Between the Poles

Consumers and Smart Grid: Reducing Peak Demand

Most electric power utilities are involved in smart grid programs.  Smart grid programs involve smart meters, bidirection communications networks, time of use pricing, self-healing distribution networks, demand response, substation automation, distributed generation, and so on.  But in many countries the focus has been primarily on programs that directly impact the consumer, because ultimately the consumer is going to pay for smart grid.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced in 2007 as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act and refinanced in 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act a grant program called the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program (SGIG). There were two types of funding for this program, smaller projects in which the federal share would be $300,000 to $20,000,000 and larger projects in which the federal cost share would be $20,000,000 to $200,000,000.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability is requiring some utilities receiving ARRA SGIG funds to survey how consumers are responding to smart grid technologies. One of these is Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OGE), who received a $130 million ARRA SGIG grant.  OG&E is in the middle of a three-year deployment of smart grid technology across its service territory which includes the installation of smart meters, a secure wireless network and smart equipment on its distribution system to increase reliability and reduce operational expenses.

OGE is currently conducting a consumer survey with help from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.  OGE’s study is looking at smart consumer devices, time of use pricing and customer education to understand how consumer electric power consumption patterns can be changed.  Pilots in other jurisdictions have shown that peak demand can be reduced significantly by a combination of smart meters and time of use pricing.

The first phase of OGE’s study involved about 2500 volunteer residents and small businesses who participated in OGE's time of use pricing programs.   Customers were provided with smart thermostats, access to Silver Spring’s web portal, CustomerIQ, and home energy displays. Participants were divided into two groups. One group saw a fixed price difference between peak ($0.23 per kWh) and off-peak ($0.042 per kWh) pricing. The other group was on variable peak pricing, which was set the day before, and could change hourly between $0.045 to $0.46 per kWh.  It was found that participants in the Variable Peak Pricing program used much less electricity when prices were high. For this group, average peak period electricity use was up to 33 percent lower during high price periods.  This is a dramatically greater reduction in peak power demand as a result of time of use pricing than has been found in other jurisdictions but similar to other pilots with smart themostats and time of use pricing.

OGE also found that  involving customers through outreach education and focus group dialogues was an important component of a consumer focussed peak energy reduction program.

Global Infrastructure Spending Estimated at $24 to $71 Trillion over 2010-2030

According to Standard and Poor's the value of global infrastructure deals in 2006 was $145 billion, a 180% increase from 2000.

As I have blogged previously, in a 2007 report, Booz Allen Hamilton estimated the global investment in infrastructure needed for water and wastewater, power, roads/highways and rail, and ports and airports between 2005 and 2030 at about US$ 41 trillion.  It broke the infrastructure spending down by sector

• Water and wastewater $22.6 trillion
• Power $9.0 trillion
• Road and rail $7.8 trillion
• Airports/seaports $1.6 trillion

and geographically

• Middle East $0.9 trillion
• Africa $1.1 trillion
• US/Canada $6.5 trillion
• South America/Latin America $7.4 trillion
• Europe $9.1 trillion
• Asia/Oceania $15.8 trillion

In a 2009 report CIBC World Markets quotes estimates of up to $35 trillion in public works spending over 2010-2030.   Geographically, the spending is broken down as

• North America $180 billion/year
• Europe $205 billion/year
• Asia $400 billion/year
• Africa $10 billion/year

Since then, a report by Credit Suisse Group AG referenced predictions by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that total new spending over the next 20 years could be as high as to $71 trillion.

But according to CG/LA Infrastructure, unless the world’s leading economies change the way they currently fund infrastructure development, they are more likely to invest about $24 trillion over the next 20 years.

In 2010 the World Economic Forum initiated the Positive Infrastructure Report (PIR) with the objective of facilitating a dialogue between businesses, policy-makers and civil society to ensure that the massive fiscal spending on infrastructure generates employment to restart the global economy and creates infrastructure that fosters long-term economic competitiveness and are environmentally and
socially sustainable. The PIR report assumed that the world is facing a global infrastructure deficit of US$2 trillion per year over the next 20 years based on the projections for future infrastructural development from the study by Booz Allen Hamilton.

Variability in Sewer and Water Rates among US Cities

Circle of Blue has published fascinating comparative data of residential costs and usage rates for sewer and water for 30 US metro areas.

Residential Water Costs

The survey, which was conducted in 2010, found that average residential water use varied tremendously from 41 gallons/person/day in Boston to 211 gallons/person/day in Fresno. It also found tremendous variation in water rates.  I've included statistics from Circle of Blue for New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, and Las Angeles, which demonstrate some of the unexpected behaviour in relative pricing.  LA has the lowest rainfall of all these cities and imports 89% of its water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Colorado River and other water sources and you would expect its water bills to be high.  But they are exceeded by Seattle, in the Northwest, one of the wettest places in the country.  Atlanta's average annual rainfall exceeds Seattle's and is about five times LA's, yet its water rates exceed LA's.  One thing that is expected, cities near the world's largest fresh water lakes tend to have the lowest rates in the US, as exemplified by Chicago.  But water rates in Chicago are interesting.  71 percent of single-family homes and other residential properties aren't metered, but are charged based the widths of their buildings and lots.

Residential Wastewater Rates

Circle of Blue's survey of wastewater rates in 30 metro areas in the US is even more interesting.  A household would be likely to pay $13.92/month for wastewater services in Salt Lake City.  In Atlanta their bill would be $208.60/month (15 times as much), partially because of the costs associated with upgrading Atlanta's waste water system that I blogged about yesterday.  Similar increases in rates are projected for Cleveland, Akron, and many other cities with aging wastewater infrastructure.  Seattle and King County are already upgrading their wasterwater infrastructure to address combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and other issues, and Seattle's rates are even higher than Atlanta's.  Chicago has been working on a 30 year  $4 billion effort to address CSO's with a Tunnel and Reservoir Plan that has produced some impressive impacts (man made geysers in downtown Chicago), but its rates remain incredibly low, perhaps because the project involves the US Army Corps of Engineers and has significant Federal funding or because of the interesting way Chicago charges for water and sewer services.

Paying for Water and Wastewater Infrastructure: Atlanta and Houston

As I have blogged previously, cities are realizing that investment in maintenance and upgrading water, sanitary and stormwater infrastructure can no longer be deferred.  They are being forced to find ways to fund these necessary improvements.  Atlanta and Houston are examples of two cities who have found very different ways to fund water infrastructure rehabilitation.

Atlanta

In 1998, the City of Atlanta signed a Federal consent decree to settle a lawsuit brought against the City by the US Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA), the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD), the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and a citizen downstream.   The consent decree committed the City to an accelerated program to improve water quality in metro Atlanta streams and the Chattahoochee and South Rivers. The consent decree specifically directed the city to end water quality violations resulting from combined sewer overflows (CSOs). 

In 1999 the consent decree was amended to include eliminating water quality violations from sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs).  The consent decree specified a deadline for sanitary sewer improvements of 2014, though the city intends to complete these by 2012.

MOST and Municipal Borrowing

The estimated cost of the Clean Water Atlanta initiative, led by Shirley Franklin, the self-styled sewer mayor, to overhaul Atlanta's sanitary and storm water system is $4.1 billion.  The city used a number of approaches to fund the improvements including municipal option sales tax (MOST), expansion of low interest state revolving fund borrowing, federal grant funding, tax-exempt commercial paper (commercial loans) and current revenue financing.  As part of the financing program the city started issuing tax exempt municipal bonds in September 2004. The MOST was responsible for a significant part of the revenue, and according to state law can be used to reduce water and wastewater rates.

Water and wastewater rates increased 189% in the first five years.  The approved rate increases for succeeding years are FY08/09 (27.5%), FY09/10(12.5%), FY10/11(12.5%), and FY11/12 (12.0%).  I calculate that this amounts to more than a 5 fold increase in water and wastewater rates over about a decade. It is expected that the cost of borrowing will continue to be reflected in rates for the next 40 years.

Houston

Last November, Proposition 1, a referendum on a proposal to improve drainage in Houston, was passed by a narrow margin.  The proposal will spend $8 billion over 20 years on infrastructure projects targetted at alleviating flooding. To pay for the drainage program, the referendum proposed a drainage fee that would raise an estimated $125 million annually, in addition to developer fees and property taxes.  Annise Parker, the Mayor of Houston, was a major supporter of the proposition because she believes that it is absolutely critical to invest in Houston's crumbling infrastructure. 

Drainage Fee

The city has proposed creating a dedicated infrastructure fund so that the city could avoid having to borrow money for infrastructure improvements. To finance the "Dedicated Drainage and Street Renewal Fund" citizens would pay a drainage fee based on the impervious surfaces on their property.  Undeveloped land would not require a drainage fee, but an average homeowner with a 5,000 ft² lot and a 1,900 ft² house on a street with curbs and gutters would pay about $5 a month.  The proposed drainage fee would apply to all residents and property owners, including churches, schools and other nonprofit groups. The only exemptions are those required by state law, which include higher education institutions and state properties.

Making Engineering Fun for the Younger Generation

I've blogged before about the workforce challenges that utilities are facing in finding younger people, both skilled trades and professional engineers, and how some utilities are turning to 3D technology to attract and retain young workers and engineers.

Autodesk has released a free application called TinkerBox App for the iPad, which is designed to spark teenagers' interest in mechanical engineering.  It's available on the App Store.

In planning for Tinkerbox Autodesk surveyed a thousand teenagers between the ages of 12 and17 about their attitudes toward technical subjects.  The survey found that teenagers seem to appreciate the importance of engineering, but are concerned that the technical skills required are too difficult.

• Over 50 % said that they believed that engineering and math are important to their careers
• Interestingly, they don’t find the subjects boring or nerdy, but think that engineering and math are twice as hard as other subjects

The TinkerBox App is intended to shows teenagers how modern 3D technology can take a lot of the technical drudgery out of engineering and make it fun and exciting, and in some ways similar to the experience they've had with video gaming.

Autodesk also provides free access to 3D design, engineering and entertainment software and curricula though the Autodesk Education Community.

NC GIS Conference: Global Climate Change, Sustainability, Statewide Lidar, SSOs and 3D Visualization

I have blogged before about how geospatial conferences are broadening their appeal by including more vertical industry content.  Dave Sonnen for years predicted that the size of the spatially-enabled or location aware application business would surpass traditional GIS.

As another example of this, I just spent two exciting days at the NC GIS Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.  The NC GIS conference is held every two years. This year 881 people attended, which I find very impressive for a totally volunteer organized event. Most of the attendees were from government and from North Carolina.

Statewide Geodata

I was impressed to find that North Carolina is leading the nation in several areas of geospatial data capture, statewide 6" orthophotos, the first county of which has just been delivered, statewide LiDAR coverage and statewide building footprints including all buildings over 800 ft², about 5.2 million buildings in all. (Slide John Dorman)

Financial Impact of Sea Level Rise

North Carolina is taking global climate change very seriously. Scott Shuford of Onslow County, gave a presentation about the challenges in communicating complex, uncertain information such as global climate change. For example, we know that the observed CO₂ concentration in 2008 was just inder 400 ppm, but we don't know what it will be in 2100.  Climate models suggest between 550 and 900 ppm, a very wide range.  We know our global climate is warming and that the rate at which this is occurring only makes sense if we take into account human activity.  CO₂ and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) appear to play a role in the warming trend.   We expect that temperatures will continue to rise, and because warm air holds more moisture, we expect precipitation events will become more intense.  We expect that by 2070-2090 the climate of New Hampshire will become more like Northern Virginia or North Carolina (It was 70^oF in Raleigh Feb 18, the last day of the conference.) We expect that the rate of sea level rise on the North Carolina coast, which is on the order of 4mm/yr now will become 20-25 mm/yr (or 1"/yr) by the end of the century. (Slide Scott Shuford)

John Dorman of the North Carolina Office of Geospatial and Technology Management is involved in a ground breaking risk assessment study of sea level rise that could be come a model for other parts of the country facing a similar problem.  The study intends to model the financial impact on coast communities of the rise in sea level. resulting from global warming, which is projected to be 1.1 meters by the end of the century. When completed it will be possible to estimate at the community level the financial losses associated with both long term sea level rise and episodic events such as storm surges.  This is incredibly valuable because it allows municipaliities to put proposals for remedial action in a financial context as a return on investment.  It also will influence patterns for new development, in particular reducing the demand for new development in threatened areas and changing the type of structures that are built in these areas. (Slide John Dorman)

Sustainability

Municipalities in North Carolina are taking sustainability seriously.  As an example, Kathleen Snyder of Durham City-County is investigating the impacts of potential municipal solar regulations and reported on her efforts to use imagery data to estimate the total solar PV capacity of roofs in Durham.

3D Visualization

There were several presentation on using 3D visualization technology.  Jeff Hicks and Alex Krebs, from RENCI at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, demonstrated using gaming technology to visualize development projects before construction. 

One of the most interesting insights about 3D visualization was contributed by Scott Shufard who reported that after the 2004 floods in Asheville, a tour of the devastated area was organized to show public officials first hand how devastating the flooding had been.  They were also shown a 3D visualization of the flooding, and Scott reported that the 3D visualization made a greater impression in bringing home to the officials the impact of the flood than the tour of the area. (Image Scott Shuford)

Sanitary Sewer Overflows (SSOs)

The conference included an extensive poster session among which I found one that caught my attention because it showed graphically a problem that many municipaliities are having to address, sanitary sewer overflows.  (North Carolina is one of the few states east of the MIssissippi that does not have combined sewers.)  The poster showed sanitary sewer overflows for Winston-Salem and Forsyth County in 2009 and 2010 and the remedial work that was done in 2010 including debris/grease cleaning, easement clearing, high priority inspections, and chemical root control. I think many citizens might be very surprised. and not a little dismayed, by the number, size and location of where sewer overflows are occurring in their neighbourhoods. I suspect that making this kind of information available for every sewer system in the country, as well for combined sewer overflows, would help immeasurably in increasing awareness of how prevalent and serious a problem SSOs and CSOs are.

EPA Serious about Regulating Emissions from New and Upgraded Power Plants and Refineries

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), power plants and refineries are responsible for 40 per cent of US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and are subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. 

Unlike the EU the US has not adopted a national emissions reduction target.  In the EU the Energy Commissioner is planning to give member states two years to improve energy-saving efforts before imposing legally binding energy efficiency targets on member states unless they accelerate effort to cut GHG emissions 20 per cent by 2020.

In the US the EPA is requiring that electric utilities proposing new generating units or major modifications to existing units that result in a significant increase in emissions submit to a pre-construction review.  Recently the EPA has sued Ameren Missouri, claiming that Ameren made major upgrades to its1.2 GW Rush Island coal-fired power plant without installing modern pollution control equipment.  Ameren claims that the upgrades were routine maintenance.

The EPA plans to introduce new emissions performance standards for new and existing power plants and petroleum refineries under the Clean Air Act, to force some of the country's worst polluters to reduce carbon and other emissions.  The new proposed standards for power plants will be released in July and for refineries in December 2011.  Final decisions on the new standards will released in May 2012 and November 2012.  The impetus for new standards is a result of a legal settlement with twelve states and others (New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, the District of Columbia and the city of New York), which sued the EPA for failing to update pollution standards for fossil fuel power plants and petroleum refineries.

Offshore Wind Development on the Great Lakes

Europe, especially the UK and Denmark, has invested heavily in offshore wind power generation.  In the US the Cape Wind Project has received regulatory approval from three levels of government after a ten years effort.  The US Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior have announced the first interagency plan on offshore wind energy, to encourage the development of offshore wind power generation in the US.

Ohio is planning to go ahead with the development of a 20 MW offshore wind project on Lake Erie.

For the second time in the last five years Ontario has stopped the development of offshore wind farms on the Great Lakes.  In 2006 it put a moratorium on offshore development while it examined environmental issues, but it was removed in 2008.

EPA Submits Draft Study Plan on Hydraulic Fracturing

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has submitted a draft study plan on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for review to the EPA's Science Advisory Board, comprised of a group of independent scientists.  The scope of the research project includes the full lifespan of water in hydraulic fracturing, from acquisition of the water, through the mixing of chemicals and actual fracturing, to the post-fracturing stage, including the management of flowback and produced or used water and its ultimate treatment and disposal.

After review by the Science Advisory Board, the EPA will respond to the SAB’s comments and the study will begin immediately.  Results of the research and study conclusions will be made public by the end of 2012.

GIS for Architects

I've blogged about an Autodesk Labs project called Galileo. Galileo is a technology preview for 3D city modeling for planners, architects, and designers, who need to view future designs of structures in the context of their intended urban environment. 

The product manager for Galileo, Chris Andrews, has posted some tips for architects and non-GIS folks who want to use geospatial data, but may not be familiar with geospatial data sources and how to use them.

The questions he answers are

Q: What is a shapefile and where do I get one?

Q: Where would a database file come from and how would it be used?

Q: How does a terrain surface file work with an image file and where would I find it?

Q: How would a terrain texture file be used?

Q: Which is the most efficient file format to import from for an Architect? (FBX, OBJ…) 

Q: What is LandXML data and where does it come from?

Q: What are coordinate systems and which should be used?