Renewable Energy Workgroup

Main Objectives and Target: ESC members recognize the need for increased energy security for both Canadian and US territories. Renewable energy can provide a very diverse set of resources and technology solutions for consideration by the residential, commercial, and industrial customers. It is...

Main Objectives and Target:

ESC members recognize the need for increased energy security for both Canadian and US territories. Renewable energy can provide a very diverse set of resources and technology solutions for consideration by the residential, commercial, and industrial customers. It is important for utilities to understand the policies being formulated by government and regulatory agencies as well as the technologies involved in the emerging renewable energy markets. Technology applications and concepts that are associated with the renewable energy include: solar thermal, solar cooling, concentrated solar, photovoltaic equipment, wind, biomass, biogas produced by digesters, landfill gas, geothermal and tidal wave solutions.
The proposed consortium effort would provide a centralized approach that allows outreach to government decision makers, information exchange with technology developers of renewable and hybrid energy solutions, and development of a market response and solution sets that combine our natural gas resources with renewable energy options. Such a collaborative and leveraged effort in the renewable energy area should provide members with a portfolio of cost-effective solutions and program initiatives.
 

Proposed Deliverables:
INFORMATION: Workshops, webinars, web-base resources would provide emerging product evaluations, document challenges and opportunities for natural gas including hybrid solutions, and would examine advanced metering infrastructure development and the impact on renewable energy.
POLICY AND MARKETING: Consortium initiatives would provide policy analysis on renewable energy and monitor regulations, incentives, and rebates.
TECHNOLOGY: Consortium efforts would track the rapidly developing solutions sets based on renewable energy resources including hybrid products that promote the reliability and advantages of natural gas when presented as hybrid solutions such as solar/natural gas heating and cooling or combined wind/solar natural gas fueled CHP systems.
Initial Deliverable – A Proposed White Paper by GTI and NGTC: The focus of the white paper by GTI will be on synergistic applications whereby renewable energy provides seasonal or peak demand reduction, overall higher efficiencies (such as hybrid renewable/natural gas solutions), lower cost co-firing, back-up, or reliability means (such as wind turbines backed up by conventional natural gas fueled power generation. The white paper will build on a separate effort funded by SoCal Gas and CEC on renewable energy technology needs.
The white paper will provide an assessment of the overall opportunities for, and challenges to, the natural gas commodity for the set of renewable energy options (wind, solar, biogas, etc.). Regional differences will be identified (such as south, west-coast, etc.).
Specifically, the white paper will identify the top three opportunities for renewable/natural gas solutions for each market sector: residential, commercial and industrial. The white paper will provide an insight into current state of technical development, expected commercialization time tables, market barriers, as well as, regulatory and economic drivers for the selected technologies. In addition the top two challenges shall be identified for each of the three market sectors: residential, commercial, and industrial.
Finally this effort, will have NGTC overlay the Canadian perspective, providing any unique technology needs or policy implications for the work effort described above. NGTC will have access to the results from GTI to avoid any duplication of effort.

For information contact Rich Biljetina, ESC coordinator at biljet@att.net, 202-251-8902