WASHINGTON, DC, November 14, 2008 (ENS) – The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices has selected seven states to participate in a Policy Academy designed to help states develop an action plan and implementation strategy to improve energy use in buildings.

Buildings consume more energy than any other sector of the U.S. economy and account for nearly three-quarters of electricity generation, about 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, and large amounts of on-site fuel use.

“States can play a major role in reducing energy use in buildings through improved codes, incentives for adopting energy efficient technologies, education, and other measures,” said John Thomasian, director of the NGA Center. “This Policy Academy will help states work through some of the challenges they face when developing policies to improve energy efficiency and increase use of renewable energy in buildings.”

States were chosen to participate in the academy through a competitive process open to all states and U.S. territories. The states of Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Michigan, Utah and Wisconsin, representing both hot and cold parts of the country, were selected.

“This project comes at the perfect time for Hawaii as we continue to maximize our federal and private partnerships to increase Hawaii’s energy independence,” said Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii.

Hotels and apartment buildings in Honolulu,
Hawaii (Photo credit unknown)

Hawaii’s central challenge is its high dependence on imported fossil fuel for its energy needs. Ninety-six percent of the crude oil refined and consumed in the state is from sources outside the United States, leaving Hawaii especially vulnerable to supply disruptions. Seventy-eight percent of Hawaii’s electricity generation is from diesel and 13 percent is from coal, resulting in the highest energy costs in the nation.

“State leadership is critical to meeting our long term energy challenges,” said John Mizroch, the U.S. Department of Energy’s acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

In addition to financial assistance, the Energy Department will support Policy Academy states with experts from national labs and other technical resources.

“Building efficiency is the cheapest, most abundant source of energy to meet our growing electricity demand,” said Mizroch. “Policies that incentivize all levels of investment in building efficiency and renewable energy can unleash untapped resources, help our economy, improve our environment, and increase our energy security.”

At this point, suggested strategies are familiar – improving building codes and encouraging participation in voluntary certification programs; increasing consumption from renewable sources; and funding the effort with low-interest loans, utility rate restructuring, or public benefit funds.

While some states have improved energy efficiency and increased reliance on renewable resources in new and existing buildings using these strategies, the National Governors Association believes that many cost-effective opportunities remain untapped due to market and policy barriers.

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WASHINGTON, DC, August 14, 2008 (ENS) – Trying to resolve technical difficulties that still prevent greater integration of solar energy into the nation’s power grid, the U.S. Department of Energy has identified $2.9 million in private-sector solar projects it hopes to fund this fiscal year.

The DOE funding, which requires Congressional approval, would pay two-thirds the cost of the projects, with another $1.7 million to be contributed by private industry.

The program overseeing the projects, managed by Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, is known as Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems. Its focus is stitching together individual solar photovoltaic generating systems with the nation’s complicated electricity grid.

Integrating thousands or more separate PV systems into the country’s delicately balanced electrical highway is a puzzle in a variety of ways.

This micro-inverter (top) and communications
gateway help connect individual solar
systems to the grid. (Photo courtesy
Enphase Energy Inc.)

One key reason is that the existing utility grid was designed for power to flow one way – from large generating stations to consumers.

With the proliferation of consumer-owned PV systems connected to the grid, electricity generation is becoming a two-way street as consumers generate their own electricity and sell whatever they don’t use back into the grid.

For the grid as a whole, the growing popularity of solar and other small generate-it-yourself systems can contribute to instability and potentially unsafe operations, according to the DOE.

The energy agency points out that clouds gathering and clearing can cause PV power output in a given service area to rise or fall quickly, so production of solar power may not match the times when power is most needed, such as late afternoon and early evening.

PV systems are designed to disconnect automatically if voltage sags on the system, such as during times of high demand.

Still, owners of the disconnected systems continue to draw electricity, which could result in a significant increase in demand, aggravating the cause of the voltage sag and contributing to a blackout.

Today, with solar power contributing less than one percent of electricity generation in the country, such issues are inconsequential. But as consumer demand and government policy boost America’s reliance on the Sun, solving the technical challenges becomes more urgent and necessary.

The projects the DOE said it hopes to support focus on conceptual design of hardware and market analysis, and point toward developing products that maximize the value of PV systems and give consumers greater control of their electricity consumption and costs.

“Our investment in these grid integration projects will lay the groundwork for high levels of solar photovoltaic market penetration,” said John Mizroch, DOE principal deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy in a statement.

Mizroch cited the Solar America Initiative championed by President George W. Bush, which hopes to make solar energy cost-competitive with conventional sources of electricity by 2015.

The Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems program will continue soliciting project proposals from industry, with a goal of contributing $24 million toward $40 million worth of projects.

The first round of winners for potential funding are:

* Apollo Solar of Bethel, Connecticut

* EMTEC of Dayton, Ohio, with Emerson Network Power, Liebert Corp., Hull and Associates, and Ohio State University

* Enphase Energy Inc. of Petaluma, California

* General Electric of Niskayuna, New York, and Sentech, Inc., collaborating with candidate utilities including American Electric Power, Duke, and Hawaiian Electric Co.

* Nextek Power Systems of Detroit, Michigan and Hauppauge, New York, with Houston Advanced Research Center

* Petra Solar of Somerset, New Jersey, with Florida Power Electronics Center and Florida Solar Energy Center

* Premium Power of North Reading, Massachusetts

* Princeton Power Systems of Princeton, New Jersey, with TDI Power and World Water and Solar Technologies Corp.

* PV Powered of Bend, Oregon, with Portland General Electric Team, South Dakota State University and Northern Plains Power Technologies

* SmartSpark Energy Systems, Inc. of Champaign, Illinois, with Evergreen Solar and Innovolt, Inc.

* Florida Solar Energy Center of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, with SatCon, Sentech, Inc., EnFlex, SunEdison, Northern Plains Power Technologies, Lakeland Electric Utilities and other utilities

* VPT Inc. of Blacksburg, Virginia, with Center for Power Electronics, Plug-in Conversions, Moonlight Solar, Breakell Inc., and Delta Electronics.

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The Alaska Energy Technology Development Laboratory did work on a new type of propane fuel-cell that is designed to create electricity through a chemical reaction rather than a heat and steam driven turbine system. The research on this fuel cell was done originally to apply to off-the-grid facilities that needed a reliable power source. The technology could easily be applied to larger industrial power plants and it would be a better system for controlling the environmental impact on the air, land and water than current electrical power plant technologies.

There are some interesting companies out there who are pioneering fuel-cell electricity generation. One of them is a company called FuelCell Energy [www.fuelcellenergy.com] and they recently installed a system in a community college in New Jersey. Read more about this story here. [www.iags.org] One of the interesting things about this story is that the community college ends up saving money by installing on-site electricity for their campus. If your electricity provider is not going to offer you green energy at a fair rate, then you can always take matters into your own hands. It will actually cost you less in the long run. Additionally, you can always point it out to people and feel good about yourself.