I wish more people would ask this question, but just in case folks are too polite to ask, I thought I’d offer a summary of recent activity, arranged by topic.
Core team: Ronnie Holland and
Monique Romero have combined to create and maintain a website that is the hub of our outreach efforts. It will get better and better based on further work and feedback from users.
Do you have any for us? Ronnie was the point person for our first two Cal-IRES events in April and May, and also has been ramping up coordination and peer review of reports on cross-cutting projects, e.g. California Renewable Energy Center's (CREC) Renewable Energy Forecasting and Mapping Project. Along with some advisory work for national and California programs,
Gerry Braun’s recent focus has been on a report addressing the forward vision and development metrics for CREC. It is for our internal CREC review. Its general theme is developing CREC to meet currently un-met needs in support of California renewable energy deployment. Gerry hopes to get it out to our advisors and sponsors in the near future; then on to other “deliverables” coming due.
Associates: Cal-IRES Associates have been supporting initiatives related Public Interest Energy Research's (PIER) Renewable Energy Secure Communities (RESCO) program.
Karen Eggerman helped develop the
presentation to the USDA on the California Rural Energy Action and Transformation Enterprise (CREATE), a joint initiative of Cal-IRES and the Applied Solutions Network, and she is also digging into issues around Community net metering. Our newest Associate,
George Hay, has been supporting our efforts jointly with the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) and Applied Solutions, to secure Department of Energy (DOE) support of a national RESCO roadmap. Response to
ACORE’s letter to Assistant Secretary Zoi is pending.
Advisors: Our advisors have been sharing important information and helping forge our strategic relationships.
- Larisa Dobriansky has organized meetings in Washington with DOE regarding the proposed national RESCO roadmap and also has arranged meetings with potential partners in the next RESCO Symposium, including the World Alliance for Distributed Energy (WADE).
- Jan McFarland has working on implementation of SB 32, enacted in 2009, which directs the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to approve standard contracts and pricing for renewable energy (aka “feed in tariffs (FITs))” and shared with us Cal-SEIA’s study on FIT pricing1.
- Merwin Brown was kind enough to arrange a presentation by Professor Igor Schvets of Trinity College, Dublin. Prof. Schvets is involved in an initiative entitled “Spirit of Ireland” that has many intriguing aspects, including wind integration that would have positive implications for Ireland’s economy and reflects some refreshing and holistic thinking.2
- Ron Edelstein forwarded a report that GTI had prepared to summarize the products that have resulted from PIER funding, which is smart and helpful thinking on GTI’s part considering the PIER reauthorization process getting underway in the legislature. One of the Gas Institute Technology's (GTI) projects is of particular interest to Cal-IRES, i.e. a Chula Vista study that GTI supported and Larisa Dobriansky also supported during her tenure with DOE. It was highlighted in a session Gerry chaired at the CADER Conference in April.
- Karin Corfee was a lead organizer of a KEMA Innovation Forum earlier in the year on the topic of Virtual Power Plants, and KEMA has now released a white paper on the subject. Gerry spoke at the forum on the linkage between virtual power plants and the RESCO vision.
- Geir Vollsaeter provided an update on his efforts to develop a deep water offshore wind pilot project in California. This is of great interest to Cal-IRES because California offshore wind resources are abundant, higher quality and less variable than onshore resources, and their potential development would change California’s long term renewable grid integration equation significantly.
- Tom Hoff reported on Clean Power Research efforts complementing CREC’s Renewable Resource Forecasting and Mapping work, and sees a connection to PIER’s pending Utility Scale Renewable Energy solicitation. Tom’s vision regarding solar forecasting affirms ours, i.e. he sees a need for real time forecasting information to be very broadly available and dubs his company’s prospective offerings “Solar Anywhere”.
- Rob Hammon and his Consol colleagues have been in touch regarding the successful proposal Consol submitted to DOE for funding of the Consol-led Building Industry Research Alliance.
Sponsors: We are in active dialog with colleagues at the California Energy Commission who have valuable information and insights to share.
- PIER Colleagues John Hingtgen and Hassan Mohammed brought information to our attention that we would have overlooked. John sent links to recent work at Stanford related to offshore wind, and Hassan sent a study of the economic benefits of Germany’s renewable energy deployment programs. In addition, Jean Baronas shared with Cal-IRES and CSEC the PIER Renewables team’s update on solar energy research & development (R&D) for California Energy Commission (CEC) Commissioner Boyd; Sandra Fromm was kind enough to share with CREC the team’s recent presentation to the Commission’s R&D committee; and Prab Sethi shared a draft of an excellent CREC overview he is developing for use inside the Commission.3
1 The price for the contracts would be set based on the wholesale price of energy and the valuable attributes like reducing emissions, reducing the need for adding new transmission lines, and generating electricity during hours of peak demand. The Cal-SEIA study showed that the value of renewable generation is between 5 and 12 cents per kWh over the wholesale price of electricity from natural gas, a fossil fuel. This additional value is based on the environmental, transmission, and reliability values of adding renewable generation to California’s electricity supply. See http://calseia.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/pv-above-mpr-methodology-final-20100423.pdf
A team led by another Cal-IRES advisor, Karin Corfee, recently completed work for the Energy Commission on FIT design. See http://www.energy.ca.gov/2010publications/CEC-300-2010-006/CEC-300-2010-006.PDF
2 Professor Schvets’ presentation is not in the public domain but the link provides an overview.
3 Cal-IRES provided review and incidental technical inputs to their efforts. Contact Jean, Sandra and Prab directly for additional information.
