Electricity Use in Rural and Islanded Communities Summary of a Workshop (2016) / Chapter Skim
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Summary of Workshop Presentations and Discussions
Summary of Workshop Presentations and Discussions
Pages 3-26
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Furthermore, the cost of expanding electricity access to rural communities may be prohibitively high for traditional investor-owned utilities whose fiduciary responsibility is the creation of dividends for investorowners. Thus, RUS partners predominantly with customer-owned rural electric cooperatives to finance infrastructure improvements that generate wealth in local communities.
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NOTE: 2015 Renewable Portfolio Standard Status Reports are available from http://puc.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/RPS-KIUC-2015.pdf; http://puc.hawaii.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2013/07/RPS-HECO-2015.pdf; and http://puc.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/ 04/Adequacy-of-Supply-KIUC-2015.pdf. SOURCE: Modified from Chris Yunker, Hawaii State Energy Office, "Islanded Communities: Issues and Differences," presentation to the workshop, February 8, 2016.
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electric cooperatives serving rural communities may have access to fewer financial and technical resources than large investor-owned utilities. Rural communities also have unique resources -- for example, strong community organizations, local banks, extension services, and ties to the 5
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He concluded by citing the lack of energy efficiency measures available for mobile homes, which are aging and constitute an important component of the housing stock in the rural United States, and urged the creation of energy efficiency measures for mobile homes. Curtis Wynn, CEO of Roanoke Electric Cooperative, described energy efficiency programs currently being implemented by his organization with support from the RUS Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program (RUS-EECLP)
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Additionally, local contractors benefit from consistent business, which creates jobs and wealth that stay in the community. In the future, Roanoke Electric Cooperative is looking to incorporate smart appliances and thermostats into its efficiency offerings but currently is limited by patchwork broadband access in its service community.
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UTILIZING RATE DESIGN Many utilities facing flat or declining electricity demand and growing penetration of DG resources are considering increased fixed cost charges within their tariffs to maintain revenue for operations and service. According to Ken Colburn, a principal at the Regulatory Assistance Project who also serves on the board of directors of the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC)
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net metering rate structures compensate customers with a variable percentage of the full retail cost for power based on the size of installation, while allowing the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative to collect the remaining amount for costs associated with grid maintenance and administration. Customers who established net metering accounts prior to reaching the statutory cap ("below-the-cap")
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FIGURE 7 La Plata Electric Cooperative reduced peak power consumption with its time-of-use (TOU) program but had to develop strategies to address the large ramp rates occurring at the end-of-the-peak billing period when thermal storage units all switch on.
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Despite high fuel costs, diesel generators are ubiquitous in Alaska because they serve important functions beyond electricity generation, such as production of waste heat, maintenance of sufficient inertia to withstand minor disturbances, and creation of a voltage and frequency reference. For these reasons, it is difficult to move away from diesel generators entirely, despite sustained interest in incorporating more renewable energy generation, energy storage, and demand response programs.
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Rich Silkman, founder and co-manager of Grid Solar, LLC, described how innovative combinations of technology and demand response strategies can improve grid reliability in rural areas without making large investments to expand transmission or generation capacity. Approximately $10 billion of transmission system improvements are planned for the New England area to improve reliability during the relatively few hours of peak load in which the system is stressed each year, Silkman said.
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VELCO developed a coupled-model framework that links IBM's highresolution weather forecasting model Deep Thunder, a demand forecast model, and a renewable generation forecast model to generate actionable information through a renewable integration stochastic engine. Johnson said that integrating the results from each of these components through this optimization engine can help VELCO improve utilization of renewable generation resources, increase grid reliability, and decrease operational costs associated with weather-related incidents.
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SOURCE: Modified from Kerrick Johnson, VELCO, "Power Connection: Vermont Weather Analytics Center Project," presentation to the workshop, February 8, 2016. TURNING SMART TECHNOLOGIES INTO SMART GRIDS Insufficient attention is afforded to the social, behavioral, cultural, and institutional change that needs to accompany the upcoming energy transition, argued Jennie Stephens, Blittersdorf Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at the University of Vermont.
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The appropriate strategy is to take small steps that demonstrate both technical feasibility and creation of value for customers, and rural areas are well-suited to lead the way. For example, coastal North Carolina beach communities have the willingness and technical characteristics -- such as highly seasonal load profiles and long-exposed transmission infrastructure -- to test the efficacy of portfolio management strategies for distributed resources on the distribution scale.
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Connaughton suggested that the federal government and industry actors continue to work toward standardization of data exchange protocols as a necessary next step to develop a truly smart grid, as opposed to a dumb grid with smart components. There is an important distinction between planning for a 100 percent renewable grid and planning to transition an existing system to 100 percent renewables, said Chris Yunker, program manager for energy systems and planning in the Hawaii State Energy Office.
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SOURCE: Modified from Chris Yunker, Hawaii State Energy Office, "Getting to 100% by 2045: Planning Holistically," presentation to the workshop, February 9, 2016. Hawaii is addressing essential questions for moving forward with greater penetration of distributed renewables, but there are some significant scale issues that will be encountered en route to reaching 100 percent renewables, said Richard Rocheleau, director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii, in a short commentary at the end of the session.
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the intermediate-sized grid allows creation of pilot studies with relatively modest investment. JumpSmart Maui is one of several ongoing collaborations between the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and an international cohort of government and industry partners researching and demonstrating the use of PEVs to provide energy storage and auxiliary services to an electric grid with high penetration of distributed renewables.
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SOURCE: Richard Rocheleau, Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, "Electric Vehicles for Hawaii's Clean Energy Future," presentation to the workshop, February 9, 2016. fast chargers, the project had some success in reducing peak demand and curtailment of renewable generation.
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offering cooperative members retail initiatives that include renewable energy credits for the electricity used over the lifetime of the car and rebates to offset expenses of installing home charging equipment. PEVs can impact a utility's load profile, so as a residential-serving utility with peak use in the evening, Great River Energy developed a TOU rate structure to encourage charging after 10:00 p.m., which benefits both the utility and the customer.
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In the second phase of the Borrego Springs Microgrid project, the utility connected a 26 MW photovoltaic array with smart inverters and increased automation to improve emergency readiness, operational flexibility, and grid resilience with 100 percent renewable resources. Microgrids can improve reliability and reduce energy costs in remote and islanded areas with high reliance on diesel generators by maximizing use of renewable energy sources, according to Steven Rowe, senior services manager at General Electric (GE)
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In the future, microgrids will be able to participate in power and ancillary services markets through day-ahead bidding, said Rowe, who concluded with a brief description of two new GE-affiliated projects in New York that will apply the communication and control techniques pioneered at Bella Coola. Aloke Gupta, senior director of policy and market development at Imergy Power Systems, presented on the use of vanadium flow batteries to provide electricity storage for microgrids in emerging markets, where the majority of new electricity demand will be concentrated.
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case study to an ongoing project with the Flathead Electric Cooperative in which the objective is to reduce peak demand through coordinated dispatch of electric water heaters. Whereas the island microgrid requires high-speed monitoring, controls, and on-site management, the dispatch of electric water heaters can be scheduled ahead of time, operated on a relatively slow time period, and coordinated off-site with cloud storage.
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FIGURE 15 Spirae's Wave™ architecture for management of distributed resources and aggregation of information and control from the individual asset level to the substation and distribution network levels. SOURCE: Andrew Merton, Spirae, LLC, "Microgrids: Distributed Controls Perspective," presentation to the workshop, February 9, 2016.
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Appendixes
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