EREN Network News

September 26, 2001

News and Events

• A Message from the Assistant Secretary
• Seattle City Council Approves 50-Megawatt Wind Purchase
• BEF and The Climate Trust Buy A Decade of Green Power
• Vermont Energy Plan Commits to Efficiency, Renewables
• General Motors Produces Powerful New Fuel Cell
• Fuel Cell Project Rejected in Connecticut, but Europe Buys
• DOE Funds Seven Teams to Build Superconducting Equipment

Site News

• Launch of New Office of Transportation Technologies Web Site

• EIA Releases the Electric Power Annual 2000

News and Events

A Message from the Assistant Secretary
David Garman, DOE's Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), has prepared a special message in response to the terrorist attack on September 11th. See Assistant Secretary Garman's message on the EERE page of the EREN Web site.

Seattle City Council Approves 50-Megawatt Wind Purchase
The Seattle City Council last week approved a purchase of 50 megawatts of wind power — enough to power about 16,500 homes — which will be the nation's largest purchase of wind power by a public utility to date. The city's municipal utility, Seattle City Light, will purchase the power from the Stateline Wind Project, now under construction on the Oregon-Washington border. The utility will buy the output from 50 megawatts of installed wind capacity starting on January 1st of next year. The utility will double its purchase to 100 megawatts in August 2002, and may increase it to 175 megawatts in August 2004.

See the press release about the proposal on the Seattle City Light Web site.

See also the full text of the ordinance from the City of Seattle Legislative Information Service.

As noted in the city's news release, the Stateline Wind Project will now have a total capacity of 262 megawatts instead of the 300 megawatts originally planned. Environmental considerations caused some of the planned turbine sites in Oregon to be eliminated from the project. See last week's EREN Network News.

BEF and The Climate Trust Buy A Decade of Green Power
The Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) and The Climate Trust agreed early this month to jointly buy $200,000 worth of green power over the next ten years — an amount totaling 36,500 megawatt-hours. The organizations will actually buy "green tags" from DOE's Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which serves the Pacific Northwest. BPA will produce the power at a wind project in Oregon, then will sell the electricity as part of its standard electricity supply. The green tag purchase will cover the added cost of producing the power from wind energy, and the two organizations will end up owning the environmental attributes of that clean power: credits for avoiding the production of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and other pollutants. Those credits, which could potentially be sold to a power plant to offset its emissions, will instead be retired by the two organizations. See the BEF press release.

BEF has been selling green tags itself through its Web site. Over the past 18 months, BEF has sold green tags for more than 11,700 megawatt-hours of green power. To help individuals and small businesses figure out how many green tags they need to purchase to offset their own energy use, BEF has created an online carbon dioxide calculator. See the BEF press release.

Or jump straight to the carbon dioxide calculator.

Vermont Energy Plan Commits to Efficiency, Renewables
Vermont Governor Howard Dean unveiled last week a long- term energy plan for the state that relies on energy efficiency and renewable energy to meet any growth in the state's demand for electricity. Vermont's electricity use is currently increasing by 100,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year. The plan also diversifies the state's energy sources by drawing on efficient, small-scale, onsite power generation. To help achieve the plan's goals, the governor is proposing to allocate $750,000 in 2002 toward subsidies for small- scale renewable energy installations. See the announcement (PDF 23 KB) on the Vermont Department of Public Service Web site.(Download Acrobat Reader)

General Motors Produces Powerful New Fuel Cell
A fuel cell with a small size that produces a lot of power is critical for the success of fuel-cell-powered vehicles. Early prototypes filled entire vans full of fuel cell components, but recent advances have brought fuel cell power densities — the amount of power produced per volume occupied by the fuel cell — high enough to create practical vehicles. And according to a mid-September announcement from General Motors Corporation (GM), that company's fuel cell is now the top performer in terms of power density. GM says its latest fuel cell achieves 1.75 kilowatts per liter, which is 60 percent higher than any other power density announced to date. The closest competitor, according to GM, is Canada's Ballard Power Systems, which has achieved a power density of 1.1 kilowatts per liter. See the GM press release.

While Ballard may be unhappy with the GM news, it recently received much better news from Ford Motor Company. Ballard announced last week that it has signed a three-year agreement worth $22 million (in U.S. dollars) to supply Ford with its Mark 900 Series fuel cell power modules and related engineering and support services. "We intend to launch our first commercial fuel cell vehicle in 2004, and this agreement with Ballard will enable us to achieve that goal," said John Wallace, executive director of Ford's TH!NK brand. See the Ballard press release.

Fuel Cell Project Rejected in Connecticut, but Europe Buys
A proposal to install 26 megawatts worth of fuel cells throughout Connecticut, and to fund them through the state's Conservation and Load Management Fund, was rejected two weeks ago in a draft decision by the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control. FuelCell Energy, Inc. had planned to produce the fuel cells for the project. See the FuelCell Energy press release.

The news hasn't been all bad for FuelCell Energy, however. The company announced last week that it is sending seven 250-kilowatt fuel cell plants to Europe under an agreement with a division of DaimlerChrysler. See the FuelCell Energy press release.

DOE Funds Seven Teams to Build Superconducting Equipment
DOE announced on Monday that seven teams will receive a total of $57 million to advance high-temperature superconductivity (HTS) technologies. Superconductivity is the ability of certain materials to carry electrical current without resistance, which causes most of the energy losses in wires. Electrical equipment that uses superconductors can operate at high efficiencies, but most superconductors require cooling to cryogenic temperatures. HTS materials offer the advantages of other superconductors but at higher temperatures, which allow liquid nitrogen to be used as a coolant. This makes HTS technologies much more practical for use in common electrical equipment.

To advance the use of HTS technologies, the seven teams will design and develop an electrical generator, a utility-scale transformer, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, bearings for a flywheel energy storage system, and a magnetic separator for industry — all using HTS components. In addition, two HTS cables will be installed in utility substations: a high-power-capacity cable in a congested urban substation on Long Island in New York, and a three- phase, 1000-foot cable in a substation in Columbus, Ohio. See the DOE press release.

Site News

Launch of New Office of Transportation Technologies Web Site
DOE's Office of Transportation Technologies (OTT) Web site has a new look and feel, thanks to a major redesign that was completed in mid-September. The redesigned Web site has a simpler home page that provides a more intuitive organization of the large amount of work done by OTT. In addition to three main categories — About Us, Technologies, and Partnerships — the site provides information crafted specifically for drivers and operators, fleet managers, students, and people interested in funding opportunities. The site also packages a variety of tools into five simple categories.

For this and other recent additions to the EREN Web site.

Energy Facts and Tips

EIA Releases the Electric Power Annual 2000
DOE's Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its Electric Power Annual 2000 early this month. The publication provides a review of the year 2000 for the electric power industry, and features the beginning of the electrical crisis in California while electric industry restructuring continued in other states. Hydropower, the primary source of renewable electricity in the United States, suffered from drought conditions that lowered output by about 13 percent compared to 1999. The other renewable energy sources — including solar, wind, geothermal energy, and biomass power — remained lost in the "other" category, producing only 2.2 percent of the United States' electricity. See the report on the EIA Web site.

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