Kimberly Ayers

Feed-in tariffs from private solar arrays like this one enable the world's largest source of renewable energy.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) now gets to ramp up a pilot phase that could add up to 150 megawatts of renewable electricity after 2016 — enough to power 22,000 homes — all with an eye toward hitting the state-mandated goal of 33% of its power from renewables by 2020. The measure awaits the mayor’s signature, expected late next week.

A common example of the new program would be a commercial real estate or large warehouse owner installing a rooftop solar power system and selling that power back to the local utility. The simplest definition I’ve found comes from another city that just approved a similar program for solar energy, Palo Alto: “Feed-in tariff programs involve a utility paying a fixed price, a “tariff,” for the power that is “fed into” their electric grid from local generation systems.”

The pros, cons and history of this trend, known as “distributed generation” or simply “DG,” are covered in plain language and plenty of colorful graphics in this presentation from the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). ”FiT” programs, as they’re known, certainly aren’t as dramatic as acres of solar arrays stretched out across the Mojave but they offer two key advantages, according to LADWP’s presentation to the City Council and the NREL explainer:

1. Proximity:  if your local utility is receiving power from a source right inside its coverage area, then there are no expensive transmission lines to fund and string out over miles of possibly difficult terrain, like the 35 miles worth approved for Southern California Edison’s Ivanpah solar project near the Nevada border.
2. Diversification: According to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) study, diversity can spell reliability: if all your “power” eggs aren’t in the same basket, then the chance of one power source’s problem taking out a huge swath of customers for a long period of time is less.

But that diversity can still be a disadvantage. Here’s why: our model for the past 100 years has been large power generating plants — mostly run with fossil fuels — sending electricity out to the grid and on to individual consumers. “Distributed” means the power is coming back the other way from a variety of sources in a variety of amounts at any given time of day — a whole lot trickier, given the need to constantly keep electrical generation and demand in balance. The power grid runs best on an even and constant supply of power. Solar is by nature intermittent, but even the technology to store solar-generated power is getting better all the time.

One other upside to solar power is that it is produced when it’s needed most: during daylight hours when most businesses are open and in the summer when people crank up their air conditioners. According to the FERC study, distributed generation can take some of the wear and tear off parts of the grid, reducing replacement costs and possibly avoiding a few more power failures along the way.

Just how big can distributed generation get in California? According to the 2010 California Clean Energy Future report, the state’s publicly owned utilities’ goal is to install 700 MW of distributed solar by 2017.  Back in 2007, the California Energy Commission said it wanted distributed generation and co-generation built by utilities and others to meet 25% of the state’s peak load demand by 2020. Governor Jerry Brown aspires to 12,000 MW of “renewable distributed generation” by 2020. As of last year, the state had nearly 1,000 MW of customer-side distributed generation systems and another 2,200 MW from wholesale systems. UC Berkeley researchers recently issued a detailed roadmap for achieving that 12,000-MW goal. Its draft report calls for streamlining the permitting process at the state and local level; adopting a faster and less expensive utility interconnection process, and asks utilities to develop local geography-driven plans for integrating these new energy sources into the existing grid.

By Chris Bauer

A dreamer stares up into the sky, watches the clouds slowly pass by and ponders what could be. From da Vinci to Newton to the Wright brothers to the little kid down the street, sometimes there’s a fine line between the day-dreamer and the visionary. And now a group of innovative thinkers are looking at those same passing clouds in a whole new way.

Looking up at the jet stream, Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist from the Carnegie Institution of Global Ecology at Stanford University says, “We find that there’s more than 100 times the power necessary to power civilization in these high altitude winds.” 100 times the energy to power the world is going to get people’s attention.

The global need for clean energy is pushing scientists and engineers to search for new, untapped sources of energy. “To solve this problem we need a real revolution in our system of energy development,” continues Caldeira, “We need huge amounts of power, and the things that can provide huge amounts of power include fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas; nuclear power, solar power and wind.” The strongest and most consistent winds are found in the jet stream as high as 30,000 feet above the earth. But how do you harness the wind power from that high? Now the race is on to find the answer to that question.

It may seem pie-in-the-sky, but over 20 companies around the world are now working to develop technology to tap the strong and consistent power of high altitude wind. One company we profiled here on QUEST, Makani Power in Alameda, California, has received a $15 million grant from Google to build a wing concept that would autonomously fly in high circles, capturing energy with small turbines and sending the power down its tether. Other companies are exploring the use of kites, parachutes, balloons and other fanciful flying machines.

There is no shortage of skeptics and there are plenty of obstacles to hurdle before true high altitude wind energy can get off the ground. But still, it’s fun and interesting to stare up at the floating clouds and dare to dream.

Gretchen Weber

Gov. Jerry Brown with Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas.

In his keynote address at this week’s National Clean Energy Summit, Vice President Joe Biden said America is at a crossroads when it comes to energy, and that the choice is clear.

“If we shrink from deciding that we’re going to lead in the area of alternative energy, renewable energy, then we will be making the biggest mistake this nation has made in its entire history,” he said.

The Vice President was joined by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, California Governor Jerry Brown, and other political and industry leaders at the summit, which is in its fourth year and is sponsored by several entities, including the Center for American Progress and Nevada Senator Harry Reid.

“If we don’t lead in this new energy technology, we’re going to follow, and I’d hate like hell to be trading the importation of oil, for the importation of new technologies,” said Biden. “Neither is very acceptable.”

Biden said that the last two years, the United States has fallen behind China and Germany in domestic clean energy investments.

In his address, Energy Secretary Steven Chu laid out a road map for the United States, saying that if the nation wants to lead, it needs to invest in research and education. He also recommended creating a clean energy development agency and a federal clean energy standard in order to spur private investments.

In an interview after his speech, Chu said that California’s renewal portfolio standard of 33% by 2020 does just that.

“Manufacturers of wind and solar can actually make this — they know they have a market, that utility companies will actually buy this, and that stimulates investments in those areas,” he said. “The government necessarily has to put money into research, but you also need a market draw, and that market draw is ultimately going to be driven by a price on carbon. But in the meantime, you need things like renewable or clean energy standards for that market draw.”

Governor Jerry Brown told summit-goers that the policy is working for California.

“California’s 33%-by-2020 goal has stimulated real investment, real money is coming in, by the billions, and they know that we’re committed, we’re going to make it happen. If the United States had a similar goal, it would be good.”

Brown said the state granted permits for 5,000 megawatts of new solar and wind power last year alone, with 15 times that amount currently in the permitting process.

Gretchen Weber

Construction of one of three planned solar thermal towers at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, Ivanpah Dry Lake, CA

Construction of the Ivanpah site is reportedly on-schedule for completion in 2013

The National Clean Energy Summit 4.0 opens in Las Vegas on Tuesday, bringing policy makers and industry leaders from around the country together to “chart the course for the future of energy in America.” It’s also attracting lots of media, which is why on Monday Oakland-based BrightSource Energy opened the gates to the construction site of its 3,500 acre Ivanpah Solar Complex, which lies just over the California border, 45 minutes southwest of the Las Vegas Strip.

About 15 reporters donned hard hats and safety goggles in 100-plus temperatures to tour the active construction site in the Mojave Desert, along with officials from BrightSource, San Francisco-based construction company Bechtel Corp., and NRG Energy, which, along with Google, is the project’s main investor.

Touted as the the largest solar thermal plant under construction in the world today, the 370-megawatt array is expected to power 140,000 homes when it’s completed in 2013.  BrightSource officials say that will double the total solar thermal capacity of the entire United States, and increase the world’s supply by about a third.

Gretchen Weber

Ivanpah constuction from a distance

The site will eventually consist of three towers more than 450-feet tall and 53,000 “heliostats” dotting the surrounding acreage. Heliostats are the mirrors that focus the sun’s energy onto a boiler at the top of the tower, creating the heat necessary to generate steam and energy.

BrightSource’s Carlos Aguilar said that by employing a technology called dry cooling, which uses air to cool the plant instead of water, the site will use 97% less water than it otherwise would have. The project is slated to use about 100 acre-feet of water per year, which, he said, is about the amount used by 300 homes in a year.

“Three-hundred homes’ worth of water use for 140,000 homes’ worth of energy is quite a trade-off,” said Aguilar.

Another low-impact environmental strategy at the site includes efforts to keep the natural contours of the land intact, in order to keep the natural drainage system functioning.  And according to BrightSource CEO John Woolard, because the plant is 50% more efficient than a photovoltaic installation, it’s able to encompass a smaller footprint.

“We’ve got probably the lowest environmental impact of any technology out there in solar,” said Woolard.

Gretchen Weber

That hasn’t stopped activists from organizing pickets outside the company’s headquarters in downtown Oakland. Ivanpah has been the target of some environmental groups arguing that the solar installation threatens the endangered desert tortoise.  In April, the Bureau of Land Management shut down construction on two sections of site when more tortoises were found on-site than expected. But in June, after further environmental review, the agency granted permission for work to resume. On Monday, Bechtel and BrightSource officials said the project is on schedule.

The event was an unusually high-profile affair for BrightSource of late, as the company is preparing for an initial public offering of stock and is in an SEC-enforced “quiet” period.

Katrina Schwartz

Cast off walnut shells await the "biogasifier." Lester has more than enough for an entire year stored in his warehouse.

By Katrina Schwartz

California is just a few votes away from changing the rules to allow farmers to connect machines that create bioenergy to the electrical grid, a privilege that has thus far been reserved for farm-generated wind and solar energy.

Passage of the bill — SB 489 — would mean they could use the byproduct of their crops as fuel to create electricity.

Russ Lester, the owner of Dixon Ridge Farms, has been leading the charge to get the rules changed. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to shrink the carbon footprint of his organic walnut farm and processing plant in Yolo County. Brian Jenkins of the California Biomass Collaborative at UC Davis calls Lester the “guinea pig” of bioenergy.

Katrina Schwartz

Seemingly endless rows of walnut trees on Dixon Ridge Farm.

Lester has installed a 50-kilowatt biogasifier that burns walnut shells at high temperatures to create fuel to run his generator, and heat to dry his walnuts. Lester has demonstrated his contraption to many people, including legislators, members of the California Air Resources Board and countless interested farmers. He’s been making the case for SB 489 as the only way to make this type of environmental commitment pay off for farmers. He predicts that many farmers will follow suit if state policy and regulations support farmers to use alternative energy in their businesses.

Beyond creating heat and power to become sustainable, Lester also mixes the char ash leftover from burning walnut shells into the soil where it sequesters stable forms of carbon for hundreds of years and fertilizes his walnut trees. He’s even looking into using walnut oil—another byproduct of processing—as a fuel to replace diesel to run his machinery. Lester says he’s on pace to meet his goal of being energy-neutral by 2012.

“We’re still not 100 percent,” he told me on a recent visit to the farm. “We’re probably at about 45% reduction in our energy usage, but it’s a substantial improvement. So the naysayers who say you can’t do that are really not correct.”

One of the biggest challenges Lester has faced is air quality regulation. It seems that every air quality district in California has different restrictions based on the particular challenges in that neck of the woods. So, the regulations that Lester must meet in the Yolo-Solano Air Quality District are quite different from those a farmer would face in the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. That can pose a problem for farmers operating in districts with chronically bad air quality as any emissions they create will be closely watched.

Kevin Hall, a co-founder of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, says he supports efforts by farmers to produce renewable energy, but he’s wary of the potential effect on air quality. As long as producers like Lester keep their systems under the one-megawatt limit set out in SB 489, says Hall, it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s conceivable that many small growers could produce the same amount of pollution as a large power plant if they aren’t regulated. Very few California farmers have a biogasifier like Lester’s, so Hall isn’t too concerned just yet.

Katrina Schwartz

Russ Lester, owner of Dixon Ridge Farms with the walnut shells that fuel his operation.

The biggest opposition to SB 489 comes from utilities. In its opposition letter, PG&E claimed that net-metering (allowing sale-back to the grid) of all renewables would cost the average ratepayer more. The California Public Utilities Commission found the opposite in its analysis [PDF]; that SB 489 would likely reduce the cost to the average consumer. That’s because farmers and commercial consumers of electricity already pay some costs that residential consumers don’t, like the cost to distribute and transmit the power. Those embedded fees make net metering for bioenergy less expensive than net metering for residential solar. PG&E’s numbers are based on the performance of solar net metering.

The other problem utilities point to is the net-metering cap. Right now, utilities buy no more than five percent of their peak energy load through the net-metering program. If more types of technology are eligible for the program, that could mean reaching the cap more quickly. If that happens, legislators might be tempted to raise the cap. For utilities, that would mean managing lots of small producers instead of a few big ones.  Nor does the energy produced through net metering count towards the utilities’ state-mandated renewable energy targets. Right now, no utility is close to reaching the cap. Most are still buying less than two percent of their power from net metering.

Katrina Schwartz

The Biomax 50 produces heat and power for Russ Lester's organic walnut farm. Lester hopes that SB 489 will allow him to hook the biogasifier to the electrical grid soon.

Supporters of SB 489 are close to reaching their goal. The bill has a broad range of environmental and agricultural supporters, including the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN) and the California Farm Bureau Federation. It won significant bipartisan support as it moved through various committees in both the Senate and the Assembly. The next hurdle will be a full Assembly vote and another full Senate vote to reconcile some small changes. Senate sponsor Lois Wolk (D-Stockton) says Governor Jerry Brown has been supportive of the bill and that if it gets to his desk before the end of the legislative year on September 9th, he’s likely to sign it.

John Dabiri

Vertical-axis wind turbines at a CalTech test site in northern Los Angeles County.

Most of the wind turbines you see driving throughout the deserts and hill country of California look pretty much the same: soaring towers hundreds of feet high with massive, pinwheel-like structures on top, blades churning (or not) as the wind blows (or not).

But there’s another design for generating wind power that, if new research proves correct, could eventually become a far more common sight as California ramps up its portfolio of renewable energy. Vertical axis wind turbines look a little like upside-down egg beaters. They tend to be smaller than traditional turbines, and therefore less powerful. But according to John Dabiri, head of Caltech’s Biological Propulsion Lab, they can be far more efficient at generating power than traditional turbines are when they’re used together in just the right way.

Dabiri said the problem with standard turbines is that the turbulence or “wake” from the turning of one turbine disrupts airflow and reduces the performance of surrounding turbines.  Locating them within 300 feet of each other can reduce performance by 20-50%, said Dabiri. That means standard wind farms need a lot of land.

Not so with his egg beaters, says Dabiri.

“With the vertical axis turbines, you can use the wake to your advantage by channeling the air through the wind farm,” he said.

To maximize the air flow, you have to position the turbines just right. And to determine exactly how to do that, Dabiri looked to nature.

“It’s identical to the problem with fish schooling,” he said.

Just as schooling fish work together to direct water flow for minimum energy expenditure, Dabiri said, wind turbines can be arranged to direct air flow for maximum energy capture.

Modeling his experimental wind farm after schooling fish was his starting point, he says, but since then he has discovered configurations that work even better.

In a recent paper based on his studies of six turbines at a two-acre test site north of Los Angeles, Dabiri argued that if you put the turbines in just the right spot relative to one-another, the efficiency and overall power output of wind farms can be increased dramatically. He found placing the turbines one diameter’s length away from one another increased performance 5-10%.

Dabiri has expanded his test site to 24 turbines and may build as many as 42.  He says as he’s added more turbines to the study, his results are remaining constant, and he hopes to be able to apply his results and make projections for utility-scale wind farms within a year.

Dabiri says this is a new approach to answering the question of how to get more power from the wind. Traditionally, the focus has been on building taller, bigger, more powerful turbines, which come with costs of their own: negative environmental impacts on birds and bats, the need for lots of land, and higher price tags associated with expensive materials needed for building at such a large size. By focusing instead on the design of the wind farm itself, Dabiri said, it’s possible to capture more wind and produce more energy at lower costs with less environmental impact.

Craig Miller

California’s three big utilities have another two years to reach their mandated target of having 20% of their electricity generated from renewable sources, and today PG&E announced two new deals that could inch the company closer to that goal:

• Wind:  An agreement with NextEra Energy Resources, for 25 years of wind power from the company’s 163 megawatt North Sky River project in Tehachapi, CA.  PG&E says the energy from this project could meet the needs of about 90,000 typical homes.

• Solar:  A 25-year contract with Sempra Generation for 150 megawatts of solar power from an expansion of the Copper Mountain Solar complex near Boulder City, NV.  Just under 2/3 of that power is expected online in 2013, with the remainder available by 2015. Ultimately, the company says, this project could power 45,000 homes.

PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said that together, these two contracts will push PG&E one percent closer to the 20% goal.

As of last week, PG&E was at 15.9% of electricity generated from renewables, according to latest numbers out from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).  Southern California Edison is a 19.3%, and San Diego Gas & Electric is at 11.9%.

The official Renewable Portfiolio Standard (RPS) is 20% by 2010, but the CPUC has implemented flexibility allowing the utilities until 2013 to meet the requirement.   Ultimately, the legally-mandated RPS requirement is 33% by 2020.

For more on California’s quest for renewable energy, check out our multimedia series 33×20: California’s Clean Power Countdown.

Photo: Shuka Kalantari

A new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab could help California’s homeowners decide whether or not to “go solar.” Researchers found that on average, homeowners who recently installed solar photovoltaic (PV) panels recouped most or all of their investment when they sold their homes.

“A house that has a PV system compared to a house that doesn’t have a PV system is expected to sell for more,” said Ben Hoen, the lead researcher on the study and a principal research associate at Berkeley Lab. “This is for systems that are relatively new – between 1.5 to 2.5 years old.”

Neal DeSnoo, an energy program officer at the City of Berkeley Office of Energy and Sustainable Development, said the average Berkeley homeowner keeps their home for only six years, so he suspects many hesitate to make such a costly investment. This study, he said, may sway their opinion.

“The fact that solar installations are reflected in home values is important,” DeSnoo said. “It would make people more willing to make an up front investment if they know they could get the cash out when they do sell it.”

DeSnoo said the study is a step towards reducing greenhouse gases for Berkeley, which has a goal of reducing emission 33 percent by 2020.

Billi Romain, the sustainability coordinator for the Berkeley Office of Energy and Sustainable Development, said she hopes the study will also sway home appraisers.

“It all depends on the property appraisers, whether or not they acknowledge the property value of solar panels,” said Romain. “If a study comes out that says there is a premium for solar, appraisers are more likely to accept that.”

Read the full report

(Photo: Lorie Shelley, CA. State Senate Photographer)

California’s utilities now have their marching orders: to provide one third of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

Now that the “33-by-20″ target is a mandate backed by state law, supporters say it will lure more renewable energy investments to California. There’s evidence that it already is.

Calling it a “breakthrough,” Governor Brown signed the bill into law at the dedication of a new SunPower Corp. manufacturing plant in Milpitas, near San Jose. And he laid down a challenge:

“Last year six thousand megawatts of solar installations were produced by China and one thousand by the United States. Now, are we up for changing that? I think we are.”

Supporters say the 33% requirement provides a stable market for renewable energy, while critics fear it will mean higher electric bills. A statement from the California Republican Party said:

“Governor Brown is pressing ahead as if the pieces of papers he signs magically and automatically result in higher revenues or a better standard of living. The laws of economics, however, overrule Brown’s political laws.

Magical or not, the law has appeared to conjure up federal dollars for the state. Energy Secretary Steven Chu seized the occasion to announce $50 million in federal funding for renewables in California, and nearly $3 billion in loan guarantees for two big projects.

“Thanks to forward looking policies and forward-looking businesses, California will be the center of the action in helping the United States in building a bright energy future,” said Chu at the signing.

Part of that bright energy future includes SunPower’s brand new plant in Milpitas, which is expected to employ about 100 people.

President Obama has pledged to double the nation’s renewable power output by 2035.

Cattle and wind turbines dot the Solano County landscape. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Those who don’t see them on a daily basis might be surprised to learn that there is already something on the order of 13,000 commercial wind turbines operating in California. Ryan Wiser, who tracks wind energy trends at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, does a rough calculation that meeting that state-imposed threshold of 33% renewable energy could take 5,000 more, in order for wind to do its share. That’s based on an estimated 10,000 megawatts of new wind power, using the current standard two-megawatt turbine. While most of these will be concentrated in a few major “wind resource areas” (there are currently four big ones in the state), numbers like that almost ensure that wind turbines will become a more familiar feature of the California landscape.

If fulfilling the California dream for renewable energy takes thousands of turbines, a full-on decarbonization of the world’s energy production will take millions.

Those numbers don’t faze Mark Jacobson in the least. Recently when President Obama raised eyebrows with his goal of getting 80% of the nation’s electricity from “clean” energy sources by 2035, the Stanford engineer  was just about to publish a paper that upped the ante, writing in an email to Climate Watch that “the clean energy should not only apply to the electricity sector but also the transportation, residential heating/cooling, and commercial heating sectors.”

Jacobson’s vision is that all new energy needs around the globe could come from a combination of wind, solar, and water-driven energy…by 2030. Of course, we’d be talking about planting four million wind turbines around the world, as well as 90,000 solar plants. Jacobson then laid out a “path” to his vision It seems at odds with the President’s broad definition of “clean,” which includes nuclear power and coal power with carbon capture:

First, right now investment is focused on too many options, most of which (e.g., natural gas, coal with carbon capture, biofuels, nuclear) are either not beneficial or less beneficial than clean wind, water, and sun (WWS) technologies. The spending of money on the less-efficient technologies is an opportunity cost wasted given the limited amount of funds available. Wind results in 50 times less carbon emissions than coal with carbon capture (“clean coal”) and orders of magnitude less air pollution than “clean coal” (“clean coal” actually increases air pollution over current coal since 25% more coal is needed to run the carbon capture equipment, and the equipment doesn’t reduce other pollutants aside from carbon dioxide).

No prudent businessperson would spend money on an investment that yields 50 times less money, so why should policy makers favor a technology that results in 50 times more carbon and much more air pollution than that?

Second, policies need to be put in place to correct the distortion of the current market mechanism that provides subsidies to fossil fuel and biofuel energy sources even though these sources cause health, climate, and other environmental damage, increasing health insurance costs, health effects, and taxes for all of us. By first eliminating such subsidies and second, instituting a revenue-neutral carbon and air pollution tax or something similar (a tax on these industries to account for their externality costs to society, where the proceeds are used to subsidize clean-energy industries — this would shift incentives toward production of clean energy systems with no net individual taxpayer cost.)

The full paper, which Jacobson co-authored with UC Davis professor Mark Delucchi, is published in the journal Energy Policy.

Hear my two-part radio series on wind energy in California, on The California Report. It and all reports in our series, “33 x 20: California’s Clean Power Countdown” are archived on our special series page. “33 x20″ is a collaboration with KQED’s Quest science unit.