President Obama Stumps for Solar & Smart Grid at FPL's PV Plant Commissioning

President Obama joins FPL for commissioning of nation's largest solar PV power plant; announces $200 million in smart grid funding for FPL's 'Energy Smart Florida'

ARCADIA, Fla. – President Barack Obama joined FPL Group and Florida Power & Light Company officials today for the commissioning of the largest photovoltaic solar facility in the nation. At FPL’s DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, the President announced that FPL was awarded $200 million in Recovery Act funds to invest in a stronger, smarter, cleaner and more efficient electrical grid, as part of his Administration’s $3.4 billion commitment to spurring the transition to the Smart Grid.
The new 25-megawatt solar array and FPL’s Energy Smart Florida project position the state of Florida as a leader in developing a clean-energy economy for the 21st century, delivering significant economic and environmental benefits to the area.
"For the very first time, a large-scale solar power plant -- the largest of its kind in the entire nation -- will deliver electricity produced by the sun to the citizens of the Sunshine State.  And I think it's about time," said President Obama. "At this moment, there is something big happening in America when it comes to creating a clean energy economy.  But getting there will take a few more days like this one and more projects like this one."
“Today we’re taking the first step into the new clean energy economy of the 21st century. It’s  high-tech, it’s low-emissions, and it empowers consumers to control their energy usage. The President’s Recovery Act made the largest investment in renewable energy and the smart grid in our nation’s history. And in Florida, the governor, the state legislature and the Public Service Commission all demonstrated a strong commitment to making the state a solar energy leader. Our Florida solar projects are creating good construction jobs when they’re needed most, and in the years ahead they’ll create clean energy when it’s needed most. We’re ready to build more solar in Florida, and with the right public policy support, we will,” said FPL Group Chairman and CEO Lew Hay.
The DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, which uses more than 90,000 PV panels that turn the sun’s rays into electricity to power more than 3,000 homes, is generating significant economic and environmental benefits. At a time when Florida is suffering from the worst economy in a generation, the solar project created 400 well-paying construction jobs. In addition, the DeSoto solar array will avoid 575,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to the DeSoto plant, FPL is building a 75-megawatt solar thermal facility in Martin County and a 10-megawatt solar PV facility on the Space Coast. FPL’s three solar projects combined are creating more than 1,500 direct jobs and more than 5,000 total jobs for the state of Florida. In addition, they will save 1 million barrels of oil and avoid 3.5 million tons of greenhouse gases.
Energy Smart Florida, which includes a $378 million investment from FPL in addition to the $200 million in federal funding, is expected to create more than 6,000 jobs. The project will install revolutionary new technologies that will help FPL build a more intelligent network that is able to detect potential problems and automatically reconfigure the grid to minimize outages. In addition, smart meters will give customers the ability to see their usage online by the hour, day and month, enabling them to better understand their energy consumption and paving the way for them to make energy efficient, cost-saving choices.
As the nation’s largest producer of solar and wind energy, FPL Group is committed to helping President Obama achieve his goal of doubling the nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. This year alone, the company will invest $2.5 billion in new renewable energy projects and will add approximately 1,200 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity.

Consistent with that commitment, FPL Group subsidiary NextEra Energy Resources has combined the clean power of its renewable energy portfolio with an innovative brand—called EarthEra—to offer everyday ways to fight climate change by building a clean-energy future. Through the use of EarthEra carbon offsets generated from NextEra’s Horse Hollow Wind Project in Texas, the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center commissioning event today will be carbon-neutral.
FPL’s DeSoto solar project is part of a larger effort by the company to create a clean-energy economy for the 21st century. The energy economy of the future will include a dramatic expansion of renewable energy, a nationwide fleet of plug-in electric vehicles and a smart electrical grid to tie it all together. Today FPL commissioned the largest solar PV power plant in the nation. The company recently announced that it will convert its entire fleet of vehicles into plug-ins over the next decade. FPL’s Energy Smart Florida plan will accelerate the deployment of “smart” meters to 4.5 million customers and incorporate greater intelligence into the transmission and distribution system serving millions of Floridians.
“At FPL, we’re investing every day to make our infrastructure stronger, smarter, cleaner and more efficient. The DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center is a big part of this plan, and Energy Smart Florida is the next big step,” said Florida Power & Light Company President and CEO Armando J. Olivera.
The DeSoto plant was constructed ahead of schedule in less than a year and $22 million under budget. With support from President Obama’s Recovery Act funding, the $150 million total cost of constructing the facility will represent an average of only 6 cents on a typical customer’s monthly bill over the lifetime of the plant.
The plant will generate more than $2 million in additional property tax revenue for DeSoto County through the end of 2010 and $37 million over the life of the project. The influx of workers into the DeSoto County area also helped local businesses during difficult economic times.
The panels used at the DeSoto plant are produced by SunPower Corp. and are the most efficient solar panels on the world market. The plant also uses SunPower’s proprietary tracking system to tilt the panels toward the sun as it moves across the sky, significantly increasing sunlight capture by up to 25 percent over fixed-tilt systems.
“With the completion of the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, SunPower’s high-efficiency photovoltaic technology is demonstrating that solar is competitively priced for electric utility power plant applications. SunPower’s sun tracking technology is fast to install, and reliably delivers clean power during peak demand periods,” said Howard Wenger, president, global business units for SunPower. “We congratulate FPL for its global leadership in the development of solar technologies, and for making solar energy a key part of the nation’s economic recovery and the protection of the environment for future generations.”

FPL is currently working with local officials to secure the necessary approvals to expand the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center even further, with a potential future capacity of up to 300 megawatts. FPL also has several other shovel-ready solar projects that it is positioned to move forward on with legislative and regulatory support. The company’s ultimate goal is to position Florida as a leader in clean-energy generation and as a hub for the development of cutting-edge technology that will rival job corridors in other states.
For more information about FPL’s Next Generation Solar Energy Centers, visit www.FPL.com/solar.
Florida Power & Light Company
Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) is the largest electric utility in Florida and one of the largest rate-regulated utilities in the United States. FPL serves 4.5 million customer accounts in Florida and is a leading employer in the state with nearly 11,000 employees. The company consistently outperforms national averages for service reliability while customer bills are well below the national average. A clean energy leader, FPL has one of the lowest emissions profiles and the No. 1 energy efficiency program among utilities nationwide. FPL is a subsidiary of Juno Beach, Fla.-based FPL Group, Inc. (NYSE: FPL). For more information, visit www.FPL.com.

Biomethane - A Primer

October 20, 2009

Biomethane as an Energy Carrier

by Thomas R. Blakeslee, Clearlight Foundation for Renewable Energy World.com

Methane is a better long-distance energy carrier than electricity. Its storage and transportation is much cheaper and easier than electricity. Natural gas pipelines cost half as much to build as electric towers and have about one fourth as much transmission loss. They are also more reliable, safer and visually superior to ugly transmission towers.

Building a hydrogen infrastructure now would be folly. Biomethane can do the job now and will be cleaner and cheaper.

Our electrical grid is only 30% efficient in delivering the energy in fuel burned to the customer. That efficiency could be doubled or even tripled if we used combined heat and power (CHP) generators located where heat is needed. By using the generator's waste heat, an efficiency of 85% is possible. Clearly it is smarter to expand our gas pipeline network than to build more electrical towers to distribute inefficiently generated electricity from massive power plants.

Even though most of our natural gas is now fossil fuel, a doubling of efficiency would be just as effective as achieving 50% renewable power as far as global warming is concerned. We can simultaneously work on greening our gas supply by feeding more and more biomethane into the pipeline.  In Germany 22 billion kWh of biogas were produced in 2007. That's a six-fold increase from 1999, driven partly by feed-in tariffs. About half of that biomethane was from landfill and sewage gas and the other half was from commercial and agricultural biomass plants. Renewable biogas is produced by natural processes of anaerobic digestion or gasification then cleaned up for sale to the gas pipeline. Sweden already gets 25% of their energy from biogas.

Energy storage is another big advantage of gas. Both the gas and the electricity grids need energy storage to take up the slack between production and consumption. Gas storage is cheap because it can simply be pumped into depleted gas wells and salt caverns. We are already storing 4.1 Tcf of gas in the US. At 85% efficiency that gas could produce 1,180 gigawatt-hours of useful power on demand. A very cheap battery!  The smart electrical grid is all about making supply match demand because electrical storage is so expensive.
Though the U.S. power grid uses significant hydro power and other renewables, CO2 emissions are still almost twice as much per kilowatt-hour as a 60% efficient natural gas fuel cell. In 2007 the U.S. power grid emitted 605 grams/kWh. The fuel cell emits only 340 grams. EIA data makes it easy to track the effects of our attempts to green the electric grid: In 1996 we emitted 627 grams of CO2 per kWh and by 2007 this was reduced to 605 grams. That’s a 2-gram per year decrease. If we continue at that rate, it will take 139 years to equal what we can do now with a fuel cell. Recent years show even less progress. There was no improvement between 2006 and 2007. Plugging into the grid is, unfortunately, a bit like plugging into a lump of coal.

People have already begun selling renewable gas into the pipeline.  Landfills, manure piles and sewage plants that used to release significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere are now selling it as green gas. Biomass and garbage can also be gasified to add to the supply. The energy balance of Grass Biomethane production is 50% better than annual crops now used. When biogas is captured instead of releasing it to the atmosphere we get a double bonus. Methane is 72 times worse than CO2 as a cause of global warming in a 20-year time frame. You may have heard 25 times, but that's based on a 100-year time frame. Methane only persists about 8 years. Also, when manure piles are covered, N²O, which is 289 times worse than CO², can also be captured. Coal mines emit almost a trillion cubic feet of methane into the atmosphere every year.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, the 230-acre Rumpke landfill has been capped and the gas is cleaned and delivered to the pipeline to provide enough gas for 25,000 Duke Energy customers. China has an estimated 31 million biogas digesters mostly on small farms. They produce in total about 9 Gigawatts of renewable energy which is mostly used locally. Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and now Ontario, Canada have feed-in tarrifs to encourage production of biogas. In Germany small farms can receive up to 25 cents per kWh for biopower. In the US, bills like SB306 that support biogas production, are still stuck in committee.
Increased system efficiency means we will need less of these renewable sources to do the job. If we’re going to gasify biomass, it is more efficient to upgrade the gas and send it through the gas grid to customer CHP units than to generate electricity less efficiently and send it over less efficient, more expensive power lines to the customer. Until we get more efficient electrical generators, generation should always be done where the waste heat can be put to good use.

Electric cars would be twice as efficient if they fueled up with natural gas and used a fuel cell to recharge a small battery. Like a hybrid with a natural gas fuel cell range extender. The expense and weight of a large battery is eliminated and the energy can be stored in a much lighter and cheaper tank. Refuelling can be much faster and could even be done at home from your natural gas connection. New, low pressure, adsorption tanks make this easy because they only require 500 psi of pressure. Recharging is a problem with batteries.  A 110v, 20A household plug can only supply 2.2 kW, which means that 10 hours of home charging will only take you 10 x 2.2 x 4 mi/kW = 88 miles. Natural gas refueling infrastructure is in place in much of the world to refuel five million vehicles worldwide.

We already have prototype hydrogen cars that work on a similar principle but hydrogen has virtually no refueling infrastructure. Hydrogen is very expensive to produce, store and transport. Its tiny molecules find the smallest leaks and fly into space. They embrittle pipeline metals by nestling into the metal matrix. Storage is extremely inefficient, requiring extremely high pressure tanks or cryonic vessels. One giant hydrogen delivery truck can service about ten customers.  Methane has one carbon atom that holds four hydrogen atoms in a tight formation making containment and dense storage easy. A gallon of liquid methane actually holds 2.5 times as much hydrogen as a gallon of liquid hydrogen!

"No carbon emissions" sounded like a great idea but 95% of our hydrogen is made from natural gas and that process emits about 30% more CO² than if we simply burned the methane. Yes, you can make hydrogen from water with electricity (at about 70% efficiency.) But you can also make carbon-negative methane from CO² and hydrogen. When you burn it, the net result is carbon neutral. The “carbon-free” cleanness of hydrogen is an illusion. Building a hydrogen infrastructure now would be folly. Biomethane can do the job now and will be cleaner and cheaper.