2014-05-28 by Susan Silber [http://www.berkeleyside.com/2014/05/28/op-ed-lets-build-resilient-communities-not-sea-walls/]:
Susan Silber is the co-coordinator for the Community Resilience Challenge-East Bay [http://eastbayresiliencechallenge.org/], working alongside Daily Acts Sustainable Contra Costa, the Victory Garden Foundation and Bay Localize to promote community resilience. She is a long-time environmental educator and community organizer, and also works with the Green Schools Initiative, working to reduce waste and promote sustainability with Berkeley Unified schools.
---
As we cope with the latest gloomy news about climate change — from flooding in Serbia to Antarctica’s irreversible melting to Congress’s continued inaction and denial that climate change is even happening — a new buzz word is popping up in the halls of environmental organizations and The White House alike: resilience. In the context of managing the risks and impacts of climate change, “resilience” implies that cities and communities must develop strategies to cope with the increasingly detrimental effects of drought, natural disasters, shifting climate zones, and rising sea levels. In short, resilience is the ability to bounce back from catastrophe.
The White House’s new Climate Adaptation and Resilience Task Force recommended a number of actions that cities and states could take to adapt to a changing climate, from building sea walls to creating resilient hospitals. While necessary, many of these strategies are top-down and expensive approaches that will take years to implement.
Furthermore, this narrow interpretation of resilience indicates a shift in resources and political will away from mitigating climate change toward simply adapting to its adverse effects. While we know that many impacts of climate change are inevitable – in fact, we’re already feeling them – every effort must be made to continue reducing our carbon footprint. “Bouncing back” to the business-as-usual approach that got us into this mess into the first place is irresponsible, a “band-aid” solution to a much deeper systemic crisis.
The missing piece in this conversation is what citizens can do immediately to make our lives and communities more resilient. Many politicians do not recognize the power of individuals who both understand the implications of a climate disruptive future and are empowered to take action into our own hands. But a growing number of empowered citizens are rising to what is arguably humanity’s greatest challenge by getting their hands dirty and taking practical action to simultaneously reduce their carbon footprint and create a buffer against the harsh realities of daily life in a climate-changed world. The Community Resilience Challenge is one indication of the power of this sort of small scale action.
Throughout the month of May, the Community Resilience Challenge has been mobilizing thousands of individuals and groups across the East Bay and beyond to build a more resilient region through coordinated local action. Founded by Petaluma-based Daily Acts five years ago and brought to the East Bay by a collaboration of local non-profits, the Challenge engages individuals, schools, organizations, municipalities and businesses to implement practical solutions that will create a more healthy, just and resilient future. It is organized under four themes (Save Water, Grow Food, Conserve Energy, and Build Community), and participants commit to undertaking specific actions or participating in group projects that fall under each theme.
Suggested actions range from the simple and free – think unplugging electronics and installing a clothesline – to the more complex, like installing a greywater system or planting a community garden. We are already halfway to our goal of collecting 3,000 individual pledges in the East Bay, and in Sonoma County Daily Acts has already collected 4,500 pledges.
The Challenge is an extraordinary community effort, reflecting the immense potential of grassroots groups, municipalities and businesses alike to tackle climate change. The City of Berkeley and Transition Berkeley collaborated to plant 120 drought tolerant plants with the help of 40 volunteers on a Saturday. Urban agriculture pioneers Urban Tilth promoted its Saturday Work Party as an opportunity for community members to help build a local food system. Emergency preparedness neighborhood volunteers discussed the nexus between their efforts and building neighborhood resilience through climate action. In East Oakland, community members will get together with DIG Cooperative to help an elderly neighbor with her garden. Up north, Daily Acts is transforming the lawn surrounding Sebastopol’s City Hall into an edible garden for the public to enjoy – and eat from. And through Transition US, a national network of community resilience groups, many more actions are catalyzing communities from Arizona to Wisconsin to Washington, DC.
Such small, low-tech community projects might not hold the sexy allure of massive renewable energy or high-tech infrastructure projects. Consequently, community efforts are severely underfunded and undervalued by municipalities and larger environmental organizations alike. This is a mistake that must be addressed. Grassroots citizen-led projects provide a plethora of personal and community benefits that go far beyond the project itself. Improving neighborhood safety by engaging community members in positive projects? Check. Addressing the obesity crisis and income disparity by providing easy access to fruits and vegetables in public spaces? Check. Saving water as California’s drought becomes more severe? Check.
So as we turn our attention to building resilience in our communities, let us not forget the power of these grassroots community projects. Please join me in supporting the Community Resilience Challenge. Plant a garden – in your yard, your neighbor’s yard, or in a public space. Install a compost bin. Help a school plant fruit trees. Together these small actions can make our communities truly resilient.
There are two Community Resilience Challenge events on May 31: A California Hotel Garden Work Day from 10-3pm, and Greywater Action will host a workshop on how to build a Laundry to Landscape greywater system at a residential home. For full information on the Challenge and its events, visit East Bay Resilience Challenge online [http://eastbayresiliencechallenge.org/].
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Thursday, May 22, 2014
"The Added Value of Local Food Hubs"
2014-05-22 by Julie Cohen for UCSB News [www.news.ucsb.edu/2014/014166/added-value-local-food-hubs]:
Santa Barbara CA -
Locally grown and chemical-free produce are labeled at the salad bar in De La Guerra dining commons. Image courtesy Spencer Bruttig.
As the largest purchaser of wholesale produce in Santa Barbara County, UC Santa Barbara's residential dining services provided the perfect avenue for a pilot project incorporating local pesticide-free or certified organic produce into an institutional setting.
The idea was conceived almost 10 years ago, when a group of students approached environmental studies professor David Cleveland about becoming a faculty adviser for student-led sustainable living classes. The group wanted to explore how to bring more local organic food in the dining halls. In 2010 Cleveland and a group of student researchers began documenting the process, which led to the publication of a paper in the Journal of Rural Studies.
A confluence of factors helped to support the project, including a UC-wide initiative to purchase local produce. At the same time, Santa Barbara County farmers were in need of an alternative local food hub to wholesale their produce to local institutional users. Farmer Direct Produce (FDP) - now Harvest Santa Barbara - filled that gap by serving as the wholesale link between farmers and UCSB and other outlets.
Residential dining services at UCSB provide about 10,000 meals a day - 2.5 million meals a year - so the task could have been daunting. Instead, the organizers started small, adding five or six local and organic items to the salad bar. Scaling up slowly turned out to be key to the project's success.
"One of the conclusions of the paper is that it is an iterative process," Cleveland said. "You always have to begin where you are; you can't make a total radical transformation. You figure out how to gradually move in the direction you want to go and then make incremental changes."
While local food systems have increased in popularity in recent years, the majority of the food system is still dominated by large-scale national and global networks.
"The entire food system is oriented toward large players and oriented to maximize their profit, not maximize environmental benefit or social benefit or nutritional benefit or community benefit," Cleveland said.
The challenge for FDP and UCSB was to create a viable operation for all parties involved, which meant moving beyond the profit-dominated mentality of the mainstream food system.
Personal relationships built on trust turned out to be important elements. FDP's Wesley Sleight and Anna Breaux knew the farmers whose crops they purchased; the pair also developed a good working relationship with Terry Thomas, systems analyst with residential dining services, and Bonnie Crouse, assistant director of residential services, both now retired from UCSB. There was commitment on both sides to reach the same goal: scaling up the amount of locally grown pesticide-free or organic produce used in UCSB dining halls.
"It's often not possible to maximize social, environmental and economic sustainability at the same time," Cleveland explained.
"There are tradeoffs, conflicts. The 'triple bottom line' in mainstream business really means that economic goals are first and they'll work on the other ones as long as it increases their profit. The UCSB-FDP collaboration turned that upside down because it was viewed as a community project in which all of the parties valued the nonmonetary benefits of their work as much as or more than the financial benefits."
Initially, students had minor concerns because the organic produce often didn't look the same as its conventional counterparts in grocery stores. Education was key. The concerns diminished once the students began to understand the benefits of choosing seasonal, locally grown produce.
Dining hall chefs also had to be educated so they would embrace ordering from FDP and understand the worth of the extra effort involved in using local produce. Despite these learning curves, by 2010 - five years into the project - UCSB was buying 100,000 pounds of produce from FDP. In 2012, FDP was sold and renamed Harvest Santa Barbara.
"We're always striving to increase the amount of sustainable produce we purchase, and having that relationship with Harvest Santa Barbara and supporting our community is wonderful," said Danielle Kemp, residential dining services' dietitian, "because without them we wouldn't be able to purchase from local farmers. Because of Harvest Santa Barbara, our student interns have formed relationships with local farmers and are able to bring back what they learn from farmers to educate their peers. These relationships and education for students are key."
Santa Barbara CA -
Locally grown and chemical-free produce are labeled at the salad bar in De La Guerra dining commons. Image courtesy Spencer Bruttig.
As the largest purchaser of wholesale produce in Santa Barbara County, UC Santa Barbara's residential dining services provided the perfect avenue for a pilot project incorporating local pesticide-free or certified organic produce into an institutional setting.
The idea was conceived almost 10 years ago, when a group of students approached environmental studies professor David Cleveland about becoming a faculty adviser for student-led sustainable living classes. The group wanted to explore how to bring more local organic food in the dining halls. In 2010 Cleveland and a group of student researchers began documenting the process, which led to the publication of a paper in the Journal of Rural Studies.
A confluence of factors helped to support the project, including a UC-wide initiative to purchase local produce. At the same time, Santa Barbara County farmers were in need of an alternative local food hub to wholesale their produce to local institutional users. Farmer Direct Produce (FDP) - now Harvest Santa Barbara - filled that gap by serving as the wholesale link between farmers and UCSB and other outlets.
Residential dining services at UCSB provide about 10,000 meals a day - 2.5 million meals a year - so the task could have been daunting. Instead, the organizers started small, adding five or six local and organic items to the salad bar. Scaling up slowly turned out to be key to the project's success.
"One of the conclusions of the paper is that it is an iterative process," Cleveland said. "You always have to begin where you are; you can't make a total radical transformation. You figure out how to gradually move in the direction you want to go and then make incremental changes."
While local food systems have increased in popularity in recent years, the majority of the food system is still dominated by large-scale national and global networks.
"The entire food system is oriented toward large players and oriented to maximize their profit, not maximize environmental benefit or social benefit or nutritional benefit or community benefit," Cleveland said.
The challenge for FDP and UCSB was to create a viable operation for all parties involved, which meant moving beyond the profit-dominated mentality of the mainstream food system.
Personal relationships built on trust turned out to be important elements. FDP's Wesley Sleight and Anna Breaux knew the farmers whose crops they purchased; the pair also developed a good working relationship with Terry Thomas, systems analyst with residential dining services, and Bonnie Crouse, assistant director of residential services, both now retired from UCSB. There was commitment on both sides to reach the same goal: scaling up the amount of locally grown pesticide-free or organic produce used in UCSB dining halls.
"It's often not possible to maximize social, environmental and economic sustainability at the same time," Cleveland explained.
"There are tradeoffs, conflicts. The 'triple bottom line' in mainstream business really means that economic goals are first and they'll work on the other ones as long as it increases their profit. The UCSB-FDP collaboration turned that upside down because it was viewed as a community project in which all of the parties valued the nonmonetary benefits of their work as much as or more than the financial benefits."
Initially, students had minor concerns because the organic produce often didn't look the same as its conventional counterparts in grocery stores. Education was key. The concerns diminished once the students began to understand the benefits of choosing seasonal, locally grown produce.
Dining hall chefs also had to be educated so they would embrace ordering from FDP and understand the worth of the extra effort involved in using local produce. Despite these learning curves, by 2010 - five years into the project - UCSB was buying 100,000 pounds of produce from FDP. In 2012, FDP was sold and renamed Harvest Santa Barbara.
"We're always striving to increase the amount of sustainable produce we purchase, and having that relationship with Harvest Santa Barbara and supporting our community is wonderful," said Danielle Kemp, residential dining services' dietitian, "because without them we wouldn't be able to purchase from local farmers. Because of Harvest Santa Barbara, our student interns have formed relationships with local farmers and are able to bring back what they learn from farmers to educate their peers. These relationships and education for students are key."
Sunday, May 11, 2014
"PG&E, Ed Lee and the SFPUC v. clean energy"
by Ann Garrison for KPFA Evening News, May 11, 2014 [http://www.anngarrison.com/audio/2014/05/12/503/pge-ed-lee-and-the-sfpuc-v-clean-energy]:
KPFA Evening News Anchor Anthony Fest: This weekend was the conference on Dirty Energy and Clean Solutions. That conference opened in San Francisco at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Friday. Ironically, the conference in San Francisco came at the same time that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee proposed to cut the entire $19 million dollar budget that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors had set aside to create a renewable power option for city residents looking for an alternative to PG&E power. KPFA’s Ann Garrison is in the studio with this live report on the distance between renewable power technologies and the political will to implement them.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos said he feels reasonably confident that the board’s Budget Committee will restore the CleanPowerSF funds before the full board votes on the budget, but he also says he wonders whether Mayor Ed Lee would have proposed the clean power funding cut if he didn’t believe that he could strike enough political deals to get his way with the board.
John Avalos: Supervisor Scott Wiener really wants streetlights. And I wonder if the mayor has talked with Supervisor Wiener to get his support to swipe the funds by offering him solar streetlights. And I’ve heard that another supervisor – I’m not sure who – is really pushing the Go Solar program and may be subject to changing his support for CleanPowerSF for GoSolar.
And then, just randomly, there’s all kinds of things in the budget or projects that the mayor can support or take away, based on supervisors’ votes.
KPFA: Even if the funds were restored, the mayor and the Public Utilities commissioners could once again stall and refuse to implement the clean power program, as they have for the past two years, ever since the board passed it with an 8 to 3 supermajority, which meant that Mayor Lee could not veto it. The Public Utilities commissioners’ prior obstruction finally stirred Supervisor Avalos to propose a board ordinance to study the feasibility of joining Marin Clean Energy, as the City of Richmond did two years ago.
John Avalos: We’re trying every means possible to offer clean power to San Francisco residents, even going to Marin possibly, if we have to do that.
KPFA: San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, a former supervisor and longtime renewable power advocate, said that Marin Clean Energy is a non-profit electricity buying community that has been extraordinarily successful, far more successful than even its adherents had imagined, and that it’s an example of how efficient regional renewable power can be.
Ross Mirkarimi: Since San Francisco has now been dwarfed in clean energy by its own politics, I think good measures stand to investigate what a regional CCA (Community Choice Aggregation) would look like by hooking up with Marin. So if you have this network of municipalities, I think it shows the creativity amid the political roadblocks.
The good news about this kind of structure is that it’s considered a not-for-profit structure. That’s one of the things that appealed to me the most, that even if you have a company like Shell or others, the overhead still must be addressed, but the dividends that are created must by law be reinvested back into the infrastructure of the clean energy system or into the rate decrease. And so, you can imagine that there will be that start-up cost. That’s natural for any new business, as well as a municipal utility.
But the payoff has already come much sooner for Marin, where they’re registering a profit that’s being reinvested back in their system. They never anticipated that that payoff was going to come so soon. So for us not to study the feasibility and the mechanisms that have now induced a much more positive than expected story, literally a bridge away, is absolutely absurd.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: PG&E produces only 19 percent of its power from renewable sources, despite a state mandate that required them to be producing at least 20 percent with renewables by 2010.
In Berkeley, for Pacifica, KPFA Radio, I’m Ann Garrison.
(Photo: San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos speaks at a clean power rally.)
(Photo: Pacific Gas & Electric was the lead sponsor of the 2014 Conference of Mayors in Sacramento in April. Next year the Conference of Mayors will be held in San Francisco. The third mayor from left is San Francisco’s Ed Lee.)
(Photo: San Francisco Sheriff and former Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi addresses a CleanPowerSF rally outside San Francisco City Hall. Hunters Point activist Espanola Jackson stands beside him.)
KPFA Evening News Anchor Anthony Fest: This weekend was the conference on Dirty Energy and Clean Solutions. That conference opened in San Francisco at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Friday. Ironically, the conference in San Francisco came at the same time that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee proposed to cut the entire $19 million dollar budget that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors had set aside to create a renewable power option for city residents looking for an alternative to PG&E power. KPFA’s Ann Garrison is in the studio with this live report on the distance between renewable power technologies and the political will to implement them.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos said he feels reasonably confident that the board’s Budget Committee will restore the CleanPowerSF funds before the full board votes on the budget, but he also says he wonders whether Mayor Ed Lee would have proposed the clean power funding cut if he didn’t believe that he could strike enough political deals to get his way with the board.
John Avalos: Supervisor Scott Wiener really wants streetlights. And I wonder if the mayor has talked with Supervisor Wiener to get his support to swipe the funds by offering him solar streetlights. And I’ve heard that another supervisor – I’m not sure who – is really pushing the Go Solar program and may be subject to changing his support for CleanPowerSF for GoSolar.
And then, just randomly, there’s all kinds of things in the budget or projects that the mayor can support or take away, based on supervisors’ votes.
KPFA: Even if the funds were restored, the mayor and the Public Utilities commissioners could once again stall and refuse to implement the clean power program, as they have for the past two years, ever since the board passed it with an 8 to 3 supermajority, which meant that Mayor Lee could not veto it. The Public Utilities commissioners’ prior obstruction finally stirred Supervisor Avalos to propose a board ordinance to study the feasibility of joining Marin Clean Energy, as the City of Richmond did two years ago.
John Avalos: We’re trying every means possible to offer clean power to San Francisco residents, even going to Marin possibly, if we have to do that.
KPFA: San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, a former supervisor and longtime renewable power advocate, said that Marin Clean Energy is a non-profit electricity buying community that has been extraordinarily successful, far more successful than even its adherents had imagined, and that it’s an example of how efficient regional renewable power can be.
Ross Mirkarimi: Since San Francisco has now been dwarfed in clean energy by its own politics, I think good measures stand to investigate what a regional CCA (Community Choice Aggregation) would look like by hooking up with Marin. So if you have this network of municipalities, I think it shows the creativity amid the political roadblocks.
The good news about this kind of structure is that it’s considered a not-for-profit structure. That’s one of the things that appealed to me the most, that even if you have a company like Shell or others, the overhead still must be addressed, but the dividends that are created must by law be reinvested back into the infrastructure of the clean energy system or into the rate decrease. And so, you can imagine that there will be that start-up cost. That’s natural for any new business, as well as a municipal utility.
But the payoff has already come much sooner for Marin, where they’re registering a profit that’s being reinvested back in their system. They never anticipated that that payoff was going to come so soon. So for us not to study the feasibility and the mechanisms that have now induced a much more positive than expected story, literally a bridge away, is absolutely absurd.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: PG&E produces only 19 percent of its power from renewable sources, despite a state mandate that required them to be producing at least 20 percent with renewables by 2010.
In Berkeley, for Pacifica, KPFA Radio, I’m Ann Garrison.
(Photo: San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos speaks at a clean power rally.)
(Photo: Pacific Gas & Electric was the lead sponsor of the 2014 Conference of Mayors in Sacramento in April. Next year the Conference of Mayors will be held in San Francisco. The third mayor from left is San Francisco’s Ed Lee.)
(Photo: San Francisco Sheriff and former Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi addresses a CleanPowerSF rally outside San Francisco City Hall. Hunters Point activist Espanola Jackson stands beside him.)
Monday, May 5, 2014
"Smart Growth" planning for residential development
"Encouraging smart growth"
2009-06-11 by Robert Selna from "San Francisco Chronicle" [www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Encouraging-smart-growth-3295469.php]
The Bay Area could serve as a national model for environmental sustainability by creating new jobs and housing on underused and blighted land while cutting carbon emissions, according to a Greenbelt Alliance initiative announced Wednesday.
The Grow Smart Bay Area campaign is not only intended to push the smart-growth philosophy that has been around for decades - reducing sprawl by creating new, dense development near public transit - but also to provide clear strategies for communities to use when planning growth in the years and decades to come.
In that vein, the Alliance, an Oakland organization focused on regional growth issues, said there are approximately 40,000 sites in Bay Area cities and towns that could accommodate new development. The parcels have vacant lots, parking lots or generally are not economically vital, but often exist on transit corridors in places such as Oakland, Concord and Hayward.
The group identified 100 "priority" development sites that could best handle growth. These should be the areas for future housing and commercial development, rather than farmland, forests and other open space, according to the group's executive director, Jeremy Madsen.
"The Bay Area could create a model metropolis," Madsen said, speaking to about 220 people and a panel of experts at a downtown San Francisco high-rise with sweeping views of the Bay Area. "The region should be more livable and sustainable than it is today. We should focus on development where jobs, amenities and transportation already exist."
Madsen said the nine-county Bay Area's population is expected to grow from 7 million to 9 million by 2035 and to add 1.7 million jobs, but many local governments have not planned ways to handle the growth. At the same time, California recently has approved innovative legislation in an effort to reduce global warming.
One bill calls for cutting back the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Another is designed to encourage metropolitan planning agencies to reduce the distances residents must drive. It also provides financial incentives for local governments that embrace smart growth and develop transportation plans that take automobiles off roadways.
Madsen noted that while many cities already have embraced smart-growth policies, they could take their efforts even further. He outlined the following strategies for planners and government officials to push smart-growth development:
-- Increase the density of new development, design streets for pedestrians and cyclists and reduce parking.
-- Bring residents into the planning process so that they support smart-growth concepts.
-- Create urban growth boundaries and other limits on sprawl.
-- Invest in infrastructure that supports growth in cities and towns, such as transportation and parks.
The panel assembled Wednesday said the Bay Area is primed for urban infill growth because there are opportunities for development within cities, and studies indicate that aging Baby Boomers and younger generations want to live in dense, urban environments. However, the economic model for such development also must exist, they said.
"One question is, will people really be coming here for jobs in the next few years and will the jobs really be here?" said Jim Wunderman, the chief executive officer of the Bay Area Council, a business advocacy group.
San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, also a panelist, said that San Jose grew by 500,000 residents in the past 30 years with urban, infill development and would need to do that again in the next 30 years, while continuing to attract creative and talented people with other options.
Monday, March 31, 2014
"Innovative Microgrid Project Is Centered Around A Solar Village"
Sovereign technologies [link]
2014-03-31 [www.solardaily.com/reports/Microgrid_Solar_Partners_with_Missouri_S_and_T_on_Innovative_Microgrid_Project_Centered_Around_a_Solar_Village_999.html]:
St. Louis-based Microgrid Solar is proud to be the engineer-of-record and installer of the first microgrid in the U.S. to be centered around a "Solar Village". Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S and T) created the Solar Village, which consists of multiple houses built by the university's students, from 2002 to 2009, for competition in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon.
This competition challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. Missouri S and T students, faculty and staff, along with members of the university's microgrid advisory board (Ameren, City Utilities of Springfield, Rolla Municipal Utilities and Electric Power Research Institute), several Missouri manufacturers (Milbank, EPRI, and Ford) and the Army Corps of Engineers, have worked together for two years to design and implement the advanced microgrid testing facility at the Rolla, Mo., campus.
The term "microgrid" is used to describe an energy "islanding" capability, whereby a campus or grouping of buildings, has the ability to operate independently from the electrical grid and other centralized power sources, creating its own smaller grid, essentially. Typically microgrids are utilized for military bases, hospitals, or other buildings campuses that involve critical power loads.
But increasingly, Microgrids are being used in a wider range of situations, and are viewed as a viable solution to improve grid stability. Most microgrids employ a combination of onsite power generation (solar, wind, gas turbines, etc), power storage, energy efficiency upgrades, and a management system.
As part of this collaboration with the project partners, Microgrid Solar was responsible for overall engineering and design, ensuring the project complies with existing electrical codes, and determining how all of the many components of this project will connect and function together efficiently.
According to Tony Arnold, Assistant Director of the Office of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engagement at Missouri S and T, "The intent is for the microgrid to be used as a research tool and testing center for microgrid technology, battery technology and system communications. This facility will also be an exhibit for outreach and awareness of energy technology as a whole.
"Projects like these have to be scalable, replicable and flexible, so that we have the opportunity to test as many different scenarios as possible." Arnold added, "Agencies interested include major utilities, companies and the U.S. Army's Prime Power School."
Microgrids have the potential to change the way communities generate and use energy by reducing cost, increasing reliability and improving environmental performance.
"Integrating renewables and energy storage into existing electrical grids and creating reliable, stand-alone, multiple-source systems are the two most important challenges in advancing our understanding and adoption of non-fossil-fuel energy sources," said Marc Lopata, PE, the Principal Engineer on this project and President of Microgrid Solar.
"The research that Missouri S and T and the university's industry partners do with this versatile testing facility will help to pave the way for significant progress toward energy security and independence."
2014-03-31 [www.solardaily.com/reports/Microgrid_Solar_Partners_with_Missouri_S_and_T_on_Innovative_Microgrid_Project_Centered_Around_a_Solar_Village_999.html]:
St. Louis-based Microgrid Solar is proud to be the engineer-of-record and installer of the first microgrid in the U.S. to be centered around a "Solar Village". Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S and T) created the Solar Village, which consists of multiple houses built by the university's students, from 2002 to 2009, for competition in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon.
This competition challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. Missouri S and T students, faculty and staff, along with members of the university's microgrid advisory board (Ameren, City Utilities of Springfield, Rolla Municipal Utilities and Electric Power Research Institute), several Missouri manufacturers (Milbank, EPRI, and Ford) and the Army Corps of Engineers, have worked together for two years to design and implement the advanced microgrid testing facility at the Rolla, Mo., campus.
The term "microgrid" is used to describe an energy "islanding" capability, whereby a campus or grouping of buildings, has the ability to operate independently from the electrical grid and other centralized power sources, creating its own smaller grid, essentially. Typically microgrids are utilized for military bases, hospitals, or other buildings campuses that involve critical power loads.
But increasingly, Microgrids are being used in a wider range of situations, and are viewed as a viable solution to improve grid stability. Most microgrids employ a combination of onsite power generation (solar, wind, gas turbines, etc), power storage, energy efficiency upgrades, and a management system.
As part of this collaboration with the project partners, Microgrid Solar was responsible for overall engineering and design, ensuring the project complies with existing electrical codes, and determining how all of the many components of this project will connect and function together efficiently.
According to Tony Arnold, Assistant Director of the Office of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engagement at Missouri S and T, "The intent is for the microgrid to be used as a research tool and testing center for microgrid technology, battery technology and system communications. This facility will also be an exhibit for outreach and awareness of energy technology as a whole.
"Projects like these have to be scalable, replicable and flexible, so that we have the opportunity to test as many different scenarios as possible." Arnold added, "Agencies interested include major utilities, companies and the U.S. Army's Prime Power School."
Microgrids have the potential to change the way communities generate and use energy by reducing cost, increasing reliability and improving environmental performance.
"Integrating renewables and energy storage into existing electrical grids and creating reliable, stand-alone, multiple-source systems are the two most important challenges in advancing our understanding and adoption of non-fossil-fuel energy sources," said Marc Lopata, PE, the Principal Engineer on this project and President of Microgrid Solar.
"The research that Missouri S and T and the university's industry partners do with this versatile testing facility will help to pave the way for significant progress toward energy security and independence."
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Solar thermal desalination
Sovereign technologies [link]
"California drought: Solar desalination plant shows promise"
2014-03-18 by Kevin Fagan from "San Francisco Chronicle" [http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Solar-desalination-plant-5326024.php]:
Quietly whirring away in a dusty field in the Central Valley is a shiny solar energy machine that may someday solve many of California's water problems.
It's called the WaterFX solar thermal desalination plant, and it has been turning salty, contaminated irrigation runoff into ultra-pure liquid for nearly a year for the Panoche Water and Drainage District. It's the only solar-driven desalination plant of its kind in the country.
Right now its efforts produce just 14,000 gallons a day. But within a year, WaterFX intends to begin expanding that one small startup plant into a sprawling collection of 36 machines that together can pump out 2 million gallons of purified water daily.
Within about five years, WaterFX company co-founder Aaron Mandell hopes to be processing 10 times that amount throughout the San Joaquin Valley. And here's the part that gets the farmers who buy his water most excited: His solar desalination plant produces water that costs about a quarter of what more conventionally desalinated water costs: $450 an acre-foot versus $2,000 an acre-foot.
An acre-foot is equivalent to an acre covered by water 1 foot deep, enough to supply two families of four for a year.
Competitive price -
That brings Mandell's water cost close to what farmers are paying, in wet years, for water from the Panoche and other valley districts - about $300 an acre-foot. And that makes it a more economically attractive option than any of the 17 conventional desalination plants planned throughout California.
If Mandell can pull it off, the tiny farming town where he is starting his enterprise could be known as ground zero for one of the most revolutionary water innovations in the state's history.
"Eventually, if this all goes where I think it can, California could wind up with so much water it's able to export it instead of having to deal with shortages," Mandell said, standing alongside the 525-foot-long solar reflector that is the heart of his machine. "What we are doing here is sustainable, scalable and affordable."
Dennis Falaschi, manager of the Panoche district, and many of the 60 farmers that constitute his customer base say the sooner WaterFX expands, the better.
Saving water -
Panoche expects to deliver about 45,000 acre-feet of water this year to its growers. That total is half of what the growers get in wetter years - but because drought and environmentally driven water mandates are not unique to 2014, the district's farmers are already ahead of the curve on water preservation techniques.
Most use drip irrigation instead of water-intensive sprinklers and are hooked up to an unusual drainage system that captures used irrigation water and directs it into fields of wheatgrass, a salt-tolerant crop sold for cattle feed. But that drainage system is little more than a creative way to get rid of irrigation water that's too salty for most uses once it leaches through farm soil.
Finding a way to make it suitable for people to drink and use on the crops they eat would be a breakthrough, Falaschi said.
"It appears this solar system will be cost-effective, and if Aaron can perform as we think he can, it can make a huge difference - be a great supplement at the very least," he said. "We're talking about basically unusable drainage water that is in everybody's interest to mine.
"This solar plant could be a very important part of where we want to be in terms of being self-sufficient in the valley."
Nothing from feds -
Panoche, like many districts in the Central Valley - the nation's most productive agricultural zone - has traditionally bought most of its water from the federally run Central Valley Project. But in this drought year, farmers are likely to get zero allocation from the project.
If that happens, Panoche will have to draw from leftover supply, the expensive spot water market and wells. All of that is pricier than usual, with the spot market alone charging as much as $3,500 an acre-foot.
"This situation right now is a killer, and anything that adds to a potential water supply is good," said Mike Stearns, a fourth-generation farmer in the Panoche district who is fallowing most of his tomato, onion and other fields this year because of the drought. He's concentrating on his wine grapes, which are thirsty but promise a good profit even in a drought year.
"And keep in mind that this water shortage doesn't just affect farmers," Stearns said. "Think about the jobs that are lost when we have to fallow our fields. Or the taxes that the government won't get because we aren't growing and selling. It's bad. We need to do everything we can about this."
Simple process -
The way the solar plant works is simple, which is why the water it produces is cheap.
Water that dribbles down from nearby hills, and through the soil in the Central Valley after being used for irrigation, collects so much salt, selenium, boron and other minerals that it's not fit for human consumption. The solar plant captures the foothill runoff and sucks in used irrigation water from a French drain-style system 6 to 8 feet under the crops, and sends that tainted water through a series of pipes and tanks that heat it.
The heat comes from the plant's huge, parabolic-shaped solar reflector, which focuses the sun on a long tube containing mineral oil. That heated tube in turn creates steam, which condenses the brackish water into usable liquid, separating out the minerals.
The water then goes back out for irrigation. Mandell says that because his condensation method distills the minerals more efficiently than other desalination methods, he is installing a system that will process them for use. Selenium and boron can be vitamin supplements, for example, and gypsum can be used for drywall.
More conventional desalination plants - such as a $1 billion operation being built near San Diego - use a reverse osmosis process, in which brackish water is forced through screens to filter out the contaminants. That requires a lot of energy, which is why it is more expensive.
Raising money -
WaterFX's pilot plant cost $1 million in state grants to build last summer. The expansion of the 36-plant complex would cost as much as $30 million, which Mandell is working on raising.
"It does seem like this system is in a great location," said Daniel Choi, an analyst with Lux Research, which researches emerging technology. "It's where it should be - an area with a lot of sunlight, where reverse osmosis doesn't make the most sense large-scale. It does seem like it's viable.
"I wouldn't be surprised if WaterFX expanded to other markets."
Mandell's expanded solar plant would be able to deliver 2,200 acre-feet of water next year - and if that performs as hoped, within a few years his ambition is to scale it up to 20,000 acre-feet. That would meet nearly half of the current demand from Panoche district farmers.
"Eventually we could process not just drainage water, but industrial and residential wastewater as well as groundwater that now is too salty to use," Mandell said. Such desalination already happens on a large scale in other parts of the world, particularly the Middle East, he pointed out.
Sinking land -
Drawing groundwater, however - even groundwater that's now too salty to drink - could prove problematic in the Central Valley. Years of tapping usable groundwater have so depleted aquifers that in some places the land has sunk 30 feet since the 1920s.
There are trillions of gallons of brackish groundwater available in California, said Claudia Faunt, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, and much of that has not been tapped because it is closer to the surface than the purer liquid deeper down. However, "to say there wouldn't be subsidence (if it were tapped) is an unknown," she said.
For now, Mandell said, he and his partners are focusing on drainage water - and that alone is a major issue.
"Look, there are 200 million tons of salt on the land in the Central Valley, and billions of gallons of drainage water, and cleaning up that drainage water is a huge issue," said WaterFX's chief consultant, Bruce Marlow. "I'd say if we can control the saline in the valley, in 10 years we might not have to rely on the federal water system here at all."
"California drought: Solar desalination plant shows promise"
2014-03-18 by Kevin Fagan from "San Francisco Chronicle" [http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Solar-desalination-plant-5326024.php]:
Quietly whirring away in a dusty field in the Central Valley is a shiny solar energy machine that may someday solve many of California's water problems.
It's called the WaterFX solar thermal desalination plant, and it has been turning salty, contaminated irrigation runoff into ultra-pure liquid for nearly a year for the Panoche Water and Drainage District. It's the only solar-driven desalination plant of its kind in the country.
Right now its efforts produce just 14,000 gallons a day. But within a year, WaterFX intends to begin expanding that one small startup plant into a sprawling collection of 36 machines that together can pump out 2 million gallons of purified water daily.
Within about five years, WaterFX company co-founder Aaron Mandell hopes to be processing 10 times that amount throughout the San Joaquin Valley. And here's the part that gets the farmers who buy his water most excited: His solar desalination plant produces water that costs about a quarter of what more conventionally desalinated water costs: $450 an acre-foot versus $2,000 an acre-foot.
An acre-foot is equivalent to an acre covered by water 1 foot deep, enough to supply two families of four for a year.
Competitive price -
That brings Mandell's water cost close to what farmers are paying, in wet years, for water from the Panoche and other valley districts - about $300 an acre-foot. And that makes it a more economically attractive option than any of the 17 conventional desalination plants planned throughout California.
If Mandell can pull it off, the tiny farming town where he is starting his enterprise could be known as ground zero for one of the most revolutionary water innovations in the state's history.
"Eventually, if this all goes where I think it can, California could wind up with so much water it's able to export it instead of having to deal with shortages," Mandell said, standing alongside the 525-foot-long solar reflector that is the heart of his machine. "What we are doing here is sustainable, scalable and affordable."
Dennis Falaschi, manager of the Panoche district, and many of the 60 farmers that constitute his customer base say the sooner WaterFX expands, the better.
Saving water -
Panoche expects to deliver about 45,000 acre-feet of water this year to its growers. That total is half of what the growers get in wetter years - but because drought and environmentally driven water mandates are not unique to 2014, the district's farmers are already ahead of the curve on water preservation techniques.
Most use drip irrigation instead of water-intensive sprinklers and are hooked up to an unusual drainage system that captures used irrigation water and directs it into fields of wheatgrass, a salt-tolerant crop sold for cattle feed. But that drainage system is little more than a creative way to get rid of irrigation water that's too salty for most uses once it leaches through farm soil.
Finding a way to make it suitable for people to drink and use on the crops they eat would be a breakthrough, Falaschi said.
"It appears this solar system will be cost-effective, and if Aaron can perform as we think he can, it can make a huge difference - be a great supplement at the very least," he said. "We're talking about basically unusable drainage water that is in everybody's interest to mine.
"This solar plant could be a very important part of where we want to be in terms of being self-sufficient in the valley."
Nothing from feds -
Panoche, like many districts in the Central Valley - the nation's most productive agricultural zone - has traditionally bought most of its water from the federally run Central Valley Project. But in this drought year, farmers are likely to get zero allocation from the project.
If that happens, Panoche will have to draw from leftover supply, the expensive spot water market and wells. All of that is pricier than usual, with the spot market alone charging as much as $3,500 an acre-foot.
"This situation right now is a killer, and anything that adds to a potential water supply is good," said Mike Stearns, a fourth-generation farmer in the Panoche district who is fallowing most of his tomato, onion and other fields this year because of the drought. He's concentrating on his wine grapes, which are thirsty but promise a good profit even in a drought year.
"And keep in mind that this water shortage doesn't just affect farmers," Stearns said. "Think about the jobs that are lost when we have to fallow our fields. Or the taxes that the government won't get because we aren't growing and selling. It's bad. We need to do everything we can about this."
Simple process -
The way the solar plant works is simple, which is why the water it produces is cheap.
Water that dribbles down from nearby hills, and through the soil in the Central Valley after being used for irrigation, collects so much salt, selenium, boron and other minerals that it's not fit for human consumption. The solar plant captures the foothill runoff and sucks in used irrigation water from a French drain-style system 6 to 8 feet under the crops, and sends that tainted water through a series of pipes and tanks that heat it.
The heat comes from the plant's huge, parabolic-shaped solar reflector, which focuses the sun on a long tube containing mineral oil. That heated tube in turn creates steam, which condenses the brackish water into usable liquid, separating out the minerals.
The water then goes back out for irrigation. Mandell says that because his condensation method distills the minerals more efficiently than other desalination methods, he is installing a system that will process them for use. Selenium and boron can be vitamin supplements, for example, and gypsum can be used for drywall.
More conventional desalination plants - such as a $1 billion operation being built near San Diego - use a reverse osmosis process, in which brackish water is forced through screens to filter out the contaminants. That requires a lot of energy, which is why it is more expensive.
Raising money -
WaterFX's pilot plant cost $1 million in state grants to build last summer. The expansion of the 36-plant complex would cost as much as $30 million, which Mandell is working on raising.
"It does seem like this system is in a great location," said Daniel Choi, an analyst with Lux Research, which researches emerging technology. "It's where it should be - an area with a lot of sunlight, where reverse osmosis doesn't make the most sense large-scale. It does seem like it's viable.
"I wouldn't be surprised if WaterFX expanded to other markets."
Mandell's expanded solar plant would be able to deliver 2,200 acre-feet of water next year - and if that performs as hoped, within a few years his ambition is to scale it up to 20,000 acre-feet. That would meet nearly half of the current demand from Panoche district farmers.
"Eventually we could process not just drainage water, but industrial and residential wastewater as well as groundwater that now is too salty to use," Mandell said. Such desalination already happens on a large scale in other parts of the world, particularly the Middle East, he pointed out.
Sinking land -
Drawing groundwater, however - even groundwater that's now too salty to drink - could prove problematic in the Central Valley. Years of tapping usable groundwater have so depleted aquifers that in some places the land has sunk 30 feet since the 1920s.
There are trillions of gallons of brackish groundwater available in California, said Claudia Faunt, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, and much of that has not been tapped because it is closer to the surface than the purer liquid deeper down. However, "to say there wouldn't be subsidence (if it were tapped) is an unknown," she said.
For now, Mandell said, he and his partners are focusing on drainage water - and that alone is a major issue.
"Look, there are 200 million tons of salt on the land in the Central Valley, and billions of gallons of drainage water, and cleaning up that drainage water is a huge issue," said WaterFX's chief consultant, Bruce Marlow. "I'd say if we can control the saline in the valley, in 10 years we might not have to rely on the federal water system here at all."
Residential Solar Power Units
Sovereign technologies [link]. Solar Power is an enhancement of sovereignty, however, this technology is created through the use of resources extracted from foreign sources, and, as such, does not constitute as a sovereign technology. Solar Power does enhance community sovereignty by allowing for an alternative to monopolized high-yield energy production.
"SolarCity accuses utilities of slowing home-battery project"
2014-03-18 by David R. Baker from "San Francisco Chronicle" [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/SolarCity-accuses-utilities-of-slowing-5325791.php]:
SolarCity wants to connect rooftop solar panels to batteries that would store power for use at night. (Photo: Ed Andrieski, Associated Press)
For more than two years, SolarCity Corp. has been trying to launch an experiment that could change the way we power our homes.
The San Mateo company has installed battery packs in more than 100 houses throughout California, each pack linked to rooftop solar panels. The lithium-ion batteries, made by Tesla Motors, store electricity from the panels during the day for use at night.
That combination - solar on the roof, batteries in the basement - could one day revolutionize the energy industry, undercutting traditional utility companies.
So the utilities, SolarCity says, are fighting back.
California's big electricity providers are dragging their feet on connecting the batteries to the grid and charging steep fees - nearly $3,700 per customer, in some cases - to do so, according to SolarCity.
"We all know this is a game-changing product," said SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, speaking at a recent public forum in which he complained about the delays. "Those in the game don't want to change the game. They really like the existing game."
SolarCity, which made its name leasing solar arrays to homeowners and businesses, quietly started offering batteries to its residential customers in November 2011. More than 500 have signed up so far. Of those, just over 100 have received their battery packs.
But most of them still can't use the batteries.
Only 12 connections -
Since the pilot program started, utilities have only connected 12 of those battery systems to the grid, according to SolarCity. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has hooked up 11 customers, while San Diego Gas and Electric Co. has connected one. Southern California Edison has not connected any, even though SolarCity has submitted 10 applications to the utility.
Lee Middleman of Portola Valley has been waiting almost four months.
Longtime SolarCity customers, he and his wife, Donnie, jumped at the chance to add a storage pack when the company started the program. They belong to a community emergency response team and understand the value of being able to generate and store their own electricity if the grid goes down.
"It's a little remote, here, and when the power goes out, it'd be nice to have a backup system," said Middleman, a ceramic artist. "If there's an earthquake, we know Portola Valley is going to be one of the last places PG&E will service, because they're going to start with the more densely populated place first."
But for now, the battery pack, complete with Tesla logo, sits unused. (Tesla CEO Elon Musk chairs SolarCity's board of directors, and Rive is his cousin.)
"It seems like they're throwing every possible roadblock in front of this thing to slow it down," Middleman said.
PG&E charges $800 for each application, plus a $600 fee whenever the utility decides that the solar-and-battery system needs a new electric meter. Southern California Edison charges the same application fee, plus $2,898 to install and connect the meter, according to documents SolarCity provided to The Chronicle.
SolarCity contends that the application fees are illegal, saying they conflict with a state law that governs how utility companies deal with home solar arrays.
Won't rush -
PG&E insists it is not trying to block or delay SolarCity's energy storage program. But Steve Malnight, PG&E's vice president of customer energy solutions, said the company won't rush its process for inspecting the new systems and connecting them to the grid. The current wait time, he said, is eight to 10 weeks.
"We're not satisfied with that time, in the long run, but this is a new technology," Malnight said. "Our focus is on ensuring safety and reliability for the customers. I think that's appropriate."
A Southern California Edison spokesman was not able to comment for this story by press time.
"SolarCity accuses utilities of slowing home-battery project"
2014-03-18 by David R. Baker from "San Francisco Chronicle" [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/SolarCity-accuses-utilities-of-slowing-5325791.php]:
SolarCity wants to connect rooftop solar panels to batteries that would store power for use at night. (Photo: Ed Andrieski, Associated Press)
For more than two years, SolarCity Corp. has been trying to launch an experiment that could change the way we power our homes.
The San Mateo company has installed battery packs in more than 100 houses throughout California, each pack linked to rooftop solar panels. The lithium-ion batteries, made by Tesla Motors, store electricity from the panels during the day for use at night.
That combination - solar on the roof, batteries in the basement - could one day revolutionize the energy industry, undercutting traditional utility companies.
So the utilities, SolarCity says, are fighting back.
California's big electricity providers are dragging their feet on connecting the batteries to the grid and charging steep fees - nearly $3,700 per customer, in some cases - to do so, according to SolarCity.
"We all know this is a game-changing product," said SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, speaking at a recent public forum in which he complained about the delays. "Those in the game don't want to change the game. They really like the existing game."
SolarCity, which made its name leasing solar arrays to homeowners and businesses, quietly started offering batteries to its residential customers in November 2011. More than 500 have signed up so far. Of those, just over 100 have received their battery packs.
But most of them still can't use the batteries.
Only 12 connections -
Since the pilot program started, utilities have only connected 12 of those battery systems to the grid, according to SolarCity. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has hooked up 11 customers, while San Diego Gas and Electric Co. has connected one. Southern California Edison has not connected any, even though SolarCity has submitted 10 applications to the utility.
Lee Middleman of Portola Valley has been waiting almost four months.
Longtime SolarCity customers, he and his wife, Donnie, jumped at the chance to add a storage pack when the company started the program. They belong to a community emergency response team and understand the value of being able to generate and store their own electricity if the grid goes down.
"It's a little remote, here, and when the power goes out, it'd be nice to have a backup system," said Middleman, a ceramic artist. "If there's an earthquake, we know Portola Valley is going to be one of the last places PG&E will service, because they're going to start with the more densely populated place first."
But for now, the battery pack, complete with Tesla logo, sits unused. (Tesla CEO Elon Musk chairs SolarCity's board of directors, and Rive is his cousin.)
"It seems like they're throwing every possible roadblock in front of this thing to slow it down," Middleman said.
PG&E charges $800 for each application, plus a $600 fee whenever the utility decides that the solar-and-battery system needs a new electric meter. Southern California Edison charges the same application fee, plus $2,898 to install and connect the meter, according to documents SolarCity provided to The Chronicle.
SolarCity contends that the application fees are illegal, saying they conflict with a state law that governs how utility companies deal with home solar arrays.
Won't rush -
PG&E insists it is not trying to block or delay SolarCity's energy storage program. But Steve Malnight, PG&E's vice president of customer energy solutions, said the company won't rush its process for inspecting the new systems and connecting them to the grid. The current wait time, he said, is eight to 10 weeks.
"We're not satisfied with that time, in the long run, but this is a new technology," Malnight said. "Our focus is on ensuring safety and reliability for the customers. I think that's appropriate."
A Southern California Edison spokesman was not able to comment for this story by press time.
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