Between the Poles

Are plug-in electric vehicles beginning to takeoff in Southern California ?

At  the Data Analytics for Utilities conference in Toronto today, David O. Jermain gave a fascinating presentation on the state of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in Southern California and how they have affected the local utility, Southern California Edison (SCE). 

Utility folks have been of two minds about PEVs, whether to treat them as a massive electricity load growth opportunity, like air conditioners several decades ago, or as just another type of hair dryer.  (But PEVs are actually quite different from either air conditioners and hair dryers because hybrid PEVs like the Chevy Volt can generate as well as consume electricity and PEV's batteries could potentially supply electricity to external devices.)

PEVS in Southern California

David provided some very suggestive statistics about the deployment of PEVs in SCE's service area and the number of calls related to PEVs that the SCE call centre gets.

                       #PEVs

• 2010 1000
• 2011 1650 (65% increase)
• 2012 5200 (300% increase)

Two thirds of these PEVs charge at level 1 (120 V).  One third charge at level 2 (240 V).

Calls received by the SCE call centre suggest that at long last, PEVs may be beginning to take off.  Calls to the SCE call centre that relate to PEVs have increased by 350% over the last year.  The number of email inquiries relating to PEVs has increased by 360%.  The number of pageviews on the SCE web site that relate to PEVs has increased 14-fold.

         # pageviews

• 2011    1,600
• 2012 23,000

Since California probably leads the U.S. in the deployment of electric vehicles, what is happening there right now may be what the rest of North America will see in a few years.

How do PEVs affect the local distribution utility

Some people at utilities worry about whether the local distribution network would be able to handle a scenario in which everyone goes home after work and plugs in their PEV.   The concern is that the resulting surge or spike could overload transformers and worse.  There is also a concern that customers would require a lot of support from customer service folks.  SCE has developed a very elaborate workflow to integrate PEVs and PEV customers, but so far it really hasn't been necessary to use it..  So far PEVs haven't created problems for the local distribution grid and SCE's customer satisfaction statistics have not been negatively affected either.

But from the perspective of the market, PEVs present challenges.  David broke these down into issues relating to home fueling, public charging and how to handle fleets, for example,  the Department of Defence and companies like Frito-lay have bought a considerable number of PEVs.  The issues involve rates, submetering, the relationship with third party vendors who provide charging services, demand response, and so on.

Load shaping

One of the very interesting opportunities where PEVs could actually improve the reliability of the grid is in load shaping to balance intermittent energy sources like solar PV and wind.  Germany has been using a variety of techniques for years to sculpt load to balance wind and other intermittent energy sources.  A fascinating study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) looked at the possibility of using battery capacity in plug-in electric vehicles to mitigate imbalances from wind generation in the power grid.

Another interesting possibility is where PEVs could act as residential batteries during outages or to reduce costs where time of use pricing is available.

Burlington Hydro's real-time smart grid for operations and analytics: Managing big data real-time

At the Oracle Spatial User Conference in Washington DC this week, Don Guatto, COO and VP Engineering at Burlington Hydro and Geoff Cameron, EVP Intelligent Networks at AGSI gave a rivteing presentation on Burlington Hydro's (BHI) smart grid implementaton for the utility's GridSmartCity initiatives.

BHI is a utility near Toronto with 65000 meters, 32 substations and 93 employees.  The GridSmartCity initiatives include

• self healing networks - this initiative has reduced average outage times in BHI's service area to 20 seconds per year
• smart meters - Burlington is in Ontario which has deployed smart meters and time-of-use pricing province wide
• distributed generation - Ontario has a Feed-in-Tariff program which has led to the deployment of over 7000 micro-generation projects, mostly solar
• electric vehicle (EV) charging stations
• factory ride-through systems - enabling factories to continue functioning through outages
• battery-based electric storage

Smart grid management system for operations and analytics

An independent consultant hired by BHI made a recommendation with far reaching implications for BHI. "Two of the main factors affecting GIS today are the move towards using internet technology to be able  to serve GIS data to a much broader user base and efforts by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to promote interoperability.  BHI needs to implement a new GIS that will fit its technology vision and provide the benefits of today's GIS to BHI operations."

Based on this recommendation BHI determined that the foundation for their smart grid management system would be an open architecture based on open standards.  This would allow them to integrate their SCADA system, 65 000 smart meters reporting power use every 15 minutes, the supporting automated meter infrastructure (AMI), intelligent devices, power line sensors, a customer information system (CIS), their ERP system, engineering analysis, and other systems.  It would utilize bidirectional communications to both receive information from and control smart devices. The system would have handle much larger data volumes than BHI had ever experienced before.  For example, some devices were reporting 60 times per second.  And perhaps the most challenging requirement is that it also had to operate real-time, which as Geoff emphasized, is beyond the capability of today's traditional enterprise GIS systems.

Implementation

AGSI's solution uses their Go360 products which provide a scalable, geospatially-enabled solution built on an open service oriented web architecture. It uses Oracle Spatial for a shared, geospatia data repository and AutoCAD Map 3D for design and geospatial data maintenance.  A web browser, either on the desktop or on a mobile device, is all that's required to access tools for asset maintenance, cable locate, asset managemet, operations, financials and drill downs, automating network pinning and work protection tagging, SCADA, schematic views, automated CAIDI, SAIDI and SAIFI reporting, an outage management system (OMS), mobile workforce automation, automated as-built management, real-time asset monitoring and analytics, and an executive dashboard.

One of the most impressive Go360 applications that Geoff demonstrated was a transformer status monitoring dashboard that not only showed a map with transformer loading in real- in the form of a heat map, but could also report on historical loading and even estimate, based on the history of oveloading on a particuler transformer, how much the lifetime of the transformer had been shortened as a result of the overloading.  It also allowed the operator to reconfigure the grid in real time to reduce the load on overlloaded transformers and redistribute it to others with available capacity.

What impressed me most was to see how an open IT architecture based on open standards together with industry standard off-the-shelf components, a bidirectional communications network and real-time smart devices and sensors has enabled BHI to develop a state of the art real-time geospatially-enabled smart grid operations and management system that integrates with their existing enterprise systems and provides a common point of access to all their operational data. 

BHI has plans to contnue to develop smart grud applications in the future, but I think that they have built a strong IT foundation for their future smart grid development.

U.S. driving patterns related to electric cars

One of the aspects of electric cars that seems to be an important factor for consumers in deciding whether to buy an electric vehicle is range.  Pure electric vehicles (EV) like the Nissan leaf have a range of about 100 miles.  Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) like the Volt has a range of about 40 miles under electric power, but has a gasoline engine to extend the range.  The range of hybrid vehicles (HEV) like the Prius don't differ that much from internal combusion engined cars (ICE).

GE's Data Visualization site has very effective graphics showing some of the characteristics of U.S. driving patterns and electric power usage that are relevant to electric vehicles.

Range

Not everyone needs a vehicle with a range of hundreds of miles.  Over 50% of all US household trips are under 6 miles.  This begs the question what percentage of U.S. households have never taken a car trip that exceeds 100 miles ? 

Charging

The graphic shows driver behaviour for the typical EV owner.  Driving (orange) typically occurs between 9 am and midnight.  For current electric vehicle onwers, who can't charge at the office, charging (green) typically starts about 6 pm when the owner gets home.  The blue area shows roughly when power utilities have greatest excess capacity for power generation.  With an appropriate time-of-use pricing policy, power utilities can encourage vehicle owners to take advantage of excess grid capacity by charging at off-peak times.

U.S. Department of Energy's vision of the power grid in 2035

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has decided to share its vision of the electric power grid in 2035 with industry, vendors, regulators and consumers.

Seamless, cost-effective electricity system from generation to end use

This means supporting both AC and DC and designed to optimize asset utilization and operating efficiency.  It should have different characteristics in different regions, reflecting local circumstances, but be part of a shared national vision.  It should be reliable and resilient, enable new products and services to be added, and help the U.S.'s global competitiveness.

Meeting the clean energy demands and capacity requirements of this century

The DoE sees a dramtic increase in clean energy generation, suggesting 80% by 2035, and accommodating a wide range of generation and storage options.  It would be reasonable to assume that by clean energy is meant the very broad range of options as defined in the current Clean Energy Standard before the Senate.

Allowing consumer participation and electricity use as desired

The DoE vision means informed participation by consumers with complete choice of how they want to participate. It includes distributed resources, demand response, demand-side management, electrification of transportation, and energy efficiency.

Getting there

These are all things that have been part of the vision of renewable energy and smart grid for some time.  What is emerging is a better idea of how to get there.  Jesse Berst sees several things that we need to do to enable the DoE vision of the grid in 2035 to happen.

• AC-DC hybrid systems
• Different degrees of power quality for different customer sets
• Making it easy for outsiders to offer new products, services and markets
• Making it easy for any form of generation or storage to hook into the system
• Giving choice to 100% of customers
• The substation will morph into an "Electricity Systems Hub"

Intelligent substations will become the “pinch point” for end-to-end integration.  The DoE sees a blurring of the distinction between transmission and distribution, which will create opportunities for industry and  make life interesting for regulators.

The future of electric vehicles: recent battery innovation may be key

One of the things I particularly like about Air Canada is the movie/video content because you can find things that you might not otherwise come across.  Last Sunday coming back from the UK, I was lucky to find two engrossing documentaries about electric vehicles.

The first was "Who Killed the Electric Car ?" which is the intriguing history of General Motors' EV1, every instance of which GM ultimately tracked down and destroyed, except for one EV1 in a museum, and even than one GM insisted on disabling.  In answer to the question in the title, the film concluded that the American consumer, the automobile manufactureres, and the oil companies were all partially to blame.

The second documentary "The Revenge of the Electric Car" oultined the history of Tesla Motors, the Chevy Volt, and the Nissan Leaf.  The claimed range of the Tesla Roadster is 245 miles, the Leaf 100 miles, and the Volt 40 miles (using the electric motor only).

In its 2009 asessment the Energy Information Administration (EIA) identified several key issues that will determine when and if widespread adoption of the electric vehicle occurs

1. "A typical consumer may be willing to purchase a PHEV instead of a conventional ICE vehicle when the economic benefit of reduced fuel expenditures is greater than the total incremental cost of the PHEV.
2. "PHEVs also face uncertainty with respect to Li-Ion battery life and safety.  Future advances in Li-Ion battery technology could address economic, lifetime, and safety concerns, paving the way for large-scale sales and significant penetration of PHEVs into the U.S. LDV fleet.  For example, a technological breakthrough could conceivably allow for smaller batteries with the same capacity and power output, thus lowering incremental costs and making PHEVs attractive on a cost-benefit basis.
3. "PHEVs could significantly reduce GHG emissions in the transportation sector, depending on the fuels used to produce electricity.
4. "PHEVs use less gasoline than conventional ICE vehicles. If PHEVs displaced conventional ICE vehicles, U.S. petroleum imports could be reduced."

According to a recent report from Pike Research, "hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) combined will represent 3.1% of worldwide auto sales by 2017. Thanks to higher penetration rates in the United States, HEVs and PEVs will account for 5.1% of total U.S. vehicle sales in 2017."

Related to EIA Item 2, at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, it was reported that independent testing has verified that a new Envia lithium-ion battery achieves 400 Wh/kg compared to 80-150 Wh/kg for current state-of-the-art batteries.  It is claimed that the Envia battery would extend the range of a 100 mile EV to 300 miles which based on the EIA's assessment could significantly change the cost-benefit picture of EVs.

European energy roadmap through 2050

The European Commission (EC) has adopted the Communication "Energy Roadmap 2050". which looks at different alternative scenarios reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050, which is a committment of the European Union (EU).  In addition to reducing carbon emissions, the objective of the roadmap is ensuring security of energy supply and developing a competitive pan-European energy market.

The German Federal Minister of Economics and Technology said that the EC going in a similar direction to Germany's perspective that a sustainable restructuring of the energy supply requires a solid economic foundation and one that ensures that EU industry continues to be competitive.  In particular he identified the importance of the development of a pan-European network (grid).

The next step is for the the 2050 Energy Roadmap to be analysed in detail. The EU President plans to have the Council conclusions on the 2050 Energy Roadmap adopted by the Energy Ministerial Council in June 2012.

Energy policy for 2020 through 2050

In 2007 the European Council adopted the Energy 2020 policy, which commits the EU by 2020 to

• at least 20 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 (30% if international conditions are right),
• saving of 20 % of EU energy consumption compared to projections for 2020;
• 20 % share of renewable energies in EU energy consumption and 10% share in transport.

The measures taken to achieve the 2020 goals will reduce emissions by about 40% by 2050 and are insuffcient to achieve the EU's 2050 carbon emissions goals.  The objective of the Energy Roadmap 2050 is to explore alternative routes toward the 2050 carbon reduction objectives and to develop a long-term European technology-neutral framework in which national, regional, and local carbon reduction efforts can operate effectively.

Scenarios

Energy Roadmap 2050 looks at several different scenarios

• Reference - includes current trends and policies already in place, and assumes no new policy initiatives.
• Current Policy Initiatives (CPI) - adds new policy initiatives whihc are in the process of being adopted
• High Energy Efficiency - decrease in energy demand of 41% by 2050 through more stringent energy conservation measures
• Diversified supply technologies - competive energy market where all energy sources can
  compete in the market basis including nuclear and Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS).
• High Renewable energy (RES) - strong policy support for renewable energy with 97% of electric power coming from renewable energy by 2050
• Delayed CCS - like the Diversified supply technologies scenario but with delayed CCS, and accelerated nuclear
• Low nuclear - like the Diversified supply technologies scenario but with no new nuclear plants beyond what is currently under construction and accelerated CCS

Conclusions

Based on these scenarios the report draws interesting conclusions.

1. Decarbonisation is possible - Energy in a lower carbon economy can be less costly than current policies in the long-run.
2. Higher capital expenditure and lower fuel costs - All decarbonisation scenarios show a transition from today's system, with high fuel and operational costs, to an energy system based on higher capital expenditure and lower fuel costs.
3. Electricity plays an increasing role - All scenarios show electricity will have to play a much greater role than now (almost doubling its share in final energy demand to 36-39% in 2050) and will have to contribute to the decarbonisation of transport and heating/cooling.
4. Electricity prices rise until 2030 and then decline - Most scenarios suggest that electricity prices will rise to 2030, but fall thereafter. The largest share of these increases is already happening in the reference scenario.
5. Household expenditure will increase - In all scenarios including the Reference scenario expenditure on energy and energy-related products is likely to become a more important element in household
   expenditure, rising to around 16% in 2030, and decreasing thereafter to above 15% in 2050.
6. Energy conservation is crucial - Very significant energy savings is needed in all decarbonisation scenarios. Primary energy demand need to drop by 32% to 41% by 2050 as compared to peaks in 2005-2006.
7. Renewables share rises substantially - The share of renewable energy rises substantially in all scenarios, reacjhing 55% in gross final energy consumption in 2050. The share of RES in electricity consumption reaches 64% to 97%.
8. Carbon capture and storage is crucial - CCS will have to contribute significantly in most scenarios, implying that coal will likely continue to play an important role.
9. Nuclear energy provides an important contribution - Nuclear energy need to provide a significant contribution in the energy because it remains a key source of low cost, low carbon electricity generation.
10. Decentralization and centralized systems increasingly interact - Decentralization of the power system and increasing heat generation will result from more renewable generation, but intermittent renewable generation requires a centralized large-scale system to provide power when local renewable generation is inadequate to meet local demand.

Ontario's "green" Liberals win third term

It looks like the Ontario Liberals will win a third term, at least partly because of a very green platform.  Over the past two terms the Liberals have introduced a number of green measures that have made Ontario one of the greenest jurisidictions in North America. The Liberal platform in this election continues to be green.

• The Green Energy Act passed in 2009 includes a Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program which has already led to 7000 micro power generation projects. (The Progressive Conservatives wanted to scrap the FIT program.)
• Coal phase-out by 2014 (Also supported by the PCs.)
• New nuclear capacity (The PCs wanted to speed up nuclear power development.)
• Clean Energy Benefit, a 10 per cent rebate that the Liberals will continue to give to energy ratepayers until 2015.
• Public transit in the form of expanded GO Train service in the greater Toronto region
• Electric cars will make up five per cent of new vehicle sales by 2020. The Liberals will invest $80 million in charging stations and offer a rebate for buying an electric vehicle.

Can electric vehicles balance out intermittent power sources like wind ?

Many states have mandatory or voluntary renewable energy portfolios standards (RPS). Wind is the most widely deployed source of renewable energy in most of the US.  Wind energy is variable and the intermittent nature of this source of energy creates imbalances on the power system that can be mitigated by electric storage capacity which currently is not available except in a few locations such as Niagara, where excess power capacity is used to pump water to reservoirs.  A fascinating recent study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) looks at the possibility of using battery capacity in plug-in electric vehicles to mitigate imbalances from wind generation in the power grid.

Electric vehicles could be used for both charging and discharging pruposes, but apparently automobile manufacturers qare concerned about battery warranty issues if  electric vehicles are used for discharging power back into the grid.  Therefore, PNNL looked at two different charging scenarios. In the first electric vehicles are charged from the grid, but never feed power back into it.  In the second electric vehicles are used for both charging and discharging.

  The wind power scenario that PNNL has adopted is 2019 expected wind scenario where an additional 10 GW of wind capacity is added to the Northwest Power Pool (NWPP). Vehicle travel patterns are based on data from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey data.

The study concludes that under certain market scenarios and penetration levels, electric vehicles can provide a feasible resource for meeting the imbalance imposed by significant wind generation, but it will require a viable and compelling business model, either for the individual electric vehicle owner, or a third-party service provider.

PNNL finds that if about 13% of the existing light-duty vehicle stock (about 2.1 million vehicles) were electirc vehicles with a 33-mile electric range and could be charged both at home and at work, all of the additional balancing requirements of 3.7 GW could be provided by the electric vehicles.

If electric vehicles could be used for both charging and discharging,  about 30 to 35% fewer vehicles would be required.

PNNL considered and interesting limiting case in which all the electric vehicles are available for charging and dischargign 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, basically a distributed stationary energy storage system.  In this scenario only about 560,000 vehicles would be necessary to balance the intermittent wind energy.

Gridweek: SDG&E finds smart grid benefits outweigh costs

At Gridweek Lee Krevat of San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) gave an overview of the smart grid program at SDG&E.  A major driver for all California electric power utilities is renewable energy.  SDG&E's goal is by 2020 to have deployed advanced grid technologies that will enable a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.  One of the most important contributors to this objective is supplying 33% of energy demand from renewable energy sources.

The smart grid program at SDG&E involves smart grid investment in nine different programs,

• Customer empowerment
• Renewable energy
• Electric vehicles
• Security
• Reliability and safety
• Operational efficiency
• Smart grid RD&D
• Integrated and cross-cutting systems
• Workforce development

SG&E's 10 year road map for smart grid deployment, which is updated frequently, is the utility’s vision for a smart energy future and is designed to help customers and the vendor community see where SDG&E is going as it deploys smart grid technology.

San Diego is an interesting area, because SDG&E consumers are already doing what folks in many other parts of the country can expect to be doing sometime in the future.  All consumers already have a smart meter.  One in a hundred consumers are already generating electricity with photovoltaic technology.  There are already a thousand electric vehicles on San Diego roads.

SDG&E has been doing smart grid-related activities since 2006 and has amassed substantial data on the costs and benefits of different aspect of the smart grid.  Its conclusion is that the benefits outweigh the costs.

EPRI estimates $1.3 to $2 trillion in benefits from $500 billion smart grid deployment

An EPRI study, which updates an earlier 1994 report, estimates that the total cost over the next 20 years of deploying smart grid technology in the US will be between $338 billion and $476 billion.  The report goes on to say that the benefits, greater grid reliability, integration of solar rooftop generation and plug-in vehicles, reductions in electricity demand, and stronger cybersecurity, will deliver $1.3 trillion to $2 trillion in benefits.  Most of the investment will be in electricity distribution systems. 

The report estimates that 70 % of the total investment will be required to upgrade the substations, lines, poles, meters, billing and communication systems which are responsible for disrtibuting power to consumers.  The study assumes that there will be 10 million plug-in electric vehicles in operation by 2030.

20 % of the total investment would go into the high-voltage transmission grid, expanding it and installing new  equipment such as synchrophasors.

Intelligent home networks and devices would require about 10 % of the total estimated investment.