Wind Power in the Bay State

Descending into Boston’s Logan Airport last August, I noticed an unexpected element among the rocky islands and weathered colonials. At the end of a narrow neck of land just feet from seaside homes was a massive, commercial-sized wind turbine turning lazily in the wind.

After moving to Boston, wind power seemed everywhere. Setting up the utilities at our new apartment, my girlfriend and I opted for plan that would power our computers and toaster with 100% wind energy at only a slightly higher rate. (The electricity is produced by a New York wind farm so large it featured prominently in a New York Times story about the challenges of wind power transmissions.) On the way to a meeting, I passed a large mill installed alongside I-93 near downtown Boston. At a community meeting, attendees from coastal communities discussed pending proposals in their towns.

I was already familiar with the controversy surrounding a major wind farm proposed off Cape Cod, notoriously delayed by wealthy property owners. A recent story in the Boston Globe described quite a different environment for a farm a bit farther south along the coast. Thanks to astronomical power prices caused by the high cost of diesel for the island generator, the residents of Rhode Island’s Block Island were considering an offshore farm.

Did I unwittingly land in some sort of New England wind paradise? Not exactly. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the few turbines already mentioned unfortunately comprised half of the state’s wind power generation capability. With a total generating power of just 5.32 megawatts, among the states Massachusetts ranks 31st, far behind wind behemoths like California (5,604 MW), Texas (3,162 MW) or Iowa (1,375 MW). Although experiencing rapid growth in the past decade, wind-generated energy comprises only a small portion of energy consumed.

The turbines visible from flights into Logan are known as Hull I and II, named after the small community that owns them. Their story began with a small turbine installed during the 1980s. After it blew down in a storm in 1997, the community-owned power utility decided to install a larger turbine. Success beget success, and in 2006 the Vestas-manufactured Hull II began operations. Local boosters eagerly track the power production online and plans are underway for yet more turbines.

The turbine alongside I-93 was installed at the Dorchester headquarters of a the IBEW 103 union, as a demonstration project demonstrating their commitment to wind power. According to the American Wind Energy Association, in addition to these two others sit atop mountains, and the last is owned by the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, all installed since 2001.

Although Massachusetts has a long way to go before wind would contribute a significant portion of all power generation, there has been interest in renewable energy. Some of the 600 programs in renewable energy funded by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative are shown here in a regional map created by my employer, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council:

The local interest in commercial-scale wind power production is no accident. Thanks to geography, the state’s coast enjoys some of the best wind conditions in the country.

Although there’s all kinds of new websites to investigate wind power potential, the map above from a government report clearly illustrates the issue. When it comes to wind power, the west is king. But unlike the flatlands of the Midwest and South, the New England seacoast and mountain peaks are blessed with high “wind power density,” meaning more proposals are sure to come.

> HullWind.org
> American Wind Energy Association project list
> 3Tier’s Wind and Solar Energy Potential Map
> U.S. Energy Information Agency
> My related post on solar thermal technology

Green Gas?

One of the most interesting things that happened on my recent trip to the west coast occurred looking for a restroom. After pulling off I-5 south of Portland, Oregon, I missed the turn-in for a name brand gas station. I noticed another up ahead. My girlfriend Libby was skeptical. I peered ahead. “It has a green roof,” I noticed, “how bad can it be?” Pulling into the station we noticed solar panels, a vegetated bioswale, and sign advertising a variety of biofuels. Inside, a man sat typing on a laptop sipping a cappuccino in a cafe, and the racks were lined with organic foods. It was, as Libby observed, as if we had stepped into the future.

That’s how I visited the self-described “greenest gas station in America.” It turns out the exit was near Eugene, Oregon, and the station was one operated by the SeQuential fuel company. The station was a restored brownfield, the flagship location for the locally-owned biofuels company.

I’m generally skeptical of biofuels. Although they’re cleaner-burning, their net carbon production can equal or surpass fossil fuels. Nonetheless, SeQuential has taken pains to make their fuels as green as possible.

Using grease from Burgerville restaurants and Kettle Foods (makers of potato chips), as well as other sources, the company produces over five million gallons of biodiesel at their local plant. They boast their fuel recycles waste grease and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by “over 78%.” Their ethanol, sold pure or in blends with conventional gasoline, comes from Eastern Oregon family farmers, and they say growing “canola in rotation with wheat enables farmers to reduce fertilizer and pesticide use and to sustainable increase crop yields.”

SeQuential’s innovation is impressive. Until we can all plug our electric cars into a solar-powered grid, this might be the next best step.

Update: I found this amusing interview with one of the people behind the station on something called “Peak Moment TV,” also this blog has some information about the impact of biofuels on waste grease prices.

Smart Grid Pilot Program Launched

Over 1,000 D.C. homes are now equipped with smart electrical meters that record their hourly electricity usage, encourage conservation during peak times, and even automatically turn down the heat or A/C when electricity is most expensive. The meters are part of a pilot program starting this week to study how “price signals” can encourage consumers to save electricity by providing them with more information about the amount and price of power consumed.

Although the generation of electricity has been deregulated in Washington since 2001, about 99% of PEPCO customers subscribe to the Standard Offer Service, the rate charged to users who have not selected an alternate source. The cost of the electricity is calculated from the average rate of contracts from power plants, plus an administrative charge and taxes. The rate is changed yearly and only adjusted twice a year. This means that even though the generated supply and consumer demand for electricity can range widely, consumers have little incentive to modify their behavior. The idea is that by charging more to consumers during peak times (or, offering discounts for those who conserve at those times) will save consumers money and help PEPCO reduce the peak demand.

From the PEPCO announcement, here are the three pricing options the program is testing:

Under Hourly Pricing, electricity prices will vary hourly. The prices will be set a day ahead, based on prices in the “day ahead” wholesale market operated by PJM Interconnection, the regional power grid. Prices will be available on the project’s Web site or displayed real-time on “smart” thermostats. Based on recent wholesale market trends, hourly prices are expected to exceed conventional power supply prices only about a third of the time within a year, with lower prices the remainder of the time. Customers will be notified of high priced hours a day in advance through an automated phone call, an e-mail, text page or “smart” thermostat notification.

With Critical Peak Pricing, peak prices will be in effect for four hours on critical peak days, of which there are about 15 each year. These critical peak hours during which higher prices are charged will be limited to about 60 hours per year. Customers will be notified of these events the day before through an automated phone call, an e-mail, text page or “smart” thermostat notification. Prices during the critical peak hours will be substantially higher than conventional rates but will be offset by lower prices during the remaining 8,700 hours of the year.

Under Critical Peak Rebate, participants will continue to pay the same generation charges as the Standard Offer Service charged by Pepco. During critical peak events, however, customers can earn rebates by reducing their consumption below what they would normally have used during those times. Customers will be notified of these events the day before through an automated phone call, an e-mail, text page or “smart” thermostat notification.

Presumably the results from the program will help PEPCO decide which of the above policies to eventually extent to all residential customers. For now the program is closed since the program website reports they received a “tremendous” response from the 1,400 customers invited to participate one year ago. Although there’s not much there yet, one of the project’s sponsors, the D.C. Office of the People’s Council, has launched a blog to track the program.

In South Africa I experienced a related method for encouraging conservation: pre-paid electricity. We would purchase a fixed amount of electricity from an authorized seller such as a supermarket, and they would provide us a confirmation code we would enter into the meter in our rented home. The meter would recognize the code and display the total amount of electricity purchased, and slowly tick down the balance as you used it. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported last year that “A half-dozen utilities are trying prepaid programs now, but that could accelerate quickly.” We found that a conspicuous meter in the kitchen ticking away our money made us highly aware of our power consumption. Participants in the Arizona program described by the Wall Street Journal cut their power usage 12%.

What about consumers generating their own power? Although PEPCO allows consumers to generate power for the grid from renewable technology through their Green Power Connection program, SproutDC pointed out in a previous comment that D.C. does not offer rebates or incentives for the installation of solar power systems like California or New Jersey.

More
> Power Cents DC
> DC Office of the People’s Council: D.C. Electric “SMART METER” Pilot Program Announcement, Blog
> PEPCO: Residential Pilot to Test “Smart Metering” for DC Electric Customers
> PR Newswire: Smart Metering and Demand Response Pilot Goes Live in Washington D.C.
> Wall Street Journal: “New Ways to Monitor Your Energy Use“

An Architectural Aesthetic of Efficiency

“The principle of organic economy was too essential to the functioning of the society not to affect ethics and aesthetics profoundly.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin, from the novel The Dispossessed

Architectural sustainability, or the green building movement, is dominated by concern with buildings energy efficiency and use of sustainable materials. Left largely undiscussed is the question of the cultural values that shape our homes. American homes have increased in size, cost, and complexity, even while the building’s energy efficiency and materials have improved. Geoff Manaugh often points out the possibility that after technical fixes to fossil fuel energy have been perfected, we will still live in precisely the same way as before - with automobiles, large homes, and consumption. The most visible counter-trend, small homes movement, has had a limited cultural impact as its absurd minimalism contrasts so greatly against excessive cultural norms. It’s often pointed out we simply don’t have enough raw materials for billions of the world’s poor to live at the same standards as exist in the developed world. What’s lacking is a concerted effort to cultivate aesthetic and cultural models for more resource-efficient living.

Other professions involved in the planning and design of cities have dedicated considerable effort to realizing models for less resource intensive environments. New Urbanism proposes neighborhood-scale pattern for more efficient development. Together with Smart Growth, some think it is the nucleus to a new “sustainable urbanism.” The field of landscape architecture has sought to align aesthetics with ecology (PDF), and great strides have been made in seeking to design parks and landscapes that are both beautiful and beneficial to natural ecosystems. The architectural profession needs to engage in a similar effort.

Oddly the place best situated to cultivate a cultural ethic of creative and efficient homes are the nations where wealthy and deeply impoverished live side-by-side. Here the resources of professionals can be deployed within the limits of the forced austerity of poverty.

Vaughan Burns, a South African architect I met with last summer while studying abroad, has made it his life’s work to make humane low cost housing. In the country, government efforts to provide housing to the poor had pushed the architectural profession to the limits of economy. Every centimeter of cement or piping, every hinge, every ounce of paint makes a difference in cost when you’re building 2.3 million homes. Although Vaughan lamented how this tendency can result in inhumanely minimal structures (the model to the right is a new version, enlarged from the previously standard 380 square feet), he has taken it as a creative challenge to formulate a philosophy that maximizes the benefit for residents. Vaughn said he’d been commissioned by middle income and even wealthy clients to build homes much larger, but in the same style as low-cost government housing. The owners almost certainly could afford a conventional home, but found the simplicity, economy, and beauty of the “low cost mindset” more appealing.

In his view architecture had just four basic elements: floors, doors, roofs, and windows. These structural categories doubled for metaphors of four rules of design that have guided his designs.

The first, the “floor,” is client participation. Vaughan argues for participation both because it is important to creating good design and also because of its transformative impact on the clients.

The second, the “door,” represents multi-functionality of design. Buildings should maximize the use of every space, surface, and room. An architect specializing in alternative building techniques has observed “many standard homes built today feel hollow and empty until they are filled with possessions.” He observed his designs include window seats, window shelves, and creative flooring making the homes “quite pleasing even before you move in.” An efficient home could convince the occupant to choose a smaller space, and even “need” fewer belongings to live.

Third, the “roof,” is the principle of expandability and sub-divisibility to provide maximum future use of the structure. This may mean making halls wide enough to contain a narrow bed should it need to be converted to a bedroom, using easily recyclable materials, or allowing outdoor access to a bathroom to allow it to be shared among several small homes.

Fourth, the “window,” stands for the value of embracing symbolism. Fake traditional touches can be cheap but provide a sense of community or identity. Murals can transform a plain surface into something beautiful, powerful, and meaningful, all at the cost of the artist’s time and the paint involved. Rather than abolish symbolism as inauthentic or unnecessary ornament, Vaughn argues we must recognize the imaginary thing can be just as good as the real thing. After all, in his view through architecture we transform real things — raw materials and labor — into the unreal — comfort, shelter, and space for living. Perhaps someday, like in Le Guin’s fictional future, economy itself will profoundly affect our aesthetics as one of the desired unreal products of architecture.

A Better Solar Power

Huge amounts of American electricity is generated by polluting coal-fired power generating plants. Electric cars and solar cells on private homes are nice, but what technology exists to replace these antiquated workhorses of the electrical grid?

The answer may lie in a new technology that’s already generating power for 380,000 homes in California and sparking a mad rush for venture capital and land. While photovoltaic cells only capture roughly 20% of the sun’s energy, solar thermal technology can capture upwards of 40%. Total costs for solar thermal technology are rapidly approaching the costs for energy produced through fossil fuels (the stated goal of google.org’s renewable energy program), and a large solar thermal plant can produce similar amount of power as a full-sized coal plant.

In a recent article the New York Times counted 10 plants in development in the Southwest, with 17 or more planned around the world:

On sunny afternoons, those 10 [U.S.] plants would produce as much electricity as three nuclear reactors, but they can be built in as little as two years, compared with a decade or longer for a nuclear plant. Some of the new plants will feature systems that allow them to store heat and generate electricity for hours after sunset.

The technology begins with this map, which shows what any visitor already knows: the American southwest is drenched in high intensity sunlight ideal for solar power generation.

FPL Energy employs giant parabolic mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays onto a liquid-filled pipe, used to drive a large turbine. Stirling Energy uses parabolic mirrors to focus the sun’s rays onto sealed Sterling engines.

Here is the relatively straightforward plan of an FPL-type concentrating solar thermal plant. While this design contains a supplementary natural gas boiler, new plant designs will feature mechanisms to store energy for cloudy periods or evenings.

The phenomenon is global, and a new solar thermal plan recently came online in Australia, and an Abu Dhabi firm has announced plans to aggressively invest in solar thermal technology across the world’s “sun belt,” with the American Southwest a primary target for investment.

While it sounds promising, can the technology produce enough power to drive both our homes and our cars, even at night? One enterprising California power company thinks so, even though Wired magazine is a bit skeptical of the hype. At the very least, short huge new power lines the cloudy Northeast and Northwest may have to look to other sources. As Wired points out, “There’s a long road from a prototype plant in Bakersfield to providing 90 percent of the nation’s electric needs.”

> U.S. Bureau of Land Management Solar Power Program
> NY Times: “Turning Glare Into Watts“