From the by M.D. Fletcher |
June 2010 |
|
For some time now, the country has been moving towards the use of alternative energy, meaning anything other than coal, water or, God forbid, nuclear. Most states, including New Mexico and Arizona, have adopted rules that require electric utilities to move their generation mix towards a certain percentage of alternative energy within a given time frame. That's why our power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, has been investing in wind and solar applications in order to satisfy these requirements for most of the 44 distribution cooperatives it serves, like Columbus Electric. The net effect of this is to raise the cost of electricity. How's that for an inconvenient truth? The fact is, on average, the sun shines in this part of the world only ten hours a day. That's it. And if you just spent big bucks for photovoltaic panels on your garage, those expensive little hummers are only going to be pumping out watts for about six or seven of those hours, provided, of course, it's not a cloudy day. So even in the best-case scenario, the capacity of these systems is pretty sorry right out of the chute, somewhere around 30%. Wind turbines have the same problem. Even though around these parts it may seem that the wind blows all the time, it really doesn't. Studies have shown that wind power, like solar power has a capacity rating of about 30%. But most people want power available all the time, even went the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. So they rely on their utility company to pick up the slack and utilities do so by ramping coal-burning generation stations up and down to meet the demand. Unfortunately, these stations are most efficient when they're running full tilt, not when they're coming up or going down, so what happens is they lose a lot of their overall efficiency. They also are a lot dirtier in this operational mode. Ask the folks up in Colorado where they've been doing this for some time now and they'll tell you that their air quality is actually getting worse, not better, despite all the solar and wind generation resources they have in place. |
This is just another example of one of my favorite laws, that being the immutable Law of Unintended Consequences. But alternative energy is here to stay, at least as long as the government mandates it and you don't mind paying for it. Here at Columbus Electric, we're a distribution organization and where the energy comes from makes very little difference to us whether it's from wind, solar, coal, water, nuclear or goat droppings. Whatever it costs is passed straight through to you via the hated Fuel and Purchased Power Adjustment Clause. That's the line on your bill that represents our wholesale power cost. We have no control over it and don't make a dime off of it, but that's the line item that you keep calling me bad names about. Our job is just to get whatever power it is to you, all the time, wherever and whenever you want it. Not that that's a simple deal. In the near future, we're going to have to invest a boatload of your money in making our distribution system smarter. One of the keys to the future is communications. We've got to know exactly what's happening on the system on a real-time basis. Let me give you a very simple problem as an example: Say you and all your neighbors each fall prey to your friendly door-to-door photovoltaic salesman and end up with a whole neighborhood of solar panels merrily pumping out watts like crazy. The voltage regulator at our substation would recognize your generation and step down accordingly. Then a great big cloud passes over. Your generation stops, our voltage regulator goes nuts trying to step back up before your flat screen gets fried, finally gets there just as the big cloud moves away and our poor, hapless regulator steps down again until the next cloud comes around and so on and so on. The question becomes how do we regulate our distribution system when we don't know when additional generation is going to come on-line? That's just the tip of this iceberg. There are other far more technical problems that nobody in this business has solutions for, like VAR flow and phase angles and harmonics. That's why we've got to get a lot smarter in the way we distribute power. We're not in Kansas anymore. |
