Recent weather events around the country like cold snaps and hurricanes make me glad I’m served by Peninsula Light Co. Recently our house guests from Portland told us that when the temperature dropped to 14 degrees during the cold weather this past January in Oregon, their family of four was without power for five days and had to move from their frozen house to a hotel. In Western Washington, the same cold snap increased demand for electricity right to the limits of big utilities like Puget Sound Energy. How lucky we were that Peninsula Light kept our power on.
Residents of Houston were not so lucky when Hurricane Beryl hit in July and left nearly 2 million people without power. Many residents had no electricity for weeks and at least 36 people died, mostly seniors who lost air conditioning. Center-Point Energy, their utility, is still cleaning up, weeks later. Ironically, there was enough supply in that region of Texas, but the above-ground distribution system including poles, transmission lines and transformers was devastated.
Are there any lessons for us on the Key Peninsula and our wonderful user-owned Peninsula Light? On the KP more people and business means more power will be needed. I wonder if Peninsula Light recognizes some cautionary lessons from these events. What are your plans to add capacity as the KP grows? What strategies can PenLight pursue to cope with conditions outside its control (like extremes of weather) or accidental (but sadly inevitable) power interruptions such as when a truck hits a power pole? Most of the PLC distribution system is up in the air, just like Houston’s. While a hurricane like Beryl is unlikely here, droughts, forest fires or earthquakes are a threat.
Power planners in Texas and everywhere else are largely approaching today’s challenges with 100-year-old thinking that prevailed during rural electrification in the 1920s and ’30s. It was simple and it worked: send power generated from fossil-fueled plants and (eventually hydroelectric sources) down every highway for hundreds of miles and hook up all the towns and houses along the way. Power distribution derived from this simple plan worked for nearly a century. Perhaps reflexively, last-century thinking crept into a recent PenLight member newsletter when it said that buying power generated by burning natural gas or coal is how the cooperative will cope with future supply problems.
The board might appreciate that some large utility companies are implementing new ideas to improve the capacity and resilience of their systems. Pacific Gas & Electric, for example, powers large areas in central and northern California where fatal wildfires have been attributed to its system. To manage these risks, especially in some remote areas, PG&E has supported the construction of microgrids.
A microgrid is a local electrical grid with defined boundaries that can be powered via a connection to an external grid, or it can power itself if that connection is lost. It may contain wind or solar power generators, a stand-alone conventional generator, a fuel cell, or batteries. Just imagine if Key Center is protected in a microgrid, power won’t be lost if a truck hits a power pole at the intersection of the Key Peninsula Highway and Elgin-Clifton Road. I believe there is federal support available for sustainable infrastructure modernization. Does the Peninsula Light board have a grant writer?
A microgrid can power itself with batteries. Virtually all utility-sized renewable generators (wind, solar, pumped storage) are now built with batteries to maintain some or all of the plant’s output for hours or days. PG&E buys power from a battery storage project at Moss Landing, California. Owned by energy generation corporate giant Vistra based in Irving, Texas, the batteries at Moss Landing can store 750 megawatts of power and deliver 3,000 megawatt-hours of power through the grid to its customers. Like solar energy and renewable energy more generally, the cost of big batteries is declining.
Most of the KP was without power for hours earlier this year because of an accident in Gig Harbor. The board could ask the experts at PenLight whether battery storage could have kept the power on. How much revenue was lost because of the accident? Was the PenLight office itself affected? Does it have battery backup? PenLight skillfully administers the electricity in its service area and has the expertise to help manage small water systems.
Perhaps it could persuade people with off-grid power from electric vehicles, home battery systems, or solar panels to power microgrids or to charge up PenLight batteries. This might help with growing demand and unplanned outages.
The trend towards self-sufficiency is apparent to many of us. Establishing microgrids and storing renewable electricity offer a path for Peninsula Light Co. to follow.
Richard Gelinas, Ph.D., whose early work earned a Nobel prize, lives in Lakebay.
UNDERWRITTEN BY THE FUND FOR NONPROFIT NEWS (NEWSMATCH) AT THE MIAMI FOUNDATION, THE ANGEL GUILD, ADVERTISERS, DONORS AND PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT, NONPROFIT LOCAL NEWS
