NW Energy Coalition – For a clean and affordable energy future

How green is my electron? Overcoming the smart grid’s color blindness
Energy journals and, increasingly, the popular media now teem with updates and predictions on developing “smart grid” technologies … how they will help smooth power demand, greatly improve efficiency and outage/service response, and reward consumers with lower bills.

This issue of The Transformer tackles the question of why the smart grid isn’t necessarily a green grid and, in fact, could actually foster greater demand for power from coal-fueled or nuclear baseload plants. It also presents one proposed means of dealing with the problem: buying green electrons…

The Transformer: A cheaper bright future

The region’s new power and conservation plan closely tracks NW Energy Coalition’s Bright Future analysis and provides an even lower consumer cost estimate for achieving our clean energy vision…

The Transformer – Energy efficiency brings good things to life

The new official power and conservation plan for the Northwest confirms that more than enough inexpensive energy efficiency is availability to meet most new electricity needs.

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More and more utilities are rushing to substitute gas-fired combustion turbines for coal in their resource plans while rapidly expanding their use of renewables and efficiency. But are the assumptions behind this change correct? The new rush to gas is raising serious questions about domestic and international supply, price and price volatility, and lifecycle carbon emissions. This edition of The Transformer addresses those questions and considers the controversy surrounding liquefied natural gas.

Using simple smart water heaters to integrate intermittent renewables
– Wind-generated power is clean, relatively cheap and available in large quantities. But the wind itself is quite unpredictable, so much so that for each average megawatt (aMW) of wind power we need, we must erect about 3 megawatts of turbine capacity, since actual output could be anywhere from 0 to 3 megawatts at any instant.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are a step beyond traditional hybrid vehicles. Much of their fuel comes directly from the electric grid, and thus their extensive employment has significant implications for the electric power system.

This issue of The Transformer considers those implications…

Vol. 5, No. 3

When big money talks, it pays to listen:
Financiers cast critical eye on coal plant proposals

Background
This February, a press release from four of the country’s largest financial institutions caught utilities’ attention. Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Chase and Bank of America announced they had endorsed a set of carbon principles to be followed when evaluating [...]

Points and counterpoints
on decoupling Transformer
Background
Our Nov. 28 Transformer on decoupling, a strategy for overcoming potential revenue losses for utilities that invest in energy efficiency, elicited a flurry of electronic responses. Several writers were complimentary; others sought clarifications of insider terminology (we’ll keep working on that!) or additional information, which we supplied them individually.
Two correspondents challenged [...]

Size matters
‘Mega’ wind farms could make new transmission practical
Background
The number and size of new and projected Northwest wind farms have exploded, matching the worldwide annual growth rate of 37-percent for the past seven years.
Wind, however, continues to provide just a small fraction of the region’s power. To really combat global warming — and to meet [...]