Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
"Smart grid" technologies significantly reduce
greenhouse gases and other emissions resulting from power production and usage.
Taken together, smart grid and intelligent buildings mechanisms
could reduce national carbon emissions by 12 percent by 2030, according to one
estimate.
But, surprisingly, sometimes the opposite is true for an
individual project. It all depends on a dizzying variety of factors, but a new
tool developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory makes estimating those emissions impacts easy.
The
free, web-based tool enables utilities and industry to evaluate not only the
environmental impacts of adopting smart grid technologies, but can give organizations
the operational data to sift through factors to justify the investment.
The Emissions Quantification Tool calculates the resulting changes to carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, and the energy and financial savings that may be achieved by integrating smart grid technologies.
The evaluated technologies include coordinated electric vehicle
charging schedules, battery-stored energy, and devices that enable integration
of solar generation into the power grid.
"Users
can quickly and easily screen different scenarios by varying the type of smart
grid technology and other variables to best characterize their specific set of
circumstances and location," said Karen Studarus, a power systems engineer
at PNNL and project lead.
"The modules we've assembled are being used right now to
explore the impacts of proposed projects and understand the sometimes
counterintuitive tradeoffs."
A business case for a smart grid
PNNL
developed the tool with the guidance of a dozen utility and energy industry
representatives who helped ensure the tool would deliver the high-level
insights needed for a smart grid business case.
"As
someone who's always trying to articulate the value of investments in smart
grid, it's so useful to have a tool to illuminate the specifics driving that
value," says Laney Brown of Modern Grid Partners, a utility consulting
firm. Brown serves on the steering committee guiding the development of the
emissions quantification tool.
Once
a calculation is complete, the tool produces a detailed report with pre- and
post-technology adoption comparisons. The report also informs the user on a number
of variables. For example, how much energy storage would be needed to provide a
certain operational benefit and what the resulting increase or decrease in
emissions would be.
"With
insights from the tool, utilities, policy makers, and companies can see the
impacts, for example, of shifting energy use to a different time of day or of
adopting additional renewable energy resources," said Studarus.
Emissions impacts can vary
Sometimes
the results are counterintuitive. The tool can also uncover unintended or
unanticipated results. For example, incorporation of coordinated electric
vehicle charging in the Northeast would reduce sulfur dioxide -- an indirect
greenhouse gas -- emissions by about 2.5 percent. But in California, the exact
same level of coordinated charging actually found an estimated increase of 1.5
percent due to differences between the two regions.
Calculations
are based on well-established data sources, including EPA's AVERT, or Avoided
Emissions and Generation Tool, which maps hourly emissions benefits of energy
efficiency and renewable energy policies and programs; solar energy data from
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; and demand response models from the
Brattle Group.
The
tool is designed to be as transparent as possible in terms of the underlying
data and algorithms so users can clearly understand how outcomes from scenarios
were calculated.
"This
is really uncharted territory," added Studarus. "Nobody's done this
before, and the diverse utility community needs detailed information when it
comes to understanding the impacts of smart grid technologies on the
environment and the bottom line. A transparent and broadly applicable
methodology not only estimates the benefit, it lets folks see more clearly how
much faith they should be putting into the numbers."
DOE's
Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability supported development
of the Emissions Quantification Tool.
Get the tool
A
prototype of the tool was demonstrated at the National Summit on Smart Grid and
Climate Change in October. Users can try the Emissions Quantification Tool free
of charge at SmartGrid.gov.