Power to the people
Distributed power movement may get boost from great blackout.
BY KEITH BENMAN
Times Business Writer
ADVERTISEMENT
The great blackout of Aug. 14 is giving a big boost to the idea that many little power plants located at factories, businesses and homes may someday become important contributors to the nation's transmission grid.
Called distributed power, the idea has been gaining respectability as new technologies make such plants, some no bigger than a home furnace, economically feasible.
"The question is will we do it quickly and get on with our lives, or will we wait until six more blackouts occur?" said Thomas Casten, chairman and chief executive officer of Private Power LLC, which will soon close a deal to purchase five cogeneration plants owned by NiSource Inc. subsidiary Primary Energy.
Casten has been a long-time advocate of distributed power such as cogeneration, which is the production of heat and electric power using waste products from industrial processes.
In the case of the Primary Energy plants, waste products from steel mills are used to power turbines which produce electricity and heat, which is then fed back into the steelmaking process.
Plants such as Primary's not only relieve stress on already overloaded systems, but could also be used to supplement power on the grid in times of crisis, according to Casten. The same goes for other forms of distributed power, such as microturbines and fuel cells.
Casten's viewpoint as to the value of distributed power is shared by a broad array of groups, including consumer and environmental activists as well as established, diversified energy companies like NiSource.
NiSource Technologies Inc. works with Northern Indiana Public Service Co., another NiSource subsidiary, to install microturbines at businesses in northern Indiana.
At the beginning of August, a NiSource Technologies-installed microturbine at Stripco Steel, in Mishawaka was shown to other manufacturers, state officials and environmental regulators.
The microturbine at Stripco can produce 60 kilowatts of electricity and saves Stripco about $55,000 annually in energy costs, according to Joseph Eads, Stripco director of technical services.
Eads also points out the generating unit, which provides only a small portion of Stripco's daily energy needs, would be an important backup system in case of a blackout. The steel mill relies on electrical power to keep certain process oils warm. If the oils go cold, startup of certain machinery can take days.
But such microturbines may have advantages for more than just Stripco.
NIPSCO officials say the widespread use of such technology could relieve strain on transmission systems and power plants.
"It will take awhile for all that to come forward, but it will definitely be a part of the planning process in the future," said Jerry Godwin, NIPSCO chief operating officer, in an interview a week after the great blackout.
Godwin said it's not just microturbines that will contribute to the distributed power sector, but also solar power, wind power and cogeneration.
And though NIPSCO and the Citizen's Action Coalition of Indiana are at odds on a number of issues these days, both seem to agree there are definite benefits to distributed power.
The Citizen's Action Coalition is emphasizing that the nation can begin responding now to the great blackout, by upping its investment in distributed power, according to Grant Smith, utilities program director for the coalition.
The coalition is also pointing out that after the rolling blackouts in Californian two years ago, a focused effort at energy conservation and energy efficiency reduced power consumption in the state by 10 percent.
"We don't have to sit around and wait for the verdict on the technicalities of what actually happened on Aug. 14," Smith said. "We can respond to this now."
Casten of Private Power estimated just in terms of using recycled waste products to power cogeneration plants the nation could easily produce 45,000 megawatts of electricity. That's enough to power 45 million households.
Since those plants would be dedicated to customers at or near the site of the plant, they would not add to the burden on transmission systems.
The building of cogeneration would provide a viable alternative to sinking $50 billion into transmission systems, which is the current low estimate of what it would take to upgrade the nation's transmission system to handle current loads, according to Casten.
"What almost no one is writing up is there is a second path," Casten said. "All that money going into the grid will only raise rates. It will increase reliability, but it will take capital to do that and so rates will go up."
Keith Benman can be reached at kbenman@nwitimes.com or (219) 933-3326.
thetimesonline.com |
