Smart grid's grass roots

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I spent the day in Fort Collins, Colo., yesterday and what I saw there is worthy of your attention.

The subhead for today's column is "where bottom up meets top down" because in that university town of about 140,000 people, served by a municipal utility, a local initiative of several years gestation to reduce peak load, integrate distributed generation and become more energy efficient found a partner in the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) stimulus grants.

This is the year that development in that project—the Renewable and Distributed Systems Integration, or RDSI, project—ends and its demonstration phase begins. Here's a bit on the project and its connection to another local initiative, both of which involve impressive private-public partnerships. (Fort Collins is one of a number of communities doing RDSI projects with partial funding from DOE.)

The Fort Collins players think that their work could serve as a model for other like-minded communities, delivering lessons learned, best practices and data to support them. Having met a number of the folks involved, having toured three related facilities and having lived in Fort Collins in the 1980s and worked at Colorado State University (CSU) there, I'd say the odds are good this RDSI project will yield useful results.

Basically, the RDSI project [3] will test the viability of substantially increasing the use of renewable and distributed energy sources during peak demand periods—a couple of the outcomes sought for a smarter grid. The three-year project is being funded by $5.1 million from local investors and technology partners and matched by $6.3 million from the DOE.

The RDSI project, in turn, is designed to "jump start" the more ambitious, local initiative known as FortZED [4], which stands for Zero Energy District, a two-square-mile area of that northern Colorado community that encompasses Fort Collins' downtown and the CSU campus. More on that effort in a moment.

The RDSI project will focus on two feeders serving the FortZED district with a peak demand of seven to eight megawatts per feeder. The project is targeting a 20 percent to 30 percent reduction in peak load. (I presume that one goal is to defer capital investment in a fossil fuel-driven peaking power plant, but I'll have to confirm it.) The city's policy is to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and avoid related costs and impacts, including carbon emissions. RDSI will provide a test bed for the integration of renewable, demand-side management, conventional backup generators and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

It's worth pointing out that this project is different from Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity in Boulder, 50 miles to the south. The city of Fort Collins has project management oversight and, like many other towns across the country, Fort Collins is reeling from the recession. The project is limited in scope, local money is tight, the utility involved is conservative and none of the players can run to a huge pool of ratepayers to cover cost overruns.

A little background on FortZED might be in order here, as it is the grassroots piece of the bigger picture.

FortZED is a three-way collaboration between Fort Collins Utilities, the Colorado Clean Energy Cluster (CCEC) [5] and UniverCity Connections. (The CCEC is a statewide economic development organization fostering partnerships between private clean energy companies, local government and higher education. UniverCity Connections [6] is an initiative of the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado that seeks to leverage three major community assets in Fort Collins: the university, downtown businesses and the Poudre River that runs through town.)

The FortZED district represents about 10 percent to 15 percent of the local utility's service territory, serving about 7,200 homes and businesses. So it will employ energy management systems for homes and buildings, local renewable resources such as photovoltaics and, presumably, communications networks and distribution automation. (I will bring readers more detail as I interview some of the principals.)

Not incidentally, these projects also seek to showcase local, clean energy-focused companies and create jobs. Promoting clean energy and its potential as a driver of economic development and job creation has been a signature policy of Colorado's Governor Bill Ritter, who announced yesterday at the RDSI kickoff event that after leaving office next week he will become director of CSU's new, privately funded Center for the New Energy Economy.

An RDSI-related tour yesterday stopped at CSU's InteGrid Lab at the school's Engines and Energy Conversion Lab [7], where professors and students will simulate and study various aspects of integrating small-scale renewables into the "last mile" of the grid, with results applicable to the RDSI project. Then we stopped at the Rocky Mountain Innosphere [8], a building for incubating startups and which, not incidentally, houses the headquarters for Spirae [9], a vendor partner in these projects that specializes in the integration of renewable and distributed energy sources. Finally, we toured the facilities at nearby New Belgium Brewing Company [10], the nation's third-largest craft brewer, which for years has explored energy efficiency, the reuse of waste streams and sports Colorado's largest privately owned solar array.

In short, the Fort Collins community has the brains, the will and the vision to shape its future. It has mustered the resources to see explore that future. This year's demonstration project should yield some fascinating insights, particularly as CSU's Engines and Energy Conversion Lab has an impressive track record of innovation that has been successfully commercialized.

Phil Carson
Editor-in-chief
Intelligent Utility Daily
pcarson@energycentral.com [11]
303-228-4757