Here’s Week 4 of my nascent and continuing “5 in 5” attempt. I’m still getting good comments, so here we go again. Sorry for the delay (speaking engagement yesterday when I usually put the piece out).
Burning issues in California
I covered this last week, but the story won’t go away. Just when we thought we might see a respite, the fires are back – with winds clocked in some areas as high as 102 mph – and PG&E indicates that two of the fires may have been started by its equipment, despite preventative outages. An estimated 2.5 million people are in the dark, and the prediction from bankrupt PG&E’s CEO (anybody want that job?) is that we may have such outages for up to a decade. Only then do we get “to a point where it’s really ratcheted down significantly.” The previous outage lasted four days, and who knows how long this one will go?
This cannot possibly got on for 10 years, can it?
GEYSERVILLE, CA – OCT. 25: A convoy carrying California Gov. Gavin Newsom passes a downed utility … [+]
So of course the regulators and politicians are all over PG&E. The endgame isn’t yet clear, but what is pretty obvious is that the queue for microgrids will look like an evacuee traffic jam.
The officials in Freemont are feeling pretty good about their investment two years ago in microgrids at three separate fire stations. They have cut their power bills in half since they threw the “on” switches. More critically, the microgrids supply most of the electricity the fire stations need under a contract with Gridscape – company that installed and owns the systems. Each system boasts a 40 kW solar arrary and 110 kWh of battery storage.
Charging ahead in VT
On Oct. 16, Vermont’s utility commission held a hearing on two proposed Green Mountain Power (GMP) battery-related tariffs. One would permit customers to lease Tesla Powerwall batteries from GMP through either a single upfront fee or monthly payments. The other would allow customers to buy or lease from other storage providers, under a “bring your own device” (BYOD) approach for range of approved vendors.
BYOD – more than wine racks in the basement
A customer inspects a Tesla Motors Inc. Powerwall unit inside a home in Monkton, Vermont, U.S., on … [+]
The BYOD pilot initiated earlier this year allows customers to enroll batteries with GMP for 10 years in exchange for an $850-per-kilowatt upfront incentive or ongoing credits on the monthly utility bill.
Some utilities have viewed batteries with a mixture of alarm – concerned about the potential for customers to combine batteries with solar and self-serve substantial portions of their consumption previously supplied by the utility (known as ‘load defection’).
By contrast, GMP has forged ahead to determine how to integrate the new technology into its service offerings and evaluate the resulting commercial possibilities. The utility controls the batteries, and has aggregated and deployed the distributed resources to offset high wholesale hourly prices and reduce its exposure to peak demand in the marketplace. In the meantime, customers have an asset that provides back-up power during the occasional power outage. Pending utility commission approval, each program will be available to 500 customers annually.
This model may have significant potential for utilities, especially as they see a growing need to integrate other assets like electric vehicles and solar panels. Don’t be surprised if more progressive utilities pay attention to this project and seek to emulate it, as we move into a world further accelerated by the coincident trends of de-carbonization, digitalization, and de-centralization.
Time-of-Use tariff in the Windy City
Meanwhile, the time-of-use tariff thing that has started to take hold in California (partly to deal with that ‘duck‘ thing) looks like it’s moving to other utility jurisdictions. Chicago utility Commonwealth Edison is launching a pilot to offer residential customers three separate and time-specific rates for avoiding peak hours and pushing consumption until later in the evening.
How much juice do you want and when do you want it?
Chicago cityscape at night. Lake Street and Interstate 90 in the West Loop neighborhood. Long … [+]
The Illinois utility commission just approved a four-year time-of-use pilot submitted a year ago for approval, to be implemented in June of next year. The pilot is limited to the first 1,900 applicants.
While ComEd currently offers a real-time pricing program based on wholesale prices, the new pilot is different in that it offers specific fixed rates (with specific prices yet to be determined) for various times of the day. The Off-Peak rate will be 10 PM to 6 AM; Super-peak will take place from 2 PM to 7 PM; and the Peak rate will occur during the remaining hours of the day.
As devices (including storage, but also other technologies such as water heaters and thermostats) become smarter and increasingly connected, the ability to elastically shift load in response to price will increase. Look for more such tariffs – starting with pilots and migrating to established programs – to take root across the U.S. in the near future.
Long-duration liquid air storage heating up
Last year, I had a chance to interview the CEO of Highview Power – the company with the cryogenic storage solution using off-the-shelf parts such as tanks from the liquid gas and LNG industry. The company chills air to a liquid state. Then, when that air expands, it drives a turbine. At that time, the company had its initial 5 MW, 15 MWh project in the UK, with plans to build more.
Let’s repurpose something like this for energy storage
A tank containing liquid hydrogen sits outside the Air Products headquarters in Allentown, … [+]
The big question has been whether the company might find its way to commercial applications. With Highview’s recent announcement of a UK project in the 50 MW/250 MWh scale– to come on line by 2022 – this long-duration technology begins to look a but more real. This project still only has a 5:1 energy to capacity ratio; barely longer than the 4;1 ratio we are seeing in many of today’s renewable projects tied to lithium-ion batteries. It does not yet boast the 10-20+ hours some industry observers have been waiting to see in a resource that can potentially provide megawatt-hours for the long haul.
GreenTech Media indicates that the project is still seeking off-takers to “secure contracted revenue that could balance merchant activity” in the UK, so it may not be a done deal yet. In August the company announced a deal with Tenaska Power Services to develop up to four giga-scale projects in the U.S. over the coming two years. Last week’s announcement is cause for hope, but we haven’t seen the real proof of life yet on this one.
Perovskite may be finally here in the solar industry
Oxford PV announced it has transferred $18.2 million to Meyer Burger for the next phase of an equipment purchase to facilitate the establishment of a 125 MW production line manufacturing high-efficiency perovskite solar cells. This could be a big deal, as perovskite has long held out the potential for low-cost high-efficiency solar cells.
Looking at the future of solar?
Prof. Charles Chee Surya, poses for a photograph with perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells with the … [+]
Meyer Burger is THE company that makes the equipment for many solar assembly lines around the world, and it took a nearly 19% ownership stake in Oxford PV (with the option to double down by 2020). Meyer Burger commented that this partnership would result in cells capable of conversion efficiencies exceeding 30%.
Perovskites have long been investigated for their potential, so this announcement is important. Assuming this partnership yields the expected results, some portion of the solar market may eventually migrate in this direction. Perovskites are light, cheap, flexible, and transparent, and they may have potential as a spray on application. Early days still, but Oxford PV and Meyer Burger are worth watching to see how this story develops.
