Mylar Balloons and Power Outages

With the spring graduation season upon us and outdoor summer parties being planned, utilities are reminding customers to keep Mylar balloons tethered at all times. This helps reduce the chance of metallic balloons making contact with electrical lines and causing power outages, fires and possible injuries.

In the last four years, metallic balloons have caused about 200 outages affecting more than 100,000 Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) customers in Northern Illinois alone. This included about 28,000 customers in 2009. The most recent outage occurred Sunday night and left 3,825 customers without power for two hours after a Mylar balloon made contact with a power line near Laramie Avenue and Belden Street on Chicago's northwest side.

When Mylar balloons touch a power line or float into substation equipment, their metallic properties cause a surge of electricity. This can cause equipment to short circuit and lead to power outages, fires and possible injuries.

To reduce these outages and help keep customers' lights on, ComEd offers the following tips:

* Keep balloons tethered at all times and attached to a weight.
* When disposing of Mylar balloons, make sure to puncture them to ensure lingering helium doesn't cause them to float and blow around if the garbage container is overturned.
* If a balloon or another toy becomes entangled in an overhead power line, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RETRIEVE IT. CALL THE UTILITY COMPANY AND LET THEM HANDLE IT.
* Always assume power lines are live, and keep yourself, your equipment and all other items at least 10 feet away from power lines.


www.DaviesGreenEnergy.com

Source: Commonwealth Edison Company

Solar Shows Strong Growth in 2009 Despite the Great Recession

U.S. solar electric generation capacity increased by 37 percent in 2009, showing strong growth despite the Great Recession. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the growth was the result of increased investment in both photovoltaic and concentrating solar power. It was driven primarily by strong demand in the residential and utility-scale markets.

Solar water heating and pool heating also grew in 2009, by about 10%. Not too bad given the overall state of the economy.

SEIA attributes the good news to a combination of government policies, new business models, and declining prices. Give the continued availability of tax credits and stimulus funds this year and next, SEIA expects continued growth in solar electricity generation in 2010.

The solar industry added 17,000 new jobs in 2009 and now employs a total of 46,000 workers in the USA. Solar manufacturing showed a 7 percent increase in PV module production from 2008.

California led the country in new solar electric generation capacity with 220 MW. Other states that continued to see growth in their installed base of solar electric generation were New Jersey (57 MW), Florida (36 MW), Arizona (23 MW), Colorado (23 MW), Hawaii (14 MW), New York (12 MW), Massachusetts (10 MW), Connecticut (9 MW), and North Carolina (8 MW).

There is still room for tremendous growth in this sector. The USA currently ranks fourth in the world in new solar generation capacity with 481 MW. Increasing advances in technologies such as thin film solar, lower prices, and government policies requiring fossil fuel prices to include the costs of pollution, solar electric generation should help solar capacity to reach into the gigawatts in the near future.

www.DaviesGreenEnergy.com

Residential Customers Are Open to the Smart Grid -- If It Will Save Them Money

A survey of 600 U.S. residential homes reveals that almost half have reported an increase in their electricity bill, due mostly to an increase in electricity consumption. Almost 60 percent of the homeowners who were surveyed say that they are willing to change their electricity use to save money. Among the thngs they are willing to do is enroll in a demand response program.

The survey was conducted and released by Frost & Sullivan. It is called "Smart Grid Market - A Customer Perspective on Demand Response", and it examines the motivations and probability of residential customers adopting demand response programs.

Demand response is a load power management program offered and controlled by either electric utilities or curtailment service providers. It is an important part of a smart grid, and it is expected to reduce the need for additional peak generation plants, as well as improve overall power quality and the environment.

"Customer awareness of smart grids appears moderately high, though awareness does not likely stem from the direct efforts of electric utility companies," states Frost & Sullivan Senior Energy Consultant Farah Saeed. "Only 16 percent of all surveyed residential electric customers are aware of any effort by their electric utility company to introduce smart grid technology into their community."

The survey notes a high probability of customers signing up for demand response if the customer has access to smart appliances. So-called smart appliances will be connected to the smart grid, allowing them to either shut-off or go into energy saving mode during peak power periods.

More than half the respondents said that they are either likely or somewhat likely to adopt smart appliances (59 percent). However, the majority plan to wait until their appliances come due for replacement (75 percent), rather than adopting smart appliances right away. Those willing to be early adopters also want rapid payback on these appliances: 79 percent want payback in two years or less, with only 7 percent not insisting on a payback at all.

For more information on this survey, please send an e-mail to Johanna Haynes, Corporate Communications, at johanna.haynes@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail address, company website, city, state and country.

www.DaviesGreenEnergy.com

IBM Study: Energy Provider Business Models Must Evolve

IBM ( IBM) Global Business Services' Institute for Business Value today unveiled a new report entitled "Switching perspectives: Creating new business models for a changing world of energy," showing that shifts in government policy, technology and consumer demand are making the long-standing business models used by energy and utility companies obsolete.

The study documents how a business model based on the past "grow-and-build" philosophy needs to be replaced by fresh business models that can facilitate both traditional and emerging technologies of energy generation, delivery, storage and use.

Transformations in three major areas are changing the traditional model and creating relentless pressure on energy providers: shifts in governmental policy, new technologies and changing consumer demands. With a growing emphasis on economic and job growth, climate change, and energy security, national and local governments are setting new policies to increase efficiency, conservation and renewable energy generation. Smart grids, distributed generation and storage technologies are adding complexity by causing electricity and information to move in an increasing number of directions.

Consumers are changing, too. IBM global utility consumer surveys show that utility customers want more control over their energy expenditures and environmental impact. In fact, a 2009 IBM survey entitled "Lighting the Way: Understanding the New Energy Consumer" [http://www.ibm.com/services/gbs/lightingtheway] revealed that over 90 percent of respondents from across the globe would like tools for managing their energy usage. These changes demonstrate that consumers are demanding more from their relationship with electric utility providers.

"It is time to revisit the business models that drove growth and success for the energy and utility industry the past fifty years. The value drivers will look vastly different in the next decade," said Michael Valocchi, Global Energy & Utilities Leader for IBM Global Business Services. "In this new environment, utility companies that are willing to re-evaluate their fundamental business models will be better positioned to capitalize on the emerging products, technologies and services available to their consumers."

New business models

The electric utility industry's traditional model is changing dramatically. One-way flow of energy and information is being replaced by a distributed and multi-directional flow, and the customer is becoming a more integral part. Although they are becoming more demanding, they also have much more to offer in return to utilities and other participants than simply paying for the energy they have consumed. Developments such as customer-owned renewable generation and energy storage mean that customers will be able to provide power or storage to the overall system, rather than playing a role that is limited to passively paying for energy they consume.

Another way consumers are playing a more integral role is in their access to information. Information on energy consumption patterns, consumer demographic information and even access to personal networks can all provide new revenue sources for companies – traditional energy providers, established companies from outside the energy industry, and aggressive start-ups alike - that are able to make use of this information effectively. Consumers, too, will be in a position to benefit financially by participating in home energy management programs or by generating their own power and selling it back to the utility.

Electricity providers will become like shopping malls

A smart grid with electricity and information flowing in multiple directions will provide support for interactions among various participants in the emerging electric ecosystem, facilitating the development of electric utility industry 'multisided' platforms. These platforms will link power generators, electric transmission and distribution providers, electric service providers, device manufacturers, application developers and end users (including residential, industrial, and commercial customers). Multisided businesses provide benefits to all of the interacting groups and a way for the platform provider to earn revenue from the transactions.

A shopping mall is an example of a multisided platform: manufacturers, retailers and shoppers all benefit from having a single location where they can meet and transact business. A wider variety of stores and services brings more shoppers; more shoppers bring higher sales volumes for manufacturers and lower costs for retailers (and, in theory, also lower prices for shoppers). Thus, some element of network economy is bundled into the shopping mall value proposition. The platform owner (the mall operator) extracts some of this value in the form of rent to store owners and, in some cases, service fees to shoppers.

Companies that envision being platform owners will need to have key competencies in marketing, sales and customer relationship management. That fact, combined with the ready-made set of platform participants already present in the form of existing electricity customers, puts retail electric providers (or integrated utilities' retail operations) in a good position to take on platform ownership.

For the full report see http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/html/ibv-electric-utility-innovation.html

www.DaviesGreenEnergy.com

Envirepel Clean Renewable Energy Facility to Reopen

Envirepel Energy, Inc. ("EEI"), a privately held company in Vista, California, announced today it plans to reopen its first Renewable Energy Facility ("Kittyhawk") by the middle of April 2010, after temporarily closing it in June 2009 to address a shareholder proxy effort.

The Kittyhawk Project is a 2.5 MW biomass fueled power generating facility, with additional bio-fuel production from recovered water and CO2. The "anti-global warming" and virtually non-polluting facility design was permitted and built in the middle of a commercial business park. Kittyhawk sets the stage for many additional environmentally friendly facilities to be developed and financed. "By ensuring that the facility doesn't give off any significant amounts of pollution, EEI has shown that we can obtain very difficult permits where others cannot," said Anthony J. Arand, the Company's Founder, Chairman and CEO.

"I'm very happy to announce that we plan to have our team back to work by the middle of next month, so that we can complete commercial operations of the power plant and the initial bio-fuel production by the 4th quarter of this year. If our CO2 recovery and bio-fuel production technology is successful, then potentially 5% or more of the nation's energy needs could be produced with our process from our country's post recycled landfill waste supply," said Arand.

The California Public Utilities Commission has called EEI "the answer" to California's need for clean renewable energy. EEI would also help to satisfy Governor Schwarzenegger's mandate that renewable energy comprise 20 percent of the electrical energy portfolios of California's utility companies by the end of 2010.

Over the past six years, EEI has designed, developed, manufactured and built the first low emissions combustion system. This ultra low combustion system consumes urban waste that would normally go in a landfill, and also has the capacity to consume high sulfur coal, tires, animal waste and many other "biomass" feed stocks that would pose a significant pollution problem to other power generating, or bio-fuel production facilities.

The company has over 300 MW of projects in various stages of development in San Diego and Imperial Counties. These project sites include business parks, rural agricultural areas, and metropolitan landfill sites. EEI's website is www.envirepel.com.

SOURCE Envirepel Energy, Inc. and PRNewswire.com