Blackout Lights Up DG Markets

Blackout Lights Up DG Markets

Mar 04 - Power Engineering

Six months have passed since a power blackout left 50 million Americans and Canadians in the dark. A joint task force of the U.S. and Canadian governments puts much of the blame on Akron, Ohio- based utility FirstEnergy, concluding the August 14th event was largely preventable had the company trimmed more trees near a transmission corridor, had better computers and better control center procedures in place.

Yet such events result from numerous factors, and regardless of cause or culprit, it was not the first or last widespread power interruption to take place. Blackouts have since occurred in London, Italy, Sardinia, Scandinavia and Latin America, collectively affecting more than 62 million people.

What may be more important is what kept power on for hundreds of customers on August 14th. Satellite photos of the affected area showed many points of light amid the darkness. Cogeneration systems employing isolated distributed generation (DG) capacity were able to keep many industries, hospitals and data centers running.

TRADITIONAL BACKUP

FOR ESSENTIAL CUSTOMERS

Critical load points such as hospitals stay in service during such events, and although virtually all have backup generation for the most essential needs, few have backup for the entire facility. One of the hospitals in the affected region that does is Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Conn. A Kawasaki cogeneration plant, providing combined heat and power (CHP) and consisting of MIA-13 units, was installed nearly 10 years ago at the 300-bed facility. Hospital officials report the system performed flawlessly. A hospital spokesman said patients and staff barely noticed a blink of the lights and that everything requiring electricity stayed on including air conditioning and computer services. Norwalk is one of the few hospitals in Connecticut that has this capability.

Complacency in maintaining backup systems, however, led to unpleasant surprises for some customers. "We had to quickly respond to service needs for generators that had not been maintained," says John Swanson, Caterpillar's district manager for New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. "So some customers are re- learning maintenance procedures. Basic things like belts, hoses and batteries seem to gel overlooked when budgets are tight."

Another problem is concern that loads have grown bigger than the backup power systems can handle. "Businesses have added loads over time and some building managers are unsure about what is connected to the system anymore," he says. "That has resulted in increased demand for load studies of existing systems. Customers want to know if their fuel system and fuel supply is adequate," says Swanson. Caterpillar is seeing customers replace old generators with bigger, cleaner burning ones.

LOOKING FOR THE BAD EGGS

A backup power system is only as good as the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) hooked to it. And like the engines and turbines designed to supply power for hours or days during outages, a UPS system, designed to maintain power continuity and quality for seconds or minutes, must be maintained as well.

"Batteries are the bane of our existence," says Alan Katz, segment manager for MGE UPS Systems, a company with thousands of customers in the affected area. he notes that 99% of UPS failures are clue to the chemical batteries that support them, because, unfortunately, battery technology hasn't progressed much in more than 100 years.

"Lack of battery maintenance was the only thing that caused our equipment to fail during the outage," says Katz. he recommends testing the internal resistance of the impedance under load every six months. Terming the procedure "looking for the bad eggs," he notes that finding a battery problem is typically not catastrophic unless the problem is ignored. "Replacement is the only alternative, but because you can isolate the exact problem cell, you would normally only have Lo replace one cell in a string of 40." Although wet cell batteries will last up to 20 years, a bad cell could mean UPS performance under load could drop from 30 minutes to three minutes.

Observing that UPS alone might be considered the backbone of a distributed generation scheme, Katz points out that 99.9% of power events last less than five minutes, substantially less than the 20 to 30 minutes that most properly maintained UPS systems can provide. "During the August blackout, there were a number of financial institutions whose backup systems did not kick in and so the UPS saved them," he says. "Virtually all major data centers have on- site engines that start within 20 seconds of an outage. Not only does the UPS make that transition seamless, it buys some extra time il the engine has a problem."

European utilities are using significant numbers of UPS systems to provide high quality power to customers. Katz says utilities there are selling customers six 9s of power quality (99.9999% perfect) at premium prices. The utility owns and maintains the UPS. "There is some growth of the practice in the U.S. but, by and large, U.S. utilities are not doing it because they want to slick to their core business," he says.

"WIRELESS" COMMUNICATION NOT COMPLETELY WIRELESS

On the afternoon of August 14, thousands of New Yorkers discovered their cell phones failed them just when they needed them the most. The reason? Many wireless providers lost power at their cell antenna sites. Long lines formed at public telephones in New York City because they continued to function thanks to battery and standby generator systems that support landlines.

Verizon Wireless in upstate New York continued to operate normally throughout the outage because each of its more than 300 cell antenna sites around Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester has a Cummins 40 kW diesel generator with telecommunications gear running on utility power and backed up with a bank of batteries capable of providing power for eight to ten hours.

The gensets feature Cummins' PowerCommand 2100 digital controllers that provide precise voltage regulation, improved combustion efficiency, remote and local networking capabilities, and real-time information. Coupled with each genset is an automatic transfer switch that senses loss of utility power, signals the generator to start, then opens the breaker to the utility connection and closes the connection to the generator. When utility power returns, the transfer switch restores normal power to the cell site and shuts down the generator. In addition, Cummins gensets of 500 kW or 750 kW have been installed at all of the company's regional switching facilities. Verizon reported that the systems operated flawlessly during the outage.

ROLL IN THE POWER

Within minutes after the power outage began, Kohler Co. and its national distributor network were deploying generators and service technicians to customers throughout Canada, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Michigan, providing back-up and primary power to manufacturing plants, municipalities, cold-storage facilities, distribution warehouses, retail establishments, cellular communication, and homes.

Jeremy Sockwell, logistics manager for Kohler Rental Power, which also offers a line of residential generators ranging from 8.5 kW to 100 kW, says August 14th has spurred renewed interest for permanently installed residential generators. Mark Repp, marketing director, notes that on the weekend following the event, residential customers flocked to Kohler distributors to purchase generators. "As a result, we will be increasing our production capacity for our residential generators," he says.

CAN DG EVER BE A BLACKOUT BUSTER?

There is broad agreement that DG can ease the strain on the grid by making larger customers more self-reliant and in some cases, interrupdble. The larger question is, can DG do more in terms of grid support?

"The grid was originally built by and for individual operating companies," says Bill Closser, director of business development for EPRIsolutions, a company that works with the power industiy on planning, maintaining and operating transmission assets to ensure overall performance and reliability. "Today, the industry wheels massive amounts of power across entire regions and that's something the giid was not designed to do."

Furthermore, there's little incentive for major upgrades to the aging U.S. grid since most players aren't sure they can recover their investment, let alone make money. "Environmental regulations often add to the difficulty by preventing new generation from being built close to new demand, so it goes in at brownfield locations and that requires moving more electricity for longer distances across already-taxed transmission systems," says Closser. "Another difficulty is that when you try to upgrade your grid using the most prudent path, that path may go through an area with EPA restrictions. So, you have to file an alternative path that makes the EPA happy but the PUC says it will not allow the cost because it's not the most prudent path."

During the blackout, Cummins supplied 100 MW of diesel peaking generators to help First Energy keep portions of its distribution system online near York, Pa. Photo courtesy of Cummins.

Some of the new DG technologies strategically placed might be helpful he says but the verdict is still out on their capabilities. "I believe it will be awhile before we see a significant contribution from some of the new DG technologies."

Since wi\nd availability is often out of synch with peak demands, EPRIsolutions has been working with utility customers to examine storage options, including using batteries and high performance capacitors to store energy for on-peak use. "One big problem of course is that the locations where the wind is the steadiest are often remote from the load centers so you have transmission constraints and transmission losses. So trying to bring wind energy onto the grid further taxes an already-taxed remote portions of the transmission system."

For decades, many large industrial customers have benefited from low, interruptible utility rates predicated on agreeing to shed load or even place generation onto the grid in power short situations. Swanson says technology can enable greater deployment of grid- paralleled generation. "There are products that allow that to happen. They allow full dispatchability and do just about anything you want to do in terms of start up, paralleling, ramp rates, setting the load and holding it, winding it down and disconnecting automatically. The important thing is that it is much less expensive to be able to do those things today than it used to be. We could have many more customers participating in this kind of grid support."

"In order for DG to help improve the local system reliability, the local DG capacity has to be sufficient to carry the local system load consistently and the local distribution system has to be re- designed for intentional islanding," says Chase Sun, senior substation engineer for PG&E who was among those involved in formulation of IEEE-929 and 1547 interconnection standards and California's Rule 21 standard that first established specified standard interconnection, operating, and metering requirements for distributed resource generators.

"At the current low DG penetration level, it is highly probable that any local DG would be swamped by the local loads if isolated from the normal supply. Therefore, it will not be able to improve the local system reliability," he says. "In order for DG to provide meaningful local voltage or capacity support it has to be under the control of the distribution system operator and its operation coordinated with the rest of the distribution circuit and associated equipment."

So far as the recently adopted IEEE 1547 interconnection standard, Sun says it was designed to minimize or avoid any potential adverse impact to the existing distribution system at low penetrations - not to improve system reliability. "For example, when paralleled, the DG is required not to regulate voltage, unless coordinated with the utility. The DG is also required to trip at 59.3 Hz, unless a lower setting is coordinated with the utility."

Regulatory and market uncertainty complicates the issue as well. "Part of the problem is that today's power markets are in an unprecedented state of flux," says Mike Devine, gas product marketing manager in Caterpillar's electric power group. "The questions are who's going to own the asset, who's going to operate it and how is it going to be a grid resource. There is an emerging niche for third parties to do this. We see RFPs from regulated utilities for ESCOs to come in and do that. And we see projects where the installed project is a temporary application."

DO THE RULES NEED TO CHANGE?

A major problem is the incentive for ulililies to want such a system. "The utility industry has a culture consisting of the central plant, transmission and distribution," says Swanson. They have their legacy systems for control and monitoring that have to be all tied together and in some areas that can be very complex. And that discourages them from pursuing some types of opportunities."

Perhaps nowhere is the incentive for utility adoption of DG stronger than in New York State. New York Public Service Commission Chairman Bill Flynn came to his post following two years as president of the New York Slate Energy Research and Development and Authority (NYSERDA). In 1998 the Commission tapped NYSERDA to establish an energy efficiency program to replace phased out utility demand-side-management programs. From the very beginning, DG was an initial part of the effort and has grown bigger with time.

"I feel confident in saying that NYSERDA is running the best DG program in the country," he says. "The commission aggressively analyzes barriers to DG and we set about to ease or get rid of them. When Governor Pataki came into office, one of the first things he saw was that we had to diversify our energy portfolio in New York because we had become too reliant for outside sources of energy." As a result of the highly pro-active commission support, New York has provided financial incentives to 80 CHP projects totaling 90 MW of capacity expected to come on-line by 2005 while assisting developers through regular workshops designed to facilitate additional projects.

One of the grids affected by this summer's event - the PJM Interconnection - also takes a proactive stance toward DG, with Manager of Alternative Generation Joe Kerecman devoting all his time toward coordinating policies to stimulate resource diversity. That includes renewables and DG.

"We don't discriminate on power sources and try to provide equitable access for these resources to come into the market. Our stakeholders have voted for an initiative to look at IEEE 1547 for projects of 2 MW and less and see how it can be adopted within the PJM Interconnection process in terms of more standardization with technical specifications for all of PJM."

PJM already has an interconnection process - one for 10 MW and below and one for above 10 MW. "The 10 MW and below is an expedited process," says Kerecman. "If you look at the FERC NOPR for small generation interconnection, our process is pretty compliant with what FERC envisions. So after resolving a few details, I think it will be a pretty big advancement for the interconnection of small generation."

He also offers this insight: "What DG needs to really work is for states to come together - at least on a regional basis - and adopt regional standards for air permitting and other matters to make things as seamless and consistent as possible. We can't have it where you go into a new state and it becomes a mini-project each time."

So far as utility acceptance, he believes most utilities have not figured out how to leverage DG for their own economic benefit. "They have to learn to look at DG as a more manageable and less costly alternative way to mitigate higher cost infrastructure investment such as distribution, transformers and transmission systems."

As an example, he cites the abilily to defer the redesign oi a substation for several years by adding several megawatts to the location. "There's some real economic benefit to dropping in a DG unit to cover the shortfall and later on being able to deploy the same asset elsewhere." he says regulators need to provide incentive rate making that will encourage utilities to become more progressive in looking at these other options versus the traditional distribution investment, possibly incorporating greater risk assessment parameters to compensate for any additional risk issues.

Alison Silverstein, advisor to FERC Chairman Pat Wood III, says that while the FERC's standard market design proposal has evolved, the commission's vision of the role of distributed assets remains clear. "Our proposals and decisions underscore the need to include demand resources on an equal footing with supply, to achieve parity and diversity between supply technologies of all sizes, owners, fuel types and locations, and to assure that every region has adequate supply and demand resources for reliability and price moderation. We also need DR and DG to help moderate peak demand prices and price volatility."

She believes having more DG could mitigate blackouts or speed recovery from them. "DG can provide an important safety valve for grid management," she says. "Measures like the New York ISO's emergency demand response program, which relies on some DG, can be dispatched in an emergency to help rebalance load before going to automatic load-shedding. During the August blackout, the state's DR program was used as a load-to-generation balancing measure to help the area restore service. second, if operators can dispatch a fleet of DG units it would provide a useful source of real and reactive power in voltage-hungry areas. In particular, by locating generation closer to load, DG can provide a targeted response to system conditions like local voltage problems. The better and faster we solve problems locally, the better we can keep a problem from spreading." She says that ultimately ways should be found to site and organize DG across an area for more effective service restorations.

She observes that as long as electricity is sold on a kilowatt- hour basis, operation of DG beyond the emergency response level will reduce utility revenues. "But I think that's narrow math. Utility interest in DG should grow if they gain a better understanding of the location-specific benefits of DG. Then we may see better recognition of and compensation for real and reactive power in transmission-constrained urban areas. That's especially true if utilities take a greater role in owning, co-owning or locating the DG."

Security concerns also drive New York State's commitment to DG. "A priority of mine is security and I think that, in terms of 9/11 and the blackout, DG can play a role if, heaven forbid, those types of events happen," says Flynn.

Bob Jones of Cummins Power Generation says that heightened security concerns in the wake of 9/11 are focusing more attention on the role DG plays in keeping both private industry and public: facilities functioning. "Factories, businesses and public facilities such as water/sewage treatment plants, pipelines, airports, and public transportation would all be less vulnerable to disruptions with on-site pow\er systems. Taken in total, these issues are a strong impetus for more DG facilities all over the country."

BY: STEVE BLANKINSHIP, ASSOCIATE EDITOR