By HDK / Published on Fri, 2009-08-21 19:52
A new paper from Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center
We examine the potential economic implications of using vehicle batteries to store grid electricity generated at off-peak hours for off-vehicle use during peak hours. Hourly electricity prices in three U.S. cities were used to arrive at daily profit values, while the economic losses associated with battery degradation were calculated based on data collected from A123 Systems LiFePO4/Graphite cells tested under combined driving and off-vehicle electricity utilisation.
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By HDK / Published on Wed, 2009-08-05 15:26
Customers want a reliable, affordable and sustainable electricity supply. Over the years the emphasis between these three items have been shifted.
What do you expect that customers will value most in the future electricity supply? We welcome your comments and votes on this question.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Mon, 2009-08-03 12:27
Whether public or private, a hospital can not afford unplanned power interruptions. Downtime significantly affects already pressured financial resources. Hospitals must be able to rely on a fully reliable, interference-free power supply to be sustainable and continuously provide a quality health service.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Tue, 2009-06-23 05:30
Should the case of Spain cause worries?
Two recent decisions by the Spanish government regarding wind energy have highlighted concerns about the affordability of this sector.
The first decision was to create a special fund for the €10 billion government deficit originating from wind energy incentives. The second decision was to end the complete autonomy of the regions in licensing wind projects. These decisions were taken to avoid exceeding the target capacity of 20,155 MW under the government incentives currently in force. Via agreements with the regions, the wind industry was already projecting 41,000 MW. Such a figure would be unaffordable for the government if the current regimen of incentives is left in place. The new national registration of wind projects will also force wind developers to give priority to the most profitable wind sites nationwide, instead of considering projects only on a regional basis.
The Spanish government’s measures provoked a lively discussion on Power Globe and other Internet forums. Can Spain still be regarded as a textbook example of renewable energy promotion, or is the country on the edge of a bankruptcy due to excessive investments in wind?
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2009-06-18 05:30
Incremental changes can result in substantial cost reductions
The technologies for producing electricity from solar thermal energy can be divided into three main categories:
- Parabolic trough and Fresnel systems
- Central receiver systems, including the solar updraft tower
- Parabolic dish systems, usually combined with a Stirling heat engine
The first commercial CSP plant, which was built in California in the 1980s, used the parabolic trough concept. It has a total capacity of 354 MW. For many years, this was the only large scale CSP plant in the world. Elsewhere, only small demonstration plants were built, as the high investment cost hampered further deployment.
In 2006, a new commercial 1 MW parabolic trough CSP plant was built in Tucson, Arizona. Since then, the development of CSP as a commercial electricity generating technology has taken off. Many CSP projects are currently being built, the majority of which are in Spain and the USA. It is very likely that because of this market boom, investment costs for CSP will go down. The question is how much and how quickly.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Tue, 2009-06-16 05:30
Diversification complicates price predictions
In regards to PV energy, we will focus on grid connected systems only, since they represent the large majority of the market. The cost of a grid connected PV system is composed of the PV module cost and the 'BOS' cost (Balance of System). The BOS consists of the structures for mounting the PV modules and of the power-conditioning equipment that converts the DC power of the modules into the AC grid power.
Prediction not straightforward
Three difficulties arise when trying to predict the future cost development of PV energy starting from existing experience curves.
- The cost decrease over the past four decades was not at all linear. It alternated periods of sharp decline with periods in which it stayed more or less constant. As a result, experience cost curves that do not represent large time spans can result in a distorted perspective.
- Various PV technologies exist and are difficult to represent with a single experience curve. New types of PV systems may break through in the near future that completely change the average cost of PV modules.
- Even if the future cost of individual PV modules can be predicted, this does not mean the cost of electricity generated by those PV systems can be easily determined. Factors such as geographical location, local support mechanisms, and the size of systems will have a major influence on the average PV electricity cost.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Tue, 2009-06-09 08:12
Future cost development of renewable energy
Predicting the learning curves
How will the cost of the various renewable energy systems evolve in the future? That is a question a great many people are concerned about. To make the transition to a sustainable energy economy, the development and deployment of renewable energy systems will be indispensable. While all of these technologies presently have a higher cost than traditional energy systems, it is generally believed that they will become cheaper once they have gone through their learning curve.
Predicting this cost development curve was the goal of the NEEDS project (New Energy Externalities Development for Sustainability). The accuracy of decision support tools depends on the reliability of such predictions. It provides investors and policy makers alike with knowledge as to what degree investing in a particular renewable technology is likely to be worthwhile.
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By HDK / Published on Mon, 2009-06-08 07:16
This paper identifies the nature and scale of transaction costs (TCs) under different policy instruments aimed to increase energy efficiency. It analyses three cases: a) GHG-driven initiatives, b) tradable “White Certificate” (TWC) schemes –taking the Energy Efficiency Commitment in Great Britain as a case study-, and c) energy efficiency audits given by grid companies in Denmark. The analysis focuses on TCs borne by project developers or obliged parties under these initiatives.
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By HDK / Published on Mon, 2009-06-08 07:14
The Green Paper on Energy Efficiency introduces an additional energy saving target of 20 % until 2020. At the same time, the Dutch parliament demands an overall speed of energy saving of 2 % a year until 2020. Both targets imply an ambitious increase in saving efforts. This paper focuses on the Dutch residential and services sectors. It includes an inventory of technical and behavioural saving measures that may contribute to energy savings by reducing heat and electricity demand or by increasing conversion efficiency.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Wed, 2009-05-20 13:42
Retailers have to be increasingly competitive – pricing, minimizing operational costs and maximizing revenue all need continuous scrutiny – not to mention complying with an increasingly stringent regulatory environment. Unrecognised but very real, disruptive events such as power disturbances are frustrating and financially damaging. The lights go out, escalators stop functioning, tills are frozen, security systems fail. Customers walk out of or have to be escorted from the store. Financial losses start mounting up.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Mon, 2009-02-23 15:26
Metals manufacturing plants have a high demand for electrical power, are electric motor intense, have high raw material costs and rely heavily on sophisticated automation and on a skilled labour force. Common to these characteristics is that they all lead to significant operating losses when the electric power is interrupted. The European Copper Institute (ECI) Power Quality Survey has identified that the metals sector loses over 10% per cent of its net bottom line due to Power Quality operating issues.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2009-02-05 06:30
Cheaper or more expensive than conventional cars?
When the cost of a plug-in vehicle is mentioned, it mostly refers to the purchasing and maintenance expenses. Sometimes, tax reductions given to electric vehicles (EVs) are taken into account, but the insurance cost is rarely discussed. This is somewhat strange, since the insurance on a conventionally fuelled car accounts for roughly one quarter of its fixed cost of ownership. So, what happens to this cost when switching from a conventional car to an EV?
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Thu, 2009-01-15 14:13
Mark Ellis and Nigel Jollands, International Energy Agency,
France Lloyd Harrington, Energy Efficient Strategies, Australia
Alan Meier, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US
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By Jonathan Manson / Published on Mon, 2009-01-12 16:45
By Jonathan Manson and Roman Targosz
Since the end of the 1990s the European Copper Institute [ECI] has been concerned about the impact experienced by commerce and industry of the changing nature of the energy demands organisations face as a result of equipment technological advances, the increasing need o build in resilience into their electrical power installations and the presumed mounting costs of not taking either adequate preventative or reactive action to accommodate the changes.
After some preliminary small scale studies into the impact of poor power quality on such organisations and as the empirical but anecdotal evidence mounted being discussed at length among the growing membership of the Leonardo Power Quality Initiative [LPQI*], so ECI decided to mount an extensive research project into what the impacts were on key energy suing industrial sectors of their not coping with poor power quality.
The project itself took over two years to complete and its results have been exposed in 2007 to a broad technical academic community with a view to securing their support and agreement for this work, the findings of which, whilst not surprising to us, make very negative reading in terms of the avoidable wastage and economic losses incurred by these industrial sectors at a time when energy and resource efficiency are the demands of today. Apply this to more commercial interpretation and it is clear that the EU’s competitive position is also unnecessarily undermined asa a result of this wastage.
This report presents the European PQ Survey – it is clear that the industrial sectors interviewed annually lose upwards of €150 billion as a direct result of their electrical power installations not being sufficiently reliable and resilient for today’s and future operating demands.
The causes of these losses are not new nor are the Power Quality [PQ] phenomena involved. What was both surprising as well as concerning was and we suspect is still the relative lack of analysis and measurement that take place among these power critical industries to be able to know what is causing these damaging interruptions to their operations.
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By Bryony Samuel / Published on Tue, 2008-12-09 10:50
It has been estimated that the cost of power quality problems to industry and commerce in the EU amounts to about 150 billion Euro per annum. Simple preventative measures, careful equipment selection, good design and effective maintenance could prevent most of this loss.
The Cost of Poor Power Quality introduces the cost implications of typical PQ problems.
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By Bryony Samuel / Published on Tue, 2008-12-09 10:45
Electrical power is an important raw material for all commercial operations and, like any other raw material, the quality of supply is very important. Any interruption, however short, can cause a production line to stop or data processing operations to fail. This Application Note discusses the potential cost of poor PQ to industry and commerce and outlines the common PQ problems that can cause serious financial loss.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Fri, 2008-07-25 17:00
By J Angelova
Sensitivity Analysis is an analytical method for determination of the factors having the strongest influence on cash flow efficiency. Through the use of a number of possible values for a given variable (factor), its influence on the positive financial profit has been determined as a result of key-variable alternations. Hence, the purpose of the analysis is to estimate to what extent an end result index is sensible to alternations and in what way it affects the end result variables, thus to set up the electrical power final (sale) price.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Tue, 2008-06-24 16:55
PQ problems faced by the semiconductor industry are often caused by the end users’ own electrical installations’inadequate design.
A semiconductor manufacturing plant experienced a production line break-down nearly every week.
Those breakdowns were caused by dips in the electrical supply voltage.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Tue, 2008-06-24 16:44
Semiconductor production line failures result in production losses that are both extremely costly and seriously undermine the companies’ efforts to minimize material wastage. The immediate consequences are:
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