Generation Partners tops 1 megawatt Fueled by TVA incentives and federal tax credits, participation in Generation Partners has tripled since last spring from 69 to 194 installations: 181 solar and 13 wind. The combined generating capacity of Generation Partners has grown from 454 kilowatts to 1.49 megawatts. While the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, the combined energy from today’s Generation Partners installations is expected to make enough electricity over a year to equal the annual consumption of more than 120 average Tennessee Valley households. “Surpassing 1 megawatt is a milestone for this program,” said Susan Curtis, TVA senior manager of Generation Partners. “It shows a growing desire of many
residents to take a personal stake in clean renewable energy for our region.” Though a small contributor to TVA’s 33,000-megawatt system, the power from Generation Partners, a pilot program launched in 2003, comes with clean-air savings. The 547,877 kilowatt-hours Generation Partners produced in fiscal 2009 represents 497 metric tons in avoided carbon dioxide emissions from fossil power plants. US Floors Inc. of Dalton, Ga., recently became Generation Partners’ largest participant with the installation of a 144-kilowatt system. It has 672 solar photovoltaic panels covering 14,500 square feet on a warehouse rooftop that can be seen from Interstate 75. Already, the sustainable flooring company is planning
to modify a second existing solar array of 31.5 kilowatts to more than 300 kilowatts. “There is no question that both TVA and North Georgia Electric Membership Corp. have been crucial elements in making this come to fruition,” US Floors President Piet Dossche said. “Without them this would have been less attractive.” Generation Partners offers homeowners and businesses financial incentives for qualifying solar, wind, biomass, and small hydroelectric systems of less than 1 megawatt. TVA pays each new participant $1,000 to offset startup costs and agrees to buy 100 percent of the green power they produce. TVA will pay the retail rate, plus any fuel cost adjustment, plus a 12-cent premium per kilowatt-hour for solar and 3 cents per kilowatt-hour for wind, biomass and hydro.
Comments or Suggestions – Let us hear from you! We’d like your suggestions on articles for the newsletter. E-mail your comments to greenpowerswitch@tva.com, or write to Green Power Switch, 1101 Market Street, MR 3M, Chattanooga, TN 37402-2881. Please recycle this newsletter by passing it on to a friend. Thanks for your help and your interest!
SPRING 2010
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Solar charging stations to be tested in Tennessee TVA, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will test and set up solar-assisted charging stations for electric vehicles across the state of Tennessee as part of the largest electric-transportation project in U.S. history. Speaking at an event in Knoxville introducing the Nissan Leaf, a 100-percent electric, zero-emission vehicle, TVA President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Kilgore said that the first prototype charging station using solar-generated electricity would be tested by EPRI in Knoxville this spring. A second prototype will be built by ORNL in Oak Ridge. The prototypes will be tested for three to six months before additional stations are built in Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville over the next few years. The amount of solar electricity generated per station will be enough to power each car for approximately 10,000 miles per year. The first prototype station will have
Concept Rendering of a Solar Assisted Charging Station, © 2010 Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Inc. All rights reserved.
four to six parking spaces, but larger 10-space stations are expected to be built in the future using a modular base design. TVA also is working closely with the Knoxville Utilities Board and other distributors of TVA power to conduct research on the impacts of vehicle charging on the power grid. The solarassisted stations will complement the home, commercial, and public
infrastructure needed to support the Nissan Leaf and other electric vehicles. “We are excited about the possibilities of incorporating renewable energy generation as a fuel source for electric transportation,” says James Ellis, program manager of TVA’s Electric Transportation program. “Blending these technologies is one way to support a more sustainable environmental future.”
Cap and Trade in a nutshell What is “cap and trade”? It is a market-based approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that uses supply and demand to change behavior and achieve environmental goals. A similar tactic has been used to reduce acid rain and smog. Where do greenhouse gas emissions come from? In the U.S., over 75 percent of human-generated greenhouse gases are related to burning fossil fuels*. More than half of that total comes from power plants, and about a third from transportation. Emissions from industry are the third-largest share, followed by agriculture, commercial and residential sources. The “cap” part of cap and trade is an annual limit on greenhouse emissions set by lawmakers. It’s based on what is needed to reduce the risk of climate change, and also what is politically acceptable. Policymakers also have to decide what activities will be capped. Will it be just electric power generation, or also include emissions from transportation and industry?
Any activity covered by the cap will require a permit, or “allowance,” that allows the owner to emit one ton of greenhouse gases. This creates a market and a price for emission reductions and is the “trade” part of cap and trade. If a company can reduce its emissions more cheaply than it can buy an allowance, it may be able to sell some of its allowances to another company that needs them. The debate about cap and trade tends to be about the cost to the economy of complying with the cap. The theory is that the higher cost of generation using fossil fuels will encourage companies to find cheaper ways to reduce emissions, including more investments in emission-free renewable energy sources. Ed Holt, Ed Holt & Associates, Inc. * www.epa.gov/climatechange/fq/emissions.html#q3
TVA and local public power companies, working in cooperation with the environmental community, developed Green Power Switch as a way to bring green power—electricity that’s generated by clean, renewable resources like solar, wind, and methane gas—to Valley consumers. Green Power Switch is a TVA Renewable Energy Initiative.
1101 Market St., MR 3M Chattanooga, TN 37402-2881 TVA and your local power company