Light Switch Distributed Generation Could Bring An End To The System Of Power Plants And Substations We Now Depend On For Electricity

Call them the X Generators.

New. Independent. Definitely not your grandfather’s Reddy Kilowatt.

They hang by the name “distributed generation,” and 500 electrical and utility industry officials met in Portland a week ago to size up their potential impact on the future of electric power in the Northwest.

One of these refrigerator-sized units could be in your home or back yard in the not-too-distant future.

“It’s just a question of when it’s going to happen,” said Mark Glyde, spokesman for the Northwest Energy Coalition.

In fact, the X Generators are not all that new. Solar power and wind power, for example, have been cranking out kilowatts for at least two decades.

Even fuel cells have been around for decades, although they were little known until they were adapted for use on spacecraft.

Perhaps the one true innovation is the micro-turbine, a more or less conventional natural-gas-fired generator scaled down to residential size.

But the individual technologies themselves are not as important as the way utility planners think they might be used to satisfy the region’s growing demand for energy.

Traditionally, power from large central generating stations flows through regional transmission grids and local distribution systems to homes and businesses.

The sheer size of the plants helped keep the price per kilowatt low.

That model does not always work, as the Northwest learned in the 1980s with the collapse of the Washington Public Power Supply System construction program.

But turbines fired by natural gas have replaced nuclear plants as the resource of choice in the past decade. Low natural gas prices have kept the cost of power from those plants competitive with hydropower.

The model stayed the same, even if the fuels changed.

Distributed generation, by reversing the flow of energy, upends the traditional model.

Instead of importing energy off the grid, homes or businesses with their own fuel cells or turbines could export energy they generate in excess of their own requirements.

The owner’s meter runs backward, negating charges that may have been run up at other hours of the day.

Legislation passed last year in Olympia authorized the two-way flow, called net-metering. Idaho has no such law.

Add batteries, said Mike Nelson, photovoltaics project manager for the Washington State Extension Service, and the owner of an alternative generation system could move that power back onto the grid when demand is greatest - and the price highest.

Thousands of such installations around the Northwest can replace a central generating station, he said, adding, “The era of big generation is over.”

Nelson said emergence of the new model coincides with other developments that should foster its adoption.

Power from distributed generation is expensive - as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. But so is new electrical infrastructure.

Many of the substations and other facilities that are the backbone of utility distribution systems are nearing the end of their useful life, Nelson said.

Timely inputs from distributed generation plants could flatten the demand peaks that are particularly hard on distribution equipment, and possibly extend its use, he said.

In rural areas, placing small generation units at isolated households would allow the utilities that serve them to avoid extending a service line at a cost of $35,000 per mile.

“These technologies are going to find their first applications in the rural areas,” Nelson said.

The Okanogan County Electric Cooperative has already begun to encourage use of solar power, said Conservation Manager Ellen Lamiman.

Of the co-op’s 2,000 customers, 24 have installed solar units that are not plugged into its grid - the conventional application.

But five more are wired into the utility’s system.

Lamiman wants more connected because all co-op members can benefit from the surplus energy the emerging technologies could generate during some periods of the day.

“You still want a community that is interdependent,” she said.

Lamiman said the further advantage to a utility is the ability to manage the free-lance kilowatts in a way that minimizes the amount of power it must buy from other outside suppliers.

Lamiman said utilities that want to continue to be the energy provider of choice in their areas will have to offer distributed generation.

And teaching customers how to use the units, and providing maintenance, will be among a utility’s new responsibilities, she said.

Jeff Shields, general manager of Emerald People’s Utility District in Eugene, Ore., said utilities also can help consumers with financing, inspections and finding knowledgable contractors.

And a utility, or group of utilities, could reduce costs by buying turbines, fuel cells or solar panels in bulk, he said.

“My whole goal is to make life simpler,” he said.

Shields recently tested a fuel cell in his home. The unit performed very well, he said, but was expensive - and homely.

Like others, Shields said he expects fuel cell costs to decline steeply as makers move into large-scale production.

But obstacles remain to widespread use of micro-turbines and fuel cells, he said.

Utilities and makers of electrical equipment must adopt uniform standards for interfaces to allow power from those units to flow onto the grid without causing outages.

When there are outages, utilities must be sure the units don’t feed energy onto distribution systems while linemen make repairs.

Shields likes the potential for distributed generation because utility planners will be able to add units when and where needed to meet specific new loads.

Utilities won’t have to float 30-year bonds for large generating projects that may be “stranded” for lack of future demand.

“We don’t want to have stranded assets if people are going to generate their own power,” he said.

At Inland Power & Light Co. in Spokane, Assistant General Manager Dave Clinton said distributed generation’s potential for a rural utility is impressive, but probably a decade away from realization.

Questions remain about the reliability of some of the new technology, he said, and also about customer ability and desire to manage the equipment instead of just flicking a switch.

Fuel cells will remain inefficient until better devices for creating their hydrogen fuel are developed and ways of exploiting all their waste heat are found, he said.

Clinton added that distributed generation will bring many amateurs into contact with energy systems that until now have been entirely in the hands of professional managers.

Despite the technical obstacles, the head of the Bonneville Power Administration is an enthusiastic advocate of distributed generation.

Judi Johansen challenged the industry to develop within five years units 95 percent efficient and capable of generating a kilowatt-hour at a cost of five cents - about what most Northwest consumers pay now.

It is, she conceded, “a stretch goal,” but doable.

The federal power marketing agency will help with research and development, Johansen said, as well as with purchases of “green power” like that from wind farms.

“We want to be sure we are doing everything we can to help this technology,” she said.

Kim Zentz, president of Avista Laboratories in Spokane, said Bonneville’s support lends credibility to distributed generation technologies.

Avista will begin testing its unique fuel cells at sites from Alaska to Arizona to Chicago later this year, she said.

The varying conditions will give technicians the best possible read of their reliability, fuel consumption and costs, she said.

Zentz predicted that in 10 to 20 years as many as 30 percent of those building new homes or businesses will choose a distributed-generation technology for their site.

“My hope is utilities will begin to factor distributed generation into their planning,” she said.

If you’re a utility that ignores the trend, Zentz added, “somebody else will be approaching your customers.”

Staff illustration by Molly Quinn

This sidebar appeared with the story: ELECTRICITY Distributed generation The building blocks of a distributed generation system could include the following: * Micro-turbines: Small-scale versions of conventional turbines fired by natural gas. A California company displayed a 28-kilowatt unit capable of supplying six typical homes at the recent Portland “Electric Revolution” conference. * Fuel cells: These devices use hydrogen for fuel, but emissions are clean because there’s no burning involved. Long used on spacecraft, they are increasingly drawing the attention of the automotive industry. Now companies like Avista Laboratories of Spokane are designing units sized for industrial, commercial and residential use. * Solar: Engineers continue to refine panels that convert the sun’s energy into electricity. New designs incorporate batteries that enable a homeowner to run some fluorescent lights and a television for three to four hours after dark. * Wind: Two wind farms now feed power into the Northwest grid. Other resources include geothermal and improvements in conservation and the efficiency of conventional technologies.