The Pecan Commons energy efficiency contest website is slowly coming together. Please visit and give us your feedback. The latest addition is a powerpoint that defines the contest elements and the updated timeline.
Give the Pecan Street Project A Piece of Your Mind
Austin’s DOE Funded Smart Grid Demonstration Project, The Pecan street Project, is looking for feedback from the energypreneur community. They recently released a prelimnary report outlining the steps taken to this point and enumerating preliminary recommendations.
PSP Executive Director Brewster McCracken and other board members of the Pecan Street Project have told us they are eager to hear what the energypreneur community has to say about the report. There are two ways you can provide feedback through the Pecan Commons:
* Fill out our survey asking your opinion on the recommendations and process.
* Join the discussion by adding your comments to this blog post.
We begin analyzing the results the week of 4/12, so now’s a great time to fill out the survey.
Many thanks to Chad Blevins for his work on the survey.
We’ve been told that this is the preliminary report, with the final report with more detailed recommendations being released sometime this spring.
Also, Pecan Commons friend David Power at Public Citizen is asking that energypreneurs sign the Clean Energy for Austin petition for City Council to approve Austin Energy’s long term generation plan, which includes significant targets for clean energy generation by 2020.
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Green Jobs Initiative conference: Retrofitting the Workforce
This is a report from the recent Green Jobs Conference held at the Texas Capital.
Good Company Associates presented the conference which was targeted at those interested in learning more about the workforce implications of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and smart grid technologies in Texas. Below are my personal notes in bullet form from each of the three panels. When reading the notes, it’s important to remember the context of the conference–retrofitting the workforce. There was a heavy emphasis on training programs and the development of those programs. Additionally, a majority of the job opportunities discussed tended to me more blue/green-collar jobs, but for you techies and entrepreneurs, if you read between the lines, there are buried opportunities. I’ve indicated potential by a Δ.
Panel 1:
Energy Efficiency Workforce
Panelist
- Joe Deringer, Staff Scientist, LBNL
- Liz Fischer, Director, Building Commissioning Association
- Todd McAlister, ED, Air Conditioning Contractors of America-TX
Todd McAlister:
- HVAC and other trades are growing at 28% per year(US) and one of the fastest growing jobs in the state
- There is a shortage of workers now and but more importantly, new ones entering the work force
- Efficiency and Tech is already very advanced in the HVAC area
- This is the highest residential use of electricity
- One of, if not the most cost effective ways to impellent residential energy efficiency
How does to HVAC play a role in going green
- Austin Energy efficiency programs:
- All fit in HVAC
- Duct sealing
- Blower door and or Duct blaster testing
- Shows how efficient is your system
How do we retro fit the workforce
- Especially for the older established workers (average age is 50 years)
- Set in their ways
- Not enough new workers are coming in
Joe Deringer:
- How do we get to the Net ZERO electricity goals of the state and ASHREA for commercial buildings
- Most pressing issues (in order)
- Day lighting
- Efficient indoor and exterior lighting
- Efficient computer equipment, etc
- HVAC
- Advanced building envelope systems
- Effective controls for all of the above
- Use of on-site renewables
- People will have to be continually trained to keep up (not just a onetime thing)
- Design
- Doc
- Construction
- Testers
- O&M
- Retrofit, TI
- Key Needs
- Curricula
- Δ Sharable and accessible and updateable
- Δ In person and online training
- State wide coordination
- Access to labs
- All types (HVAC, etc)
- Δ Virtual environments
- Energy centers
- PG&E (exiting)
- Trainings centers
- SCE (exiting)
- AGTAC
- CTAC
- Consortium
- Learning sites, labs, and programs are growing
- Learnhvac.org
- Learngreenbuildings.org
Liz Fischer
- Commissioning
- All business systems
- Making sure your building works correctly and as intended
- How big is commissioning
- New construction
- Slow recently, but growing
- Existing buildings
- Demand is way up
- LEED-EBOM
- Energy cost-impacts on NOI
- Codes and standards
- Demand is way up
- New construction
- All business systems
- Career Growth
- Who’s hiring
- Commissioning provider firms
- Design engineering
- Construction
- Large owners
- Campuses
- What positions
- Commissioning providers
- Commissioning techs
- Specialized fields Building envelop
- Building Operators
- How to build the workforce
- Generating knowledge in k-12
- Attract professionals for adjacent fields
- Create the training and paths
- Mentorship
- Professional development
- Where
- Community Colleges
- Trade Associations
- Who’s hiring
Questions:
- Lighting : Where are the energy efficient lights produced?
- Mostly abroad
- Almost all of the other energy efficiency materials are produced in the US
- Obstacles
- Lack of info and knowledge
- Learning (Experience) curve
- Cost eventually come down
- Δ Need more success stories (compilation, database, easily to search by industry)
- Peer to peer
- Learning (Experience) curve
- Lack of info and knowledge
- Δ Lack of documentation and coordination
- New building tech implementation
- No integration between involved parties
Δ Innovative Ideas:
- Communication:
- Integration of all levels involved in the building process
- Example) Architects, engineers to subcontractors, etc
- Solutions: communicate and documentation sharing platform
- Social Media
- Google docs(FTP)
- Discussion board or forum
- Problems: differing levels of tech savvy
- Training needed
- Integration of all levels involved in the building process
Panel 2:
Renewable Energy Workforce
Panelist
- Howard Newton, Chair, International Ground Source Heat Pump Associations’ Training Committee
- Ken Whiteside, Director, Educational Program Development for Ontility
- Don Penn, President, Image Engineering
Ken Whiteside:
- Ontility:
- Training org
- Partners with community colleges
-
- Drives faculty developments
- Increases the speed and effectiveness of colleges launching their own training programs
- Expanded into solar energy training
- B2B contractor training
- Mostly builds on existing skills
- B2B contractor training
- Why?
- Systems are very complex and there is a great deal of accountability
-
- Wholesale distributer
- Dealer support
- Partners with community colleges
- What Drives the Training
- Standards
- Building codes
- Installer must be certified and trained properly
- DOE
- Developed consortium to increase training for solar (PV and Solar thermal)
- Train the trainer
- Developed consortium to increase training for solar (PV and Solar thermal)
- Training org
Howard Newton:
- Over 2500 dealer level certifications for Ground Source Heat Pumps
- Rolling out other training programs
- Techs, drillers, maintenance, etc.
- GHP touch an incredible number of contractors, professional and regulators
- Techs, drillers, maintenance, etc.
- Public awareness programs
Don Penn:
- Spoke on the savings and the job creation in Green building
- Working on a project in AZ for 3 million sqft of government buildings
- Most of the jobs are in HVAC and geothermal (drilling, etc)
- AZ as a state in fully on board with all things green and is taking the steps to get things started
- Working on a project in AZ for 3 million sqft of government buildings
- Citi Group is offering special financing for green programs, in particular Green Buildings
- Net ZERO Green Building
- School in Irvine, TX
- Living Lab
- every class room monitored for consumption (class competition)
- Sections of the school are dedicated to
- Solar, geothermal, biofuels, etc
- 20% more upfront cost, but over 20 years they are going to save millions of $
- Living Lab
Panel 3:
Smart Grid
Panelist:
- Paul Hudson, Chairman, Center for Commercialization of Electric Technologies
- Paul Hilgers, Assistant General Manager, Pedernales Electric Cooperative
- Larry Fuller, Director of Training, Centerpoint
Paul Hudson:
- CCET got one of the DOE Smart Grid(SG) testing grants
- The smart grid is so new that the majority of the future SG jobs are limited to our imaginations
- Similar to that of the airline industry when flight was only first developed
- The smart grid is so new that the majority of the future SG jobs are limited to our imaginations
- No one thought of the hundreds of jobs that go into a commercial flight operations
- There are many jobs currently in the SG but there will be hundreds of thousands of new jobs
Larry Fuller:
- The SG is fundamentally changing the business
- Grid readings, back office, online integration, automation
- Δ Integration of multiple providers and multiple technologies is a current obstacle
- The timeline of smart meter installation has been moved up
- There is a major lack of workforce and training for new workforce
- San Jac College is working with Centerpoint and the TX Workforce Commission for development of training
Paul Hilgers:
- Moving toward coop member focused
- Δ What are the services they want
- The coordination with community colleges is imperative to drive the workforce
- There is a need for traditional and Green workforce
- Traditional Jobs
- Line workers
- Call center
- Member services
- Acct
- Audit
- …
- Green or New issues
- Project management
- Δ Innovators to drive a new business model
- Energy audit
- HVAC
- Traditional Jobs
- There is a need for traditional and Green workforce
- Δ Currently testing a model to aggregate and quantify the energy savings of its member and market it back to LCRA
- Efficiency and generations
- The SG will be very different in Cedar Park and Junction (difference in customer and meter/mile)
Questions:
- How do smaller energy entrepreneurs get past the barriers and test in the grid?
- University of Houston is setting up two separate testing grids
- Good place for entrepreneurs to focus? (and not conflict with the utilities)
- 1. Capture and quantify savings
- 2. The business model of utilities is going to have major shifts and until that is figured out the entrepreneur, utility line will be hard to see.
Pecan Street Project Releases Report – Requests Feedback. Pecan Commons Responds.
Earlier this week, The Pecan Street Project released their initial report detailing the past year’s journey. From discussions /w/ a city council member, UT’s Austin Technology Incubator, and Austin Energy, the idea for doing something that had to do with a new electricity future emerged.
The current board reflects those discussions. For the first time, the Pecan Street Project tells the story of how the original team came together, how they pulled together work groups from various companies to formulate a yet to be released plan. It also contains recommendations for moving Austin into the new electricity future.
The door is open for entrepreneurs. To quote the report:
“All of this points to a responsibility on the part of the founding partners and Pecan Street Project, Inc. to not only renew their commitment to the project mission, but also to double their efforts as its ambassadors and invite new talent into the process.”
To that end, the Pecan Commons is soliciting feedback from energypreneurs so that we can present it to the Pecan Street Project. Of course, you can do so yourself, but working together will continue to show that there is a strong energypreneurial culture in Central Texas that has much to offer.
There are a number ways to participate in feedback:
- - leave comments on this post
- - help us create a survey that we’ll field next week. (Add your questions as comments to this post.)
- - volunteer to pull everything together in a report. Chad Blevins is taking the lead, so please contact him; cnblevins [at] gmail [dot] com
Please contribute to our survey by adding questions you’d like to see answered. Our sample is energypreneurs in Central Texas and beyond.
Posted in Pecan Street Project
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DOE’s ARPA-E Announces 3rd Round of Funding Opportunities
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Projects Research Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), has just announced it’s 3rd round of funding of energy projects. ARPA-E is aimed at small teams working on high risk, high reward technologies that could have an impact in the short term. $0.5 – $10 million in rewards for 1-3 years.
An example recipient is Sun Catalytix, MIT research Bob Nocera’s company. Nocera invented a catalyst for electrolysis allowing the production of hydrgogen from water vastly less expensive.
Here, Nocera goes into more detail:
Dan Nocera: Personalized Energy from PopTech on Vimeo.
The two other DOE funding programs are larger in scope.
Energy Frontier Research Centers
Fundamental research in new energy technologies, or to elminating technology roadblocks. Six to twelve senior investigators, mainly universities, many mult-institutional, working on projects that fit into a large set of scientific grand challenges identified by DOE. Five year projects funded at $2-5 million per year.
Energy Innovation Hubs
Large set of investigators across multiple science and engineering discplines, multi-insititutional. Bio-energy Research Centers are current model. From fundamental research to potential commercialization. $22 million in the first year with up to $10 million for infrastructure startup, $25 million/year in following years.
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Getting Involved in Standard Setting
One common question asked in our meetings is, “How can I participate in setting the emerging smart grid standards?”
There are a number of answers at the national and state level.
NIST Smart Grid Standards
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is leading the standards committee for the smart grid. The NIST Smart Grid Collaboration Site is the gateway into NIST’s smart grid standards. Start here.
NIST has a blog that they’re using to solicit public comments. Go to the Office of Science and Technology Policy Forum: Consumer Interface with the Smart Grid Blog in order to provide comments. From the NIST website:
By using this blog format, we hope to generate constructive discussion on a number of questions related to the customer interface to the Smart Grid. Over the next few weeks, we will focus discussion on three interface topics central to the consumer participation in the Smart Grid:
* February 23-March 1: architectural questions.
* March 2-7: questions concerning data access and ownership.
* March 8-12: questions regarding data communications standards for consumer appliances and other devices that will communicate with the Smart Grid.
When the blog ends, a team will review and synthesize the main comments, themes, and recommendations.
There are numerous ways to get involved, but the action is happening NOW, so don’t delay in participating:
- Priority Action Plans, including Role of IP In the Smart Grid
- Smart Grid Interoperability Panels, such as:
- Transmission and distribution (TnD)
- home-to-grid (h2g)
- building-to-grid (b2g)
- industry-to-grid (i2g)
- vehicle-to-grid (pevtg)
- business and policy(BnP)
- Upcoming Meetings and Events
- Feb. 17-22: Vote on Plenary Vice Chair and Secretary
- March 11-16: Vote on Bylaw Change Proposals
- March 16: Governing Board Meeting. For details, click here.
- March 16-17: 1st SGIP Face-to-Face in Chantilly, VA. For details and registration, click here.
- April 23rd: SGIP Virtual Meeting. For details and registration, click here.
Open Smartgrid User’s Group
You may also want to look at the Open Smartgrid User’s Group. You can also find more info on their SmartgridPedia.
This is a national working group that provides input to utilities looking at the smart grid.
PUCT
The Public Utilities Commission of Texas has an Advanced Metering Initiate Team (AMIT) that’s working on smart meter protocols. The AMIT website is the best place to find information including:
- Their meeting schedule through 4/10.
- Presentation by Dr. George Arnold on The NIST Interoperability Framework for the Smartgrid (1/25/10). Dr. Arnold is leading the NIST Smargrid initiative.
- AMIT Meeting documents, so you can get up to speed.
To participate, contact:
Christine Wright.
Team Leader
PUCT
512-936-7376
christine.wright@puc.state.tx.us
Local
What about local? What are the opportunities for participating in standards at the local level? The Pecan Street Project is in the process of figuring that out. Austin Energy generally does what ERCOT tells them to. ERCOT generally executes the goals the Public Utilities Commission of Texas sets for them.
ERCOT meetings are generally open. According to David Power at Public Citizen, ERCOT likes it when people come and help them design the solution to a problem or goal set by the PUCT, so there’s an opportunity there if you have a specific issue. The main action at the State level appears to be at the Advanced Metering Group at the PUCT.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of opportunities. If you know of other opportunities, please let everyone know by leaving comments.
(Many thanks to David Power at Public Citizen Texas for helping me figure out the regulatory environment.)
Pecan Street Project Update
In our on going effort to advocate for energypreneurs, Tech Ranch co-founder Kevin Koym and I met with Pecan Street Project Executive Director Brewster McCracken this morning over coffee to get an update and discuss next steps.
PSP Update
As of today, the Pecan Street Project is in an organizational phase. McCracken had just met with Pecan Street Project board members to begin making decisions that will allow the organization to function. Currently, there are no staff members. There’s only McCracken and the board. But that’s going to change.
This week, McCracken expects to post a job opening for a Project Director. Within three weeks, he well post a job opening for a Technology Director. Keep an eye out at the Pecan Street Project website.
PSP Standards
Once he has the Technology Director, he can begin the process of developing standards for connecting to the grid. Within six weeks, he’d like to hear from the energypreneur community on what they need from PSP to plug into the grid. The new Technology Director will be intimately involved in those discussions. McCracken is looking at the right model for bringing people together to create those standards. Whether it’s something similar to other standards bodies such as ANSI, W3C, etc. remains to be decided.
To date, when it comes to energy in general and the smart grid in particular, the players have generally been utilities, government, universities, and large corporations. Electricity, in general, has been a difficult field for entrepreneurs to enter because of the entities involved. McCracken has stated publicly time and again the need for entrepreneurs to be involved in any Smart Grid project such as the Pecan Street Project. In our discussion he reiterated his commitment for making sure entrepreneurs are at the standards committee table. We have a good start from our 2/2 Pecan Commons meeting.
Smart Grid Standards
If you’d like to study up on the emerging standards for the smart grid, try these resources:
- Smart Grid Standards Self-Test: Do It Now (Or Feel the Pain Later) from Smartgridnews.com.
- NIST Smartgrid Collaboration site.
- NIST Smart Grid Website
- The NIST Framework and Roadmap for Interoperability Standards Release 1.0
Energy Entrepreneurs & The Pecan Street Project: Q&A /w/ Brewster McCracken
Energy Entrepreneurs met to begin the discussion of how they can participate in the Pecan Street Project, Austin’s smart grid demonstration project. The Pecan Commons hosted the meeting at Tech Ranch Austin. It was a working session where teams broke out into various categories to list out what they needed from the Pecan Street Project in order to participate.
Pecan Street Project Executive Director, Brewster McCracken ended the meeting with a Q&A session. This video is of that Q&A session.
[bliptv AYHFqxQC]
McCracken lays out the current state of affairs of the Pecan Street Project as of the beginning of February 2010. He discusses:
- broad timelines
- open positions with the Pecan Street Project
- having a continuing dialog with energy entrepreneurs.
- Programs such as:
energy storage integration
micro grid architecture
smart grid water and irrigation
home systems
customer system (from ami to rooftop solar)
electric vehicle integration (10 neighbors on the same transformer with EV’s for two years; 10 employees in local business /w/ electric fleet vehicles)
technology commercialization
business model
McCracken challenged the group of entrepreneurs to think about how can we leverage what we’re doing to create other goods? His example was the oil and gas leases that funded the state university system to provide inexpensive higher education for citizens. He illustrated with an example of a business that placed solar panels on schools and shares the revenue with the schools.
Some questions from the Q&A included:
Q: Have you chartered the license of open source technology? Is there going to be an LPGL license [for connecting to the smart grid]?
A: This is all open for discussion. This is the heart of what we want to do. One of the efforts that I want this group to think about is to provide advice on what those standards should be.
Q: Do see VC backed companies participating in this, as well as early stage entrepreneurs?
A: Yes, but one of the reasons why VC’s haven’t played very much, which this room understands but most people don’t, is because there’s no predictable market.
Q: Is there going to be a format or space available to interface with Austin Energy?
A: Pecan Street Project is the interface for interacting with Austin Energy. Roger Duncan [general manager of Austin Energy] is the Chairman of the Board of the Pecan Street Project, Inc. His successor will be a board member.
Notes From Initial Pecan Street Project Meeting Hosted by Pecan Commons
On February 2nd, the Pecan Commons hosted our initial meeting on how entrepreneurs can participate in Austin’s Pecan Street Project, the smart grid project that should allow any energy entrepreneur to connect to a demonstration grid.
Phase 1 of the Pecan Street Project was primarily a definition phase with participation by government, utilities, and large corporations. There was no clear way for entrepreneurs to participate even though Brewster McCracken’s original vision included energy entrepreneurs. Brewster knew this, that’s why he asked the Pecan Commons to host a meeting of entrepreneurs to help define how they’d like to participate in the Pecan Street Project.
The February 2nd meeting was the beginning. We broke out into groups and brainstormed various categories. Here are notes from those breakout sessions.
If you’d like a power point version of the notes, click here:
Distributed Energy Resources
Entrepreneurs and the Pecan Street Project - Distributed Resources notes.
1) Energy Efficiency (10-20%) – 100-130M bldgs
Building Envelope eg. spray foam insulation
Efficient Appliances eg. lighting control systems, hvac, etc (variable drives)
Solar Thermal/Ice thermal
2) Demand Response/Load Curtailment/Peak Avoidance (5-15%)
Home Energy Mgmt Systems (HEMS)
Energy Svc Cos (ESCO)
3) Distributed Generation (40-60%)
Solar PV – ground mount, rooftop, etc
Solar Thermal (molten salt)
Geothermal
Microwind
Landfill to energy, waste to energy
Biomass
4) PEV – Transportation
Infrastructure
Vehicle Apps, etc.
5) Storage
Lots of emerging technologies and applications
Community business models
6) Community Engagement
Social Networking
S/W
HOAs
etc.
7) Water
Conservation
Collection
Financial Tools
9) Mounting Sys
Business Model
1. Board structure & participation (inc small biz)
2. Access to data/info (open – 2-way)
3. Changing / distributed leadership (prevent ossification)
4. Creation / access / process for field lab involvement
5. Steering Committee to drive engagement process / product & service areas/scope
6. Default answer should be ‘yes’ – how?
7. Customer engagement / eduation
8. How deal with constraints: legal, regulatory, safety
Marketing
Protocols
Web services
Open source licensing
Internet over power lines
Interoperability
Prices to devices
Security & privacy
Test data – getting it from utilities
IEEE standard : smart grid – home policy
LED -> Advertising
Paradigm shift in “lighting” per se
Customers
Residential – free from utilities
Commercial, Industries
Utilities thru bills
Educate – how much $$ will it cost!
media – TV, print
academic sector
social networks, internet
API
Solar
SOLAR MICRO-GENERATION
What is a Business Model?
- overcome obstacles (min/etc)
- PTC for new buyers (prebuild) solar
- drive cost of install down W/bulk purchase
- new installation metrics
- insurance of quality installations assurance
- more installation science
Who is Customer?
- both? Utility/consumer
- investors
- PPA provider (Purchase Power Agreement)
- municipalities
- goverment
- Utility control of power consumption
What does the customer need?
- 120VAC@60Hz
- 240VAC@60Hz
- 480VAC 3Phase
- power that is stable
- cost advantage/affordabilty
- hedge
- pollution free power
- generation technology/electrical equipment (i.e. 200 amp load centers)
Outreach and Education
OUTREACH & EDUCATION
The Media role in generating public interest
- How do we get the press attention?
- education opportunities (project teams, etc)
- Public affairs/public relations
> piggyback established communications
- i.e. Austin Energy, Public Citizen, etc
- Develop strategic communications plan
- corporate information outreach
- define the message – vision
- reach the unreached
Distributed Energy Resources2 – Combined Heat and Power
On-Site Energy Services consisting of combination of central utility plant, district energy, and CHP
Vision:
The most energy efficient and sustainable solution for meeting cooling, heating, and power needs of buildings. Use current technology, not waiting on inventions or costs of fledgling technologies to come down.
Technologies deployed:
- Combined heat and power process (single fuel input produces cooling, heating and power simultaneously).
- Energy storage (ice, chilled water, hot water, molten salt)
- Heat recovery processes (hot water from chilled water return, geo-thermal, etc.)
Benefits:
Dispatchable (turn on or off whenever you like), fraction of carbon emissions of traditional solutions, lower life cycle costs than traditional solutions, energy security, highest energy efficiencies, provides power when sun or wind not available, stores excess energy if too much wind or solar is available, lowest costs for storage (~$0.50 per watt), equipment lasts 30 to 100 years), no opportunity for obsolescence.
Challenges:
Higher first costs, owners don’t maintain equipment properly, engineers don’t know how to design, utilities don’t understand value proposition and therefore don’t support it, very few people even bother to ask for technical and financial feasibility studies, 99% of opportunities go with status quo even because no one wants to change and no one knows how to perform life cycle costs.
Solutions:
- Get buy-in from stakeholders (environmental, financial, utilities, renewable, etc.)
- Understand the synergy of CHP/Energy storage/district energy and renewables
- Force potential opportunities to undergo a technical and financial feasibility study
- Let the math do the talking – and get personal opinions out of the decision making
———
Energy Efficency
- LEED Standards
- Ownership Challenge
- Water Savings
Demand Response
- TES (Thermal Energy Storage), Peak Shaving
- Renewable Applications
Distributed Generation
- Combined Heat & Power (CHP) Mueller Energy Center
- Bridge to renewables
- Biomass
- Waste heat recovery (WERR), LFG, Geothermal
Storage
- Ice on coil
- Chilled water
- Molten salt heat storage
Business Models
- Public Private partnerships
- Commodity Sales provider
- Host/Developer Joint venture
Financial Arrangements
- lease purchase
- CSA, PPA (commodity, power purchase agreement)
- Pilot projects grants
- Venture Capital, Angel Investor
Video from Initial Meeting
Pecan Commons’ initial meeting was held Tuesday, February 2nd at the Tech Ranch, Austin. Here’s a video from the meeting:
[youtube o6OGjaI0l10 ]
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