrades to infrastructure  
>> are
>> also going to be needed in order to get the power generated to  
>> where it
>> needs to go. In this regards, nuclear is much more of a "drop-in"
>> replacement as a power source. Our local power plant is an excellent
>> example of how interchangeable the technology is. Just don't build a
>> nuclear power plant on top of an earthquake fault!
>>
>> I think that the best shot we have right now at a new "green"  
>> source of
>> energy generation, which could output a steady source of power 24/7  
>> and
>> could be built at the location of most existing power plants is  
>> fusion
>> generation. It's a lot closer than most people think. Try taking a  
>> look at
>> https://lasers.llnl.gov/ for more info. It won't solve everything.  
>> There's
>> still the problem of handling peak loads for things like electric  
>> cars,
>> but it's a big step in the right direction.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Dave Thewlis, DCTA Inc.
> +1 707 840 9391 (voice) · +1 707 498 2238 (mobile)
> http://www.dcta.com · dthewlis at dcta.com
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