Toronto-based Enbala Networks has brought demand-response to a new level — just don’t call it demand-response.

In traditional demand-response, companies such as Comverge and EnerNOC sign up dozens, potentially hundreds of clients that agree to reduce their energy demand when asked.  When a heat wave hits and electricity demand spikes, a power system operator will ask a Comverge or EnerNOC to orchestrate a large-scale demand reduction for a specific period of time. These companies (and their clients) get paid to reduce their electricity, with the idea being that the cost of such programs is far less expensive than the cost of building (and paying for) a natural gas peaker plant to do the job — that is, negawatts is cheaper than natural gas megawatts.

EnerNOC, for example, said it was able to reduce power demand across the United States last week by 1,230 megawatts when asked to kick its services into action.

But this is only one form of demand-response. What about the second-by-second fluctuations on the grid that require what the industry calls “regulation”? Regulation is a way to constantly balance supply and demand on the system, and it’s usually accomplished by power generators that get paid a hefty premium to do the job (In Ontario hydroelectric facilities in Niagara Falls play a major role). In early 2010, Enbala Networks decided to participate in an Ontario Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) program aimed at proving that demand-response could work for regulation services as well.

The company issued a call in June 2010 for municipal and industrial partners that had the flexibility, when asked, to reduce power demand regularly throughout the day and night. Ideal candidates were water and wastewater treatment facilities, wood chipping and rock crushing facilities, companies that had large electric boilers, chillers and battery charging loads, and partners that relied heavily on industrial ventilation. In other words, anyone that used lots of electricity for equipment that could easily be turned on and off without materially affecting the overall operation of the organization. You might call it flexibility harvesting, and Enbala has built a smart grid platform that does it well.

Enbala went ahead with the pilot project and a year later the company and the IESO appear satisfied with the outcome. Now that proof-of-concept is out of the way, it will be interesting to see where it leads. Will Enbala be able to replicate it in other jurisdictions and turn it into a vibrant money-making business? Will the IESO expand the pilot into a full-scale commercial program, giving the Ontario grid a faster and cheaper way to balance supply and demand?

The smart grid demands no less, and this approach will become increasingly important, along with energy storage, as we add more intermittent renewables to the power mix.

Hi all, I’m delighted to report that the first review of my upcoming book, Mad Like Tesla: Underdog Inventors and Their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy, is in and it’s, well, pretty encouraging. Here’s what Library Journal, an important industry trade magazine used as a purchasing guide by library buyer and book wholesalers, had to say:

Hamilton, energy and technology writer for the Toronto Star, examines some of the latest, most far-out green energy innovations and the people behind them. How far-out? Take, for example, a retired engineer’s idea to produce electricity via an artificial tornado, or a plan for a space-based power station that would harvest the sun’s energy, using microwaves to beam it down to earth. Other gizmos and processes seem more amenable to commercial success and social acceptance: Hamilton tells of a secretive company called EEStor that claims to have made a breakthrough in energy storage, and of a team building a low-cost nuclear fusion reactor. He strikes a fine balance between hope and hard realism when considering barriers to energy transition. As the “tornado guy” says, upon considering financial and regulatory obstacles: “Holy crap, that’s a lot to get through.” VERDICT: Mad Like Tesla is easy to get through, even for readers with only a basic knowledge of energy issues. Hamilton makes complex technologies comprehensible, and he clearly enjoys the remarkable human stories behind the science. Many of the risk takers and visionaries portrayed are Canadian (rocker Neil Young makes a cameo appearance!), but this book’s strong appeal should transcend all borders.

Can’t complain with that. The book is scheduled for public release on Sept. 1 and is already available for pre-order on a number of sites, including Amazon.com/Amazon.ca and Indigo.ca. The book won’t break the bank, either. We decided to do paperback release on first run to make the book more accessible to a larger audience. You can likely pick it up for $13 or so. I built a Web site I’m not entirely happy with, so plan to have a newly designed site finished by the end of August. Stay tuned!

Natural gas-fired power generation has generally been considered necessary for the transition away from dirty electricity generated from coal toward clean electricity generated from renewables. Wind and solar are intermittent so integrating them into the grid means we have to be able to balance their intermittencies against another source of power generation that is flexible. That “other” source is natural gas, which despite its own controversies (particularly around emissions and water contamination as they relate to shale gas production) is generally much cleaner than coal.

But here’s the problem: There are two basic ways of deploying natural gas-fired power plants. One is in single-cycle mode, where you run the fuel once through a gas turbine. This kind of plant is usually used for peaking purposes because it can ramp power output up and down quite quickly, and because of this flexibility it is generally matched up with renewables — i.e. when the wind stops blowing the single-cycle peaking plant ramps up accordingly, and when the wind picks up the gas plant ramps down. This assures demand and supply on the grid remain in proper balance.

Unfortunately, single-cycle plants are not efficient. Only between 33 and 40 per cent of the natural gas fuel that goes into it produces electricity. The rest is lost as waste heat. Now, the alternative is to build combined-cycle plants. With these plants, natural gas fuel goes into a gas turbine, but the waste heat is captured and used to power a steam turbine. A combined-cycle gas plant can be between 55 and 60 per cent efficient. But the tradeoff is that it doesn’t have the flexibility that comes with single-cycle mode. So combined-cycle plants tend to run more like baseload generation, but with minor flexibility to adjust to slow-moving changes in system load. In other words, combined-cycle gas plants and intermittent renewables can play together but not very well.

Now, all of this is background for what I really want to tell you: General Electric announced yesterday in France that it has developed a new power plant design that achieves the flexibility of single-cycle with the efficiency of combined-cycled. The new plant, called FlexEfficiency 50, is basically a combined-cycle plant with 61 per cent efficiency that’s based on jet engine technology (a newly developed 9FB Gas Turbine) and waste-heat capture for driving a steam turbine (109D-14 turbine). GE has rated the plant’s output at 510 megawatts. According to GE, the plant can ramp up by 50 megawatts per minute, which is apparently double the ramp-up rate that exists today.

This might not seem like a big deal, and it’s certainly not the sexiest of stories, but if we’re going to rely more on natural gas as we transition to renewables, and if more of that gas is going to come from shale resources (meaning it will have a larger carbon footprint), then having a natural gas plant that’s both efficient and flexible is actually a very good thing to have over the coming years. This is especially true in regions such as California and Ontario that are hoping to integrate a large amount of renewables into their systems over the next decade.

The following Victoria Day weekend guest post is by Gideon Forman, executive director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) – along with nurses and leading health charities – is running an advertising campaign to support renewable power and the speedy phase-out of coal-fired electricity. It’s a project unique in the country. Under the heading, “Doctors and Nurses Support Green Energy”, the ads – which are appearing in 15 newspapers as well as in magazines and online – tell readers that last year Ontario’s coal plants caused over 150,000 illnesses and over 300 deaths. They state: “Ontario doctors, nurses, and other health professionals support energy conservation combined with wind and solar power – to help us move away from coal.”
 
The ads are signed by organizations — such as the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, the Lung Association, CAPE, and the Asthma Society of Canada – which represent literally tens of thousands of health professionals. These professionals have long condemned air pollution for its damage to human well-being. In a landmark report entitled “No Breathing Room” the Canadian Medical Association calculated that, in 2008, air pollution killed 21,000 Canadians and it projected that, by 2031, the “number of deaths due to long-term exposure to air pollution will be 710,000.”
 
But CAPE’s campaign is different because it does more than just assess harm – as important as that is. This initiative, for the first time in Canada, sees health professionals  combating air pollution by urging both an end to coal and an embrace of renewables. Ontario has promised to close its coal-burning plants by 2014 but doctors and nurses want it to happen much sooner. (more…)

The Ontario Smart Grid Forum, a group led by the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator, released today its latest report on smart grid development. The report, titled “Modernizing Ontario’s Electricity System: Next Steps,” documents progress that has been made since the Forum’s first report two years ago and the many smart grid-related activities currently underway. It also makes several recommendations that will help build on the current momentum of development.

The report touches on electric vehicles and related infrastructure, emergence of the smart home, importance of privacy protection, integration of energy storage, challenges of managing an expected deluge of what I like to call “gridformation”, and the overall importance of industry standards. It also attempts to quantify the expected annual investment in smart grid technologies, systems and training over the next five years.

Disclosure: I was contracted by the IESO to prepare this report so am reserving comment. That said, for anyone interested in Ontario’s smart grid activities this report offers a great sense of where the province is coming from, where it’s at, and where it is going on all things related to the smart grid.