The Senate Indian Affairs Committee approved several bills yesterday to address tribal energy, land and water resources. Lawmakers approved Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith’s S. 2610 to reauthorize and reform the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs within the Department of Energy.
Around 170 battery storage systems larger than 1 MW are currently operating in the U.S., but the 62.5 MW first phase of the Gateway project is already the largest in the country, CAISO said in a press release.
Storage resources are becoming more competitive, but installations are really being driven by carbon reduction and clean energy goals, Mohit Chhabra, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean energy program, told Utility Dive.
The world’s most relied-upon renewable energy source isn’t wind or sunlight, but water. Last year, the world’s hydropower capacity reached a record 1,308 gigawatts (to put this number in perspective, just one gigawatt is equivalent to the power produced by 1.3 million race horses or 2,000 speeding Corvettes). Utilities throughout the globe rely upon hydropower to generate electricity because it is cheap, easily stored and dispatched, and produced with no fuel combustion, meaning it won’t release carbon dioxide or pollutants the way power plants burning fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas do.
Imperial Irrigation District voted to sell wholesale energy to Mexicali for the months of July, August, and part of September at the July 7, board meeting. The two parties entered into contract June 18, 2019 to facilitate energy transactions between IID and Centro Nacional de Control de Energia, beginning in 2019 and beyond. Energy Manager Marilyn del Bosque Gilbert presented the contract to the board.
A 90% clean grid by 2035 would be cost-effective, says a report from UC Berkeley and GridLab; a companion policy paper calls for a federal renewables mandate to get there.
Under a 90% clean grid, wholesale electricity would cost less than it does today. And although a 55% clean grid in 2035 would have even lower electricity prices, when environmental and health damages from fossil fuel use are counted, the 90% clean grid would cost less.
The first slide of Daybreak Power’s first-ever presentation to potential investors quotes Paul Allen, the legendary co-founder of Microsoft, asking what he calls the most exciting question imaginable: “What should exist? … What do we need that we don’t have?”.
The answer I reached in the years leading up to co-founding Daybreak in 2018 is this: A bunch of big-honkin’ pumped storage hydropower projects, for the simple reason that we’re going to need a ton of cost-effective, proven, long-duration energy storage if we, as a society, are to have any hope of integrating high levels of intermittent wind and solar power, and thereby slash greenhouse gas emissions to put the brakes on catastrophic climate change.
Plus, we can create a lot of jobs and maybe make some money on it!
Joyce Patry, a former MBA classmate, and I founded Daybreak in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, as an early-stage developer of these massive infrastructure projects.
Despite extremely limited resources, we pulled together some engineering and cost-configuration studies that had previously been conducted on potential pumped storage sites at US Bureau of Reclamation dams around the West. In late 2018 we filed a FERC preliminary permit application for the 1540MW Next Generation Pumped Storage project near Hoover Dam/Lake Mead, and followed that up with a July 2019 application for the 2210MW Navajo Energy Storage Station near Glen Canyon Dam/Lake Powell on the border of Utah and Arizona.
Water suppliers in San Diego County say future COVID-19 federal and state stimulus packages should include funding for shovel-ready projects that would create jobs in the region.
In a letter to members of California’s congressional delegation, a group of 13 agencies, including the San Diego County Water Authority and 10 of its member agencies, and the cities of Del Mar, Oceanside and Poway, say the region’s water utilities have dozens of infrastructure projects that could be launched with an infusion of state and federal stimulus funding.
“As the water suppliers throughout San Diego County, across the state, and around the nation are confronting the unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are several actions that the federal government could take to provide some much-needed relief,” according to the letter dated May 31.
From replacing valves in pipelines to building water purification facilities, to developing a major pumped hydropower energy storage project for the region, the funding boost would advance efforts to enhance water reliability and increase jobs across San Diego County.
The letter requests the following action items be supported as Congress discusses additional legislative relief packages:
Pumped energy storage facilities are part of an integrated and sustainable energy system that includes the production, storage and distribution of clean energy.
One of those shovel-ready projects does not require any state investment or financial assistance to generate economic stimulus. But it needs a regulatory path forward, which could come in the form of state legislation or decisions by the California Public Utilities Commission.
The Water Authority and the City of San Diego have been working on the San Vicente Energy Storage Facility project for several years. All equity and debt financing would be provided by a private investor.
The project would create a small upper reservoir above the existing San Vicente Reservoir, along with a tunnel system and an underground powerhouse to connect the two water bodies. The powerhouse would contain up to four reversible pump turbines.
During off-peak periods – when power is inexpensive and renewable supplies from wind and solar facilities exceed demand – turbines would pump water to the upper reservoir where it would act as a battery of stored energy. During peak energy use, the system would create clean energy as water from the upper reservoir flows downhill through the turbines.
“Our developer estimates the project could generate more than 50,000 hours of preconstruction work, followed by more than 1,000 jobs during a four-year construction period,” said Gary Bousquet, with the San Diego County Water Authority. “When it’s completed, the facility could store huge volumes of renewable energy and then use that energy when renewables are not available, such as nighttime.”
Bousquet said the project, when completed, would also generate additional revenue to offset water agency costs and help stabilize water rates.
EPA’s final rule that curtails states’ authority over Clean Water Act permitting of pipelines, hydroelectric dams and other energy projects could run afoul of a 1994 Supreme Court ruling that originally granted states that oversight power.
Federal courts have delivered a string of rebukes to the Trump administration over what they found were failures to protect the environment and address climate change as it promotes fossil fuel interests and the extraction of natural resources from public lands.
Essential workers at Imperial Irrigation District, are now living at their job site in order to stay protected from the coronavirus. According to IID, they will be housing 32 employees who are vital in providing Imperial County residents with water and energy.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
