Notes on Distributed Generation
I met Bruce Wilson in the sandbox in kindergarten, where we were schoolmates in Philadelphia. Though we lost track of one another for many decades, I’m happy that we’ve reconnected via 2GreenEnergy, where he offers a steady stream of cogent remarks, mostly on the need to improve the energy efficiency of the built environment, a subject to which he’s dedicated his entire career. I salute you for the work you’ve done, and I thank you for your comments.
Yesterday, Bruce noted: I like to think that the future of energy is distributed power with many small local producers helping bring greater balance to a shared system much like the rural electrification program.
I’m not sure how this is going to play out. It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future (Yogi Berra).
Seriously, there are several factors weighing on us here that suggest that Bruce may be correct:
• For the first time in history, it’s possible in some cases for the customers of the utilities to generate power more inexpensively than they can buy it from the utilities. These situations will only increase in number as the price of solar and wind continue to fall.
• As public sentiment re: mitigating environmental damage continues to grow, it’s likely that these same customers, residential, commercial and industrial, will heighten the demand for electricity from renewable resources, and, in cases where they are frustrated by the inaction of the utilities, take matters into their own hands.
• Where rural electrification isn’t a big deal in the developed world, it’s a huge issue for people living in developing countries; it’s a gating factor to good education, healthcare, personal productivity and affluence, the availability of clean water and nutritious food, and many other aspects of quality of life. In these regions, the absence of a power grid can be seen as a blessing in disguise, insofar as it enables these parts of the world to leapfrog over the stage that the OECD built in the 20th Century, i.e., large fossil-based power plants and all the problems they create.
• We need to re-regulate our power utilities anyway, even if these factors didn’t come into play. There are several forces driving this need for change, perhaps the most obvious is the ever-increasing amount of solar coming onto this grid, which is in the process of making it impossible for the utilities to perform the tasks we’ve assigned to them profitably.
• The advent of cost-effective energy storage is about to cause a huge effect here, though this cuts both ways. Utilities will be able to use it to integrate more variable resources into the grid-mix and to provide ancillary services (e.g., AC wave form and voltage correction) inexpensively. At the same time, the customers of the power companies will have this technology behind the meter, enabling them to store energy that was generated with solar and wind.
There are some points to be made on the flip side, however.
• Economies of scale favor the concept of a centralized power company, which is why many consumer-advocate groups are against distributed solar.
• The nature of wind resources includes this fact: if the wind isn’t blowing at a certain place, the odds are better that it will be blowing someplace else. Thus energy schema that incorporate large areas have an inherent advantage over DG.
• Providing power to those living at or beneath the poverty level is a social imperative, but it’s hard to imagine how this can be accomplished cost-effectively with newly installed DG. In general, these people have relatively little living (and roof) space per capita. Accordingly, they also have smaller electric bills to offset, making the payback for solar very hard to justify. For now, the existing utility infrastructure will have to suffice.
All this (and lots else) makes the 21st Century an interesting place and time to be alive.
Hi Craig – a couple of questions:
– Can you expand on what “the task we’ve assigned to them” is, exactly, and why it’s becoming impossible?
– Wouldn’t DG within a wide-area distribution network let wind keep its advantage over centralized generation?
Hi, Peter.
We’ve assigned the utilities the task of providing reliable and inexpensive power to everyone; the advent of large amounts of distributed solar is making this difficult.
In answer to your second question, I suppose the answer is yes, to the extent that the region is very large, though these effects exist over regions that are hundreds/thousands of miles in diameter.
Having worked in the electric power industry for the last 40 years, I can see the merit of both sides of the argument – distributed vs central station generation. For wind, there’s no doubt that a robust transmission grid is a necessity – wind is only economical at large scale and the winds are strongest where no one lives. For solar, large solar farms in sunny locations simply make more sense than lots of rooftop solar in cities that are not as sunny. That means robust transmission linking solar farms to the population centers. For such cases, storage is not a necessity until the combined wind and solar penetration reaches a very high level – about 60% of total electrical energy. However, for developing countries without transmission lines, dispersed solar in villages is probably the best solution; that’s where storage is most needed.
Mark Kapner
Thanks. I agree 100%.
Like most things, theory and practice have certain disagreements. In no particular order:
1) Economy of scale is only true to a point. There is usually a point that is dependent on the current state of the art (and thus a moving target), where increasing scale increases costs per unit of deliverable product. The challenge in any large infrastructure project is the balance between the amortization period and the viability of the current technology. We play with hell’s fires when we build large technologies that we intend to pay off over 40 to 50 years. This curve is even more challenging because it has an acceleration component.
2) Prioritization of all our challenges, taken in the widest possible view, is usually the more difficult component than the actual technology. Building a superconducting high voltage DC link is, in many ways, easier than the discussion of whether we do that or preserve the last 3 acres of the hairy footed web eater.
3) Utility companies ‘seem’ to not take a futurist view of their business. Any business can evolve with the current culture and technology if it wishes to. It may be hugely transformative, but it is always possible. An Exon-Mobile could for instance be a pure algae company someday (hypothetical and not necessarily an endorsement). They simply need to make such choices and plan accordingly. They have a huge advantage over startups in that they can capitalize anything they choose without angel investment.
4) Distributed generation with, and here’s the caveat, an intelligent self-balancing grid can be one of those tasks impossible to fulfill by the individual and a job for the utility.
5) Storage is certainly possible by the individual, but I don’t recommend it. I personally have a full off-grid setup and it requires me to deal with it as a kind of semi-professional hobby. You can’t really buy it and ignore it, at least not yet. Utility scale technologies are sorting themselves out as we speak, but this is a clear job for the utility in terms of practical management and economy of scale. Even if we retire old EV batteries to the home in packaging like the Powerwall, it is not even close to competitive with a commercial facility for the same.
And finally, because this is already too long, utilities need to STOP making stupid long term investments and then go to the PUC and say their hands are tied due to the financial commitment. That’s self-fulfilling prophecy and not even remotely clever anymore.
As a grandfather, a union representive at two Florida coops, a strong beliver of distributed renewable energy, and a thirty year lineman I feel very strongly the oppurtunities for coops to lead the US in distributed green energy is an unrealized gift. This gift will be harnessed when people(like those that follow you, Craig) if or as members of coops begin to take the reigns of leadership from those that now run our coops, who are either old school utility, protective of self interest, or as the ones I deal with in Florida misguided or miseducated of the great future of building a new self retiring grid based on renewables, relibilty, and economic adventure.
Many farms on the plains had wind generators. Then rural electrification came and many wind systems were taken down. The electric coops in Alabama send all their customers a glossy monthly magazine that wants us to call our representatives and ask for more coal, no solar….Alabama Power charges about $20-$50 per month if a homeowner installs solar. I hear Alabama Power has paid for public service commisioners campaigns.
Alabama Power has bought large solar farms and wind farms out west and lets customers buy”green power” at a higher price. The military bases do not have money for energy improvements so Alabama Power does them and takes most of the savings for Alabama Power. Southern Company owns Alabama Power and Georgia Power, which started a solar subsidiary to dominate solar installations in Georgia. They want to make money….
“economies of scale favor the concept of a centralized power company” Not if you factor in the 30% transmission losses on the power lines. Not if you want many, spread out, sources of solar and battery power when the grid goes down.
Loved this piece. From a developing world perspective, the true competition is not utility scale centralized power generation, the real threat for the 600 million people without access to electricity is the continued use of Kerosene. What we are seeing here is a ramped up “climb” on the energy ladder for households connected to mini grids. Whereas as many homes start off needing to replace kerosene lamps with electric lights, they then start procuring TV sets, radios and other appliances. In this sense, micro grids do not act as a stop gap, they pave the way for households to walk into a higher standard of living. In so doing distributed electricity in Sub Saharan Africa is not a choice per ce, it is in every sense of the word a necessity.
Centralized grid systems vary depending on national policies and regional co-operation. Either for economic, or historical reasons some nations or states may share grid infrastructure. Ownership also varies with State owned, State/Private partnerships, State owned generation but private retailing, and entirely privately owned generation and grids infrastructure.
Wind and Solar create problems for Central Distribution grids, not just through incompatible generation, but due to the basic principle of mass power distribution. As Craig points out, the principle that everyone is entitled to electricity at a reasonable cost, requires utilities to amortize costs over a very large number of subscribers.
As Spain discovered, disruption to this principle can create massive problems. Generation created by uneconomically ill-conceived Government incentives and subsidies can lead to a chaotic meltdown, when favoured treatment is reversed or moderated.
It’s true that the price of Wind and Solar generation has dropped, but in the case of Solar that’s been not just the result of improvements in technology and mass manufacture, but also the deliberate flooding of the market by PRC manufacturers, often with inferior products, and massive taxpayer subsidies.
Once subsides, incentives and required energy purchase tariffs are removed or lessened, as in Nevada, UK ,Australia or Spain, the Solar Energy industry collapses. Nor is it a given that the price of Solar will continue to fall. In Europe as the result of a combination of reduction in subsidies and quality regulations, combined with EU anti-dumping trade restrictions, the price of solar installations is actually on the increase.
Both the Solar and Wind industries continue to portray unrealistic vision of economic viability. The problem is inherent within the restrictions of the technology. Any intermittent power source with always need more and more technology to solve it’s basic flaw.
Centralized power generation suffers from the problem of producing enough power to overcome the problem of large scale distribution, economically. The cost of building and maintaining a huge distribution network, with transmission losses, is equally daunting for traditional generators.
The problem becomes even more complicated when generation is affected by environmental, political or ideological considerations. Often the issues are not clear cut, and with so many “public interest ” factors, no simple “market economic mechanism ” can be utilized to solve the issues.
Huge and well funded lobby groups have arisen, each dedicated to the partisan promotion of their chosen technology. With so much self-interest at stake it’s become very difficult for regulators to select the most compatible and efficient method of power generation and distribution. The fact that many newer technologies are not yet mature further complicates decision making, while the political considerations remain in a state of flux.
Over the next few decades will see far more varied options relating to generation and distribution. The human species will met these challenges as humans do best, that is by ; chaotic squabbling, innovation, folly, brilliant and plain daft planning, self-interest and altruistic co-operation, passionate advocacy, apathy and all manner of weird and wonderful schemes, as well as truly magnificent achievements 🙂
As a species we seem to have the ability to survive anything, even ourselves (albeit with a fair amount of pain).
Distributed power will result in less large scale outages and is thus has a lower risk profile e.g. A fire or explosion, act of terrorism (or whatever localised event takes out the centralised utility power station will impact 10’s or 100’s of thousands of consumers.
Sure you are right there are risks in distribution, but what about reliability and do you see each of us producing electricity for your own need only? What about industries, services, etc.? They also will produce locally their needs? Grid technology will improve and the market pressures and local production will drive this!
I think we must have grid and local producers working together for a reliable and srting system to operate efficiently and at the lowest possible cost.
Everyone producing their own small scale power distributed power for their own needs will definitely require a lot more looking after/maintenance etc, as you are correct that large utility scale power plants benefit from scale and are more efficient to run/maintain. However the distributed model will certainly create a lot more employment (relatively low skilled) running around looking after all those small household/ SME systems (mostly solar/battery backup systems) if that is another key objective to be achieved?? So yes, a mixture of distributed and utility scale is likely the correct answer. Just not sure where the optimum for each town/country resides, as I’m sure each location will differ.
Hi Craig, I do not know if I have ever read myself being quoted in print before. It is nice to realize that some of what I write is of value.
Almost half of the electricity in the US is lost in distribution. Power produced on site can be much more economical since there is no transmission loss.
Here is the link to a great article in Forbes from Sep 19, 2014 on the rise of Micro Power by Amory Lovins. http://www.forbes.com/sites/amorylovins/2014/09/19/micropowers-quiet-takeover/
Have you heard of All Power Labs in Berkeley? They make gasifiers that are being used to electrify the undeveloped world. They were at COP21 and are a great example of small scale renewable energy in action. http://www.allpowerlabs.com/products/product-overview
That looks very interesting. Thanks very much.
Re the quote: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” -Yogi Berra
There’s some dispute of the origin: Niels Bohr said : “Prediction is very hard to do. Especially about the future.” )
Then there was Markus M. Ronner in 1918; see:
http://chaosbook.blogspot.com/2010/06/lundskovdk-citater.html
Electricity for many people is becoming almost as necessary as water.
Sorry to say but all your needs are everybody needs! People are people regardless of economic, social or religious situation! That’s why I think humans will destroy the conditions for humans (and mammals) to leave on Earth! We are in a war of numbers! 7,3 billion is by far too many!
10 billion people are collectively smarter than 1 billion. They’ll figure it out (we’ve got code, they didn’t).
Solid state battery lined “solar-storage” panels on almost every building and a few hundred thousand square miles more of them in the deserts connected by a global grid is, to me, the ultimate clean energy scenario.
Water desalination, too, for almost unlimited amounts needed for growing large trees in the deserts for natural CO2 sequestration, and of course, for the water needed by the people who now rely on glacier melt. This, alone, may require another ten thousand square miles of the cheap machine produced stuff.
There should be less pollution from 10 billion in 2050 than how we did things back in the 1950’s with 1 billion, due to efficiency, collective awareness and smarts.
We won’t have to harvest trees and corn for scarce fuel amounts. We won’t have to burn hydrocarbons (due to solid state electrical storage and power lines connecting all the central and distributed solar, wind, and hydro projects across an entire planet’s worth of variable RE generation!). We won’t have hardly any areas on the planet with poverty, either (thanks to power lines connecting people with “too much” solar with those that don’t have enough).
Therefore, people will be more intelligent and will not over populate as fast as mold does in a petri-dish – thanks to the coming a smart grid.
The power of fusion will be used to convert all trash into constituent elements (and even deal with nuclear wastes). From there, fusion powered graphene ships will open up the space age in masse and there will be literally trillions of people living (somehow) in this one solar system alone.
I guess, as long as we are not “too materialistic” we can make it.
@ fireofenergy
I love your optimism and positive thinking. I agree advancing technology and expanding knowledge, will drive creative innovation far beyond what this generation can imagine.
It’s not in the nature of mankind to retreat and cower in the face of adversity (even adversity of its own making),
“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not ?” RFK
When deprived of water we go to extreme measures to acquire it. When electricity is now cut from storm, earthquake, natural disaster, or man made calamity, it would be rather natural for humanity to seek a remedy.
When I have PV solar on my roof and storage in my garage I would be outraged to have my utility tell me I could not use it when they can not provide.
Would our military put up with the utilities? I think not. They have done a good job of demonstrating why it would be in everyone’s best interest to cover their own needs during an outage. I love the heroic character of the utility workers, they truly are great. But what if everyone had enough power to get them through a week or two? The power companies could take it a little slower.
What if the power companies supplied the battery packs for every customer? Then when power went out it was not a big deal. Maybe they could even trickle power when it was abundant(solar or wind) for storage at each place that uses power.
I think the future will have to be a lot different than the past or we will repeat. I say that if we don’t remember the past we will repeat it. Repeat, with emphasis.
In the rush to provide free power to the masses we should not forget the folly of backyard distribution fueled by government subsidies. Take Mao’s Chinese backyard blast furnace/smelter for example. Once other people’s money got thrown into the pot, the obvious limitations and impracticality became apparent to even the politocrats. Maybe the results of a solar panel on every roof will not be as disastrous for the environment but economic disaster can be as painful as a thousand pin pricks.
Who’s economic disaster are we talking about. Me and the masses or the utilities and the polit bureau?
Very true Larry ! Alternate energy has a long long and unfortunate history of expensive failures all created by spending vast sums of public money unwisely.
Government involvement must be very carefully thought out and even more carefully monitored. Despite it almost unmanageable and crippling national debt, the US is still borrowing to prop up uneconomic decisions to retain electoral popularity.
One the revenue from the current domestic energy boom starts to decline, incoming administrations will be unable to afford the subsidies, or even service the debt. A downturn in the US affect the entire world, and the US economy needs to invest the current boom wisely to reduce debt, recapitalize, reform and restructure it’s economy. It can’t afford wateful extravagant gestures, financed by more debt, buying inferior imported products.
I thnk the problem of energy and distribution is a very complex one and as such with no ONE magic solution but several small ones that jointly will build a solid infrastructure.
In Brazil, we did a national plan “Energia para todos!” (energy for all) that took electricity to rural areas. Today Brazil has a 97% coverage with a National Operator(National grid integration and Amazon forest is a nightmare regarding electricity distribution!!). Energy and distribution are state policies and as such all you need is political commitment.
In relation to renewables energies, the more the better! But local energy production does not mean the end of a national grid! In fact, the need is more important than before because the reliability and consumer profile factors must be accounted for.
For small, medium and large consumers reliability is an essential need. Wind, Solar, tides have technological and market issues to solve. I have nuclear, gas, oil and coal, but I can not deny that it generates electricity quite reliably!
The distribution grid is essential, so How do we accommodate local generation and the need of a grid to ensure reliability?
Governments are giving incentives to local production (house, small/medium generators) and in most cases forcing the distributors to buy the excess of electricity produced at rates that are not what these companies normally pays to a generator. You can argue that the electricity can be sold to the neighbour, so the transmission cost is lower but it can also be sold to someone at the end of the grid! In both cases, you need a grid!
So local producers must sell and distributors must buy! The question is: At what price?
In order to keep the incentives rolling, my solution is a fee to be charged per KWh sold to the grid. This fee shall be calculated as grid maintenance only!
In Brasil and probably in most developed countries, our National grid allows for a generator in the south to sell its electricity to a state distributor in the north. The proposed maintenance fee will take into account only the extent of the state distributor.
This would allow for the grid to be maintained and local generation would be incentivized.
Hi Craig,
Would you please elaborate on the last bullet point in your article: “Providing power to those living at or beneath the poverty level is a social imperative, and it’s hard to imagine how this can be accomplished cost-effectively in areas where utility infrastructure already exists.”
Thanks. 🙂
Sorry, that was unclear. I fixed it above to read:
Providing power to those living at or beneath the poverty level is a social imperative, but it’s hard to imagine how this can be accomplished cost-effectively with newly installed DG. In general, these people have relatively little living (and roof) space per capita. Accordingly, they also have smaller electric bills to offset, making the payback for solar very hard to justify. For now, the existing utility infrastructure will have to suffice.
For a lot of entry level electricity users a small PV panel and a deep cycle battery can be a revolutionary way to start up. We are used to having vast amounts of power at our finger tips. One LED bulb can light up a small hut. Computers use DC power to run, so if you eliminate the power supply a computer can run on straight DC using much less power.
“We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those assumptions.”Stephen R. Covey
We need to try to notice and remove the lenses through which we see the world.
Yes, a great number of our assumptions include ideas like those people will be using grossly inefficient 40 year old refrigerators like some of the ones they have there now. This simply won’t work; these micro amounts of power need to be used in conjunction with extremely efficient loads.
If the ever-increasing amount of wind and solar coming onto the grid is making it impossible for the utilities to perform the tasks we’ve assigned to them profitably – I have a solution they might appreciate knowing more about because it offers them a way to modify their business model in such a way so as to keep themselves ahead of the big changes going on and stay relevant in the face of profound change.
The fact is energy from biomass and wastes can be carbon negative and help resolve the global warming problem through new concept innovation.
Therefore I would like to communicate with the more progressive of them to determine the interest level they have in joining AAEC in an effort designed for empowering humanity to avoid that portion of human induced global warming that is still within our reach to minimize.
My position is; to win this epic battle, humanity needs new, modern and innovative tools of battle, and my firm, Advanced Alternative Energy, has developed negative emissions technology and I’m inviting requests for more information from all interested in helping to help humanity move forward on a much saner pathway. Please call or email me if you would like information on my novel, new concept technology, a technology designed for the epic battle ahead, and designed to help us win the fight for humanity’s long term survival.
AAEC believes we will do better and be safer in the long run if we can deploy a practical way to power our societies on extraction of greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into earth’s atmosphere while also reducing ongoing greenhouse emissions and begin protecting our communities and electric power grids. We are claiming to be the inventor of one of the repowering “tools” needed to enable humanity to overhaul the power delivery system, in the USA and elsewhere, and help get us out of the box fossil fuels and governmental inaction have humanity boxed up in. We propose to do this through deployment of advanced alternative energy projects at residential, village, community and county scale because many good paying infrastructure construction jobs are needed worldwide. Thus AAEC is seeking support from any and all that may care to support this grass roots – trickle up – project.
Here is a notice I’ve posted on Facebook and elsewhere.
COLLABORATORS, STRATEGIC ALLIANCES AND/OR INVESTMENT NEEDED FOR NOVEL NEW CONCEPT GLOBAL REPOWERING TECHNOLOGY. AAEC WILL PROVIDE MORE DETAILS ON REQUEST.
AAEC invented, patented, tested and further developed a novel new concept low-carbon energy technology we’ve designed for serving as the core technology for far cleaner renewable energy production systems and energy efficiency improvements across the American landscape and around the world. AAEC’s novel new concept technology consists of a biomass, fossil fuel, and municipal waste combustion, gasification and pyrolysis conversion technology that can provide scalable heat and power requirements as well as both biofuel and biochar production. AAEC’s technology is for stand-alone use or as backup for alternative energy systems that depend on solar, wind or other intermittent sources of energy, and in this way it will help enable a doubling of the deployment of alternative energy projects around the world in coming decades.
AAEC developed this new concept breakthrough technology to enable homeowners, businesses, towns, cities and counties to convert completely to cleaner energy. AAEC is for all those who understand that distributed alternative / renewable energy derived from solar, wind, biomass and waste is a viable pathway to stall global warming and produce a much better future for our descendants, and ultimately for all humanity. AAEC offers a viable way to move to a future where we are better at controlling global warming. Fossil fuel firms and utilities may at first oppose what AAEC offers and prefer to continue passing on the costs in cleaning up their operations to their clients and customers even if better options are available that would benefit them as well.
AAEC management believes we will all do better and be safer in the long run if we can deploy a practical way to power all human activities on extraction of greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into earth’s atmosphere while also cutting back on ongoing greenhouse emissions and begin protecting communities and electric power grids. I’m claiming to be an inventor of one of the “tools” needed to enable humanity to overhaul the power delivery system, in the USA and elsewhere, and help get us out of the box fossil fuels and governmental inaction have humanity bound up in. I propose to do this through deployment of advanced alternative energy projects at residential, community, city and county scale as good paying, infrastructure producing, jobs are needed. Therefore AAEC is seeking support from any and all that may care to support this trickle up – distributed energy – project. With such support AAEC will enable bringing energy production to the people much as the PC brought computing to the people.
Les Blevins
President at Advanced Alternative Energy Corp.
1207 N 1800 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66049
Phone 785-842-1943 – Email LBlevins@aaecorp.com
For more info see http://aaecorp.com/ceo.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Advanced-Alternative-Energy/277213435730720
http://buildings.ideascale.com/a/dtd/SCALABLE-MIXED-WASTE-TO-ENERGY-CONVERSION-TECHNOLOGY/84117-33602
“We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and we’re the last generation that can do something about it. We only get one planet. There’s no Plan B.” ~ President Barack Obama
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckmister Fuller
“There are risks and costs to any program of action, but they can be far less than the long range risks and costs of inaction” ~ President John F. Kennedy
Someone said I that – advancing technology and expanding knowledge, will drive creative innovation far beyond what this generation can imagine and I agree.
It’s not in the nature of mankind to retreat and cower in the face of adversity (even adversity of its own making),
“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not ?” RFK
“Insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting different results” ~Albert Einstein
To put it another way; it’s insanity to believe we can solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. ~Les Blevins
“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don’t do anything about it” ~Albert Einstein
If you’re like me, you are feeling a strong sense of responsibility to empower a big fix for the global warming issue before it is too late, a fix on the scale of the Marshal Plan that enabled the rebuilding of Europe after World War Two. Scientists now report that we only have a few years left to transform our society to a renewable energy (zero-carbon) economy if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. So what should our role be in creating this all-important transformation? And who among us can deny this need? – Les Blevins