Between the Poles

Four energy-efficient community development projects that affordably reduce energy consumption

The Ottawa Chapter of the Canada Green Building Council last evening hosted a very informative presentation by Jamie Shipley and Thomas Green from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) on lessons learned from CMHC's EQuilibrium Communities Initiative and EQuilibrium Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative.

The EQuilibrium Communities Initiative are four sustainable community demonstration projects jointly funded by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).  The initiative provided financial assistance to developers of the neighbourhood projects for research and technical activities to improve, monitor and showcase their performance in the six areas; energy, water and stormwater, protection of the natural environment, land use and housing, transportation and financial viability.

Jamie Shipley, a researcher with CMHC, gave an overview of the four EQuilibrium Communities projects: Station Pointe Greens in Edmonton, Alberta; Ampersand in Ottawa, Ontario; Ty-Histanis neighbourhood development 10 km from Tofino, British Columbia; and the Regent Park Revitalization in Toronto, Ontario, all of which are completed or near completion at this point.  The achievements that Jamie described for these projects are quite remarkable and perhaps most remarkably because they have not increased costs significantly over what they would have cost if just built to meet the local building code.

Station Pointe Greens

Station Pointe Greens is a transit-oriented development 300 m from a light-rail transit station in a former industrial area northeast of downtown Edmonton. The Communitas Group Ltd. is building 219 co-operative homes, with mixed uses, in the form of mid- and high-rise construction, with some townhouses, all targeting Passive House criteria.  (Passive House is a desing standard developed in Europe for reducing the energy consumption of houses.  In Canada energy consumption can be reduced through PH by 80% or more).  An ecological wastewater ("black" water)  treatment facility has been installed in-site as part of the project.

The project has reduced energy requirements for heating and cooling by 90% compared to what would be required if the buildings had been built according to the Alberta Building Code.  By installing green rooves, 50% of the site is classified as green.  This also reduces storm water runoff.  100% of waste water is treated on site and reused as gray water.  Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this project is financial. The total cost was 1% above what it would have cost if built to code.  This is quite a mremarkable achievment as buildung houses to the Passive House standard in Canada can require 10% more expenditure than building to code.

Ty-Histanis

Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations (TFN) is developing a new community on 84 hectares of land near Tofino. The neighbourhood will 162 residential lots, up to 215 housing units, an elders’ complex, and a variety of community facilities located in the Community Core. By the end of 2012 all infrastructure is in place and 43 housing units had been built.

A key objective of the project is a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases (GHGs) through energy reductions by using a district energy system using renewable energy sources and ground source heat pumps as well as building envelope improvements.  At least 40 per cent of the development site has been maintained as undisturbed, natural habitat.  Through the use of porous pavements only 14% of the total site surface area is classified as impermeable.

Ampersand

Ampersand is a transit-oriented development being developed by Minto. Phase 1 incudes 300 units in the form of stacked townhouses and 4-storey condominium apartments.  One block of this development (14 units) is net-zero energy.

The project has a high level of pedestrian connectivity with access to high-quality community parks,  commercial outlets, the existing OCTRANSPO bus transitway and Ottawa’s proposed Light Rail Transit. Remarkably, tree canopy coverage is 30 % of the site.  A 30% reduction in energy usage compared to code has been achieved through a district heating system, solar PV on the rooves of the net zero energy buildings and improved building envelopes, appliances and mechanical systems.

Regent Park

Revitalization of Regent Park is transforming Canada’s oldest and largest social housing community into a mixed-income community for 5,100 households. The EQuilibrium Communities initiative supported Phase 1, which includes over 1,000 townhouses, mid-rise and high-rise units, either market condominiums or affordable rental units for low to moderate income residents. This part of the project is fully occupied.  Phase 1 also has 5,000 square meters of commercial, retail and community agency space.

One of the main objectives of the project is a high quality pedestrian environment with walking access to public transit, jobs, civic amenities and commercial outlets.  This is a relatively high desnity development, but has been able to a achieve 30%-40% tree caopy coverage.

Energy consumption is 40 to 50 % lower than building to the Model National Energy Code for Buildings (MNECB) throgh energy-efficient building envelopes, lighting, appliances and mechanical
systems and a district heating system that uses commercial waste heat for residential heating. 

The project uses 40-60% less potable water through low-flow fixtures, water-efficient
landscape design and tenant education.  It also reduces runoff volume by 50 per cent through the use of green roofs and porous pavements.

Affordability is a key goal of this community development: 35 per cent of homes are market rental and all units have rents lower than the area average or are rent-geared-to-income.

South Africa seeks to expand renewables for electric power generation

South Africa is a net energy importer.  It has very limited oil and gas reserves, and has relied on coal and peat for 72% of its primary energy requirements.  67% of its petroleum is imported, primarily from Saudi Arabia and Iran.

ESKOM, the South African state owned electricity company, generates two thirds of the electricity produced in Africa and provides more than 60% of Africa's demand.   ESKOM has a generating capacity of 35 GW from 20 power stations, primarily coal-fired, but also a nuclear power station, gas turbine facilities, and hydroelectric plants.  The company also owns and operates the national transmission system.  It relies on coal for 95 percent of its electric power generation.

The South African economy has expanded significantly during the past few decades.  This has resulted in growth in electricity demand.  The South African Government wants to diversity its power generating fleet beyod coal.  The South African Integrated Resource Plan (IRP 2010-2030), issued in May 2010 by the Department of Energy (DoE), calls for 18 GW of  renewable energy over the next two decades.

The DoE has created an enabling environment to attract private sector investment in the energy sector.  The program is targetted toward independent power producers (IPPs).  A renewable energy fund is seen as one of the important steps to ensure the long-term affordability and sustainability of the renewable energy programme in South Africa. The intention is to lower the cost and impact of renewable energy on the economy by leveraging private sector investment.

South Africa has a high level of renewable energy potential and presently has in place a target of 10 000 GWh of renewable energy. DoE has determined that 3 725 MW of renewable energy is required to ensure an uninterrupted supply of electricity. This 3 725 MW is in accordance with the capacity allocated to renewable energy generation in IRP 2010-2030.

The IPP Procurement Programme has been designed so as to contribute towards the target of 3 725 megawatts and towards socio-economic and environmentally sustainable growth, and to start and stimulate the renewable industry in South Africa.

The following technologies and capacities are considered as qualifying technologies for selection under the IPP Procurement Programme:

• onshore wind - 1 850 MW
• concentrated solar thermal - 200 MW
• solar photovoltaic  - 1 450 MW
• biomass - 12.5 MW
• biogas - 12.5 MW
• landfill gas - 25 MW

DoE has also allocated 100 MW of the 3725 MW to the procurement of small projects which individually have generation capacity between 1MW and 5MW.   The technologies that qualify for the Small Projects IPP Procurement Programme include onshore wind, solar photovoltaic, biomass, biogas, and landfill gas.

Construction on the first utility-scale concentrating solar power plants (CSP) in Africa has been announced.  The plants will have a combined capacity of 150 MW.  The output from the plants will be purchased by Eskom.  Technically the most interesting aspect of these plants is that to minimize water use, both plants will employ dry cooling technology.  Dry cooling is critical technology in deserts such a those in South Africa where the need for water for evaporative cooling for conventional CSP plants has inhibited the deployment of CSP plants.

Chinese lunar rover includes ground penetrating radar

The Chang'e-3 mission will land a robotic rover on the moon.  The lander's premier instrument is a wide-angle extreme ultraviolet camera that is intended to monitor the Earth's plasmasphere, a halo of ionized gases surrounding the Earth.  But the science payload also includes ground-penetrating radar (GPR) mounted on the undercarriage of the rover.  It will record echoes in the very high frequency and ultrahigh frequency bands from as much as 100 meters deep in the lunar crust.    GPR is being increasingly used here on Earth to geolocate underground infrastructure.

China has not announced the launch date, but liftoff could occur December 2, which would set up the most favorable approach to the Bay of Rainbows (Sinus Iridum), the intended landing location.

Third city in China opens carbon trading market

Nov 28 Beijing launched a carbon trading scheme to regulate CO2 emissions from 490 of its largest power generators and manufacturers.   Two other cities Shenzhen and Shanghai have already started their own carbon trading markets.  Guangdong province is scheduled to open a fourth one in December.

China's has committed to reducing its carbon intensity (greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP)  to 40-45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.  China is the world's biggest carbon emitter and its emissions continue to increase.  On a per capita basis its emissions are much less than the Unites States, the world's second biggest emitter.

The China Beijing Environment Exchange (CBEEX) hosts trading in allowances (for one tonne of CO2 emissions) for the Beijing market.  Carbon prices were 50 yuan in Beijing, 80 yuan in Shenzen, and 28 yuan in Shanghai.  Coal-fired power plants (Beijing power plants are shown on the map) will receive free permits for 2013 equal to 99.9 percent of their average emissions for 2009 to 2012.  By 2015, free allowances will drop to 99.5 percent.  Manufacturers will receive permits equal to 98 percent of their historical emissions.  This will drop to 94 percent in 2015.

80% of power generation in Canada is non-emitting

80 % of Canada’s electricity generation comes from non-emitting sources, primarily hydro and nuclear.  Globally Canada is third in the total hydroelectric power generation, behind China and Brazil. Ontario is on schedule to eliminate coal generation by next year. In spite of having some of the greenest power in the world, global statistics show that Canadians pay average electricity prices that are lower (and in many cases substantially lower) among OECD countries.

Some provinces still burn coal, but they are moving toward reducing emissions.  For example, SaskPower's Boundary Dam Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage Demonstration Project is the world’s largest commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.   It aims to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 90 %, capturing one million tonnes of post-combustion CO2 emissions every year.

The next wave of Canada’s electricity infrastructure will need to focus on the replacement of the remaining emitting and less efficient generation with distributed generation primarily wind and solar PV.

Cumulative wind generation reached 6.2 GW in 2012.  Beginning with Ontario's Green Energy Act in 2009 solar photovoltaic (PV) has grown rapidly

• 2009 62 MW
• 2010 186 MW
• 2011 216 MW
• 2012 268 MW

to reach a cumulative total capacity of 765 MW in 2012. The majority of these installations occurred in Ontario through Ontario's feed-in-tariff program..

Canada is the largest supplier of electricity to the U.S.  In 2012 Canada supplied 47,000 GWh net of electricity to the U.S.  Historically, electricity exports to the U.S. have represented
5 to 10 % of Canada’s total generation.  The majority of electricity moving from Canada to
the U.S. is coming from clean, non-emitting sources.  Most of the states in the U.S. have renewable portfolio standards (RPS) setting clean energy objectives which creates increasing future opportunities for clean (relative to the U.S. generation mix) Canadian energy.

The Conference Board of Canada estimates that more than $350 billion will be need to be  invested in Canada's electricity grid over the next two decades.  This will be required to exand transmission networks to provide new generation, including renewables, access to the grid.  It will also enable energy conservation, smart grid and distributed generation technologies, increase system effi ciency and empower customers to make more informed decisions about their power usage.  For example, 50 % of Ontario consumers have access through the province's Green Button program to the power usage data collected by their smart meters (everyone in Ontario has a smart meter and is on time-of-use tariffs).  British Columbia has completed installing 1.8 million smart meters across the province.

Sensor web: drifting buoys

I blogged earlier about the sensor web that is taking shape.  It involves satellites and ground sensors.  I blogged about very inexpensive nanosatellites, typicaly 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm,  that are dramatically reducing the cost of sateliite imagery.

Drifting buoys are less than 22 feet long, weigh no more than 100 pounds, and typically survive on the open seas for an average of 450 days. Each drifter consists of a surface buoy and an underwater drogue attached by a tether. The thermometer, pressure sensors, batteries and other electronics reside in the buoy.  There are about 1,000 drifting buoys on the world's oceans. The modern drifter weighs about 44 pounds with 16-foot drogues and cost around $1,700 each.

Roughly every hour, the drifter uploads data to a satellite passing overhead which in turn relays the observations back to an Earth receiving station.   Drifters measure sea-surface temperature and ocean current data as well as their location. For example, their observations help in tracking the impact of El Niño and La Niña on global ocean currents. In addition NOAA will sometimes deploy drifters in front of hurricanes to improve forecasts and investigate how the ocean and atmosphere interact within and around the storm.

The 1,000 or so drifters in the oceans collect about 30,000 observations per day, which are processed by NOAA's Drifter Data Assembly Center in Miami and archived for research and placed on the Global Telecommunications System, where the National Weather Service and other forecasters can use them for weather prediction.

The map shows the location of all drifters as of April 26, 2013. (Credit: NOAA Climate.gov, based on drifter data from the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory.)

Comparing the cost of alternative electric power generation technologies

The "levelized cost", which is the present value of the total cost of building and operating a generating plant over its financial life, aims at making the costs of different generation technologies comparable.  The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has developed a standard way of estimating levelized costs.  The most recent estimates of the comparative costs of different ways of generating electricity have been developed by the EIA for the Annual Energy Outlook 2013 (AEO2013) Early Release Reference case.

The levelized cost represents the per-kWh cost (in real dollars) of building and operating a generating plant over an assumed financial life and duty cycle. Key inputs to calculating levelized costs include overnight capital costs, fuel costs, fixed and variable operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, financing costs, transmission costs, and an assumed utilization rate (capacity factor) for each plant type.  Plants typically built for peaking have a much lower capacity factor or utilization rate than a baseload plant.  Renewable energy generation also typically has a a lower capacity factor because wind and sun are intermittent.

The levelized cost shown for each utility-scale generation technology is based on a 30-year cost recovery period starting in 2018, using a real after tax weighted average cost of capital (WACC) of 6.6 percent.

The levelized costs are the true economic cost and do not include state or federal incentives such as tax credits.  In the AEO2013 reference case a 3 % increase in the cost of capital is added when evaluating investments in greenhouse gas (GHG) intensive technologies like coal-fired power and coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants without carbon control and sequestration (CCS). The impact of the 3% increase is similar to that of an emissions fee of $15 per metric tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) when investing in a new coal plant without CCS, similar to the costs used by utilities and regulators in their resource planning.  It represents an estimate of the carbon allowances these plants may have to purchase to offset their emissions.  The impact is that the levelized capital costs of coal-fired plants without CCS are higher than would otherwise be expected.

Costs vary regionally.  Levelized costs have been calculated for 22 regions across the U.S.  The graph shows minimum, average and maximum regional costs for the U.S.

Comparing the levelized costs for dfferent generation technologies and different regions shows that natural gas-fired combined cycle is the cheapest way to generate power in many parts of the country, recognizing that the levelized cost of coal includes the potential future cost of carbon emissions. 

The other interesting conclusion is that in some parts of the country solar PV has already achieved grid parity (within the assumptions of levelized costs).  This repesents a signfiicant drop in the cost of solar PV.  When I blogged about levelized costs was at the beginning of 2011.  At that time the cost of solar PV per MWh was significantly more than any other generation technology.

Balancing supply and demand when intermittent sources exceed 20% of total power demand drives natural gas generation

Intermittent renewable energy sources like solar PV and wind power are being used more and more worldwide, while the market share of conventional power stations is decreasing.  Balancing intermiitent power sources and consumer demand becomes a serious challenge when intermittent  represent more than 20-30 % of total demand.  For example, distributed generation with many small sources of power feeding energy at medium and low voltage levels can reverse the load flows from lower to higher voltage levels.  In addition the greater distances between where power is generated and consumed require increased transmission capacities.

All of these changes affect the provision of system services which balance supply and demand. For example, conventional power stations not only provide most of the balancing energy required in the system, but the inertia of their generators also guarantees the provision of instantaneous reserves for immediate frequency support. Other important system services include voltage maintenance, operation management and re-establishment of power supply.

Two world economies that are facing a situation in the near term where electric power from intermittent sources will exceed 20-30% of total generation are Germany and California.

Germany

The decision to shutdown its nuclear power plants in favour of renewable energy (and increased use of coal) is fundamentally changing the supply of energy in Germany.  In the first six months of 2012 according to BDEW, Germany produced 67.9 billion kWh of renewable energy, about 25 % of Germany's total power production.

To address the challenge of balancing generation and demand with increasing intermittent energy sources distributed over larger areas, the Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH (dena) - the German Energy Agency - has commissioned a study to be led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Rehtanz, Technical University Dortmund/ef.Ruhr to determine the scope of grid system services in the context of an increasing supply of intermittent energy.  In particular, the study will look into the extent to which distribution grids can contribute to grid stability for the transmission grid, and the role renewable energy systems, storage facilities and demand-side management need to play to esnure grid stability and resilience. The results of the study are expected by the end of 2013.

California

California has mandated a state renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of 33% by 2020 and most of this is intermittent.  A recent joint report produced by: the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and the California Independent System Operator Corporation (CaISO) addresses the challenge of integrating large quantities of intermittent energy sources also called variable energy resources (VERs), which in California is predominantly wind and solar photovoltaic (PV), into the North American bulk power system.  California plans on adding an additional 11 GW of intermittent energy capacity by 2020, most of which are expected to be connected to the CAISO grid.

This requires significant changes to electricity system operations to ensure the continued reliability of the grid.  The report focuses on issues that all system operators need to consider in order to integrate significant quantities of intermittent sources into the bulk power system. Because California will be facing this challenge in the next few years, the report identifies some of the measures that  CAISO is undertaking including self-scheduling of resources, ramping capability, lower capacity factors for dispatchable generation, inertia and frequency response, active power control, and reactive power control. 

For example, currently with centralized power plants meeting demand requires ramping up or down several GW over an extended period.  Intermittent sources can increase the frequency and magnitiude and decrease the time in which raming or shedding needs to be completed.

System operators must rely on ramping capability to balance the less predictable energy production patterns of VERs like wind and solar resources. This requires dispatching flexible resources at higher loads. The alternative is when generation exceeds demand and resources need to be ramped down.

The typical CAISO load (blue curve) has ramps that are relatively small and of long duration. However, with more renewable resources, whose maxima do not correspond with system load maxima, the net load (red curve) is the trajectory conventional ramping resources would have to follow. It is a series of ramps of significant magnitude and shorter duration including one up to 13 GW in three hours.  Also  CAISO may have to cycle resources on and off more frequently which adds to maintenace costs.

As this report points out, CAISO projects current ramping capacity is inadequate and that more flexibility (rapidly dispatchable capacity) will be needed to reliably meet net load and provide nearly 13 GW of continuous up-ramping capability within a three-hour time period.  In the California market this means more gas fired turbines.  It is estimated that an additional 6.4 GW of new natural gas capacity will be required by 2020.

Planet Labs launches two more earth observation satellites

In April 2013 Planet Labs launched two demonstration satellites, “Dove 1” and “Dove 2”.  Yesterday two more satellites Dove 3 and Dove 4 were placed into orbit by a Dnepr rocket. 

It appears the Dove-3 and 4 mission is a technology demonstration.   They will operate from longer lived sun synchronous orbits. Both satellites are licensed to collect images of the Earth and will undertake an experimental mission in an 800 km by 597 km and a 700 km circular orbit, respectively.  Dove 3 conforms to the 3U cubesat specification, with a launch mass of 5.2 kg. Basic physical dimensions are 100 mm × 100 mm × 340 mm, with two 260 mm × 300 mm deployable solar arrays.  Power storage is provided by Lithium-Ion cells. The batteries will be recharged by solar cells mounted on the body of the satellite and on the two deployable solar panels.

"3D" interoperability for the smart grid

At the inaugural meeting of the SGIP John McDonald, Director of Technical Strategy and Policy Development at GE Energy and Chair of Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) made a strong case for why interoperability is even more important now than it was in 2009 when NIST initiated SGIP.  Back in those days vendors like GE were selling products and interoperability was to a large extent the customer's problem.   Since then there has been a "solution revolution" at GE where GE now focuses on  understanding the customer's business problem and then builds a solution by integrating components from across GE's many divisions and product groups to solve the problem.  But after doing this, they quickly realized just how critical all these components working together was to delivering successful solutions.  They also recognized that product maturity was not what they expected.  The result was that at GE interoperability became even more important than it had been back in the days when they sold products, which is one of the reasons that GE is a major supporter of SGIP and a Conference Sponsor.

In an interesting EnergyCentral webcast yesterday, Pat Corrigan Vice President, Public Utilities at Elster, Richard Gray, Manager of Enterprise Architecture at Kansas City Power & Light and Doug Lambert, Multispeak Program Manager at NRECA gave their perspectives on interoperability for the smart grid.

Pat Corrigan provided an overview of some of the challenges facing the utility industry as it moves toward implementing smart grid technologies.  Perhaps the most important challenge is simplifying the complex web of devices, communications protocols, and applications such as SCADA, outage management (OMS), billing, DSM, AMI, and other applications.  In the past each application represented a silo and there was very little interoperability between application silos.  This is the world that Pat calls 2D.  Each application uses its own protocols to talk to its own devices.  Whatever integration there is between application silos is point to point and often involves custom programming that has to be retested whenever a new version of either of the applications is released.

Pat outlined a vision of the future, what he refers to as "3D", where applications, communications protocols, and devices all interoperate using standards and multi-device and multi-communications support built into devices and applications.  For example, Elster has developed an integrated smart meter and radio called REXUniversal that supports a number of different radio protocols (multi-radio) as well as full support for standards such as IEEE 802.15.4g and Zigbee.

I hope this is indicative of a trend because if all vendors take the approach of building devices that support standards such as those from the IEEE, IEC CIM, Multispeak, OGC, and those in the SGIP Catalog of Standards as well as multiple communications protocols, developing smart grid solutions will become easier. 

Standards enable devices from different vendors to be used interchangeably, thus encouraging competition and ultimately reducing prices.  The internet is a classic model because it is a suite of standards from several standards organizations like the IETF, IEC, and W3C and is not "owned" by any vendor.  But vendors can develop devices and applications that interoperate with other devices and applications from other vendors because they all use TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, JSON and other internet standards.

802.15.4g#sthash.dmvFDCFk.dpufZigbee and can interoperate with any wireless network commonly used by utilities for connecting smart meters to aggregators and my consumers to connect a home network.