CWEB.079/July.18.2002
In its first major renewable energy venture, the Energy Trust of Oregon has issued a request for proposals for 25 megawatts to 100 MW of new wind energy capacity within the state.
Wind power from the selected project(s) would be sold to Portland General Electric and/or PacifiCorp, which are joining with the Trust in this solicitation. The Trust has allocated up to $8.5 million for the RFP, "to cover the difference between the cost of the wind power and the utilities' purchase price," according to a news release.
Intent to respond forms are due July 26, and proposals themselves are due Aug. 21. The Trust expects to conclude contract negotiations in November. Projects must be commercially operating by the end of 2003, when the federal wind energy production tax credit is scheduled to expire. New Oregon wind farms as well as expansions are eligible.
Beating PTC Deadline
The Trust wants to beat the current expiration deadline for the PTC, which is vitally important in making wind power a cost-effective energy resource.
"Over the last three weeks," according to a June 26 Trust staff recommendation memo for a board decision, "staff met with both utilities, checked with wind developers, consulted with experts in the wind industry and asked for qualifications and costs from firms with relevant experience developing and conducting RFPs. There is significant interest in responding to a wind RFP, and a strong belief among developers and wind experts that the PTC deadline can be met.
" ... There appears to be enough potential sites in Oregon to provide for robust bidding," the memo continued. "With an in-state resource, Oregon would capture the benefits of the additional property taxes, lease payments and jobs. A quick analysis suggests that it may be worth as much as a 20% price premium to have an in-state wind resource."
RFP Details
The Trust is seeking wind projects of a certain size--25 MW to 100 MW capacity, from one or more ventures, all within Oregon. Expansion potential is preferred. The public-purposes funding agency specifically excludes wind projects under negotiations through other solicitations.
Energy output would flow to one or both of Oregon's major investor-owned utilities, through power-purchase agreements expected to last 20 years, "at agreed upon prices reflective of projected market prices," the RFP said.
"In anticipation that the market prices will be lower than the prices needed to justify construction of a wind power plant, Energy Trust will support the project(s) ... through one of several possible options: subsidizing the project(s) initial costs, committing available funds to subsidize the energy price, and/or other options that may be proposed." The RFP lists a single lump payment, fixed price per kilowatt-hour produced and fixed annual or monthly payments as specific possibilities.
"Energy Trust's primary interest is maximizing the amount of energy produced for the available funding while maintaining an acceptable level of risk and minimizing transaction costs," the RFP said.
As a condition of its support, the Trust would retain environmental attributes from the selected project(s), such as avoided emissions and green tag reporting rights. These attributes would then be passed from the Trust to PGE and/or PacifiCorp, based on their wind purchase amounts.
The Trust's first evaluation criteria for RFP submissions is defined as "the amount of Integrated energy delivered per dollar of Energy Trust support required. To the extent a proposal does not include Ancillary Services, the Utilities' costs of creating an Integrated product from the As-Delivered energy will be added to the proposed prices. It is expected that the projects that provide the lowest cost of energy without the Energy Trust funds will best meet this criteria; however, individual bidders' financial situation, or creative uses of the Energy Trust funds may create additional value."
Ability to deliver is the second evaluation criteria, including likelihood of meeting the December 2003 operational deadline and reliability of long-term energy projections. Creditworthiness is the third criteria.
After the Aug. 21 proposal deadline, the Trust's RFP schedule calls for notification of shortlisted ventures by Sept. 21, followed by negotiated letters of intent. Final contract negotiations are planned from Oct. 18 to Nov. 22.--Mark Ohrenschall
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High in the sky above, giant rotor blades spin around and around and around at the top of huge gray towers ... whoosh, whoosh, whoosh ...
This is the sight and the sound of wind energy at its source.
I find it mesmerizing, standing on a service road at the Stateline Energy Center along the Oregon-Washington border. Rows upon rows of turbines--399 machines in all, each rising about as high as a 25-story building--snake across rolling brown hills near the Columbia River's westward bend toward the sea.
I could stay for hours and hours, watching and listening, but our bus is leaving. My wife Janice and I are on a Wind & Wine Tour sponsored by Peninsula Light Co., visiting Stateline as well as three southeastern Washington wineries.
With plenty of time to ponder on this two-day cross-state journey, my mind wandered beyond the enthralling physical presence of this 263-megawatt-capacity wind farm--soon expanding to 300 MW--into green power and its marketing, public and private roles in wind energy, indigenous resources, the history of the West ... and the Cabernet Sauvignon swirling around my mouth. OK, it wasn't all energy business. But it was enlightening.
Wind & Wine Tour
First, full disclosure: I am not a Peninsula Light customer. But through circumstances and exemplary cooperation from Jonathan White, Pat Maynard and their Peninsula Light colleagues, I arranged a Christmas gift last year for Janice's aunt and uncle in Gig Harbor, WA to become the utility's first green power customers. I subsequently learned about the Wind & Wine Tour planned for mid-June, which offered a chance to visit Stateline, taste some Washington wines and enjoy a brief getaway on the dry side of the Cascades. So we paid our fees and joined the busload of about 40 other people heading east the morning of June 14.
Our first stop was the Darigold Dairy Fair in Sunnyside, followed by Washington Hills Cellars a short drive away. We sampled the free Merlot, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon brands, but declined to pay $5 for three tastes of some premium labels.
This clever marketing strategy led me to wonder if such product differentiation would eventually permeate green power, as the market matures and more supplying resources are available. It already exists in certain instances, as, for example, with Portland General Electric's three separate green power offerings and Xantrex Technology and Schott Applied Power's recent green tag purchases from Bonneville Environmental Foundation, each of which specified 5-percent solar content.
Perhaps one day a green-power buyer could ask, say, for 40 percent wind, 30 percent solar, 20 percent landfill gas and 10 percent nuclear (for its carbon-free properties). And pay accordingly, on a market basis, for each choice.
The ultimate green power choice, of course, would be no choice--all power sources would be renewable.
Peninsula Light's Green Choice program offers blended retail green power, consisting of wind and low-impact hydro resources.
At our lunch stop in Kennewick, Jonathan, the tour leader, praised Peninsula's green power customers as "pioneers supporting renewable energy. You are the ones who are going to drive that market." But he also acknowledged the need to expand beyond the standard demographic, and the low-single-digit percentage of utility customers who actually buy green power.
One way to do so is showing renewable energy in action--a basic premise of the tour. "Seeing is believing," Jonathan told us. "Hopefully you can convince other folks for renewable energy so we can transform this market." I noted the group included Tacoma city council member Bill Evans and an official from a Puget Sound air pollution agency--both of whom are likely to spread the Stateline word in their circles, as will the other tourists, including yours truly.
Private and Public
Jonathan made another intriguing point in his presentation, on private investment and publicly owned utilities. It takes considerable money and assumption of risk, preceded by demand, to put together a capital-intensive major wind farm. "It's not always going to be public utilities," he said. "They typically don't have the capital investment to do it, unless it's in a consortium."
Indeed, that touches on a significant aspect of the Northwest wind energy boom. The vast majority of the approximately 450 MW of installed wind capacity in the region or earmarked for the region is owned by private concerns. The only exceptions that I know are Energy Northwest's 48-MW-capacity Nine Canyon Wind Project--a public-power consortium effort--and Eugene Water & Electric Board's 20-percent share of Foote Creek Rim I in Wyoming. In the public domain, entities such as Last Mile Electric Cooperative are working on wind ventures, while Bonneville Power Administration, Seattle City Light and EWEB are major purchasers of Northwest wind power. Yet buying is not owning, with all the potential implications.
But ours is a capitalistic society, of course, and Jonathan's point about capital is on point. FPL Energy (a subsidiary of FPL Group, which totalled $781 million in net income in 2001) SeaWest WindPower, Vestas Wind Systems and many other private enterprises large and small have advanced wind power to its present stage--with considerable help from the federal government, particularly for research and development along with the production tax credit, a vital financial element.
So we can fairly describe wind's strong growth as a private-public partnership. Or, from another perspective, as taxpayer subsidized.
Resource Extraction
Riding across Washington, past logged forests and mighty dams that fuel agriculture and other industries, I was reminded anew of the West's history of resource extraction.
Wind power fits within this broad historical sweep, but its impacts on land, water, air and wildlife are generally benign, while offering compelling local benefits in the forms of lease payments to landowners, substantial property tax revenues for rural communities and a few jobs. It also allows farming and ranching to continue with minimal disruptions. Stateline, for example, stretches across 50 square miles but physically disturbs just 160 acres, according to FPL Energy community relations manager Anne Walsh.
Even in private ownership, wind energy still produces considerable public good, ranging from a clean power source to local economic development.
Stateline Overview
Speaking at the Kennewick lunch, Walsh gave an overview of the Stateline project and its construction. This is heavy-duty building. She listed such features as 15-foot-deep to 25-foot-deep tower foundations, some 38 miles of new roads and turbines weighing 75 tons apiece. Each fiberglass blade weighs 3,300 pounds. The wind farm infrastructure includes a new substation, a transformer for each turbine and sophisticated computer controls that adjust blades to take maximum advantage of the wind. Each turbine can generate 660 kilowatts at wind speeds between 28 mph and 56 mph; stronger than that, and the blades feather.
Walsh also mentioned Stateline's popularity--each month some 700 people go on site tours and 200 people listen to presentations.
Up to Stateline
With this informational background our tour leaves the Tri-Cities, past the confluence of the Columbia and Snake rivers. Near Wallula Junction we catch our first glimpse of turbines up on the hills, eliciting a "wow" from one passenger.
The bus turns off U.S. Highway 12 and chugs up a fairly steep and winding gravel road, which eventually flattens in view of turbines looming ahead. These are some reactions from fellow tourists: "cool", "gorgeous", "otherworldly", "unbelievable" and "My God." It is, indeed, a truly stunning sight.
Ironically, this is a relatively calm day and Walsh tells us the spinning blades are probably not generating electricity (minimum required wind speed is 12 mph). Fall, winter and early spring bring typically stronger winds than in summer.
The bus stops on the service road, and we file out into the parched late afternoon, while the blades greet us with their rhythmic whoosh.
We are allowed inside one of the hollow towers, where instruments show real-time wind speed, power generation and blade pitch, among other data.
After a while the heat drives most of our group into the long thin afternoon shadow cast by this turbine, but I am energized and wander around, wishing I could lie on my back in the stubby brown fields and simply enjoy the kinetic elegance of these machines--so simple in motion and appearance, and yet so large and technologically advanced.
On our drive out I spot what appears to be a hawk circling above, another on a fence post and a smaller bird darting down the hill. I am sure this project has some avian mortality (wind industry jargon for bird kills), but these sightings indicate some apparent coexistence.
Far below, Walsh points out the site of a proposed 1,300-MW natural gas-fired plant at Wallula Junction--a reminder to me that wind, for all its recent development and long-term promise, remains a minor energy resource for the Northwest.
Golf, Indigenous Resources
The next morning, we leave Walla Walla and visit a couple of local wineries on our way home.
Three Rivers Winery has a well-manicured three-hole pitch-and-putt golf course, which Janice and I and another tourist play twice under a soothingly warm sun. Wouldn't it be cool, I think, looking over at the nearby Vansycle Ridge turbines, to combine a golf course with a wind farm? Imagine a hole requiring a shot through the spinning blades! OK, that's frivolous, and logistically impractical. I must have sipped too much of that delectable 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon.
Our next visit, to L'Ecole No. 41, led me to contemplate indigenous resources. Most of its grapes are locally produced, we learned. And the winery building itself is a charmingly refurbished 1915 schoolhouse--another native resource, updated to serve the modern wine industry, itself a growing presence in southeastern Washington.
So, too, is harvesting the wind making productive use from a locally abundant and renewable resource--an example of sustainability in practice.
Kittitas Valley Wind
Between Yakima and Ellensburg a minor mechanical problem forces our bus to stop on Manastash Ridge, overlooking the Kittitas Valley--and the site of a proposed 100-MW to 250-MW wind farm by Zilkha Renewable Energy (see Con.WEB, May 31, 2002).
This would be another instance of indigenous resource development, as anyone buffeted by Kittitas Valley breezes can attest. It would also lie within two hours drive of Seattle, near Interstate 90, a highly visible location that could generate tremendous awareness and, presumably, support of renewables.
But the project is locally controversial. Some residents are loudly worrying about visual impacts, and associated problems, in their scenic mountain-ringed valley. Others appreciate the economic development opportunities.
One Ellensburg community leader told me earlier he wouldn't want to be a Kittitas County commissioner making a decision on this wind farm. It will be a challenging call, certainly, but in the end a judgment will be made indigenously (assuming Zilkha follows through with its proposal). I think the outcome will hint at the future scale of wind development in our region, especially around Cascadia.--Mark Ohrenschall
Oregon is a national leader in using tax incentives to give energy-efficient products and green buildings a leg up in the marketplace, according to a new study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
Oregon's residential and business income tax credit programs have "gained enthusiastic support from legislators, retailers, and manufacturers, as well as consumers," since they were established in response to the 1970s energy shortages, the study said.
Oregon offers a 35 percent income tax credit to businesses for the incremental cost of energy-efficient equipment and buildings. Business tax credits also are available for alternative energy systems, recycling and commute trip reduction projects. Residents are eligible for income tax credits for purchasing a variety of efficient appliances, motor vehicles and alternative energy systems.
Oregon's success can be attributed to two factors: the state has a strong constituency for resource conservation, and the programs are well designed and managed, said study co-author Liz Brown, an ACEEE research assistant. Oregon's Business Energy Tax Credit program, for example, takes a "modular" approach that allows for easy integration of new incentives--such as the green building credits introduced in 2001--"when the constituency arises for them," she said.
Another factor in Oregon's favor is the work of other programs, such as the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance's market transformation projects, that build "brand recognition" of Energy Star, the study reported.
The study did acknowledge Oregon's tax credit programs this year will cost the state about $22 million in foregone revenues. The state, meanwhile, is planning a study this year to quantify the economic benefits of energy efficiency.
Important Characteristics for Incentives
The ACEEE study examined incentive programs in nine states--Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York. It said incentives are useful for overcoming market barriers to energy-efficient products, including high first costs, lack of awareness and resistance to unfamiliar technologies.
The study concluded that state incentive programs should have the following characteristics to be effective:
"It's the money. Follow the money," said Oregon Office of Energy analyst Charlie Stephens. Energy Star clothes washers are eligible for state tax credits of $160 to $230, and have penetrated about 30 percent of Oregon's market for new washing machines, one of the highest penetration rates in the nation. "When you're talking about a machine costing around $1,000, that $230 makes a difference," Stephens said.
In contrast, the maximum value of Idaho's income tax deduction for residential insulation and windows is $390. "Given the high cost of installing windows and insulation, this is not strong encouragement for their installation," the study said, adding that anecdotal information indicates this deduction is not widely taken.
In addition, Oregon eligibility standards must be backed up with data ensuring that qualifying equipment will deliver measurable savings. "Everything (eligible) has to have a standard test procedure," Stephens said. For example, credits are not available for residential cooking stoves because there is insufficient data on consumer usage habits that would be needed to calculate valid savings estimates.
'Virtuous Circle'
By stimulating the market for energy-efficient products and building practices, well-designed incentive programs can create a "virtuous circle," the study said. As sales of efficient products grow, salespeople, equipment specifiers and other market players become vested in the technology. As a result, more equipment suppliers enter the market, heightening competition and driving down prices.
An intangible benefit of incentive programs is validating new technologies, the study said. "The nice thing about credits is they provide a great deal of education," Brown said.
However, a Maytag representative interviewed for the study said customers and retail sales staff need more education to help them understand efficiency ratings and credits. The Maytag representative said vendors can be strong allies of state incentive programs once they understand that credits support the sale of more profitable premium products.
Hard lessons were learned from federal tax credits offered between 1977 and 1985 for insulation and storm windows. A 1992 review by the federal Office of Technology Assessment concluded these programs did little to change consumer behavior. The federal credits were relatively small and for widely available products, creating a free rider problem, the ACEEE study said. A 1983 survey found that 88 percent of households that took the credits would have installed the equipment anyway.
Green Building Incentives
State incentive programs are diverse, reflecting each state's unique needs and constituencies, the study found.
Green building incentives, for example, are offered in Oregon, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York, which have strong citizen environmental movements and leading-edge designers and construction companies.
Green building programs have been in place only since 2001. Although there is growing interest in resource-efficient design and construction, the study said "many owners and builders who recognize the benefits of green buildings will still need incentives to go beyond common practices until the technologies and practices of green buildings are generally accepted."
Green building methods can have "substantially high first costs," Brown said. "That's a barrier. As time goes by, however, there will be greater acceptance."
Oregon Programs
Unlike the other three states offering green building incentives, Oregon adopted LEED to set incentive levels--rather than its own criteria--because it's an accepted set of standards familiar to architects and builders, the study reported.
Oregon gives higher tax credits for achieving higher LEED standards. For example, the allowable cost cap for buildings meeting the silver LEED standard is $5.71 for the first 10,000 square feet. For the platinum LEED standard, the eligible cost cap is $14.29 per square foot for the first 10,000 square feet. In addition, qualifying buildings must be at least 20 percent more efficient than base-case buildings. Credits are capped at $10 million per project.
Oregon's green building credits are among the state's newest incentives. Since the late 1970s, Oregon's residential and business programs have progressed steadily in both scope and in performance levels required to qualify for credits, the study said.
Since their introduction in 1998, the state has given 88,000 appliance credits, 44,000 in 2001 alone. However, Stephens added, the state can't say for sure how many appliance purchases resulted directly from the availability of credits.
The study found that ease of use is one reason for the success of Oregon's residential program. Income tax credit applications are available at retail outlets. At a Corvallis appliance store, for example, a customer who buys a qualifying refrigerator can have the tax credit application ready for processing within 10 minutes of purchase.
Incentives introduced in 2001 for 90 percent-plus efficient furnaces with electronically commutated variable-speed fan motors have been wildly popular, Stephens said. After the $350 tax credits were introduced, the market penetration of these furnaces rose dramatically. In October 2001, Stephens said, the qualifying units held 35 percent of the statewide furnace replacement market. Three months later, the penetration rate was 52 percent.
The efficiency savings are "enormous," plus the units deliver a "nice, even heat" that improves home comfort, Stephens said. "These furnaces are electronically controlled, so they deliver a constant level of air no matter how bad your ducts are," he explained.
Stephens told the study authors that some HVAC dealers have sold out of qualifying furnaces and have stopped stocking furnaces that are not eligible for tax credits.
Economic Benefits, Foregone Revenues
The state is planning a study this year to quantify the economic benefits of energy efficiency. A general survey of appliance buyers, plus specific surveys of furnace purchasers and contractors, will be used to estimate the value of energy savings. "We'll try to figure out how people spent the money from energy savings. There's a real need to help people understand the larger economic picture, of the money we're keeping in Oregon rather than sending to Texas or Canada," Stephens said.
The study did report two problems with Oregon's residential programs: administrative costs and foregone state revenues. "Good budgeting is needed to minimize the effect of the lost tax revenue. Even so, the lost revenue is small (less than 0.5 percent) compared to Oregon's state budget of $10.6 billion," the study said. With the addition of credits for more appliances and hybrid-electric vehicles this year, the credits are expected to cost the state between $5 million and $6 million annually, the study estimated.
The annual revenue impact of the state's business energy tax credits was $4 million to $9 million per year from the mid-1980s until last year. As a result of the popularity of business tax credits, the Legislature removed cost caps in 2001, which will increase foregone revenues to an estimated $17 million annually, the report said.
For businesses, Oregon's credits can improve the economic attractiveness of efficiency upgrades by reducing payback periods. A Portland Kinko's store used state tax credits and utility incentives to reduce the payback period for a $3,400 lighting upgrade by 50 percent, to only 1.5 years. After the payback period, the $1,000 annual lighting energy savings will go straight to the store's bottom line.
The Kinko's store leveraged two incentive programs to improve the economics of the lighting upgrade. On a broader scale, leveraging opportunities could be expanded through the public-purposes revenues collected from Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp customers.
Stephens hopes the Energy Trust of Oregon, which administers most of the state's public-purposes funding, will work with the tax credit programs by targeting commercialization of promising technologies. "They can leverage our program and get bigger savings by strategically selecting technologies," he observed.--Jim DiPeso
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A three-month citywide LED traffic light retrofit project in Portland completed in December should save about $400,000 in annual energy and maintenance costs and pay for itself in less than three years, according to a recently released report from the city of Portland's Office of Sustainable Development and the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance.
LED (light-emitting diode) cost reductions, lease options and state tax credits enabled Portland to retrofit the entire city--more than 13,000 red and green signal lamps--in one fell swoop and complete the $2.2 million project with no capital investment.
Three-Part Phenomenon
Curt Nichols, the Office of Sustainable Development's senior energy manager, explained the project's financial feasibility as a three-part phenomenon, largely dependent on the opportunity to lease rather than purchase the lights.
First, the lease, at slightly more than $340,000 annually, spreads the capital cost of the lights over time at a level close to the $335,000 projected annual energy savings. Second, the savings from leasing allowed the city to use contract labor for installation, rather than switching public works employees from current projects. The contractors were then able to finish the project before 2002, making the city eligible for Portland General Electric and Pacific Power energy efficiency rebates totaling $715,000.
Third, the lease allowed the city to benefit from Oregon's Business Energy Tax Credit, normally reserved for businesses investing in energy projects, and good for 35 percent of eligible project cost. Oregon laws allowed the leasing company, Dooling Lease Management, to pass a portion of that benefit on to its customer, saving the city nearly $500,000. The law has since been changed to allow equipment suppliers and contractors to pass a portion of the credit (up to 27 percent of project cost) on to their customers, even without a lease agreement.
LEDs on The Rise
Nichols said he and a few other "energy geeks" followed the results of a Philadelphia LED retrofit in the early 1990s. Portland considered such a project a few years later, but green LEDs were not available, and a red light-only retrofit would have taken nine years to pay for itself because of high light prices and low energy rates.
By 2001, however, energy prices were rising and competition and economies of scale had brought LED prices to less than half of 1995 levels. When the energy crisis hit, Nichols said, he went through the numbers again. "Everybody in the media, and my bosses, and their bosses, were asking, 'What is the city doing now?'"
LED bulbs use between 16 watts and 25 watts each and are expected to last six or more years, compared to more than 140 watts apiece for standard (and even energy-saving) incandescents, whose life averages just two years. For Portland that translates to LED traffic light energy use of 1.2 million kilowatt-hours per year and a bill estimated at $85,000, compared to 6.1 million KWh costing $435,000 for incandescents. Maintenance savings from fewer replacement projects is expected to run around $45,000 per year, according to the report.--Ben Gilbert
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Two Montana hotels using a new comprehensive HVAC system invented by a former energy engineer are among the first lodging facilities to receive the federal Energy Star label.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in June extended its Energy Star program to hotels, with an Energy Performance Rating System based on energy performance data over a one-year period, accounting for square footage, occupancy rates and number of rooms.
The Bozeman Wingate Inn scored 95 and the Laurel Super 8 scored 100 on the EPRS 1-100 point scale. Both use Ultimate Comfort Systems, a company and approach started by Steven Clark in the early 1990s and bought by Texas-based PowerCold 18 months ago.
Rather than a separate, bulky, through-the-wall HVAC unit in each room--as is standard in many hotels--the Ultimate Comfort Systems integrates heating and sprinkler systems, routing pipes through rooms and using a four-pipe fan coil to blow air off the pipes and regulate temperature and ventilation to each guest's preference.
40 Percent Lower Electric Bills
The complication and cost of rerouting pipes effectively prohibits simple retrofitting with UCS, so new construction or major renovation projects are generally the target customers. "It's so integral with the piping systems that the economics come from using the pipe that you're putting there anyway," Clark explained. "It's a little tougher to do it as an afterthought."
The system results in electricity bills that average 40 percent less than similar facilities using traditional HVAC compressor units, according to UCS figures. The company calculates construction costs of $12 to $17 per square foot for its system, compared to $11 to $15 per square foot using individual HVAC units--an increased cost that can be recouped with energy savings and increased revenues from repeat guests.
Bozeman Wingate Inn owner Steve Sparks said the UCS system paid for itself in less than two years and garnered positive comments from guests who slept soundly without the ticking, rattling and temperature variation of most air-conditioning units. Sparks plans to work with UCS on a new Wingate Inn he's developing in Greenwood Village, CO.
PowerCold's acquisition of UCS added marketing and manufacturing resources, and integrated PowerCold's patented Nauticon evaporative water-cooled condenser into the system, first installed at the Laurel Super 8.
The Nauticon condenser is installed on a skid through the wall of a hotel's facilities room, with the chiller on the outside and plumbing delivering cooled water to the sprinkler and air-conditioning system inside. The system also features an exhaust air exchanger and dehumidifier that uses exiting waste air to heat or cool incoming fresh air, without mixing the two streams.
UCS Market
The UCS system has been installed in about 20 buildings since its invention, and each time it has become more efficient, according to Clark. Most of those installations have been in the Northwest, including hotels in Boise and Great Falls, Hamilton and Missoula in Montana.
UCS recently moved the majority of its operations to Tampa, FL, where president Robert Yoho told Con.WEB the market may be better for air-conditioned, dehumidified environments. UCS has since been working with several developers to design an energy efficiency showcase hotel in St. Augustine, FL that would use solar energy for heating guest rooms and swimming pools, and nylon evaporator and heating coils that resist salt air corrosion.
PowerCold president Frank Simola told Con.WEB the company is about to announce "quite a few new orders" from several major hotel chains. Yoho said UCS is still pricing and negotiating for 15 or 20 possible projects, and more than 30 hotels have made inquiries. The company anticipates expanding into managed-care facilities, condominiums, apartment buildings and offices where HVAC systems could benefit from an integrated approach; Yoho said that as yet, the hotel market has kept his staff plenty busy.
Finding contractors to work with UCS on design and installation for the individual projects has sometimes been difficult, Yoho said, forcing PowerCold and UCS to do some work in-house and slowing their ability to take on as many projects as the market might demand. "Really we don't have to sell the job, we just have to have the manpower to produce the system," Yoho said. With newer designs, "When you go into the engineering community you run into a lot of older engineers that don't want to change. A lot of engineers can be more concerned with what they design than what the owner needs."--Ben Gilbert
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With the help of a funding partner, changes in Oregon's Business Energy Tax Credit program and a new state electric industry restructuring law, $3.7 million for energy-saving projects will be made available to almost 100 Oregon public schools this year.
This spring public schools partnered with Nike--the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in Oregon--to make use of the new "pass-through" option in the BETC program, which gives agencies with no state tax liability, such as tribes, local governments and schools, incentives to complete energy efficiency projects.
These agencies must find a private funding partner that can claim 27 percent of the project's cost as a credit against its own tax liability, which is then passed through to the agency. In Nike's case, the company redirected $1 million of tax liability to pay for school projects, and will be repaid through 35 percent state tax credits over the next five years.
This financing comes at a time when property tax limitation initiatives and state budget shortfalls have severely limited public school monies. In this environment, energy efficiency endeavors are some of the most difficult projects for which to leverage money; as schools struggle to keep classrooms staffed with teachers, facilities and capital improvements suffer.
Leveraging Conservation Funding
With this initial funding, the schools leveraged another $2.7 million for energy conservation projects through Oregon's restructuring law that took effect in March. Three percent of Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp statewide electric revenues are earmarked for public purposes, predominantly energy efficiency and renewable energy via the Energy Trust of Oregon. The first 10 percent of public-purposes funding is dedicated to energy efficiency audits and projects in public school facilities.
"It's my hope that we can find other industrial customers and other large companies in Oregon who will be willing to also do this for the rest of the schools in the state. It's a real incentive to move some programs on," said Betty Merrill, school program specialist for the Oregon Office of Energy, which facilitates administration of the public-purposes school funding.
Because of strained budgets, Merrill added, public schools can't afford to finance energy efficiency projects over time--they need up-front money. "If schools are going to be taking money out of their budgets for the next 10 years, it's not going to get paid for."
School Projects
Six schools--Floyd Light Middle School, Gilbert Park Elementary School, Gilbert Heights Elementary School, Powers High School, Powers Elementary School and Astoria Middle School--have completed projects this year for a total projected annual savings of 635,000 kilowatt-hours and $32,000. PGE and PacifiCorp also provided incentives for these projects, according to an OOE news release.
All the projects to date have focused on lighting retrofits, replacing T-12 lamps and magnetic ballasts with T-8 lamps and electronic ballasts. Powers High School and Powers Elementary in southern Coos County also replaced incandescent bulbs with metal halides, compact fluorescents and LED (light-emitting diode) exit lights, resulting in a 60-percent reduction in the high school's power bill. Astoria Middle School also replaced some mercury vapor lights with T-5 high output lamps.
Two other schools are in the midst of completing projects, while many more are applying for funding and undergoing energy audits. OOE expects to complete about 100 projects this year; 700 schools statewide will undergo energy audits in the coming years, and seek funding for projects involving HVAC controls, boiler retrofits and boiler and chiller energy management.--Ben Gilbert
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Many things in Eugene are green: the verdant foliage, the University of Oregon school colors, the widespread environmental ethic.
And so are a growing number of local buildings.
Four were spotlighted at a March forum titled "Green in Eugene," which featured a range of green building types, owners and development stages. Two are finished: Food for Lane County and Co-Motion Cycles; and the two others are under construction: the downtown Eugene Public Library and the UO's Lillis Business Complex.
Among green building themes shared at the forum--sponsored by the Oregon Chapter of the Association of Professional Energy Managers--were the importance of owner and project team commitment, an early start in design, synergies, productivity gains and consideration of people's needs. Those, in addition to specific energy-saving strategies for heating, cooling and lighting.
Food for Lane County, Co-Motion Cycles
These two award-winning buildings both emphasive passive approaches to heating/cooling and lighting, making use of such features as building orientation, operable windows, appropriate reflection and shading and ceiling fans. Neither has a mechanical HVAC system, according to Galen Ohmart of Solarc Architecture and Engineering, who designed both buildings.
He first described Food for Lane County, a food bank that also provides a variety of other services.
The FLC site runs long east to west, he said, a fortunate circumstance that allowed placement of offices on the south side and the food warehouse wrapped behind, to the north. This helps the warehouse stay roughly 10 degrees cooler than the outside air, according to Ohmart. It also protects from the sharpest summer sun from the east and west.
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| Food for Lane County offices (Photo by David Simone/Lightworks Photography) |
Daylighting is a key feature of the building, which has won an Architecture + Energy Award from the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
In the original design, Ohmart said, a narrower roof monitor would have brought too much light into the center and created surrounding dark spots. G.Z. Brown of the UO Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory recommended a wider opening for more even distribution of daylighting, which is roughly split between the warehouse and office spaces.
The offices also have dimming ballasts for electric lighting, while the warehouse electric lighting system features a simple three-step operation: on, half-on or off, depending on daylight, which Ohmart said is available roughly 80 percent of the time.
While the office spaces have T-5 fluorescent lamps, the warehouse uses more conventional and less efficient T-8s with electronic ballasts. Such an extensively daylit space "brings up the question of the quality and expense you want to put into a lighting system, a more efficient system, when you get the benefits of daylight," Ohmart said. "We're sensitive to paying for something twice."
Meanwhile, exterior sunshades help block direct light. But this element caused a minor ruckus during construction. "We came to budget crunch time and they wanted to jettison" these shades to save $30,000, Ohmart said. His reply: "No way those are coming out. Take out the walls, doors, anything but the sunshades. Those are going in." He reminded others that the project had already spent $70,000 on glass and eliminated a mechanical cooling system. He compared a daylit building without shading to an eye without eyelids--"a very small feature, but very important."
Contractors and subcontractors often consider design features such as sunshades as easy cost-cutting targets, Ohmart said. "They don't really understand the sophistication. They're looking out for what they perceive as the owner's interest. For a lot of them, it's dollar-driven. If they can save $30,000, they're as happy as can be." The project actually ended up using locally produced and less expensive sunshades.
He did note interior light shelves were eliminated for budget reasons, although a mezzanine helps shield direct sunlight.
The offices and warehouse both rely on natural ventilation--essentially a chimney effect, according to Ohmart. In the summer months, a rooftop louver on the warehouse side enables cooler outside air to gradually replace inside air during the night. Ceiling fans circulate air when the office spaces become warm, as in late afternoon. "You have to educate clients; they need to buy off on this" passive cooling strategy, he said. "If they need 74 degrees max, in summer, we really can't go down this road."
Co-Motion Cycles, a bicycle design and manufacturing company, incorporates many of the same design principles as Food for Lane County: a roof monitor for daylighting, natural ventilation with fan cooling, supplementary heating from gas furnaces, operable windows.
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| Co-Motion Cycles (Photo by David Simone/Lightworks Photography) |
With both facilities, Ohmart said it didn't cost more to go green. The money saved from eliminating conventional HVAC systems was applied elsewhere, as an example. "By making those trade-off decisions a green building can cost the same," he said. "With that said, if you wanted everything else like a traditional office building and you wanted all the greeen, then you are going to be spending more money ... Does a green building cost more? The answer is, it depends."
Both Food for Lane County and Co-Motion Cycles are also saving money on energy bills, although that was not a primary consideration. "The clients came from the standpoint that they wanted a wonderful space to be in," Ohmart said. "They did not come to me and say they have to save $100 a month" on power bills.
In any case lower electricity costs are dwarfed by the benefits from more efficient employees, whose salaries account for the vast majority of business expenses, he said. "If you get 6 percent, 7 percent, 2 percent increase in productivity--the number doesn't matter--if you get some, you've got your payback right there."
Asked about the main team ingredients for successful green building projects, Ohmart emphasized a steadfast owner. "If the owner's committed, it allows you to bring in the expertise you need early. Our approach, the best approach, is to have an integrated team" focusing on green from the beginning, discussing such vital issues as targets, costs and synergistic benefits.
UO Lillis Business Complex
As a public institution dating to 1876 and anticipating a lengthy future, the University of Oregon plans far ahead with its new buildings. "We want to do it right, instead of doing it twice," said UO planning associate Fred Tepfer. "We also want to tailor buildings to user reality."
These traits are incorporated in the Lillis Business Complex, a new four-story $40 million facility for which a ground-breaking ceremony was held April 2. A UO news release on the 196,500-square-foot construction/renovation project called it "a monument to maximizing available resources: for the student, for the environment and for the future economic health of the state."
It will feature energy consumption projected at about 45 percent below state code, significant daylighting, natural ventilation strategies, computer controls and (possibly) a large solar photovoltaic system.
First, Tepfer said, university officials confronted a basic question: "How sustainable is it to tear down a building?" Approaches were considered to keep classroom facilities built in 1952, but in the end they were deemed too structurally inflexible to meet unknown future needs. "The scheme to make it work was so compromised, the decision was made to wipe clean and start over," he said. The project includes 145,000 square feet of new construction, with a large glass atrium.
Green building approaches benefitted from early engagement by university officials, students, faculty and designers, Tepfer said. A series of energy discussions helped develop ideas, including a long east-west orientation with the four-story atrium in the middle. That, in turn, opened up daylighting opportunities.
"Daylighting's magic if you can get people to use it," Tepfer said. In collaboration with UO's Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory, a concept emerged for a control system to deliver appropriate lighting from daylight and electric sources. "It sounds really easy, but it's not," he said. "If it works, I think it represents a conceptual breakthrough of a huge magnitude." This will apply mainly to classrooms, auditoriums and lecture halls; faculty offices will have occupancy sensors, but otherwise will rely on manual controls. Light shelves and sunshades will help balance daylight.
Before heating and cooling systems were designed, workers in the existing Gilbert Hall were asked about thermal comfort. "It appears there are a number of opportunities to raise the top end of the comfort zone, based on this research," Tepfer said. "We also know that buildings that have effective user controls, operable windows, plentiful outside air, have higher satisfaction" for workers.
A mix of passive and mechanical systems will heat and cool the Lillis complex.
The atrium will act as a chimney to enable night cooling, assisted by a couple of booster fans. Emergency exhaust fans with variable-frequency drives allow for smoke control.
Cool night air from a louver/damper system will also flow under the floors in classroom and office spaces and then out into the atrium. A computer-controlled system--requested by workers as a backup to the passive approach--will furnish cool air as needed, based on an upper comfort limit of 84 degrees. Ceiling fans will circulate air on warm days. Cooling needs will be further reduced by the predominant use of flat-screen and laptop computers.
Meanwhile, radiant sources, such as hot-water tubes, will furnish heating in the well-insulated but not extraordinarily insulated complex.
Occupany sensors in offices will adjust lighting as well as heating and cooling loads from the mechanical system. "That turned out to be extremely inexpensive to do," Tepfer said. "We already had detection going. We just had to go back to the box."
These strategies will save considerable energy, and also lead to other benefits, Tepfer said. For example, seismic bracing became simpler and more resource-efficient without having to account for a heavy rooftop packaged HVAC unit. And maintenance workers will do fewer fix-it jobs than if the complex had more sophisticated air-handling units.
UO is pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council--at least silver and possibly gold--for the Lillis Business Complex. Tepfer said there was some initial hesitation because of the additional cost to seek LEED, but time donations by design professionals helped make it work.
Eugene Public Library
The city's new library is rising in the heart of downtown Eugene, scheduled for completion late this year. The $31 million, four-story, 127,500-square-foot building will feature a potpourri of green building strategies, including a planned 30-percent energy consumption below Oregon code requirements.
Building designers hope to reach LEED certification, although city project manager Brad Black acknowledged "some scrambles" because this goal was established about one-third through the design process.
"Understand what your goals are up-front," said Keith Hubbard of Balzhiser & Hubbard Engineers, which is working on the project. "It's really hard to back into anything."
Green building concepts developed for the library include widespread daylighting, some natural ventilation, considerable use of outside air, building commissioning, resource reuse, construction waste management and locally available materials.
Hubbard, outlining air strategies, said designers "realized quickly that libraries are large people loads. They come and go during the day and move around in the building. One of the biggest loads, then, is ventilation loads." Designers intend to provide sufficient ventilation to occupied spaces--but not more. "Otherwise, it's a waste of energy."
Three rooftop units each will have two fan systems with separate ducting, one providing ventilation with 100-percent outside air, the other for heating and cooling. This allows control of ventilated air separate from heating and cooling loads, Hubbard said--a relatively uncommon approach.
Ventilated air will flow through a low-velocity duct system, which will reduce friction losses and limit energy consumption. Carbon dioxide and occupancy sensors will primarily determine the amount of ventilated air for interior spaces, although Hubbard said some such air will always flow.
Heating will originate from two high-efficiency gas-fired condensing boilers, while two air-cooled chillers will provide mechanical cooling. An economizer cycle will bring in outside air for cooling. And the first-floor children's area will have operable windows, but nowhere else, because of temperature control reasons, according to Hubbard.
Illumination is a central issue for a library where people come to read, noted lighting designer Greg Hansen of Balzhiser & Hubbard. "There's a whole series of considerations that come into play when designing lighting, energy being only one part of it ... Lighting quality was a primary concern." That involves contrast ratios, light source and distribution characteristics, and illumination levels.
Luminaire aesthetics were an important consideration, Hansen said, citing priorities for timeless design, integration with the building and thematic consistency. Maintenance matters, too, and so lighting equipment longevity and component consistency came into play.
And for energy, he said, "We're designing a dynamic building here. You don't just walk in and turn the lights on. It's a daylit space. You have to look at energy use over time, not just connected load. We call it adaptive compensation."
The building is designed for daylight, Hubbard said, with considerable glass on the north side, a little on the west and east sides, and minimal south-facing windows.
Mechanized shades (particularly for reading rooms on the east and west) will help control daylight, Hansen said, while photocells inside and outside will help integrate daylight with electric lights. A total of 80 percent of fixtures will be dimmable, compared with a typical percentage of 10 percent to 15 percent. This will better enable the system to match electric lighting needs with available daylight, while improving visual quality. The library also will feature many different lighting zones with customized strategies. Lighting controls (13 networked panels) informed by occupancy sensors will oversee the system.
In lighting technologies, the library will sport 192 luminaire types and six different lamp types (linear and compact fluorescents, electrodeless induction, metal halide, halogen and cold cathode). Altogether, connected load should account for about a 25 percent to 30 percent reduction in energy use, while dimming and daylighting should add considerably more, Hansen said. He estimated total lighting power density for the library at 0.85 watts per square foot, compared with 1.23 watts per square foot average under the occupancy method of Oregon's non-residential energy code.--Mark Ohrenschall
More Information:
Conservation of electricity, not mild weather or a sluggish economy, was the main reason California did not experience rotating outages during the summer of 2001, declared a new study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Between 3,000 megawatts and 5,500 MW of peak energy demand never showed up last summer, said LBL, largely as a result of changes in consumer behavior and responses to media messages about impending blackouts. The study claims 1,100 MW of lasting savings resulted from 2001 efforts.
Heading into summer 2001, said senior LBL researcher Chuck Goldman, all the forecasts called for severe power constraints and involuntary service curtailments similar to those experienced from January through May. "But the blackouts never happened last summer," he said. "Our research addresses the role that customer load reductions played."
The study, by Goldman and colleagues Joe Eto and Galen Barbose, looked at factors that have been attributed to reduced demand: media awareness; tiered rate hikes imposed by the California Public Utilities Commission; utility energy efficiency programs; the 20/20 conservation incentive program; demand-response programs administered by utilities and the California Independent System Operator; and other efforts to encourage conservation.
Each contributed in significant ways, Goldman told Energy NewsData's California Energy Markets newsletter, but, "It's impossible to separate out effects of the six factors we studied."
An important finding in the study was that at least a quarter of the demand reductions, some 1,100 MW worth, are sustainable into the future. These resulted not from short-term behavior changes in response to the energy crisis but from long-lasting efficiency equipment installations and new, clean distributed-generation projects installed last year. "We think this will persist over time," Goldman said. However, he said, that means 75 percent of the savings cannot be relied upon into the future without additional effort.
Still, consumer actions managed to bolster operating reserves during at least 60 hours and as many as 150 hours last year, preventing the need for staged emergency declarations or rotating outages, LBL said.
The detailed study provided a comprehensive analysis of weather data from more than 120 stations, concluding that last summer was no different from summer 2000. Similarly, despite a perceived economic downturn, the LBL research showed that state economic activity actually increased in 2001. Load-response programs had only marginal impact.
The study also closely examined the effects of rate disincentives and the 20/20 incentive program. Goldman suggested the 20/20 incentives, though costly, were "probably a good investment" in light of spring wholesale energy prices. If all 5,000 gigawatt-hours of energy savings were attributed to 20/20, he said, the average cost would be $90 per megawatt-hour. However, using figures from Pacific Gas & Electric about "random" conservation among customers, the 20/20 effect was really only about one-third of the total savings, or roughly $250/MWh.
Goldberg also cited the value of established utility DSM programs in preparing consumers and providing a base of information that could be distributed via news media. "You wouldn't have had the response you did last year if you didn't have 15 years of experience" with utility DSM in California, he said.
The total $1.3 billion spent on California efficiency in 2001 "was a good investment compared to the estimated $2 billion to $20 billion in potential losses from rolling blackouts," Goldman concluded.--Arthur O'Donnell, California Energy Markets
Renewable Energy/Green Power
BEF is joining with the Northwest Renewable Energy Cooperative to provide this financial incentive for an estimated 50 new small solar PV systems on homes and businesses, according to a BEF news release.
These green tags, in turn, will be delivered to Xanxtrex Technology and Schott Applied Power, both of which specified that 5 percent of their green tags over three years originate from new solar. That equals about 80 KW of capacity.
"We look forward to working with BEF to support an expanding market for green power products, particularly those with a strong solar energy component," said Schott Applied Power president Tom Starrs. He praised BEF for "remarkably innovative and pioneering work in promoting the development of viable markets for new environmentally preferred power." His company's green tag purchase accounts for all the electricity used at its Rocklin, CA headquarters. Schott will pay about a 10-percent premium on its power bills for these green tags.
Xantrex had previously signed up for 100-percent green power through BEF for its Arlington, WA facility; this new deal adds the Xantrex operation in Livermore, CA. "We made this purchase to help stimulate the demand for renewable energy and to contribute to the growth and development of the solar industry," said Xantrex official Kevin Hagen. Xantrex is now the country's largest purchaser of solar green tags, according to BEF.
The foundation also recently announced that its green tags have received Green-e certification from the Center for Resource Solutions.
Products/Services/Marketplace
Utilities
Awards
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center won the energy conservation award, after saving 12 million KWh annually, 5 million KWh from recent retrofits. SAFECO Insurance of America received an honorable mention for energy conservation.
Other award-winners: Aaron's Bicycle Repair, waste prevention and recycling; Port of Seattle Landscape Department, water conservation; Pirelli Jacobson, stormwater pollution prevention; Mithun, sustainable building; and Albertson's Food & Drug, innovation in conservation. The Fred Hutchinson center and Julia's Restaurants earned mayor's environmental leadership awards.
The BEST awards are a program of the Business and Industry Resource Venture, in partnership with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light and local providers. More information: Business and Industry Resource Venture Web site.
Puget Sound Environmental Learning Center on Bainbridge Island, WA and the Bank of Astoria in Manzanita, OR were the regional honorees.
At the Oregon Manufactured Housing Show in Salem, IDWR also honored Champion Redman for making the most homes in 2001 under the Northwest Energy Efficiency Manufactured Home (NEEM) program; Guerdon Enterprises of Boise received an energy achievement award for producing the highest percentage of energy-efficient homes last year.
Federal Government
Lighting
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