Keeping the Lights On While Transforming Electric Utilities

[kristopher]

Keeping the Lights On While Transforming Electric Utilities
By Lena Hansen and Amory B. Lovins

Electric utilities operate now much as they did a century ago—but the environment in which they operate is changing dramatically. Now more than ever before, utilities whose regulators reward them in the traditional way for selling more electricity risk losing revenue as customers use their electricity more efficiently.

Climate change and energy security concerns, coupled with advances in disruptive technologies, may make conventional power-generating assets uncompetitive to build or even to run. Potential competitors armed with new technologies, new business models, and greater cultural agility are emerging in many sectors.
A New Electricity Paradigm

Responding to these disruptive forces requires a shift to a fundamentally new paradigm of electricity generation and use—business-as-usual incrementalism is simply insufficient.

The new paradigm will be based on a highly integrated network of advanced technologies including energy efficiency, demand response (which affects the timing rather than the efficiency of usage), renewables such as solar and wind, energy storage, and distributed generation.

Together, these technologies...

http://rmi.org/rmi/Transforming+Electric+Utilities

This is a comprehensive explanation of how the assumptions about "baseload generation" formed, how those assumptions led to inaccurate conclusions and how our improved understanding leads us forward.

[sam11111]

1. could u rewrite this so it is not vague?

Is lights out just figurative?


Thank you

[kristopher]

2. No, but I can clarify it.

I assume "Keeping the lights on" is, as many good titles are, a phrase chosen precisely because it has more than one interpretation. In this case it refers to the need for ensuring the continuity of electric supply as we transition to a carbon free economy as well as the specific mechanism by which that is to be accomplished.

You should read the article and judge for yourself. It is worth the investment of your time if you want to understand one of the most important discussions about choosing our future energy systems.

[txlibdem]

3. A good article, thanks

My only criticism is that the depicted (projected?) role of renewable energy storage is far too small and the use of coal is a long dead loser. If that chart is meant to represent the near future I can see that but if we are still using coal after 2030 then renewables should be doubled, its energy stored to make up for its variability. V2G can supply a portion of that energy storage but the greatest amount has to come from large scale to medium scale energy storage.

In other words: we need to end the use of coal by 2030.

I love the inclusion of efficiency as a part of the energy arsenal. A common term for that is "Nega-Watts" (Negative Watts) -- i.e. energy you would ordinarily have had to use but is instead saved due to increases in efficiency such as building insulation, LED lighting, electric vehicles, solar hot water heaters, better windows, etc.

Then there is my favorite subject: Using concentrated solar energy (using an inexpensive parabolic mirror to focus the sun) to supplement or perhaps even replace process heat for manufacturing and processing plants. I'll spare you the youtube video of a 6-foot diameter mirror being used to melt steel, then used to melt rock -- can generate temperatures high enough to melt any substance on Earth (3500 degrees C).

[kristopher]

4. What article are you criticizing? Certainly not the one in the OP.

The article isn't a projection of any sort, it is a detailed description of why the concept of "baseload" as used by proponents of nuclear and coal is fallacious.

[txlibdem]

5. "Not baseload" yet it shows nuclear and coal at the bottom of the chart providing a stable output

when you take into account the article's supposition that coal can be ramped up and down ahead of time based on projected increases or decreases of wind or solar output.

I don't mind calling it something else, not baseload, call it what you like. The truth is that, as every utility knows, there is a relatively unchanging amount of energy usage throughout the day and then there are peaks and valleys as outside forces cause energy usage to rise or fall by a few percentage points here and there. I wasn't criticizing that part of the article at all.

I simply stated that any energy plan that includes fossil fuels is outdated and needs to be rethought with renewable energy and zero carbon energy sources only.

If the charts (CHARTS) that I criticized had shown only Solar, Wind, Geothermal Power, Tidal and Wave Power... along with the necessary amount of energy storage (which utilities have today in the form of "peaking" natural gas power plants) then I wouldn't have any problem.

My final remark: Quit Using Fossils!

[kristopher]

6. Hmmm...

I'd like to agree with you on your positive sentiments, but let's look at the paper a little more closely before we finish. What I see when I read the paper and look the graphs reveals more meaning than you've mentioned.

For example, this image is not designed to show whether coal is a necessary part of the mix, it is to show just what the text beside it says:
"...no individual generator—from a huge, faraway coal plant to a small, rooftop solar array—has a completely steady output. All generators are intermittent—they sometimes fail without warning. They vary only in the size, duration, frequency, cause, and predictability of their outages. Even normally reliable big thermal plants have both planned and forced outages.



Do you see those dips in the coal section? Can you compare that with the fluctuations of the other sources as indicated by the graph? If you didn't include coal in the graph, you wouldn't be able to compare the reliability profile of gas and coal with renewables, would you?

Now take this one:


What do you read it as saying?
What happens to natgas, coal and nuclear as you add more wind and solar?
What happens to the need for storage as you add more wind and solar? Do you see how the use of storage tracks the top of the curve vs the bottom?

Let's go to the third graphic.



What is that illustrating? Is it a completed renewable grid working properly? Or is it representative of the inaccurate view of renewables that is fostered by the baseload myth?

[txlibdem]

7. "is it representative of the inaccurate view of renewables that is fostered by the baseload myth?"

Perhaps you and I don't agree on the meaning of that "white space" above the solar and wind output and below the "efficient load"/"aggregate demand" in the final chart. To me, that chart shows that without having coal and natural gas to provide a "core" energy output, solar and wind fall far from the needs of the electrical utility.

Unless you see some other purpose for that white space... If so, please enlighten me.

My statement was that we need double the amount of wind generation shown and twice the solar generation, combined with adequate energy storage. This will enable generation (or generation plus "X" amount retrieved from storage) to meet the demand 24/7 -- and Coal wouldn't appear on my chart at all, ever.

[kristopher]

8. Why do you ALWAYS ignore what others write?

If you followed the study guide I gave you in the previous post, you wouldn't be wondering anything,