National park energy use and strategies

Small-scale alternative energy resources play an increasing role in how the U.S. National Park Service manages its lands, budget, and energy usage.

Solar panels line the roof of the comfort station at Devil's Garden Campground in Arches National Park, Utah.

The United States National Park Service manages about 84.4 million acres of land in the form of national parks, national monuments, and other historic and conservation properties.  While much of the Park Service's holdings are preserved as undeveloped backcountry properties, the NPS provides visitor amenities like lodging, food and other concession services.

The remote locations of many Park Service sites make traditional energy resources expensive and challenging.  Ranger stations and campground bathrooms may be located far from the traditional utility electric grid.  Diesel generators can be used if road access to the site is possible, but have drawbacks: fuel is expensive, and generators can be loud, produce emissions, and may be out of character for a particular national park site.

In some cases, the Park Service is turning away from traditional energy resources to alternative and distributed energy resources like solar power.  In fact, the Park Service has deployed distributed solar photovoltaic generation for over a decade.

Consider the example of Devil's Garden Campground in Arches National Park in Utah.  While the campground is relatively remote (located at the end of a 30-mile dead-end road inside the park), Park Service facilities in the campground need electricity.  These facilities include two campground hosts, three bathrooms, an amphitheater and a ranger station.

Historically, electricity for the campground facilities came from on-site diesel generators.  These units ran 24 hours a day, consuming over 6,400 gallons of fuel per year.  Producing electricity from diesel is seldom cost-competitive today; generating electricity from diesel at Devil's Garden Campground cost the National Park Service over $22,400 per year.  This meant that the Park Service was generating electricity for a price of 28 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), about four times higher than the current average Utah price.

(As expensive as this is, it's still about a third of the cost of diesel-generated electricity on the remote Maine island of Monhegan.  In 2010, electricity on Monhegan cost an average of 74.51 cents per kWh.)

As early as 1995, the Park Service joined with the state of Utah to develop four photovoltaic/diesel hybrid systems at Devil's Garden Campground.  Each system is composed of a 1.4 kilowatt (kW) tracking array, a 4 kW inverter and a 40 kWh battery bank.  Diesel units remain on-site and ready, but now run less than 4 hours per day.  This cut the Park Service's annual operation and maintenance costs for the diesel generators from $22,400 to $10,000.  The project dramatically reduced the noise level in the campground, and significantly cut the diesels' emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides.

As this example shows, sites that are already off the grid can be good candidates for small-scale distributed generation projects relying on alternative technologies like solar.  Depending on project economics and other objectives (like the Park Service's sustainability initiative, improving noise levels and air quality, or education), replacing diesel with renewable energy -- and making energy efficiency improvements -- can make sense.

Other units in the National Park Service system are following the Arches example by turning to distributed renewable energy and energy efficiency.  In 2011, Yosemite National Park installed a 672 kilowatt grid-tied solar array.  The $5.8 million Yosemite project is bigger in scale (the Park Service's largest solar energy project) and is tied to the utility electric grid, but represents a similar strategy to that used in Arches and throughout the Park Service.

March 16, 2011 - victory for demand response

The smart grid just got smarter.  Demand response -- when customers respond to signals about the scarcity of electricity by temporarily reducing their consumption -- is a key tool in efforts to reduce the cost of energy through the use of smart grid technology.  As a society (or as a grid), if we can reduce the peak amount of electricity being demanded, we can not only reduce the need for the most expensive marginal peaking generation units, but we can also reduce the need for expensive transmission lines.  Demand response thus benefits not only the person reducing consumption, but also all other ratepayers and the grid as a whole.  It is a key component of our transition to a smart grid.

On March 15, 2011, demand response took a big step forward through a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruling on how people should be compensated for demand response participation.  In Order No. 745 (116 page PDF), FERC ruled that organized wholesale energy market operators must pay demand response resources the market price for energy, known as the locational marginal price (LMP), when those resources have the capability to balance supply and demand as an alternative to a generation resource and when dispatch of those resources is cost-effective.

FERC noted that doing so is necessary to preserve and enhance the competitiveness of wholesale electricity markets, something FERC and Congress have promoted across the board.  For example, in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress established a national policy of eliminating unnecessary barriers to demand response participation.  FERC has long held that active participation by customers in organized wholesale energy markets through demand response helps to increase competition in those markets, but had not previously required all organized wholesale markets to compensate demand response resources in the same manner.  For example, PJM has been paying the LMP minus the generation and transmission portions of the retail rate, while ISO New England has paid LMP only when prices exceeded a threshold level.  Even within a given market, the continual threat of policy changes resulted in a chilling effect on the full implementation and deployment of demand response.

FERC's Order No. 745 takes away this uncertainty.  FERC held that demand resources should be paid at market-based prices when two criteria are met: capability and cost-effectiveness.  First, the demand resources must have the capability to balance supply and demand as an alternative to a generation resource.  To be paid at market prices, demand resources must be effective at displacing the need for bringing additional generation online.  Second, the demand resources must be cost-effective alternatives to generation, based on a "net benefits test".  In essence, this test is satisfied when the overall benefit of the reduced energy price resulting from dispatching demand response resources exceeds the cost of dispatching and paying LMP to those resources.  If both of these criteria are satisfied, organized wholesale energy market operators must pay demand response resources the market price for their energy value.

Demand response has long had great potential to transform the way our power grids work.  To reach its full potential, people must be compensated fairly for the value they provide through interrupting their consumption of electricity.  With FERC's Order No. 745, that value has been established clearly.

3/17/10

University of Maine President Robert Kennedy announced that he is stepping down in June 2011 to take another position within the University of Maine System -- a new position whose focus is the "greening" of the university system. Media coverage reports that President Kennedy will look at "sustainability, alternative energy and taking advantage of federal initiatives", plus the highly interesting "further business opportunities in energy fields".

The City of Ellsworth leverages $950,000 in Land for Maine's Future and other funds to defray the costs of the $2.4 million Branch Lake conservation project. Ellsworth will buy 451 acres outright, and then grant an easement to the Frenchman Bay Conservancy to protect the water quality of the lake while developing low-impact, nonmotorized public recreation. A working forest easement on 745 acres will go to the Forest Society of Maine providing for the sustainable harvest of timber. Two councilors objected to the premise that Ellsworth will issue $1,515,000 in general obligation bonds, but the motion passed 4-2 (with an abstention from a councilor who had dealt in easements on the land).