Email Action
To: Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt. jarndt@fcgov.com
Fort Collins City Manager Kelly Dimartino. kdimartino@fcgov.com
Subject: Solar/Virtual Power Plant Advocate
Say whatever you like in the body of your email. Our main request is that Fort Collins Utilities hire someone who will prioritize local energy production and a Fort Collins Virtual Power Plant, and work to minimize the need for fossil fuel generation.
What the heck is a Virtual Power Plant?
· Local Distributed Energy Resources (DER), such as solar, electric vehicles, brewery biogas, and smart water heaters networked together to provide electricity for a community.
· DER’s are owned by individual local ratepayers (such as schools, businesses, residents) sharing energy in a co-op model. These ratepayers are known as “Prosumers”, they produce and consume energy (more about Prosumers below)
· Brattle Group study: VPP is 40%-60% more cost effective for consumers than traditional power plants.
· Utilities from coast to coast are developing VPP to replace coal and gas, and increase reliability.
· Fortune 500 companies and investment bankers are developing VPP to harvest savings as profit.
· VPP… a weird name for a Networked Distributed Energy System. What shall we call the FTC VPP?
Why Should Fort Collins pursue VPP?
· Fort Collins electric rates increase 5% per year. With VPP rates can go down, not up.
· VPPs have an economic multiplier of 2.5x, meaning that every dollar spent generates $2.50 in local economic activity. Our current energy system has an economic multiplier of 0.2. We send $250,000,000.00 annually out of Fort Collins for electricity. If we can put half of that into VPP then we can increase our local economy by $312 million annually!
· DER reduce pollution and are rapidly deployable. Giant wind and solar projects take more than 5 yrs to deploy, face local opposition, and can’t be built fast enough to meet Fort Collins’ 2030 climate goals.
How can Fort Collins achieve VPP?
· CSU’s Energy Institute has been a pioneer in this space since the 1990s and is eager to help.
· Fort Collins is a prime candidate for one of the $250 million VPP grants from the Department of Energy.
What does Fort Collins need to do now?
· Denver has a DER goal of 30% by 2030. FCU’s goal is 5% of electricity coming from DERs by 2030. We’ll surpass that goal without any additional help from FCU. Their approach appears to be to manage DER growth rather than to maximize potential.
· A different approach would be to partner with experts from CSU, Rocky Mountain Institute, National Renewable Energy Lab, and elsewhere to form a “DER accelerator” to work on maximizing DER.
· Local solar is a key DER. A FCU “Solar Advocate” employee could work on policy and implementation to build out local solar potential now, while electric vehicles and other technology become more widely adopted.
· Platte River Power Authority (FTC’s electricity provider) wants ratepayers to pony up $300 million for four fossil gas plant, locking us into expensive gas generated electricity for the foreseeable future. We need VPP before that happens.
How can you help?
· Spend 20 minutes Googling Virtual Power Plant and Brattle Group to have your mind blown and get inspired.
· Join us at City Council meetings, call and write the City, talk to everybody about Virtual Power Plants!
Fred @ city council Oct 17, 2023
The Global Rise of the Prosumer
Written by Bill Althouse. Bill has been working in the renewable energy industry since 1980 and is a consummate activist for energy policy that promotes the greatest benefit to the ratepayers, community, and Earth.
Prosumers are value driven global revolutionaries in 3D-
· Decentralize-Prosumer owned Distributed Energy Resources, DERs, provide more value to the electric system than the same capacity at utility scale.
· Democratize- The Local Community economic development value of DER revenues going into the pockets of local Prosumers where it circulates through local economies with a multiplier effect.
· Decarbonize- The environmental value of transitioning from fossil fuel to renewables.
Whether to be a consumer or a Prosumer is a simple choice- consumers pay bills, Prosumers cash checks. $100s of Billions are also available in tax credits and subsidies to help consumers become Prosumers.
In the past, Regulators had only two classes, Utilities and ratepayers. The ratepayer paid for everything, but the Utility owned everything. The Prosumer is a new value driving class in the community that pays for, and owns, DERs on their private property at no cost to the ratepayer. Prosumer DERs reduce the need for utility investments, the only way to reduce rates to everyone.
The new Google funded study by Brattle shows that Virtual Power Plant aggregations, VPPs, of DERs, not in rates, can provide value far beyond the KWhrs, like “free” capacity to other ratepayers. This says that utility owned and ratepayer funded assets, compared to Prosumer funded and owned decentralized assets, are economically obsolete. The cost comparison conclusion in the Doc- “The VPP is the only resource with the potential to provide resource adequacy at a negative net cost to society.” This means cheaper than ”free” to other ratepayers. https://www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Real-Reliability-The-Value-of-Virtual-Power_5.3.2023.pdf
The Energy Policy of the United States is to transition from centralized fossil fueled generation to virtual powerplants, VPPs, of localized renewable distributed energy resources. The plan is called “Pathway to commercial liftoff- Virtual Power Plants”- https://liftoff.energy.gov/vpp/
The main arguments for VPPs in the Liftoff plan are economic- “With electricity demand growing for the first time in a decade and fossil assets retiring, deploying 80-160 GW of virtual power plants (VPPs)—tripling current scale—by 2030 could support rapid electrification while redirecting grid spending from peaker plants to participants and reducing overall grid costs.” “Rather than using natural gas peaker plants to burn fuel and transport electricity over transmission and distribution (T&D) lines, utilities can use VPPs to pay participating end-users (Prosumers) for balancing demand on the grid locally with DERs and supporting systems.”
Rocky Mountain Institute says that this is a value driven technological revolution- https://rmi.org/the-energy-transition-is-a-technological-revolution-with-a-deadline/ RMI has a VPP overview- https://rmi.org/clean-energy-101-virtual-power-plants/
This Prosumer value revolution is also the policy of Colorado. The Colorado Commission agreed that the Prosumer is an entirely new participant class, who makes investments that reduces utility investments, the only way to lower rates to everyone. CPUC case#23M-0466EG says that competition can be by Prosumers at the retail level on the distribution system, a radical departure from the legacy Regulatory compact . The Commission Ruled that the Prosumer is a new class that provides power, capacity, and services without ratepayer investment that can lower rates to all. Giving Prosumers retail market access for all DER values on the distribution system may be the lowest cost path to consumer and environmental protections. Colorado is the first State to define “Prosumer” in a regulatory proceeding and mandates a rate of return for Prosumer investments. From the decision-
“26. Prosumer – Prosumer is a concept raised during the workshops in contrast to the term “consumer”. A Prosumer is a consumer that also provides resources to the grid. While this Decision does not use the term “prosumer” to refer to all participants in a VPP, is useful to distinguish a traditional customer from someone participating in a VPP. This differentiation may be beneficial when designing specific tariffs and programs for those who can reliably provide a certain capacity level upon utility dispatch. That threshold of capacity and control may be used to distinguish a prosumer from a consumer in future programs.”
“48. The VPP pilot program will test a tariff concept that would establish a “Prosumer” as a utility customer that met a certain capacity level of available dispatch. These would be residential, commercial, and industrial customers with relative capacity levels that they can deliver to the grid”
“A.) Prosumer levels should be identified by the Company to maximize the most beneficial combined DERs that could deliver capacity services to the grid.
B.) Prosumer tariffs should be designed to be attractive financially to the participant such that the option to qualify for the tariff would be an incentive for the participant to invest in more DERs”
Rural electric Coops in Colorado are adopting Prosumer policies like United Power’s “hyper localization” plan to replace their wholesale power supplier, Tristate, with locally owned DERs that capture the economic multiplier. https://bigpivots.com/at-united-power-talk-of-hyper-localization/
The Four Cities of Fort Collins, Longmont, Loveland and Estes park are blocked from moving to the cheaper cleaner Prosumer model. Platte River Power is controlling their future and has an obsolete view of the electric system. They are going against the energy policy of the US and the desires of the local community by making us pay for an obsolete Natural gas peaking plant that will become a “stranded cost” barrier to Prosumer compensation.
The world’s largest power plant (of any kind) is already a 13GW VPP aggregating over 25,000 Prosumer’s behind the meter assets. They have 1500 Prosumer biogas plants storing fuel to come on line for “dark calm”, periods of no wind and no sun. German engineers refer to this as Dunkelflaute, fear of the dark. - https://www.next-kraftwerke.com/
More than 2,000 community owned renewable energy cooperatives have formed in the EU- https://www.rescoop.eu/
Bill McKibben says VPPs are the fastest and cheapest way to attack climate change- https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-next-power-plant-is-on-the-roof-and-in-the-basement
Great article about Prosuming as a home based business - https://www.businessinsider.com/new-passive-income-side-hustle-selling-electricity-neighbors-solar-panels-2023-12
Energy Justice of Colorado’s energy transition should ensure that Prosumer investments are fairly compensated for the value they deliver, and that those values are captured to lower rates to all.