La Plata Electric Supports Fort Lewis’ New Cutting Edge GPE Building

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Durango-based Fort Lewis College celebrated the opening of the new Geosciences, Physics and Engineering (GPE) building. La Plata Electric Association and its members helped fund this building through an educational and special projects grant of $200,000 from Unclaimed Capital Credits.

LPEA staff engineer, Rachel Schur-Wagner says that Fort Lewis is cutting-edge and the opening of the GPE “Is providing incredible opportunities in engineering and the sciences.” Labs in the GPE are filled with the latest in high-tech equipment and spaces for students to be creative. Instead of listening to mass lectures, students work in small collaborative groups.

Dan Harms, LPEA manager of rates, technology and energy management says that Fort Lewis is a “great value to local companies” now that they can “home-grow” their own future employees in Durango.

Not only is the GPE building cutting edge, but with the new three-story building, Fort Lewis is able to expand its student base for their geosciences, physics, and engineering programs.

LPEA takes pride in the fact that they and their members had a hand in helping make this a reality for their local Durango community.

Two EnergyWise Awards Presented at the Colorado Science Fair

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Projects focused on electricity were honored at the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair thanks to CREA and the financial support of CoBank. The 62nd annual statewide science fair at Colorado State University in Fort Collins included more than 300 projects created by students in grades 6 through 12 from across the state. As a sponsor of the EnergyWise Award, the Colorado Rural Electric Association was represented by Stuart Travis, a member of the CREA board from Y-W Electric in Akron. Travis served as the judge for the special EnergyWise Award, and as a former state science fair exhibitor himself, he enjoyed quizzing the students exhibiting at this year’s fair and learning about their projects.

Winners this year are middle schooler Tate Schrock, a 7th grader at Arickaree School in Anton, and high school students Michelle Ren and Julianna O’Clair, who are 10th graders at Brush High School in Brush. Tate’s project was titled “H2 and O2 Generator Fabrication & PEM Fuel Cell Efficiency,” and it documented a successfully-built H2 and O2 generator that split water molecules to be used in a fuel cell as another way to create renewable energy.

Michelle and Julianna titled their project “Energy Production of Microbial Fuel Cells,” studying how microbes from the soil or wastewater can generate electricity and showed how adding a salt or sugar solution to the process increases output.

Both of these projects were awarded a special certificate and a $250 prize. The students will also be invited to exhibit their projects at the CREA Energy Innovations Summit in October.

Take Control of Your Smart Devices and Make Them Work for You

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By Paul Wesslund

If you ever want to see one of the biggest changes going on in the world today, look around your home. Your smartphone, video gaming system, security camera, fitness bracelet, thermostat and even your television could be part of a vast, interconnected group of devices that goes by the clunky name of the “internet of things.”

The term refers to anything connected to the internet, which covers a lot of gadgets and will soon cover even more. Today, you can purchase lightbulbs that dim with the sound of your voice or from the press of a button on your smartphone. A 2014 report by the investment firm Goldman Sachs predicted the number of internet-connected devices could grow 10 times by 2020, to as many as 28 billion “things.”

While this growth may seem like the latest trend, it was recognized more than 30 years ago. Credit for naming it goes to Peter T. Lewis, co-founder of Cellular One. In a 1985 speech he said, “The internet of things, or IoT, is the integration of people, processes and technology with connectable devices and sensors to enable remote monitoring status, manipulation and evaluation of trends of such devices.”

Low prices versus security
In other words, the rapid rise in the number of internet-connected devices has been building for decades, says Tim Heidel, deputy chief scientist with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. “The ‘internet of things’ is the latest buzzword that reflects a long-term trend,” Heidel says. “Ten years ago, you may have had six or eight or 10 devices on the wireless router in your home. Now, that number can go as high as 25 or 30 devices.”

Heidel credits lower costs for ramping up this high-tech revolution, which can make life more convenient and fun, and even increase energy efficiency with new ways to control heating, cooling, lighting and other electricity users.

“The cost of including communications in the devices has come down dramatically. Twenty years ago, you could only afford an ethernet port or Wi-Fi in a computer,” Heidel says. “Now, we’re getting to the point where it costs literally only pennies to include that capability in any device imaginable.

“So what’s changing here is the number of devices. Once you have a critical mass of all the places that are capable of communicating, they can then start communicating with each other.

All of this promises convenience and services, but in the pursuit of extremely low costs, sometimes there’s the opportunity to cut corners on security,” Heidel adds.

A stunning example of security problems with the “internet of things” happened last October when hackers crashed dozens of websites in the United States for most of a day, including well-known names like Netflix and Twitter. Incredible as it seems, that attack may have been aided by a device in your own home.

Here’s what happened Friday, October 21: Hackers already scanned the world for devices vulnerable to infection by malicious software that allowed them to take control of hundreds of thousands of home routers, baby monitors, printers and network-enabled cameras. Using that “botnet,” the hackers flooded websites with so many messages the sites shut down for several hours in what is called a “denial of service” attack.

Cyber safety tips
There are ways you can reduce your risk from hackers hijacking your internet-connected devices, says Cynthia Hsu, cyber security program manager with NRECA.

“Understand what you’re buying,” Hsu says. “If you have a choice between two vendors who are producing a product and one takes security seriously and the other doesn’t, use your money to buy a product that takes security seriously. If consumers are not willing to pay for security, the manufacturers have no incentive to build it.

“The criminal element is rapidly escalating the innovation of new ways of attack.” If you have a router for wireless internet in your home, Hsu says, “make sure you patch your router’s software whenever security updates are available so it’s protected as new vulnerabilities are discovered.”

Other security steps Hsu recommends:
• Install firewalls in your home network.
• Change the default passwords regularly in devices you purchase.
• Disconnect gadgets when they’re not being used. “Not everything needs to be plugged into the internet all the time,” she says.

Keep in mind that the electronics in your home can not be accessed from outside without you allowing it. For example, your electric utility cannot access your refrigerator’s energy usage unless it is a smart refrigerator that you allow access to and it is connected to one or more online applications.

The folks at your local electric co-op can offer expertise in managing the promise and the problems of what is called the “internet of things,” and they can answer questions about efficient energy usage. NRECA, your co-op’s national association, is researching some of the newest devices to understand how they can be used for energy efficiency.

“NRECA does a lot of research to help guide, deploy and test these devices,” says Venkat Banunarayanan, NRECA’s senior product development manager. “These projects are looking at how to use these devices in the ‘internet of things’ to bring value to the co-op and its members.”

Paul Wesslund writes on cooperative issues for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Co-op Solar Spring Break 2017

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Grand Valley Power in Grand Junction, GRID Alternatives and the Colorado Energy Office announced the development of the third phase of a low-income solar project at Grand Valley Power’s Community Solar Array.

Through a partnership between GVP and GRID, the first phase of this 29 kW solar array was installed in 2015, which was the first of its kind in the nation. A second array was installed in late 2015. GVP’s Chief Executive Officer Tom Walch stated at the time, “In the grand scheme of things, a 29-kilowatt solar array serving six to 10 families is a small project. But I like to think that this is a big idea — one that can be replicated at utilities across the state and across the nation.”

GRID received a $1.2 million CEO grant in August 2015 to partner with utilities to implement low-income community solar as part of a statewide initiative. Since GVP’s first installation with GRID, five other Colorado rural electric cooperatives and one municipal utility have partnered with GRID and CEO to pilot a slight variation on the low-income community solar model developed by GVP. Development of the third phase of GVP’s Community Solar Array will mark the seventh such project built as part of the initiative. At the end of the two-year grant period, more than 1 megawatt of solar generation directly benefiting more than 300 Colorado families will be installed.

What separates this phase of the GVP Community Solar project from previous phases is this year, students from Beloit College in Wisconsin spent their spring break installing the solar array. Beloit College is one of three schools involved in GRID’s Campus Chapter pilot program, Solar Spring Break. The students spent March 6-8 learning about solar system design and solar policy. From March 9-10, the group installed a ground-mounted community solar system at the GVP site. This was an opportunity for students to experience hands-on solar industry workforce training with GRID, America’s largest non-profit solar installer.

With this completed phase, the partnership between GVP and GRID installed enough solar to benefit at least 35 Grand Valley Power members who need it the most over the next 20 years.

Penitente Solar: Lighting the Way in the San Luis Valley

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Over the past decade, solar energy manufacturers and developers have made significant strides in the quality and affordability of this electric generation resource. The per-kilowatt-hour price from solar generators in the past five years has dropped almost 30 percent making this renewable resource competitive with traditional generation.

For the past four years, San Luis Valley Rural Electric Cooperative has been investigating the installation of a 2.75 AC megawatt solar project. Its top priority is ensuring that the project is cost effective. Last summer, San Luis Valley REC negotiated a power purchase agreement with RES-Americas. RES-Americas provided attractive pricing that will provide modest power supply cost reductions.

The project has been named Penitente Solar and will be located in the southwestern part of Saguache County. San Luis Valley REC purchased the 25 acres of land on which the project will be constructed and all the agreements necessary to build this project have been executed. Construction is scheduled to begin in early spring and should be complete by midsummer.

Innovative Technologies Change the Costs of Electric Power

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By Justin LaBerge

Advances in technology are bringing major changes to the energy industry. We are generating a growing portion of our electricity with renewable resources, and advances in automation and communications technology are making our power grid smarter and more reliable than ever.

These advances are exciting news for American energy consumers, but they’re also changing the cost structure of the industry. Since electric cooperatives use costs to determine their rates, changing costs require corresponding changes to rates.

Not-for-profit electric cooperatives work hard to ensure their rates are fair to all members. To accomplish this mission, cooperatives design their rates so that the bill each member receives matches the cost of serving that member as closely as possible.

But just because your local electric cooperative’s rates are designed to be fair doesn’t mean they’re always easy to understand. In fact, rate structures that do the best job of fairly assigning costs are often the hardest to understand.

Here is a quick look at three of the approaches electric cooperatives are trying.

Time-of-use rates
With time-of-use rates, when you use electricity is just as important as how much you use. Rather than charging the same price for electricity at all times, time-of-use rates charge different prices based on the time of day when the energy is used. The goal of this system is to encourage consumers to reduce their energy use at the times when demand for energy is highest.

For most electric cooperatives, demand for electricity spikes in the afternoon and early evening hours as heating units and air conditioners battle outdoor temperatures and families return home from school and work and began evening routines.

When demand for energy spikes, electric cooperatives must purchase extra electricity to meet the demand. That extra power typically comes from more expensive power plants.

A time-of-use rate ensures there’s always power available when consumers need it but provides price incentives to shift certain activities — such as running the dryer or dishwasher — to times when demand for electricity is lower.

When co-op members embrace this model, they can lower their monthly bills and help the cooperative reduce its costs — which can save members even more money in the long run.

Demand charges
Perhaps the most confusing concept in energy billing is the demand charge.

Historically, most residential consumers have not paid demand charges. But as our power grid becomes smarter and our network of generation resources gets more complex, it’s likely that more electric cooperatives will incorporate demand changes into their residential rate structures.

Demand measures the highest amount of electricity you demand from the system at one moment in time. The higher the demand, the more it costs to build, operate and maintain the equipment delivering that energy to you.

To understand demand charges, imagine you’re at a party chatting with two guests and you ask them how they got to the party. Betsy tells you she drove 150 miles per hour to get to the party. David says he drove 150 miles to attend the party.

There’s a big difference between a car capable of traveling 150 miles and a car capable of traveling 150 miles per hour. Any car can take you 150 miles. But if you want to go 150 miles per hour, you’ll need an expensive car with extra horsepower.

The same thing is true with electricity. If you demand large quantities of electricity be delivered to you all at once, the electric cooperative has to build larger, more expensive equipment to accommodate that demand.

Even if you only demand that much energy every once in a while, the cooperative still has to ensure its system is capable of handling that request when it comes.

If Betsy and David use electricity the same way they use their cars, Betsy is going to be paying a lot more than David each month, even if their total energy use is the same.

As the energy sector continues to move through this unprecedented period of innovation and change, cooperatives across the U.S. are experimenting with new rate structures to figure out the best way to recover costs and pay for the electric grid in a manner that is fiscally responsible and fair to all members.

Fixed monthly charges
Most electric cooperatives charge a fixed monthly fee to be connected to the co-op’s lines. Common terms for that fee include customer charge, service availability charge or access charge.

No matter what it’s called, the goal is to recover the cost of the poles, wires, bucket trucks, computers, switches and employees that bring electricity to your home or business. Those costs are the same every month whether you use a lot of electricity or turn off everything in your house and go on a month-long vacation.

Most utilities, including electric cooperatives, have never charged the full monthly cost of service as a flat fee. Often, the fixed portion of a member’s bill is only a fraction of the actual cost to build and maintain the power lines to his or her home or business. The rest of that cost is made up with a separate delivery charge that varies based on how much energy you consume.

To understand the difference between these structures, imagine a new vehicle with a sticker price that would require a monthly car payment of $500. Now, imagine if instead of charging $500 per month, the car company structured your payment so it was $250 per month, plus an additional 25 cents for every mile driven. If you drove 1,000 miles per month, you’d end up paying the same amount. If you drove more than that, your payment would be higher, and if you drove less than 1,000 miles, your payment would be lower.

That’s how cooperatives traditionally charged for the delivery of electricity to your home. But as renewable technologies become more popular and consumers make better energy choices, the old model doesn’t fully cover the cost of maintaining the grid.

Electric cooperatives are generating a growing portion of our nation’s electricity with renewable resources, and advances in automation and communications technology are making the power grid smarter and more reliable than ever.

As not-for-profit, member-owned organizations, electric cooperatives want to help their members find the best energy solutions to meet their needs. If members want to install solar, cooperatives want to help. If members want to reduce their energy use through home improvements and efficient appliances, cooperatives are eager to give advice. But even if we all consume less energy, we still need the power grid, and it costs a lot of money to operate and maintain that grid.

By lowering the variable delivery charge and increasing the fixed charge, electric cooperatives can keep the grid running safely and reliably while allowing members to make the energy choices that work best for their lives.

This system does a better job of fairly charging each member for the actual cost of their service. The total amount of money raised by the cooperative remains unchanged, but some members end up paying a bit more, and some a bit less.

Looking toward the future
The coming years will bring many changes to the way we generate, deliver and use electricity, and advances in energy technology promise to greatly improve our quality of life. America’s electric cooperatives are working hard to ensure that whatever the future may bring, you’ll be connected to that future through a modern energy grid that is safe, reliable and fairly priced for all.

Justin LaBerge writes on consumer and cooperative affairs for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Batteries are Changing How You Receive Electricity

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By Paul Wesslund

Batteries will soon be part of a huge change in how you will receive electricity from your electric cooperative.

Utilities are currently running into electricity supply challenges, and batteries are stepping up with solutions. Here’s what electric utilities are currently facing:

• High-tech equipment can fail during a power interruption of even a few milliseconds.

• Interest in renewable energy is increasing, but solar power won’t work when the sun doesn’t shine and wind turbines won’t spin when the wind doesn’t blow.

• Consumers want electric service to be restored more effectively after outages. Even if a storm leaves a large number of homes and businesses without power for several days, consumers want plans in place to quickly restore power to essential services, like gas stations and pharmacies.

A solution for these dilemmas lies in the emerging technology of battery storage, which could provide additional power when the demand for electricity is high. Currently, these large batteries are extremely expensive.

But the demand for better smartphones, laptop computers and electric cars fueled a frantic race for batteries that are lighter, smaller, longer lasting and less expensive. These demands are being met through research into technical improvements and by the economics of mass production.

The lithium-ion battery breakthrough
What’s behind all these developments is the 40-year-old lithium-ion battery technology, named for the lightweight metal lithium it’s made of, and ions, which are pieces of atoms that move back and forth inside the battery to produce and store electricity.

“One of the breakthroughs has been the adoption of the lithium-ion battery for vehicles as well as consumer products,” says Andrew Cotter, a program manager for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s business and technology strategies group. “A lot more lithium-ion batteries are being produced so there are a lot of companies able to package them much more cheaply. And that has spurred more companies to start investigating and investing in research.”

According to a 2016 report titled “Welcome to the Lithium Age” from Germany-based international financing giant Deutsche Bank, “Lithium-ion battery costs are falling rapidly as global battery producers expand manufacturing facilities, unlocking economies of scale.”

The next step for the battery industry, says Tom Lovas, a technical liaison and consultant with NRECA, is scaling up for applications in the electric utility industry.

Working through the hype curve
Right now only a handful of utilities are making significant use of batteries, but one industry research group predicts that number will grow eight times by 2020, for a market value of $2.5 billion. That kind of potential leads to some bold claims as battery companies compete for their share.

“There’s a lot of hype out there,” Lovas says, as marketers tout batteries as the linchpin of putting together the smart grid to modernize the flow of electricity.

“The technology is available, people are interested but no one knows the flaws yet,” Cotter says. “As utilities gain experience using batteries in routine operations, they will learn the imperfections and start figuring out what are the most conventional uses. Vendors, in turn, will start developing batteries for those specific applications.”

For example, one of the most likely of those applications will be to resolve the problem of intermittent power flows created by renewable energy. Since solar and wind power can be generated during times when people don’t need it, batteries could store the excess energy for future use. While beneficial in theory, in practice it is not clear whether there is a broad economic case for this. Each utility will have unique factors that will play into this decision.

Another use of batteries could be to smooth out power fluctuations from renewable energy. Solar and wind energy can come from a variety sources: independent vendors and even homeowners selling power back to the utility from their relatively small sets of solar panels or wind turbines in ways that are hard for the utility to predict. The result can affect the quality of power and even damage equipment as transmission and distribution lines are used in ways they weren’t designed for. But again, the economics of such an application are unique to each utility.

In time, utilities will become familiar with the best uses of the technology. Storage applications will become commonplace, and vendors will sell optimized products for them. Until then, NRECA’s business technology and strategies group is using cases that provide methodologies for a storage assessment.

Like all things in the energy industry, it is not all economics. Some state governments are getting into the act, passing laws requiring utilities to use batteries in their operations to encourage renewable energy and provide immediate power to essential businesses after storm outages.

This new utility world holds great promise and could start taking shape in as soon as one to three years, Cotter says. But first, he says, the utility battery industry needs to mature and show the effectiveness of the products.

Paul Wesslund writes on cooperative issues for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Electric Cooperative Gets New, Energy-Efficient Lighting

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La Plata Electric Association, with offices in Pagosa Springs and Durango, works with members — both residential and commercial — to change out their lighting to new, energy efficient lamps. The cost to purchase new lighting all at once can be cost prohibitive, so the electric cooperative has been prudent with its members’ money as it too worked to change out lighting in all of its buildings.

Ray Pierotti celebrates the appearance of “daylight” in LPEA’s warehouse.

“This has been a steady process beginning in 2010,” says Ray Pierotti, LPEA’s project specialist who focuses on lighting technology. “We’ve got a number of buildings and different lighting applications, such as parking lot and exterior lights, in addition to regular office lighting. I’ve been keeping up with the technology and, as it made sense from a technology and budgeting perspective, we initiated the projects.”

LPEA’s administrative offices were steadily replaced and are now 100 percent LED. With the office light retrofits, energy-saving controls were also installed, including dimmers and motion sensors. Work lighting for office employees is greatly improved even with the energy savings.

Pierotti is perhaps most excited about the projects that replaced the lighting in the warehouses. Previously dimly lit with old technology, the warehouses now appear to be illuminated by daylight. “The difference is just amazing,” Pierotti says.

The total reduction in kilowatts with all the office space, warehouses, truck barns, exterior and other lights changed out is nearing a combined 100 kilowatts, which, according to Pierotti, saves the cooperative more than 260,000 kilowatt-hours in both locations and more than $30,000 annually going forward.

Just like all of LPEA’s commercial members who opt to change out their lighting and reduce their energy consumption, LPEA benefitted from rebates provided by its wholesale power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission. Tri-State benefits by encouraging members to reduce energy consumption so the company doesn’t need to build additional generation facilities.

Innovation Rampant in Co-op Territories

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Want to know what Colorado electric co-ops are doing to bring more renewable energy online for member-owners? Find out by viewing the Colorado Rural Electric Association’s video on energy and innovation.

Titled “Innovations. Power. Community: Colorado’s Electric Cooperatives,” the video, which premiered at CREA’s annual Energy Innovations Summit, includes information on co-op solar gardens, a biomass plant, small hydro facilities, a methane capture project, a landfill gas plant and other renewable options.

View is at http://bit.do/CoopInnovations to view the video.

Going Green in Northern Colorado is Cost Effective

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Member-owners of Fort Collins-based Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association who want to go green but can’t build a wind turbine in their backyard or don’t have enough sun exposure to buy solar panels can opt to participate in the electric cooperative’s Green Power Program.

The Green Power Program is a way for members to support the use of renewable energy resources with the help of PVREA. The Green Power Program is a subscription to buy renewable energy credits (RECs) on a monthly basis.

RECs are proofs of purchase from electricity generated by renewable energy resources. Through the Green Power Program, subscriptions buy RECs from wind or solar facilities. The program is a great way for members to help expand an existing renewable energy footprint.

Members can opt in to invest in green power in 100-kilowatt-hour blocks for 9 cents per block. For the average residential consumer that uses around 1,000 kWh a month, going 100 percent green costs less than $1 a month. PVREA has been providing this green power option to its members since 1999.