Yellowstone park proposes utility upgrades

The U.S. National Park Service manages over 84 million acres of land for both conservation and visitor use.  For wilderness parks, these joint objectives lead to the challenge of providing park facilities with electricity despite their remote location.  The Park Service has launched energy efficiency and sustainability programs, but many visitor and administrative facilities still need electricity for safety and comfort.  How should the Park Service balance conservation and development?

Old Faithful geyser erupts in Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone National Park, the nation's first park, highlights the difficulty.  Most facilities in the park receive electricity from transmission and distribution lines owned by utility NorthWestern Energy, but the park's rugged environment, challenging climate, and relatively old electrical infrastrucutre lead to frequent power outages - over 250 in 2012.  Unlike much of the electric grid outside the park, facilities in Yellowstone lack modern communication infrastructure - a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition or SCADA system - that would let the utility diagnose and correct the cause of power outages from the utility's central offices in Montana.

As a result, Yellowstone and NorthWestern Energy have proposed to update the park's electrical distribution system.  Proposed upgrades include an automated, remote monitoring and control system, the installation of equipment buildings, back-up power generators and propane fuel tanks.  The proposed communication system would require the construction of seven towers for radio equipment within the park, generally located at existing electrical substation sites.

Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Park Service cannot approve the plan without conducting an environmental assessment of the impacts of the proposed development.  The Park Service has released its Environmental Assessment (10.5 megabyte PDF), which is open for public comment until December 6.

The use of national park lands for energy infrastructure can be controversial due to differing philosophies on the level of development desirable in parks.  At the same time, the Park Service notes that the Yellowstone outages have had negative effects on park operations and visitor experience, creating health and safety concerns and lost revenue for concessioners.  How will this balance play out in Yellowstone?

Utah pumped storage project seeks license

Electricity can be tricky to store once it is generated.  Batteries, flywheels, and other energy storage technologies can provide some storage capacity, but pumped storage -- using electricity to pump water uphill during times of low power pricing, and letting it fall back down to generate electricity when needed -- is the most-used bulk electricity storage medium in the US.  As of 2010, the United States was home to 21.5 gigawatts of pumped storage generating capacity.  Pumped storage can be used both to balance supply and demand on the electric grid and to arbitrage fuel and electricity costs. 


While some question whether electricity produced through pumped storage should qualify as renewable energy, pumped storage in the US is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as hydropower.  Most pumped storage projects will ultimately need a FERC license, but obtaining a preliminary permit is a typical first step in the approval process.  A preliminary permit gives a developer the right to investigate the feasibility of a project, typically for a three-year term, and convey exclusive first priority to file for a full license during that window.

This month, a proposed pumped storage in the Utah desert applied for a preliminary permit.  Utah Independent Power, Inc. filed its application to FERC for a preliminary permit for the Long Canyon Pumped Storage Project (18-page PDF).  Utah Independent Power proposes to build two dams to store water drawn from the Colorado River near Moab, Utah.  These dams would create an upper reservoir on the high plateau above Long Canyon and a lower reservoir at the end of Long Canyon.  The developer suggests that the power required for pumping would be supplied to the proposed project through the transmission grid using existing off peak power, while power would be produced by the project during peak periods and sold through the Western Electricity Coordinating Council grid at competitive peak rates.

The principals behind Utah Independent Power are no strangers to investigating pumped storage projects, having been involved in other proposals in the desert Southwest in recent decades.  Indeed, in 2008, Utah Independent Power applied for and obtained a preliminary permit for the Long Canyon Pumped Storage project.  (Here is Utah Independent Power's 2008 application, and the Commission's 2008 order issuing preliminary permit.)  Utah Independent Power surrendered that preliminary permit in 2011, along with another preliminary permit for the nearby Bull Canyon Pumped Storage project.  Its 2012 Long Canyon application bears significant similarities to its earlier proposal, with some differences including a slightly lower upper dam.

Utah Independent Power's proposal is likely to trigger significant interest.  On the one hand, being able to use existing natural resources -- in this case, Colorado River water and canyon topography -- to store electricity may be an attractive proposition.  On the other hand, Colorado River water is already scarce and at the center of water right fights.  Moreover, the Long Canyon project would lie close to scenic and protected lands, such as Dead Horse Point State Park and Canyonlands National Park.  An existing jeep road runs along Long Canyon, and the area receives both motorized and non-motorized recreation.  In 2008, the State of Utah filed comments questioning the applicant's rights to the necessary water and land, as well as the impacts to the viewshed and natural landscape from the dams, transmission lines, and other project facilities.

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.

June 7, 2011 - Washington dam removal in process

While state and federal governments pursue policies supporting the development of new renewable energy resources, existing hydroelectric dams are being removed.  Last year, I noted the plan to remove the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams on the Elwha River on Washington's Olympic Peninsula.  That plan is moving forward; last week, after 99 years of producing renewable power, the dams' electricity-generating turbines have now been turned off.

The Elwha River restoration project will be the largest dam removal in U.S. history.  All told, the dam removal project is projected to cost $324.7 million.

The Elwha project is made more interesting by its factual context, including land conservation, fish impacts, and sedimentation.  Much of the river's 45-mile course runs through Olympic National Park, making power generation a use some feel is incongruous with the watershed's protected status.

The Elwha River was formerly home to impressive runs of anadromous fish, including salmon, which have been an important part of local native Americans' culture.  In 1910, the river produced approximately 390,000 wild salmon and sea-run trout, but that number dropped more than 99% to only about 3,000 wild native salmonids in 2005.  The dams are believed to have played a part in this decimation of that fish stock.

Thanks to the glacier-fed nature of the watershed, massive amounts of sediment have built up behind the dams -- perhaps as much as 24 million cubic yards, or enough sediment to cover almost 15,000 acres one foot deep.

Dam demolition and removal itself is scheduled to begin September 17, 2011.