Community Choice and Renewable Energy Gerry Braun Renewable Energy Team Lead California Energy Commission August 23, 2007
Outline Introduction Renewable Energy Options and Costs CCA Opportunities Conclusions Appendix - Renewable Energy Review Technical and Market Progress Challenges and Opportunities
Introduction (CCA) provides California Communities, individually or through joint powers arrangements, to take control of the impact of energy costs on their local economies, without taking control of the energy delivery infrastructure and related services provided by the state s investor owned utilities. The Energy Commission is supporting development of the option, in cooperation with the California Public Utilities Commission, as envisioned by the California legislature, through a project funded by its Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER) and implemented by the Local Government Commission
Renewable Energy Options Renewable energy options for California can usefully be classified into four major categories: System Renewables large power plants storing and/or delivering renewable electricity to the electric system, including: Supply Based Renewables smaller power plants exploiting high quality local resources, including: Load Based Renewables modular systems for building power, heat, cooling, and lighting, e.g. Bio-refineries Plants for production of fuel and/or electricity from wastes and crops Each category has its own implications for CCA, and there are multiple options within each category.
System Renewables System Renewables large power plants storing and/or delivering renewable electricity to the electric system, including: Wind Farms Geothermal Solar Thermal Power and Molten Nitrate Salt Storage Compressed Air Energy Storage[1] Utility contracting for renewable energy deliveries concentrates on system renewables. CCAs can also contract for system renewables blended in specified percentages with fuel based options. (1) Storage technologies will be key enablers and of the expansion of intermittent renewable energy technologies into markets. The value they add will outweigh their costs in many cases. While not renewable energy technologies per se, in a broad sense they will be part of the renewable energy mix
The Rest of the Menu Supply Based Renewables smaller power plants exploiting high quality local resources, including: Bio-power, i.e. combustion or bio-chemical conversion of agricultural, forestry and urban wastes to low to medium BTU gas, followed by conversion of heat and/or gas to electricity using thermal power plants, engine-generators, micro-turbines or fuel cells Moving water, i.e. tides, waves and currents Load Based Renewables modular systems for building power, heat, cooling, and lighting, e.g. Residential Solar Commercial Solar Modular Wind Bio-refineries Plants for production of fuel and/or electricity from wastes and crops
Renewable Energy Costs Several renewable energy technologies already contribute 11% of California's electricity supply. Their costs will be driven down by innovation, experience and economies of production and project scale. Wind. Already at parity with conventional fuel based sources. The challenge ahead is to develop the transmission infrastructure to link load centers and high quality wind resource areas. Geothermal. Central station geothermal power plants are also at parity. The challenge in this case is resource assessment and exploration enabling larger investments in new production wells and power plants. Solar Thermal Power. Significant capacity was built based on incentives and standard offer contracts available in the 1980s. Extension of Federal tax credits will result in economic parity within the next five to ten years. Biomass. California has a fleet of nearly 30 operating biomass combustion power plants. Technologies for converting forestry, agricultural and urban wastes and sewage to energy are also approaching economic parity. Solar Photovoltaics. $3B in incentives are available through the California Solar Initiative; by leveraging CSI rebates, power from community scale systems on large buildings can be offered at parity with utility tariffs.
CCA Opportunities Local governments can offer lower rates by using capital structure advantages available to public agencies. Through CCA, local governments can insulate local economies from the effects of potentially rapid escalation in prices of conventional fuels while capturing renewable energy and climate change mitigation incentives. Through CCA, communities can compete successfully for economical system renewables (from large, remote wind and solar power plants) while also exploiting costeffective load and supply based renewable options that result in local jobs and investment.
Conclusions Renewable energy will play a major role in the global, national, state and local economies of the future. California is committed to aggressive renewable energy deployment, which can be accelerated to the benefit of local communities through CCA. The Energy Commission has deep and comprehensive renewable energy expertise as well as the obligation to make it available to California communities.
Appendix Renewable Energy Review
System Renewables Wind 1992 California wind capacity exceeded the rest of the world s Average machine size was below 200kW 2007 CA capacity, 2376MW, is ~3% of 72GW world capacity. Multi-MW variable speed machines are the new standard (bottom right)
System Renewables - 1992 Emphasis on managing declining resource Dry steam resource dominant (The Geysers - top) 2007 Targeting hydrothermal resources in Imperial Valley (bottom) New drilling technology New reservoir characterization, optimization and management tools Geothermal
System Renewables Solar Thermal Power 1992 354 MW operating in Mohave Desert (top right) Natural gas hybrid configuration 2007 Market pull through Spain s feed-in law; new plants in Spain, US (Nevada), etc. Several projects in development in Calfifornia Federal investment tax credit will apply
System Renewables Storage 1992 Compressed air energy storage demo operating in AL (top right) Many suitable CAES sites in CA 2007 Improved parabolic trough concentrator technology can couple with nitrate salt storage (bottom right) Projects demonstrating use of storage technology to facilitate integration of intermittent renewables Solar Field Thermal Storage HTF system Power Island Power Block
Supply Based Renewables Bio-power 1992 Emphasis on thermal power plants Limited experience with biomass gasification 2007 Emphasis on thermochemical and biochemical conversion of cellulosic materials Major environmental benefits and trade-offs Variety of distributed generation solutions including stock engines, fuel cells and micro-turbines LFGTE 27% Digesters 7% Direct Comb 66%
1992 2007 Supply Based Renewables CA wave and tidal resources considered marginal or limited Pilot projects proposed elsewhere but limited experience Numerous wave and tidal energy conversion projects underway outside CA Moving Water Updated CA wave resource assessment complete
Load Based Renewables Residential Solar 1992 Largest PV markets were offgrid, with total global demand around 50 MW/year Research emphasis was on thin films (top right) 2007 Germany is largest market @ 600 MW/year (in 2005) driven by feed-in tariffs Japan is second largest with emphasis on solar homes (bottom right) California Solar Initiative goal is 3GW of net metered new PV capacity by 2017
1992 2007 Load Based Renewables Commercial Solar Limited experience with large rooftop arrays Emphasis on ground based system demos (top) in US and architectural integration in Europe Feed-in laws in Europe and opportunistic sales and leveraged financing in the US are driving commercial rooftop PV market MW scale systems are standard in Europe. Some community scale systems (>10MW)
1992 2007 Load Based Renewables Small off-grid market for modular wind turbines in the kw to 10kW size range No exploration of building mounted turbines Emerging interest in roof mounted and building integrated wind turbines Pilot projects underway deploying first generation technology Modular Wind