Obama praises Nellis - unaware of flaws

Off-Grid.net has written many stories over the years about the US military’s early-adoption of off-grid energy strategies.  But some army and USAF bases are stymied by the big energy companies when it comes to readying themselves for a big outage caused by anything from solar storms to terrorist attacks.

A recent report from Nevada by Greenwire focuses on a base that carries out some of the Air Force’s most advanced work, including testing and flying drones.The 140 acres of solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base’s 14.2 megawatt array are useless when commercial power is out, thanks to a provision in the agreement with the local utility that lets NV Energy turn off the array if the grid power goes down.

It seems mad, but “ contractual and technical obstacles mean Nellis’ array won’t produce a watt of power if the grid goes down any time soon.  The deal reveals the hurdles facing the military as it tries to tap renewable energy in its search for energy security..

NV Energy claim the key issue is safety. The utility says it does not want the renewable power plant feeding energy to the grid if its engineers are fixing lines. But that is a ruse used widely by energy companies around the world.  A simple switch could solve that problem, and for large scale projects like this, a trusted operator would be required to throw it.  A similar arrangement may not work for ordinary households.  But what about an automatic switch in homes that have solar panels?  One that cannot be overridden and simply disconnects solar from the grid when the grid is down and connects back again when power returns to normal?  The electro-mechanical technology is child’s play but the gadget does not exist.  Why not?

Getting back to the US military, Nellis has not implemented that fix. No switching is allowed in their contract with the energy company.  Nor has the Navy at the Naval Air Weapons Station in China Lake, Calif., a 270-megawatt geothermal plant –  the only military installation that produces more power than it uses. Nor have many other U.S. military bases that have fields of solar panels and/or wind turbines.

The idea of using renewable energy to power critical missions was on the Pentagon agenda when Nellis was built in 2007 (though not when China Lake projects went up in 1987).

Today, as bases recognize the need to build renewable energy generation for reasons of energy security, there is no absolute requirement that vital services are maintained if the local power goes out. And that seems self-defeating.

“It’s not energy security if you’ve got renewable generation that you cannot access if the grid goes down,” Scott Sklar, a veteran renewable power consultant told Greenwire.

“Cost is often cited as a barrier for DOD not having the proper grid-access deals or technologies. Utilities charge a “disconnect fee” for the right to drop off the grid and continue generation during a power outage. The fees vary, but military energy managers say they are sizeable enough to affect a project’s overall financials”  says the report.

The problem lies in the way the military were authorized to take on renewable energy projects, which are legally required to yield more in savings than they cost to build. Because of bad management and inaccurate projections of future costs by energy companies – projects can appear to have thin margins.  However as energy costs rise faster than predicted, the energy companies’ position looks increasingly tenuous.

“Pentagon policymakers have been awakened in recent years to the vulnerability of bases that rely on commercial power, but as they start to devise new standards for renewable power, they must navigate regulatory mazes that vary from state to state. States have authority over utilities, and many utilities must be dealt with individually,” says Greenwire.

Capt. Jeffrey Dodson, commander of the Navy’s China Lake installation, raised the issue at the Pentagon this fall.

Meanwhile, Off-Grid.net reported three years ago http://www.off-grid.net/2009/07/10/29-palms-goes-off-grid-ready/ on one base which does have its own off-grid facility.  California’s Mojave Desert is home to the Marine Corps’ Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms. It has an off-grid energy system that will work during a grid outage.  It can disconnect from the grid.  It has a  7.2-megawatt gas cogeneration plant, so will be immune to solar storms, and it is building a smart microgrid independent of the power company’s.

The military is investing elsewhere in smart microgrids that respond to changes in renewable energy generation and send power to the most important facilities.

Consider this scenario: The commercial grid is down, so the base is running its cogeneration plant and 5 megawatts of photovoltaics at full tilt. Then, clouds pass, and suddenly 5 megawatts of power is gone.

“Tom Hicks, the Navy’s deputy assistant secretary for energy, said he cannot get around a requirement that projects save enough money to pay for themselves. But, he said, the service has a new tool that allows him to bring energy security benefits to the forefront.

“We always have many more projects that are financially viable and meet anybody’s definition of what a good return on investment would be, but there are some within that that also address some grid security or defense critical asset issues,” he said. “This should give them more visibility or greater interest.”

Meanwhile, the Army has launched a team of renewable-power experts to help bases maneuver technical and legal hoops as the service pushes to vastly increase the amount of clean energy produced on its bases.

And the Air Force is beginning to think about the issue.  Even renewable power that is tied to the grid can have security benefits if it brings cost savings that can be put toward other security measures like building an extra power line out to a base, said Kevin Geiss, Air Force’s energy spokesman.

There are a lot of things you or a professional handyman can do around your home to help cut back on energy use.  That’s something that will benefit both your budget and the environment.  

Small Do-It-Yourself Jobs

Not all green projects are major undertakings. There are simple ways for you or a professional handyman to make your home more energy efficient. Switch out light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs throughout the house. Install occupancy sensors so lighting will come on when people are in the room and automatically turn off when they leave the room. Clean or replace furnace filters once a month. Clean the air conditioner filter regularly. Add insulation to hot water pipes. Install a water filter and quit buying bottled water. Replace your showerhead and faucets with low-flow versions. This won’t reduce water pressure but water consumption and energy costs can be reduced by up to 50%. Insulate the water heater and turn it down to 48 degrees and cut your water-heating bill in half. Install ceiling fans. Weatherize your windows and doors with caulk, weather-stripping and sealants. The average home can lose 30% of its heat or air-conditioning though the windows. Replace the thermostat with a programmable one with a timer.

Watch “the Online carpenter” Mitchell Dillman as he shows off this “green” home improvement project located at 1011 E. Yampa in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Bigger Home Improvement Projects

Home remodeling projects are the perfect opportunity to make your home greener. If you don’t have the knowledge, tools and time, hire a reputable home improvement company. Replace standard toilets with high-efficiency toilets. These newer models use 20% less water, and dual-flush, water-saving toilets can save you about 20% on your monthly water bill. Install a new gas water heater with a timer if your current water heater is more than 10 years old. Insulate your roof, walls and attic with natural insulation. Put in a whole-house fan. If you have an attic, put in a solar attic fan to vent hot air out. Install solar panels. Replace windows with modern energy-efficient windows. Avoid formaldehyde-based particle board when putting in new cabinets. Take out wall-to-wall carpeting and put in wood flooring. Carpeting traps dust mites and allergens; carpet mould is one of the leading causes of respiratory problems.

While US stalls, they're eating our lunch

Beijing  - After a rash of wind turbine malfunctions, China is to “revise” (ie raise) its standards for wind turbine production.

China’s wind power capacity surpassed that of the U.S. in 2009 and the country is planning to further raise the proportion of renewables in the nation’s fast-growing energy consumption, according to Shi Lishan, deputy director of the New and Renewable Energy Department of the National Energy Administration (NEA).

Chinese wind power has long been half the price of Western competitors, but also less reliable.  However, even the best Western small turbines are relatively unreliable, so if China raises its standards, it will become competitive.

China currently has more than 2 billion kilowatts of inland wind power resources and more than 500 million kilowatts offshore.

However “a rising trend of wind turbine breakdowns has been witnessed since 2010,” says a State report.  There were 193  accidents in wind farms in the first 8 months of 2011, according to the report released last week by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC). It also announced decision to double the solar subsidy forthwith.The accidents reveal the conflict between technology standards in the rushed development of wind power, as well as the technical problems of bringing wind power onto the national grid, according to an analyst familiar with the situation.

China is to redirect wind power development towards product quality, instead of speed and installed capacity.  In late 2011 the NEA  set stricter access thresholds for wind power projects, and higher national technology standards for wind power access to the grid.  Wind turbine projects with a capacity less than 50,000 kw must now also apply to NEA, instead of getting approval from local governments.

Meanwhile, the SERC launched a national inspection of 360 wind farms with access to the grid and 80 under-construction wind farms, 50 percent of which have completed security maintenance.

In a threat to Western competitors, China is to formulate subsidies for wind power prices and “favoring policies for wind power’s local utilization in a bid to achieve a sustainable development of wind power,” according to the SERC report.

The subsidies for frequency and peak modulated wind power sources are part of a bid to formulate compensation standards for grid connected wind power systems and facilitate the wholesale purchase of wind generated power, according to the report.

In a boost to the Smart Grid in China, State companies will construct more power transmission lines and other infrastructure to coordinate the construction of wind farms on the grid, according to the SERC report.

Meanwhile, the State Grid Corp, China’s largest power grid operator, also plans to invest some 1.6 trillion yuan for smart grid system construction in China in 2011-2015, Liu Zhenya, general manager of the company said at the Smart Grid World Forum 2011 in late September.

By the end of 2015, the smart grid system will give access to 90 million kilowatts of wind power and 8 million kilowatts of solar electric energy, Liu claimed.

The plan for China’s renewable energy industry for 2011-2015 will increase the solar energy installed capacity to 15 million kilowatts by 2015.

At the same time, China has doubled the subsidy for on-grid price of electricity generated from renewable energy sources to 0.008 yuan/kilowatt hour (kwh) from current level of 0.004 yuan/kwh starting from December 1.

The higher target for solar capacity and the increased subsidy are evidence of China’s determination to subsidise its solar PV industry over the next five years.

China’s total solar power installed capacity is 3 million kilowatts up from just 800,000 kilowatts in 2010.

LaMar's off grid cabin

I just love learning how other people live off grid, especially when they are doing it in a very similar way to how I live. LaMar Alexander has done all of this and more, we may be in different places, but we both started out with small and simple systems, cobbling together this and that, building an independent life one piece at a time.

LaMar has graciously shared his life with the rest of us, in book and video format, here are some interesting and educational videos about how he is upgrading his solar systems. There are 4 videos in this series, you can view them here or click on the links to view at YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajp0VkWZ9Jk

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrkyMKb73co

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EylS_Kt0gQ

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n7e9ttcmlM

 

 
LaMar has written a great book about how he built his off grid cabin and the systems that are part of his off grid cabin, this IS a “how to” book about building an off grid cabin, a great companion book to Nick’s book Off The Grid-Inside The Movement For More Space, Less Government, And True Independence In Modern America I own both books and found lots of great information in them.

Solar newbies beware

Don’t believe the awful ads which promise you “free power for $200″, or “build your own solar panel for $200″. Several of them appear on this site from time to time, despite that we are doing everything we can to stop them.  Many are from Chinese spammers, and a particular bunch of conmen called energy4free, or earth4energy or Get-Cheap-Solar-Panels.com, amongst many other aliases. These slimebags ask you to pay for an e-book which directs you to some other sites and offers to sell you components for a solar panel that will never work. Of course it would be quite wrong and immoral to suggest you should click repeatedly on their ads whenever you see the Earth4energy logo. We do not recommend that.

We have complained to Google but that did no good. Every time we find the ads we delete them, but they pop up under some other dodgy URL.  Please email us if you find any ads you think we should delete.

IF the federal government was really worried about the planet’s destruction it would force power companies to adopt a German model and pay people more for generating green power, and ban solar rip-offs like the above.

The solar tax rebate is mainly aimed at grid-connected homes, and although I can’t say its a bad thing in itself, I certainly don’t like that the State-based incentives tend to discriminate against off-gridders.  But the new Obama stimulus incentives might allow new off-grid properties larger grants for power and water.

Right now, the power generators are treating people who put energy back into the power grid as if they had somehow fixed the electricity meter – refusing to pay them any more once they have “zeroed out” their own electrical usage. In Germany, where solar power is a significant contributor to energy, I would get 50c, instead of the 10c I get here.

The contribution from solar is most important at times of peak demand in the heat of the day in the cities, when the faraway power stations are losing a lot of heat in the transmission lines.

Now back to that claim of “free energy for $200″: If you were to spend $10,000 on renewable energy for your house, you’re not going to get that back for many years. But it would bring your power bills down by a large amount.

So how much would it cost to take your home, with say a couple acres  completely off the grid? `If you do everything really well, you should be able to spend $5000 of your own money plus the $5000 grant from the Government.” For water and sewerage, allow another $5-8,000. In most cases, if you have a couple acres or more allow $15,000 of your own money and you need never get another power or water bill.

Time to wrap up warm and get hands dirty

Its time to start culling woodland,scavenging fuel from dumpsters and wearing warmer clothes

Start foraging in Granny’s closet — if forecasts by Deutsche Bank are true, we are heading for =higher energy prices very soon. The bank’s researcher estimates that prices will rise a further 25% by 2015, meaning that the average  household will be spending more than 4% of their disposable income on fuel bills, back to the levels seen following the oil shocks of the1970s. For households, Deutsch Bank surmise that the only way that energy prices would be lower than forecast is if there were a recession — but the lower energy prices would be of little comfort to those out of work. Perhaps those furry waistcoats and long cardigans so beloved of the 1970s may be the trick to staying warm in winter. Driving the increase is not just the growing demand for fuel but the growing dependency on imports.  In the UK,  the boon from North Sea oil and gas fades. The UK stopped being a net exporter of energy after 2003 and since then it has been increasingly at the mercy of international fuel prices. For the sellers of household energy, those utilities with upstream (producing assets) should be better placed than those that have to buy more of their energy in from wholesale markets.Centrica, with its storage, generation and upstream gas and oil, and SSE with its considerable wind and hydro production as well as fossil fuel production have the potential to benefit from upstream earnings cushioning any squeeze in profit margins in retail (downstream supply).

David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, is not your typical power company executive, as becomes clear from his interview with a Yale University  student magazine, e360.

NRG is a Fortune 500 company producing electricity for up to 20 million U.S. households. Crane is still neck-deep in hydrocarbons, with more than 90 percent of NRG’s electricity production coming from natural gas, coal, and oil. Crane  believes the electricity market is about to be transformed by the widespread adoption of solar panels on residential and commercial roofs, and electric cars in garages,

Crane told e360: “I think the most important thing is to make the American public aware that now they have energy choices in a way that they never really did. You don’t just have to settle for using electricity in your house that is supplied by coal-fired power plants on the grid. And you don’t just have to put oil that comes from the Middle East in your gas tank. By far the biggest opportunity for those of us on the electricity side is transportation energy.

I mean the people who were opposed to climate change legislation used one of two tactics. They either said, “Well, we don’t believe it’s happening.” Which, of course, is just a bald-faced lie. Or the second part of the one/two punch is, “We can’t afford to do anything about it because a synonym for the word “green” is “expensive.” But looking forward, electric vehicles will be far cheaper to operate than internal combustion engine vehicles. And solar panels on the roof will provide power more cheaply than taking power from the grid.

The electricity side of the energy sector is 50 percent coal and 20 percent natural gas and 20 percent nuclear. The transportation side is almost all oil. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re on the left or the right of the political spectrum, no American wants to keep importing 3 million barrels of oil a day from the Middle East. So there’s huge public policy benefit to shifting the transportation sector to something other than oil.

e360: Could you talk about NRG’s move into utility-scale solar, and also your vision long-term of large-scale solar, versus distributed [smaller-scale] solar power?

Crane:So far most of our business has been utility-scale solar — gigantic plants in the desert. The biggest solar [project] we have is 295 megawatts. That’s something like 6 million solar panels. Those projects are really dependent on two things, because they cost over a billion dollars: the Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Guarantee Program and California’s 33 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard, and the fact that the two largest California utilities have been willing to sign long-term agreements in order to meet their requirements [to obtain 33 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2020] under the Renewable Portfolio Standards. We have over 800 megawatts of projects out there, which is a huge number for solar. But our view is that because the DOE Loan Guarantee Program is going away and the California utilities are coming close to putting themselves in a position to satisfy the requirement, there will be fewer of those projects in the future.

We expect to continue to pursue that business and to do well, but that’s not going to be the explosive-growth part of the industry. The explosive-growth part will be between distributed solar power, which is like 1 to 10 megawatt size, and then residential, which is measured in kilowatts. We have so many parking lots and warehouse rooftops and residential locations where people want to reduce their monthly electric bills and that is just an enormous area of growth.
Democratization of customer choice in our sector begins with two things. One is the electric car and the other is the solar panel on the roof. I think it actually starts with the electric car. You put the electric car in your garage and you really have a mini power plant because these batteries that drive electric cars are quite substantial pieces of equipment. The average car in the United States is sitting still about 22 hours a day. Those are hours where the car can either be accepting power from the grid or selling power through the grid in a phenomenon we refer to as V2G, vehicle-to-grid. That leads to the third leg of the trilogy, which is the smart meter, because between a smart meter in your house, combined with time and use pricing, you essentially want that electric car to be charging between midnight and four in the morning. And you want to have it available to basically drain itself a little between 2 and 6 o’clock in the afternoon.

This is something that most people don’t like to really talk about. But it’s just a fact of life that when you start talking about electric vehicles and solar on your roof, you’re talking about something that’s going to penetrate into the population top-down through the socio-economic strata. That’s just a fact of life. We’re very bullish on the electric car, but we don’t expect for another 20 years that a person who can only afford to have one car will have an electric car. But in America there are 60 million families that own more than one car, and that’s a big market. Ultimately, the answer to your question is this: If you assume that the average solar installation on the roof of a house is going to cost somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000, we think about one percent of the population is willing to write that check. So what the industry is already fast creating is lease arrangements, and power purchase arrangements if you’re a small business. Basically, a lease arrangement where someone like us actually owns the solar on your roof, and all the customer sees is an electric bill that’s no bigger than the electric bill they were seeing before.

I think people like us will try to offer you a discount.Also, if you put solar on your roof you’re deflecting the sun from beating down and that will put less strain on your air conditioning system. Number three, most people who understand energy realize that right now is a very good time to lock in your price of energy for as long as you can. The average age of a power plant in the United States is 40 years old. When American utilities start replacing the current generation of power plants, everyone’s bill is going to go up. The lease arrangements we’re talking about are fixed-price arrangements for 20 years. We will give you price stability for a long time — no inflation.

We believe that in the next 3 to 5 years you’ll be able to get power cheaper from the roof of your house than from the grid. Solar is going to go from this thing that right now is like .1 percent of the market to 20 to 30 percent of the overall electricity mix. That’s huge.
If you go back about four years to where the price of solar modulars were, the prices have been cut in half in the last four years. I predict that the price of solar modules will be cut in half again in the next two years. And the basic reason is that solar technology is a nanotechnology. And most forms of power generation that we deal with are based on thermal energy or, in the case of windmills, kinetic energy. With those things, in order to reduce your unit cost you just have to keep making things bigger. And so our problem with the wind industry is in order to get the per-kilowatt cost down, they have created these engineering marvels, these monstrously large wind turbines.

But to place them in a crowded country you have to put them farther and farther away from where people live. Right now, most of the action in the wind industry in the United States is in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas and they don’t use a lot of power out there. And we fundamentally don’t believe that people are going to support building a whole big network of high voltage transmission lines.

Utilities can't handle universal solar

Further evidence in favor of Micro-grids and against the so-called Smart Grid.

The runaway take-up of rooftop solar panels in Australia has undermined the electricity supply system, feeding so much power back into the network that it is causing voltage rises that could damage household devices such as computers and televisions. This means we should either rewire every home and every street, to suit the convenience of the big Utility companies, or rethink the way the nation’s energy delivery is organised. What applies to Australia is true elsewhere in the world.Power distribution lines and home wiring were designed for electricity to flow from power stations to appliances, but households with solar panels do the reverse of this.

Power quality problems are worse in rural areas as the network is sometimes weaker and there is generally more space, meaning that bigger solar PV systems with capacities of 5 kilowatts or more are being installed, compared with the 1kW-3kW systems more common in urban areas.

One of Australia’s biggest electricity network providers, Ausgrid, warned that there was a “significant likelihood” that costs would have to rise because of the impact of the solar photovoltaic cells.

In a letter to the NSW pricing regulator, obtained by The Australian newspaper, Ausgrid warns that in areas with a high concentration of solar cells, voltage levels can rise and this can have “consequences for appliances and equipment in customers’ homes”. It can also cause solar systems to switch off.

In Queensland, some new applications for rooftop solar systems have been rejected and Energex now urges customers to check that a solar PV system can be installed without threatening the operation of the network.

In Western Australia, Horizon Power has set limits on how much renewable energy can be installed in a system without affecting the power supply. Horizon is rejecting applications for new renewables installations in Exmouth and Carnarvon, and accepting them only from households, schools and not-for-profit organisations in Broome and Leonora.

Energex spokesman Mike Swanston said it was becoming difficult for electricity distribution authorities to set up the power system to ensure correct voltages when some houses in a street had solar and others did not.

“It is similar to the water network — the pipes get smaller and the pressure is designed to be lower as you get closer to the house,” Mr Swanston said. “Start pumping water backwards into the smaller household pipes, and all sorts of strange things happen.”

Energy Networks Association acting chief executive John Deveraux said the problem would only get worse as more rooftop solar panels were installed and the systems got bigger.

In southeast Queensland alone, more than 22,300 rooftop solar systems were installed in the first three months of this financial year — more than the 19,000 installed in the 2009-10 financial year, according to Energex.

Federal Labor’s target of producing 20 per cent of electricity from renewable sources such as solar power by 2020 has pushed up demand for the rooftop PV systems. So, too, have state-based schemes that pay generous feed-in tariffs to households for injecting power back into the grid.

Meanwhile, a flood of cheap solar panels being made in Asia and imported into Australia has offset moves by the government and some states to wind back their subsidies.

Essential Energy, which operates powerlines in country NSW and parts of southern Queensland, wants NSW to follow Queensland’s lead on introducing a cap on solar PV systems of 5kW to avoid power quality problems.

Endeavour Energy, which runs the network in Sydney’s greater west, warns that some solar panel installers have not done voltage checks and other measurements to ensure the solar PV system operates adequately.

“The biggest problem we’ve got with the accelerated rollout is making sure every installation is fully compliant,” Endeavour’s general manager of network development, Ty Christopher, said.

Adelaide solar panel installer Chris Hart said the problems were worse in the summer months, when airconditioner use added to the stress on the system.

Mr Hart, who owns EcoSouth Solar Electricity, said areas with a lot of solar panels pushed the voltage up to the maximum allowable level, triggering shutdowns in the individual systems and taking the load off the grid.

He said solar systems “drop out for a few minutes” when voltages get too high, a phenomenon known as “tripping out”.

“Then they try to come online again and it pushes the voltage up again and it’s very wearing,” he said. “That’s the problem with having too much solar in an area where the local authority hasn’t got enough wires or copper in the street to hold the voltage down.”

Mr Hart said the size of conductors and cables in the streets would have to be upgraded “so it can handle lots of solar, versus times when there’s lots of load and no solar”.

“If you get a very, very hot night and there’s obviously no solar, the mains voltage is going to drop a lot,” he said. “If your wires aren’t up to it, you’ve got a problem.”

The network companies say measures such as retrofits and battery storage can stop the “tripping” but can be costly.

Less is more

A call for more “microgrids” in America from Amory Lovins, one of the country’s leading thinkers on renewable energy.

Lovins issued a plea for a cellular approach to energy  – and so do we – where mini-grids around the country make it impossible for a vast outage like the ones in the NorthEast last month or the mega-outage in 2003.

In Time Magazine this week, Lovins calls this idea (proposed last year in my book OFF THE GRID) a way of saving the US Grid.  I prefer to see it as a way of superceding the grid, and the whole business model that goes with it.

Lovins does not get into who would own the tiny microgrids that we and many others think should be built.  Yet that is the crux of the question.  I have always argued that it should be local communities themselves that own their own grids that provide their power.  Lovins implies (but perhaps does not believe) that the grids should be owned by the existing major power companies, which control the current $400 billion a year electricity industry.

Lovins seems much more enamoured by  the status quo than is justified by the facts. “With a smart portfolio of renewable generators,” he says, “we can cost-effectively redesign a secure grid.  This seems to be code for support of the smart grid — the $1.5 trillion dollar grid upgrade, which is seen as a fair accompli inside the industry despite widespread opposition and a huge bill, mainly for energy users and taxpayers.

“Distributed generators are closer to customers and can make a grid more resilient, splitting it into myriad microgrids that normally interconnect but can stand alone at need and still serve key loads. My house high in the Colorado Rockies does this (I can’t even tell when the grid fails.) So do 20 microgrid experiments around the world. So does Denmark’s pilot “cellular” grid. So does Cuba’s grid, which cut serious blackout days from 224 in 2005 to zero in 2007, then in 2008 sustained vital services through two grid-shredding hurricanes in two weeks.”

Off-Grid.net has been fighting for microgrids since 2005.  At last the tide seems to be turning in favor of microgrids.   Now the world needs to see successful working examples.

It will probably be the US military which pioneers the proof of concept.

But States or the Federal Government could make money available for civilian projects as well.

Utilities won't spend the money to fix the system

As the clean up continues across North Eastern America, 1.7m were still without power Tuesday night according to Associated Press.The realization is dawning that if you live outside a major conurbation with its underground power grid, you can no longer depend on your electricity supply. That means each household ensuring it has its own backup, including batteries and a means of surviving for several days without the Utility.

Consolidated Edison “has gotten so unbelievably bad,” David Kirschstein, an 83-year-old retired patent lawyer,  told the New York Times. Kirschstein has been living in the same house in Chappaqua, N.Y., for 44 years.
“The winters used to be much worse, but even with the big snows, we had nothing like the outages over the past four or five years,” he continued. People who make preparations for the next big outage can end up deciding they no longer need the Utility company at all.A year ago, Mr. Kirschstein bought his first generator, which came in handy when his power went out this weekend. “It seemed worth the money to get the generator because Con Ed is terrible,” he said.

In fact, for increasing numbers of people, a generator is seen as a necessity, if an expensive and imperfect one.Eric Nowlin, vice president for customer service for Grainger, an industrial supply company, said his generator sales around Tropical Storm Irene were tenfold what is normal for that time of year. He said during and after the tropical storm, Grainger sold “thousands and thousands” of generators.

“This kind of weather is becoming a fact of life,” said another upstate New Yorker. “In the last year, we’ve had Irene, which could be the 500-year storm, plus three 10-year storms, a 50-year storm and a 100-year storm.”

Along with the downed trees across the driveway, the region’s latest freak storm, has left something else in its wake: increasing unease about just what is going on and what it means for the vast majority outside the relative stability of an underground urban power grid. Experts say the violent weather of the past few years in the Northeast is stressing the 20th century above-ground utility grid as never before, along with the people who depend on it.

Few solutions are in sight other than making your own arrangements on a household or community level. A report by the Edison Institute updated at the end of 2010 said that over the past 10 years, at least 11 states studied putting utility lines underground — usually after devastating storms — only to find it too expensive. “To date, no state utility commission has recommended wholesale undergrounding of the utility infrastructure,” it concluded.

Utilities have fallen under sharp official criticism for their lagging performance.”I join with hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts consumers in expressing my outrage at the current situation,” Senator Scott Brown wrote in a letter to that state’s electric companies.”Our state’s utilities received similar criticism during the response to Hurricane Irene, and I am concerned that lessons learned from that storm have already been forgotten,” he wrote.

At a hearing last week convened by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, state Attorney General Martha Coakley delivered a stern message.

“Failure to have and execute emergency response and restoration plans not only affects customers, but also our local first responders who at best face unnecessary costs and at worst are exposed to dangerous conditions,” Coakley said in her statement. “Customers and our cities and towns deserve better, and the Department should strive to ensure a regulatory environment where these failures are eliminated where possible and ensure that we are not back before the Department after the next storm.

”There was ample time to prepare for this early-season storm. Forecasters were warning all last week that the combination of heavy, wet snow and trees still in full leaf would wreak havoc with power lines. But utilities seem willing merely to let their customers wait in the dark and cold.

Similar sentiments were being expressed in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Up in smoke

They look great but that homey glow real fires produce sends heat right up the chimney as the fire sucks warm air from the rest of the house.

“Ninety-five percent of the heat is lost,” said Prof Kevin Eigel, who studies energy use in homes. “The rest of the house gets cold even while it’s warm right around the fireplace.”

Fortunately, homeowners have more options than ever to get more use and heat from the fireplace.

Options range from a simple blower system that costs less than $1,000 to wood-burning inserts that can cost more than $5,000 but can heat an entire home.

Homeowners seeking to add some heat to their fireplace must start with two choices: Do they want an insert? And what fuel do they prefer?

Fireplace inserts are essentially steel boxes lined with ceramic or brick that fit into fireplace openings and use the existing fireplace flue (with a liner inserted down the chimney). Such inserts ordinarily use one of three fuels: wood, gas or compressed-wood pellets.

Heat from the insert gathers in chambers around the fire and is typically sent into the room with a blower.

Although inserts ordinarily produce more heat than other options, they cost substantially more because of the material involved and the labor required to install them.

Homeowners who don’t want the expense of inserts have two options: blowers that rest in the fireplace and send heat into the room; or vent-free gas logs.

Although each option presents practical considerations, some of the choices are driven by aesthetics. Wood might be preferred by those who like the idea of providing their own fuel.

Gas, on the other hand, offers a wide range of looks and sizes, from sleek contemporary models that “burn” rocks or glass crystals to ones that resemble wood burners.

“These are very realistic compared to 20 years ago,” said Pete Morris, who opened Aspen Fireplace & Patio on the North Side in 1988.

Gas also offers convenience of use, which helps explain why about 70 percent of the almost 1 million fireplaces and fireplace inserts installed in the United States last year were gas-fueled, according to the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association.

“People want to walk in, turn it on, and turn it off when they’re done,” said Harold Wagner, a fireplace salesman and installer at Scioto Valley in Hilliard.

The newest flames in the fireplace belong to pellet inserts and vent-free systems.

Pellet-burning fireplaces haven’t caught on as much in Ohio because of the abundance of wood and natural gas but remain popular in other parts of the country and in Europe.

Vent-free systems, however, have grown enormously in popularity, driven by their ease of installation and the fact that they require no chimney.

Although vent-free systems have been approved for use by the federal government, concerns about carbon-monoxide buildup have led some states, such as California, to ban them. All vent-free logs come with oxygen-depletion systems that shut off the fuel line if oxygen levels drop to a certain point. In addition, manufacturers and retailers recommend installing carbon-monoxide detectors in any room that uses the logs.

Vent-free systems come with other drawbacks. The burned-dust smell can be annoying to some, and vent-free systems can produce a lot of humidity, which can be a problem in tightly insulated homes.

“If you have a brand-new house, you probably don’t want to go vent-free,” Wagner said. “You will literally wet the walls.”

Before installing any product, even vent-free ones, experts recommend cleaning and inspecting the fireplace to ensure that it can handle the use.

Most inserts, either gas or wood, are designed to fit horizontal fireplace openings, although a handful of gas insert options are available for owners of older homes with small vertical fireplaces.

Insert options

Gas insert

Natural gas powers the flame in these inserts, which are vented through a liner in the fireplace chimney. The flames dance around artificial logs, although glass, rocks and other materials can be used. In most systems, homeowners control the flame and blower with a remote control.

Cost range: $2,500 to $5,000

Pros: efficient; easy to use; provides instant and steady heat; offers a variety of looks

Cons: fuel cost; lacks “real-fire” look; produces less heat than wood

Wood-burning insert

Although similar in installation to a gas insert, a wood-burning insert usually requires removing the existing flue to accommodate a liner through the chimney. Heat is regulated by controlling air into the burn chamber. Although flush-mount wood-burning inserts are available, the most efficient units jut out of the fireplace into the living area to allow more surface to throw off heat.

Cost range: $3,000 to $6,000

Pros: inexpensive fuel; generates high heat

Cons: requires monitoring; damper must be removed; heat can’t be instantly adjusted; more visible than other options; exposed surface extremely hot

Pellet-fueled insert

Similar to gas- and wood-burning inserts, these use compressed-wood pellets for fuel. The pellets are automatically dropped into a small flame depending on how much heat is sought. Like wood-burners, most units jut out of the fireplace into the living area.

Cost range: $4,000 to $6,000

Pros: clean burning; an easy-to-manage fuel source

Cons: fuel cost and availability; requires electricity (can’t be used during power outage); small flame

Non-insert options

Blower system

There are two primary variations of blowers, the “poor man’s insert.” One system blows warm air out of tubes that serve as a grate. The other relies on a heat-gathering tube placed at the bottom of a fireplace, under glass fireplace doors. At one end of the tube is a blower that kicks heat into the room while the glass doors help keep warm air in the home from vanishing up the chimney.

Cost range: $500 to $1,500

Pros: inexpensive; simple installation

Cons: doesn’t produce as much heat as inserts; heat can still be lost up the chimney

Unvented gas logs

These logs burn at 99.99 percent efficiency, requiring no venting. They are installed like conventional gas logs but used with the flue closed. They can generate so much heat around the fireplace that experts caution against using them if you have a wooden mantel or a television above the fireplace. Vent-free logs can also be installed with fireplace inserts, which allow blowers to add to their efficiency.

Cost range: $750 to $1,500

Pros: inexpensive; can be installed in any opening; venting isn’t required

Cons: produces moisture; can produce odor; extended use requires opening window; less-realistic flame than vented gas logs; requires carbon-monoxide detector; produces heat around opening

Note: Costs are for installed product, which might include $300 to $500 for running a gas line.

Message from govt: tax fuel to subsidise energy corps

With average real incomes heading down and average fuel bills going up, the typical British household will be in “fuel poverty” by the  2015 if energy bills stay on their current path.

Fuel prices have almost doubled as a share of median income since 2004, and an official target to spend £200bn on new infrastructure by 2020, mainly on the so-called Smart Grid,  will intensify the price rises.

Next month, the average annual bill for a “dual fuel” (Gas and electric) customer will reach £1,293, or 6 per cent of median household income, compared with 3.3 per cent in 2004. Any household that spends 10 per cent of median income on electricity and gas lives in “fuel poverty”, according to the government’s definition.

Energy costs have risen more than six times faster than household incomes since 2004 acording to the Financial Times. The average dual fuel energy bill has climbed 117 per cent in the past seven years, while median household income has increased 18 per cent. On present trends, energy costs will absorb 7.4 per cent of median household income by 2013, 8.2 per cent in 2014 – and 10 per cent in 2015.

A Solar Powered Life

If the price of fuel is pushing you towards setting up your own solar power, check out this series on living a solar life in Australia, where the sun always shines of course.  The final part, just published — by Chris McLeod – sums up everything he has said so far about Energy Systems

The series looks at the various issues, compromises and components of an off-grid solar power system,including the individual components and how all of these components are connected.

The simple articles show you exactly how to connect up a solar power system.

Government says its doing what it can

Unbelievably, the Department of Energy and Climate Change is making no effort to free people from the grid.  It said: “We know that rising energy prices, driven by international fossil fuel prices, are hitting many households hard at a difficult time. We are taking action to help consumers help themselves by shopping around, switching, as well as helping them make their homes more energy efficient.”

Wholesale gas prices, set by the international market and beyond the power of any British politician, have been the governing factor behind higher bills since 2004.

The profits of the “big six” utilities are less significant than might be thought. Deutsche Bank forecasts that UK households will spend £48bn on energy in 2015: of this, only £1.3bn will be the post-tax profits of retailers.  But that does not take into account the energy generating arms of the Utilities.

Laurence Kemball-Cook ponders his invention

Paving slabs that convert energy from people’s footsteps into electricity are being tested in London and may then be applied in some of the world’s off-grid slums in major cities.

The special slabs are set to help power Europe’s largest urban mall, at the 2012 London Olympics site. The recycled rubber “PaveGen” paving slabs harvest kinetic energy from the impact of people stepping on them and instantly deliver tiny bursts of electricity to nearby appliances. The slabs can also store energy for up to three days in an on-board battery, according to its creator, Laurence Kemball-Cook, a 25-year-old engineering graduate who developed the prototype during his final year of university in 2009.

The young inventor envisages PaveGen systems being used to power off-grid appliances such as public lighting, illuminated street maps and advertising, and to be installed in areas of dense human traffic such as city centers, underground stations and school corridors.

“Our main test installation is at a school in Kent (southeast England) — where 1,100 kids have devoted their lives to stamping all over them for the last eight months,” said Kemball-Cook.

The current PaveGen paving slab contains a low-energy LED which lights up, communicating the energy transfer idea to the user but only consuming around 5% of the energy from each footstep.

“This is what I really enjoy about the design,” said Richard Miller, head of sustainability at the UK’s government-funded Technology Strategy Board.

“As much as it’s an effective, common-sense source of some sustainable electricity, it’s also a great way for people to engage with the issue of sustainability … to feel like they are part of the solution in a very immediate, fun and visual way that doesn’t make you do anything you wouldn’t already be doing,” said Miller.

However, although generally enthusiastic about the product, for the time being Miller withholds speculation about its far-reaching impact.

“As with all things of this nature, on a large scale and in the long term, its success will be determined by how cost-effective it is to produce … If it turns out to be expensive, then it will struggle to find a place as anything more than a niche application,” he said.

Kemball-Cook declines to comment on the cost of each slab, arguing that their current price is much higher than what it will be when they go into mass production.

That said, the company has already won a spate of awards, including the Big Idea category at the UK’s Ethical Business Awards and the Shell LiveWire Grand Ideas Award. PaveGen has also recently received a round of financing from a group of London-based angel investors, although the sum is undisclosed.

Kemball-Cook is confident that the slab is durable. Over the course of a month it was subjected to a machine that replicates the pounding of footsteps, non-stop every day, he said.

“So we’re confident enough to give it a five-year guarantee, but that could well go up,” Kemball-Cook said. “It’s also really easy to install as a retrofit on existing pavements, because they can be made to match their exact dimensions … you just replace one slab with another.”

Looking to the future, Kemball-Cook would like to see the paving system introduced to the developing world, in areas that have a high footfall, but are off-grid, such as the slums in Mumbai.

“The average person takes 150 million steps in their lifetime, just imagine the potential,” he said.

In their first commercial application, 20 tiles will be scattered along the central crossing between London’s Olympic stadium and the recently opened Westfield Stratford City mall — which expects an estimated 30 million customers in its first year.

“That should be enough feet to power about half its (the mall’s) outdoor lighting needs,” said

The green slabs are designed to compress five millimeters when someone steps on them, but PaveGen will not share the precise mechanism responsible for converting absorbed kinetic energy into electricity.

Although each step produces only enough electricity to keep an LED-powered street lamp lit for 30 seconds, Kemball-Cook says that the tiles are a real-world “crowdsourcing” application, harnessing small contributions from a large number of individuals.

“We recently came back from a big outdoor festival where we got over 250,000 footsteps — that was enough to charge 10,000 mobile phones,” said Kemball-Cook.

Outside woodburners deliver cheaper heat

With cold weather approaching and household budgets tight, homeowners are looking for ways to lower their heating costs.

The often-heard advice to make sure windows are completely sealed, change furnace air filters and turn down the heat when you’re not home isn’t always enough.

To cuts costs, some are looking to new technology, while others are reverting to older methods, but with 21st century twists.

Wood-burners are now highly engineered to consume every last ounce of energy from their fuel, and outside burners can be fed with huge logs, cutting cost and effort.

New heat pump systems are now using solar panels to warm entire homes, with the unused energy routed to pay for additional utilities.

Solar Panels

The system uses solar panels placed on the roof with individual transmitters that convert the solar power into AC energy. A heat pump is installed with a high-efficiency furnace to convert the energy to heat. This cuts down on fuel costs, but doesn’t completely eliminate them.

Note that the heat pump cannot work in freezing weather, so consumers must rely in part on oil or natural gas on winter days when temperatures are below 32 degrees. But the Energy Star furnace runs three times less than older models, saving heating costs, and the energy produced from the panels supplies power to the grid to help pay for the homeowner’s electricity. During winter months, electricity bills can be reduced by 90 percent..”

A system for a 2,400-square-foot home — which includes a high efficiency air conditioner — cost $14,000, but came with a $1,500 rebate from the supplier, a $500 rebate from National Grid and a nearly $6,000 tax credit from the U.S. Department of Energy. So the total net cost will be around $6,000.

“It was really a no-brainer for me with the money I would get back,” said one customer who now pays less than $100 a month in electricity and is hoping to only pay a $100 heating bill come December.

Furnace Upgrades

If the aesthetics of solar panels don’t sound appealing, you can try upgrading older furnaces to an Energy Star-qualified model with a variable speed motor and digital thermometer.

Variable speed motors essentially control the amount of heat blowing into your home and reduce gas and electricity usage required to operate the furnace.

The programmability of digital thermometers gives greater control of temperatures at certain times of the day, like when no one is home or when people are sleeping.

An Energy Star-qualified furnace with a variable speed motor costs between $3,500 and $4,500 with installation, depending on size. A $420 rebate is available through the federal government, as well as one from National Grid and an additional tax credit is available until 2016.

But some are reverting to older methods with a solid fuel source. Coal-fueled stoves, furnaces, and hot water heaters are selling fast and wood burning stoves are once again becoming popular as consumers try to get away from oil and natural gas and take heating into their own hands.

New coal stoves are now fed automatically with room for about three days worth of fuel. A computerized censor maintains a chosen temperature and the anthracite coal used is cleaner than the older, bituminous version.

These aren’t the old dirty stoves of the past. It doesn’t even leave soot in your hands when you touch it.

A new coal stove, depending on the size, can cost between $2,000 and $2,600, while a coal-fueled water heater can cost $4,500 to $10,000, with installation. If the customer doesn’t have a chimney, a hole must be put in the wall for ventilation pipes and an additional $600 is added to the cost because a power ventilation unit is needed.

It’s pricey, but reduces fuel costs in comparison with oil and natural gas by a minimum of 50 percent.

Fireplace Inserts

Also available now are wood-burning stove inserts for fireplaces. They’re small, quick to install and work with the chimney already in place while using a blower to push heat into the house. He’s already sold 30 since August, which he says is a lot for so early in the season. Each one costs about $2,000.

you don’t have to heat the entire house, just the rooms with the most activity.

Heating specialists agree not much has changed in insulating homes, but many believe foam insulation is best. The method is about 15 years old and became popular six to eight years ago. Some think it’s the best insulation choice on the market.

It’s sprayed on as a liquid for a more even coat and expands with air when it dries to prevent wind getting through the cracks.

The foaming product expands 30 to 40 times larger than regular fiberglass insulation and is guaranteed for the life of the home because it’s three times stronger. Energy savings are also expected to be 30 to 50 times greater.

Fiberglass insulation shouldn’t have to be replaced but it does happen over time with wind going through it, or it could get dirty, or patted down, so it’s not going to be as effective.

Cost of wood

Wood is a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels, but in an unexpected side-effect of the increasing interest in wood-burners, demand for wood to heat homes and businesses and generate power is surging.

Forestry Commission Scotland says that the use of oven-dried wood fuel, such as chips and pellets, rose 118,000 tonnes (23%) last year to 618,000 tonnes in the UK.

Usage this year is expected to top 800,000 tonnes. Sales in excess of 1million tonnes are expected in 2012.

In recent months, the UK Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive has been stimulating domestic and commercial sales of the more expensive boilers that can burn wood and other forms of biomass, such as straw.

But one pioneer of wood pellets said yesterday that, while demand was rising, he had not seen the sixfold increase trumpeted by the commission.

Keith Arbuthnott, of Kincardineshire-based Arbuthnott Wood Pellets, said: “There are more people coming off the fence and switching.”

Scottish Environment and Climate Change Minister Stewart Stevenson said wood fuel and other types of biomass had an important role to play in developing a long-term renewable energy supply for Scotland.

He added: “While the Scottish Government is keen to ensure that appropriate support is provided to help further biomass development and that the full potential of biomass is realised, it is vital that, in the face of the increasing demand for wood fuel and the growing competition for supply, everyone plays their part to ensure that the most efficient and beneficial use is made of this finite resource.”

Oliver Middlemiss, of land agent Savills, at Perth, said woodland owners were also expecting strong demand for firewood this winter from those with fires and wood-burning stoves at home.

He said surging utility prices lay behind that expectation, adding that the firm’s clients with firewood operations had been stockpiling wood through the summer.

Mr Middlemiss added: “Base demand is increasing year on year as more people turn away from the utility companies and install wood burners in their homes.

“However, another extremely cold winter will push demand to new levels. It will be interesting to see if supply can keep up.”

Homesteading, it’s a buzzword that means different things to different people, back in the day, it meant getting land for free as long as you lived on it and improved it for x number of years. It was a way to get people to move west (in the USA), back when travel was slow and painful, even dangerous.

Today it usually refers to someone who is living more like our ancestors did, in a more self sufficient manner, on a plot of land, often raising livestock, growing their own food, living more independently. Most of us are more than one generation removed from those who lived on a farm or homestead, so we don’t benefit from the knowledge of our family members who lived in a more self sufficient manner. I know in my family, it was my great grand parents who had lived on a farm, my grandparents and parents lived in suburban neighborhoods with small yards and animals no bigger than a dog.

Because of this, those of us who want to live closer to the land have to resort to alternative methods of obtaining  knowledge. I continually scour the internet for books about living off grid, gardening and such, I found this book The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading: An Encyclopedia of Independent Living (The Ultimate Guides), actually I didn’t find it, I was offered an opportunity to review it and I jumped at the chance, it was a book I had been looking at previously and was more than happy to review it.

I keep getting distracted from writing because I keep finding more and more interesting things in this book to read, I just read about growing cotton, then picking it, cleaning it, and spinning it. Since I crochet, this is especially appealing to me, and something I think I can do with little trouble. For now, I’m not set up to raise wool bearing animals, but I can grow cotton and process it.

This book has a lot to offer, it doesn’t go into extreme detail on any one subject, but gives you enough information so that you can decide if that particular thing is something you really want to try.  Nicole Faires (don’t you just love her name?) the author, has certainly lived the life, she is not just spouting theory, she grew up on a hobby farm raising chickens and growing her own food among other things.

While not an exhaustive list of homesteading subjects, I believe it covers the majority of them quite nicely, such as:

• land-buying, communities…
• water-getting it, purifying it and such
• food-finding it, growing it, preserving it…
• animals-livestock, domestic…
• shelter-various home styles, barns, fences…
• financial-making money from your skills…
• health-medicines, herbal medicines,
• and lots more

There is a great  dictionary in the back so you will at least sound like you know what you are talking about when chatting with the old timers at the feed store, LOL, seriously, I have had a good time reading the terminology and their meanings. Such as “butt-up”, before reading this book, I would have said that is how one lands when tripping over a rock and doing a face plant, now I know that is a type of roof ridge made in thatching which forces the straw together from both sides of the roof to form a peak. “Flying change”, I would think it’s what happens when you lose control of your change purse, but it really has to do with horses.

Near the back of the book, just before the index, the author’s bio and several blank pages (perfect for adding your own notes), there is a great bibliography with tons of resources, mostly in the form of internet links. These will send you to more detailed resources for the subjects found in this book. This alone is worth the price of the book.

The book is easy to read, well made, with lots of color photographs and diagrams, nice thick glossy pages ensure this book will last for a long time, that’s a good thing because once you have this book, you will be referring to it over and over again throughout the years.

PB (my hubby) has been trying to steal this book from me ever since I received it, his comment on it was that it is a good all over resource, not detailed on each thing, but a good book and he’s glad we have it, he has also been going on and on about how well this book is physically put together, the binding, the paper quality and the pictures. Now that I’m finished with this review, I can safely give the book to him, I’ll not see it again for a while. :)

See my other book reviews here:
http://www.off-grid.net/tag/book-review/

Honesty disclaimer:
I did receive this book free from the publisher for the expressed intent of giving a review, that in no way influenced my review, all of my reviews are honest and from the heart.