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This issue of the La Conner Weekly News will be Ken Stern’s next-to-last issue. The Skagit Valley Clean Energy Alliance, and I personally, would like to thank Ken for this space, and for his encouragement and enthusiasm about this column during the last two years. The story of energy technology started millions of years ago, when homo erectus learned how to sail. We know this because fossils have been found on islands in modern Indonesia that can’t be reached without a sail or motor. A mil...
The La Conner public parking lot, east of Maple Hall, occupies about an acre. It’s big enough to host a 400 kilowatt solar generation system, built in the form of a canopy covering most of the lot. Such a canopy would also provide protection from snow, rain and sun. Building a solar canopy over most of the lot would require installation of support structures and some analysis on how the power would be delivered to the grid, or whether it would be better to install batteries and keep the s...
Republican readers may be sitting back and ordering Christmas sweaters featuring newborns sitting on oil rigs ("Drill, baby, drill"), but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't remind everyone: If you're hoping that drilling for oil is sufficient to create low, stable energy prices and U.S. energy independence, your information about energy costs and alternatives is out of date. Even the reddest of red hat wearers has reasons to be in favor of more renewable energy development in the U.S. After...
Most of what I write in this space is about innovations in electric generation and storage, because that’s where the biggest market changes are happening. Innovations that will increase the use of renewable energy are also happening for liquid and gas fuels. Renewable liquid and gas fuels are derived from “biomass,” which is exactly what it sounds like: biologically derived matter. Plant materials (agricultural wastes, waste paper, purpose-grown crops) and animal-related waste materials can a...
As I’ve mentioned before, heating – including both space heating and water heating – accounts for up to two-thirds of the energy use in the average Western Washington home. If you’re trying to reduce your heating bills, start by looking at the possibility of updating your building envelope – all of the surfaces of your home, plus its insulation. Our home in Shelter Bay was insulated well in 1978, when it was built. However, today’s insulation codes, depending on the type of space (e.g., wall...
Should Skagit County approve utility scale battery energy storage projects? Yes. The size of the project, the type of battery and where, exactly, those projects should be located are subjects that will require public discussion. However, as their costs have fallen more than 99% over the last 20 years, large batteries have become very helpful in keeping electricity rates down. Here’s why: The American electric generation system is significantly overbuilt. There’s more capacity to generate ele...
Today’s small-scale renewable energy generation and storage systems don’t have to be placed exclusively at big, centralized locations. It’s easier than ever to distribute electric generation and energy storage systems near places where energy is actually used. Distributed energy resources (DERs) have advantages over legacy systems based on huge power generation plants. Installing small generation systems at multiple points, instead of big systems at a few locations, can improve relia...
The La Conner-based Skagit Valley Clean Energy Cooperative has changed its name to Skagit Valley Clean Energy Alliance. Its business structure has also changed. Rather than being a membership-based, non-profit cooperative like REI or Orcas Power, the SVCEA is now a non-profit 501(c)3 charitable organization. The goal of the alliance remains the same as the goal of the cooperative: Accelerate the use of renewable energy, energy conservation and related energy management technologies throughout...
Since the earliest days of sailing, boats and ships have been powered by renewable energy. At first, the motive energy came from muscles manipulating oars. I would have said human muscles, but boats predate modern humans. Almost a million years ago, Homo erectus settled several Indonesian islands that couldn’t have been reached without boats. Boats with sails aren’t known to be that ancient; the first evidence of their existence starts around 7,000 years ago. Recreational sailboats, and var...
Most electric vehicle (EV) charging takes place at home. But, what if you’re not home? Suppose that Jenelle and I decide to go to Portland, Ore., with a detour to Multnomah Falls, for a weekend of scenic hiking and sneaker shopping, capped off with a couple of Portland’s giant donuts. It’s a 260-mile trip from La Conner to Multnomah Falls, plus 30 more miles into Portland, plus some driving around to Big Sneaker stores and the donut shop, before heading to a hotel. Then, there’ll probabl...
From 1999 – 2001, I worked for Florida Power & Light. Part of my job was to figure out how that company should make use of energy technologies that were just emerging from the laboratory into commercial use. Twenty-five years later, to borrow a line from Raul Julia in “Street Fighter,” some of the technologies I was studying “are Tuesday.” In other words, they’re no longer exotic. They no longer attract attention. They’re just what exists, barely worthy of comment. Compact fluorescent l...
Electric cars were introduced in the 1890s. They only had about 50 miles of range between charges, but they wouldn’t break your arm starting them and they didn’t make loud noises and scare horses. Internal combustion engine cars weren’t reliable, gasoline wasn’t widely available, tires on all car types were unreliable and roads were bad. As late as 1905, electric, steam and ICE cars split the market with about a 33% market share each. Steam and ICE cars gradually got better tires, electri...
Back when there were only three channels on TV, and you had to change them by hand, some new cars arrived in America. To paraphrase a quote often misattributed to Mahatma Ghandi: First, Detroit ignored Japanese car manufacturers. Then, Detroit laughed at Japanese car manufacturers. Then, Detroit fought Japanese car manufacturers. Then, Japanese car manufacturers won. In 1972, according to Detroit, nobody would ever want small Japanese cars, and Japan didn’t understand the U.S. car market. T...
Lighting experts expect that light-emitting diode lights will soon completely eliminate fluorescent lighting and that LEDs will reduce the use of incandescent lighting to a few specialty items like high-powered outdoor halogen lamps. This shift is expected to be nearly complete by 2030. Further improvements in LEDs, including a shift to what should ultimately be lower-cost organic LEDs are likely to continue. By 2050, all new lights may be LEDs or OLEDs. This change means that we’ll use less e...
Before electric lights were available, we created artificial light with fires, and beeswax or tallow candles, and oil lamps and gas streetlamps. In the 1860s, kerosene largely replaced whale oil for lighting. Then, starting in the 1880s, incandescent electric lights were introduced on a large scale. Electric lights were more convenient, easier to maintain, and less of a fire hazard than gas or kerosene lamps. That seems like an uncontroversial statement. In 1880, it wasn’t. Electric lights were...
I recently bought a used plug-in hybrid car, a Chevy Volt. After the federal tax credit and Washington licensing fees (EVs are currently exempt from sales tax), it cost about $8,000. I already had a home charger for Jenelle’s Chevy Bolt. If I had needed to install a 240-volt EV charger at home, that would have cost about $2,000 to $3,000 more. Over almost three months, I’ve put a little over 1,800 miles on the Volt, using it as my primary car. It’s a plug-in hybrid, not a pure electric, so it...
“What about airplanes?” That’s one of the most common questions I get when people start talking with me about renewable energy. It’s like asking Henry Ford “Hey, Henry, when’s that Model A going to be able to run 200 miles an hour for about three hours at Talladega?” The answer: Not immediately, but a Ford that’s a direct descendant of the Model A will be able to do that. It’s not like asking when a Ford car will be able to land on the moon. Switching to renewable energy will be possible witho...
Reducing energy use through energy efficiency is easier than ever. As we say in the energy efficiency business, a megawatt is the energy you use, but a “negawatt” is the energy you don’t need to use. Efficiency, as I’ve mentioned before, doesn’t mean that you have to stop using energy-consuming devices, or even that you have to use them less. It means that you choose systems and controls that enable you to use less energy to get the effect you want. Often, new, energy efficient technologi...
On June 18, the State of Washington’s Department of Commerce announced that the La Conner School District has won a $1.96 million Community Decarbonization Grant. This new grant will pay for the development, at the La Conner Middle School, of a grid-interconnected solar electric generation system with a capacity of 138.2 kilowatts. Based on the U.S. Department of Energy’s solar generation model, the electricity produced by this system during an average year will be about 140,000 kilowatt-hours....
Some nominally recyclable organic materials, in some specific locations, may be better used as fuel for a waste-to-energy system, even if that system produces some carbon dioxide, for the purpose of replacing a fueled heating system that would produce even more carbon dioxide and reducing waste shipments. La Conner may be one such location. There are two major reasons to recycle. If you can reuse raw materials that have already been extracted and processed, you’ll reduce the need to extract n...
About half to two-thirds of the average Western Washington home’s energy use is for space heating and cooling, and water heating. Normally, temperature management is either accomplished by burning gas or propane, or by using an electric resistance heater or air-source heat pump. There’s another, more energy-efficient option: Water-source heat pumps. These systems operate on the same basic principles as other heat pumps. They transfer heat from one side of the system to the other. In an air...
Wind energy – both on land and offshore – has been falling in cost almost as dramatically as solar power. It’s down well over 90% since 2000. The relevant technologies are still improving. Furthermore, wind has some advantages over other forms of electricity generation, including other renewable generation systems. For instance, wind generators can be installed in far more places than hydroelectric or geothermal generation plants, both of which require very specific geology. On average, a well-...
For most of the last 10 years, electric consumption in Washington has been relatively flat or even falling. Innovative technologies like LED lighting and heat pumps have been replacing less efficient incandescent lighting and the older generation of HVAC systems. Moderate weather, on average, in both winter and summer has also flattened electric loads. Some Washington utilities have been concerned that falling demand would affect their ability maintain their systems without substantial rate...
As longtime readers know, Jenelle bought an all-electric Chevy Bolt a couple of years ago. We’ve driven it about 18,000 miles. It replaced a Buick SUV that had about 85,000 miles on it. The total cost of the Bolt out of pocket, after the trade-in and the electric-vehicle rebate, plus the cost of adding a 240-volt (Level 2) charger to our garage, was about $25,000. The Buick got about 20 mpg, so we’ve saved 900 gallons of gas. Gas has been around $4 a gallon here for most of that time, so tha...
The energy infrastructure we have today is the result of thousands of years of technological development, during which the systems evolved based on what had and hadn’t been invented, and where. The Romans had everything they needed to develop a steam engine, but they didn’t. Where would humanity be today if we had almost 2,000 more years of industrialization? The existence of legacy systems significantly affects the speed with which we design and install energy systems based on the latest tec...
