Next: The wattcom boom

By Elisa Wood

June 11, 2009

I was at a meeting about three years ago where state energy commissioners and power plant developers were debating new market rules, some to take effect almost immediately, others five years out. A wise commissioner looked around the room and said something like: “All that matters are the immediate rules because everything will be different in five years. In fact, most of you won’t be working for the same company you are today.”

Lo and behold, he was right. When I think of the people at the meeting, most are already elsewhere – and only three years have gone by. Some of the companies they represented, major players in the fossil fuel arena, are struggling for survival.  And where is the commissioner who made the statement? He now works for a wind energy developer.

Who will be the new, big market entrants in the next five years?  Here is a clue: More and more energy announcements that come across my desk are not from energy companies. They are from IT companies: Google, Hewlett Packard, IBM.

This makes sense given that a necessary marriage between IT and energy must occur for the development of the smart grid and user-friendly energy efficiency devices. Clearly, the IT world sees opportunity in energy.

Farah Saeed, a senior consultant for Frost & Sullivan, put it this way: “In the coming years, competition expects to intensify as non-energy related IT focused companies expand their presence in the utility sector. Companies such as IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and HP acknowledge the fact that Internet-enabled grid applications present opportunities to serve the utility market. Networks developed to support AMI [advanced metering initiatives] technologies such as home area networking (HAN) and backhaul networks, as well as enterprise software to support asset management, invites the expertise of IT technology pioneers.”

I’m predicting a “wattcom” boom. Okay, maybe the name is corny. But catch up with me in five years – probably less. Let’s see who’s in the room.

Visit Elisa Wood at www.realenergywriters.com and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

Who gets the EE stimulus money?

By Elisa Wood

February 19, 2009

The ink is dry on President Obama’s signature to the federal stimulus bill and word is out that energy efficiency receives more than $20 billion. How will homeowners and businesses benefit?

Two sources offer an excellent break-down on the incentives: the Alliance to Save Energy and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, a unit of the US Department of Energy. EERE goes so far as to give the page numbers in the bill that address certain incentives.

Here is a snap shot of where some of the energy efficiency funds will go.

Housing & Buildings

• $5 billion for low-income weatherization assistance, plus an expansion of people who are eligible. An increase in the funding level to $6,500 per home.
• About $4.75 billion to Housing and Urban Development for public, low-income and Native American housing
• Tax credit for existing homes extended and increased to 30 percent of cost, up to $1,500 for 2009 and 2010
• About $8.9 billion for federal buildings, including $4.5 billion for green buildings and $3.6 billion for Department of Defense energy efficiency initiatives

Appliances

• $300 million for the Energy Star Program and for matching grants to states that offer rebates to consumers for buying Energy Star appliances.

Technology

• $4.5 billion for smart grid projects
• Up to $2.3 billion allotted for a 30 percent investment tax credit given to those who manufacture renewable energy, energy storage, energy conservation, efficient transmission, and carbon capture and sequestration items.

Transportation

• $400 million to encourage the use of plug-in hybrids
• $17.7 billion for public transportation and rail
• $2 billion for the manufacture of advanced batteries

Other

• $3.1 billion for state energy programs and $3.2 billion in block grants for local governments
• $500 million to prepare workers for jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency
• $9.75 billion for public safety and other government services, including renovation to “green” schools

Further details are available at http://ase.org/content/article/detail/5388 and http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/enn.cfm

Visit Elisa Wood at www.realenergywriters.com and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

Googlifying the electric grid

By Elisa Wood

February 12, 2009

If you showed Alexander Graham Bell cell phone towers, he’d be stumped. But if you let Thomas Edison tinker with our electricity grid, he’d know just what to do — not because of his genius, but because electric transmission has changed little since Edison’s day. Telephone technology advanced; electricity did not. So says the Department of Energy. http://www.oe.energy.gov/1165.htm

Thus, we are now playing catch-up and pursuing a new, smart grid. This means we will incorporate digital technology which, among other things, allows for two-way communication. The grid will speak to us and we will speak back through our actions. The average householder will know the price of power as it constantly changes throughout the day, and based on the information, choose when to buy it.

The implications to society are huge. Like the Internet, which democratized information retrieval, the smart grid opens doors for new control by the common folk, in this case over energy management, now the domain of remote utilities and grid operators. Collectively, we will determine what kind of energy the nation uses and when. In a sense, we all become energy policymakers through our purchasing choices.

So it’s no surprise that Google, whose goal is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” announced this week that it will step in and help with the smartening. Google is not an energy company, but it understands how to make information retrieval user friendly – and this will be crucial to the success of the smart grid. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/power-to-people.html

John Petersen, chairman of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College, understands this need for simplicity in communicating energy concepts, as he shows in his creation of the Energy Orb. In today’s Energy Efficiency Markets podcast (www.realenergywriters.com), Petersen discusses Oberlin’s trial and error in getting students interested in managing their energy use. Initially, the college set up a website that monitored dorm energy use with colorful charts and graphs. But Petersen quickly realized it was too “techno-geeky.”

So taking a page from Ambient’s Stock Orb, a ball that glows different colors to show stock market activity, Petersen developed the Energy Orb. The glowing balls are placed in dorms, so students can pass by and see the buildings power consumption in real time. Red means high consumption, green is low. There is no need to get online and analyze charts. The Orb reveals the immediate truth. Dorms compete against each other to maximize efficiency by watching what their orbs say.

The Energy Orb is just one way we can googlify energy information management. Many other pilot projects are in the works that simplify information retrieval and encourage people to conserve. We’d like to use this space – and our weekly podcast – to feature some of these smart grid experiments. We invite you to submit them for consideration to realenergywriters@comcast.net

Visit Elisa Wood at www.realenergywriters.com and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

Energy Efficiency Markets chooses its favorites of 2008

By Reid Smith
January 8, 2009

We appreciate the entries submitted for Energy Efficiency Markets’ first annual ‘best of’ contest. It is difficult to select winners in an industry that is burgeoning with innovation. We hope you find our selections as intriguing as we did. Please continue to email us (realenergywriters@comcast.net) about interesting projects – we’d like to highlight them periodically in our weekly newsletter:

1. Best appliance: Energy orb

Remember the mood rings we wore as kids? The stone changed color depending on how we felt. Here is a variation on the theme: an orb that signals the energy mood of a building, glowing angry red when energy use is high and green when consumption is low. A kind of smart meter, this crystal ball helped Oberlin College students cut back by 56% on energy use in their dorms. What’s interesting is that the kids don’t pay energy bills – still they responded to the magic ball. http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2008/12/18/power-meters-help-homeowners-track-and-cut-their-energy-use/

2. Most innovative public policy: Connecticut

Connecticut tends toward gutsy moves when it comes to energy policy. The state is embracing innovation to reduce its electric rates, which hover around the second or third highest in the nation. We like Connecticut’s energy efficiency certificate or “white tag” trading program, which takes a page from the successful renewable energy certificate market now in several states. Companies, colleges, hospitals, factories and others earn the tags or credits for their energy reductions. They then sell credits to utilities or others who need them to meet state energy efficiency mandates. http://www.incisivemedia.com/energyrisk/Environmental_Risk/PDFs/Spring2008/7_EnvRisk_EnergyEfficiency.pdf

3. ESCO: CMC Energy Services

The health of any industry depends on truth in advertising. If the efficiency industry overstates what it can achieve, consumers will quickly lose faith. That is why we like the honesty in CMC Energy Services’ Home Energy Tune-uP®. The company calls it a pay-as-you-save residential energy audit program; it identifies the group of improvements in the home that will truly pay for themselves when financed. The whole house audit takes into account how various improvements interact and change your payback. If you install insulation, and you also get a new heat pump, less scrupulous auditors will calculate insulation savings based on your old, inefficient heat pump. That overstates your savings. CMC adjusts its audit to take into account the new heat pump. Consumers get a realistic picture. CMC also uses home inspectors to do the audits, rather than contractors who may have a natural conflict of interest. http://www.hometuneup.com/

4. Demand-response: Energy Curtailment Specialists

The DR market has several emerging players that deserve credit for growing use of the resource. We had a hard time deciding who to choose. We finally selected Energy Curtailment Specialists because of its intelligently packaged “Power Pay.” See http://www.ecsgrid.com for the company’s plain-talk pitch, one that avoids most of the jargon peculiar to demand response programs. FAO Schwarz and the Hyatt Regency are among recent converts to the program.

5. Transportation: Google

Google made a product that is so popular its name has become a commonly used verb. Now the company turns its attention to greening the world. Among other things, Google has a fleet of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) at its Mountain View headquarters for employee use. Following a seven-week experiment, Google announced some impressive performance from its fleet. The PHEVs averaged as much as 93 MPG average across all trips, and 115 MPG on city trips. http://www.google.org/recharge/. Will we eventually “PHEV” instead of drive?

6. Green building and construction: Pairing of green energy and efficiency

Here we honor not so much a company but a concept: the efforts by renewable energy companies to get customers to pursue all cost-effective efficiency before buying green energy. For example, California-based3Degrees, which markets renewable energy certificates (RECs) and carbon offsets, starts by analyzing a building’s carbon footprint. If it finds strong efficiency potential, 3Degress contracts with a third party to take on the project. http://www.3degreesinc.com. Chevron Energy Services offers a good example of successfully pairing solar and efficiency at three campuses of Contra Costa Community College. The $35.2 million Northern California project includes a 3.2-MW solar power generation system, efficient lighting and energy management systems, efficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, and high-voltage electrical system replacements. http://www.chevron.com/News/Press/release/?id=2008-01-31

Visit Reid Smith at www.realenergywriters.com and pick up his free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

How Power Hungry Is Home Entertainment?

By Patrick Costello

Plasma televisions, video game consoles, and cable set-top boxes find their way into more and more American homes thanks to lower prices and aggressive marketing. While this trend makes for better home entertainment, it strikes a blow to energy conservation efforts.

For example, even when just in standby mode, a plasma television consumes nearly $160 of energy/year and a game console over $25/year, says an article in Good magazine. A study by Australian consumer group Choice found that plasma televisions use four times more energy than older cathode ray tube televisions. An Xbox 360 game console could cost $200/year to operate, and its competitor Playstation 3 as much as $250/year. (Meanwhile, Nintendo Wii fans can take heart that their box costs only $25/year.)

The two studies make various assumptions about usage, some more credible than others. No one, for example, would leave a game console on 24/7/365. And energy costs were on the high side in the Choice study at 15 cents/kWh. Still the studies make it very clear that both plasma televisions and game consoles are power hungry.

The energy consumption of another common home entertainment device, the cable set-top box also often goes unnoticed. A 2007 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) study found that even the most basic box consumes more energy annually than a washing machine. And more and more households are likely to install such cable boxes very soon. Analog broadcasting will be cut off in 2009, rendering obsolete any television without a built-in digital tuner. Thus, millions of Americans will soon need to buy or rent digital-to-analog converter boxes. This is expected to spur the purchase of nearly 22 million cable set-top boxes. Many households are likely to upgrade to models offering integrated digital video recorders and high definition capabilities. The study found that advanced models offering both options consume more than 25% more energy than desktop computers and cost more than $30/year to operate. Interestingly, the study also said that the set-top boxes consume pretty much the same amount of energy whether they are on or off.

It is important to acknowledge the energy consumption of these home entertainment electronics and identify how they will affect household efforts to become more efficient. The set-top box is the least energy intensive of the three types of electronics addressed here, and the EPA estimates that these devices alone will consume more than 3 billion kWh/year and add $270 million/year to American electric bills.

While entertainment systems may not be as energy intensive as heating and cooling, we cannot ignore their impact as more and more of these devices make their way into our homes.

Visit www.realenergywriters.com to pick up the free Energy Efficiency Markets newsletter and podcast.