Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Report: Northwest Power System Can Handle More Wind Energy, But More Work Is Needed
The broad group of energy experts releasing this consensus report — including leaders of state utility commissions, public and investor-owned utilities, wind power developers, renewable power interests, environmental groups and others — was convened last summer by the Bonneville Power Administration and Northwest Power and Conservation Council. The group’s mission was to study all aspects of how to make wind power fit into the region’s existing power system.
“This action plan will help the Northwest take advantage of an abundant source of renewable energy while protecting the reliability of the regional power supply,” Council Chair Tom Karier said.
“This regional effort concludes that more wind power projects can be incorporated into the Northwest power system,” said Steve Wright, BPA administrator. “To maintain a reliable electricity system, there are costs that need to be addressed, transmission resources that need to be built, and wind resources will need to be supplemented by non-wind generation. These challenges can be solved, but we need to get after them.”
Key points of the Northwest Wind Integration Action Plan from the consensus view of the Steering Committee
1. There are no fundamental technical barriers to operating 6,000 megawatts of wind in the Pacific Northwest.There is a range of estimated costs associated with integrating wind into the Northwest system necessary to assure reliable service. When wind energy is added to a utility system, its natural variability and uncertainty is combined with the natural variability and uncertainty of loads. As a result, there is an increase in the need for flexibility services required to maintain utility system balance and reliability.
Conceptually, the cost of wind integration starts low, particularly when integrating with a hydropower system that has substantial flexibility, and then rises as increasing amounts of wind are added. Costs ultimately plateau at the cost of integrating wind with natural gas power plants.
With increasing amounts of wind, there will likely be times when large, unexpected changes in wind output (so-called “ramping events”) coincide with periods of limited hydro flexibility. Initial analyses indicate that these will be low probability events, but if other sources of flexibility are not available at the same time, system operators will need to limit wind output for brief periods in order to maintain reliability. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission now requires wind plant operators to help protect system reliability. Northwest utilities and wind developers are collaborating to implement the requirement in a mutually satisfactory and cost-effective manner.
2. Wind energy is providing value to Northwest electricity consumers, but the Northwest will still need other resources to meet peak loads.The fundamental value of wind is its ability to provide energy to displace fossil fuel consumption, limit exposure to uncertain and volatile fuel prices and hedge against possible greenhouse gas control costs. Wind is primarily an energy resource with relatively little contribution to meeting system peak requirements. Wind by itself cannot provide reliable electric service, and the Northwest will need to build other resources to meet growing peak loads.
3. In the very short term there is available transmission capacity to integrate additional wind resources — but this is not expected to last for long.New transmission will be needed and can help open up new areas for wind development, helping to diversify wind production. This diversity helps smooth variability and therefore lowers the cost of wind integration. Because wind operates at its nameplate capacity a relatively small fraction of the time, traditional models for transmission development and marketing will need to be altered to achieve greater economic efficiency. A more economical and efficient approach for a resource such as wind is to provide a mix of firm, nonfirm, and conditional firm transmission that achieves a balance between the cost of transmission capacity and the value of delivered wind energy.
4. The major portion of wind integration costs will be incurred due to additional efforts by system operators to balance loads and resources in real time in order to accommodate wind variability.These entities must have flexible resources available to them to ensure that reliable service will be maintained and that there is an ability to recover the associated costs.
5. We can increase integration capability and lower integration costs.The cost of wind integration services can be reduced through generally four types of actions: (1) encourage more cooperation among regional utilities to spread the variability of wind more broadly; (2) develop markets that will reward entities with existing flexibility who choose to market that flexibility; (3) make more low-cost flexibility, such as that provided by hydroelectric resources, available; and (4) create and apply new flexibility technologies. Producing these results will require coordination. Fortunately, the region has a long history of forging cooperative agreements designed to increase the value for all regional consumers that provide a model for what will be needed over the next several years to address wind integration issues.
The Northwest Wind Integration Action Plan will serve as a guide for utilities and state regulatory commissions as they plan their resource strategies in the future. To review the action plan, visit the Council’s Web site at www.nwcouncil.org/energy/Wind/Default.asp
What Steering Committee members are saying about the Northwest Wind Integration Action Plan
Bonneville Environmental Foundation, Portland, Ore.: “This important work is the necessary, if not sufficient, first step in establishing how wind will become a significant, cost-effective source of zero-carbon electricity for the Pacific Northwest,” said Angus Duncan, president of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. “It demonstrates that the technical requirements for integrating 6,000 megawatts of wind into the system can be met and it points us to the cost solutions. Northwest states that are mandating renewable energy requirements for utilities should be applauding this important work and strongly supporting the next phase of the project.”
Bonneville Power Administration, Portland, Ore.: “Six months ago, this coalition of energy leaders rolled up its sleeves to look for ways to make intermittent power sources such as wind fit with the largely hydro-driven electric power system we have here in the Northwest,” said Steve Wright, BPA administrator. “This plan is the result of an incredible investment of collaboration, discussion and analysis by many people. Because everyone focused on really listening to each other, we arrived at outcomes that are meaningful for the region.”
Grant County PUD, Ephrata, Wash.: “I would like to acknowledge the efforts of everyone involved in this process, including Bonneville Power Administration, Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the Wind Integration Action Work Group, and, especially, the technical work group,” said Tim Culbertson, general manager of Grant County PUD. “This effort is of significance to the region because there is a false sense of how much an already constrained hydro system is capable of firming as we continue to develop these ‘wind resources.’ This is a regional issue that will take joint cooperation to solve.”
Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Portland, Ore.: “Wind power is a major resource to meet future demand for electricity, along with energy conservation. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Northwest Power Plan calls for developing 6,000 megawatts of cost-effective wind power in the region by 2024,” said Tom Karier, chair of the Council. “The Wind Integration Action Plan complements the Council’s power plan by highlighting the importance of wind in the regional power supply and identifying the technical and policy issues that need to be addressed in order to fully integrate this abundant renewable resource with other sources of electricity.”
Oregon Public Utility Commission, Salem, Ore.: “The report shows the region is well-positioned to accommodate 6,000 megawatts of new wind energy. That is exciting,” said John Savage, OPUC commissioner. “However, to achieve wind's full potential, there are issues that must be resolved. It will require a coordinated effort to ensure that consumers in Oregon and the Northwest benefit from clean, renewable energy in the future.”
Pacific Power, Portland, Ore.: “With the Northwest Wind Integration Plan, the region’s utilities are taking initial steps to ensure we have the necessary backup resources for when the wind isn’t blowing, and new transmission lines to bring the variable wind resource to customers,” said Pat Reiten, president of Pacific Power. “That is very important to our company, as the leading utility renewable energy developer in the region. Pacific Power has recently added nearly 350 megawatts of new renewable resources, most of it wind, and expects to add another 1,000 megawatts by 2015. Pacific Power customers have generously supported our voluntary Blue Sky program to add even more renewables to our regional mix. The integration plan recognizes both challenges and opportunities in making wind power a steady and dependable resource for the region.”
PNGC Power, Portland, Ore.: “This action plan represents a remarkable collection of the industry’s best and brightest minds focused on developing a strategy to deal with the pending large amount of wind energy forecasted to be installed in the Northwest. The plan explores the issues with integrating an intermittent resource into an electrical system that requires that generation production must exactly match the changing demand for electricity every second of every day,” said John Prescott, president and CEO of PNGC Power. “The plan points out the technical issues and costs associated with solving these issues. The most important action mentioned in the plan is the need for the region to work collaboratively to solve these identified problems. It also clearly identifies the need for new transmission.”
PPM Energy, Portland, Ore.: “PPM Energy is pleased to see so many important energy participants looking at new wind resources as a growing part of the region’s energy supply,” said Terry Hudgens, CEO of PPM Energy. “This study shows that it’s entirely feasible to add a significant amount of wind generation to the regional energy mix.”
Puget Sound Energy, Bellevue, Wash.: “We expect wind power to play an increasingly significant role for us in coming years,” said Eric Markell, senior vice president of Energy Resources for Puget Sound Energy, already the Pacific Northwest's largest producer of renewable energy with the utility's two wind farms — Hopkins Ridge in Columbia County and Wild Horse in Kittitas County. “There are challenges, yes, for widespread regional development of new wind resources, primarily in siting new wind farms and moving their power output to where it's needed. But the people in our region, I believe, support wind power and want to see it become an integral part of our energy future.”
Renewable Northwest Project, Portland, Ore.: “It’s great to see the region engaged in finding solutions to incorporate more clean energy into our region’s electricity supply mix,” said Rachel Shimshak, director or the Renewable Northwest Project. “Continued cooperation will be needed to identify ways to reduce costs even further and to keep the momentum going. It’s an especially important topic in this increasingly carbon-constrained world.”
Seattle City Light, Seattle, Wash.: “Seattle City Light is committed to the success of the Wind Integration Action Plan. New renewable energy sources are an important element of our Integrated Resource Plan and wind is one component for us in meeting load growth in the next twenty years,” said Jorge Carrasco, superintendent of Seattle City Light. “BPA's wind integration study looks comprehensively at how we get to an electricity grid that can more easily welcome this new source of low carbon, clean energy.”
Western Montana Electric Generating and Transmission Cooperative, Missoula, Mont.: “The report demonstrates that the operational and transmission hurdles presented by wind generation are not insurmountable, but wind presents some unique challenges that need to be addressed,” said Bill Drummond, manager of Western Montana Generating and Transmission Cooperative. “Much work on these issues remains to be completed.”
SOURCE: BPA / NWPCC
Investigation Continues at Energy Northwest
RICHLAND, Wash.- The investigation continues at Energy Northwest after they were served with a federal search warrant Tuesday.
The warrant is for tests done at the Applied Process Engineering Lab, or APEL.
It is not at all related to things at the nuclear power plant.
The FBI, EPA and Department of Energy showed up for about four hours Tuesday.
Apparently, a former employee accused the company of incorrectly testing a water sample from the river.
Energy Northwest says the tests were done differently than usual, but no data was compromised in the process.
"I think what they're going to find in the long run is that we've got a permittable test that was done, documented in writing, also presented to the people that visited us," said Brad Peck, a company spokesperson.
A Hanford subcontractor had ordered the testing, and they signed off on it without problem.
Energy Northwest operates the APEL facility, it's not related to the nuclear plant, they just contract out lab testing to other companies.
Source : http://www.kndo.com/Global/story.asp?S=6358395&nav=menu484_2_10
Uganda: U.S. Firm Takes Over Garbage Energy Project
Kampala
PLANS for the construction of a gasification plant involving the conversion of garbage into energy will soon get underway at Lubya near Kampala.
Taylor Biomass Energy Ltd, a company based in New York, USA, is in the final stages of undertaking the $85 million investment.
The project will involve recycling garbage, which would then be converted into electricity.
The firm is one of several companies, which have invested heavily in the development of waste-to-energy gasification projects in the US.
Company President Jim Taylor was in the country late last month on a fact-finding mission and to finalise contractual obligations with the government and other stakeholders.
"As we come close to signing the contract with authorities, we appeal for government support. We have already approached all the stakeholders including Kampala City Council and we are happy to report that we are excited to take over this deal," Mr Taylor said.
"No bank will touch any new first-commercial technology process," Mr Taylor said.
"The first one, you have got to pay for out of your pocket. Or, in this case, you have got to go to the government."
Mr Taylor also revealed that the Buganda government had donated the 20 acres of land in Lubya for the construction of the plant.
In conjunction with SASAM Energetics 1 Ltd, a local company dealing in waste technology, Taylor would collect household garbage and transform it into gas.
The gas would then be burned to run generators that would produce more than 30 mega watts of electricity.
Mr Taylor said the multimillion-dollar plant would take in more than 500 tonnes of garbage per day.
The plant is based on technology that has been in development for decades but now appears ready to make its debut in Uganda.
He told Daily Monitor in an e-mail that rising oil prices and tight energy supplies in the country have spurred interest in renewable resources and that the accumulation of garbage heaps in the city has also become a major problem for city residents.
"Gasification, the process of turning biomass into fuel gas, offers solutions to garbage problems. Virtually all biomass, which makes up the vast majority of the waste stream, can be gasified," he said.
"In its broadest definition, biomass includes wood, paper products, food, leather and even some plastics."
Mr Taylor said gasification, which takes place in an oxygen-starved chamber, generates little pollution into the environment while creating a gas that can be substituted for natural gas.
Source : http://allafrica.com/stories/200704120018.html
EPA Guides Top Industries on Energy-Saving Strategies
04/10/07
WASHINGTON, April 10, 2007 -- The Environmental Protection Agency has released a report on energy use trends in major manufacturing sectors that highlights the environmental implications of energy use. In an extensive 200-page report released today, the EPA looks at the 12 sectors that together use 85 percent of the country's industrial energy supplies and finds there are significant ways to reduce energy usage and pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions by improving their operations, adopting cleaner fuels, and taking advantage of the latest R&D.
The report analyzes each sector's current energy consumption trends and the associated environmental impacts, specifically emissions of air pollutants and carbon dioxide. Under a business-as-usual scenario, energy consumption across many of these sectors will increase by 20 percent from 2004 levels by 2020, and carbon dioxide emissions will increase by 14 percent.
The report shows how each sector could improve environmental performance by becoming more energy efficient or by using clean fuel technologies. It also identifies five strategies that could be used to achieve these goals: switching to cleaner fuels; using combined heat and power; retrofitting or replacing older equipment; making process improvements; and investing in research and development.
Although total energy used by the U.S. industrial sector has declined over the last 10 years, the decline is due as much to growing use by commercial, residential and transportation sectors as it is to improved energy efficiency within industry.
The industrial sector as a whole uses the most renewable energy of any U.S. sector, at 5.0 percent of total use, but it also uses the most heavily polluting coal-powered energy. As federal, state and international governing bodies increasingly take action on global warming, these industries face serious financial threats to already-thin profit margins.
The insights and recommendations in the report are intended to give the industries studied options and opportunities to save money while also protecting the environment. The sectors examined in this report are:
Alumina and aluminum
Cement
Chemical manufacturing
Food manufacturing
Forest products
Iron and steel
Metal casting
Metal finishing
Motor vehicle manufacturing
Motor vehicle parts manufacturing
Petroleum refining
Shipbuilding and ship repair The EPA has created a website providing more information on the Sector Strategies Program, and the full report is available for download from GreenBiz.
Source : http://www.gnet.org/news/newsdetail.cfm?Page=1&NewsID=34871
Energy News: Strong Crude Oil Demand Drives Market
As the graph below indicates, the last two times the U.S. average retail price for regular gasoline approached and surpassed $3 per gallon (following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and most of the summer in 2006), gasoline demand growth (the blue line in the chart below) did slow. Of course, there have been other times that gasoline demand growth has slowed. The latest weekly data showed demand continuing to grow at a strong clip, with the four weeks ending April 6 averaging 9.363 million barrels per day, or 2.5 percent higher than the same period last year. Demand for the week ending April 6, averaged 9.472 million barrels per day, a record for the month of April, far surpassing the previous weekly record for April (9.338 million barrels per day for the week ending April 9, 2004), while data for the week ending March 30 was also a record for March.
With the sharp increase in ethanol blending over the past year, gasoline demand measured in terms of energy content has not grown as fast as the volumetric measure of demand growth cited above, since ethanol has a lower energy content per unit volume than the fuel components it has displaced. But, even taking account of the change in fuel composition, recent data suggest that gasoline demand, however measured, is quite inelastic, meaning that it takes a large increase in prices to significantly affect demand.
Source : http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=120907
Qatar forum highlights future role of energy industry - minister
CAIRO, April 10 (Itar-Tass) -- The global market of natural gas has entered into a new phase, and the major changes that have occurred on it of late are a sure sign of this, Russian Energy and Industry Minister Viktor Khristenko told Itar-Tass in the wake of the gas exporter countries’ forum, which has just ended in Qatar.
Khristenko, who has arrived in Cairo from Doha, said the Qatari forum had made a decision to create a high-level coordination group Russia will chair as the host of another such conference due in one year’s time.
“The coordinating group has been instructed to draft an agenda,” Khristenko said. “There will be some fundamental questions in focus, such as the evaluation of gas production and pricing prospects, gas infrastructure development and the identification of the tasks the forum of gas exporter countries can cope with as an organization.”
Khristenko said “Russia maintains relations with all major gas companies in the world, so contacts in the sphere of production, exploration and transportation will be developing. Businesses realized long ago that in such a global market as that of gas it is impossible to launch new major projects without sharing risks or exchanging assets.”
“Everything that has happened in Qatar, and everything that will be happening further on is evidence of the energy’s great future role,” the Russian industry and energy minister said. “Nobody will be making friends to the detriment of third parties. There must be a balance of interest and clear positions known to each other.”
Khristenko believes that “the dialogue with all participants in the energy chain – producers, transit countries, and consumers – is expected to help understand how we all together can keep the world economy going for many years to come.”
The Qatari forum made no decisions to establish a gas industry equivalent of OPEC. This possibility was a source of major concern for the main natural gas consumers – the United States and the European countries.
Source : http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=11420870&PageNum=0
