[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Questions for Heather Bailey and City Staff involved in the Boulder’s Energy Future MuniZ Analysis

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Cowles, Macon

I am sending this as an attachment (.doc), and also pasting the contents of the attachment below.

MEMORANDUM
 
To:                   Heather Bailey and City Staff involved in the Boulder’s Energy Future MuniZ Analysis

From:               Macon Cowles

Date:               February 25, 2013

Re:                  Ten Questions re the Study Session Memo, February 26, 2013

 
I have read the memo and attachments and discussed them with engineering colleagues who work in the field of renewable energy, DSM, distributed generation, and renewables integration into the grid. As a result of
 all this, I have the following comments, with questions:
 
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1.             
Reducing GHG emissions—Fuel Switching: CO2e in coal and natural gas.
The modeling was based on the assumption that burning gas releases only half the carbon emissions that burning coal releases to produce the same amount of electricity. A corollary of that statement is that using gas as the fuel source to generate electricity
 cuts GHG emissions by half over what would be released if the same amount of electricity were produced by burning coal. However, the work of UCAR scientist Tom Wigley indicates that gas is no better than coal in GHG emissions per BTU of energy if fugitive
 methane emissions from natural gas operations exceed 2% of the field’s production.
See 
https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/5292/switching-coal-natural-gas-would-do-little-global-climate-study-indicates, the first sentence of which reads as follows: “Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study
 concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change.”
 
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a.    
Turbine efficiency. When you model gas generation, what type of turbine are you modeling (combined cycle?), and what is the assumed efficiency of the turbines?
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b.   
Modeling fugitive emissions. What are the reasons for not modeling fugitive emissions that are potent greenhouse gases attendant on the production of natural gas?
 
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2.             
Penetration at 54% or more. What is the basis for asserting on pages 5 and 19 of the memo that there is a high likelihood that a Boulder Muni could “obtain 54 percent or more of its electricity from renewable resources?”

 
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a.    
What is being measured? What is being measured in the assertion that 54 percent or more of the electricity of Boulder Muni customers could come from renewable resources? Are we talking 54 percent total energy (i.e., kWh in a year)
 or total instantaneous power (kW) measured during a low-load period on a sunny or windy day?  This is a very important difference but it is not clear what is intended.
 
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b.   
Literature or experience? Is there literature or experience that supports this assertion that a Boulder Muni could “obtain 54 percent or more of its electricity from renewable resources?”
 
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c.    
Increased Renewables, Increased Reserves. Because of the intermittency of renewables, the more they are used to generate electricity, the more standby power is required to ensure reliability. This issue is being studied in California
 now, where a 33% RPS has been adopted. See 
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/09/local/la-me-unreliable-power-20121210. Where is the analysis of the cost of extra reserve power to back up renewables included in the model?
 
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d.    
Intermittency, HOMER, and Diminishing ROI at higher penetration rates. Please address this concern about the assertion that a Boulder Muni could achieve a renewables penetration of 54% or more:

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“Basically the sun shines brightly enough about 25-30% of the time and the wind blows above the aerogenerator threshold more of the time, about 45-50% at a good wind site.  If the wind and sun are coincident, then we could have to shed renewable power elsewhere;
 not likely for Boulder, however, since our renewables capacity is not going to be large.
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“The point of this is that achieving 54% does not make sense (correct simulation can show this or actual field experience can). However, if Boulder counts importing renewable power via PPA's to get its 54% then it is being taken from others. Since CO2 is a
 persistent global problem, not a local transient problem, it is not good bookkeeping for Boulder to take credit for that. I am concerned that the HOMER modeler used in the Boulder report did not catch this since it is his model that showed the precise effect
 at higher penetrations.
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“Also note that at high penetrations the economics don't work since that last 1% of added green electrons comes at very high life cycle cost because the hardware to produce that last 1% is rarely used.  We would hope that the Boulder system would have the provision
 to sell its excess power thereby reducing this consequence of the law of diminishing returns. The overall key point, then, is that the wind is not windy enough nor is the sun sunny enough to provide these high renewable electron offsets. If we just had some
 storage (chemical, pumped hydro) that would change everything and very high renewable fractions could be achieved but still limited by the law of diminishing returns.”
 
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3.             
“Secure energy independence.” In the first full paragraph on p. 6, there is a proclamation that “Boulder is poised [among other things] to
secure energy independence.” What does that mean?
 
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4.             
Life Cycle Analysis. No credible study of power production in the EU or Japan would be even considered without the entire cradle-to-grave tracking of carbon emissions. Solar PV arrays do not burn carbon, but manufacturing PV is far
 from clean in this life cycle sense. Not once in the 287 page staff memo and supporting material is life cycle analysis even mentioned, let alone be addressed. The literature is full of Life Cycle Analysis of burning coal, so we could easily do an LCA for
 Xcel’s Business As Usual Approach, even though Xcel ignores life cycle costs. Why has the Life Cycle Analysis of the various alternatives not been done?

 
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5.             
Cost per ton of reduced CO2e. Where is the cost per ton of reduced CO2e calculated and analyzed? I believe the consultants have done this, as one of the five scenarios, "Lowest GHG's, Reduce Use" includes not just fuel switching
 and investing in renewables, but also widespread energy efficiency and DSM measures as well.
 
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6.             
Grid Security and Cyber Attacks. I would think most utilities rely on third parties, like Mandiant, to provide security for their systems and infrastructure. How ARE utilities protecting against cyber attacks? Is this a cost where
 there are economies of scale? Where is this cost considered in the analysis?
 
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7.             
High Test Tech Bed. At p. 6, the memo speaks of Boulder’s creating “a high-tech test bed.” This raises the following question among some readers: “A test bed for what? Are Boulder Muni customers supposed to trade off reliability
 for someone’s science experiment?” Obviously not. So what test bed is staff talking about here? And how can a test bed be separated from the day to day operation of a Muni so that the reliability goal is not sacrificed to a “science experiment?”
 
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8.             
Emergence of a New Economic Paradigm. At p. 6, the memo claims that the ““growing differential between the rising costs of fossil fuels and the declining costs of renewable energy technologies is setting the state for the emergence
 of a new economic paradigm
” Well, not so fast. The “rising costs of fossil fuels” is correct when speaking of coal costs, but the breadth of the assertion is belied by the collapse of gas prices during the last few years. The part about the new economic paradigm
 needs to be rewritten so that the huge increase in gas reserves and the decrease in gas prices are properly accounted for.
 
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9.             
Antiquated System of poles and wires? Would the purchase of Xcel’s system be the purchase of an antiquated system? What part of it is antiquated, and what portion is that of the whole basket of purchased assets?<span style="font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;
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10.          
Wind Power and Avian Mortality. What is the current state of knowledge about the extent of avian mortality from wind turbines? The early wind farms placed in mountain passes in California killed a lot of birds, e.g., Altamont Pass
 (east of San Francisco); Tehachapi Pass (south east of Bakersfield) and San Gorgonio Pass (near Palm Springs). But there still seems to be cause for concern. Here is a quote from the June 20, 2012 edition of
Nature at http://www.nature.com/news/the-trouble-with-turbines-an-ill-wind-1.10849:
 “Wind turbines kill far fewer birds in general each year than do many other causes linked to humans, including domestic cats and collisions with glass windows. But wind power has a disproportionate effect on
 certain species that are already struggling for survival, such as the precarious US population of golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos canadensis). ‘The troubling issue with wind development is that we're seeing a growing number of birds of conservation concern
 being killed by wind turbines,’ says Albert Manville, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Arlington, Virginia.”
 




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 I would argue that an antiquated part of their system is the $42MM Xcel claims to have spent for the Smart Grid. Just for starters, they installed 25,000 Landis + Gyr meters in Boulder--meters so promptly obsolete that Landis + Gyr no longer even makes them.
 Xcel's selection of Broadband over Power Line (BPL) for the means of two way communication, from the material I have read, appears to be an orphaned technology now--and even appeared to have been so in 2008 when Xcel began to roll it out. So one might call
 Xcel’s investment in BPL “antiquated.”




Macon Cowles
Boulder City Councilor