PG&E Has Trickier Motives Than Fear Of Public Power

Speaking as one of the organizers against the peaker plants, but also as an organizer fighting tooth and nail against PG&E to establish the Community Choice renewable energy project, I would expand further on your comments above.

It's not just public power paranoia that PG&E is playing at. PG&E is attempting to leverage the actual structure of the power market further in its favor.

The corporation is using PR spin to hijack the peaker issue and justify a further upgrade and entrenchment of its power grid in San Francisco. The result would be that when we make our next grab at public power it will cost us more, and be more difficult. And with more tight control over our grid, PG&E will also have more freedom to hold us hostage to predatory pricing and rate increases.

For these reasons and many others, in recent meetings with public officials, those of us who are legitimately opposing the peakers have stated that we are extremely dubious about PG&E's proposals, and that the City instead can and should move to both close Mirant and cancel the peaker project without any 'help' from PG&E.

Solving the peaker problem by letting PG&E gain even more control over our power grid is a bad idea no matter what side of this issue you are on.

We should thumb our nose at PG&E's maneuverings, and then all public and renewable energy advocates should launch major campaigns in the next few weeks to make sure that the public power measure which Mirkarimi and Peskin will soon place on the ballot, passes with flying colors; ridding us of PG&E for good.

cheers

Eric Brooks

A Peaker Plant Would Degrade, Not Promote, Renewables -

I've heard this argument and it makes no sense to me at all.

Especially in bad budget times like this (which will certainly perpetuate for decades if wars for oil continue to drain local City budgets) a ready to run natural gas power plant simply leaves public officials an easy out to avoid badly needed commitments to renewable energy.

If we build a fossil fuel peaker plant and times stay tough, politicians can balk at renewable projects and say that since we have back up fossil fuel power, we should wait for renewables until the City is more flush with cash (which might take decades).

My experience with public officials is that if you leave them an easy out to not spend money in tight budget times, they'll take it.

So a peaker plant could well be poison to renewable energy projects, which always require a bit of financial commitment up front, even when they will obviously save money in the future.

The good news is that there is a much more clean and even more secure way to ensure power grid stability. It's called Distributed Generation.

Distributed Generation is the process of building thousands of solar projects, wind projects and other small energy facilities on individual homes and businesses, then linking them all together into one unified power grid, and backing them all up, each with its own robust battery storage. The fact that any one of those energy sources can then stand on its own when others go down, will give the community iron clad electricity security.

It operates much like the very secure and always on World Wide Web that we get from having millions of computers all interlinked together with each other to form the internet. The system won't go down because it is extremely redundant and robust.

The same applies to independent, and interlinked, individual electricity households and facilities.

That kind of reliability beats a centralized fossil fuel plant, which is hostage to wild natural gas price fluctuations, and is built on a liquefaction zone that is vulnerable to earthquakes, hands down.

If we want -true- renewable energy and electrical grid security, we should take that $273 million that we were nearly set to waste on this dinosaur natural gas power plant project, and spend it on Distributed Generation instead.

peace

Eric Brooks

So, as someone who's for more public power and more renewables, what do you say to people who've told me that in order to have a truly robust, dynamic renewable grid, a back-up peaker that turns on quickly and burns cleanly, is the greatest thing we could have in our back pocket?

Natural gas burns cleanly? Not in my universe sister.

See my comments on Distributed Generation for the alternative.

peace

so eric,

how many decades to get your magic rainbows and unicorns lined up for distributed generation? and what are people supposed to do in the meantime?

please be realistic for once. when you aren't, it's insulting to the folks who have to put up with the mirant plant.

100 MW Distributed Generation Online By 2012 -

Actually 'factcheck' all by itself, even without my proposed added infusion of the $273 million currently tapped for the peaker plants, the Community Choice renewable energy project (which goes online next year) will build over 100 megawatts of Distributed Generation in just its first three years; and it will build even more DG afterward, until, within the next decade, San Francisco will be getting a full 51% of its electricity from solar, wind, and other renewable sources.

That first 100 megawatts, combined with another 100+ megawatts of efficiency that will also be installed in the first three years of Community Choice, is enough to make -both- Mirant and the peakers totally unnecessary.

For basic information about Community Choice, which was passed into law by the Board of Supervisors last year, go to: http://communitychoiceenergy.org/

If you are going to call yourself 'factcheck', can you please do us all the justice of acually understanding the, facts, and knowing what the hell you are talking about?

Thanks

Eric Brooks

eric,

i am trying to get to the facts underneath your rhetoric, hence the name.

even under the optimistic timetable of your press releases, you have a decade of continued Mirant pollution while the CCA program grows. and history tells us that these things often take much longer than advertised.

also, CCA and DG may be good for reducing fossil fuel demand, but what about the ISO's backup needs?

feel free to point out where - at the PUC website, or in some other spot - your thousands of batteries backing up DG is considered to be a reliable backup of 150 megawatts of power. bonus points for any discussion of it by the ISO. i'd like to see that.

otherwise, you are back to posting your own press releases and insisting that they are facts.

Rainbows and unicorns were lined up at PG&E's shareholder meeting last week, during which they presented their vision of the future: distributed storage and generation, with customers owning battery banks and hydorgen fuel cell technology in their homes. Yeah, it was almost like Bill Morrow was channeling Amory Lovins.

Of course, this is the next phase after they roll out vehicle to grid technology and their "Home Network Energy Management" program, which is a fancy name for PG&E doing your house chores. You put in a load of laundry on a Saturday afternoon, and they don't let it run until after peak hours.

Eric -- can you cite any communities in the US that are working with 100 percent renewables?

Marin is preparing to go 100% renewable under Community Choice -

Other than Marin, not yet. 100% renewable is a brand new concept for U.S. cities. (Although I think the Cape Cod Community Choice project might get close.)

On your PG&E points, I couldn't agree more. PG&E has no intention whatsoever of allowing Distributed Generation to become a reality, because its widespread establishment would put PG&E out of business. That's why PG&E is vehemently opposing the San Francisco Community Choice project. All of its media events indicating otherwise are just greenwashing exercises.

To factdistort's points, the entire draft implementation pan for the San Francisco Community Choice project, with timelines, is indeed on the SFPUC website at:
http://sfwater.org/detail.cfm/MC_ID/12/MSC_ID/138/MTO_ID/237/C_ID/2475
The implementation plan is the document titled 'CCA Draft Implementation Plan Appendices'.

cheers

Eric

eric,
i'll let others decide if your namecalling affects their sense of your credibility.

but this question isn't addressed in the implementation plan, according to my searches of the pdf you linked.

'feel free to point out where - at the PUC website, or in some other spot - your thousands of batteries backing up DG is considered to be a reliable backup of 150 megawatts of power. bonus points for any discussion of it by the ISO. i'd like to see that.'

please point that out to me.
thanks.

I just talked to Marin. They're doing it with natural gas -- at least until 2019, after which they hope to phase in biomass and geothermal. (Look for a future blog on details of that.) San Francisco's CCA is shooting for 51 percent renewables by 2017, which means that until then -- and even afterward -- we're going to be pulling from conventional power sources. Should we own them, or buy the power from Mirant?

Oh boy, what a mess folks. I think few understand a few real issues:

800 MWs of power is not going to come from "Disributive Generation", not in San Francisco, anyway. In someone elses backyeard, maybe, but I doubt it.

Reneweables are not mutually explusive of carbon if that is what people are worried about. The Marin "project" of using bio-mass (essenitally burning garbage but also specifically produced methane from things like sewage plants, etc) is burning HYDRO-CARBONS folks. It is only little 'better' than natural gas. Every serious 'renewable project'...in the WORLD is contextualized by massive use of natural gas peaking power or, worse, as in Germany, with the building of more...coal plants. The US is no different. The grid has to stay up. You need power for wend the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine and, remember 2000/2001 it was PRICE, not supply, that got everyone into a pickle.

The Danes pay 19 cents a KW/hr for their wind (backed up by German coal, Norwegian hydro and Swedish nuclear). No solar plant in the world produced power for less than 14 cents a KW and that is without storage. Add storage and we're talking about doubling the price. It's boutique power at best.

The Transbay Cable is *designed* to carry fossil produced power from the east Contra Country power plants owned by Mirant, Calpines and now PG&E which just built a new 540 MW combined cycle gas turbine. This is where your 'meeting the SF load criteria' gets you.

The only people who benefit from tearing down Potrero are the real forces behind it: the realestate industry which can't WAIT to develop the 20 acres at the plant for more yuppie housing...and drive prices back up in Potrero Hill. The plant doesn't even pollute that much but realestate agents know the true value of a succesful closing of the plant campaign.

Yours for real public power,
David Walters

Solar On, At Peak Of Hot Days At Highest Demand -

Come on guys, you are all making a lot of very faulty assumptions here.

First, Distributed Generation is not the only component of the Community Choice project, it is simply one aspect of it. I wasn't claiming by any stretch of the imagination that DG would replace all 800-1000 megawatts of San Francisco peak demand.

However it will replace over 100 megawatts by 2012 and efficiency will replace another 100 megawatts by then. Balancing strategies like that efficiency component and small scale wind (which runs when the sun isn't shining) - with the solar DG, and adding some battery back-up, will even out load response and make our grid perfectly secure. So just these two subcomponents of Community Choice (efficiency and diversified DG) by themselves, will obviate the need for Mirant with no need for new fossil fuel generation.

And the most important point you are missing is that the peak demand emergencies that you are referring to as a reason to have a back-up fossil fuel plant, only happen on extremely hot days, -at the peak of the day- once every ten years or so. At peak demand moments like that the sun is shining y'all, full blast.

So because solar is running at peak at exactly the times we need electricity the most, demand will be met, even -without- battery back up and diversified DG sources.

And of course we -will- use batteries for back up storage. Battery technology is improving in great leaps every year, and it will become standard issue to include them with solar and wind power systems linked into a distributed generation system.

Furthermore, so far in this discussion we haven't even included the -other- 150 megawatts of power that will be provided in Community Choice in its first three years by a major wind farm that is part of the project.

The future of this world is renewable energy. And if this world is to survive, it must be.

Finally, you keep bringing up Cal ISO as if it is god. Cal ISO is a decrepit private nonprofit appointed by the Governor to run our energy grid, and 3 of its 5 appointed board members are fossil fuel energy corporation executives. So of -course- Cal ISO is going to tell us that every city in California needs fossil fuel generators.

Hence, letting Cal ISO dominate decision making over our San Francisco energy grid is about as sensible as letting Dick Cheney decide national energy policy. Federal and state agencies tell San Francisco to do stupid things all the time and San Francisco wisely refuses. (Such as federal and state directives to kick out and arrest our undocumented citizens, shut down our medical marijuana centers and arrest pot smokers, and allow ourselves to be inundated with aerial spraying in vain attempts to eradicate harmless moths.)

We say no to the feds and the state all the time. We can and will say no to Cal ISO and end fossil fuel generation in San Francisco.

cheers

Eric