SMUD’s new 1.2-MW PV farm sits on seven acres formerly occupied by a turkey farm in Wilton, southeast of Sacramento (Photo: SMUD)

We’ve written at this blog, and in our e-mail newsletter, e-Newswire, about the ever-growing suite of creative options (Power Plug, 5/16/08) entrepreneurs and governments have devised to encourage homeowners and business to install solar. We’ve also written about the so-called “principal-agent barrier”  that dissuades renters from investing in solar or energy efficiency (e-Newswire, 2/21/07).

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) thinks it may have found a way to entice customers who can’t afford the upfront cost of a PV system, or those who, living in an apartment or condo, aren’t able install a system of their own, to invest in solar. Through its new SolarShares program, customers pay a voluntary monthly fee — a fixed charge based on historical energy use and the size of the solar share they choose — for pro-rata payments for the energy produced by a solar farm.

SMUD inaugurated yesterday its first such “customer-driven” PV farm, a 1.2-megawatt (MW) array constructed and owned by enXco, in Wilton, southeast of Sacramento.

So, how does it work? A SMUD customer who chooses the minimum buy-in, a .5-kW share, would pay $10.75 monthly. After the monthly fee, the amount of power generated by the solar share appears as a credit on the customer’s bill — a credit expected to average about $4 per month to start, according to SMUD. Not only does the credit help to offset what customers pay for electricity produced by dirty sources, but it should pay more when customers need it most: during the summer, when air conditioning use sends bills soaring.

SMUD says it expects to be fully subscribed — 800 to 1,000 proud new solar owners — within a month.

With a significant heat wave bearing down on California and the West this week, and with more than 300 wildfires still burning statewide posing potential threats to the state’s power grid, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has declared a Flex Alert for Tuesday through Thursday, July 8 - 10. CAISO expects to see the highest electricity demand of the summer this week, and it urges Californians to conserve energy, especially during the “AC rush hour” of 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.

CAISO says it does not anticipate any shortages this week, but it cautions that peak demand could approach the record peak demand of 50,270 MW, set July 24, 2006 (e-Newswire, 7/26/06).

To sign up to receive e-mail and text message notification of Flex Alerts, and for energy conservations tips, visit our Flex Alert page. To view the current demand on the grid and an hour-by-hour forecast of the day’s electrical surplus/shortfall, visit CAISO’s website.

I’ll post updates about the Flex Alert at this blog throughout the week. Please pass this post along to your friends and colleagues in California.

• Sign up to receive e-mail and text message notification of Flex Alerts

San Francisco start-up ZETA Communities says it can build homes for far less than ordinary home builders and cut the owner’s electricity bill to nearly zero at the same time. The company plans to manufacture factory-built, 1,600-square-foot modular multifamily townhomes, and is working on a 17-unit townhome project in San Francisco that it expects will cost around $165 per square foot to build, Greentech Media recently reported. The homes will sell for around $400,000.

(Photo: Thomas Fake/National Park Service)

CEO Naomi Porat says a single unit can be completed in six weeks, while a traditional home takes nine months and costs $200 a square foot. Porat adds that ZETA is 20% cheaper and 80% faster than conventional home builders, and that, ultimately, the price should drop to $134 a square foot.

Green amenities in the project include solar panels, thermal mass heating, EcoRock (e-Newswire, 1/23/08) drywall and energy-efficient windows from Serious Materials. Factories for the homes will be built near potential development sites to reduce the carbon footprint even further. ZETA is speaking to several Northern California cities to find a site for its first factory, Porat told Greentech Media’s Michael Kanellos.

ZETA hopes to build 42 homes in 2009 and 200 homes in 2010. Altogether, it is negotiating with four separate developers on housing tracts, including builders in Southern California. According to Porat, the first prototype will likely come later this year.

British builder Barratt Developments recently announced the UK’s first zero-carbon house built by a major home builder. Barratt plans to build 200 zero-carbon homes on the site of Hanham Hall hospital near Bristol, a third of which will be affordable by low-income buyers, reports the UK Guardian.

Barratt’s zero-carbon house (Graphic: Barratt Developments)

Developed at the Buildings Research Establishment, in Watford, Barratt’s Green House includes solar panels, rainwater harvesting and an air-source heat pump. The house uses solar power for heating instead of gas, and hot water comes mainly from a solar thermal panel on the roof, backed up in winter by the heat pump. Automatic shutters slide across the windows to prevent the house from getting too hot in the summer, although you can manually override them.

The house employs a new kind of concrete in its walls and floors for excellent thermal mass, combined with super insulation and triple-glazed windows for airtight construction and thus, energy-efficient heating and cooling. Fresh air entering the house passes through a heat exchanger, which transfers the heat from the outgoing stale air and puts it back into the house.

According to Andrew Sutton, an architect with the firm Gaunt Francis, which designed the house, despite the heavy use of carbon-intensive concrete, the homes have excellent thermal mass and will last well over a hundred years, meaning the homes’ lifetime carbon footprint will be extremely low.

The UK Green Building Council recently released a report (PDF, 628 KB) defining when a house can be called “zero carbon,” and it is likely to form the basis of approaching legislation in the UK. This includes a proposal that zero-carbon homes must produce almost all of their energy onsite or very nearby.

Barratt’s new homes will achieve code level 6 (the top grade awarded to completely zero-carbon homes) and will be completed by 2011 — well before 2016, when all home builders in the UK will be mandated to build only zero-carbon homes. Here in California, the Public Utilities Commission has proposed making all new homes zero-net energy by 2020 (e-Newswire, 10/03/07).

• Read related stories from Flex Your Power: “SMUD, Partners Building Green “Home of the Future” Near Sacramento” (e-Newswire, 6/11/08); “Net-Zero Electricity Chartwell School First LEED Platinum School in U.S.” (e-Newswire, 11/14/07); “IDeAs Z² Design Facility One of the First Net-Zero Energy Commercial Office Buildings in the U.S.” (e-Newswire, 10/17/07)

Conserval Engineering Inc. recently announced the launch of their new SolarDuct line of rooftop solar air heating and PV/thermal systems. SolarDuct is based upon another Conserval product, the SolarWall, which I wrote about on this blog in April (Power Plug, 4/17/08).

Artist’s rendering of the SolarDuct rooftop solar air heating and PV/thermal system (Photo: Conserval Engineering Inc.)

Using an all-metal collector panel, SolarDuct is designed for flat-roofed buildings in the commercial, industrial and institutional sectors, and has been engineered for applications where a traditional wall-mounted system is not feasible. The system heats ventilation air before it enters the air-handling units, reducing onsite energy costs. SolarDuct can also be used for PV/thermal cogeneration. The system’s all-metal SolarWall panels act as the racking system and remove the heat from the back of the PV modules, using it to offset the building’s heating load.

This Better Day BP gas station has installed 56 LED-based lighting fixtures from BetaLED (Photo: LEDs Magazine)

The U.S. is host to a staggering 164,300 stand-alone gas stations and 115,000 combination convenience store and gas stations. Profit margins are typically thin at these stores, and customers are often drawn to establishments they perceive to be well-lit, clean and safe.

Aware of these facts, Tom Tousis, owner of Better Day BP gas station and convenience store in Racine, Wisconsin, recently opened the first gas station and convenience store to feature all-LED exterior lighting. Tousis’ station is outfitted with 56 LED-based fixtures from BetaLED.

According to a profile of Tousis’ store in LEDs Magazine, on the canopy alone he is saving about 62% on energy compared to the 320-watt metal halide fixtures that normally would have been used. By choosing LED fixtures, Tousis will reduce his carbon emissions by about 30%. And, given the long life and reliability of LEDs, Tousis can expect even more savings with reduced maintenance costs.

Wall-mounted LED fixtures (Photo: LEDs Magazine)

According to U.S. Department of Energy numbers cited by LEDs Magazine, LED luminaries are seeing efficiency gains of 35% annually, while costs are decreasing at a rate of 20% per year. Recent advances in LED technology now mean that LEDs not only have the required brightness for outdoor applications such as roadways and parking lots, but also superior optical control compared with conventional sources of light such as wasteful traditional high-intensity discharge (HID) lights.

The lack of optical control in conventional lighting wastes a lot of light, particularly in the U.S., where an estimated 30% of outdoor lighting is projected skyward. LEDs, because of their energy and dollar savings and improved quality of light, have the potential to replace all existing conventional lighting. At a time when virtually all products are seeing price increases because of escalating oil prices, that’s good news for everyone.

With the 2008 presidential candidates talking about carbon cap-and-trade plans to fight global warming, it’s important to distinguish between three types.

In a cap-and-dividend system — also called a “cap-and-rebate” or a “sky trust” — carbon permits are auctioned off and the generated revenue goes to all residents equally through a trust. Because the atmosphere belongs to everyone equally, those who pollute it most must pay the most into the central sky trust. The carbon permits in such a system can be traded, but the number of permits available diminishes over time to drive up the price of pollution and spur investment in clean technologies. This system aims to reduce carbon emissions over time while protecting household incomes from skyrocketing energy prices. James E. Hansen, the NASA climate expert, has strongly endorsed this system.

In the European Union, the cap-and-giveaway system — also called “grandfathering” — allowed carbon permits to be given for free to historic polluters on an annual basis. The more a company had polluted in the past, the more permits that company received. As the descending cap raised fuel prices, everyone paid more, and this extra money flowed to the companies that got free permits. The system has been called a complete failure. An MIT study (PDF, 3.6 MB) estimates that grandfathering carbon permits to U.S. utilities would give them hundreds of billions of dollars in extra profits every year for decades. A bill containing such giveaways was tabled in the U.S. Senate last week after being blocked by Republicans; it will be re-opened for debate next year.

In the cap-and-auction system, permits aren’t given away but sold to polluters, and the revenue is collected by the government, which can then use the money however it wants. This means less accountability than the cap-and-dividend system, which protects the generated revenue in a trust where it’s guaranteed to be returned to all households equally.

John McCain touts his cap-and-trade proposal as a viable solution to fight global warming (even as he stumbles over whether his plan requires mandatory emissions cuts), yet his plan looks more like a cap-and-giveaway than anything else. “You see a big difference between McCain and the Democratic candidates on how the permits are allocated. McCain’s proposal would give the lion’s share to companies that are now the biggest polluters,” notes former Labor Secretary Robert Reich in a recent commentary for NPR’s “Marketplace.”

Barack Obama, meanwhile, calls for a cap-and-trade system with a 100% auction of pollution credits.

• Read more: Carbon Capping: A Citizen’s Guide (PDF, 484 KB)
• Read more: “Climate Change Policy Roadmap Released for Next President” (e-Newswire, 2/6/08)

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (right) in conversation with New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear

Last month, The New Yorker hosted a series of conversations with with thought leaders at its annual The New Yorker Conference. In one of the conversations, “The Green City,” staff writer Dana Goodyear asks San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to describe how his city has become an environmental initiatives trendsetter. Newsom obliges, reeling off his city’s achievements: the largest plug-in hybrid fleet in the U.S., a 70% recycling rate, a new solar rebate program, a citywide plastic bag ban and a ban on bottled water for city employees, to name just a few.

But he also insists that cities, responsible for 75% of our energy use and an equal percentage of greenhouse gas emissions, must take the lead in tackling climate change — with or without help from Washington. Indeed, Newsom chides fellow politicians, including members of his own party, for merely “playing at the margins” when it comes to fighting global warming.

Newsom’s monologue, coming as it does from a rumored 2010 California gubernatorial candidate, is must viewing. For video, click here.

Steam rises from the drill used to bore a hole thousands of meters below the surface at the Unterhaching geothermal plant in Bavaria (Photo: Spiegel Online/Rödl & Partner)

While geothermal power has supplied only 1% of Germany’s renewable energy to date, it has one big advantage over solar and wind power, renewable power sources that already have a foothold in the country. Because it uses the heat of the Earth’s deep crust to heat water for power, geothermal is a base load electricity source available around the clock.

The German news magazine Spiegel recently reported on a Bavarian geothermal energy plant — set to come online in the middle of this month — that is only the second in the world to make use of a “Kalina” system. According to the plant’s technical manager, Reinhard Galbas, the system, which uses a combination of water and ammonia to maximize the amount of power generated by steam turbines, is the most effective way to get electricity out of geothermal energy.

Located in Unterhaching, the €80 million plant is capable of generating 3.4 megawatts (MW) of electricity — or enough energy to power 10,000 homes. It is one of an estimated 150 geothermal plants planned for Germany.

Even before the plant begins sending electricity to the grid this month, it had, for the last year, provided 2,000 households in Unterhaching with space heating. Surplus heat has kept the homes off the heating grid and prevented more than 7,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere, as well as saving residents money on heating costs.

“For many customers who are heating their home with oil, switching over pays off within one to two years,” Erwin Knappek, a former mayor of Unterhaching who began the effort to build a geothermal plant in Unterhaching in the 1990s, told Spiegel.

Despite the rising costs of needed materials such as steel, the cost of the plant is becoming more justified by the day as oil prices continue to climb. “Those costs should be amortized in less than 20 years,” Knappek says. If oil prices rise any more, the plant could pay itself off in much less time than that.

Editor’s Note: The following post is a guest submission by Rosario Marin, Secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency and Chairwoman of the California Building Standards Commission.

Rosario Marin (Photo: California State and Consumer Services Agency)

If you could make everyone in California build energy efficient buildings, how would you do it?

Would you enact new standards city by city and jurisdiction by jurisdiction, creating a jumble of different regulations? Or would you enact a new set of building codes and enforce the same energy-efficient standards across the state?

Governor Schwarzenegger believes the right answer is to change the building codes and make sure that everyone who builds in California will be held to the same strict environmental standards. That is exactly what we are doing at the California Building Standards Commission, where we set the building standards and codes for every commercial building constructed in this state.

We just concluded the public comment period for 2009’s proposed codes. We call it California’s Green Building Codes and I am proud to say that, when adopted, it will give our state the most advanced building standards in the United States.

The new 2009 codes will require significant improvements in water usage for plumbing fixtures, specify household and landscape water conservation reductions of 20% for homes, and set 15% stronger requirements for energy savings than we currently enforce. We will find these energy savings through a combination of more efficient appliances, better insulation and more efficient windows. This code will also encourage the use of recycled materials in carpets and building materials, identify a number of improvements to air quality and suggest various site improvements, including parking for hybrid vehicles and better storm water plans.

Our partners in developing these new standards are the Department of General Services, Department of Housing and Community Development, the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and the state’s building industry.

As the state’s real estate arm, the Department of General Services has been constructing energy-efficient buildings for years, and already meets Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for all new construction projects. This on-the-ground knowledge has helped us create an advanced energy-efficient and sustainable code that is practical today. The Department of Housing and Community Development has provided residential expertise, and Health Planning and Development contributed healthcare facilities know-how. We are also proud that the state’s builders — the Commission’s greatest asset — have attended our public comment sessions and provided valuable input.

Together we created new standards that go well beyond the Title 24 energy standards that California adopted a few years ago — which put us on the map as environmental trailblazers — and which the California Energy Commission has recently strengthened (e-Newswire, 4/30/08). Those standards have contributed to our state keeping energy consumption nearly flat while the population has grown. The Title 24 standards have become the model for many other states.

Once again California is ready to step back in and lead. It is time to go further than Title 24, and our proposed 2009 code is the right next step. I encourage anyone interested in the “greening” of our state to look at the proposed codes on our website and provide us with feedback. By working together now, we can make California a better place for generations to come.