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Reenergizing the City of Detroit

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Over the last year, Next Energy, in partnership with the Clean Energy Coalition, has assisted the City of Detroit with a wide range of Green Economy initiates to reduce costs and energy use, such as street lighting efficiency, recycling, and fleet operations. These efforts, funded by The Kresge Foundation, directly help the City of Detroit save money, attract additional funding, and lay the groundwork for ongoing energy and sustainability initiatives – all at a critical time for the city.

 

LED Streetlights

The next time you are in Detroit, take a look above ­at the new LED streetlights that are starting to appear. NextEnergy helped the Detroit Public Lighting Department secure a $100,000 grant from the Michigan Energy Office to implement advanced lighting technology. This grant then led to a $400,000 follow-on grant from the Michigan Energy Office. Together, this $500,000 investment will help install more than 700 LED fixtures in multiple locations around Detroit.

At the same time, the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, with support from the Department of Energy and the Downtown Detroit Partnership, is investing an additional $1.3 million to install more than 1,000 LED fixtures. In total, some 1,700 new fixtures are being installed throughout the city. These new lamps use about half the energy of a traditional streetlight fixture, last three times as long, and improve system reliability.

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California Grid Hits Record Solar Generation Peak

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California Grid Hits Record Solar Generation Peak

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new solar generation peak of 849 megawatts on June 8

Last month Germany set a world record for the most solar energy production of any country.

The IWR, Germany’s renewable energy organization, issued a release saying that “under a cloudless sky” on May 25, German solar generation reached 22,000 megawatts. That’s about half of Germany’s peak afternoon load, depending on the time of year. Dr. Norbert Allnoch of the IWR said that there is no other country on earth with solar plants capable of producing over 20,000 megawatts of electricity.

Well, California is setting its own records for solar production.

Stephanie McCorkle, Director of Communications of the California Independent System Operator, noted that a new record was set on June 8 with 849 megawatts of solar generation on the system. In a conversation with Greentech Media, McCorkle said, “The solar record would continue to be broken as the days get longer” and we move towards the summer solstice.

 

A Peaking Resource

McCorkle explained, “With solar, you have a gradual ramp with a peak when you need it at AC [air conditioning] rush hour,” adding that “solar is a nice peaking resource” without the fluctuations of wind power. Solar is fairly predictable at this time of year in California absent coastal marine layers moving in and causing variability. She did note that conventional generation was still needed as a backup resource.

The cumulative amount of solar installed in the U.S. at the end of Q1 2012 was 4.943 gigawatts, according to GTM Research.

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Energy Savings Reaped in New Orleans

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A year after the launch of its $11 million citywide energy-efficiency program, New Orleans officials and executives at Entergy New Orleans say the program has made strides in cutting down on power consumption and helping save money for thousands of local homeowners and businesses.

 

 

 

Energy Smart

More than 8,580 businesses and individuals participated in the Energy Smart initiative since last April, according to Entergy, which submitted an annual report about the program’s progress to the New Orleans City Council earlier this month. Entergy estimates that the efforts helped cut electricity use by more than 15 million kilowatt-hours, enough to power 1,300 homes for an entire year.

The program provides an opportunity for customers to receive an in-home energy audit to help spot ways to improve efficiency, and gives residential and commercial customers cash incentives for making improvements aimed at lowering their power consumption. By the numbers, it led to more than 600 home energy audits being done.

“The thing that was really important to me is that it made people aware of ways that they could conserve and they could work to make sure their utility bills were low,” City Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, the chairwoman of the council’s Utility Committee, said about the program.

The effort, which had been in the works for four years, has been administered by Clearesult Consulting Inc., a Texas energy management company that managed a similar but smaller 18-month energy-efficiency program, called Quick Start, for Entergy New Orleans.

 

Cash Rebates

Among those eligible for cash rebates: homeowners who install cost-effective energy-saving measures; small-business customers with peak demand of less than 100 kilowatts per month; and commercial, industrial and government customers with peak demand of 100 kilowatts or more per month. The energy improvements come at a discounted cost to homeowners and businesses: An in-home energy audit can be performed for as little as $35, and the program offers a $75 rebate toward an air-conditioning tune-up performed by a participating contractor, as well as rebates for insulation, air sealing and a handful of other energy efficiency measures.

Meanwhile, some customers heeded the advice they received during the assessments and took on suggested improvement projects, such as tuning-up air conditioners, installing ceiling and wall insulation, sealing ducts and installing compact fluorescent light bulbs.

The program proved so popular that Entergy officials warned in April that it was likely to run out of money for its first year ahead of schedule. Instead, it finished about $180,000 under budget, according to the filing.

Lana Lovick, manager of regulatory and environmental affairs at Entergy New Orleans, said the utility expects more customers to get on board this year. “The word’s getting out,” she said.

 

Green Workforce

Entergy and city officials also say the program was successful in jump-starting development of a “green workforce,” with more than 60 local contractors becoming trained to complete the work.

Lovick said the contractors can do “as little or as much as they choose, and some of them really choose too push the program heavily and use it as a marketing tool for their business.”

Some contractors submitted hundreds of rebates through the program, including General Heating and Air Conditioning in New Orleans, which filed 434 for air conditioning tune-ups, according to Entergy.

Customers seemed equally impressed: Out of 162 responses, all but a few participants reported the experience was “good or excellent,” according to Entergy’s filing with the city.

“For a city like New Orleans, you have utility rates that are some of the lowest in the country, and a lot of times that can impede energy-efficiency programs because people don’t really have the incentive to install the measures,” Lovick said. “And so I think the success of the program really speaks for itself.”

Casey Roberts, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, said she is optimistic that the program can be extended past its initial three-year window, and said “a lot of the programs exceeded expectations, and they got more savings from less money than they had anticipated.”

Roberts said one possibility is that the city could look to incorporate funding as part of its integrated resource planning process, which is required by the New Orleans City Council in an effort to invite public participation in working with utility companies on reducing community demand for power.

 

Bundling Improvements

For its first year, Roberts said the program grabbed much of the low-hanging fruit, like distributing

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free compact fluorescent light bulbs, which is “great bang for your buck,” but added that she would like to see the effort make a bigger dent in persuading customers to bundle improvements instead of scattering measures years apart.

“All of the light bulbs in your house don’t use as much energy as your air conditioner, and though it would cost more to do attic insulation, you would have a greater amount of savings, but it would take you longer to pay back that investment,” she said. “If you combine attic insulation with lighting, then your total investment payback period is lower than if you first did lighting, then a year later you did the attic insulation.”

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How an Energy Planning Tool Changed Decision-Making at MSU

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What if you had to identify solutions and implement changes that would result in a 45 percent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction for your organization by 2020?

What if your goals also included achieving a 20 percent increase in your renewable energy sources by 2020? As a leader aware of your limited financial resources, how would you guide your organization to success?

 

Difficult Questions

Generically, these would be difficult questions. But with the specific constraints of 10,000 employees, 580 buildings, 5,200 acres of land, a 100 megawatt power plant that is primarily coal-fired, 48,000 students who use the campus daily, 16,000 permanent residents and sub-optimal annual weather conditions (77 sunny days, average wind of 9 miles per hour and 49 inches of snow), the “what ifs” of this type can seem impossible to address.

 

Complexity Creates Opportunity

At Michigan State University (MSU), the complexity of these constraints provided an opportunity for the institution to look for a tool that would help everyone understand the impact of a decision against a set of key performance indicators, or metrics, that are most important to the university (see next page). Like businesses, colleges and universities have many stakeholders, all of whom have different points of view and opinions about paths towards environmental progress.

MSU was searching for such a tool that could provide everyone the quick ability to see the trade-offs of each environmental scenario, thereby identifying the missed opportunities and efficiencies to be gained.

 

An Integrated Planning Model

Developing an integrated energy and planning model, with the help of Confluenc Inc., has impacted university decision-making processes relating to resource allocation and strategic planning. Confluenc provides institutional energy planning distinguished by processes and analytical tools that facilitate complex decision-making.

As universities work to identify the path to their varied sustainability goals, it is clear that there is no silver bullet. Nor is there a right or wrong way to arrive at the destination. In fact, there are an overwhelming number of scenarios by which to travel.

What is important to any university is that all stakeholders have a good understanding of the impact of potential scenarios on the various key performance indicators of the university, which generally fall into the three categories of fiscal, operational and environmental performance. Knowing how a decision will affect these various key performance indicators before the decision is made is critical.

 

Comparing Scenarios and Impacts

In the example below, we compared various scenarios. There is the business as usual (BAU), along with example scenarios focused on conservation (blue), expanding electrical grid purchases (red) and fuel switching from coal to natural gas (orange).

The effects of each are seen in the following cost of utility service graph, as an example, and for all other key performance indicators as the dashboard is expanded to other views.

 

%40edu inline 1 How an Energy Planning Tool Changed Decision Making at MSU

 

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What If?

MSU’s model allows the development of “what if?” scenarios using data that already exists within the institution and compares these scenarios to various reference cases, including a business-as-usual (BAU) condition. The ability to begin this modeling with existing data sets — and augmenting only where the value of additional information is clear — distinguishes this methodology from any others used in the past.

Users can develop and then compare multiple scenarios against a set of fiscal criteria such as debt capacity, capital expenditures (annual and cumulative), utility costs and tuition impact; against operational criteria such as building efficiency, plant efficiency and power capacity; and against environmental criteria such as greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy utilized, water conservation or other institutional environmental goals. Institutions likely will have unique key performance indicators they want to measure, which can be easily incorporated into the platform and decision environment.

For example, would you be better off with a scenario where you would move off coal to burning only natural gas as a fuel? Would you be better off with a scenario where you implement an aggressive energy conservation program in buildings? Would you be better off with a mix of different types of supply for energy plus adding new renewable energy? The scenarios and combinations are vast and varied.

The two graphs below show scenarios similar to the questions asked here and how those scenarios perform relative to the BAU reference case (gray line) and MSU’s energy transition plant targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions and percent renewable energy. Literally hundreds of scenarios have been developed and compared in this way.

 

edu inline 3 small How an Energy Planning Tool Changed Decision Making at MSU

 

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Dashboard Decision-Making     

The intangible benefits of the technology for MSU emerged during meetings with decision makers and constituents by showcasing and comparing multiple opportunities and scenarios against each other.

Rapid response and visualization of ideas and proposals are easily viewed in the dashboard, which then allows for in-depth discussion by individuals with different perspectives (students; facilities; academics).

When multiple performance indicators are viewed simultaneously by a diverse group of stakeholders, the tradeoffs associated with different scenarios become clear and understood and group insight is established.

In the dashboard illustrated here, four different indicators are visualized simultaneously: required capital (upper left); cost of utility service (upper right); GHG emissions and transition plan targets (lower left); and percent renewable energy with transition plan targets (lower right).

The drop downs in the ribbon at the top of the dashboard can be used to change the content of any window helping conversations amongst a diverse group quickly visualize information relevant to the discussion at any moment.

 

edu inline 5 small How an Energy Planning Tool Changed Decision Making at MSU

 

In my opinion, this is the most powerful but subtle educational and consensus-building tool I have seen and it has changed the way we make decisions. It has also affected who takes part in the decision-making, which is more inclusive than ever.

It has done something that is very hard to do in higher education: It has changed our decision environment.

MSU image by Dextera Photography via Compfight cc.

 

 

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