Eye on the Grid

Remembering the EPRI robots

2012-02-06T06:18:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, over 8,000 people gathered in San Antonio for the combined DistribuTECH/Utility Products Conference & Exposition. There were many high points in the week, from the well-attended Department of Energy megasession to the supremely well-attended western-themed networking reception. Some of my favorite moments from the show were the demonstrations of the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRI's) family of robots.

EPRI has been kind enough to post the demonstrations on YouTube, if you didn't have the chance to get away to suprisingly rainy San Antonio this January.

The overhead demonstration of Ti---he was hanging from a wire about 20 feet into the convention exhibit floor air--- the transmission inspection robot can be seen by clicking here.

Adorable little rover Scotty, who measures lighting, was running around the exhibit floor as well, albeit with a lot more freedom than Ti; he can be seen by clicking here.

Finally, EPRI was kind enough to bring their latest and greatest robot, the insulator inspector robot Ike, who can be seen in all his glory by clicking here.

Those are my personal favorite highlights of the week. If you attended DistribuTECH and Utility Products in San Antonio, feel free to share your favorite moments right here in the comments section.

Robots, smart grid invade San Antonio

2012-01-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

If you're in the great state of Texas---or visiting the great state of Texas next week---I want to extend you an invitation to a robot party.

Yes, seriously, a robot party. (Scotty, our lighting robot, is already getting down with his bad self in the picture here.)

For the Utility Products Conference and Expo 2012 (UPCE), which will be at the Henry Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio Jan. 24-26, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has graciously agreed to bring three of their robots onsite to the exhibit floor. Each robot will be demonstrating its skills multiple times during the show, and you are welcome to join in. Times for those demonstrations will be listed in the UPCE show guide, which will be available in hard copy at registration when you pick up your conference badge for either UPCE or DistribuTECH. (The robot demonstrations are open to DistribuTECH attendees as well.)

Additionally, EPRI will have the world premiere of their newest transmission robot right on the combined UPCE/DistribuTECH show floor. And we would love all of you to be there for that unveiling. The premiere is scheduled during the opening reception on Tues., Jan. 24, 2012 at 5:30 p.m. And all will be revealed on the exhibit floor, right down aisle 4400/4500.

UPCE officially kicks off with an opening keynote session on this Tuesday morning, Jan. 24, 2012. After the keynote, the conference itself is open for business with a bevy of learning opportunities.

Experts from the Electrical Industry Training Institute (EITI) will present a number of sessions during the conference, including a two-part session on managing electrical operations. Arkansas State University’s Dr. Duane Doyle will speak on developing occupation programs at local community colleges during the conference. UPCE will also present a two-part session on occupational grounding. And the EITI experts will return with a session on understanding switching best practices. The National Utility Industry Training Fund (NUITF)---a part of the IBEW---will discuss crafting training and development for line workers as well. Finally, local utility CPS Energy will discuss adopting lessons from local smart grid work.

Additionally, EITI will offer some precourses on qualifying employees to work near high voltage substation equipment and high voltage substation grounding and bonding on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, before the show begins. More information on those precourses can be found online at http://eiti.us/upce.html.

UPCE isn’t all business, though. It’s about fun, too. Also onsite: Hooters girls, a buckin’ bullride and a cash giveaway multiple times each day of the show. The cash prize giveaway will be featured on the UPCE exhibit floor all week. Just get your passport stamped by all the UPCE sponsors, and your name may be called to get a few minutes in our money machine. The Hooters girls will escort your trip in and out of the booth. You may go in broke and come out ready to buy the next round.

I hope you can join us for the robot premiere, and feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions about the robots or the show itself.

More information on the robots can be found online at http://www.utilityproductsexpo.com/

Looking forward to seeing all of you in San Antonio at this exciting robot shindig. Block out a few minutes of your time on Tues., Jan. 24 and join us.

More 2012 perspectives, predictions

2012-01-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

Last week, I made my own annual predictions about what will happen in the power industry in 2012. I summed it up with four items: More smart grid, more cautious consumers having growing pains, more consumer growing pains means fewer EVs on the road, and more government contraction pains means less renewables investment.

You can read my predictions here.

This week, I look to other industry insiders to give 2012 predictions with a little insider perspective.

Chris King of eMeter (now owned by Siemens) tells us they’ll be a lot of meter growth in South America, Easter Europe and other emerging markets with Brazil, Poland and Singapore leading the way. King also notes that prepayment will become a major topic and “Smart Grid 2.0 will become a reality,” meaning that some consumers who live where smart meters are already deployed in full will start seeing the whole smart grid package.

King also predicts that data analytics apps will be a popular item with leading utilities and, unlike my predictions, that EVs “will reach critical mass.”

Steve Ehrlich with Space-Time Insight touched on data volumes just like King, pushing analytics, again, as a big 2012 trend.

“Pulling yesterday’s data out of a data warehouse is not the answer,” he tells us. “Utilities not only need access to real-time data but, because getting to the root cause of problems is increasingly complex, they also need more sophisticated software to come up with answers.”

From today’s waste of data to tomorrow’s waste of power, King also sees the idling of renewables becoming a “significant problem” with “utilities paying millions to curtail wind power and, for the first time, solar power.” Unfortunately, the solutions of more power lines and time-based pricing are longer-term items, according to King.

IDC Energy Insights sees positives in renewables for 2012, however, including it in one of the technology areas they expect to grow this year. In fact, they forecast that solar PV installations in North America will grow by more than 25% just this year.

As 2012 advances, we’ll get to see just how smart meters, smart grid, EVs, renewables and data analytics progresses. Keep an eye out.

2012 to bring more smart grid, less government support

2011-12-29T08:07:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of year for annual predictions. CNN’s doing it. The New York Times is doing it. So, why not us at POWERGRID International magazine?

Keeping the concept to our own power industry, what will be on the horizon in 2012?

The obvious choice is: more smart grid. A lot more. That’s a bit of a no-brainer. This ball is rolling, and stopping it will take, as Newton said, a “greater force.” At this time in this industry, there is no force greater than the smart grid momentum. Granted, its growth will be slower now that the government cash tap has been cut down to a trickle, but that growth will continue. Everything about power is going to get smarter, and that’s the way it is.

This leads to a second prediction: Everything’s going to get smarter, but customers are still going to gripe. In the end, humans don’t like change too much. It’s scary. We fear it. It’s one of those things we hate most in life. Heck, we don’t even like it when the grocery store moves our favorite can of creamed corn over an aisle or two. We gripe about it. We grumble. So, smart meters---which are a heck of a lot of new---will continue to be a tough sell in 2012 in a number of areas. We’re gonna gripe about it. We’re gonna grumble. Customer communication (and an open-door policy) will help, but only time will make things more accepted---more a part of the norm and less new. So, I don’t see great mobs of average consumers embracing the smart meter/smart grid concept. They haven’t gotten to that level of acceptance yet. They will, but that will take time. So, utilities will have to practice a little patience.

Jumping off of the “consumers hate change” concept, here’s a third 2012 prediction that may not follow the typical industry fanfare: Electric vehicles (EVs) will be put on a backburner (yes, again). Why do I think this? Well, first, despite a whole lot of media coverage of electric cars, they aren’t selling very well. EVs are selling so poorly that analysts at investment website 24/7 Wall St. labeled the Chevy Volt one of the worst product flops of 2011. Lots of hype trumpeted the Volt’s entrance, but sales in July were a whopping 125 vehicles.

Second, it’s all about consumer acceptance. We can put up charging stations and complete studies on massive EV grid impact, but without the consumer willing to buy that EV, we’re stuck. And EVs are still too “wacky” for the average American. (And too expensive, unpredictable, scary and thought-/time-consuming.) Americans may come around to EVs eventually (as they will with smart meters), but it won’t be in 2012. Will this lag time mean a second death for the electric car? It’s possible, yes, unless the government’s willing to shore up the EVs trade until it becomes capable of standing on its own.

This leads to my fourth and final prediction for 2012, which is just basic writing on the federal wall: The government is going to take a step back in research, support and funding for anything outside of the traditional energy norm. It’s already happened with smart grid in 2011, and smart grids aren’t nearly as scary as intermittent renewable energy or cars that steer away from gas guzzling. So, with those scary areas, there’s going to be next to no movement. All actions will be gone over with a fine-tooth comb, especially after Solyndra’s messy collapse. While support from the government to help develop research and processes is a true American tradition and has brought us awesome stuff like relatively cheap air travel and cell phones, sometimes investments go wrong. In the time of a recession, however, wrong is amplified. Solyndra is now a symbol. This will make the feds a bit cautious in any approach to shore up new and unproven forms of energy from solar to EVs. They’ll be terribly skittish, especially with elections bringing in a spotlight on every penny spent. So, obviously, 2012 will be a time of investment contraction, which doesn’t bode especially well for the renewables side of the power equation since they truly need the support. But, they’re scary and new, not a sure thing. Not a definite. These days, the government is hedging bets.

So, four things in 2012: More smart grid, more cautious consumers having growing pains, more consumer growing pains means fewer EVs on the road, and more government contraction pains means less renewables investment.

What are your predictions for 2012? Send me an email at kathleend@pennwell.com and let me know. We’ll share more next week.

Give the gift of power

2011-12-15T07:19:00.000-08:00

As Christmas fast approaches, most of us are in panic mode. We’re shopping the mall; we’re checking out specialty coffee and chocolate stores in our hometowns that most of us would never set foot in outside of the Christmas rush. But, what was once just too darn expensive now seems like an easy gift idea for Aunt Mabel or your second cousin who randomly shows up on gift-giving holidays without warning.

My father does all of his shopping on Amazon.com. He solicits lists every year around Thanksgiving and then hops online on Cyber Monday to complete the whole buying process in one fell swoop. Personally, I find that a little sterile. What’s Christmas without a little hustle and bustle and fighting for the last Frosty cookie jar with some lady in an overwrought sweater in Hobby Lobby one busy Saturday afternoon?

Christmas just isn’t the same without a little sweat equity, without a little mixed martial arts and the throwing of elbows.

But, if you are like my father and want to keep things sterile, I have the perfect gift for your friends with new and shiny electric vehicles (EVs): a vehicle charger.

And, you know what? You can order it from Amazon.

Yes, you can.

This week, GE Energy told the world that Amazon.com will sell GE’s wall-mounted EV charger the WattStation. No worries anymore about finding a charger or having to buy it at the dealership or through your utility. Now, you can pop online and pick one up on Amazon.com.

Noting that this is “just in time for the holidays”---which may be clever marketing or simply an odd accident---GE will gift EV users in both the U.S. and Canada with those WattStations just as soon as you click on the “add to cart” link on Amazon (and pay, of course).

“As demand and interest in the GE WattStation continues to grow, we’re excited to give our customers an easy way to purchase the charger,” said Sergio Corbo, chief marketing officer for GE Energy’s Industrial Solutions business in a release about the Amazon deal. “We believe the product is well-suited to an online purchasing experience.”

Well, OK. I’m not really sure about that one. Buying a DVD online? Sure. Easy-breezy. Buying some headphones, a new nose ring, some paperbacks and maybe a scarf? A-OK. But, a car charger?

Buying a car charger online seems---odd. Sometimes I breeze through the sporting goods equipment on Amazon and think, “Who buys a treadmill online?”

I had a similar reaction to the car charger announcement: “Who buys a car charger online?”

A $10 purchase online? Sure. A $1,000 purchase online? Really? And do you just slap that on your VISA and call it good?

Amazon lists the product features as:
• Easy-to-install mounting brackets,
• a power button allowing zero energy consumption when off, and
• peace of mind (in the form of ground fault protection).

And the description labels the WattStation “the EV charger you've been looking for!”

So far, there’s only one review on the GE WattStation on Amazon’s site. By AaronLephart---who has done no other reviews I can find on the site about anything other than the WattStation---the response is glowing:

I purchased this charger at a retail store long before Amazon carried it. The internals are made with overbuilt componants and are top quality. This same charger would have cost you $3000.00 a year ago, amazing how fast progress is being made. I recommend installing the charger on a dedicated 40amp circuit breaker. The J1772 connector is solid and does'nt feel cheap at all. The electrical wiring they use for the cord is VERY flexible and long. I cant stop looking at the lights on the charger at night. When not in use the charger has a button to take all power from the unit. No vampire power usage here!

Three out of four people found Aaron’s review very useful. Me, I’m still in awe over buying a $1,000 car charger online. I really need to get with the times, I guess.

Just for a rush, I added it to my cart for a second. Then, I opened the cart and immediately deleted before the thought of a grand on my VISA made me faint dead away.

So, I didn’t finish my WattStation charger purchase, though I gave it a whirl. Since I don’t have an EV, it would be a frivolous holiday purchase---much more frivolous than that peppermint bark from Williams Sonoma I’ve been eyeing. For someone with an EV, it could be a luxury holiday surprise, for sure.

One thing that does make my cheap soul happy about a WattStation purchase from Amazon: At least it qualifies for free shipping. (But, not if you want it by Christmas to gift to Aunt Mabel.)

Talking cyber in Phoenix

2011-12-08T04:39:00.000-08:00

Security is a constant concern with the smart grid. As our technology grows more intelligent, it also grows more vulnerable. Every point of interconnection to another bit or byte of electronics is a possible intrusion point.

This week at the Grid-Interop conference in Phoenix, experts discussed practical implementations of cybersecurity in a session focused on solutions and practices.

In the session, Russ Silva from Telcordia Technologies noted that utilities are currently deploying millions of intelligent devices, some part of field area networks (FANS). While each intelligent device has a potential spot of vulnerability, the FANs, especially, tend to operate in open and vulnerable areas.

“There’s a lot of technology out there,” he said, adding that there aren’t a lot of vendor options available to keep an eye on FANs, or on the traffic flows and packet exchanges within.

Silva ran through a series of research areas that Telcordia is working on to address the FAN security issue.

Any bit of technology in the field is more vulnerable in all areas of security, including cyber, but the largest security issue at the moment centers around the largest number of implementations---namely smart meters.

Efrain Gonzalez with Southern California Edison---in fact, he’s their lead cybersecurity architect---joined Silva’s discussion with notes from SCE’s Smart Connect project.

“It’s been said that cybersecurity is more of a journey than a destination,” he opened with, detailing that SCE has surpassed 3.7 million meters installed at this point in the project. And, the utility did so by integrating system engineering principles and borrowing items from the defense industry in order to address security issues.

One of the biggest lessons SCE learned from this project was that security must be built into the technology, not “bolted on” as an extra.

In the end, there were a number of lessons involved in the process. Gonzalez revealed that the first meter the utility took to be tested for cybersecurity was broken into “in the first five minutes.”

But, they learned. A lot. And now, the utility has worked up specifications that they will share with utilities vendors and other associations (and require from vendors working with SCE). Based on open standards, the specifications will help promote cybersecurity interoperability, and Gonzalez said the utility hopes to have that set of specifications available for download in 2012.

Mike Ahmadi with consulting firm GraniteKey built on the journey analogy that Gonzalez brought up early in the session, pointing out that journeys can be inconsistent, as air travel is often these days: Security is different at different points in the travel process. Where will you have to remove shoes? At which airport do you have to empty your pockets or take off scarves? Which airport won’t require that?

The cybersecurity journey may be less consistent than air travel, at this point. The industry is juggling oppressive security issues.

“We moved into the idea of implementing the smart grid. Then, security issues snuck in, raining on this parade of ingenuity,” he said.

While focusing on the joys of a smart grid, the issues that those joys create, including cybersecurity, were latecomers. We brought in the smart grid for its positives and are now trying to keep the negatives at bay, but that’s a lag process.

“We’re in an active state of deployment,” Ahmadi added. “But we haven’t come up with any real standards---not just suggestions, but standards, things you have to have.”

Ahmadi noted that baseline standards are needed because some vendors do a better job than others with security issues, harkening back to that inconsistent journey concept.

Ahmadi pointed out that utilities carry a heavier burden with cybersecurity than vendors, as regulators and customers will come to them if something goes wrong, not to the vendor.

Gonzalez supported Ahmadi’s observation about the cybersecurity burden, adding that the industry has been “leveraging the utility” to press standards but that some of the onus needs to be placed with vendors.

In the end, the panelists are hoping to create a more consistent cybersecurity journey for utilities, vendors and customers.

Smart city evolves from concept to product

2011-12-01T09:05:00.000-08:00

Amsterdam has a leading example of the smart city ideal: transportation, distribution, utilities, consumers, water sources and renewables working together to create a cleaner, greener urban utopia. They’ve been working on this concept for years, bringing in researchers, utility experts, consultants and even the common man to contribute to the cause.

Over the last few years, other cities---mostly in Europe but also a handful in the Middle East---have been gathering behind the smart city piper, following that tune to its proper end. Of course, no one is quite sure what that proper end will be, but most agree that smart cities are about cooperation and good planning. Cooperation and good planning usually end pretty well.

As the journey progresses, though, every good idea eventually becomes both a catchphrase---like “smart grid”---and a product.

This week, the concept of smart cities has moved past catchphrase to product in my mind.

Schneider Electric and the IT company it recently acquired, Telvent, announced a joint “SmartCity” offering that comes complete with an integrated suite of solutions centered around efficiency, sustainability and ways to make “more livable cities,” according to the press release.

Their specific SmartCity offering combines areas they label “smart grid,” “smart mobility,” “smart water,” “smart public services,” and “smart buildings and homes.” While the grid part looks for inefficiencies over local distribution, the mobility checks in on traffic congestion and electric vehicle integration. While the water side looks to reduce losses, the public services side reviews safety, lighting, healthcare and even admin stuffs. Finally, the suite looks into creating brighter, cleaner, smart buildings which ties it right back to the grid portion of the collection.

Now, this isn’t the first collaborative offering in this arena, but it was the one that struck me as evidence that the smart city train is still on track. Once an idea becomes a serious, sellable product, we’ve moved from “maybe someday” to today.

It’s nice to see a smart city of today, even labeled SmartCity.

I pinged Telvent to know a bit more about their product and whether any utilities are just foaming at the mouth to use it. I got a very lovely---and very quick, thank you---response from Jon Reifschneider over there. He tells me there were a lot of people involved in planning their SmartCity suite, including utilities, city governments and urban planners.

He went on to comment that they’re seeing a lot of “activity currently in Brazil in preparation for the major events there (World Cup and Olympics) and, of course, in China, where new cities are being built and current cities enlarged at an incredible pace.”

Reifschneider also noted activity in the U.S. and Europe, with the U.S. focus on energy management and led by utilities.

“One particular example of a smart city initiative we have implemented very closely with a utility is the Malaga Smart City in Malaga, Spain with Endesa, and we are working with them to explore projects in additional cities,” he added.

Both he and the company see smart cities as the evolution of smart grid, which I cannot deny. It does seem that change is in the works. The final result of this smart city journey may be the bundling of smart grids into the smart city overall product, making interconnections and cooperation the most key element.

And, if that happens, the “smart grid” catchphrase may go the way of “Xerox.” When’s the last time you used that catchphrase---based on a company---to say you’re making copies?

Technology, it does one thing well: evolve.

10 power game changers to be thankful for

2011-11-21T11:46:00.000-08:00

This week, as Americans gather around turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce suspiciously shaped like the can it came from, we’ll all give thanks. In honor of that holiday, here’s a short list of power game changers to add to your list.

10. ARRA smart grid funding. It sure did lots to help a number of slower moving pilots get a real boost. It may not have started new projects, but it bolstered old ones, expanded them and is letting them see an end-date before the next century. More details by clicking here.

9. Smarter smart grid thinking. With the right plans in place, all could be right in the smart grid world, but we don’t get anywhere, really, without good planning. More details by clicking here.

8. Solyndra’s collapse. I know. I know. It was bad. But, we often learn best from our mistakes, and that one was a doozy. While I still find this to be a “hindsight is 20/20” moment, it can teach us a few things. And it’s gotten every side of the political equation at least talking about green energy. More details by clicking here.

7. Great moments in outage recovery 2011. Hurricanes and storms galore have hit the U.S. this year, and American utilities have weathered the weather well. More details by clicking here.

6. Linemen. Seriously. Linemen. Don’t think linemen are important? Really? Try climbing the pole to put out that transformer fire yourself sometime. More details by clicking here.

5. Learning to talk to customers. Not just sending a bill and “we’re done.” Customers showed they could be brutal about the smart grid this year. So, the time to keep those customers informed is now. More details by clicking here.

4. The rise of social media to inform those customers. To use an old motto: By any means necessary. And social media is today’s necessary means. More details by clicking here.

3. Virtual power plants. Not your daddy’s power plant, this shiny new source of system efficiency can bring together old and new, renewable and not, top-down and bottom-up generation sources. It may be the transitional power answer while only existing in the ether---or in the cloud. More details by clicking here. And here.

2. Efficiency. It’s the single fastest way to make that heavy power load a little lighter. You don’t have to add more generation if you can make it all a bit more efficient, and a number of utilities around the world have been doing just that this year. More details by clicking here.

1. The shadow potential of data. The smarter the grid gets, the more we know about it. We’re making that grid more intelligent from one end to the other, which will result in a lot of data points to play with. What a utility can do with all that data in the arenas of customer service, grid efficiency, renewable integration and business opportunities is still gray and amorphous. But, it’s a gray area with a ton of future possibilities. And, future possibilities are what I’m always most thankful for. More details by clicking here.

UPCE to show off robots, industry experts, and demos for all

2011-11-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

The fourth annual Utility Products Conf. & Expo (UPCE) features an unusual surprise this year: three Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) robots demonstrating their mad skills onsite.

UPCE has everything a utility worker needs to do his job—from tools to cutting-edge technology to the latest insider information. UPCE is bringing a lot of hands-on expertise to Texas this Jan. 24-26 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio

Robots Galore
By far, the biggest UPCE buzz this year centers around that trio of robots. EPRI has generously agreed to show off two of their cutting edge power industry research robots, Ti and Scotty, at the show. The third robot will have its grand unveiling at the event and is a hush-hush secret until the reveal on Tuesday, Jan. 24 on the exhibit floor.

The first robot is nicknamed “Ti,” which is short for “transmission inspection.” Shaped a bit like a giant’s breadbox, Ti can be permanently installed and cover about 80 miles of power line a couple of times each year as it “crawls” along the line identifying numerous issues from grass and trees too close to the right-of-way to just how components along the line are weathering the wilds.

The second robot, Scotty, looks a bit like the classic NASA lunar lander. Scotty will demonstrate his lighting measurement skills in a roving display on the Utility Products Conference & Exposition's outdoor exhibit floor.

The third robot is still a secret, but it’s rumored to be an exciting advancement in inspecting tricky bits of equipment. More will be revealed at the show.

Session Details
Robots aren’t the only reason to attend UPCE, however. The show will offer a number of informative conference sessions.

UPCE officially kicks off with an opening keynote session on this Tuesday morning, Jan. 24, 2012. After the keynote, the conference itself is open for business with a bevy of learning opportunities.

Experts from the Electrical Industry Training Institute (EITI) will present a number of sessions during the conference, including a two-part session on managing electrical operations. This industry overview will provide utility management personnel with an orientation to T&D hardware and equipment, including underground distribution and substations. Session participants will leave with an enhanced knowledge of an electrical utility operations system.

Speaker Gerry Bramhill will helm both parts. Part 1 will cover maintenance, best work practices and field management. Part 2 will cover hazards, safety training, bonding and auditing.

Arkansas State University’s Dr. Duane Doyle will speak on developing occupation programs at local community colleges during the conference. Today, occupational options and certification courses can be found popping up in regional colleges all over the country. This session will look into creating and growing those programs in your community to educate the work force of the future.

UPCE will also present a two-part session on occupational grounding. Matt Dell with Hi-Line Utility Supply Co. will run the first part, giving an overview of best practices and standards. Steve Gordon with Hubbell Power Systems/AB Chance takes over the second hour with an insider’s look at equi-potential grounding including its history, the effects of current on man and the use of mats, among other topics.

Our EITI experts return with a session on understanding switching best practices. Tim Lollar will show the best ways to use switching for maintenance, fault clearing and reliability.

Bill Neiles with the National Utility Industry Training Fund (NUITF) will discuss crafting training and development for line workers during UPCE. This session will draw on the expertise of NUITF’s partnership between utilities and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to give attendees a peek into their hands-on utility boot camps to screen newbies.

Finally, local utility CPS Energy discusses adopting lessons from local smart grid work. This session will offer first-hand experience and lessons from a utility’s actual and on-going advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and distribution automation (DA) implementation.

Additionally, EITI will offer some precourses on qualifying employees to work near high voltage substation equipment and high voltage substation grounding and bonding on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, before the show begins. More information on those precourses can be found online at http://eiti.us/upce.html.

Other Informational Options
Outside the hour-long conference sessions, UPCE will include half-hour robot demonstrations multiple times daily Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Jan. 24-26.

Bulli Ray will present thirty-minute attack prevention courses to teach field workers to fend off an aggressive dog. Those demonstrations, which will include live dogs, will be ongoing in the outdoor exhibit area twice daily Tuesday, Wednesday and Thurday during the show.

Omicron will bring the company’s product bus to the show, offering show ten-minute courses on testing reclosers, sectionalizers and power quality meters, setting up a protection test library, understanding transformer diagnostics, and utilizing IEC 61850.

Also, each UPCE exhibitor will set aside 15 minutes during the show to offer a product demonstration, showcasing the company’s product or service to conference attendees.

All of these demonstrations, along with times and locations, will be listed in the show guide available onsite.

Just for Fun
All UPCE attendees should plan to kick up their heels at the Round ‘Em Up Networking Party on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. Pack your cowboy boots. It’s time to party western style. This year’s even will include the Texas Unlimited band, food, drinks and bucking a mechanical bull.

The UPCE exhibit floor offers other options for fun as well, including an opening reception with drinks on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, and the “It’s 5 O’ Clock Somewhere” happy hour with exhibitors on Wed., Jan. 25, 2012, right before attendees rush to the boot-scootin’ network party.

As you walk the floor, watch carefully for a few Hooters girls. A handful of the local beauties will be available for snapshots and autographs, along with their duties as hostesses at the cash prize giveaway.

The cash prize giveaway will be featured on the UPCE exhibit floor all week. All attendees are eligible to enter the contest. Just get your passport stamped by all the sponsors, and your name may be called to get a few minutes in our money machine. The Hooters girls will escort your trip in and out of the booth. You may go in broke and come out ready to buy the next round.

So join us for UPCE 2012 Jan. 24-26, 2012, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio. I look forward to seeing you there. (I'll be the girl in the cactus-design cowboy boots.)

More information on the show can be found at http://utilityproductsexpo.com.

PNM’s social media saves Santa Fe adventure

2011-11-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month I spent a long weekend in Santa Fe, NM. It’s an annual trip, and we purposely go in the minutes before winter hits the high desert in order to avoid fellow tourists just like us. We’re careful planners, since we know the weather in northern New Mexico at this time of year can be brutal and turn on a dime. In early November we suddenly become addicted to Weather Underground, we pull up Google maps and pull out furry earmuffs. We know all the wind channels and dust storm possibilities in the hundreds of miles of I-40 between here and there.

Due to that careful, obsessive planning, waking up to snow on that first Santa Fe morning wasn’t a surprise, but the massive power outage was. In all our minute attention to minute detail, we hadn’t counted on the emergence of chaos theory---things rarely go as perfectly planned.

So, we’d planned to sit by the fire a bit, enjoy the snow. We had that mental picture in our heads. But, we hadn’t planned to eat M and Ms and road trip snack foods for breakfast because the restaurant was closed, nor that we’d have to sit huddled together by that gorgeous fire in the hotel lobby with four layers of clothing squinting to read by the gray light that filtered through snow flurries.

Turns out the light and lovely snow wasn’t to blame for this outage, however. A tree fell onto some transmission lines and knocked out power to downtown Santa Fe for a little over three hours. Even without power, I knew this within an hour of the first light flicker. How? My phone still had juice and the local utility, PNM (formerly Public Service Co. of New Mexico in full), has a Twitter feed.

Now, I’ve never been one of those people who adore social media. I often think it’s odd that everyone believes I want to see pictures of their dogs, know what they had for breakfast or comment on their latest viewing of American Horror Story. What I realized during this Santa Fe trip, however, is that social media like Twitter allows utilities to send out valuable information to thousands without the necessity of massive phone banks or even having to adjust HTML coding on large and unwieldy websites. It’s simple and easy---and in this case, incredibly effective. Within two minutes and 140 characters, I knew exactly why the power went out.

PNMtalk: 10,450 w/p power due to 9 a.m. Santa Fe transmission outage. N-Tano Norte S-Camino Sudest E-Paseo Primero W-Legacy. Crews working.

PNMtalk: PNM crews removing tree from a transmission line and making repairs. Estimating a noon restore for Santa Fe customers.

Those two tweets made me a convert. We knew what happened and an estimate of restoration. So, we bundled up and went outside. We enjoyed the snow and the cold and, in fact, were in a Santa Fe café by 12:30 eating huevos rancheros with all power restored.

Pike Research recently released a new report on utilities and social media, labeling the use “somewhat chaotic” in our industry. There are concerns about controlling information and conversations between the employees and the consumers on the utility end of things. Those concerns may be valid, but, from the consumer side of the equation, up-to-date, quick information during outages is invaluable and worth a little risk.

In the report, Pike estimates that about 57 million customers will talk to utilities over social media in 2011, with that number leaping to 624 million by the end of 2017. So, perhaps others should take note from PNM’s clever use, as social media isn’t going away anytime soon. In an outage, what I've got is my phone. And Twitter is easiest to access from there. It's simple, and it's logical.

There’s nothing worse than being in the dark---both literally and figuratively. With a couple of tweets, PNM lit up on our dark situation, allowing us to figure out a good timetable. Hooray, the outage wasn’t going to last forever. The darkness wasn’t going to eat our vacation. We weren’t going to run out of M and Ms and start eyeing each other’s femurs. PNM used 140 characters to put our minds at ease, and that is the power of social media, especially Twitter---a lot of consumers in the know instead of in the dark. That has great potential.

And, while I was impressed that PNM was on the cutting edge of Twitter-adoption, I was even more impressed with their estimate of restoration---they were bang on the money. We noticed that lights were back on in shops and businesses at about 12:08, and we went about the rest of our vacation more thankful for PNM’s Twitter feed than for our Google maps, furry earmuffs or road trip M and Ms.

And, before next year’s Santa Fe trip, I’m going to take a look at their Twitter feed. Just in case.

Could an investment in Greek energy save world stock markets?

2011-11-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

I think we can all agree that Greece has been a bit of a problem lately. I think even the Greeks might admit that at this point. And, it’s not that we don’t love the Greeks. We do, but we don’t much love their economy right now. To put it mildly: Their economy is in a bad, bay way. All of Europe is trying to fix it. Now, whether or not Greece will accept that European Union (EU) “we’ll-pull-your-bacon-out-of-the-fire” bill full of “haircuts” and bailouts is a matter for a people’s referendum at this point. And the idea that, perhaps, the Greek people might just let their bacon sizzle, thank you, is enough to send the international stock markets into a depression this week.

Now, you may be like me and marvel that a country with about the same amount of citizens as the New York City metro area could singlehandedly bring international economies to a grinding halt. But, the fact remains that it obviously can or the stock market insanity of the last week would have been---well, a little less insane.

It traces like this: Greece is in the European Union. If they fall out or are kicked out---and there really is no clean exit plan either way---it could destabilize the EU and pretty much the continent of Europe. The makes other continents, like Asia and our own, decidedly fidgety. So, like people tossing heavy luggage off a sinking boat to get a few more minutes above water, stocks start to get chunked over the side to lighten the load.

We may not like it, but it seems someone, anyone, has to save Greece to save all our economic necks. So, is there a solution?

The International Energy Agency (IEA) thinks there may be a rescue plan for the Greek economy hidden inside the country’s own energy market.

In late October, IEA released a report on Greece stating that allowing competition and ratcheting down the government’s role in energy could help the problematic country with economic recovery. (In fact, all EU member states recently adopted the third Internal Energy Market Directives which basically says “you will deregulate”---or ‘liberalize,’ to use the European term.)

“Reforming Greece’s electricity and gas markets is a policy imperative that should add efficiency and dynamism to the Greek economy. This, in turn, should help generate self-sustained employment and prosperity for the country,” IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said as she presented the study titled Energy Policies of IEA Countries – Greece 2011.

The IEA had a few recommendations for Greece to make the electricity market, in particular, more attractive. First and foremost is more competition. (State-run Public Power Corporation [PPC] pretty much still dominates both the wholesale and retail markets in the country, along with owning all the transmission and distribution assets and having a huge stake in the operator for the transmission market.) The IEA wants a “strong and independent regulator” in place to pry PPC away from some of these monopoly positions, which is understandable. The only problem is: Who’s in place to do that? Pretty much no one.

One area that the IEA points to with great potential is Greece’s renewable arena, especially wind and solar. IEA gave Greece brownie points for a renewable sector that already offers increased feed-in tariffs and simplified licensing. The agency even applauded Greece’s “determined” effort to fulfill the country’s renewable potential. Again, like the increase in competition, this may be a product of overall EU policy since there’s a 2020 renewable energy target in place for all member countries. Still, in nice to see some positive Greek news.

There was a caveat in all the renewable happy talk, however---namely that it “will be crucial that framework conditions to investment remain stable.”

That was pretty much the gist of the entire report on Greek energy: Keep things stable so people will give you money cuz you need it. The report's summary states:

Investments and competition are needed for ensuring the financial efficiency of the electricity sector. Investments by independent power producers in both renewable and flexible conventional generation will be necessary in the transformation to a low-carbon, green electricity market. Competition can also drive prices down and help mitigate the costs of necessary network investments and renewable energy supports.

Well, that may be the kicker. It’s that old “you have to spend money to make money” adage. Greece needs an influx of cash in order to get their power markets in order so that those, in turn, can help with the teetering Greek economy. But, who will start the ball rolling? Everybody here wants someone to invest in Greece to save all our collective bacon, but no one really wants to be the investor and put personal funds where our hopes are---not with financial reforms and not with energy market investments.

At least, not today.

So, yes, investments in energy infrastructure could help the Greek economy---but the cash isn't going to come right now, nor will it come quickly enough to save our stock market bacon. Infrastructure and market building could be a way to ensure Greek stability in the future, but it's certainly not a cure for the current and immediate crisis.

If that EU bill passes the Greek referendum, however, we may be humming a different tune. There is infrastructure and energy reform tied up into that package of haircuts and loans. But, first, the Greek people have to tell us just how much hair they are willing to trim or whether every lock will remain in place. Then we'll talk about energy market reform.

UPDATE: Thurs. Nov. 3, 2011. Greek prime minister has declared "no need" for a referendum, but has not officially called off the planned vote.

Illinois back in the smart grid game

2011-10-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn vetoed Senate Bill 1652, the “smart grid bill” set to pump up funding for new technology in the state. Yesterday, the General Assembly overturned that veto, and the state, once again, has a sunny smart grid future.

Just a couple of weeks ago, right here on this blog, I noted that resuscitating that bill was highly unlikely. Today, I have to eat those words.

It passed---this despite a last ditch effort from local mayors writing in the Chicago Tribune calling ComEd to the carpet for “inadequate” responses to power outages and lamenting that the smart grid bill doesn’t address outage issues like ComEd claims.

The mayors wrote:
But does Senate Bill 1652 adequately address ComEd's inadequate responses to crisis and non-crisis related power outages? Does it ensure communication of accurate information to local governments and customers during an outage? Does it resolve downed power lines blocking a fire station driveway for four straight days?

Sadly, it does not. The fact is that Senate Bill 1652 fails to address ComEd's systematic shortfalls or hold ComEd accountable to its customers in a meaningful and transparent manner.

ComEd, on the other hand, says that’s exactly what 1652 does---help address issues like communication and response time.

"Today, the General Assembly took a historic step toward creating a stronger Illinois that will help us deliver more value and better service to the 3.8 million customers we proudly serve," said ComEd President and Chief Operating Officer Anne Pramaggiore. "We thank our supporters in the General Assembly for their leadership."

Now, there were a few concessions to get this override. A trailer bill tightened performance standards, dropped return on equity and established an assistance fund, along with redirecting about $200 million to undergrounding lines, since the area had such a horrible time with storms this year.

But, the governor wasn’t going down with a final punch or two. He released a statement when the trailer bill came along saying “unfortunately, this movie still has the same unhappy ending: blockbuster annual rate hikes for consumers and businesses.”

In the end, though, ComEd and the advancement of the smart grid did get at least a Star Wars-esque movie ending in Illinois---they got “new hope.” The 10-year, $2.6 billion program is back on track---faster than anyone expected.

Solar outlook sunny despite Solyndra

2011-10-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

Solyndra’s messy and expensive collapse a few weeks ago dominated the news. This week, it’s been replaced by a bevy of solar positives.

Bloomberg has some toes on the ground at the Solar Power International conference this week, and the ears above those toes caught some interesting info on solar. Duke Energy’s James Rogers was quoted as noting that U.S. utilities, with their access to “low-cost capital” will have a leg up in expanding solar options for consumers, especially if a carbon tax materializes. (Rogers is well known for being in favor of a carbon tax or a federal cap-and-trade option. His passion for renewables is common knowledge, though there is speculation that some of that passion has to do with the subsidies for those projects, which ups returns much higher than traditional energy sources.)

Whether Rogers is right or wrong about the utility position in the solar equation, there’s no doubt that activity in that arena continues to thrive. NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy and a sister company to Florida Power & Light, announced the commissioning of the Hatch Solar Center in New Mexico.

According to the company, the five-megawatt Hatch facility is comprised of 84 Amonix 60-kilowatt units and is the largest operating concentrated photovoltaic solar power plant in North America. NextEra Energy Resources owns and operates the plant and sells the power to El Paso Electric under a 25-year power purchase agreement.

Down in Georgia, sentiment over solar has changed the mindset of Public Service Commissioner Lauren McDonald. McDonald is pitching an interesting funding idea for solar---charging Georgia Power customers a nickel a month on top of their current bill to put into a solar power rainy day fund, essentially.

AP reported that other members of the commission were surprised at McDonald’s new concept. McDonald is proposing a type of budget compromise, connecting what Georgia Power wants to pay to what developers say they need to make a profit on projects. No word on requiring Georgia Power to buy renewables, but one wonders what would happen to that pile of nickels without a solar mandate. And, since Georgia doesn’t have a renewable portfolio standard, utilities aren’t forced into a “must have” demand situation, making the world of solar building---or any renewable building, really---a bit of a risky business equation.

Still, it’s interesting that McDonald, a Republican, is pitching such a green/green idea (green cash for green energy).

And, despite the dour trading of solar stocks recently, there still appears to be green cash in that sunny form of green energy. Google-backed SolarCity, which makes rooftop systems, recently signed on Robert Kelly as the company’s CFO. Kelly managed Calpine’s 1996 IPO, so there’s industry speculation that SolarCity may be looking to go public, pulling in key players to help with that option.

At the start of this month, it felt like Solyndra’s collapse was trumpeting the death of the solar subsidy, if not the solar industry altogether. As the end of this month approaches, it appears that Solyndra was just a minor glitch in the matrix and the solar industry has already moved on to bigger, brighter, greener pastures---at least as long as the subsidies and renewable energy portfolio standards remain.

Illinois at center of “As the Smart Grid Turns” controversy

2011-10-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

This Illinois smart grid struggle is starting to look a bit like a daytime drama.

Hopefully, Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and Ameren aren’t holding their corporate, collective baited breath on that legislative stamp of approval for their smart grid programs. The Illinois smart grid bill is unlikely to be resuscitated anytime soon. Unlike soap characters, bills rarely rise from the dead.

And, the handful of senators and representatives who beat the drum for an overturn of Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto may be laying low for awhile since the Chicago Sun Times and the Better Government Association laid out a lot of links this week---links between campaign donations and politicians who approached the smart grid bill favorably in the last session.

Now, the appearance of impropriety isn’t proof of impropriety, it’s true. But, it often muddies the picture.

A bit of history may be in order. Back in September, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn vetoed Senate Bill 1652, set to raise electric consumer rates in increments over the next decade to pay for system upgrades, resulting in approximately a $3 billion cash pool.

At the time Quinn vetoed the bill, he called it a “sweetheart deal” that basically erased all accountability for “big utilities.” The veto was supported by various organizations ranging from AARP to the Environmental Law and Policy Center. ComEd was, of course, disappointed at the veto, releasing a statement that the bill, despite Quinn’s description, “does not guarantee profits.”

Some politicians had discussed overturning the veto at the next legislative session, but that was before the big reveal this week.

The Better Government Association (BGA) released information through the Chicago Sun Times that ComEd and Ameren gave more than $1.3 million in campaign funds in the state. That cash was distributed, according to BGA, between January 2010 and the end of May 2011. More money came along over the summer, pushing the total to near $1.5 million. Both the politicians and power players have said that the money didn’t influence, and wasn’t intended to influence, the vote on the smart grid bill that passed in May.

BGA pointed out, however, that House supporters of the bill received six times more cash than opponents of the bill. Senate supporters came in at three times more.

Overall, however, there are 177 legislators in the Illinois chambers. Only 20 of them didn’t receive donations from ComEd and Ameren during the period recorded by BGA. Ninety-eight people voted for that bill, with eight of those not receiving a dime, leaving a whole lot of people who did get some campaign cash voting against, despite the money rolling in.

Once again, though, we’re back to the appearance of things. While the rights of corporations to freely spend political capital has been upheld by the Supreme Court, the average ComEd customer will still wonder if utilities giving cash to politicians was the only reason 1652 existed. And the benefits of smart grid will be lost in the hunt for meaning in the donation trail.

It’s human nature to assume a tit-for-tat response, though. When given a gift by a relative or friend we didn’t plan for at the holidays, how many of us run out and buy return gifts? They’ve given us something; we feel the urge to give something back.

ComEd and Ameren gave a lot of gifts to Illinois politicians. Did a few of those politicians feel the need to reciprocate with a legislative gift? That’s not something that can ever be proven or disproven, really. Money’s written down and accounted for. Good and bad intentions usually are not.

In the end, though, it appears that Illinois’ smart grid portrait is growing increasingly more Dorian Gray than traditional, stately over-the-fireplace staple. Impropriety, cash, anger and consumer backlash may end up making that portrait unrecognizable, with its owners covering it up and hiding it away.

Whether the sins of the portrait are real or imagined, it’s still the appearance that appears to matter most.

Obama wants to build a better grid right now

2011-10-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

This week, the Obama administration told Americans they want to build stuff. Now, Obama has said that to Americans before with the stimulus package. That version of building stuff looked more like the WPA of the 1930s---roads, bridges, hard and solid infrastructure.

This time around, Obama wants to build infrastructure of the less concrete and more dynamic sort---namely, power lines.

He’s focused on seven specific projects in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Wisconsin, and his contribution to the projects isn’t financial. It’s regulatory---or reducing regulatory red tape, you might say.

Oh yes, and the president says it will create thousands of jobs.

To create those new gigs, Obama wants to speed up the federal permitting for those seven projects: getting all the players together, working out a game plan, and making it happen. But, power line siting is more difficult than just getting everyone to chat. After all, Congress chats all the time, and the American people still see a lot of gridlock on that front.

Gridlock on the permitting and siting front is almost inevitable, chatting or no chatting. While it’s certainly an admirable concept to get more power flowing to the people, the people can be rather picky about seeing the inner workings. Everyone wants power; no one wants to live near power lines.

Now, a lot of Obama’s proposed “lucky seven” are in the West. That will help with speeding up siting and permitting. More elbow room, less people. Less people living near those lines means less people complaining about living near those lines. So, a lot of these have at least a decent shot in getting a good, swift kick in the pants to hurry completion.

The projects where Obama’s “hurry up plan” may work include a new 500 kV transmission line proposed by Idaho Power running a 300-mile long, single-circuit from Boardman, Oregon to Melba, Idaho; an Idaho Power/Rocky Mountain Power project between Glenrock, Wyoming and Melba, Idaho once again; the SunZia Transmission plan to construct and operate up to two 500 kV transmission lines in New Mexico and Arizona; and the TransWest Express to assist wind projects in Wyoming.

Those are likely to go off with fewer hitches because they go through a lot of uncharted country and involve not so many folks in the mix. With transmission siting, less is more: less people, less entities, less complications.

The Cascade Crossing Line that involves a lot of substation upgrades around lean and green-leaning Salem, Oregon may have a few hurdles, as might the CapX2020 project in Minnesota and Wisconsin and the Susquehanna-Roseland power line in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that’s heavy on substations and people interaction.

A lawyer for the Citizens Energy Task Force in Wisconsin, which opposes the CapX2020 project, has already been quoted in a local paper asking if the government would just “ram it through no matter what.”

And, locals near the Susquehanna-Roseland line already have a history of protesting the capacity upgrade for a number of reasons: aesthetics, energy fuel source, the location of the line through a recreation area, and because of the tower height required. (Current towers are about 80 feet tall. The new ones could be closer to 200 feet.) The New Jersey Sierra Club has a lawsuit against the proposal as well. There’s even an entire website dedicated to the opposition called “Stop the Lines” which claims the proposed project is about utility “greed” at the state’s expense.

After the White House announcement, Stop the Lines issued a statement saying, “Corporate profit should not be given priority here. Fast-tracking the destruction of a priceless national treasure---the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area---must not be allowed.”

So, all may not be so quick in this expedited expedition.

And, of course, on top of the issue with people living near power there’s the issue of the government’s concept of time. Transmission line siting is considered speedy if accomplished in five years and can take decades. By expediting the process, Obama may only be shaving a few years off. So, in 2015 we might see those New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming lines start up. By early retirement, I may hear of the Susquehanna-Roseland completion. But, in the end, there’s no way Obama is seeing a foot of new power line before the next election.

So, I hope transmission siting wasn’t a large part of his new campaign.

Autovation shows innovation

2011-09-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

The D.C. suburb of National Harbor saw a lot of action this week as exhibitors and attendees of Autovation descended upon the Gaylord National to discuss the automated side of the utility equation.

Autovation is run by Utilimetrics, an association with the goal of bringing together “diverse stakeholders of electricity, water and gas distribution utilities to promote and share best practices for smart grid/smart metering, communications, utility automation and data management.”

Autovation is now in its 24th year and, this week, it offered a bevy of options from breakfast with utility peers to big picture sessions on today’s hottest power topics.

A couple of utilities opened and closed the week. Pepco Holdings revealed how they are taking a look at new technologies and transmission projects, even chatting up the smart grid, in the opening session. Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) closed the show painting a picture of the perfect smart energy home, which could include smart meters, demand response options, energy efficient appliances and other “killer applications” of smart grid technology.

And smart tech did end up in interesting spots at the show. While AMI and communications have always been an Autovation staple---and is now a smart grid one as well and should be, given the need for those items---electric vehicles (EVs) got their own series of sessions this year at the show, a whole track, even. Topics ranged from managing the distribution system impacts to identification of utility and customer issues with EVs. (Last year, Deloitte predicted that EVs and other alternative fuel/green would be a third of global sales by 2020. J.D. Powers, on the other hand specifically hailed EVs at a whopping 3.5 percent by 2015. Whichever prediction wins, EVs have certainly garnered a lot of conference attention this week.)

My favorite Autovation session, by far, featured Portland General Electric (PGE) insiders Eric Spack and Steve Sprague who revealed how the utility is using new meter tech to not just examine revenue protection but to bust pot growers in the area who are stealing a whole lot of power. The packed session was treated to some fabulous shots of home nurseries found and local news reports on PGE’s work. (And how often do you get to hear a speaker admit that his favorite part of the presentation is the marijuana part that will come later? Not too often, and it got some good chuckles.)

In other Autovation news, Hydro One and San Diego Gas and Electric were award winners at the show this year. Hydro One received the 2011 Excellence in Project Management Award for its smart meter deployment in Ontario. These days, almost all of Hydro One’s customers have smart meters and over a million have switched to time-of-use pricing. San Diego Gas and Electric won the 2011 Consumer Outreach Award for the utility’s smart metering program and its communications plan to keep the consumer in the loop.

In the downtime between sessions and awards, breakfasts and receptions, attendees could visit the Autovation show floor which featured both industry staples like Elster, Aclara and Itron and niche companies like Mad Dash and Ecologic Analytics.

Communications and open standards provider SmartSynch announced a major contract at the show. Michigan’s Consumers Energy has chosen the company to provide the metering system for the utility’s modernization program, to the tune of 1.8 million electric customers.

“As we develop our program, it will allow us to offer new options to customers and allow them to use our system to integrate new technology---such as smart appliances and plug-in electric vehicles---into their daily lives,” Consumers Energy President and CEO John Russell said in a release about the SmartSynch partnership.

Those EVs were just popping up everywhere at Autovation, I swear.

Next year’s Autovation is scheduled for Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in the hometown of the Queen Mary, Long Beach, California.

Utilities contribute backbone and Benjamins to the economy

2011-09-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

We talk a lot about utilities being the backbone of our economy, since electricity is the maker of the modern world. (You can't go through a single business transaction these days that doesn’t rely on electricity in some way, from powering lights and computers at the local bank to massive Wall Street stock transfers.) But, utilities are also a very profitable business by themselves, contributing to the economy in both backbone and Benjamins. Run correctly, utlities bring in cash and rising share prices for stakeholders.

(In case you're not up on the urban slang: Benjamins started as a slang term for $100 bills, since Ben Franklin is on the $100 bill. It's now grown into a general slang term for all large amounts of dollars and cents.)

So, let’s take a look at some of the dollar-and-cents power news this week.

Barrons is so happy with Southern Company that they’ve downgraded the utility’s shares. No, really. Not kidding. It seems that the cash gurus always thought Southern was an A-number one investment in this sector, but now the prices of Southern shares have popped up to reflect their goodness. So, it’s not a steal anymore. That being said, Barrons shifted their rating for Southern to Above Average from Buy.

In other cash and power hot spots on the web, Motley Fool is labeling National Grid a “cash king.” (They define their “cash king margin” as cash flow divided by sales, with that number topping 10 percent.) According to Motley Fool’s calculations, National Grid is at 13.2 percent (up a couple of percentage points from last year and up 10 from three years ago). American Electric Power (AEP) took second in their overview at 7.8 percent. Like National Grid, AEP showed “significant growth” from last year.

The other two utilities reviewed for potential “cash king” status by Motley Fool didn’t do quite as well as AEP and National Grid. Exelon came in at 0.8 percent, down over 10 percentage points from last year, and Duke Energy was in negative numbers, even more negative that last year’s but less negative than five years ago.

Investment website Seeking Alpha labeled utilities “boring,” but noted that they are a good buy since utilities represent a stable foundation for any investment portfolio. (In bad economic times, even investors look for less risk and less crazy. It may mean slower returns, but it’s not a rollercoaster ride that could end in one long drop.)

Seeking Alpha wasn’t looking for Motley Fool’s “cash king.” Instead, they examined the net profit margin. For those of us not watching our investments like hawks, a net profit margin is a formula figuring a company’s profit per dollar generated.

Looking at a net profit margin above that coveted 10 percent---like Motley Fool’s “cash king”---Seeking Alpha suggested ten good utility purchases that they labeled “cheap” but with “strong profitability.” These included DPL Incorporated, which sells electricity in West Central Ohio; Wisconsin Energy; CPFL Energy in Brazil; El Paso Electric; and Duke Energy, among others. (Editor’s note: If you’re interested in the power markets and distribution options in Brazil like CPFL Energy, check into the new DistribuTECH Brasil conference at this link.)

So, Duke didn’t make “cash king,” but it did get the thumbs up on net profit margin.

And, speaking of Duke and money, the Duke-Progress Energy merger that could make the combined company a monopoly of sorts in the Carolinas is still jumping regulatory hoops and hearings. The hearings were opened to the public this week with customers fearing high rates to support the combined entities' profits.

Duke and Progress, however, believe the merger is necessary to spread higher rates over a wider consumer base, since the companies see a whole lot of generation spending coming.

“In order to meet future demand for electricity, both companies will have to invest in new generation that will be more costly than the companies' current embedded costs," said Duke CEO Jim Rogers and Progress CEO Bill Johnson in a prepared statement at the hearing’s opening.

Over at the Wall Street Transcript, Ali Agha, managing director in the equity research department of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey gave some tidbits from the recent “Alternative Energy and Utilities Report.”

Agha recommends AES and AEP. Agha sees AES accelerating in 2011 through 2012 in the area of earnings growth. He stated that AES may hit $1.70 in earnings by 2015.

Agha likes AEP because it’s cheap. Like Barron’s once saw Southern, Agha views AEP as a sweet deal, trading below value.

Utilities remain sound business sense for many shell-shocked investors. And, according to the experts, some are still trading on the “cheap and sweet” deal level. As utilities---and the rest of the economy---continue to recover, the bargin prices may disappear, but the value won’t. It's hard to argue with an investment that brings you both comfort and profit.

China out Wal-Marts the Waltons and Solyndra collapses

2011-09-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

Last week, the FBI raided the California offices of thin-film solar maker Solyndra, once a poster child for the new energy movement that was to bring green jobs across the country in a giant wave of momentous change.

But, that was 2008. Now it’s 2011, and the momentous green wave didn’t happen here. That wave never reached our shores. Instead, that wave is stuck inside the country outline of China.

It fizzled out at the borders.

Here’s the deal: The Chinese are sharp. They see the potential in the green market for massive future energy needs. They’re also unified and interconnected in ways we individual Americans are not. So, being a communist country and an industrial powerhouse, they pulled the ultimate Wal-Mart: They stole the market share.

How’s that done? Well, for a lot of years Wal-Mart was the king of this philosophy, some would say. (Honestly, though, they aren't the only ones to use a strong arm to rule a market.) Here’s the basic concept: Go into a small market, undercut prices by taking a loss that can be balanced nicely across your wide network, force the mostly small and mostly independent competition out of business when they cannot meet your low, low prices competitively, and then become the sole player in the game---which lets you set prices any way you’d like from that point forward. Now, Wal-Mart may quibble with this characterization, but it’s a view of “market hogging,” if you will, that’s always followed them as they expanded. They have a bad reputation for running smaller companies out of town on a rail with those low, low price guarantees. And, factually, smaller manufacturers, suppliers and retailers can't get the big group deals that Wal-Mart can. They're leveraging their size.

Now, think of China as government Wal-Mart, a state-run powerhouse capable of taking a large financial hit up front and more than willing to leverage its size. So, they develop huge state subsidies in order to flip a switch on green manufacturing. Instantly, everyone’s up and running, pushing a product out that’s cheaper because they’re not having to carry the burden of production costs or start-up money at this point. (They’re the runner who jumps the gun with the blessings of the establishment.)

Now, American green companies have gotten some help from stimulus cash, but nothing like the funnel of dough the Chinese have contributed. The Chinese help is overwhelming, full and even overreaching. Americans, on the other hand, are putting together guaranteed government loans, some venture capital, some cash from friends and family, their maxed out credit cards---they’re struggling for a product they believe in. But, the emphasis in on struggling here. And it’s a heavy emphasis indeed.

So, as the FBI sorts through the lost belongings and paperwork of Solyndra---where the Walton family ranks as venture capital investors, actually---there will be a lot of speculation about whether the government did enough due diligence in choosing Solyndra for that suddenly very unpopular green loan.

But, perhaps that’s the wrong question. Perhaps, instead, we should ask if the government really invested enough given how quickly China was able to flip the green game to its favor.

AEP Ohio case finds settlement amid controversy

2011-09-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

On Sept. 7, AEP Ohio called it quits---not in offering power but in a series of cases pending before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO). In the end, the final settlement gives AEP the OK to merge Columbus Southern Power (CSP) and Ohio Power (OPCo) into a single unit.

There are other issues laid to rest as well, including a mandate to transition to a competitive generation market by 2015.

AEP Ohio seems pretty happy with the outcome, but not everyone in Ohio is thrilled.

On the happy side of things: AEP Ohio, of course.

"After a decade of legislative and regulatory changes to Ohio's market for electricity, this agreement allows an appropriate transition to a fully competitive electricity generation environment for AEP in the state," said Nicholas Akins, AEP president, in a written statement. "With the clarity this agreement provides, AEP is adopting a new Ohio business model that transforms the company into two entities---a regulated energy delivery system and a separate generation business. It also advances key state policies while sustaining investment in Ohio."

And the agreement was signed by a lot of stakeholders---20 or so organizations that AEP Ohio dubbed as “representing a broad range of customers.”

Among the biggest features of the agreement: a timeline for that open market move that has AEP supplying capacity to retail at a discount for three years, a fund to bolster economic efforts and a continuation of the company’s low-income fund, and an option for customers to choose renewable sources.

According to AEP, in 2012, typical CSP customer bills will decrease a bit (about $4) while typical Ohio Power bills will increase a bit (about $4). But, right now, it’s not the customers who are doing the complaining about this deal, it’s retail provider FirstEnergy Solutions.

They sent out a release in response to the deal that claimed customers would “be forced” to fork over a billion above competitive price values.

"The settlement filed today is no better for customers than AEP's initial plan which was overwhelmingly opposed by consumer and business groups," said Donald R. Schneider, President of FirstEnergy Solutions in another written statement. "With this settlement, customers will be denied the benefits of low prices from the competitive market and be illegally burdened with high electric prices for years to come---all to benefit AEP shareholders at the expense of customers. The plan also unfairly favors large industrial customers by providing them with cheaper electric rates at the expense of residential and low-income customers."

Details on how that billion breaks down or number supporting the claim that the settlement favors industrial customers at the expense of others were not provided in the release, although it is fairly common for all power companies to cut higher end/heavier use customers, like commercial and industrial users, a break.

As with any deal ever made, it seems this one has winners and hecklers. Since this settlement is a compromise, it seems to fit the very definition of it---that nobody is totally happy.

Irene pushes utilities to show off recovery skills

2011-08-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Irene wasn’t as bad as predicted. When it hit most of the East Coast, it was a lower category hurricane, or even a tropical storm, than originally feared would smack into the beach communities aligned along the Atlantic.

But, since we still have most of our power strung into the sky, category 1 winds still do a ton of damage to the power infrastructure.

Eastern utilities have been working nonstop since Irene blew threw to get power back on to millions of Americans.

Dominion had a goal of restoring service to 75 percent of their customers today, Aug. 31st. As of 11 a.m., they’d flipped the switch for 77 percent (or more than 920,000 customers) in Virginia and North Carolina.

That took a lot of work at about 8,500 locations---and that’s just for Dominion.

FirstEnergy has turned the lights back on for 770,000 customers so far in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. About 150,000 customers are still in the dark: 130,000 with JCP&L in Jersey, 21,000 with Met-Ed and 2,000 with Penelec. (They have a great image gallery of hurricane work available for viewing at their website: www.firstenergycorp.com/newsroom/hurricane_image_gallery.html.)

But, while winds blew lines aloft and snapped poles, problems weren't reserved to just the delivery side of the power equation. Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant suffered damage from the hurricane, though repairs are nearly complete, according to Constellation Energy.

What often complicated the repair process is road damage in many places, especially flood-ravaged Vermont. But, the Associated Press is reporting that some roads have been opened to previously isolated communities, allowing emergency vehicles, like a convoy of power trucks, to move into the area. (The convoy is headed to Rochester right now.)

Given that we started this week with a bold CNN headline about millions without power, I am amazed at how quickly well trained crews and good response teams can move a disaster impacting millions to one impacting thousands in just a few days. Their work in the aftermath of the storm should be commended. That’s efficiency in action.

Hurricanes on the horizon

2011-08-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

It’s that time of year again---the time of year when we give friendly names to large storms with terribly deadly gusts of wind. It’s hurricane season in the Atlantic. Now, honestly, it’s been hurricane season for awhile now---since June 1. But things normally get up and running full speed about now, as Hurricane Irene, which is expected to reach category 4 status any day, can attest to.

Now, Irene isn’t forecast to hit Florida, which I like to call Land of the Hurricanes (though they refuse to put that on their tourist brochures for some reason). But, the 2011 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) updated forecast estimates 14 to 19 named storms this season and 7 to 10 hurricanes. The last hurricane to make landfall---which basically means the eye of the storm hits land, not its edges---in the U.S. was Ike in 2008, and, while last year saw a lot of activity in the Atlantic, nothing actually hit us. Still, as those boy scouts tell us, it’s always good to be prepared.

Whatever the final number, the locals with Kissimmee Utility Authority (KUA) are bound to be ready for the first one to wander across Florida this season or next. Founded in 1901, KUA is Florida's sixth largest community-owned utility providing electric and telecommunication services to 64,000 customers in Osceola County. Each year, that local electric company prepares a hurricane handbook. This year’s comes in full color and even in Spanish.

The comprehensive guide gives a nice list of local utility, cable, gas, weather, transport and emergency numbers along with its practical preparation advice. (I’d love for my local AEP affiliate to have a similar tornado guide, actually. That would be quite handy.)

After all, how many of us really have items prepared for emergencies? We talk about it, but we rarely get around to doing it. That's back burner stuff. We have more pressing problems. Granted, after the ice storm of 2007 here in Tulsa knocked out my power for nine days, I do now have things like lots of candles and a stack of canned goods in my cabinets. But, KUA challenges you to be über prepared.

1.) Have an inventory of your property (with pictures, if possible).
2.) Have an indoor safety plan so you remember which areas of your house could be dangerous during a storm. (Here's the advice of a farm girl who has seen a lot of tornadoes: Stay away from window.)
3.) Have an outdoor safety plan (to keep those potted plants from becoming flying weapons).
4.) Have a financial plan in case you need to stay in a hotel for awhile or need to be able to access cash for repairs quickly.
5.) Have that traditional disaster kit (that’s where my candles and canned goods come in).
6.) Have a plan to secure your house (and the supplies stored somewhere on your property).
7.) Have an evacuation plan.

The guide even has advice for rescuing and securing pets and cleaning up after the storm, including the proper use of a generator, along with a layman’s guide on how the utility restores power.

You can download a copy of the guide from their website: http://www.kua.com/hurricane/2011-Osceola-Hurricane-Handbook.pdf

With the exception of the local emergency numbers that would only apply to Florida, the guide could be handy for anyone weathering a storm. And, these days, it seems like more and more of us are experiencing extreme weather---whether those storms are named or anonymous.

Thinking about boxes, robots and endless possibilities

2011-08-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

We all know that old saying about thinking outside the box. We're supposed to do it. We're supposed to be the only people doing it. People tell us to do it, but do they really mean it? Now, I tend to joke that even the people who use that phrase don't actually want "outside the box" thinking. Not really. Not truly. Instead, they simply want you to paint the same old box a different, shiny color. That's what they mean by all those boxy thoughts.

This week, I spent some time in a very hot and very humid San Antonio preparing for our upcoming Utility Products Conference and Exposition and doing some thinking that's all about a box---well, a box-shaped robot, anyway. I made a special trip to South Texas to discuss details about hanging the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRI's) transmission robot, Ti, at the show. (More info on Ti can be found by clicking here.)

Ti really is a bit of compact dramatic irony. It's outside-the-box thinking shaped into a very boxy package---a very boxy and very heavy package. It's new cutting edge transmission research wrapped in what we've always traditionally label as an old-fashioned, out-dated concept---that dreaded box. In this case, the box is neither old-fashioned nor out-dated. Instead, it truly represents the newest options for technology in our field. And we are delighted to get to show it off to all of you at the upcoming show.

This week, with the great help of Tom from EPRI's partner Southwest Research, we had some unique thinking about how to properly display and show off that cutting edge box. (Southwest Research helped bring Ti to life, and they're local to the San Antonio area. So, it's great to have them in the mix for logistics.)

Ti will be moving and grooving across the ceiling of the combined DistribuTECH and Utility Products Conf. and Expo exhibit floor Jan. 24, 25 and 26, 2012. Zipping along nearly 90 feet of cable above the heads of show attendees, Ti is poised to be a center attraction at the event, and, with each step closer to the January show, I grow more excited about these robots. (Yep, there will be more than just Ti.)

I hope you guys are equally excited. For more information on the robots and other Utility Products Conf. and Expo attractions, click here.

Speaking of outside-the-box thinking, Davy Crocket is quoted all over the San Antonio area for famously saying "You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas" to his Tennessee political opponents (and then President Andrew Jackson, whose policies he truly hated) before giving his life in a showdown at the Alamo. Perhaps Texas wasn't the best choice for Davy, but it is a great choice for you this coming January. With Ti in the mix, we'll bring outside-the-box thinking directly to the town that lured Crockett.

And, unlike Davy, you can visit the Alamo without planning for a military onslaught this January---though I might suggest prepping for an onslaught of information, data and friendly little robots.

Got the best project in the whole wide world? Tell us all about it.

2011-08-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

About three inches below this blurb on the website is a shiny brass icon that says “Projects of the Year.” When you get the time, you should scroll down there and give it a hit.

Once again, it’s time for the editors of POWERGRID International magazine and PennWell Corp. to select the best and brightest grid projects for our annual awards program.

The winners will be selected for four specific categories: Smart Grid Project of the Year, Smart Metering Project of the Year, Demand Response/Energy Efficiency Project of the Year and Renewable Grid Integration Project of the Year.

The awards will be given out during the keynote presentation at the DistribuTECH 2012 conference in San Antonio, Texas, Jan. 24, 2012.

Each year, the judges select winners based on five specific criteria:
* Ingenuity
* Scope
* Practicality
* Vision
* Follow-through

Any interested party may submit an entry for consideration by Oct. 28, 2011. One award winning utility company will be named in each category. All companies involved in transmission and/or distribution of electric power are eligible, including investor-owned utilities, federal power agencies, municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives. Also eligible are RTOs, ISOs, independent transmission companies and other T and D-owning/operating entities.

Project/implementation (or significant phases of a phased rollout) must have been completed between Dec. 1, 2010, and Dec. 1, 2011.

Submit an entry form along with a description of the project/implementation (1,000 words maximum). Project description must include history of the project, project details, major participants (customer, vendor, consultants, etc.), and reasons the project/implementation should be considered for Project of the Year. Include significant dates (contract signing, project start, project completion/go-live date) in the project description.

Award winners will be recognized in an exclusive feature article in POWERGRID International magazine (formerly Utility Automation & Engineering T and D magazine) and Jan. 24-26, 2012 during the DistribuTECH 2012 Conference & Exhibition in San Antonio.

Winning entries will work with a POWERGRID International editor---yeah, OK, it's going to be me; you caught me---to develop the article and award video between the closing Oct. 28, 2011, and the official award ceremony Jan. 24, 2012. High-resolution photos/graphics/artwork (up to 10) and additional details on the project will be required.

For questions, you can contact me directly at kathleend@pennwell.com.

So, tell me all about those groundbreaking projects, that fabulous smart grid work and how you program benefited the consumer. I’m all ears.

Exelon, Constellation still feel the urge to merge

2011-08-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

This past April, Exelon, one of the big-dog power utilities in the U.S., and Constellation Energy announced the desire to join forces. This week, the Public Utility Commission of Texas said they could---at least as far as Texas is concerned. So, one more hurdle jumped in the race to a 2012 merger completion. Despite both of them having generation located in the Lone Star State, it appears the Commission isn’t too concerned that a merger will give them a significant market advantage.

“We are pleased that the PUCT has approved our application,” said Exelon President and COO Christopher M. Crane. “This is a key step toward completing the merger, and we remain on track to do so in the first quarter of 2012.”

“Because Exelon and Constellation both operate in Texas, securing the PUCT’s approval was an important step in completing our merger,” said Constellation Chairman and CEO Mayo A. Shattuck III. “We will remain focused on obtaining the remaining federal and state regulatory approvals and seeing the merger through to completion.”

And Shattuck and Co. will have many more approvals to jump, including A-OKs from the Federal Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Maryland Public Service Commission and the New York Public Service Commission. Plus, they’ve got to get a pat on the back from the shareholders, which they hope to do by the end of this year.

Exelon and Constellation are so dedicated to this merger prospect, that they’ve even created a singular go-to website to the subject: www.exelonconstellationmerger.com.

On that website, you can learn all about the “strategic fit” of the combined companies and the key benefits the merger will achieve. Among the highlights are: increased scale and financial strength (or a “bigger is better” philosophy), a use of “complementary businesses” to grow (once again that “bigger is better” philosophy), more spots across the U.S. (even more of that “bigger is better” philosophy that will have their fingers in 38 states, D.C. and a little bitty bit o’ Canada). “Bigger is better” also spills over into the “enhanced utility platform” discussion (where being the second largest regulated distributor of electric and gas” is super good for customers) and the “clean power” discussion (where those customers also benefit from all that bigness with lots of renewable options).

So, basically, what we’ve learned is: Bigger is better. Gotcha. (Anyone else having AT and T flashbacks?)

And, you know what? That philosophy may indeed be true for Constellation, which is having a bit of a bad time this year. They’ve already lowered their 2011 earnings forecast by a nickel a share because of nuclear issues. And they adjusted their April-June profit down by a dime a share to 76 cents. Shattuck noted that the merger would help them diversify, making the risk of gray areas like nuclear a little less, well, risky. So, perhaps hooking themselves onto the Exelon star can help.

Exelon, unlike Constellation, seems to be having a heck of a good 2011. They raised their range for adjusted operating earnings to $4.05 to $4.25 a share from the $3.90 to $4.25 range. They also revved up the second quarter generation income from last year by about $60 million, are working on their Texas acquisition of natural-gas fired Wolf Hollow and they’ve filed with FERC for the RITE line along the Indiana/Ohio border.

So, the Exelon/Constellation merger keeps chugging along and, so far, it appears that Exelon will remain on top and perhaps pull Constellation up with it. Perhaps bigger really is better.

Baby, it’s hot outside

2011-07-28T07:20:00.000-07:00

When I was small, I used to march around our farmhouse in the winter singing a version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” that old popular jazz tune that was revived multiple times by more artists than I can personally count. I still admit to humming that tune on occasion. Okay, yes, sometimes I still sing it, too, but this summer I’ve done my own adaptation of the chorus to “baby, it’s hot outside.”

As summer temperatures cook not just the relatively small percentage of sweaty people here in Oklahoma, who are rather used to summer heat, but also folks in places as far north as Minneapolis and Boston, concerns about whether our power infrastructure can keep up with the demand are inevitable. And, with a few minor exceptions, this major heat anomaly hasn’t really caused too much trouble for utilities. But, then again, utilities are planners. It’s the job of planners---you might even say their calling---to be prepared for anomalies.

And some of that planning includes demand response (DR) programs. This week, Con Edison's New York customers used a terawatt hour, or 1 trillion watt hours of electricity, according to the utility. (I love the wording of the press release on this heat wave response. They wrote: "That's a lot of juice. In fact, it's about the amount of electricity Vermont uses in two months.")

Con Edison gave credit to their DR program for curbing what could have been an even more record-breaking response. They assured people that, while a terawatt is a whole lot of power, things could have been worse if they didn’t have customers willing to respond to “calls for conservation,” as the company labeled them.

EnerNOC, Inc., a provider of demand response applications and services, announced that its DemandSMART network was dispatched at record levels this July as well in response to the heat wave---or “heat dome,” as the weather guys have been labeling it.

EnerNOC's network responded to a series of dispatches from grid operators and utility partners, providing about 1,230 MW of DR overall. One of the grid operators that EnerNOC works with, PJM Interconnection, set a new record for peak power use in July at 158,450 MW.

Demand response has been so helpful, it even got press in The New York Times this month. The paper discussed demand response options with North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s (NERC’s) John Moura, manager of reliability assessments. Moura labeled the DR available around the country as “imperative” in weathering the heat.

The Christian Science Monitor also did a piece on the wonders of energy efficiency and demand response in this oppressive heat, and they also quoted NERC, though they chose Mark Lauby, vice president of reliability assessment. (And, along with DR, they cited a weak economy as a factor. The concept is: We didn’t being this race at the starting line, but, instead, a few feet behind the starting line. So, the recession dip has helped demand not get too darn crazy, even with the heat. What they’re basically saying is that things would be a lot worse if the recession hadn’t already cut back on that power demand.)

So, worries about whether we have enough power seem unfounded, even as temperatures continue to break regional glass ceilings and power use sets national records. There are small issues in isolated pockets: Oncor is currently struggling to return power to a Dallas neighborhood for an outage cause by trees and not heat, though heat is exacerbating the problem. Baltimore Gas and Electric is getting complaints about their demand response program from people who think their air conditioning was turned off for too long during the blistering heat. And here in Tulsa, the local news is reporting record setting power use for the city and surrounding area.

Overall, though, we have to all admit that this old, cobbled together, partially updated, partially archaic power system that we have is doing very, very well for the stress we’re putting her under this summer. She keeps working, chugging along despite the desire we all have to sing “baby, it’s hot outside” and turn up the thermostat a couple of degrees.

Post show: Texas linemen conquer in Seguin

2011-07-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Texas Lineman's Rodeo in Seguin, Texas was quite the event last weekend.

That humid Saturday in late July, the gray of potential rain gave way to the type of fluffy white clouds normally wallpapered onto a child's bedroom wall.

But, clouds weren't the only items in the sky that day. There were also a lot of linemen hanging from poles, posted inside buckets at the long-line end of work trucks' mobile arms or crawling up to T-poles with clouds nipping at both toes and hard hats.

There was no keeping those boys from the bright Texas sky.

Working from 7 a.m. into the afternoon, the competition was fierce. Winners this year include individuals, cooperatives, munis and IOUs. The first place overall journeyman award went to Ryan Voges, Justin Green and Darin Koehler of New Braunfels Utilities with the division winner for cooperatives going to John Hernanez, Brad Downum and Mark Jebbia with Bandera Electric Cooperative.

Gergory Chelette, Richard Schwartz and John F. Kent brought in the overall journeyman team for investor-owned utilities, while that Voges-Green-Koehler team grabbed the municipal top spot. In the overall journeyman team, senior division, the winners were David McDowell, Danny Moss and Larry Terry with Farmers Electric Cooperative.

All the 2011 rodeo winners are listed on the Texas Lineman's Rodeo website at http://www.tlra.org/.

Additionally, keep an eye out for the September issue of POWERGRID International magazine which will feature more photos from the rodeo in living color, as they used to say.

Linemen tough out a blistering rodeo

2011-07-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

As you read this, I’ll be in Seguin Texas for the 15th Annual Texas Lineman’s Rodeo. Seguin is a small town about thirty minutes outside of San Antonio along I-10, and I fully expect it will be a hot spot this coming weekend, in both competition and summer temperatures.

The Texas Lineman’s Rodeo is sponsored by the Texas Lineman's Rodeo Association, Inc. (TLRA), which is “a non-profit organization created to offer line workers in the great State of Texas a way to showcase their pride in the profession of high voltage line work.” Comprised mostly of volunteers who offer their time, efforts and organizational skills for free, the TLRA works hard to put on this rodeo every summer. Having been personally corresponding with volunteer Gloria Christmas for about a month now, I have to say that the TLRA is both highly organized and highly friendly. She’s been a real sweetheart in getting information out. (And, in case you’re interested in coming down to Seguin this weekend, she let me know yesterday that some hotel rooms have opened up at the Days Inn in Seguin.)

2010’s rodeo winners included folks from Farmers Electric Cooperative, Hilco Electric Cooperative, Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative, CenterPoint Energy, Austin Energy, New Braunfels Utilities, Hamilton Country Electric Cooperative, Mid-South Synergy, Sam Houston Electric Cooperative, Trinity Valley Electric Cooperative, Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, Bryan Texas Utilities, Perdernales Electric Cooperative, Garland Power & Light, Midwest Electric and Navasota Valley Electric Cooperative. Those winners stretched across a number of categories: journeyman awards, division winners (including a 45-and-older senior division), event awards (like changing a single phase capacitor, doing an amp switch change or a pole climb) and rescue events.

If you’re thinking of joining us in the wild Texas heat for the 15th Texas Lineman’s Rodeo, the activities start Friday night on Nolte Island in Seguin with a t-shirt trade and a fish fry, but all the rodeo action happens on Saturday. That’s when you’ll see those linemen skills put to the test and rewarded for their efforts---with rewards in both awards and barbeque form.

More information on the rodeo can be found on the TLRA website: www.tlra.org

Amsterdam gets smarter and smarter, and we get left behind

2011-07-07T06:56:00.001-07:00

If you’re an American reader of this blog, chances are good that you don’t live in a smart city. I certainly don’t. Not that Tulsa is peopled by the ignorant, no. This isn’t about individual intelligence or grading our education system. It’s just that our power isn’t exactly the cutting edge smart grid stuff of legend. We’ve been talking about the smart grid since 2007---how it can save us all from a bleak energy future with smarter meters, smarter switchgear, smarter energy delivery, even interconnected and informed (and therefore smarter) consumers.

But, few of us here in the U.S. have seen any real smart grid progress. A small percentage in some well-funded pilot hot spots has seen smart meters being installed. Some have tried out a few pushes in energy management concepts---although both Google and Microsoft’s energy management goals have fallen decidedly short. Both companies have called a halt to their consumer-oriented smart grid visions. But, no real vision of smart cites and collaboration is popping up in these parts. We seem to take one step forward and two steps back with smart grid on U.S. soil.

Still, there are cities in this world that are pushing forward and showing significant progress in the smart grid concept, even moving ahead to incorporate other options and other utilities in an overarching concept of a “smart city.” One of those is Amsterdam.

Last year, I took a personal guided tour of “Climate Street” in Amsterdam. A long row of traditional looking shops along a narrow street, these businesses were all invested in the idea of energy management and smarter consumption. From bars to record stores to chocolate shops, they partnered with the city and the local grid operator Liander to put in smarter equipment and keep an eye on the energy bottom line. And all that collaboration and progress didn’t seem to impact the end product one bit. The beer was still tasty, the bitterballen still toasty and the chocolate still melt-in-the-mouth delicious.

Even though I don’t cover Europe much anymore, I still keep up with Amsterdam’s Smart City initiatives, including Climate Street. Perhaps I’m just fascinated that a culture, a group of business people, a city, residents, and the local grid company, along with a research group, can all get along so well. As an American who still sees our sense of rugged individualism in myself and pretty much everyone else in this country, including utilities and businesses, it’s positively amazing to witness such smooth and steady cooperation.

This week, Amsterdam’s Smart City announced a new partner, KPN. (I admit to being on their e-mail list. As I said, I’m fascinated.) KPN is a fiber optics connection. So, Amsterdam has a new partner that can bring all sorts of smart grid consumer options to the equation, as well as positioning the city for a very collaborative, very interactive, very digitally high tech fiber future. And the announcement must have mentioned the word “cooperation” eight times in four paragraphs.

Perhaps investing in the smart grid, at its core, doesn’t start with the technology or even with cash on the table. Perhaps there’s a real lesson in Amsterdam’s Smart City progress that we can mull over in the U.S.: Can we get further ahead if we set aside “who’s paying” and “who’s benefiting right now” and “how does this make my personal life better immediately” and start thinking a bit more collectively?

Is cooperation the first step to a smarter grid and smarter cities?

Planning focus and public fear

2011-06-29T08:30:00.000-07:00

After Fukushima, power plants and vertical utilities---especially nuclear ones---can’t catch a break.

Despite fervent planning and detailed execution, the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant is still caught in the “we’re not them” excuse cycle this week. They get to bail out public perception while they bail out river water.

Disaster planning has long been a staple of utility emergency procedures, but a string of storms, flooding, tornadoes and other bits of weather nastiness have the American public wondering if the industry is doing enough to prevent injuries, deaths and outages. But, can a utility really do more than plan for established scenarios? Should they be expected to anticipate every possible bad decision and each hearty gust of wind?

Returning to Nebraska and Fort Calhoun, the employees there tried diligently to ward off Japanese comparisons by opening their flooded power plant to journalists. CNN reported this week that they were allowed inside access. Plus, the CEO of Fort Calhoun pointed out, through a lengthy quote in the CNN article, that no flood water had breached the reactor, that the reactor itself was covered with borated water as it should be.

Now, the close time-proximity to Fukushima’s disaster, of course, played a large part in how quickly and how carefully Fort Calhoun had to react to public fears. But Calhoun isn’t the only utility under pressure to show their disaster planning hand to the American public today. There was also a series of small town newspaper reports this week on the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and its recovery from the April storms that knocked out power in the South.

Apparently, this series of stories was sparked by one Republican representative from the state of Maryland making a remark that the blackouts from those April storms showed the power grid as vulnerable. In fact, he’s quoted repeatedly in those stories as saying the grid is “very much on edge.”

This prompted a quick response from TVA. The bottom line of all responses was this: You can’t accurately predict or prevent weather damage completely, and no power grid can be made immune to weather. Having poles in the sky makes one at the mercy of the wind. That’s pretty much a fact of our grid structure. But, the key isn’t shoring up beforehand, it’s following up quickly.

In fact, most disaster planning---like TVA’s stellar storm clean-up work---is about response rather than prevention. Perhaps that representative thought that the days some people went without power in the region was an excessive outcome of the storms. But, weather predictions will have to get much more accurate, and we’d have to spend a lot more money on undergrounding miles and miles of line, in order to even begin a prevention program. And, if fear wasn’t the background of that vulnerability statement, the expense of this request would, normally, curb a political response in these times of recession. After all, a prevention program to ward off Mother Nature that would cost the taxpayers billions goes against the anti-spending rallying cry.

Still, even with events that are unpredictable or unthinkable, the American public expects utilities to have not just prevention options but detailed contingency plans. Take the recent lawsuit against Xcel Energy over the unfortunate accidental deaths of five contract workers at their plant in 2007. A fire killed men brought in from a coating company in California to paint a penstock. The fire blocked the only escape route, and, despite attempts at dropping rescue equipment and plans to pull the workers out from above, the men perished.

Xcel said that the responsibility lied with the contractor and the men involved. (Apparently, there was a mistake made onsite with chemical mixing that ignited the fire.) But, federal prosecutors blamed Xcel and took them to court for violating safety regulations.

Xcel was found innocent this week, but a legal ruling doesn’t often change public perception. And the question of whether those men could have been saved by a better disaster plan on the part of Xcel will likely haunt the company and the families of those men---just as the disaster unraveling Fukushima will continue to plague every nuclear plant around the world with as much as a minor case of the hiccups and the idea of stronger infrastructure will follow every storm-related power outage.

Utilities will always be planning for disasters, but the American public will always expect improvements in that planning---adjustments, changes, investments, upgrades. And the two will likely never meet in a central, agreed upon spot. Utilities are thinking from both a community and a business perspective; the public is thinking from an individual protection perspective. And, unfortunately, the end result will likely never make either camp completely happy. But, we keep striving for a balance. That’s about all we can do, really, besides hoping that the weather quiet down a bit and that no one ever makes a mistake again.

But, the planning is all we have any actual control over. Human nature and Mother Nature cannot be adjusted to suit our desires, unfortunately.

There's a robot invasion coming

2011-06-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

I am excited to announce that the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) will be bringing two of their industry research robots, Ti and Scotty, to the Utility Products Conf. and Expo (UPCE) in San Antonio next January. (UPCE runs in conjunction with the largest smart grid conference in the U.S., DistribuTECH.)

EPRI's transmission line inspection robot is the one nicknamed “Ti" (see artist's sketch of Ti above). Ti can be permanently installed and cover about 80 miles of line a couple of times each year as it “crawls” along the line identifying numerous issues from grass and trees too close to the right-of-way to just how components along the line are weathering the wilds. He moves along on a shield wire and dodges obstacles like marker balls by using bypasses installed along the line. Ti can automatically unhook itself from the shield wire, transfer to the bypass, navigate around the marker and then return itself to the shield wire.

The prototype of Ti is being tested and refined at the Lenox, Mass. EPRI lab. Right now, he’s equipped with high definition and infrared cameras and can even be rigged up with light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors. Ti’s job is to pass along information to the utility about what’s going on along the line, along with specific location information that comes from his handy global positioning system.

Ti will also reach out—electronically, at least—to UPCE attendees and give a visual presentation at the show, complete with data transferred back to EPRI's booth inside the co-located DistribuTECH show floor. Ti will, in fact, be hanging from the ceiling of the combined show floor. So, when you visit the floor, make sure to take a good look up.

American Electric Power will partner with EPRI on a first field implementation of Ti. The utility’s engineers are planning to include Ti and his systems in a 765kV line to be built in 2014.

EPRI's second robot to visit UPCE, Scotty, measures street lighting. Today, high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting, such as high-pressure sodium and metal-halide lamps, prevails when it comes to illuminating streets, parking lots and walkways. But high-power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) promise a brighter future in outdoor illumination. Their capacity to send a more pleasing light in one direction makes them an ideal candidate to replace conventional outdoor lighting. Since 2009, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has been conducting an LED Energy Efficiency Demonstration. The goal of the project is to discover a better light bulb, one that not only meets the outdoor lighting requirements of consumers but also uses less electricity in doing so. There are a number of reasons for exploring new LED technology for this application, including costs and the low efficiency of HID fixtures.

EPRI is conducting assessments of LED-based street and area lights at over 20 sites within the United States. The assessments require accurate, repeatable and timely measurements of light levels. Existing test methods require hand-held meters and are time-consuming, of limited accuracy and require manual recording of data. EPRI developed a solution for this measurement challenge. That solution is a remote controlled and highly instrumented roving light measurement vehicle known as “Scotty.”

Scotty will demonstrate his lighting measurement skills in a roving display at the outdoor UPCE demonstration area during UPCE 2012 in San Antonio.

To learn more about the combined UPCE/DistribuTECH conference in San Antonio, visit: http://www.utilityproductsexpo.com/ or http://www.distributech.com/.

And keep an eye out for more information---including demonstration times for Ti and Scotty---that will come along as we get closer to the show.

I hope you plan to come join us in witnessing this very positive robot invasion.

All the president’s millions

2011-06-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

This week, the Obama Administration unveiled new plans for the 21st century grid they envision, along with some millions in potential funding.

Ok, yes, the big news is that we’re not talking billions here. A couple of years ago, those pennies to support grid development stacked to the ceiling and toppled over into the big “B” money pool. But, it is a new, less-spending environment in D.C. these days.

"America cannot build a 21st century economy with a 20th century electricity system. By working with states, industry leaders and the private sector, we can build a clean, smart, national electricity system that will create jobs, reduce energy use and expand renewable energy production," said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu at this smart grid plan unveiling.

Sweet. So, we’re going to build a whole new system that helps us be energy efficient and get in those solar panels and wind turbines. Awesome. So, what’s our budget? Trillions? Billions? We're talkin' a whole new set of off-the-beaten-path grid tires here, so to speak.

Nope. We get $250 million in loans for smart-grid technology deployment as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service. They want to upgrade rural America. Well, that’s nice, but the grid does range outside of rural America. It goes urban. It goes through the desert. It hits tundra and sneaks around landmarks. And, 80% of the American population live outside those rural areas. Most of us live in urban areas. What about us?

Now, we still have those old billions in stimulus funds granted a few years ago, but this new push for the smart grid from the Administration doesn’t really bring any new cash to the table besides those loans to help establish smarter tech in areas on the outskirts. Now, that’s understandable. Most utilities will be working in urban areas to start the smart grid transformation process. So, yes, the rural areas will likely get the short end of the smart grid stick.

Still, it is a rather sad sign of the times that all this talk about the smart grid isn’t bringing much cash with it, just lots of discussions about “public-private partnerships,” which is often code for “someone else needs to fund this.”

According to the White House, these new efforts are building “upon the historic $4.5 billion in grid modernization investments provided for in the Recovery Act—matched by contributions of more than $5.5 billion from the private sector—to modernize America’s aging energy infrastructure and provide cleaner and more reliable power.”

The new efforts include a lot of consumer issues and paperwork.

First, there’s the mention of the Gridwise Alliance’s new spin-off, Grid 21, which is all about getting the consumer into the talks about smart grid---helping quell fears, educating them about tools and savings. Second, the president promises that the Department of Energy promises to look at how to get those consumers better data and info. He might even have crossed his heart on this one.

Basically, the plan is this: They want to tell the kiddies all about energy savings through student programs and have them bring that information home so you can be lectured by your children about power consumption the same way you’re currently lectured about how to properly use the DVR and your iPhone. I have to hand it to them, though, kids are the perfect combinations of know-it-alls and annoying to get this job done. Those parents will assimilate, eventually, if just to make the mini lectures stop.

Also on the agenda: Everyone gets to talk about smart grid stuff at www.smartgrid.gov. There will be sharing---and maybe even some caring. It will be like an industry twelve-step program, but without gulping down cold coffee in a room filled with chain smokers. Everyone will learn stuff about themselves and others and programs and consumers. And, if it weren’t all online, it might end in hugs.

My favorite idea here might the “ Renewable Energy Rapid Response Team.” I had in my head this bevy of Black Hawk helicopters swooping into a site, dropping ropes down into a field where commandos would sneak in with solar panels strapped to their burly backs and a solar farm would be set up in seconds. Then, they’d be out like the wind, leaving the community to wonder what happened as they sipped their morning coffee and enjoyed their new partial freedom from fossil fuels. But, alas, this is not true. The team is basically a group of peeps to speed up paperwork---the geek squad, of sorts. They promise to ensure that the feds all talk to each other and review stuff promptly. I like the vision of my response team much better.

Those ideas, and a report, are pretty much what happened between speeches during this White House smart grid shindig.

“A 21st century grid is essential to America’s ability to lead the world in clean energy and win the future,” said John P. Holdren, President Obama’s science and technology advisor and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during this week’s hubbub. “By unlocking the potential of innovation in the electric grid, we are allowing consumers and businesses to use energy more efficiently even as we help utilities provide cleaner energy and more reliable service.”

While I understand the limitations that the Administration is under these days from all sides of the political fence, rural loans for the greener pastures of America and red tape clipping alone will not unlock the potential of that 21st century grid we all want. What the grid really needs is another outlay of cold, hard cash.

But, the government purse is now zipped tight, with a hand over the clasp to ward off prying fingers. But, at least we can all still talk about things and share. We’ve got that going for us.

Blaze could lead to blackout in the Southwest

2011-06-09T07:43:00.001-07:00

While driving through New Mexico and Arizona just last month, I saw six or seven different wildfires, all being tended by firemen who were usually standing alongside a tar-black highway engulfed in tar-black smoke with a single hose and a small truck. Once in awhile, the traffic would grind to a halt on that tar-black highway as the tar-black smoke blocked all visibility.

When I drove back along the same road a week later, all that was left of those fires were tar-black stains on what is otherwise a golden bit of desert brush.

But, in the Southwestern desert, without rain in plain sight, fire is the top tier of summer weather, and flames have broken out once again---this time into one of the largest blazes in Arizona history, known as the Wallow fire. Wallow has already burned 389,000 acres, mostly of national forest land.

The firemen in this scenario have moved past the single hose to fight the flames and are using fire retardant dropped from the air and entire brigades of fireman from as far away as New York. And, while the fighters are making progress, the fire is getting dangerously close to power transmission lines in the area and may cause blackouts.

"There are concerns about power transmission lines and obviously the fire is still moving and active,” said Karen Takai, a spokesman for the fire incident command to ABC News on Thursday. On Wednesday night, ABC News reported that it covered over 600 square miles.

El Paso Electric Co. is reporting that the fire is about 15 miles from their Springerville-Luna transmission line, though whether that line will be under fire---or above it, as the case may be---is entirely a matter of wind.

Now, wildfires in the Southwest aren’t often the towering, raging visuals we’ve seen in movies. The brush and burn areas are small and short. Flames rarely get taller than a few inches unless they encounter a bigger burnable obstacle like a house or the rare tree. With most transmission lines high, high in the air on big steel supports, transmission lines are unlikely to be drastically impacted by such a low-burning fire. But, given the right wind, the right environmental force, the unlikely can still happen.

So, El Paso Electric is taking no chances. They’ve warned their customers that the fire could hurt their ability to bring in power from Palo Verde, which could lead to rolling blackouts (in a worst case scenario). But, they do have equipment on hand to roll in and fix things as soon as the area is safe.

El Paso Electric owns one 345 kV transmission line and co-owns another 345 kV line that carry power from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona to the utility’s Southern New Mexico/West Texas service territory. Combined, the lines carry 633 MW, which is almost 40 percent of the company’s available generation. This fire could impact nearly 372,000 customers.

In the end, no line may be impacted by the fire. We’ll all cross our fingers for that one. There is reason to hope with low winds and superior firefighter power this Thursday morning.

But, El Paso Electric should be commended not just for being prepared with men, equipment and trucks---one expects that with a well-run utility today---but also for being proactive in communication and transparent with its customers and the press. That’s key to keeping panic to a minimum in any dangerous situation.

With these open lines of information, people feel they can trust El Paso Electric to keep an eye on the flames. And building trust is important in any relationship, even in business---perhaps especially in business. Despite the potential detrimental impact to customers in the form of power loss, El Paso Electric will be seen by their customers as a partner ready and able to help if the worst happens.

But, let’s hope the worst doesn’t happen---no tar-black stains on the desert floor under those transmission lines please.

Is former utility bigwig Bryson too green for commerce?

2011-06-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

In what has been branded by conservatives as a move to push alternative energy over traditional resources, President Obama has named former Edison International CEO John Bryson to run the Commerce Department (replacing Gary Locke, who may be moving to an ambassadorship in China).

Obama touted Bryson as “a business leader who understands what it takes to innovate, to create jobs, and to persevere through tough times” and “a fierce proponent of alternative energy.”

While Bryson did work for solar company BrightSource Energy these last few months, that’s not the scope of his power resume. He’s no lightweight when it comes to the hard-hitting, gritty, rather conservative power business. He helmed Edison during the serious California energy crisis that claimed utilities with lesser navigation skills like Pacific Gas and Electric, which was forced into bankruptcy trying to weather the same crisis.

Business groups and California officials applauded the Bryson nomination, but some congressmen, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have threatened to stall the nomination until they can get a look at trade agreements the White House is negotiating. Additionally, some of the seriously conservative sects of Congress are a little concerned that Bryson is too green (in values, not in experience). Bryson has been an advocate of solar energy and plug-in vehicles and recently advised a task force on climate change for the state of California.

Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma has announced that he will fight the nomination because Bryson helped found the Natural Resources Defense Council, which he labeled a “radical environmental organization.” (Bryson was among a group of young lawyers who helped establish the organization in the early 1970s.) Inhofe is not a proponent of climate change theory, believing it to be a hoax, and has a pattern of opposing environmental groups, causes and promotions. So, that particular opposition was to be expected.

Is Bryson green? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing? No, I don’t think so. The man did help create a large environmental movement. He does push initiatives that he believes in, and that does include a lot of alternative energy. But, the bottom line is this: Bryson knows power. And, you don’t bump up exports and increase those commerce numbers without knowing how to make, ship, control and tackle the energy side of the equation.

Sure, Bryson graduated from Yale and founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. He also joined Edison International in 1984 and took over the company in 1990, just a couple of years before industry headlines trumpeted deregulation woes and financial drama for most California utilities. He retired from the position in 2008 having helped that company regain footing in a business environment that was financially toxic.

It seems a smart combination for Obama’s alternative energy agenda: Bryson’s both the man who knows the industry and the man who believes in the cause. He has the passion and knows the path to get there. It’s a very solid call for the Administration’s goals to make us, as a country, leaner and greener.

The fact that not everyone agrees with those goals is just another day in D.C., really.

Who’s protecting the Kentucky energy consumer?

2011-05-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

This week, Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities Company told the world they needed money. They trumpeted the fact that environmental regs on coal are going to cost them a mint or two, to the tune of $2.5 billion. In fact, they plan to increase rates for power consumers by nearly 19 percent to cover those costs. (The fine print tells you that will occur slowly over the next five years, not be implemented the moment of approval.)

And cleaning up coal can be expensive: Scrubbers and baghouse systems don’t come cheap. ($1.4 billion for scrubbers and over a million for baghouse systems.)

Paul W. Thompson, senior vice president of energy services for the two utilities stated, "While costs continue to increase as a result of the federal EPA regulations, we are committed to providing our customers a secure energy supply in the least-cost manner. We have carefully studied the options to meet the stricter regulations and have developed a compliance plan that will least impact our customers and the Commonwealth.”

Thompson went on to hedge that statement, however, by explaining that a number of utilities will be hit with these regs at the same time, leading to high demand for materials, which could increase costs higher than their original estimates.

The rate announcement led to a small angry explosion by Kentucky governor Steve Beshear, who released an answering statement of his own in which he lamented “that too many Kentucky families are still struggling in this tough economy” so he’s just darn “disappointed that the federal government’s war on coal, which I am fighting against every single day, is now threatening to cause drastic utility rate increases.”

In fact, he called the regulations “mandates” and labeled them “unfair” and “unfunded,” along with “devastating” to the state’s coal industry.

The utilities say they cannot help but pass on these costs from these regulations, but they are keeping the costs as low as possible for consumers. The government says that these regulations are necessary to fight air pollution and global warming and allow those consumers a better quality of life, along with helping health, allergy and asthma issues. The governor says that he’s protecting the consumer by fighting those air pollution mandates---a fight no one believes he’s going to win. Can the consumer be equally protected by all?

And even the Kentucky Coal Association has been in this tussle over customer interest.

See, this fight isn’t new. Those regulations have been on the books, with the due date coming, for quite awhile. And coal-heavy utilities have been weighing just what to do with their newly expensive (formerly cheap) generation sources that rely on those chunky black squares. But, no one really saves for this sort of thing; that’s what rate increases are for.

In fact, just last month the same two utilities discussed here hinted that they might switch some of their older coal plants over to natural gas to save money for that consumer, a move that brought another angry response, this time from Kentucky Coal Association president Bill Bissett who stated a firm belief that it’s still much cheaper to retrofit coal than to switch to gas and that he believes coal power will be around for “generations to come.”

The current release on the expected rate increase doesn’t include the direct statement that natural gas may take over the plants they want to close, but it does reinforce the concept that closing three plants is more than possible, it’s highly probably.
In the end, the regulations will not be removed, despite the governor’s protest. And, the utilities will likely get a percentage (or all) of what they are requesting for a rate increase. (For 2012, that’s about 2 bucks a month per bill.)

I’m curious, though, about where the Kentucky power consumer falls in this equation. Does he feel protected by the utilities, the feds, the governor or the association? And, does he want to fork over an extra 2 bucks a month for cleaner air to breathe, or does he think the costs should be born by stakeholders and not him?

One local TV channel’s website covered the rate news and quoted the company spokesman heavily as pointing a finger at the government and literally saying they were “forced” to do this and “we don’t have a choice.” But, I’m not sure their consumers believe that.

One comment on the article noted that “upgrades” to his own house and car came out of his own pocket. So, he didn’t understand why those costs were being passed along to him. Also in the comments section: pleas for better customer service if the rates go up, for executives of the utilities to take a pay cut rather than upping the rates on struggling consumers, and confusion about why these costs don’t come out of the utility’s profits

So far, it seems, the utilities will bear the brunt of consumer anger about being so thoroughly protected, not the government, a position I’m sure the utilities were hoping desperately to avoid.

The NERC CIP evolution

2011-05-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

The North American Reliability Corp.’s critical infrastructure protection rules (NERC-CIP) continue to impact power utilities. That is about to change, but not lessen. It’s only bound to get more detailed and restrictive as NERC CIP grows and adapts to the industry and the smart grid.

“Security and compliance are spelled differently in the English language because they actually mean different things,” said Tim Roxey, director of risk assessment and technology division for the North American Reliability Corp. at a session during the UTC Telecom Conf. in Long Beach May 10-13, 2011.

“We have a culture of compliance when we should really have a culture of security,” he added, noting the continuing discussion about whether adhering to the CIP rules really makes a utility more secure. But, Roxey said, the industry needs to work with what it’s got at the moment, which is compliance and that’s where NERC CIP comes into the related security equation.

They’re starting with compliance and hoping to evolve into real security protection as versions change to meet smart grid needs. That process can be painful, complex and problematic. But, there has been progress.

“Do I really gotta? Yeah I really gotta,” Roxey joked, rolling through a short history of the CIPs.

“When I started in this industry, the communications infrastructure was a guy named Joe who basically lived in the substation and had a phone,” he said. “Now it’s this incredibly complex system.”

“It’s almost impossible for a company to remain compliant, let alone secure, because of the complexity,” Roxey said, noting that the complexity moves past just communications and that guy named Joe to all other areas covered by CIP.

Details and differences are the history of NERC CIP, noted the panelist that followed Roxey. And those differences and details created the complexity issue, which is connected to the compliance versus security argument.

“NERC CIP is all about compliance and not about security,” said Jerome Farquharson, practice manager at Burns and McDonnell. “Eighty to 90 percent of what a utility is doing with NERC CIP is paperwork.”

“Compliance doesn’t necessarily make you secure,” Farquharson added. “But, as we grow and change, we are trying to put more emphasis on security.”

Farquharson noted clarity about critical assets---what they are and where they start and stop in the utility structure---is a huge dream of the industry, though the standards haven’t quite gotten to that point of clarity yet. But, both Farquharson and Roxey do see that clarity coming.

So, NERC CIP is growing, and perhaps having a few pains with that cultural evolution. But, what a utility needs to focus on is what’s in front of them right now.

“At the end of the day, it is what it is,” Farquharson said, stressing that compliance is required, despite some issues with clarity. “We may not like the system. That’s fine, but we need to do it.”

Farquharson does see NERC CIP becoming the “de facto” standard in this area. So, a utility shouldn’t expect the standards to just go the way of the dodo.

Perhaps someone should call Joe down at the substation and make sure he has a pencil.

This is an excerpt from a longer article scheduled for the August issue of POWERGRID International magazine.

LIVE FROM UTC TELECOM: Let's look at data centers

2011-05-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

Before a utility can discuss data security with a customer, it has to have and hold the data itself. Data was the centerpoint of all the sessions at UTC Telecom 2011 in Long Beach May 10-13. From use to security, it was all about those small little slices of very important information.

During the case study on data centers on Wed., May 11, experts questioned whether current data centers have the capacity to support the data that’s about to hit with the smart grid, specifically smart metering and demand response pilots and programs---all that information that impacts a consumer.

“We’re adapting our infrastructure for a very bright smart grid future,” said Bud Voss, chief technology officer at Comverge during the session. “Our data center needs and our back office needs are ever-changing.”

Comverge works with more than 500 utilities and with data needs for communications and the smart grid. Comverge currently operates a data center in Pennsylvania for their demand response program, though they are now building a main location in Atlanta, leaving the Pennsylvania operations as a back-up.

With the smart grid, there is a shift in data collection from one-way to two-way with info coming in and going out every 15 minutes. Voss noted that this creates a massive change, and, now, Comverge needs to analyze business data in real time, which requires expansion.

Comverge suggests adopting an architectural approach to improve security and scalability with the bigger and better data center the smart grid may require. This new and shiny process is all about creating a solid grid design capable not just of data use and sorting but takes into account potential disaster issues and even federal requirements like NERC CIP.

“You have to allow for access points and higher levels of traffic with the smart grid,” said Sanket Amberkar, senior manager of smart grid with Cisco Systems, which worked with Comverge on the data center update. Amberkar also stressed a need for robustness in this type of system and making sure they are scaled even with field deployments.

So, the first step to securing that customer data starts with making sure your data center is up to snuff.

Constellation-Exelon merger creates a few concerns

2011-05-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

Last week, the boards of Exelon Corp. and Constellation Energy trumpeted their potential merger. Technically, since Exelon gets to keep their name and their headquarters and be the big boy, it’s a bit more like Constellation’s being swallowed up or virtually erased---although both companies claim they will retain the Constellation brand and keep it in Baltimore. (But, with the Exelon crowd getting the lion’s share of the stake in the combined company, it’s really Exelon’s game.)

The new company will control more than 34 GW of big, bad power with a generation mix of about 55 percent nuclear, 24 percent natural gas and about 8 percent renewable. Constellation currently controls about 12,000 MW of generation capacity, and the company delivers electricity through the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., its regulated utility in Central Maryland.

Before this merger can reach the proposed 2012 finish line, a lot of companies, regulators and people in general will need to be placated. First, the blending must be approved by the stockholders of both Exelon and Constellation, and will the Constellation people be happy with a final stake around 30%? (Analysts have noted, however, that they consider this a better deal for Constellation’s shareholders than Exelon’s. So, perhaps they are thrilled with their 30%.)

Then, the merger has to get a stamp of approval from a bevy of government regulators, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Maryland Public Service Commission, the New York Public Service Commission, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and a handful of other players.

Both groups have tried to head off potential issues at the pass. First, they’re dumping some coal-fired plants in Maryland to ward off possible calls of old-school monopoly (mostly because Exelon has some generation stuff in the PJM area, too). And, the companies have said that the individual utilities will feel little adverse effects with the merger.

BGE, ComEd and PECO will remain headquartered in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia, respectively. And the companies claim that the merger will “benefit customers as all three utilities work together to share best practices to continually improve performance.”

But, no matter how hard they worked to mitigate the response, not everyone is a happy camper. According to the local Baltimore press, there’s a union-backed coalition already protesting the potential deal. While it has been widely reported that this combination would effectively eliminate the last Fortune 500 company in the city, what the coalition seems most concerned with isn’t the large overarching umbrella of Constellation and its Fortune status, but the local utility BGE.

In a press release, the coalition noted that BGE customers would get a single $100 credit with the merger but would not get protections against “already high bills” that they fear could be raised after the deal is finalized.

The mayor of Baltimore has said she’s all for the deal, believing it will bring in more jobs. But, the governor isn’t so sure.

While the state of Maryland isn’t actively protesting the merger like the union coalition in Baltimore, Governor Martin O’Malley made it pretty clear that he’d be keeping an eye on the proceedings, watching how it would impact his state’s ratepayers.

Given the concerns over outcome, the sheer number of regulators to please and the bad track record Constellation has for trying to market itself, things could get very messy. After all, it has tried this before, unsuccessfully with both Florida Power and Light and MidAmerican Energy and partially successfully (on the nuclear side) with EDF.

Will this merger idea with Exelon be the charm?

Royal weddings: The Crown Estate, renewables and British efficiency

2011-04-28T07:38:00.000-07:00

It’s almost here, according to every major news outlet and cable channel in America. The U.S. is all atwitter about one thing: the British royal wedding of Prince William set for this week. It’s almost like the last 200 years of separation from the motherland never actually happened.

Let’s face it: most of the Colonies have royals fever, just like the Brits. We’ve been flooded with royal souvenirs and wedding watch parties and tours of Princess Diana’s personal items as if we’re right next door rather than a large ocean and nearly a half hemisphere away.

So, let’s join in the gusto. Let’s go with the flow. Let’s follow the fray. Let’s talk about the royal family---energy style.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that the royals love renewables, especially offshore wind. Why so specific, you wonder? Well, because they get a good kickback---of course, not a kickback in the mob sense of things. But, it pays to own the seabed, let’s say.

And they do. Literally. A lot of the royal family expenses are, in fact, pulled from public funds at the moment, but that’s about to change. And, the sizeable land portfolio of the monarchy is tied up in what’s known as the Crown Estate. Now, way back when---many, many generations ago---King George III made a trade. He offered the cash made from the Crown Estate to the people and country of England in return for his household expenses being covered by government. Traditionally, this has been a pretty awesome deal for the Brits. (In 2007, England netted about 160 million pounds with this system. The Crown Estate brought in 200 million, but the family cost about 40 million. All in all, an excellent return.)

Well, everyone’s feeling the recession these days, and now the royal household has been told to freeze expenses and even asked to make some cuts. Long story short: It’s said that, in 2012, the household costs will be reconnected to that Crown Estate.

Once reconnected to the cash made from the Crown Estate, you might hear the Queen herself chanting, “Build, baby, build” as offshore wind grows by leaps in bounds. After all, circling back to the top of this long tangent, the Crown Estate owns almost all the seabed (up to 12 miles offshore) off the English coast. So, leasing that to marine/offshore energy companies could make the Crown Estate a pretty penny, since all the rights to lease that area were granted to the Estate by the Energy Act of 2004.

So, with the new royal household set to be connected directly back to the Crown Estate, leasing seabeds to offshore wind facilities may be one way for the new princess to pay those high electric bills at Buckingham Palace.

But, not the only way. Renewables aren’t the only new-fangled energy concept the royals are adopting. They’re also big on negawatts---yep, energy efficiency.

Apparently, Ron Harper, the deputy property manager at Buckingham Palace, sits down every five years and checks on the efficiency of the household, going so far as to looking at heat resonance imaging and energy ratings.

A computerized building management system controls heating and power at the palace for optimum balance. It even controls the use of fans in the palace kitchen. Harper also touts the benefits of Buckingham Palace’s combined heat and power units for energy and the LED technology they are installing to control the lighting more effectively.

Overall, while the wedding this week may be an old tradition in grand old fashion, the British monarchy has shown that it’s actually very cutting edge when it comes to the latest in power sources and efficiency.

It’s Earth Day: Do you know how green your power is?

2011-04-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

There’s going to be a lot of celebratin’ going on this Friday. April 22 may be Good Friday to you, but it’s also Earth Day to many, at least to many greenies here in the U.S. Started in 1970 by a U.S. senator concerned after a large oil spill---my how things haven’t changed---Earth Day is supposed to bring communities together to celebrate the sustainable, the healthy and the environmentally positive.

Almost 40 years later, Earth Day is still around, but it’s moved beyond that sustainable celebration to become a massive marketing tool for American culture. This week, even the SyFy Channel turned its logo green in celebration. Of course, watching the SyFy Channel requires using power, which requires, in many cases, the burning of fossil fuels---which those greenies don’t care for. But, really, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Among utilities, there is an equal push to show the “green” side of all sorts of power, even the non-renewables kind.

NextEra Energy's headquarters in Juno Beach, Florida---home to Florida Power and Light Company, NextEra Energy Resources and other NextEra Energy subsidiaries---grabbed Gold-level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. They’re pushing energy efficiency and energy savings this week. (NextEra is the green arm of things, although that green portfolio does include some bones of contention, including eight nuclear units and some natural gas-fired plants. On the definitely green side, though, they do have 7,540 MW of wind capacity scattered across the U.S. and Canada. No arguments about that.)

A company down in the Lone Star State is opting to purchase RECs to show their commitment---but just for Earth Day. Renewable energy credits (RECs) are a bit of a gray area for greenies, too. The buying of RECs---which are produced by renewable power companies when they make green power but aren’t always sold with the power itself---is basically a company saying, “OK. So, we don’t personally have enough renewable sources of our own to make this requirement. So, we’ll buy some.” It’s not really planting the tree yourself, but more like buying the dirty t-shirt off the guy who planted the tree---and some of his good karma, too, let’s say. While positive in the fiscal support of green power, it doesn’t actually physically offset the carbon-produced power product used. RECs are created by the government to give renewables more market muscle, but it doesn’t mean that the power said company will give Texas that day is actually from a green source.

Tampa Electric is offering $1.5 million in rebates each year for five years to help customers install renewable technologies like photovoltaic (PV) solar systems and solar water heating. They actually announced that last week, but they added it to a press release touting some Earth Day events their employees are participating in this week. This could help interest the local greenie in PVs, but it doesn’t, again, do much to impact fossil fuel use on a larger scale, which would make for a super excited greenie on Earth Day.

Of the three Earth Day announcements listed here---and, believe me, they are only three of many---Tampa Electric’s is probably the most in tune with the original thinking of Earth Day: getting the community involved in sustainability---in Tampa Electric’s case, getting them hands-on involved. Actual steps in sustainability may still be of the “baby” variety here, but, behind all the marketing chatter for Earth Day, there remains a core truth to believe in.

After all, these concepts wouldn’t sell so well if there wasn’t a market for them. While the real legacy of Earth Day may reside heavily in the realm of whitewashed PR at the moment, the very fact that Earth Day still garners such attention---right down to the greening of the SyFy logo---gives all greenies hope that, in the future, there may be real, massive renewable power behind the annual celebration.

We’re not there yet, but we may be able to hitch an EV-powered ride to that future soon.

Does your utility really care about security?

2011-04-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Security, of both the physical and cyber varieties, has been on the lips of power insiders for decades now. Discussions about the physical side of the issue usually peak after accidents like the one slowly evolving at Fukushima Daiichi over the last month or attacks like the ones on the World Trade Center in New York a decade ago. The discussion comes and goes with a social ebb and flow that mimics human behavior patterns: It’s high when humans have something to fear in the recent memory; it’s low when that recent memory begins to fade from the synapses.

The cyber ones, on the other hand, don’t really ebb much. They have been steadily growing in strength and decibel level as the smart grid gets more of a foothold and creates more potential security endpoints to cover. Concerns in that area rarely grow less numerous, and a recent study by the Ponemon Institute may kick up a few new arguments as well.

Unfortunately, the study shows that pesky patterns of human behavior are apparent with the cybersecurity elements of power as well---namely that workers don’t think management understands the value of their work, that compliance is something everyone has to do but few think is valuable, and that the “terrorist” you really need to worry about may already be inside your cyber walls, so to speak.

The study, “State of IT Security: Study of Utilities and Energy Companies,” was published this week by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Q1 Labs. They surveyed 291 IT and IT security people in the energy industry for the results, picking people specifically involved in securing assets, systems and infrastructure.

My favorite finding is one gripe that you could find with any gig, anywhere, in any office in the U.S.: The boss totally doesn’t get what I do or how important it is. 71 percent of the survey respondents said “the management team does not understand or appreciate the value of IT security,” according to the survey’s specific wording. Now, keeping in mind that the people doing the talking here are likely not a part of the management team, this seems quite standard for corporate America: The boss doesn’t get it. Unfortunately, however, we’re not talking businesses that make bingo cards or bracelets or BB guns. This is the power structure we’re chatting about---the backbone of health, security, luxury and industry.

If the boss really doesn’t get it, we’re all in a lot of trouble here---not just the corporate employees, but all of us in this power hungry society. Adding to the issue, those employees in the survey don’t see what they’re working with as state of the art technology, nor do many of them think their companies are very proactive in keeping risk at bay in this area. So, the bosses don’t get it, aren’t forking over cash for it (likely because they don’t get it) and really don’t want to think about it or plan ahead for it.

Again, we can all hope this is just a problematic human perception and not the actual truth, but it’s still a bit scary to think about. Still, even if the boss doesn’t get it, they have to comply with NERC standards and regulatory objectives that force the utility into security compliance, right?

Well, yes and no. There are, indeed, standards for this sort of thing, but the respondents in this survey overwhelming said that compliance isn’t a major push with their company and that, besides, it’s super difficult to comply anyway. Plus, in the end, the regulations in place don’t really help with security. They’re just not very effective.

Just in case you want to keep score, here’s the bottom line so far: The boss doesn’t get how important security is, isn’t paying for it, isn’t bringing in the right technology and, in the end, what we’re all forced to do by those pesky regulations doesn’t help a whit anyway.

Scared yet?

Finally, in the area of just how much they will cost and who exactly is causing those security issues, you might get to breathe a small sigh of relief. It’s not nearly as frightening as you think. No multi-million dollar price tags are popping up today, and no terrorists are rearing dangerous heads. While those survey respondents admit that an “exploit” on their company network could occur in the next year, the average breach would clock in at a modest cost of $156,000. (OK, that’s not modest to me, but it is modest to a large corporation, let’s say.)

Additionally, we don’t need to fret so much about outsiders and scary terrorists. Most of those breaches will be caused by people who already work at these organizations. While leadership issues (like who the heck is really responsible for security) are contributing to the problem, there isn’t an overwhelming need to shore up systems against angry outsiders---just a need to get a good look at potentially angry insiders.

This small survey may note, inadvertently, the biggest hurdles to cybersecurity that power systems face: ourselves. Someone needs to be in charge of security and take responsibility for it. Someone needs to think it’s important, invest money in it and really figure out how regulations can help, rather than hinder, the issue.

The problem remains though: Who will be that mysterious “someone” for your utility?

One year later: Remembering the Upper Big Branch mine disaster

2011-04-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

One year ago today, 29 men died in the Upper Big Branch mine, the worst coal mining disaster in the U.S. in 40 years. The incident prompted multiple investigations, including one by the Mine Safety and Health Administration and a criminal look into the mine's chief of security. No final answers are available as of yet. Those answers may still be months away. And, if we're honest with ourselves, final answers may never come---at least not answers that make the families feel any better.

After the disaster, there was a national call for new safety regulations, but those have yet to materialize (and many efforts have stalled out in the new Congress and the state legislature).

In honor of this solemn anniversary this week, I'm rerunning a commentary I wrote immediately after the accident. Despite various blogs from me over the last year that lament the logistical problems of renewables, I still believe that renewables are the answer to getting us away from mining disasters such as Upper Big Branch. And I hope we find a way to get to that renewable horizon fast enough to save ourselves future mine disasters and future families grieving over the needless deaths of fathers, sons, brothers and friends.

Coal Mine Disaster Brings New Reason to Consider Renewables
Originally published April 6, 2010.

The rather dramatic irony of this blog entry is that I thought about writing it yesterday after reading about China’s flooded mine and all the men trapped there. At that point, I was thinking about how much safer our own mines are here in the U.S., how that probably wouldn’t happen here after all the OSHA safety requirements and other issues involved. I was going to write about that, slant the article to say we can help China make mining less dangerous. Then, this morning, I read about the coal mine blast in West Virginia that has killed 25 people with four still missing.

Coal mining is a dirty, nasty business---even with our OSHA regulations, even with our laws and safety requirements. We’re not so different, at the core, from China, after all. It may, in fact, be impossible to make mining a really safe endeavor.

I come from a long line of coal miners. I’ll bet you are surprised by that revelation. My grandfather was a coal miner. And his father. And his father’s father. My family’s dug a lot of black chunks out of the ground.

My grandfather used to talk sometimes, quietly about what miners fear most---back then it was a scary term called “blackdamp.” Blackdamp is the removal of oxygen in the air, which is replaced by toxic gases. Pretty much all tight, sealed environments can create blackdamp, but it’s especially nasty in coal mines because the coal itself adds to the problem. Coal, once exposed to air, begins absorbing oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide and water vapor.

My grandfather used to talk about blackdamp as if the mine itself was breathing, cutting off air from the miners inside its gullet. You can’t smell blackdamp. You usually only become aware when you get lightheaded and dizzy, uncoordinated like you’ve had way too much to drink. Blackdamp was what miners feared most in my grandfather’s day. But, that wasn’t usually what killed them. It did kill some, of course, but most miners were killed from the force and power of collapses or accidents, not from the creeping blackdamp.

Still, the blackdamp scared them most---that slow, crazy spiral to asphyxiation that it represented. My grandfather said the scariest thing was an awareness that death is coming down that mine in bits and parcels, in small steps and strides. And you had to watch. You had to realize what was coming.

My grandfather stopped fearing the blackdamp in 1947 because he stopped being a coal miner in 1947. March 26, 1947, to be exact.

He was running late for his shift at the Centralia Coal Company’s No. 5 mine on the edge of Centralia, Illinois. He wasn’t usually the type to run late---at least not as I recall. (We always made it to the movies and the circus early enough to get sodas and popcorn when I was a kid.) But, that one day in 1947, he was a bit behind.

He told me the reason was something to do with a family birthday celebration that had kept him up way too late the night before. The celebration hadn’t, however, slowed down my great-grandfather. Not a bit. He was bang on time for the mine collapse---the worst coal mine disaster that the country had seen in nearly 20 years.

111 men died in that mine disaster, including my great-grandfather Jacob Rethard. My grandfather, Raymond, would talk about digging with shovels and picks and bare and bloody hands---anything to get to his father and those other men trapped, even though they knew just minutes after the shaft fell that hope for the lives of those men was completely futile: If the force didn’t get them, the blackdamp and growing lack of oxygen certainly would.

It was a race against time, and they didn’t have the equipment to win. Still, my grandfather kept digging until he recovered the body of his father. His father was no. 110---the 110th body. No. 110 out of the 111 dead men pulled from that mine. And my grandfather walked away from that disaster dirty and bloody and done.

He left coal mining behind without a second thought.

As human beings, we are incredibly resilient. My grandfather certainly was. He became a security guard, working everywhere from Vegas to Oklahoma City. He raised a family and rarely talked about that coal mine collapse that killed his father. He was funny, a great cook, and he used to build the most amazing blanket-and-kitchen-chair forts in his living room, much to the annoyance of my grandmother. He pressed on.

As a society, we often mirror my grandfather’s ability to move forward. Hundreds of men in China die, and it really doesn’t stop us from flicking a light switch. We don’t make that connection much. 25 men in West Virginia died today, and it hasn’t stopped me from using my computer or my television. We have a great capacity to accept and move on. But, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to adapt.

I’ve thought a lot about the place of renewables in this industry in the last few years---most of it focused on the practical. I still think they are expensive and lacking in a certain economy of scale. But, perhaps I should think less about the financial cost of renewables and more about the lives they might save---not just with reducing global warming but direct human lives like those we lose regularly in coal mines around the world.

Jacob Rethard was a solid, tough family man who was proud to be a coal miner, but it cost him his life. My grandfather, Raymond Rethard, walked away from that disaster that killed his father a changed man, one who saw coal mining as not worth the risk.

In the end, he died at a ripe old age surrounded by family---not by darkness and blackdamp.

Perhaps we should pay more attention to the humanity embroiled in the dangers of mining. If renewables become more prevalent, could we save more men in China and in West Virginia and in Illinois from dying in the dark? Years ago I made a definitive choice to never buy diamonds because of the human cost they sometimes require to mine. It was a change in attitude, and I know I’m not alone in that attitude or choice. Perhaps we, as an industry and as a society, also need to consider a change in attitude and adjust our social concepts and technological advances to give the advantage to renewables, even if they are more expensive.

We should remember that we sometimes pay a very large, very human price for very cheap power. And, bottom line, that human price may be much, much less if renewables were given a stronger foothold in power production. It would be a nice change if no man had to fear the dark blackdamp in our smart energy future.

Where’s the logic in our rush to renewable the world?

2011-03-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

I’m coining a new phrase today: “to renewable.” “To renew” is taken, and it can mean a variety of refreshing tangents across a number of delightful industries---it’s especially popular with cosmetics companies---but “to renewable” is specific to just power and will represent our headlong rush to make everything inside our arena lean and green---and, therefore, more appealing.

After all, when we act, as a group, “to renewable,” we’ve pushed aside pesky things like global warming (or just air pollution for those conservatives still insisting that global warming isn’t real) and nuclear regulation and massive fuel reserves and dependence on foreign oil fields that are sometimes run by angry despots.

So, with the great rush “to renewable” we can solve a lot of social, cultural and fuel-related issues. We clean up the environment when we hunker down “to renewable,” and, yet, it doesn’t impact our World of Warcraft time together. And, even politicians can love “to renewable,” cuz that means we can, metaphorically, flip the bird at those angry despots we think are holding all the oil we need---gallons of political hostage.

But, in that great rush we also create an issue, a big ol’ tech issue that we’ve known about for years. See, your World of Warcraft time there at the computer may not be when the sun shines. In may be in the dark hours of the night when the rest of the world is sleeping. And, it may not be when the wind blows. It may be during a night of complete and utter calm. So, if the wind’s not blowing and the sun’s not shining when you sit down to play, you’re going to need power from another source because renewables are, for the most part, pesky in their intermittency.

Now the intermittency of our rush “to renewable” has, of course, been around since the dawn of power itself. We’ve know about it forever, and, in fact, it has kept us burning fossil fuels in recent history because renewables just weren’t reliable. But, now we’ve turned a corner, decided to forge ahead, made a pact “to renewable.” We’re resolved---yet, no one has solved that pesky “sun’s not always shining” issue.

Still, we don’t, as an industry, talk about it. It’s the elephant in the room that we’ve painted to match the wallpaper so it just doesn’t stand out quite as much. When we hear there will be change from the governments above us and hear an echoing call for change from consumers below us, we just don’t feel like we have a lot of choice but to disguise that problem. When we talk about those problems, the governments above us think we’re stalling and the consumers below us think we just want to keep the status quo because of money---and we're stalling. So, the rush is on. And, we’ll just do some camouflaging and be done with that elephant for as long as we can possibly ignore it.

But, intermittency is bound to have impact as we grow more and more dependent on renewables. You can’t hide an elephant that darn big forever.

European consultants Poyry recently completed a study on the growing push “to renewable” and how power based on weather patterns could impact the market. Among their findings (which focused on Northern Europe): “By 2030, wholesale market prices in some countries will have become highly volatile and driven by short-term weather patterns.”

Poyry’s report also noted that there will be more “peaks” in prices: When there are lots and lots of renewables all going at once, the price will death spiral, but when there is no renewable power option, the price will skyrocket. Intermittency leads to volatility. That’s the first major lesson of our rush “to renewable”: It’s going to be a rollercoaster ride for prices, if prices are open to a market based on the fickle whims of weather. Add in the costs of renewable subsidies and the cost of keeping a back-up in baseload, and now items are trending higher more often than they are trending lower. It may always regress to mean, but, in the future, that mean may be a significantly higher price mark.

While there are options to mitigate those crazy price spikes by interconnecting more renewables across more space (as the ability to push power over lines gets easier) and creating demand-side management programs, these concepts are band-aids for a wound that won’t stop bleeding (and those concepts involve convincing governments and consumers to work together for the good of the utility, which is often not so easy to sell). In the end, until we can find a way to logically solve the technical issue of intermittency our rush “to renewable” will always be plagued by a problematic lack of logic and not nearly enough serious thinking about practical solutions.

I want our attempts “to renewable” the world to work, but it seems like we’ve gotten caught up in the excitement and money available---the soap-opera drama of it all---and forgotten that there are, indeed, some valid reasons to burn stuff to make power. If we want to get away from burning stuff, we need to spend more time mulling over the issues before we run out of the house with saws and drills in hand to build, build, build those renewables.

Can we build our way out of an energy crisis?

2011-03-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

While the world stares down Japan in an attempt to seal off nuclear containment with collective Superman eye lasers none of us actually possess, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu touched on the crisis for just a moment in his speech to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He discussed how the U.S. is helping Japan with detectors, experts and assessments of contamination.

Nuclear may have been on his mind, of course, but not just in the form of the ongoing Japanese issue. Chu was on Capitol Hill to discuss nuclear and other forms of energy within the context of the President’s budget plans for the Department of Energy.

Diversity was key for Chu’s speech. He included nuclear, despite the crisis, along with fossil fuels and renewable efforts. But, what the President and Chu really want to do is make stuff.

“President Obama has a plan to win the future by out-innovating, out-educating and out-building the rest of the world.” Chu said.

Can we build our way out of an energy crisis? Well, you can spend your way out of a financial crisis. So, I guess it’s technically possible, depending on what, exactly, you want to build. The President, it seems, wants to build lots and lots of clean energy bits---so much so that we could get 80 percent of our power from clean sources by 2035.

Biofuels, the smart grid, R&D and carbon capture are all mentioned in this long-term goal, along with loan guarantees for renewables and energy efficiency tech. Nuclear got a push, too---up to $36 billion to help deploy a “new generation of American nuclear reactors.” Whether that will be in the final budget is hard to say. It likely depends on how well the Japanese walk the tightrope between potential meltdowns and how scared the average American is by all of that front page news.

This push up for renewables and nuclear loan guarantees is balanced by the elimination of some fossil fuel subsidies that have been deemed “unnecessary.”

This plan of Obama’s is lean and green, but is it mean? I get where he’s going. There’s a great logic to unhooking ourselves from fossil fuels and imports, creating power from the wind and sun that blesses most of the American landscape daily. But, to get to 80 percent is quite a lot of building. And, the one area that might have helped bridge that gap---nuclear power, which doesn’t emit greenhouse gases---may be sidelined.

And all renewables goals aside, we’ll never get to that 80 percent without significant improvements in energy storage---or building the world’s largest battery. Or both.

While it’s very nice to see the Administration taking a long-haul look at energy, I’m still left wondering exactly what we’re going to build to go from our current energy portfolio (with coal leading at 45 percent and renewables---not including hydro---at 4 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration) to that whopping 80 percent renewables. Like our attempts to stop Japan’s nuclear disaster, we may need some super powers for that.

Nuclear energy, Florida sunshine and emotional meltdowns

2011-03-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

This week, I'm attending Elster's EnergyAxis event in sunny Bonita Springs, Florida. I may be working, but most people around these parts this week are all about leisure---after all, it is Spring Break. Flip flops and board shorts and bathing suits are everywhere, mixed in with the suits and khakis of the conference, but, whatever we're wearing down here, we're all enjoying the warmth of the sun.

But, not all warmth is good. While we play here in Florida, Japan is trying to stave off overheating nuclear reactors to prevent potential radiation leaks. And, the world watches and speculates about nuclear plants in an earthquake prone area, about regulations, about precautions and, really, about the safety of nuclear energy as a whole.

And the discussion is heating up. It's been all over the news. It was on Good Morning, America this morning. I watched bits of it, including their energy correspondent in a protective suit, while enjoying my sunny view of the bay.

Warmth is emotional. With the Spring Break crowd here in the Sunshine State, it's positive. We're basking in the heat. Japan, on the other hand, is emotionally cooking. Their warmth (potential and otherwise) is negative emotionally. People are afraid of that heat, of the dangerous fallout (possibly literally).

I was thinking of these dichotomies this morning, this splitting of the whole of what warmth can mean emotionally in the areas of energy, during the keynote presentation by Suzanne Shelton, president and CEO of the Shelton Group. She was discussing the tendency of people to make an emotional decision and then create reasoning to rationalize that decision.

"You cannot fight an emotional argument with a logical one," she said. Her suggestion was to focus on areas that speak to both the emotional and rational in people.

People aren't very rational about nuclear energy, even before the Japanese issue. Nuclear energy has always been squarely an emotional decision---either "for" or "against" depending on whether you are concerned about energy independence or health and safety. The reasons to rationalize the very emotional decision that nuclear will help us be energy independent fall squarely into cost and security issues. The reasons to rationalize the very emotional decision that nuclear is too problematic with health and safety issues often circle around natural or manmade disaster possibilities, reinforced, at the moment, by what's unfolding in Japan.

But, the immediacy of the Japanese tragedy certainly brings the emotional question of health and safety to the forefront during these trying days. With enough distance, however, I wonder if worries about nuclear will continue to fall on that side of the emotional argument.

To be sure, nuclear is not 100% safe. That's really very obvious right now; there are men at those Japanese reactors risking their lives to prevent a radiation leak. But, no form of energy, really, falls into a completely safe category. Oil issues killed 11 men in the gulf last year and unleashed an environmental disaster that an entire region may never fully recover from, yet we still continue to drill.

Coal and other fossil fuels contribute to climate change. And, while that isn't as immediate of a disaster as nuclear fallout, it is still predicted to be a disaster---and not one confined to a single region.

So, safety, as an emotional issue, has variables. And, our reactions to the dangers of all energy are not consistent.

In the end, will the benefits of nuclear energy---that it doesn't add to climate change, that it's a steady and reliable source of power---outweigh our fears of disaster as it often does with oil and fossil fuels? I think the final decision on that emotional argument is being played out right now in Japan. If a meltdown occurs physically and radiation leaks from the reactor, nuclear energy may burn through any remaining goodwill in the arena of public opinion.

And, if that happens, I doubt any of the rational positives about nuclear power will manage to make even a small dent in the negative emotional argument for decades to come.

Live from the Work Truck Show: Everybody dance

2011-03-07T16:23:00.000-08:00

OK. I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek with the dancing thing, but I have hit just two press conferences in the wee "leading up to" hours for the Work Truck Show and both had background music that reminded me of the European dance scene---I would imagine for the "energy."

I expect the Work Truck Show, which officially opens in the morning, will have a lot of energy without the need for peppy upbeat underlying musical scores. But, heck, great underlying musical scores can't hurt, can they?

The Work Truck Show is held in conjunction with the 47th Annual NTEA Convention here in Indianapolis from March 8-10. (NTEA is the National Truck Equipment Association.) They are very self-explanatory: They have lots of work trucks---big, big ones, like the semi rig I saw unveiled during the Western Star press conference this evening and "normal" ones like the ones ringing the Ford booth during their press conference.

Western Star introduced its Class 8 vocational truck, the 4700. I can tell you this: It's pretty. And shiny. And, as said before, really, really big. They are serious with that marketing tagline: serious trucks. This one looks like it could haul a three-story house to the dump for you without breaking an automotive sweat. Mike Jackson, the general manager of Western Star Trucks also showed some pretty numbers to go with the pretty trucks: The company was up sixteen percent in retail for the industry last year (vs. 2009 numbers).

But, all detailed industry numbers aside, I think I most enjoyed the marketing campaign that helped debut the 4700. Sure there was the lovely video of the timeline of Western Star trucks (Ford did a similar video in their time slot). There was the requisite half house music/half heavy metal music soundtrack. (It's supposed to read "energy" and "hardcore" in one, I think.) But, it was the new tagline that was out of the ballpark: "Whole new truck. Same badass philosophy."

Sold. Now, who needs their house moved to the dump? We could split the cost of the 4700. I'd be nice about drive-time scheduling.

Ford took more of a fleet angle with their press conference---less giant "badass" truck philosophy, more going green. Opening with a short overview, Len Deluca, the company's director of commercial trucks, noted that Ford's sales are up nineteen percent in the commercial truck division and that the company gained over a full point in market share in 2010. They've also, delightfully, reduced their debt by $14.5 billion and delivered six consecutive quarters of profitability. Go Team Ford!

After the overview, Rob Stevens, the chief engineer of alternative fuel strategies discussed greening options, admitting that the time for one or two "examples" or "pilots" was in the past and that alternative fuels is now more than just for show.

"We're looking at the greening of fleets and the greening of commercial products," he said.

Ford offers a number of green options with fuel, from flex fuel to biodiesel to electric vehicles, and they expect that, by as early as 2012, half of Ford vehicles will be capable of running on alternative fuels.

All these fun, tough and green truck options are on display this week at the Work Truck Show, North America's largest work truck event that brings together vocational trucks and transportation equipment from some 560 suppliers.

It’s elementary, my dear Watson

2011-02-24T08:09:00.000-08:00

IBM’s Watson robot triumphed on Jeopardy recently. While the geek guru of trivia stumbled a bit on the first day and had a tendency to answer really, really wrong when it was wrong and bet in odd, seemingly random cash sums, the computer came roaring back to leave the champion human contestants in the dust.

Did any of us really question that the computer would beat the humans at trivia?

Computers are like little digital elephants. They don’t forget. I once memorized all the U.S. presidents, their terms in office, their vice presidents, their major accomplishments and their major failures for a college class on American history. But, I’d be hard-pressed to remember much of that list today. The human brain doesn’t retain knowledge it doesn’t use often---at least, not very well and not completely or I wouldn’t have such trouble with maps of Africa.

If a computer “brain” had the gaps in it that my brain has (especially for presidents between Lincoln and Roosevelt #1), I’d be sorely disappointed in that computer. I’d think it a colossal failure if its digital circuits sparked and burnt out the way my organic ones often do.

But, Watson triumphed, and at least IBM cheered. Personally, I’m not sure what to make of Watson, exactly. I hear that the next stop on Watson’s smarter planet world tour, of sorts, is to help with medical diagnosis. Watson can take in and hold a lot of factors, facts, stats and charts that a human doctor cannot. I can see how that might be useful. But, Watson is lacking one thing you can’t ever teach a computer---human reasoning.

Yes, you can program Watson with all sorts of data. You can tell him that A + B + Ru + the speed of light over the square root of pie + a fever equals Z. And, when he sees A + B + Ru + the speed of light over the square root of pie and, by golly, a fever, he’ll cry, in rather digital tones, “Eureka, Z it is.” But, what if it only looks like Z? What if Z is the wrong answer and you have to work backward to find the right one? In Watson’s world, the answer must always be Z given those factors. Humans are a little better at realizing that factors and data aren’t the whole picture.

Still, Watson can be a great help. In our industry, IBM has pitched that Watson can assist with energy efficiency in the field and in educating consumers about use. (And, oh yes, kids and geeks alike will love learning via Watson. He’s like the world’s most advanced See ‘n’ Say.)

IBM also posits that Watson can help make decisions in utility control rooms, mostly due to his ability to understand “natural language” questions. This means you can ask Watson questions in English, and he can translate it, basically, into the digital format he works in. But, bear in mind that, essentially, Watson isn’t a native speaker of English. We natives talk weird. We drop syllables. We don’t form complete sentences. We each have our own way of speaking and writing; we complicate language with individual styles. Plus, words have subtext related to vocal inflection and context. In talking, we often get the gist of things, not every word. We grasp the overall concepts with language. We work in big pictures, and Watson sees in singular, linear details.

Singular, linear details are great for a computer, but not so great in a world built by humans for humans with human-caused and human-impacted problems which careen off the logical line in nifty and tangential ways.

Still, I will be very interested to watch Watson evolve in the field as he works with doctors and energy personnel. I’m sure he will continue to add to his extensive bit of knowledge---those details of facts and data and trivia. But, I really want to watch Watson move past the elementary item of natural language interface to something more analytical and more profound. If IBM can truly accomplish that, then as Ken Jennings noted during final Jeopardy with Watson, “I, for one, welcome our computer overlords.”

OK. Well, maybe I’ve seen the Terminator series too many times to go quite as far as Ken. But, I would welcome all the intelligent help we can get in power control rooms.

Bring on the rise of the power robots, IBM.

Study to electric utilities: Tell businesses the truth

2011-02-16T09:24:00.000-08:00

J.D. Power and Associates released a report today on business customers’ reactions to power outages and outage management. While a bit happier and less emotional, overall, than their residential counterparts, there still seems to be a lesson in all these numbers: Dear utility, don’t shorten the outage time.

The J.D. Power and Associates 2011 Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study is based on interviews with people from 17,000 U.S. businesses that spend $500-$50,000 a month on those power bills. Those study Associates measured customer satisfaction looking at: power quality and reliability; billing and payment; corporate citizenship; price; communications; and, of course, customer service.

If the surveyed business had an outage, the average satisfaction rating was 729 out of 1,000 points---about a middling “C” grade for those of us still judging things based on old school report cards. And that “C” was only if the power clicked back on by the time told them. If the utility stretched the outage (for whatever reason, even those beyond their control) past the hour given by the utility, that grade plummeted to 576. (That’s a whopping 150-point plunge, and an “F” on the school report card scale.)

So, the lesson here: Be accurate. Tell the truth. Don’t give the best-guess estimate. The customer wants to know when it’s really going to be back up and making them money again. If it’s going to be a long time, be honest. And, let them know why.

The survey noted: Among business customers who contact their utility for information about an outage, satisfaction levels are highest among those who received at least three points of information. Satisfaction is lowest among customers who only received one piece of information.

“While causes of power outages may be outside the control of electric providers, they do have the ability to establish highly satisfying procedures for making adequate outage information available to customers,” said Jeff Conklin, senior director of the energy utility practice at J.D. Power and Associates. “Particularly for business customers, time is money. Providing accurate and comprehensive information about outages can help these customers make contingency plans and effectively plan resumption of their operations.”

The second lesson here: The customers expect you to know. True, you may not have the shiny smart grid intelligence to even get a bead on where the outage is without sending out some guys in a truck to just drive around the darkened spots. But, customers don’t know that. They hear a lot about the smart grid; they think you have one. They think there’s a robot or magic computer connection on that line. They believe that the very moment power goes out, you know. And they also believe you should know how long it takes to get that power back on. Whether or not you think that’s fair, that’s the business world you’re working in these days.

The study also noted a decline in overall satisfaction among business people with their power companies---not much, about four points, but that decline happened across a number of areas with the biggest dips in power quality and reliability (7 points) and customer service (5 points). Do you really have worse power than you did last year? Of course not. Do you have worse customer service? Perhaps. Either way, what’s important here is, again, what customers believe. They believe you know more than you are saying about outages. They believe your power is not as awesome as it was before, and they think your customer service isn’t so hot.

You can fix those beliefs with some extra time and extra communication, but the key is to be truthful and accurate---even letting them know when you don’t know. Sometimes honesty really is the best policy.

LIVE FROM DISTRIBUTECH 2: Let's talk EVs

2011-02-02T21:06:00.001-08:00

In electric vehicle news today, researchers at Indiana University think Obama's "one million electric cars by 2015" dream will be shattered by car manufacturers who won't rev up supply because they don't think the American consumer will answer with matching demand.

The timing of this study's release is most interesting to me because I spent a good block of time today at DistribuTECH talking to ABB and ECOtality about their electric vehicle (EV) plans.

ECOtality provides EV charging systems. Last month, at the turn of 2011, ABB announced a $10 million investment in ECOtality. ECOtality, in turn, is leading the EV Project, a DOE-funded program to develop electric vehicle infrastructure with the deployment of 15,000 charging stations in 16 cities.

Murray Jones, vice president of global e-mobility at ABB, called this "range ready infrastructure" in our meeting today, which I found most intriguing---that someone is building out a basic highway charging infrastructure for EVs for a good road trip. Fleets of EVs are one thing. Distribution systems are circular, without a lot of miles traveled, and with a return trip to a central charging area. That may be how some businesses work, but that's not how the average American lives. Putting charging infrastructure along the road---at restaurants and retail outlets---and really developing an infrastructure to ease the mind of the consumer certainly seems like a step forward to getting the second wave of EV adoption, beyond the early birds that love that electric car for its ecology marketing or as a second car that cuts down on gas costs.

"We're building up a connected highway," said Jonathan Read, president and CEO of ECOtality, when discussing the EV Project that ranges across the West from Seattle to San Diego and has extensions into Arizona, Texas, and three cities in Tennessee. The ultimate goal of the EV Project is to take the lessons learned from the deployment of these first 8,300 EVs and related infrastructure to make it easier and faster to put in more---to Obama's one million and beyond.

To put those EVs on the road takes more than car companies or even consumer demand. It will take a ready, willing and enabled power utility. That's where ABB comes into the game.

Read added, "In each market, we have to work with utilities, and no one know utilities better than ABB."

ABB and ECOtality believe that those EVs on Obama's horizon are coming, and they want to work to make EVs a real asset to the grid rather than a "drag on it," as Read noted. Allen Burchett, senior vice president for strategic initiatives in North America for ABB added that it's obvious that EVs will have a major impact on the electricity distribution network, but, if utilities have more control over the timing of personal charging, it can be a positive impact, relaying on the intelligence of the charging infrastructure.

As for the Obama dream of a million EVs, Read believes that there may be as many as 1.5 million by 2015, exceeding Obama's vision. Perhaps those naysayers at Indiana University are wrong after all.

LIVE FROM DISTRIBUTECH: It's about the customer

2011-02-02T07:31:00.000-08:00

DistribuTECH 2011 kicked off in San Diego yesterday (with a few pre-conference sessions and meetings beforehand) and from the co-located SGCC symposium to the keynote to my personal meetings, almost everyone is talking about the customer---and not just internal industry customers, truly about the end-use consumer (an idea rather foreign to traditional utilities who always had a bit of a monopoly and could simply assume demand without catering to consumers).

During the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative's (SGCC) Smart Grid Symposium (also titled the "Partnering for Progress" Symposium) on Monday, debate about how much, how often, how nicely utilities need to communicate with consumers was the stuff of panel debates and paper releases.

SGCC released their 2011 State of the Consumer report to "shed light on what residential electric consumers want." What do they want? To know more, apparently---especially about the smart grid---if they have the values and priorities that fit into the smart grid overview. (The report noted that personal mores and hierarchies trumped age or income factors.)

When discussing this report and the motivated smart grid energy consumer at the meeting, SGCC Research Director Judith Schwartz noted, : The big picture may change, but the major players for change had to have passion, had to care."

Schwartz made the comment during a debate on customer wants and needs, acceptances and doubts.

But she found a bit of disagreement with Ahmad Faruqui, principal with the Brattle Group, who made the point that asking people what they would do in a situation and what those people actually end up doing in a situation when finally faced with it, are often very different prospects, which may be a flaw in reasoning out the psychology of consumer smart grid choices.

All the panelists, however, seemed to agree that bringing the consumer into the smart grid conversation was absolutely necessary since, really, the mainstream views of smart grid are often negative.

As panelist Craig Boice, president of the Boice Dunham Group pointed out, the most successful smart grid marketing, to date, was created by the opponents of smart grid in the San Francisco area who changed the community view of smart grid to a negative one in six to nine months time.

"The smart grid story we are telling, "Boice noted, "well, we just haven't found a way to get the customer into that story."

These customer-centric words were echoed in the opening keynote session of DistribuTECH the next morning by representatives from local California utilities and industry commentators and analysts.

David Geier, vice president of electric operations at San Diego Gas and Electric stated, "We can have all the great ideas in the world, but they need to align with and benefit our customers."

Lynda Ziegler, senior vice president of customer service at Southern California Edison agreed with Geier, noting that we, as an industry, have not yet incorporated educated consumers into the equation nor looked at areas consumers are really concerned with: cost, safety, accuracy, security and health issues like EMF.

"If consumers see no benefits to the smart grid, it will be difficult to move forward," she said. "We all have a role to play in the public conversation."

The industry conversation about smart grid continues this week at DistribuTECH. We'll be here in sunny San Diego until the end of the week---most likely talking more about the consumer. We'll keep you updated.

Additionally, our online editor, Jeff Postelwait, is onsite giving you the latest news from the conference. He's streaming that to the news section of the home page. So, take a look at the home page for a peek at the products, announcements, partnerships and collaborative projects from DistribuTECH 2011 this week.

Old cowboys rescue New World

2011-01-24T11:57:00.000-08:00

Ted Turner’s at it again. No, he didn’t buy another set of cable stations or a new bevy of bison; he’s out to solar the Wild West.

Turner and Southern Company announced today that their Cimarron Solar Facility in New Mexico is up and zipping out enough voltage to power 9,000 homes. The Turner Renewable Energy, Southern Company cooperative effort picked up the project from First Solar last March.

"We are very excited to see this project completed and producing clean solar energy to power homes and businesses in New Mexico," Turner was quoted as quipping about the project. "Large-scale solar generation is among the fastest growing energy sources in the world, and we're pleased that we can be a part of that growth."

Turner is known for doing his own thing at his own pace; so, his leap from TV to rancher to solar scholar isn’t all that out of his normal range. However, what’s surprising is the number of old school cowboys (both real and imaginary) that have joined him on the renewable energy side of things.

Let’s be honest. Cowboys don’t really have an image of progressiveness. Old trucks, old dogs and old horses are more their style. But, renewables---especially solar---may be a dark horse in this cowboy race.

Let’s take the ultimate TV cowboy from the 1980s, good ol’ boy J.R. Ewing, who stopped time (it seemed) until their writers of “Dallas” finally revealed who shot him. The actor who played J.R., Larry Hagman, popped up last summer hocking SolarWorld, a German photovoltaic module maker. The commercials played off the cowboy/oil days of old and offered a new and shiny energy alternative in solar.

And Hagman himself does have a 94-kilowatt solar system on his estate in Southern California. He also sits on the board of a nonprofit group that helps build solar systems in places of hardship and poverty worldwide.

Hagman isn’t the only oil-based cowboy (albeit an imaginary one) to embrace renewables. In real life, Oklahoma oilman (and self-proclaimed Oklahoma State University cowboy) T. Boone Pickens has introduced “The Pickens Plan” which is a long-term energy plan to get off of oil by using a whole lot of wind and natural gas transportation. Of course, this was a great idea for him since he was all set to invest a ton in a Texas wind farm that, unfortunately, never got off the ground, leaving him with a lot of wind turbines to spread around.

But, the interesting connection between these three cowboys remains that investment in renewables. As Pickens saw a huge market in consolidating oil companies in the 1980s, it appears he may see another ground floor opening with renewables this time around.

And a couple of other cowboys seem to see that on the horizon as well. Wind farms and solar arrays do speak to the loner spirit of the cowboy---being far away but still managing a few creature comforts. And, perhaps it also speaks to the push cowboys often have to forage into new territory and new frames of mind. It may be that old cowboys will ride to the rescue of this new world (at least in the form of renewable energy) after all, leaving me to wonder: Are renewables the next “oil boom,” so to speak?

On outages and clear Oklahoma skies

2011-01-13T14:21:00.000-08:00

Another blizzard has hit the Northeast. Atlanta is frozen solid. There’s snow in 49 of the 50 states, according to CNN, even here in Tulsa. But, today, we have a clear, bright blue Oklahoma sky reflected in that remaining white.

There’s a lot of real estate in the sky in Oklahoma. The blue horizon seems to go up and out forever, an endless ceiling with no glass barrier in sight. On days like today, it’s almost impossible to believe that the bright blue ends somewhere, that eventually the dark of space will interfere and stop that tinted ascent.

We don’t put a lot of skyscrapers into the real estate of an Oklahoma sky, but we do put quite a bit of one thing---electricity. Towers and poles dominate the landscape here. They trace along highways and roads, turn left or right to follow the bits of civilization and urban sprawl. They go up and out the way Manhattan builds office buildings.

It makes for cheaper energy. It makes for quicker hook-ups if you decide to build out in the middle of an Oklahoma nowhere to enjoy that deep blue overhead real estate.

But, sometimes, it can be problematic.

Sometimes the real estate above our heads in Oklahoma isn’t that bright blue we’re used to. Sometimes it’s black or gray or even green. Green’s the worst. That means tornado. But black can also bring strong winds, sometimes hurricane force. And gray can mean a whole lot of ice---all items that can destroy the biggest builds of our Oklahoma sky, that power structure.

When the worst ice storm in state history hit here in 2007, the parts of Tulsa with lots of power real estate in the sky were crippled. Poles were down everywhere. Transformers exploded. It was chaos---except in those newer spots with underground equipment. They had a few spotty power outages but, all in all, maintained a good front.

After that storm, I thought, “Perhaps we should stop building our power structures into the bright blue of the Oklahoma sky.”

However, there is a problem with moving all these bits and pieces underground: cost. It’s expensive. And, locally, for a utility caught in a recession and already hurting from a series of bad winters (including that historic ice storm), it’s not something easily done.

I know our utility is anxious to return to upkeep and undergrounding, but I also realize their dilemma with cost and cutbacks. And, while the average customer might love the reliability and safety from ice and wind that underground power provides, they are not willing to pay out of pocket for it. Again, this is as equally understandable as the utility’s bottom line concerns. So, no fair pointing fingers at each other with this argument.

For the moment, the real estate in that Oklahoma sky remains the most practical power option. I’ll just keep an eye out for the blue to change to black or gray and hope that our infrastructure in the air can be spared---at least until the utility can spring for undergrounding things again (or customers are willing to pay for it). Until then, power will remain in the air, and there’s just not much we can do about it from our spot on terra firma below.

The Governator exits stage left

2011-01-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

He angered his own party quite a bit. He was a definite handful---a big, brash personality difficult to compete with. He was a source of both pride and frustration for Californians---sometimes at the very same time. And, today, he is the Governator no more.

This Monday, January 3, 2011 marks Arnold Schwarzenegger's “hasta la vista” goodbye to politics in the Golden State. He is no longer a governor. He’ll just have to return to his lowly previous career as matinee god.

Thems the breaks.

Schwarzenegger blew into office a little less than 8 years ago when pretty much the entire state hated then Gov. Gray Davis and headlines like “Pacific Gas and Electric to Gov. Davis: We’re Busted” were regular bits of ink in the trade presses. Deregulation had taken the state---and the state utilities---to the cleaners, and Davis was left holding the bag, whether or not he was actually at fault.

Schwarzenegger swept in like the action hero he often portrays---trying to save the day for the state and for the state of energy.

At the time of Arnie’s big rescue, I worked for Electric Light and Power magazine and wrote a piece on Schwarzenegger’s energy plans. You can read that one HERE if you’d like to take a trip in the Way Back Machine. At that time, the only thing we were arguing about concerning Schwarzenegger was whether to use "governator" or "gubernator" as his nickname. (Governator won out, though I still prefer gubernator.)

Long story short: Arnie was going to fix it all.

"I will restore stability to our energy system and stimulate private investment in electricity generation and transmission," the governor's campaign website stated at the time. And he had a multi-point plan for doing so that included:

reforming the 13 state agencies with sway over the markets.
creating a regulatory structure based on "other states and the FERC standard market design" while eliminating incentives for "gaming" the regulatory system.
investing in natural gas and transmission capacity.
encouraging conservation.
creating reserve requirements for generators.
addressing "overpriced legacy power purchase agreements."

How much of that he actually did or was really necessary depends on whom you ask. No one really talks about power purchase agreements anymore, the regulatory structure in the state hasn’t truly changed all that much, but there has been movement in both transmission capacity and conservation. And he combated global warming like no Republican in history, in or out of the Golden State. In fact, last month, he was named 2010 Green Governor of the Year by the Beautiful Earth Group and Opportunity Green.

When accepting the award, Governor Schwarzenegger said, "California is showing the world that you can protect the environment and grow the economy at the same time. We are creating a new economic foundation for the 21st Century built on clean fuel, clean energy and clean cars that is turning California into the green capital of the nation and the world, and I couldn't be more proud of these accomplishments.”

Despite the California greening, the BBC reported today that Shcwarzenegger’s “political star has faded” since he came into the scene with approvals hovering in the 20 percentile range (rather close to Davis’ when he was in such hot water in 2003). But, whether you think the Schawarzenegger was a driving force for energy change or was stagnated by other issues no longer matters, really, except in terms of his legacy. Today, he hands over the state driver’s seat to Democrat Jerry Brown, a former governor who first served from 1975 to 1983.

While it is likely that Brown will continue down Arnie’s greening power path (the environment and clean energy jobs were a part of his eight-point campaign platform), one thing’s for certain, though: The official reign of the Governator is over.

No word on whether Brown will have as fabulous a nickname as Arnie. Granted, in Brown's first round as governor, he was called "Governor Moonbeam" by one journalist for his liberal policies. Somehow, that just doesn't compare. In the nickname arena, the Governator may always remain supreme.

The electric joys of Christmas

2010-12-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

What if, on the first day of Christmas, your true love gave to you the joy of uninterruptable power service? Wouldn’t that be the greatest gift ever? A Christmas miracle?

Granted, uninterruptable power service isn’t possible. I know that. Although, to be fair, utilities do a darn good job of making an outage a truly rare thing. They can’t really control Mother Nature, but they give it the good ol’ college try. I can say, actually, that I haven’t had any noticeable outages this year---maybe a flicker during a storm. But, everything came right back on quickly, including during the long ice storm in February where I spent a good hour whacking giant icicles off my house with a shovel. (It looked like my front porch had a scary mouth full of pointy monster teeth.)

Sadly, though, uninterruptable power wasn’t always the case at my abode.

As I finished wrapping my piles of Christmas presents this year, I was reminded of a time about three years ago, a day when I was running early on Christmas purchases and had just started wrapping when the lights went out. Darkness. Complete. I tried to remember where I stuck the flashlight. Then, there was a flicker of power hope. The TV recovered, then the lights. Then it was off again. Total. I did remember where the flashlight was, finally.

And the power was off for nine days.

A freak ice storm had taken down half of the city. Limbs were everywhere. I spent that night listening to sirens, to limbs fall and to the crackle of transformer explosions. And that night I hoped for a Christmas miracle. It was down near 20 degrees. I was buried under blankets with my clothes (including shoes) still on clinging to the last bits of battery in both my flashlight and cell phone.

And, all I wanted for Christmas was power. Not those awesome Hello Kitty slippers. Not some delicious summer sausage from Hickory Farms. Just power.

I got that wish, finally. In fact, I got it in a rather Scrooge moment. I’d been without power for nine days. After the flashlight went out and I realized the cell phone was near that point as well, I called my father who came and did what daddies do. He rescued me. (His house had power.) I returned to my place over the following weekend and had just gotten good and thoroughly chilled again when I noticed that my neighbors across the street had power.

In fact, they had so much power that they strung Christmas lights into the front yard to show it off. Or, perhaps, to show off their Christmas spirit. But, I wasn’t feeling the Christmas spirit at that moment. I was feeling irked. Their act of Christmas spirit was irksome.

And, I stood in the doorway, wrapped in blankets, contemplating a loud, primal “bah-humbug” and flinging myself across the street to rip down every last shiny strand like a madwoman.

Then, behind me in the dark, I heard the refrigerator kick on. It took a second for me to figure out the significance. When I did, I ran around the house turning on everything that required power: the lights, the televisions, the heater. I was giddy with the power of power. It was, for me, a Christmas miracle. (I even did a little dance. Don’t tell anyone.) There is no gift like the joys of modern life, the comfort of heat and light and those tiny people inside the TV.

So, as I finish wrapping these gifts three years later, I am still thankful of my greatest gift of all: a (mostly) uninterruptable flow of power.

To AEP-PSO: Thank you for a good year of good service. You’ve given me exactly what I want for Christmas.

The zombie apocalypse power primer part 2: Would renewables have made for a happier apocalypse?

2010-12-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

An office friend---doesn’t seem right to call him a mere coworker---and I are both addicted to the AMC zombie series “The Walking Dead.” The finale of the (sadly very short) season aired a couple of weeks ago. Our hearty band of survivors made a break for the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control and, once there, came upon another annoying apocalypse: The power was going out, even in an important spot like the CDC.

Sure, the CDC had back-up power when the first wave of zombies got tangled in distribution lines or gnawed through rural poles looking for tasty woodpeckers and took out part of the local grid. Like all major infrastructure points, they had generators. Big ones. But, two months into this new world, the generators were running out of fuel. There were no back-up options. All the back-up options (those generators) were too temporary to sustain the place for the apparently long-winded zombie overrun.

Even if there were more fuel for the generators, eventually, since fuel was no longer being made, even the last ones would sputter down and shut off. One of the characters comments that the power grid isn’t meant to run without fossil fuels. In fact, he laments, “Fossil fuels? How stupid were we?”

Actually, not that stupid.

Granted, the designers of the power grid didn’t think ahead to impending zombie horde takeover and how that would impact the system, but, sadly, even if today’s grid were run on wind energy, at some point a character in that story would have to comment, “Wind energy? How stupid were we?”

Because, it’s not about the fuel; it’s about the path.

The fact remains that the problem with our grid (were there to be a disastrous apocalypse of pretty much any type) is the system. It’s interconnected. It’s complicated. It’s tied from big generators (whether they are coal, natural gas, nukes or large wind farms) to end-users in a long stream of transmission lines, substations, ties, distribution lines, step-down transformers and meters---all of which are vulnerable and require oversight. Even if the fuel at the beginning of this chain were of a green variety, the way to plan ahead for power to aide a small band of survivors is not to change the fuel, it’s to also change the system. And that can’t really be done.

If you need to plan for small pockets of power to run individually, you have to island yourself, you have to isolate (either an area or a home) and figure out how to be your own system from fuel to use---the whole power cycle. You’d have to have renewables connected to your house (solar panels, wind turbines) and be able to use the flow directly. (And, of course, you’d have to have those renewables manufactured and installed pre-zombies, I’d imagine.)

In reality (and not on cable tv), it’s not practical to plan for the apocalypse. Instead, we plan for the most efficient system for the time (and for short outages when they happen). And, at the time the power grid was established, it was the most practical, pragmatic system. It got put together in bits and pieces, interconnected where it could be and improved willy-nilly. It grew rather naturally. And it evolved into a behemoth that, yes, would not be manageable after a zombie apocalypse.

But, now we have this system and, fortunately or unfortunately, it will be easier to work with it to accomplish small changes (like a shift from fossils to renewables on the fuel input end of things) rather than scrap it for expensive individual islanding---even if that might help us in a possible REM “end of the world as we know it” scenario.

Even if we did island our house or our neighborhood with renewables, the only one you might be able to reproduce once the original equipment manufacturers (OEMS) are all dead and buried is a rough wind turbine or hydro wheel (if you're an engineer). It won’t be possible to replace that solar panel eventually broken in the zombie outbreak of 2024. And, so, we’d be stuck in the same boat as the characters in “The Walking Dead” finale---only we might be lamenting the lack of OEMS instead of our reliance on fossil fuels.

After all, we can’t put planning for a far-off “maybe” ahead of what works best at the moment. The zombies may come, but we in the power industry won’t be planning ahead for that specifically. Sorry hearty band of future survivors.

Secretary Chu, Sputnik moments, growing up a little, and memories of the Fonz

2010-12-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

In late November, Secretary Chu addressed the National Press Club and told Americans that we are immersed in a “Sputnik moment.”

What does that mean? Quite simply, Chu’s saying that we are chasing China and other nations in the area of clean technology and that this chase should clue us in that we need to buckle down and regain our technology foothold. It’s a wake up or shut up moment.

But, I don’t agree that we are in a fight-or-flight spot, a do-or-die situation. Instead, it feels more like a “jump the shark” moment to me.

To explain Chu’s scientific Sputnik reference let’s go back a generation to 1957 when Russia sent the sleeping giant of America a big ol’ wake up or shut up moment by launching the first Earth-orbiting, manmade satellite. U.S. citizens who saw America as the tech powerhouse in those post-war glory days were forced to alter those visions when it became obvious to the entire world that the Russians were ahead in this game. It was hard to ignore the shiny metal sphere circling the world. So, Sputnik 1’s launch created the space race and solidified the USSR as our biggest Cold War opponent. We took that as a call to a figurative tech war, and we met that call.

Now, Chu is telling us China’s our newest opponent, that it and other leaps-ahead clean and green industrial countries will be on the opposite side of what might be termed a “green war.”

“When it comes to innovation, Americans don't take a back seat to anyone---and we certainly won't start now," said Secretary Chu to the National Press Club. "From wind power to nuclear reactors to high speed rail, China and other countries are moving aggressively to capture the lead. Given that challenge, and given the enormous economic opportunities in clean energy, it's time for America to do what we do best: innovate. As President Obama has said, we should not, cannot, and will not play for second place."

I think Secretary Chu was being conservative when he told us we’re in a “Sputnik moment.” In the area of energy, Chu specifically pointed out China’s leaps in high voltage transmission, advanced coal tech, nuclear power and renewables. In his Sputnik moment world, we just need to try a little harder, and we’ll be back on top again.

Looking at all those clean tech issues and other countries’ (like numerous EU member states) pilot projects and funding, personally, I think, in the areas of green tech, we’re getting closer to a “jump the shark” moment.

To explain my “jump the shark” reference, think about the Fonz and all those good memories you had watching that classic TV favorite Happy Days. It was great family entertainment and often thoughtful and well written. But, all good things wind down if they don’t innovate and change. And, rather than innovating and changing, the Fonz (and Happy Days) chose a storyline where Henry Winkler’s leather-jacketed character (still in his leather jacket but also sporting board shorts) climbed onto water skis and literally jumped a shark to prove his manliness.

I’m not sure it really proved the Fonz’s manliness, if that was ever in question, but it did prove to many viewers that Happy Days really had nothing left to offer in terms of storylines and was headed downhill. And so “jumping the shark” became a familiar Hollywood idiom for TV shows that have lasted past their prime.

Has the concept of an American tech powerhouse also “jumped the shark”? Have we lasted past our “we’re number 1” prime? For years, countries that we have traditionally seen as “behind” in tech areas have assessed their situation, made changes and suddenly taken leaps ahead of us in niche areas. (Think of India’s large-and-in-charge acceptance of IEC 61850 as one example specific to our industry.)

I understand Chu’s desire to push the American button of competitiveness to re-energize the tech community, but I think it’s misguided and off the mark. There’s a lot of good work being done across the U.S. in clean tech areas. I doubt that what’s lacking here is really the technology itself or the thought leadership. It could, more specifically, be regulatory issues---lack of economic incentives, an inability to get states to work together on larger goals, issues with private and public access, the red tape.

So, standing up and declaring that we’re having a “Sputnik moment” to inspire us to get behind the development of better technology is an odd concept when that technology is already at hand (if not here, than in Germany or even, yes, China). Let’s accept that we’ve “jumped the shark” on being the number one worldwide techhead forever and ever and think more about the best way to move forward. Let’s think about collaboration and cooperation and less about, well, in a nutshell, proving our American “manliness” in the technology arena.

Let’s accept that we've jumped the shark, that we're no long numero uno. Even the Fonz’s Henry Winkler moved on eventually, expanding into production and directing his own shows, growing up a little and worrying less about that leather-jacketed image.

And let’s not start a green war where we work to come out on top again and line up opponents to knock down (or jump over or leap past) in an effort to make us shinier and newer with a $6 million makeover. Instead, can we all say, “You know what, winning isn’t the issue. And, we don’t need to ignite another 50-year international juggernaut.”

Instead, can we be adults about this and give China a quick phone call? Can we sit down for coffee with President Hu Jintao and ask the big questions, “How are those high voltage projects going? What advice would you have for us to implement similar changes?”

In other words, can we move this more global team forward together rather than re-establishing competitive lines set to mimic the problematic arc of the American-Russian space race?

It’s OK to have jumped the shark. It’s OK to be out-Sputniked by China. It’s OK to leave old animosities and fears and ethnocentric bubbles behind in the dust with our Cold War history and, instead, move forward to a clean tech future that’s more inclusive.

And, as every good American parent tells his child, it’s really OK to ask for help and a little advice when you need it.

Will there be an Erin Brockovich 2: Back to Hinkley?

2010-12-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

We all saw the original. Julia Roberts even won an Oscar. Now, it seems the story isn’t over.

Original long story short (and basic facts courtesy of the local Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board): California utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG and E) has a compressor station about two miles outside of the small town of Hinkley, California. It’s out in the Mojave Desert, quite a long way from anything (except Hinkey and Barstow, a couple of the handful of bits of civilization out in the flat California heat).

Between 1952 and 1966, PG and E used hexavalent chromium (hex chrome or chromium 6) to fight corrosion in cooling towers, and the wastewater from those cooling towers was flushed into unlined ponds at the site. Some of the wastewater seeped into the local groundwater, resulting in chromium 6 popping up in local wells. (Hex chrome is a heavy metal and can occur naturally in small amounts, but its major source is industrial waste.)

If you’ve seen the award-winning Steven Soderbergh film, you know there were a lot of illnesses and medical issues in and around Hinkley eventually linked to the chromium 6 pollution through class-action litigation. A $300-million-plus settlement was awarded from PG and E to residents, and the utility promised to contain the “plume” of hexavelent chromium to keep it from spreading.

Unfortunately, earlier this year, the water board found, through testing, that the plume continues to expand despite efforts by the utility to keep it in check, and the board recently asked PG and E to do more to contain the spread and assist the town. In November, PG and E distributed drinking water to residents and, late in the month, proposed buying nearly 100 impacted properties in the area.

PG and E has reiterated that it is committed to cleaning up Hinkley but that such projects take time. It has also noted in articles and releases that some areas recently reported as contaminated are still within the California safe drinking standard.

This Hinkley/PG and E sequel is getting international attention. Yesterday (December 1), London’s Guardian reported that the local water board in the area “ordered” PG and E to reduce the chromium 6 level to 3.1 parts per billion. (The state standard is 50 micrograms per liter maximum contaminant level for drinking water). The newspaper also noted that PG and E’s own study concluded that “natural attenuation”---basically allowing nature to fix it without humans mucking it up too much---could take 1,000 years. (Although, to be fair, that September PG and E feasibility study had a number of different clean-up options; natural attenuation wasn’t the suggested option for clean-up but more of a reference point.) Still, it’s likely that the utility will, indeed, have to roll up their sleeves a bit more and get back their hands back into the Hinkley water supply.

The PR in this situation is tricky. The 2000 flick has “made truth,” to an extent, the dramatized version of this long and complicated (and unfortunate) story. PG and E will always have to contend with being cast as the heavy in this situation, and even proactive action---like the letters to residents offering potential buyouts---will naturally be regarded with suspicion given the cinematic and legal history. But, the alternative---a PR bit of that “natural attenuation” equivalent to, basically, ignoring the stories being created for this new Hinkley sequel---is not possible.

What’s safe and fair in this current chromium 6 situation is best left to the water board, with citizen input, to define. All we, and Pacific Gas and Electric, can do at this point is wait, and listen.

Sometimes really listening---making listening an activity unto itself---is the best place to start.

There was a meeting about this issue last night at the Hinkley elementary school. Everyone from the water board to Brockovich herself was expected to attend. The board and the attendees were set to discuss all the clean-up options PG and E listed in their study.

Cross your fingers that there was active listening on all sides of this issue and that a plan for progress came out of what must have been an emotional, turbulent meeting.

And let’s all hope that a storyline for a dramatic movie sequel isn’t unfolding before us and that, instead, it will be a boring and quiet little tale of a community and a utility actively working together to get a small, proud California town back to normal as quickly as possible.

An electric second coming: EVs put the pedal to the metal

2010-11-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

Electric vehicles (EVs) fascinate me---not really because of the science behind them, but because of the politics. After decades of back-burner living, EVs died the first time in the mid 1990s. Now, they’re back from the grave, and, like the zombie hordes so prevalent in pop culture these days, EVs are poised for a massive takeover just all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere and for no single explanation that makes complete sense to me.

Honestly, I’m still not sure how we got here, nor, really, where we’re going.

It wasn’t so long ago that we declared the body---the first body. Director Chris Paine’s documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” just came out a scant four years ago. (Now, it appears, he’s working on a sequel tentatively titled “Revenge of the Electric Car.”)

What happened? No, really. What? This can’t have all been a leftwing, eco-conspiracy to change the way Americans (and some of the rest of the gas-guzzling world) think. Leftwing eco-conspiracies, like all conspiracies through history, simply don’t work. Granted, there may be more concern these days about carbon footprints and climate change among some subsets of Americans, but I just finished reading an article about a reversal in climate change beliefs. (The number of average joes who think climate change is hokum has spiked; the number of scientists who think climate change exists remains a steady “almost all.”)

Given the swing back on eco issues, that can’t be the sole force behind the EV explosion. So, where is this constant push for EVs coming from? Let’s try these options.

1.) That pesky foreign oil litany. We want off it. We don’t like it. It makes us economically and politically nervous. So, pulling massive amounts of American transportation from the great and scary foreign oil (FO) contingent is appealing across a wide range of politics. And, that’s been a great boon for EVs. It’s not just the eco warriors who love electric; it’s also the anti-FO crowd.

2.) Our attempt to shore up Detroit. Yep, for all the irony that exists in the dead car documentary, which focuses quite a bit on the director’s view that General Motors was pushing hard to kill it’s own EV1 (though, to be fair, a number of other car manufacturers had electric vehicles that also kicked the metal bucket), this may have a lot to do with reinventing the automotive wheel and how it can help the American job base.

3.) The assumption of cheap. Electric vehicles are advertised as cheaper (and, if you don’t have to use gasoline, you are certainly saving that cost). But, a true comparison of fuel costs per car vs. fuel costs through the power plant remains to be seen. However, cheap sells. Americans love cheap. (I know I do.) And, the idea of saving money will get many people to pay up front.

And the popularity of EVs continues unabated. Today, Southern California Edison (SCE) joined the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA) in launching www.GoElectricDrive.com, a website to inform consumers about all the crazy details of buying and owning an electric car. (I found the video on how to charge your car especially informative, personally.)

At www.GoElectricDrive.com, you can calculate savings (see #3 above), find incentives (also #3 above) and learn about environmental benefits (see previously discussed eco-conspiracy). No real references to my #1 and #2 hypotheses though.

“Southern California’s expected to be one of the first and potentially one of the largest markets for plug-in electric vehicles in the country,” said Pedro Pizarro, executive vice president, power operations for SCE with this website launch. “SCE is committed to assisting customers as they select a plug-in electric vehicle. It’s important to understand the process of getting ready, from selecting a rate and charging options to understanding what individual households need to do to get plug-in ready.”

But, how many customers will be jumping on the EV bandwagon? Is this website prudent planning or just publicity?

In the end, to quote Sebastian Junger for the billionth time, all this EV hulabaloo may have been a simple meeting of the minds, a melding of right times and right beliefs---a perfect storm. But, whatever the political and economic meteorology that began pushing EVs on this massive overthrow path, it’s going to be even more interesting to watch what happens. And, we’ll probably be able to judge it by the title of Paine’s third EV docudrama---be it of a “return of” or a “death of” variety.

Now I’m going to go play a bit more on www.GoElectricDrive.com.

Prowl power products in San Diego

2010-11-15T07:03:00.001-08:00

If you work in this industry, you’ll probably well aware of DistribuTECH, one of the largest annual power grid and automation conferences in America, but did you know that DistribuTECH has a fun and precious littler brother in the Utility Products Conference and Exposition (UPCE)?

DistribuTECH may help you with your industry homework, but UPCE is waiting to show you the fun side of power products. It’s more hands on, less official. And, best of all, you probably can touch all the exhibits, even if that voice in the back of your head that sounds just like your mom tells you not to.

UPCE will be conveniently located in the same spot as DistribuTECH in February 2011---beautiful, sunny and warm San Diego. In fact, UPCE will be in the same building, the San Diego Convention Center, located waterside and adjacent to the fun and funky Gaslamp Quarter.

And, UPCE expands outside the typical power products area to include exhibits on: safety products, tools, repair, testing, fiber optics and cable, vehicles, monitoring, installation, cabinets, computers and other toys and spoils any lineman or utility worker would crave. Additionally, I hear we’re giving away an Artic Cat Prowler on the exhibit floor.

Off the floor, there is, like DistribuTECH, a conference side of things, though UPCE is more hands-on and less engineering “big picture”-oriented. You can hear about utility pole solutions, grounding practices and workforce automation, as well as getting that pesky transformer certification you always wanted.

So, come see UPCE in San Diego this February 1-3. We’ll take you on a personalized, hands-on tour of all the work tools that will make you drool. And, you can check us out online at www.utilityproductsexpo.com.

Update on the power race: Europe leaves us in the dust

2010-11-10T09:12:00.000-08:00

A little less than 400 years ago, the pilgrims hopped on the Mayflower and left England in the nautical rearview mirror for a number of reasons, not the least of which was a lack of progressive thought (especially in the areas of religious freedom). Now, it seems that England, and Europe as a whole, have lapped us in some areas of progressive thought, including energy.

Yesterday, European Union Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger stunned a lot of the EU community by not getting more conservative or free-market in his planning (as the U.S. did in last week’s elections). Instead, despite media speculation that he would follow the flow of fellow German and home country Chancellor Angela Merkel, he set out a huge five-point, trillion-euro agenda to make energy in Europe (gas and power included) one big happy family by the much-chatted-about 2020 deadline.

So, while the U.S. will be gridlocked on energy policy with a Democratic Senate and a Republican House and little-to-no elbow room in sight, the EU plans to sweeten the financial incentives for energy efficiency; create an EU-wide market with upgraded, interconnected infrastructures; direct energy policy from the top down (rather than by country); expand technology in multiple areas (including the “smart city” concepts) and push for consumer options on price comparisons, supplier changes and billing.

Along with those smaller goals are the overarching plans of the 2020 strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent, increase the share of renewable energy to 20 percent and make a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency all by the year 2020.

By the year 2020 here in the U.S. we might have come to some final “yea” or “nay” decision on cap and trade. Maybe. But, I’m not going to hold my breath.

A lot of this indecision in the U.S., I realize, is due to a strong states-rights mentality that makes it hard to get all 50 states on board for anything, really. But, there are 27 member states of the European Union. And, while called “member states,” those are separate countries, with separate cultures, governments and, heck, even languages. Yet, they seem to work better for a common energy cause than we do under the umbrella of a single federal government.

Granted, the European goals may not be reached by 2020. That’s only a decade off. But, it’s vexing that they can get their people to at least agree on the concepts, the need and the planning---to at least “think” the energy forward. Getting even a pow-wow to plan for energy here in the U.S. seems improbable; getting a plan together for sold changes in the next decade appears nearly impossible at this point.

I hope that the U.S. can catch up to Europe in terms of power policy. It’s 1620 no more, and, at the official 400-year Mayflower landing mark (2020), Europe may have made advances we can’t possibly touch with energy efficiency, infrastructure, investment and, yes, the smart grid.

Midterm elections, treehuggers and regression-to-mean changes in energy policy

2010-11-04T07:24:00.000-07:00

The word around industrial and political blog-land is that it was not a happy election week for energy treehuggers. There’s a great regression-to-mean at work, a return to the traditional senses of energy and policy. With a large change from a global warming-sure blue sea to a global warming-unsure red current, the tide in the political world has shifted away from carbon-lessening, renewable-positive energy to a more traditional fossil fuel approach, with a few exceptions here and there.

Not an exception: cap and trade. It’s dead, for awhile at least. Perhaps we should say it’s comatose instead. We can’t completely call it. But, it’s not bound to awaken like an electric sleeping beauty in the next two years. Just recently, Congress was having one heck of a time attempting to pass a climate change bill in an overwhelming Democratic government. Now that Congress is split between a Democratic Senate and a Republican House, it’s certainly not getting any easier. As the Washington Independent was reporting on Nov. 3, “at least 12 freshman Democrats who voted for the cap-and-trade bill lost their re-election bids.” And, according to Politico, the total number of Dems who voted for the Waxman-Markey House climate bill who lost seats in this election cycle tops 30---“swept away on Tuesday’s anti-incumbent wave” was their exact wording. So, pretty much that’s a mean, green snoozer who will be snoring for awhile, much to the dismay of environmentalists (and to the relief of many climate skeptics, though I admit to you that I am not one of those; I may be from Oklahoma, but I am no Tom Coburn).

Overall, except for the bright spot of a “no” to Prop. 23 in Cali (a ballot measure to suspend AB 32, the state's climate change law) there wasn’t a lot for motivated treehuggers with a fear of global warming to cling to after Tuesday in the area of energy policy. However, nearly 30 states already have renewable energy portfolio standards. So, there’s that for those treehuggers, I guess. Unless there’s a lot of work to reverse RFPs, those will remain. Still, don’t expect that number to grow until election year 2012, and perhaps not even then if our return-to-mean is entrenched.

If environmental issues do remain on the political plate, look for less of a push with wind and solar power and more “middle ground” environmental energies like nuclear power or even carbon capture to resurge. (The one power plus both sides seem to agree on, sometimes, is hydro. So, that may be neutral territory to start from.)

Incentives for renewable projects and green buildings are expected to dwindle, though programs that push both a healthy environment and a healthy consumer wallet (like winterizing and efficiency) may survive.

Electric vehicles, which also bring in that wallet factor in terms of jobs and potential return for still-hurting car companies are thought to be the real bright spot with this election. It is believed that EVs will remain a positive power push, even for a Republican House.

In the end, though, the burning question may be: What happens to the smart grid? Obama has made it his big player energy push with attention, action, and, most importantly, cash. A number of SGIG projects are in production, so to speak. And, it’s quite likely that, at least for a few months to a year or so, the smart grid momentum will keep rolling; with the funding in hand, some of those projects just have to rely on the gravity of completion. But, with no more stimulus cash floating in on that red tide, can the smart grid still come together?

It waits to be seen if our disappointed treehuggers will also be shedding a few tears for the smart grid in the future.

A zombie apocalypse power primer

2010-11-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

Last night was Halloween, one of my favorite holidays of the year. So, I did one of my favorite things: I watched classic moaning, groaning undead flicks, including the new “zombie western” on AMC. Zombies are my favorite of all horror creatures: They are frightening monsters but with a visual reminder of the humanity that once existed. I love the groupthink hunger horde that zombies represent---zombies are, essentially, the primal id selves we all fear we might become some day in the absence of our dull civilizing network of bank ATMs, cable TV and On the Border restaurants.

But, as someone in the power business, I’m often fascinated at what the remaining non-zombie survivors have to work with once the power grid goes out. Sometimes it’s accurate (the AMC show worked hard for that, even adding odd exposition to explain why the water was hot and ran here at the police station but not there at the house), but a lot of times there are major gaps in the power reality of a zombie movie, leading me to believe that most Americans don’t understand just how pervasive power is in their lives.

Personally, in case of a zombie apocalypse, I’d be more worried about lack of power than the power of a deadly undead bite.

Power isn’t just the reason your TV flickers and the lights go on. Power pushes through things you’ve never thought of, really----like pumps that allow you to have running water and gas to flow from a station’s underground reservoir.

One of my favorite newer zombie flicks is “Zombieland,” but, I admit that I was a bit of a heckler on my first viewing in the theater when our hero fills up at a gas station 3 weeks after the great epidemic. Without power, there’s no pumping of gas. Period. If we all lived in 1920 when the pumps still relied on customer (or, more likely, attendant) manpower, our hero might have had a shot, but manual gas pumps are a relic of the past. We’ve made them electronic, like the rest of the world.

So, when the zombies attack, remember: Fill up first. Because, when they get enough people to join the scary zombie cult and no one is left to man power stations, you’ve only got the gas in your car to work with. (But, take heart, the survivors in EV cars will be dead before you are.)

Now, let’s talk water. Many water utility lift stations (or pump stations) will have back-up generators, and your hot water heater will have 40-50 gallons, sometimes, of water still in the system. This will give you some time to hunker down if the zombie hordes are roaming the streets. But, alas, those stations aren’t meant to operate long-term without power. So, eventually, when the generators run out of fuel, your sewer system stops working. And, when the clean reservoirs at your local water treatment plant go dry and no more can be lifted into the system, your water stops running (even gravity systems don’t work if there’s no water to pull from).

But, it’s true, you’ll have water longest. Remember that. Long after lights, TV, cable, Internet, your cell phone (once it runs out of power, you’re out of talk time permanently), you will have water. Just don’t forget to boil it first before drinking. (Here’s hoping you remember how to build a fire from your Girl Scout/Boy Scout days.)

Finally, yes, generators will be a godsend in the zombie apocalypse. But, remember, they are only temporary. You run out of fuel, and you run out of power. Without the massive oil industry to produce more (and without electronic pumps to lift it from the station’s underground holding tank, as mentioned earlier with “Zombieland”), there are only so many abandoned cars, tractors and motor homes you can scavenge for leftovers. Eventually, without fuel production, there will be no power.

In the end, watching a small band of survivors take on the zombie hordes and deal with the newfound inconveniences of a powerless world, I have to admit that my great affection for power grows two sizes with each viewing. Power is a marvelous thing, and I hope we can avoid the zombie apocalypse that would put a significant dent into my delightfully pampered lifestyle.

But, it might not hurt to buy a generator and stock up on fuel just in case. I want that pampered power lifestyle for as long as humanly possible.

Will consumers ever want to hug the stuffing out of the smart grid?

2010-10-21T09:12:00.001-07:00

Like most people around the world, I find myself still thinking about those Chilean miners, more than a week after the rescue seen around the world.

I was at home in bed watching a live video feed as the capsule carrying the first rescue worker reached the bottom of the mine. The miners couldn’t wait to touch him, to hug him, to reach out to him, and the worker was visibly emotionally touched by their physical reactions to him.

It was an almost child-like reaction those miners had, wanting to make sure the rescue worker was real. It’s the same reaction we have when we’re confronted with something or someone that seems mythical. We want to touch it, to touch her. We want to see if it’s imaginary, and, when it is proven real, we want to embrace it and, as my mother would say, “just hug the stuffing out of it” because we’re so happy it exists.

I thought the miners were going to hug the stuffing out of that poor rescue worker, but, I honestly don’t think he would have minded. That moment where myth became flesh was too amazing to worry about one’s stuffing, really.

In the end, mythology was trumped by reality---after two months of those miners thinking the outside world atop their heads was unreachable, unthinkable, mythological, it became real again.

Mythology is a part of all human culture. We tell stories of great feats, and, if we can’t explain them scientifically, or if we have a large emotional reaction that such things can’t be reality, we tend to bloom them into myths.

The smart grid is no exception. It has its own mythology, especially to the average electric consumer hearing all sorts of horror stories about higher bills and problematic smart meters. The real issue with mythology is that it does not always feed on fact. It can feed equally on emotions, whether positive ones like the hope those miners had of returning to the surface, or negative ones like turmoil, chaos and fear.

With customers today, the smart grid mythology is a negative one and is, unfortunately, based on fear---fear of the unknown. While, as an industry, we seem collectively flabbergasted at the large number of negative stories on the smart grid that have been published in recent months, we have to realize the emotional distance between those of us “in the know” with smart grid technology and all those customers still in the dark.

We are on the surface, and, figuratively, those customers are in a mine, and what exists between the two camps are layers and layers of sedimentary mythology that we must, as an industry, find a way to drill through if we’re going to get those customers to see the smart grid in a positive light.

They need to see it, touch it, find out that it’s real and positive, but we can’t accomplish that by simply telling them it’s positive. You can’t pop a solid myth with pretty words. Unfortunately, mythology is a bit harder to fight and, once established, is much tougher to disperse. We have to accept that negative mythology, whether or not it is based on fact, has been established with customers and the smart grid. And, we have to stop griping about how the average customer just doesn’t understand. You’re right. They don’t.

But, if we don’t find a way to break through that rock-hard mythology, we may find that even the smart grid itself, every digital bit and byte and every physical meter, may fade from fact into mythology, as well. The question is: How do we show the positive truth of the smart grid to the average customer so that they want to just hug the stuffing out of it?

Lineman's Rodeo hits KC

2010-10-14T12:46:00.001-07:00

I made a joke to my coworkers that, this weekend, I'm traveling in the beaten track of Wilbert Harrison---going to Kansas City, here I come. Sadly, even with my slightly off-key singing, few people get that joke anymore.

This weekend, Kansas City is host to the International Lineman's Rodeo. Well, more specifically, the rodeo plops down in Overland Park, a suburb of KC.

This is the 27th annual lineman's rodeo, and the 2010 version is packed with an exhibit floor and the rodeo events themselves, which happen on Saturday in Bonner Springs, Kansas, another suburb of KC. Everything's in the 'burbs these days.

Kansas City Power and Light along with Westar Energy are the host utilities for this well-attended event attracting the best of the best in lineman from across the country and around the world. The rodeo on Saturday pits utility teams against one another in a number of traditional lineman tasks from pole climbing to hurt man rescue. There are also a number of surprise "mystery events," where the teams don't know what they will be tested on until they get on site. (Last year, one of the mystery events was replacing a lightening arrestor. Southern California Edison won that event.)

The first Lineman's Rodeo was held in September 1984 with twelve participating teams from Kansas and Missouri. This year, there are teams from Canada, Hawaii and even Brazil, according to the show's registration people (whom I chatted with a bit earlier today). While the exposition that comes into play today and tomorrow before the rodeo is quite a draw (especially for free t-shirts), it's clear that the real excitement is yet to come---at the Saturday rodeo. When even your registration staff is excited, you know you have something special in hand.

The expo at the Overland Park Convention Center over the next two days features a number of exhibitors from Aircraft Dynamics to Buckingham Manufacturing Co., from Duratel to our own sister publication Utility Products. (Utility Products is currently neck-and-neck in the running for the best giveaway t-shirt, right up there with Bulwark, which has a line that extends out from its booth and down the aisle. T-shirts really are the thing here at the Lineman's Rodeo.)

Those handy folks at registration told me that, on average, the exhibit floor will take in around 2500 people today and tomorrow before the Saturday rodeo. Additionally, for this year, there are over 150 teams registered for the rodeo itself and around 200 apprentices. (It's a bit down from years past due to the economy, but the Lineman's Rodeo is still a very strong event indeed. That expo floor was packed when I left a few minutes ago, and Utility Products was darn close to running out of t-shirts, as were most exhibitors.)

Are you here at the Lineman's Rodeo? If so, leave me a comment or two about what you're seeing and hearing at the event. Reading this after the event? Tell me your favorite winners and moments at the rodeo.

Fess up, utilities: Smart grid stuffs may not save customer cash

2010-10-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this entry by saying that I believe in the smart grid. I’m a fan. I think we need a smarter, more self-healing, more active, more adaptable energy system. It is, indeed, the wave of the future, the golden child, the technological messiah.

But, nope, it ain’t gonna be cheap.

Last week, I wrote a blog about the California governor signing into law a bill that (sorta) mandates utility targets for energy storage in the state. You can read it here, if you’re interested.

One of the comments I received was from a reader named Jim. He wrote:

Will investment in energy storage lower my energy bill? Of course not. Is this the most effective way to reduce green house gases? Not by a long shot. The virtue of this plan is that everyone gets to subsidize those who will make a lot money from it.

To be completely honest here, Jim is absolutely right. Is energy storage specifically (and smart grid or renewables generally) going to automatically start Jim’s electric bill on the path to negative numbers? Is the power company going to, eventually, have to pay him? Probably not unless he has own wind turbine or solar panels, and, even then, such technologies would cost him a lot up front for purchase and installation.

And, sure, energy storage is not the most direct way to reduce greenhouse gases produced by the power industry. The most direct way would be to just shut down fossil fuel plants---at least the most direct within our industry. But, we can’t do that. So, we have to look for some outside options that may be more than the mathematically logical straight line between two points. Sometimes, it takes a cloud of dots to clear the air.

And, in the end, will people make money off this stuff? Yes, they will. For AB2514 (that energy storage bill), the companies that make the equipment will make money. For the smart grid, yes, the companies that have those smarter technologies and can sell them will make money. That’s the way capitalism---fortunately or unfortunately---works. Those companies wouldn’t be in business if they didn’t have a profit margin.

And, in the end, the same has to be said for your utility. While they are highly regulated and while they don’t really get the free reign of capitalism that, say, Wal-Mart does, they are still a company and still trying to make a bit of money---while providing a valuable, important service. Whether or not such a service should be socialized, privatized, deregulated or regulated is another argument really. Here, we’re talking about what is.

And, in the land of “what is,” here are the facts:
(1) Smart grid technology costs money.
(2) Utilities can only take on so much of the up-front costs of smart grid before passing it on to consumers.
(3) We also need to seriously upgrade infrastructure for those smart grid technologies, and that, too, costs money.

So, yes, Jim is totally right. Why can’t we, as an industry, admit that? We often market the smart grid as a way to save the consumer cash, but, let’s be honest, that’s not always true. And, to so do, the consumer would have to be willingly involved---checking energy consumption, adjusting their use, understanding rate changes.

In the end, can we set aside the idea of selling the smart grid, renewable adoption and upgraded power technology as a saver of nickels and dimes and dollars? Instead, can we be more direct and say, “The smart grid is good for the individual, good for the marketplace and good for the country.”

As Martha Stewart coined, the smart grid is a “good thing.” It will allow for more renewables. It will give better information on power use, outages and issues. It will add technological options to the grid. And, sure, if you’re super dedicated to your in-home energy management unit and are willing to invest time (and perhaps cash if you had to buy and install that unit), the smart grid could save you money.

It could, but we’ll still need to pay for upgrades, research, investment and pilot programs before that happens. And, while a lot of that cost is being shouldered by utility companies, it is more than true that the average consumer is not going to see a financial benefit to the smart grid in the near future. They may get smarter, more reliable, higher quality energy. And, they may, in a few years, get to help with that greenhouse gas reduction, but it’s time to market the smart grid with it’s definite positives and let go of the idea that the average consumer can only be swayed to join the smart grid fan base if we talk about cash.

Let’s talk about change, about a smarter future. Let’s talk about cleaner energy and fewer outages. Let’s talk about more understanding with energy use and energy production. But, let’s stop talking about the almighty dollar. It’s just clouding an issue that should be about positive and necessary change and not about cost savings.

Governator to utilities: Invest in energy storage … maybe

2010-09-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB2514 into official law this week, and it may change the face of the entire power industry if the details of that law spread to other regions in the U.S.

What makes this law so unique? It gets very close to mandating that utilities invest in energy storage systems to make connecting renewable power easier.

AB2514 requires that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) “open a proceeding” by March 1, 2012 to discuss potential investor-owned utility (IOU) energy storage targets with a two-fold deadline---one set of targets achieved by December 31, 2015, and the second set by December 31, 2020.

There would be a similar set of requirements for public utilities, along with a plan for significant demand response activity.

"Energy storage improves the overall efficiency of our electric power system which will lower costs for consumers," said Assembly Member Nancy Skinner when the bill passed in June. "The Assembly's passage of AB 2514 is another step that advances California's clean energy economy and represents a great economic opportunity for the State."

"We applaud the Assembly's passage of this essential legislation, as well as Chairman Skinner and Attorney General Brown's leadership and commitment to moving it forward," said Janice Lin, Director of the California Energy Storage Alliance at the time of the bill’s passing. "This landmark bill puts California at the forefront of a growing global market that will spur economic development. Given major advances in energy storage, the industry is now ready to provide affordable, reliable products for California's utilities and consumers."

“California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just signed AB2514, an energy storage bill, into law this evening,” wrote Silent Power CEO Todd Headlee on the company’s blog. “The passage of this bill is a major step forward for reliable, clean and lower cost electric power for all Californians. Electricity storage will enable more clean, local renewable wind and solar power supported by clean storage. With storage, Californians will have clean power when and where they need it and with less need for new transmission lines.” (Silent Power, Inc. manufactures and markets distributed energy storage systems.)

CALMAC Corp., a company that manufactures energy storage equipment, released a statement after the signing by CEO Mark MacCracken.

“Energy storage is an excellent solution for making renewable energy sources more economically viable,” said MacCracken. “Energy storage is critical as we move toward the use of renewable resources and Energy Storage Bill AB 2514 is a step in the right direction for the future of our country’s energy needs. I commend the leaders in California that realized that solving our energy problems is not as simple as just putting solar on roofs and wind turbines on mountains, since solar and wind cannot be counted on to be there when you need them. I hope other states follow California’s lead.”

If the CPUC decides to create extensive energy storage targets, this bill could be a sign of things to come with other states in the area of renewable interconnections, but, of course, there is always the loophole: AB2514 only requires that the CPUC discuss the matter and set targets. There is no guarantee what those targets might be. And, in fact, they may decide that no targets are needed at all, to stick with the status quo.

But, AB2514 is certainly a promising start for the renewables camp to get a stronger foothold in the door of traditional energy. And, they are using the biggest stick they can find: the government.

Meditations on solar max, Max Headroom and naughty little business case genies

2010-09-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

Ralph Abbott is a hoot to talk to. I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered him at an industry conference. (He’ll be hanging out in the RW Beck booth chatting up passersby and handing out his business cards which proudly declare him the founder of Plexus Research.) If you do run into him, though, ask him about the three risks.

It’s like three wishes, only negative---from a potentially quite naughty little genie.

Not that Ralph is a negative guy. He’s certainly not. As noted, he’s a hoot. But, he does have three specific concerns about smart grid and communications. And they are quite valid.

His first concern: What about the sun, man?

I know. Seems like a hippie liberal issue, but it’s not, my friend. The sun impacts all. What he’s getting at is solar max. Solar max isn’t an ‘80s icon you don’t remember well because you’re still fondly recalling Max Headroom. No, in fact, solar max is short for solar maximum. It’s a measurement of solar variation. It’s about sun spots and, while it still sounds odd, that does impact things here on Earth like weather, surface magnetism and radiation.

What’s the bottomline here with solar max? Well, it impacts something much more directly than weather here: It can create odd havoc with communications. The scientific explanation involves refraction and ionized solar photons. But, the basics are: It gets all wiggy with radio frequency (RF).

Ralph noted that solar max is on a 17-year cycle with experts expecting it to peak between 2012 and 2014, which could cause issues with utilities’ RF use. Ralph’s question to the industry echoes more Dirty Harry than Max Headroom though: Are we feeling lucky?

In other words, are we just going to ignore solar max and hope it doesn’t cause massive issues, or does someone, somewhere have a plan?

I know. That’s only one risk and already you’re a bit concerned. Try to maintain your calmness.

His second concern: GPS.

Okay, not all of GPS. Not your Mr. T-speaking TomTom alight on your car dashboard that gets you to the Kenny Rogers concert without getting lost on Oklahoma’s unlit, unmanned and unsigned back highways. That’s not the GPS Ralph is concerned with. He’s more concerned with GPS satellite timing signals, which would keep all your smart grid equipment on the same reliable beat, you might say.

But, as Ralph pointed out, GPS can be easily jammed with about $200 worth of over-the-counter parts and an ability to get within 150 feet of the equipment. So, like his concerns over solar max, he has some questions, like: What’s the risk of GPS jamming to utility operations? What’s the threat level, really, and what counter measures are we taking?

Hopefully, you’re not panicked yet. We’re on to risk number three, and, luckily, this risk doesn’t really make us fear the minor jammer or the almighty sun. Instead, this final risk revolves entirely around the almighty dollar.

His third concern: The business case for AMI.

How many articles have we all read---and, also, have I written---on proving a business case for AMI? I’ll estimate it topping Super Bowl ticket receipts from last year. Seems like millions, doesn’t it? But, Ralph wants to know if they are really getting to the heart of one specific area: using demand response as the ‘sweet spot” to get to goal on operational savings.

See, demand response is rather an amorphous term. It’s here. It’s there. It can mean different things to different folks (rather like the term “smart grid,” really).

Let’s say you need to prove your AMI business case and you know a few savvy facts. You know that five percent of your consumers will change their power use according to demand response ideals if you just tell them all about it, if you just give them good info. They are really that darn motivated.

But, you also know that if those consumers had in-home gadgets that let them visually see the information in real-time, that number would jump to 15 percent. So, you pencil in that number in your AMI business case, cuz that’s a delightful number, really. Helps all those other numbers look better. But, are you figuring in costs of those in-home devices, or are you saying to yourself, “Self, those consumers are gonna be just fine going to Radio Shack or some other fine establishment and buying their own devices and installing those devices themselves.”

This leaves the pay out for that in-home device in the pocket of the consumer, which is lovely for that AMI business case but perhaps not so practical in the real world. Because will that person really be excited about taking time out of their day and going down to the Shack and picking up that purchase and then going home and installing that thingamajig? And who do they call if the thingamajig doesn’t light up with all the bells and whistles the consumer expects?

One response Ralph got when he asked around about that question to a few utilities, “I don’t know who they call, but it ain’t us.”

So, if it ain’t us, who is it? And is this a magical view of consumers where they are all tech savvy, gung-ho and willing to pay for demand response benefits up front? What if that magical view is woefully inaccurate? How will taking on consumer-side technology, questions, installations, problems and follow-ups impact the business case for AMI?

Those are Ralph’s meditations these days. You’ll be able to read more about them in an upcoming issue of POWERGRID International magazine. If you can’t wait until then, track him down at the nearest conference and ask him to expand on these risks. It may be the most interesting meeting you have at that conference.

More from my Autovation notes: Ben Koch

2010-09-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

Ben Koch, managing director in the corporate finance division of SWS Group, joined Austin Energy’s Mele at Autovation’s opening keynote session at the Austin Convention Center on September13. While he didn’t talk as much about communication as she did (see previous blog on Autovation by clicking here), Koch did mirror the executives at Itron and Cisco and discuss collaboration.

“We’re all on this road to a true end-to-end smart grid together,” he told the audience.

While Koch noted that there have been—and still are—obstacles on the road, the path is getting smoother and the industry is making progress.

“The smart grid has persevered,” Koch said, despite challenging economic conditions, complex integration issues, consumer skepticism, regulatory pressures and evolving standards.

While Koch admitted that financing is still an issue, he pointed to the Obama stimulus money for smart grid as being “on the right path” and noted that third party private investors are stepping up, offering nearly $500 million for smart grid products this year alone.

“On the private side, [companies] believe in smart grid opportunities,” he stated.

In the end, that investor faith in the smart grid was the one idea Koch really hoped every audience member would take away from his speech at Autovation.

“Investors are following [the smart grid] closely. They are willing to put capital to work,” he added.

Koch added that the smart grid market has a number of positives that investors look for, including growing market opportunities (1.3 billion electric meters around the world, for example), unique technology solutions and scalable business models.

While the gray area of emerging-but-not-definitive standards and significant consumer issues still remain, Koch doesn’t see those as impossible mountains to climb.

He said, “There will always be challenges in a market this size, but they will be overcome. It’s a great time to be in the [smart grid] market.”

Live from Autovation: It's all about communication

2010-09-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

It seems the buzz words at Utilimetrics' Autovation conference in Austin this week center around communication: communication in its techy automation form, communication with customers, and communication between vendors.

The communication fest began during the opening keynote this morning. Austin Energy's Cheryl Mele, the COO, talked about the utility's extensive program to exchange those regular old, outdated meters for smarter, sharper ones. And, even with that program, it was all about information distribution.

"One of the most important things we did during this exchange process was communicate."

And communicate they certainly did: flyers, press releases, post cards, door hangers, even a dedicated customer call center to answer all the questions about the meter exchange process.

Communication with customers was also on the minds of David Elve and Matt Zafuto with Sensus when I stopped by their booth on the Autovation exhibit floor today. Elve was discussing the importance of managing customer expectations and Zafuto agreed that being in the customer business is part of being in the automation business these days.

"Utilities don't react with customers very well, and traditionally they haven't had to," Zafuto pointed out. Comparing the current state of smart grid development as the "awkward toddler phase," Elve and Zafuto noted that utilities have the tech available to them, but now they need the technique, the flexibility to change plans as feedback from customers and other partners changes the needs of the smart grid---two-way communication both technologically and socially.

Itron and Cisco discussed the need for partnership communication as they expanded on their original announcement on the partnership subject during a press conference at Autovation.

Philip Mezey, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Itron North America, noted that a lack of trust and problematic scalability has created a push back against current smart grid advances but that he hopes this collaboration between his company and Cisco will announce a new state of affairs in the industry, one of communication and collaboration between vendors.

Paul De Martini, chief technology officer and vice president of strategy for the smart grid business unit at Cisco, added that it is "time for the industry to move out of the embryonic stage and start real deployment," which would include a standards-based approach with better communication and more vendor partnerships. This would allow for "creativity and innovation" in the smart grid marketplace, according to De Martini.

Love's labour's found

2010-09-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost is a comedy about the details of courtly love; it's both a commentary on how much work that love can be and, ironically, how little work that love can be. That's where all that "labour" comes in. Here in America, we drop that extra u and talk about "labor" when it comes to work and the workforce---and one area of the American workforce where labor hasn't been too significantly lost is power.

The production and distribution of power is still a labor-intensive effort from the mining of fuels like coal to the maintenance of equipment like pole-top transformers. Men and women are still steadily and directly in the mix of electricity.

In many vital American industries---logging is a good example---technology has overtaken the labor force. These days, with the right equipment, a single "driver" of a good logging machine can do what used to take a force of strong men weeks to complete.

In power, however, the growth of technology has often meant a growth in workers, rather than a serious cut in workforce. When meters helped separate costs and flow of residences, someone had to be on hand to read those meters. When lines began to be hooked together into grids, someone had to be around to do the connections---and to watch the traffic on those connections.

While it is true that smart meters and smart grid technology may translate into less of a need for meter readers, it remains true that skilled labor will always be an important and vital part of the power equation. Electricity doesn't flow without the right people making it happen. As we all return from a long weekend to celebrate labor in America, that's definitely a positively charged thought to keep in mind: That powerful labor of love is important to America, and the importance of the labor required in that effort should never be forgotten.

CIGRE and the smart grid

2010-08-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

I spent last week in Paris for the CIGRE exposition at a conference center just down the street from the famously triumphant Arc de Triomphe. But, while Napoleon’s victories may still be celebrated in the stone arch of the Arc, I was surprised that CIGRE’s exposition showed few victories for the area of transmission and distribution we all hear so much about---the smart grid.

CIGRE stands for Conseil International des Grands Reseaux Electriques---or, in the not-so-queen’s-English: International Council on Large Electric Systems. Established in 1921, the group is one of the leading organizations on electric power systems, covering their technical, economic, environmental, organizational and regulatory aspects. A non-profit association based in France, CIGRE leans heavily toward transmission and pops up in Paris in exhibition form every two years for a week of complicated sessions.

When I first went to CIGRE two years ago in 2008, they were breaking record attendance numbers at 4400. While my contact hasn’t told me what the numbers were yet for this year, I guarantee you they were large, as always. That’s not surprising. They’re always large. What was surprising was the lack of smart grid focus. (There was more on it two years ago, actually.) No long sessions on the subject, few exhibitors touting it. The show was heavy on hardware and light on the PR of the smart grid. Since smart grid is pretty much all anyone talks about with transmission and distribution these days here in the U.S., color me surprised to show up at a large international conference that chats most about overhead lines, audible noise and transformers---that really is all about the basics of the electric grid.

And, yet, it was not a ghost town. The floor was packed. The sessions were full. And, it got me thinking about rabbits.

Yes, rabbits. Well, one rabbit in particular.

After a long day of sessions at CIGRE, I wandered up to the art district by the Sacre Coeur church. I have a soft spot for that area, a place of poets and artists from the turn of the last century. Down a side street is a cabaret called Au Lapin Agile which has been around, in one form or another, since the time of green fairies and Toulouse-Lautrec. (Latrec used to use the owner as a model for some of his posters). There’s a famous story about this spot, translated into The Nimble Rabbit in English. An early 20th century French novelist so hated modern artists like Picasso, so thought them fluff and garbage and a bunch of hooey, that he tied a paintbrush to the tail of a donkey and showed the finished product as art at a salon, naming it “Sunset over the Adriatic.”

France has always been a place of rather pointed commentary, and, while I actually like Picasso and other cubists that the novelist was attempting to skewer with his donkey canvas, I have to admit that the French ability to preach a novel without saying a single actual word seemed poignant given what I’d encountered that day at the conference center. It crossed over to the CIGRE floor and sessions in my overactive imagination. Was the decided lack of smart grid information, smart grid details and smart grid exhibits at CIGRE a commentary on what the smart grid actually is---or, more pointedly, what it actually is not?

Granted, some of this is because the smart grid, as we know it, has focused almost entirely on the distribution end of the game, but, the fact is, that we need to make this grid intelligent from the meter all the way back to the power plant, and, if transmission isn’t in the equation yet (as CIGRE might show us), we have millions of miles to go before we sleep, to steal a bit from Frost’s little poem, which isn't about rabbits at all.

Vegetation management as vegetation melancholy

2010-08-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I wept over my Japanese maple---ok, not literally. But, it’s a nice opening image, isn’t it? A girl in all black crying over a sweeping, pale tree. Very gothic.

Anyway, here’s the true story: I was outside in the heat doing some yard work and noticed that the 100+ heat wave had scorched part of the left side of my favorite, delicate front yard centerpiece. So, I cursed a bit. Then, I climbed a stepladder and tried to trim off the burnt bits.

Before owning a home, I never understood how attached people can get to plants. Vegetarians don’t eat meat because of a variety of reasons, one of which is a sentimental attachment to animals. There is no word for people who don’t eat plants because of a sentimental attachment to them, but I could, yesterday, fully understand where they might be coming from, if we had a word for that.

I’m reminded of my own recent veggie sentimentality because of PPL. Today, they reached a court-approved agreement with the National Park Service that will allow the utility to trim vegetation around a key power line in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area near Bushkill, Pa. Apparently, there was a dispute about whether the right-of-way had been regularly maintained by PPL and whether or not PPL would need a special permit to go ahead with the VM work. And that dispute got so out-of-hand that there were legalities involved.

All I could think was, “It’s all important, I know---every tree, every shrub, every non-aesthetic trim on an aesthetic view---it’s all vitally important … until the power goes out.”

Sentimental and aesthetic attachments to greenery can actually pose a big, big problem for utilities. A fear that the utility company will “whack” at trees and trample flower beds brings a lot of uncertainty to vegetation management (VM) programs.

And, if the 2003 Northeast blackout taught us anything, it’s that vegetation management is of fundamental importance in the care and feeding of a power grid. Remember that blackout? Terrorist fears and knee-jerk reactions finally aside, it came down to vegetation in a David-and-Goliath tech battle. And, just like in the Good Book, David won. Unfortunately, in that circumstance, the low-tech, tiny adversary isn’t the one we were all rooting for. We were on the Goliath side of the equation---that long, complicated, high-tech grid system.

But Goliath went out like a light, for a day and half. People were stranded. Businesses were closed. It cost the area billions.

Now, the PPL situation in Pennsylvania is not quite so drastic---and actually fairly uncommon. Usually, if there is VM issue, it’s on a private, individual level rather than a public, widespread one. When doing articles on vegetation management and tree programs, utilities always have a gaggle of stories about homeowners unhappy about or afraid of the utility clearing out and cleaning up around power lines and poles. Some of those individuals are doing things they shouldn’t be (like backyard drug labs, rights-of-way cockfighting farms or illegal shooting ranges) and don’t wish to get caught, but most, like me, are just sentimental and attached to how they’ve grown, sculpted and nurtured their vegetation. Sure, that vegetation might be directly underneath a power line---as my fabulous backyard outdoor room is which I love for its palm tree and adorable seating area perfect for a summer afternoon lemonade---but that doesn’t mean I want that power line to take top priority.

Well, I don’t want it to take top priority until my palm, stretching toward the hot summer sun, tangles itself in the power line and causes an outage. Then, I wouldn’t care if they had to burn that palm, along with the seating area, as a sacrifice to the power gods in order to get that precious electricity back on.

So, when faced with vegetation melancholy and sentimentality about VM, I’m going to take the same position I do on vegetarianism in general: I understand the point-of-view. I even have some empathy for the emotional reaction, but, alas, I just can’t subscribe to the philosophy.

In the end, I love my Japanese maple and my backyard baby palm tree, but, in 106-degree Oklahoma Augusts, I love my air conditioner even more. The utility can come trim in my backyard anytime; I’ll even loan them some clippers, if they need some.

Do mere meters define the smart grid future?

2010-08-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

This week, research company Berg Insight predicted that installed smart meters will shoot past the 300-million mark worldwide by 2015. That’s a lot of meters. A whole lot. But, are we circling, here? Smart meters may be the heart of the smart grid, but where is the rest of the infrastructure we were promised? How is it developing? Are we going to get that intelligent overlay all the way up the path to the power plant, or is the concept of smart meters the only bit of fruition in our smart grid dreams?

The smart grid, overall, has had a lot of setbacks here in the U.S. recently: Boulder’s SmartGridCity project is facing serious doubts and extreme cost overruns (not to mention regulatory issues), utilities like Baltimore Gas & Electric have had their smart grid dreams shattered by public utility commissions that don’t share the vision, and many other utilities have significantly scaled back their smart grid plans to reflect growing consumer fears and economic issues.

But, apparently, the meter is just gonna keep on keeping on, keep on beating. It’s going to shed its problematic smart grid outer shell and emerge new and fresh and victorious.

According to Berg, during the next five years, penetration rates for smart metering technology are projected to increase from around 15–20 percent today to nearly 50 percent in Europe and North America, while Asia-Pacific is projected to soar from less than 1 percent to 25 percent by 2015.

Granted, a lot of this is helped by two things (at least in Europe and Asia): state-run utilities (especially in China and Korea) and regulation. While the regulatory bodies here in the U.S. balk, the regulatory bodies in Europe push. As even Berg admits, the key role in this meter overload is government. Even here in the U.S., while we don’t have the EU legislation demanding change, we do have an administration investing in grid technology as part of the stimulus, a suggested path, if not a push. And, the single most proven part of smart grid technology is, indeed, the smart meter.

“Smart metering is now a globally accepted mature mainstream technology,” said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst with Berg Insight and author of the report on this meter influx. “All over the world we can see how IT and telecommunication has transformed the metering industry from a business of mechanical devices and manual labor to an arena for state-of-the-art technology in everything from wireless networking to data warehousing and complex system integration.”

Additionally, Berg Insight believes that a number of places around the world may near the 100% smart meter mark by 2020. While that’s all fine and dandy, it still leaves us to wonder where the rest of the smart grid tin man resides. Smart metering may be the heart he’s seeking, but it seems like the bulk of him is still significantly lost, running behind, forgotten along this yellow brick road to meter penetration.

To worry or not to worry about icky worms

2010-08-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Viruses, worms and Trojans are an unfortunate part of the computerized present—albeit not a pleasant part, which Siemens has been finding out all too personally this summer. But, should we really be all that worried about our smart grid’s cyber security, or are we panicking ourselves unnecessarily?

The Siemens thing: In June, the company discovered it was the specific and directed target of some nasty malware which uses a Microsoft Windows loophole dealing with shortcut files to latch on and download secure information from supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems using a leaked Siemens password. The sticking point, though, is that the worm is rather low-tech (relatively) in its delivery: The computer has to be physically connected to an infected USB stick (although there is also a possibility of it spreading via CDs and file-sharing). If someone views an item from that infected stick, the worm sneaks on out into the system, searching out information to copy.

Named the Stuxnet worm, it seems to be hitting Middle Eastern and Asian countries the most. (Symantec Corp. revealed that over half of the systems impacted were specifically in Iran, but Indonesia and India have also seen a large set of Stuxnet issues, according to one IDG News Service report.)

The worm itself was discovered by an antivirus company in Belarus named VirusBlokAda, which has labeled the worm “very dangerous” and noted that it could lead to a “virus epidemic” on the company website. But, how dangerous is it if I need to connect an infected part and then open something up by hand to create this issue? That doesn’t really sound like a system issue as much as a personnel issue, really.

Right now, according to Siemens spokespersons, the Stuxnet worm has not yet impacted any power generation SCADA system nor any T&D SCADA system.

“To our knowledge, only two industrial systems were affected by this [malware],” a Siemens spokesperson told me, and the fact that power-system SCADA networks weren’t impacted reveals the hearty backbone of those systems, according to Scott Gosnell, CMO with Tatsoft, a developer of software tools, products and services.

“This particular attack shows the strengths of current security technologies and protocols—the worm didn’t come in through a network vulnerability,” he noted.

Industry insiders warn, however, that utilities should not assume they are out of the woods just yet, even if the Stuxnet worm has avoided corrupting power systems this round. It is still spreading, and it won’t be the last threat by far. And, of course, there are other issues recently brought up around smart grid security, including a recent Pike Research report that points to smart meters as “the weakest link in the smart grid security chain” filled to the brim with juicy data that “could be successfully eavesdropped.” (Pike report: Smart Meter Security. Easy to find on their website pikeresearch.com.)

So, what’s a smart grid planner to do? Can he think ahead to the next malware? Can he plug all the security holes? Well, maybe he can’t do it all, but it seems that it is expected that he give it the ol’ college try, really.

“This is not the time to stick your head in the sand and say ‘it can’t happen here,’” said GarrettCom President Frank Madren. “Cyber attacks on industrial control system are happening now and will probably increase.” Madren suggested best practices to prevent damange include a multi-pronged approach of good industry standards, technology and personal, targeted recommendations to fill in holes in a utility’s security program. It’s all about repetition. Never assume that all the holes have been covered. Always go back and check again and again. (In this way, malware is a lot like a zombie horde---always trying to get in a forgotten opening, an unchecked back door, an open window.)

Tatsoft’s Gosnell would add man to Madren’s best practices equation---keep him tech savvy and on top of things, ready for the onslaught.

“This [attack] also demonstrates that operational risks are an inherent part of running these systems,” Gosnell added. “One of your biggest potential problems comes from poor processes and policies at the human level. Maintaining good security hygiene at the human and social level complements good technical hygiene.”

Madren noted that North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) regulations help protect power utility substations from a variety of security issues, including worms like this one. They are incredibly comprehensive and offer a great amount of defense.

“However, no system is completely immune from creative new incursions. Constant vigilance is required,” Madren said.

So, worry? Yes. Panic? Not helpful. Just keep one eye open … and try not to fall asleep and unconsciously let in those zombie malware hordes.

How practical are electric cars? The sequel.

2010-07-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

A few days after I wrote part one of these blogs, Chevy came out with an estimated cost of the Volt, and my frugal Midwestern farm girl inner voice cried “Holy capped carburetors! Seriously?”

The Volt will come in at around $40,000, making it about $33,000 after the government credit. (The Nissan Leaf starts at $33,000 before the tax credit.)

A lot of people I talked to about this---for I was a bit surprised that a car the size of my right tennis shoe would cost $40,000---made valid points about it being expensive to research and develop and such. And, again, I realize that my growing-up-Heidi upbringing might have me leaning a bit cheap on most purchases. (I recently refused to buy a belt because I thought a utilitarian strap to hold up my low-riders should not be more expensive than $30 unless it is inlaid in some sort of semi-precious stone.) But, still, who’s going to buy an electric car that costs like a sports car without the sex factor?

And, really, $40,000 is the base model, before bells and whistles, and it’s the MSRP. When’s the last time you bought a car at the MSRP?

I’ve got to say, I’m still on the fence about this electric car thing, overall. I want to be persuaded. I know I can be persuaded. Heck, General Mills cereal persuades me constantly with its shiny cereal advertising, but I’m still a bit stuck on this whole cost/benefit analysis thing. The cereal has it easy: it’s cheap and tasty and convenient. Triple bonus. The Volt has it hard. I admit that. I’m a tough sell.

It reminds me of the time I looked into solar panels for my house. $20,000 for something that would need about ten years to recoup the costs but would probably have to be replaced in five---and that was if it survived a good Oklahoma hail storm.

Man, it is expensive to save the world. Unlike Al Gore---whom I like, by the way---I just cannot afford it.

But, back to the Volt. I currently drive a Kia. It cost $20,000. That’s half the price of the Volt and about the same price I could have paid for those solar panels, although the panels couldn’t drive my bad self to work. The Kia gets pretty decent gas mileage, doesn’t cost a lot in repairs and is reliable. Plus, no limit on those miles beforehand.

So, would I pay twice the cost of my current vehicle to save the world? Not right now. In the future? Maybe---really---but there’s a catch: You have to prove to me it’s going to make a difference, this large and expensive Earth purchase.

I always have the same thought with electric cars, and it centers around hype. I can get used to the inconveniences (remembering to schedule charging on down time, looking for a charging station if out and about, thinking more about a car than I’m used to), and I can even get used to the price. I had similar sticker shock when CDs began to rule over cassettes when I was a music fiend in high school.

But, I’m having trouble with the logic, with the end result.

See, I live in the Midwest where use of fossil fuels is pretty prevalent in electricity production. So, while I’d be personally polluting less with an electric car, have I not simply shifted that pollution footprint to a power company? Am I making a real dramatic difference, or is it just a slight of hand? And, is it possible that shifting the pollution footprint to a power company could make that footprint an even larger one, in the long run?

Renewables are a growing force in the power arena, but they are still hovering at 3-4% of overall power production. That means 96-97% is non-renewable. OK, so 20% is nuclear. It doesn’t pollute---at least, not in a “puffy clouds in the sky” way. So, that kicks it down to 76-77%. We’ll be generous and say 75%.

So, if 75% of power production is still the carbon-emitting kind, am I making a difference buying an electric car? And, will I feel like a schmuck for spending twice as much to get no real results on the global warming front?

It’s something to ponder. What are your thoughts?

Sharing the Smart Grid in Bits and Bytes

2010-07-26T07:16:00.000-07:00

I don’t care what your momma told you, sharing sucks. I share a driveway. (My house was built in the 1920s before the great auto explosion in American culture.) I’m always courteous---painfully aware of keeping the driveway access open for the consideration of those people right next door. My neighbors, however, are not courteous. They take over. They hog. They plant their little rubber car feet in the driveway in multiples I cannot begin to describe---nor can I begin to describe how it irks me.

For two years, I’ve been overly nice and they’ve been overly nasty. After a particularly bad incident a couple of weeks ago involving a tan Malibu that blocked me in the drive for nearly two days, I stopped being so nice. Now, I wasn’t overly nasty, either. I didn’t block them in. I wasn’t quite that childish. Childish wasn’t going to help, even if I really, really, really wanted to be childish at the time. But, I did park in an area of the drive that was a bit “in the way” for them---just to give them a taste of what I’ve been dealing with daily for two years.

In less than 10 days, they were at my door to ‘talk’ about the drive and access---because it finally became a personal problem, an issue for them. They didn’t suddenly get the hint that they were being jerks. Nah. They never will. I had simply figured out that, to get even close to a compromise, I had to make it about them, specifically. I had to get them emotionally involved, make it impact their own daily lives.

I think Duke Energy learned a similar lesson about their smart grid Indiana plan: make it personal, make it impact the individual, and show them how it can benefit all to talk more about it. Forget greater good, energy efficiency and development for renewables. Target individual desires.

Duke’s Indiana plan for the smart grid was breathtaking---an over-arcing, 800,000-meter proposal that was a real beauty in its coverage, a showstopper. There would be a meter in just about every house and every business in all of the 69 counties Duke served in Indiana. A multi-pronged, five-year blueprint worthy of the Chrysler Building, really, Duke’s Indiana plan had all the bells and whistles a smart grid could ask for.

Duke packaged it up nicely, neatly and went along to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with the $450 million proposal. The Commission stopped the show literally. They denied the proposal. They weren’t impressed by the scope and breadth. They weren’t impressed by the technology. As a group in place to buffer costs and watch out for the consumer, they didn’t look at the beauty of the plan; they wanted to know, specifically, how that plan was going to impact them and their neighbors and the people they represent.

When they didn’t find the information they wanted, they said, “No way. Try again.”

That was last November. And it appears that Duke has learned my driveway lesson. (I always assumed the neighbors would want to be courteous to me the way I was courteous to them. Duke assumed that the regulatory commission would, to an extent, take their word about benefits with the plan. We both learned a painful lesson on trust and concessions. In the end, benefits to the individual must be laid out, spelled out, colored in and made directly, perfectly, crystal clear.)

This week, Duke returns to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with a new proposal---one that’s significantly smaller and involves a bit of lag time. Duke wants to put in about 40,000 meters and then read the data for a year, hoping to put together a good, solid argument at the end of that year for those regulators---hoping to show, in real numbers, those benefits to the individual.

We often assume---as individuals and as corporations---that a situation will be seen from our own point of view. Alas, in many cases, personal and corporate “blinkers” and “blinders” keep us from seeing anything but what falls directly into our own paths.

This psychology may need to be applied to the smart grid more often. Rather than the big picture approach, we may have to drive the path to a fully-realized smart grid in easier-to-digest, individual portions. To teach society to share, we might need to appeal to the self-centered individual preferences in all of us.

How Practical Are Electric Cars?

2010-07-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

Last week, the Department of Energy released a new report on electric cars, sort of. It wasn’t so much about the cars, really, as it was about how the money the Recovery Act poured into electric car technology has done.

According to the report, that money has been spent wisely. In part, the report reads:

Investments in batteries alone, for example, should help lower the cost of some electric car batteries by nearly 70 percent before the end of 2015. What’s more, thanks in part to these investments, U.S. factories will be able to produce batteries and components to support up to 500,000 electric-drive vehicles annually by 2015. Overall, these investments will create tens of thousands of American jobs.

Batteries, chargers, components, tax credits, and even loans to car companies are among the vast array of investments under the Obama plan to kick start the electric vehicle boom. But, will this electric vehicle future actually arrive? Is this a fruition-filled, overarching plan of infrastructure brilliance like Eisenhower’s interstate highways, or an oddity that will plainly fizzle out like Bush’s hydrogen economy?

There’s little doubt of the facts: The money invested has created some movement, as any money invested would. If you give a man money and tell him he has to build X or he doesn’t get it, he’ll get up off his keister and build X faster than anything. So, 26 of 30 manufacturing plants have broken ground and started construction on new facilities or began updating old ones. Eight demo projects are up---if not actually running---with a projected outcome of 13,000 more electric vehicles plugged in and 20,000 more charging stations available, both public and private.

The most interesting bit of investment might be the green being funneled into research projects on batteries. Today’s lithium-ion EV batteries are restrictive and problematic. If that storage technology can be updated, leading to cheaper batteries and longer driving range, then, absolutely, electric vehicles are on their way to integration---potentially as fast as they can slap together charging stations atop or aside gas stations. (The same can be said for renewables getting a larger chunk of generation if they can clean up storage issues.)

But, if that tech doesn’t come to a fabulous breakthrough soon, electric vehicles’ lack of practicality may relegate it to that discard pile teetering atop the junked hydrogen economy.

Want to read the report? Click here.

Obama, the Smart Grid and Idealist Ideology

2010-07-08T08:42:00.000-07:00

Obama and I have a couple of things in common.

One: We were both born during a Chinese cycle of the ox---although he was born the cycle before I was. So, we have that going for us if we need to make small talk at some imaginary state dinner that I can script in my head. But, secondly, we both seem to be a tad too pragmatic in a time of idealists. And idealists, whether red, white or blue, seem to truly abhor pragmatists---abhor to the point of verbal stone-throwing, really, although Obama gets it way worse than I ever will.

The idealist far left is angry at Obama that he hasn’t made gay marriage legal, stopped the wars, freed all the Gitmo detainees and tapped out the BP oil leak with his burning laser-eyed superpowers. The idealist far right is angry that he tried to stimulate the economy more because economists think that’s a darn tootin’ good idea, wants to continue to help the poor and unemployed, and hasn’t freed corporations from the regulation slavery that’s bringing down the true American spirit of Capitalism.

Instead, Obama seems genuinely focused on trying to make progress on laws, bills, war fronts and economic changes---on political details, if you will. Whether or not you see those details as fitting into your particular ideal for this country, it’s obvious the man is more about connections and thinking than he is about emotions and praying, despite that campaign based on hope. That’s pragmatism.

But, unfortunately for Obama, pragmatism isn’t really an American ideal these days, if the comments section on CNN’s Belief Blog or the responses to the BBC’s Mark Mardell (a British reporter discussing life in America, as he once discussed life in Europe) are any indication. We are an angry bunch of idealists, as a national whole. We are fighting amongst ourselves, loudly. We call the other side “stupid” and “evil.” We have left “live and let live” and “let’s talk about this calmly” behind and have, instead, picked up “if I yell at you long enough, you will see all how wrong you’ve been your whole darn life.” We’ve adopting rather polarizing mantras.

Reports on the smart grid have often followed this same blind idealist climb to the summit over the last few years since the term has become household-known. You either believe the smart grid will save the industry, or you think it’s a bunch of hooey. You either love it, or you hate it. And, there’s not a gray area. And, if you’re in the wrong room, you may be cornered by a mob trying to change those beliefs. (Last year, I wrote two articles for POWERGRID International titled “Will Smart Grid Take Over the World?” That title was a play on this concept of growing smart grid idealism.)

But, back in reality, there is a gray area in the smart grid---and a lot of it, for us pragmatists in that mobbed-up room. The smart grid (more than Obama, CNN or the BBC’s Mardell) lends itself to a lot of gray areas, a lot of pragmatism, a lot of maybes. The technology involved in the smart grid may not be the “end all, be all” of a technological savior, but it is an improvement for a system that, in many cases, hasn’t seen much improvement in half a century.

And, on the other end, there is a lot of hype, a lot of expectations that may not come to fruition. Should we really be looking at solar installations and wind installations and sinking money hand over fist down the renewables road when the smart grid, alone, cannot possibly overcome the limitations of intermittency? Personally, as a pragmatist, I’d look first toward solving energy storage before I’d be sketching out plans for a multi-country, offshore grid infrastructure, as Friends of the Supergrid are working on. However, that spending isn’t money wasted if it brings us to a better system and a better end---albeit, perhaps a roundabout one. And, yay for them for finding a positive “button” to stimulate some funding.

Americans tend to feel strongly about everything from presidents to Pepsi, from couches to Congress. In many cases, that makes us fascinating. However, in entrenching ourselves in personal ideals without a willingness to find that gray area, meet there and see if we like it, we often prevent real technological progress and any actual development, instead miring ourselves down, holding ourselves back.

The smart grid needs fewer zealots and more pragmatists---according to this particular pragmatist, at least. No, the smart grid is not the electric messiah, but it’s also not the devil himself. It’s not everything we need for the next generation; it’s not a ridiculous waste of funding. Now that all those waving flags are out of the way, let’s meet and think---as Pooh said, “Think, think, think, think.”---about what the smart grid really is, can really bring to the table and what its limitations are. And, let’s do so honestly. It’s time to step out from behind ideals and spiels and truly come to terms with what can be accomplished with smart grid technology and, realistically, what cannot.

To the idealist industry left, I wish I could tell you that the smart grid is going to allow you to plug in various solar panels, a personal wind turbine and your PHEV with the ease of plugging in your hair dryer. But, it’s not. On the plus side, it will help you manage appliances and energy. To the idealist industry right, I wish I could tell you that the smart grid is going to infuse mountains of capital into the industry to the point that you could swim in it and then use the leftover cash for a towel. But, it’s not. After initial stimulus funding, you will still have to convince the fearful to overcome the hump of investing in the relative unknown of the future---oh, that pesky unknown future. On the plus side, that pragmatist Obama has opened that investment door a crack and helped you get your foot into it. Now, wiggle. Wiggle what your momma gave you and work that gray area.

Cuz, that gray area is all you’re gonna get.

The Death of Smart Grid Has Been Mildly Exaggerated

2010-06-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

When a cousin of Mark Twain’s took ill and died in 1897, it was mistakenly thought by entire throngs of gossipers, cynics and fans that Twain himself had passed on, prompting his famous “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” quotation.

I couldn’t help but think of that quotation when Baltimore Gas and Electric had the proverbial “head” of their smart metering program handed back to them on a shiny regulatory platter last week by the state of Maryland.

Was this a problem for the smart grid? Sure. Was it the end? Should it be looked upon as a death knell? Should we be asking smart grid programs if the bell tolls for them? Nah.

What happened? Well, we had a little setback. That’s for darn sure. We thought we had all the smart grid ducks quacking and walking along together in a neat little row. We thought it was all set, everyone was on board, and we were good to jump---in one big ol’ happy group---into the smart grid pond. But, we learned, instead, that some of our ducks were wandering astray, some had stopped dead in the path and decided to sit this one out and some had simply found the pond just too darn cold.

Maryland definitely found the water too cold. The New York Times reported that the cost of deploying approximately 1.36 million electric meters and 730,000 gas meters and related technology in that Baltimore Gas and Electric program would have clocked in at nearly $835 million, about $200 million of which would have come from a DOE grant. The Public Service Commission (PSC), however, was more worried about where the remaining $635 million might come from---namely a surcharge on customers. And, so, they turned the utility down.

Baltimore Gas and Electric stated they were “shocked” at the decision, but it seems rather odd to be shocked that a PSC would balk at raising consumer bills. It’s pretty common for PSCs to be rather difficult to navigate for rate increases, even ones that are supported by evidence of necessity.

While Constellation, the parent company for Baltimore Gas and Electric, was willing to kick in about $280 million of stakeholder money, the PSC still didn’t want to put a burden on the customer. And, unfortunately, that’s how they saw this program---as a financial burden and a bit of tech folly that wasn’t necessary for the future.

And, that denial was the shot heard round the world, effectively drawing out speculation in articles, blogs and conferences that this would mean the end to all smart grid programs---that it has been discovered that the smart grid was a type of boondoggle normally reserved for the Old West days of snake oil salesmen.

It is true that Baltimore’s program could collapse under this denial. The regrouping may not happen for them, but that doesn’t mean that the smart grid overall is ready for burial. That doesn’t mean we are out of ducks, you might say. We still have lots of ducks, and many of them aren’t so afraid of a cold pond.

Today, Duke Energy announced it has signed an agreement with Cisco to pilot and further develop a smart grid-enabled home energy management solution that will provide Duke Energy customers with secure and reliable energy information and a simple-to-use tool to help them reduce the amount of energy wasted in their homes.

This week, Texas-New Mexico Power has selected SmartSynch’s Residential SmartMeter solution for a 231,000 unit point-to-point deployment to residential customers throughout the utility’s Texas market, which will mark the first mass residential deployment of smart metering solutions that use a public wireless network as the communications backbone.

Last week, Elster and Webster Electric Cooperative, a locally owned and governed not-for-profit cooperative in Marshfield, Missouri announced they will work together on a metering project featuring Elster’s EnergyAxis AMI Smart Grid solution to replace the co-op’s existing self-read electric meter base. Webster Electric Cooperative plans to deploy 18,500 EnergyAxis smart meters between July and December 2010.

So, while it’s both prudent and healthy to reexamine our systems, plans and motivations with Baltimore’s big smart grid setback---to tweak a few things here and there---it’s a bit too early to be placing that bucket out front of the industry and whispering that the smart grid needs to give a big ol’ boot to that five-gallon container.

The smart grid ain’t dead yet.

Walking a Problematic PATH

2010-06-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

Transmission gets ignored, put upon, forgotten, quietly doing an important and thankless gig---that is, until a line needs to be built near our homes. Then, power transmission is evil technology, HAL of the electric world (stretch back to that last “2001: A Space Odyssey” viewing). Then, transmission is intent on our physical destruction (with EMF) or our economic downfall (thinking that towers/lines/poles will decrease property value). Then, transmission is our enemy. We want the power, but we hate the transmission.

And, thinking transmission is our enemy makes the act of siting a line nearly impossible. It takes a lot of money and the patience of a Buddhist, mountain-top guru. There are regulatory hurdles, tech hurdles, geography hurdles, consumer hurdles. It’s a tough path to walk, even for a simple project like PATH.

PATH stands for Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, a joint venture of American Electric Power (AEP) and Allegheny Energy to build a new high-voltage interstate transmission line from West Virginia to Maryland. Specifically, the project is a 765-kilovolt transmission line extending approximately 275 miles from the Amos Substation in Putnam County, W.Va., to the proposed Kemptown Substation southeast of New Market, Md. The project also includes a new Welton Spring Substation along the proposed route in northwest Hardy County, W.Va.

This project was approved---even deemed necessary---by the local grid operator, PJM, way back in 2007. It’s a mere 275 miles. Out here in flat plains country, that’s a bit less than a four-hour drive, what we would term “a spit in a bucket.”

Yet, that project has hit all sorts of issues, despite being inside a government-designated National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor. (You remember those. They were supposed to make transmission siting a super snap, as fast as driving the length needed. Approval in no time flat.)

There have been nasty rumors which have been repeatedly denied by the companies/parties involved, including:

“I’ve heard that PATH is only being constructed to transport power to New Jersey and none of the electricity will supply our region. Is that true?”

I’m also hearing that you’re only building this line so you can sell more power from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest to electric users in the Northeast.”

Those rumors got so heated that they are responded to on the project’s website under the frequently asked questions section.

And there have been regulatory setbacks, too. It needed to wander about 20 miles into Maryland. Maryland didn’t wish to be wandered upon and said, “No way,” setting the projecting back about a year. West Virginia and Virginia took similar regulatory high roads, projecting buckets and boatloads of demands before agreeing to even think about the project.

One of those demands was, in fact, a new study on demand, electricity demand. Basically, those regulators wanted to know if such a line was really needed. Now it looks like they might hear things (in a hearing-type format) in January (yes, January 2011) and that the project might get word of a decision by May 2011.

Remember how those corridors were supposed to make siting fly by? Like, in a blink of an eye? Remember?

Anyway, back to the story. This week, the PATH stakeholders said, “Hey, by the way, we need this line to be up and running by 2015 in order to meet rising demand.”

According to a note released late last week, an analysis conducted as part of PJM’s 2010 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan supports previous studies about the line’s necessity.

“All analysis to date indicates that the PATH project remains the most robust and effective means to ensure the long-term reliability of the PJM grid,” said Steven R. Herling, Vice President of Planning, PJM.

Whether PJM’s solemn word on the subject will be good enough for regulators in West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland remains to be seen---most likely until January 2011. At that time, PATH will be verging on four years in limbo. By the decision process in May, they’ll have another four years to build before that PJM 2015 deadline.

The question is: Will PATH really have four years to completion or will another round of rumors and regulation stall more transmission coming to the Northeast?

Whether you want you power through coal, nuclear or renewables, that sizzle has to have a path to get to the consumer. Here’s hoping this PATH paves the way for more, if all parties involved can invoke the patience of those Buddhist mountain-top gurus until the project finally gets the OK to put rubber (or, in this case, steel) to the scenic byways.

Cross your fingers for 2011.

Amsterdam Brings New/Old Views on Climate Change

2010-06-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Dutch eat some unusual things for my American tastes---the herring being just the beginning. I've found that I'm not a fan of their "between the bread" options, which usually involve raw salmon or too much mayo or too many onions. So, I readily admit, after a week of Dutch conference catering, I am not a fan of the Dutch sandwich.

But, I am a fan of Dutch innovation and initiatives. And, today, I got to see one in person: Amsterdam's Smart City Climate Street project.

Behind the front doors of the shops, cafes, and restaurants of Utrechtstraat is a push toward the efficient, the effective and the sustainable. This, specifically, is the Climate Street project, but that project is just one of many within the Amsterdam Smart City plan, with its total of 15 various projects pushing sustainable living, working and mobility.

The total projects making up Amsterdam's Smart City planning are well past the second phase, with a third phase scheduled for Sept. 2010 and completion in line for 2011. Despite how organized and engineering focused it all sounds, the projects began on the less static end of things, with what the group labels "the entrepreneurs."

"You can over-engineer smart city programs," stated Maikel van Verseveld, a partner with Accenture (a company that, in turn, partners with Smart City) in an interview during the POWERGRID Europe 2010 conference. "Amsterdam Smart City has been under-engineered from the start."

That might sound a bit scary---under-engineering a tech project---but thinking from the standpoint of the consumer, both residential and retail, has helped them build real enthusiasm for the projects involved in Amsterdam Smart City, according to van Verseveld and Ilse van den Breemer, the project manager sustainability for the Amsterdam Innovation Motor (another Smart City partner).

"You can design things to death," van Verseveld continued, stating that boundaries need to be pushed on the social/societal end of things for projects to really push change. It helps find middle ground and foster real adaptation.

One area on the cusp of that boundary, that edge of adaptation is Climate Street in Amsterdam, where a group of retailers, store owners, bar and restaurant owners came together to prove that the technologies of climate change (solar, EVs, energy scans) can be very useful to the end-user as well as a municipality.

Climate Street is a collection of about 140 entrepreneurs split down the middle, pretty much, between bars/restaurants and shops. Construction on the projects along the street began in September 2009 and will continue past its original end date (December of this year) into 2011.

"The entrepreneurs wanted to do something positive," said Maaike Osieck, manger of communications with Amsterdam Smart City at a personal POWERGRID Europe tour of the area. "They started this push to do something sustainable in the area."

The group along Climate Street have been participating in small pilots and tests for awhile now with a larger rollout to begin within a few months. One participant, a fabulous five-building music store called Concerto, saw a 43% savings in energy (specifically with lighting) with their first pilot attempt.

As Climate Street and the overall Amsterdam Smart City projects move closer to completion, it will show the world just how new technologies can push into old corners of an old town and change culture from within.

Art thou a power pig or a power prince?

2010-05-27T12:36:00.000-07:00

I adore the supporting line of Microsoft Hohm’s recent press release: Hohm Scores help everyone answer the question, ‘Am I an energy hog or an energy miser?’ Now, loving alliteration as I do, being an old defunct English major, I went with the pig/prince combo for my own title. Still, whichever way you type it, the message is clear: Do you know how you are spending that energy, and are you spending it wisely?

According to the release from Microsoft, they can answer that particular question for about 60 million homeowners with its Hohm Score, which estimate’s a home’s efficiency based on what appears to be data readily available from realty websites and pictures from Google Earth (ah, Microsoft tells me it's from Bing, not Google Earth)---although my particular estimate didn’t include the fact that I do, in fact, have central heat and air. It’s true that my little old 1926 bungalow didn’t have such luxuries up to about 10 years ago, but it does now. So, I probably shouldn’t be so darn proud of my Hohm Score number.

But, I am.

Hohm Scores are calculated by comparing a home’s actual and potential energy efficiency, and is grounded with advanced analytics licensed from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and statistical data from the Department of Energy, according to Microsoft. In addition to individual scores, Hohm Scores are available by ZIP code, city and state so anyone can compare a home’s score with others around the country.

Microsoft estimates the national average Hohm Score at 61, with Hawaii topping the list at 81 and with Texas coming in last with 51. (Yes, you want a higher number, apparently. Otherwise, I have no idea what that number actually means.)

My personal home state of Oklahoma came in pretty close to Texas at 52. When your summers are 107 degrees and, yet, you still have winters with ice storms and blizzards, you use a lot of energy, my friend. With weather such a factor, I’m not sure if Hawaii’s top score is more to do with greener peeps making greener choices or just nice ocean breezes. We could really use those ocean breezes here in Tulsa.

My Hohm Score? 82. That’s right. I totally trumped even the great leading state of Hawaii. Why? Well, some of it most likely has to do with that inaccurate info about my heating and cooling system (and is, therefore, wrong). There’s probably a lot of gray area with those numbers there, but, if this number is accurate, I’d attribute it mostly to space. My house is less than 1100 square feet. That saves a boatload of energy.

So, while it’s probably not entirely accurate, I like my little green house. (No, literally. A green house. There’s a house on the website next to my Hohm Score, and it’s painted a very eco-friendly shade of green. A little green home icon that tells me how awesome I am to Mother Earth.)

Now, in real life, my house is literally gray. Painted gray.

And, well, as mentioned, there’s probably a little gray area in my online green home, but, darn it, I’m still gonna be proud.

Wanna know your score? Hit this link: HOHM SCORE