Between the Poles

Australia's carbon tax comes into effect July 1

July 1 is not only Canada Day, but also the day that the carbon tax comes into effect in Australia.  Drafts of the bills that implement the carbon tax were released about a year ago.  The Clean Energy Bill 2011 was passed by the Australian Parliament in October, 2011. 

According to the Garnaut Climate Change Review, Australia’s per capita emissions are the highest in the OECD and among the highest in the world.  According to the Australian government, in addition to the negative effects of carbon emissions to quality of life and the environment, there are significant risks to the Australian economy if steps are not taken towards pricing carbon. 

The carbon pricing scheme will impose costs on Australia’s heaviest polluters, which will result in higher end prices for certain products including electric power. The price on carbon will directly affect approximately 500 businesses. Polluters will pay per tonne of carbon they release into the atmosphere. This cost will initially be set at $23/tonne, and increase gradually until 2015, when Australia will shift to a trading scheme that will let the market set the price of carbon.

Special assistance

There are six streams of industry assistance in the carbon price package. 

• The Energy Security Fund provides $5.5 billion to be used for negotiating the closure of 2 GW of highly polluting power generators.
• The Coal Sector Jobs Package provides $1.3 billion of transitional assistance over six years to implement carbon abatement technologies in the most polluting coal mines.  Australia is one of the world's biggest coal producers, with much of its production exported to China, the world's biggest source of emissions.
• Some companies, termed “trade-exposed”, compete with offshore companies who may not be subject to the a similar carbon pricing scheme.  The Jobs and Competitiveness Program provides $9.2 billion worth of free permits to trade exposed industries such as steel manufacturers, aluminium producers and cement producers.
• The Clean Technology Program provides $1.2 billion of grants to manufacturing industries to help them improve their energy efficiency and adopt low-pollution technology. It also includes funds for clean energy and energy efficient research and development.
• The Steel Transformation Plan provides $300 million worth of transitional assistance over five years.
• Small businesses will see their instant asset write-off increased to $6,500.

The Australian Treasury estimates that an average family will pay $9.90 more per week in the first year of the scheme’s introduction.

Autodesk releases Infrastructure Modeler 360 for the cloud

Autodesk has released a new service as part of Autodesk 360, called Autodesk BIM 360.  One of the new tools in BIM 360 is a Conceptual Design and Feasibility Evaluation service, which enables users of Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler to publish, store, and manage large models in the cloud. Users can invite other team members to access, download, and edit shared models.  If you ever used Project Galileo Online, this may look familiar.  Users can invite other team members to access, download, and edit shared models.

Introductory videos are available.

This part of Autodesk BIM 360 is a cloud-based collaboration service available to subscription customers.

Congress proposes to cut state revolving funds for water/wastewater projects

I have blogged previously about the issues facing water/wastewater systems in the U.S. and the challenge of funding replacement of aging infrastructure and upgrading to meet the requirements of the Clean Water Act. One of the most important funding mechanisms are state revolving funds which provide low interest loans for water and wastewater infrastructure.

According to the ASCE, the problem is that most jurisdictions are spending between 1 and 1.5 percent on infrastructure, which is down from 5 to 6 percent spent in the 1960s and '70s.  In September 2002, an EPA Gap Analysis concluded that if there is no increase in investment, there will be a $6-billion gap between current annual capital expenditures for wastewater treatment ($13 billion annually) and projected spending needs.  The EPA CY2004 clean water needs survey estimated an investment of $202.5 billion over 20 years.  In the CY2008 needs survey the investment has risen to an estimated $344.8 billion, primarily as the  result of age, deferred maintenance, and population growth.  

The AWWA has estimated that the cost of repairing and expanding U.S. drinking water infrastructure will exceed $1 trillion in the next 25 years and $1.7 trillion over 40 years.

According to Forbes, this week the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies of the U.S. House of Representatives approved a FY2013 funding bill that will cut state revolving funds for water and wastewater.  The Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) provides loans for water quality improvement projects including municipal wastewater facilities, estuary protection projects, and nonpoint source pollution control.  The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) supports loans to improve drinking water quality, The cuts are significant

• CWSRF - 53 percent cut from the $1.47 billion 2012 to $689 million in 2013
• DWSRF - 9.7 percent cut from $918 million in 2012 to $829 million in 2013.

According to American Rivers, the bill also removes dedicated funding for green infrastructure, water efficiency, and environmentally innovative projects that communities used to implement forward-thinking water management solutions that protect clean water and save them money.

There are alternative suggestions for paying for water/wastewater infrastructure including

• Clean water trust fund - funded by industries that profit from water or damage its quality, including those that make beverages, fertilizers and pesticides, flushable products, pharmaceuticals, water appliances and plumbing fixtures.
• Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Authority (WIFIA)
• More private investment - remove state volume caps on private bonds for water and wastewater projects to  free up billions of dollars in private capital for the nation’s water infrastructure.  McKinsey has suggested that more private sector involvement in infrastructure projects could result in an estimated 30% improvement in construction productivity over 5-10 years and this would translate into a 20% reduction in overall infrastructure spend.

Two nuclear reactors approved to resume operations in Japan

The Japanese Government has approved the resumption of operations at two of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors, the first to come back on line after they were all shut down following the Fukushima crisis.  The two reactors are operated by Kansai Electric Power Co at Ohi in western Japan.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) says that as of December 2011 conditions equivalent to a cold shutdown, where the inside reactor temperatures have decreased to below 100 degrees C, have been achieved at Units 1 through 3. Tepco also says that the release of radioactive materials has been significantly suppressed. Efforts to continue cooling down the reactors, control radioactive emissions into the atmosphere, and stop all radiation leakage into the ocean continue ongoing.  Tepco says that in the future they will move forward with their primary mission to decommission Units 1 through 4.

After Fukushima, the last operating nuclear reactor was shut down May 6, 2012.

Tepco shareholders have approved nationalization of Tepco, which would have been forced into bankrupcy as a result of the Fukushima incident.  Tepco management has secured an agreement from the government to inject ¥1 trillion ($12.6 billion) in government capital in return for a 50.1% stake in the company.

Immigration helps address aging workforce issue in Canada

The aging workforce problem is a major challenge for utilities around the world, but especially for advanced economies with limited immigration like Japan and Germany.  Because of the serious impact that the labour shortage is having on the German economy, Germany has been revising its immigration laws to make immigration more attractive for highly educated and skilled trades from eastern Europe, Spain, and other parts of the world. 

This is also a problem in Canada. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the country's low birthrate and aging population means in the not-too-distant future without immigration Canada won't have enough people to keep the workforce growing. 

Immigration is seen as the solution to this problem.   In 2010, there were 280,636 new permanent residents in Canada, which on a per capita basis is one of the highest immigration rates in the world.  The Federal Skilled Worker Program gives priority to technicians, skilled trades people, managers and professionals.  The program has a new eligibility stream that is open to international students who are pursuing or who have completed doctoral (PhD) studies at Canadian institutions.

Panasonic announces mass-production of 1.35kWh battery system for solar-powered homes

Large scale lithium-ion batteries for energy storage are expected to become much more prevalent in 2012 as a result of technology advances and dropping prices.  One prediction suggests that prices for lithium-Ion large format batteries will reach $600 per kWh by the end of the year with capacities exceeding a MWh.  These very large batteriss are targeted at utilities and other large industrial users and generators of electric power.  Now a manufacturer, Panasonic Corporation, which last year supplied a lithium-ion battery storage system for field tests in Germany, has announced that it will start mass-production of a lithium-ion battery energy storage system for homes, specifically for the European residential market.

The battery system consists of a battery cell with a capacity of up to 1.35 kWh and a battery management system designed to control battery charging and discharging.  When the sun is shining the battery stores energy generated from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. At night when the PV system is not generating power, the battery provides up to a kWh of power, about enough power to keep a 100 watt bulb lit for 10 hours.

Performance characteristics:

• The lithium-ion battery has a design life time of 5000 cycles.
• The battery management provides battery status information to the controller of home energy storage system, which allows users to remotely monitor the status of the system and battery.
• The system uses a lithium-ion cell that is specifically developed for an energy storage application.

Heatmap of the Blitz in Google Maps

Keir Clarke on the Google Maps Mania blog has developed a Blitz Map, which is is an animated heat map of the bombs dropped on London on the first night of the London Blitz in the Second World War. At this point he has included half of the over 800 bombs.  He's using the new heatmaps function in the Google Maps API.

Reducing electrical demand through energy efficient buildings

I heard a very interesting presentation on energy modeling for buildings with a focus on reducing electrical load at the GORUG meeting here in Ottawa.  Energy efficient building are becoming a priority for many utilities in the U.S., Germany and other locations.

Jean Carriere, an energy modeling specialist at 3D Energy Ltd, gave an insightful overview of what's involved in energy modeling from the point of view of a designer who is familiar with building information modeling (BIM).  The kind of design decisions that energy modeling helps with are

• How much energy should my building use ?
• Could I power it with solar PV or wind (Ontario has a feed-in-tariff program that encourages small scale renewable energy development) ?
• How much insulation is cost effective ?
• How sensitive is my building to changes in weather ?

Compliance

The motivations for conducting an energy analysis include the revised Ontario Building Code, LEED and other types of certification.  In Ontario, new buildings with 40% or more external glazing are required to conduct an energy assessment. After January 1, 2013 new buildings will have to exceed ASHRAE 90.1-2010.  In addition the High Performance New Buildings program rewards builders with incentives for offsetting the cost of energy-efficiency measures.  According to Jean you get compensated for every kW saved.

I blogged previously about a new LEED program fro commercial buildings focussed on demand response and reducing peak electric power usage.

An energy analysis allows you to determine how much energy your building will consume in a year, cost effective insulation and glazing, and other things that you can do as part of the building design to opimize energy usage.  An energy analysis requires a lot of data and according to Jean inputing the data is still a very manual process that takes more time than it should.  Simulation applications allow you to include local environmental conditions and conduct thermal modeling, daylight and airflow simulations.  Thermal modeling includes energy consumption, thermal comfort, CO₂ emissions, renewable energy integration, and electric power load. Natural lighting includes visual comfort (glare) and the reduction of energy use through natural lighting.  Airflow silumation includes external wind simulation, internal airflow simulation, clean room ventilation, and reduction in electrical load as a result of using natural ventilation.

Workflow

Jean devoted most of his talk to the workflow he uses to conduct an energy analysis.  In most projects he is brought in after the building has been designed which significantly limits the opportunity for optimizing the design of the building for energy usage.  He typically starts of with the architect's BIM model and a database containing information about building elements as well as local envrionmental conditions. 

The frist thing he does is to create a parallel model, which is a simplified BIM model derived from the architect's model that contains the key elements that are required for the energy analysis usch as simplified walls and floors, room bounding elements, complete volumes, and window frames and curtain walls.  He exports the simplified model as gbXML to an energy analysis package and runs a simulation or several simulations if he is able to consider alternative designs.  The simulations generate a lot of data which he analyzes. 

Finally, he uses a visualization based around the BIM model to communicate the conclusions derived from the analyses.

Standards

Jean repeatedly emphasized how standards, for interoperability like gbXML and for classifying building elements in BIM models, could contribute to streamlining the workflow for enegy analyses.  He specifically mentioned Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and Zero Energy Performance Index (zEPI), and it would seem that other standards for classifying elemnts in BIM models such as COBie and Omniclass could play a role in this as well.

U.S. Court rules that greenhouse gases are pollutants that endanger human health

In 2007 twelve states and several cities of the United States (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington and the cities of New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C) won a case in the Supreme Court brought against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to force the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington ruled this week that the EPA's decision that greenhouse gases are pollutants that endanger human health is valid.  Furthermore the court said that those opposed to the regulations, several states and industry groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Texas and Virginia, do not have the legal right to challenge EPA rules that specify when industries must comply with regulations for reducing emissions.

NREL study finds renewables and a more flexible grid could supply 80% of U.S. power demand by 2050

In 2010 renewable energy contributed 10% of the total electricity supply in the U.S.  This included 6.4% from hydropower, 2.4% from wind energy, 0.7% from biopower, 0.4% from geothermal energy, and 0.05% from solar energy.  The advantages associated with renewable energy compared to traditional non-renewable generation not only include reductions in electric sector greenhouse gas emissions, but also much less water water use.  One of the major challenges of renewable energy technology is backstopping intermittent energy sources which requires dispatchable capacity such as fly wheels, hydro, batteries, natural gas turbines, and certain types of concentrated solar plants.

A report, Renewable Electricity Futures Study, published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), investigates whether renewable energy can meet most of the electric power demand of the continental United States over the next forty years. It focusses on what is required to meet most of the power requirements of the continental U.S.

It concludes that electricity generation from renewable technologies that are already commercially available (biopower, geothermal energy, hydropower, ocean energy, solar energy, wind energy and energy storage), when combined with a more flexible grid than we currently have, would be able to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation by 2050, not only for the entire country, but also for meeting hourly electricity demand in every region of the continenal U.S.  

Smarter grid

Increased grid flexibility is required to balance demand against generation, in particular intermittent sources such as wind and solar PV.  The technologies that would be required to enable A new, more flexble grid include dispatchable capacity, storage including batteries and pumped storage, expansion of the transmission network, load management programs such as demand response, energy efficiency programs, and changes in power system operations.

Policy changes could include increased code adoption and enforcement; financial incentives such as tax credits, energy efficient mortgages, rebates, and coupons; broadening rating and labeling efforts; and encouragement of volume purchase programs.  Behavioral changes could include use of sensors and automation, continuous building commissioning, and managing use based on signals from the power company.  Other changes the report considers includes an increased focus on building commissioning so that buildings are built and commissioned as designed; more integration between the financial, construction, and associated industries to better enable the deployment of highly efficient buildings; and deployment of smart meters to empower users ro better manage their energy consumption.

Energy efficiency

One of the scenarios modeled in the report is a Low-Demand Baseline, which is based on the energy efficiency targeted by the Department of Energy's (DOE) ultra-efficient building programs for residential and commercial buildings. The electricity demand forecast under the Low-Demand Baseline assumes a larger number of buildings to be capable of ultra-high efficiency.  Its basic assumption is that the average energy intensity of new buildings in 2050 will be 60% below that of new buildings being built today.   This would be motivated by underlying more stringent energy codes, new federal energy efficiency standards for equipment and appliances, and new technology for buildings and facilities.

Changing operating procedures and transforming the energy market

Operating procedures are already changing to accommodate intermiitent energy sources. Actual operating experience has shown that it is technically feasible to operate an electric power system with wind energy penetrations of 10%–20% of energy generated, but this not only requires changes in current operational procedures, but also a tranformation of the energy market market such as the rule recently issued by FERC relating to transmission and intermittent energy generators.

Grid reliability

This study is based on an hourly simulation of the electric grid.  At this level of time granularity it finds that the proposed grid can meet the load scenarios with high levels of intermitttent renewable generation. However, it also says that understanding the impact of a high level of intermittent renewables on grid reliability requires a more detailed analysis at a much more granular time level (on the order of a few minutes to a few seconds).  The report also says that it should also include a grid security analysis.