The LEGO wind turbine was so popular that I though I’d give you another energy facility modeled with plastic bricks. This is the LEGO ITER fusion energy project.
[Source: Scientific American]
Follow-Along an Outage Restoration
In this narrated reenactment, ITC Holdings explains how they respond to storm damage and downed transmission lines. The video, I think, is meant for consumers, though for that audience, it’s a bit heavy on jargon.
[via AOL.Energy]
Snakes on the Line
When I explained before that animal incursions are a significant cause of power outages, I bet you weren’t thinking of snakes! This snapshot from Alabama Power, however, documents one that, climbing a pole, caused a short that blew a transformer fuse.
Power Transmission is Music to His Ears, Literally
The CBC interviewed a man who turned net scheduled interchange data in to music. His tools collect power flow numbers live from the website of the New Brunswick System Operator and then use that information to select samples based on the number of beats per minute.
[via CPV]
High-Altitude Tethered Wind Turbine
In the video below, Altaeros Energies uses a scale prototype to demonstrate the ability of wind-turbine generators lifted 1,000 feet high (about three times the height of typical wind turbines) to produce twice the power output. Lift is provided by a helium-filled, inflatable shell. The technology is being developed for military, offshore, and other remote needs.
[via Greentech Media]
Find Your Energy Avatar
At Mediamatic in Amsterdam, a new exhibit allows visitors to meet their animal energy avatars. Part of the New Order series exploring energy consumption in a world fully supplied by renewable resources, the installation displays animal forms representing the actual energy consumption of human participants.
The exhibitors explain that once-upon-a-time human energy consumption was directly related to metabolic rate.* For example, asleep, humans require 90 watts. Hunter gatherers in the Amazon require 250 watts. With modern technology, though, middle-class humans in the developed world consume around 11,000 watts—more than a blue whale.
* Plus shelter and heat requirements, I think. But we get the idea.
5 Tips for Surviving a NERC Audit with Your Sanity Intact
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt—nearly 5 years into mandatory electric reliability standards and there’s still plenty of it to go around. Some people seem to want it that way. But with regard to compliance audits, it’s just not necessary. I’ve been through a few. Follow these five tips and you too can come out the other end of a NERC audit calm, cool, and collected.
1. Ignore the audit
Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the point is that the audit should not be your focus. Put your attention on reliable operations. Be diligent at maintaining compliance. Keep proper documentation always. If you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing all along, then the audit becomes no big deal.
2. Remember, it’s just an audit
Uncertainty and doubt breed fear. “What if we can’t find all the maintenance records in time?” “What if the auditor disagrees with our interpretation of that standard?”
Relax! It’s just an audit. The worst thing that can happen is the audit team issues findings of possible violations. You still have time to address those during the enforcement process before they become official alleged violations. After that, you can contest a violation and request a hearing. And you even have an opportunity to appeal a notice of penalty to FERC.
I’m not saying the audit is meaningless, just keep it in perspective. It’s the first step in an enforcement process with multiple opportunities to demonstrate compliance. Documents that take time to locate can be submitted later. Interpretations of standards can be argued at hearing.
3. Complain
Auditors asking for confidential records or showing up at your door (sometimes even with FERC representatives in the group) can be very intimidating. Don’t be afraid, though. Speak up! NERC and regional entity auditors aren’t always right and, in my experience, they usually could do a better job of explaining why they’re asking for something. Now, be careful about refusing to answer a question or provide a requested document. However, don’t hesitate to ask an auditor the basis for his or her request if it seems to imply an assumption or interpretation with which you disagree. At NERC’s recent seminar on audits, Michael Moon, Director of Compliance Operations, said, “This is not a gotcha game. It’s an open book test.” Throughout the seminar, the presenters also encouraged entities to ask questions of their auditors and provide feedback on the audit experience.
4. Shut up
While you should not hesitate to speak up for yourself during an audit, in general, I counsel people to be quiet. With nerves on edge and outsiders questioning one’s work product, there’s a natural tendency to talk—to explain, to justify, to relate interesting stories. This is even more the case when auditors, as they are trained to do, refrain from the personal smalltalk common in business meetings.
Don’t. An audit is not a typical business meeting. You and the auditors are not on the same team. These people are there to determine if you are being compliant with the reliability standards. Answer their questions. But stick to the facts.
5. Do what you say, say what you do
This is both the easiest thing to get wrong and the easiest thing to get right. A number of NERC standards require entities to develop procedures and then follow them. Examples of this include vegetation management plans, maintenance intervals, emergency operations plans, and facility ratings. But besides some general guidelines or limited criteria, the exact procedures or policies are left up to the entities themselves. What could be easier than writing your own standards?
Unfortunately it seems that many entities take this flexibility further than it was intended. They seem to think that because they get to write the procedures themselves, their practices can vary from the procedures if “within reason” or “for the purpose of maintaining reliability.”
Similarly, for many standards a specific procedure document isn’t required, yet an entity may have one for its own reasons. In such a case, there appears even less need to follow the procedure exactly.
Not true! With all due respect to the technical expertise of the engineers and technicians, you need to understand that what we’re dealing with are federal regulations. To be compliant, you must follow the standard exactly as written. If the standard says that you must write a procedure and then implement it, then that is what you must do. Sure, you could have written the procedure differently, but you didn’t. On the other hand, if what you’re doing is better, then change the procedure to match. Even if a procedure document wasn’t required, inconsistencies may lead auditors to question compliance in practice. Don’t let that happen.
Ecotricity’s “Dump the Big Six” Campaign
A very cute commercial for British green energy marketer Ecotricity.
[via Geekosystem]
Thomas Edison’s Lesson For Achieving Greatness
My to-do list has stuff like clean the bathroom, fix the closet door, and file the tax return. Edison’s 5 page to-do list from January 1888 clearly demonstrates aspirations to greater things, including:
- “New slow speed cheap dynamo”
- “Refining copper electrically”
- “Ink for blind”
- “Artificial ivory”
- “Marine telegraphy”
- “Sorting coal from slate machine”
- “Regenerative kerosene burner”
[via Lists of Note]
FERC Interference With Reliability Standards Development
Last week, FERC held a technical conference on reliability policy. The main topic of conversation was the Environmental Protection Agency’s pending regulations on power plant emissions, which most panelists asserted could have a significant negative effect on electric power supply reliability. Some argued that the EPA should institute a blanket delay in implementing the regulations, some that the President should exercise his authority to grant an extension to all generators nationwide. Personally, I’d side with some of the other panelists, who suggested that if shutting down (either permanently or temporarily) any particular power plant would lead to a reliability problem, then the EPA, President, DOE, or FERC could certainly explore the possibility of granting that plant (and only that plant) an extension of time to comply.
But that’s not what I wanted to address with you today. That topic was covered thoroughly throughout the media. And further, FERC’s jurisdiction does not extend to generation resource adequacy, thus in my mind calling in to question why this issue would be addressed in a FERC conference on reliability policy.
Rather, I wanted to discuss an issue raised on the first day of the conference—an issue related to bulk-power-system reliability standards.
During the second panel, as part on a discussion of FERC intrusion in to the standards development process, Gerry Cauley, President of NERC, complained about FERC staff participation. He explained that FERC staff only partially participate in standards development, making occasional comments and complicating the discussion, but refusing to contribute specific proposals or commit support to a particular point-of-view on behalf of the commission. He said that FERC staff should either be “into or out of the tent.”
I spoke to FERC staff after the panel and know they took this comment seriously. However, resolving it is not a simple matter.
See, one possibility is for staff to “step into the tent.” This they’d be happy to do. But staff aren’t the decision-makers. That authority rests with the commission. And FERC attorneys regularly advise engineering staff not to speak on behalf of the commission, or commit to a specific result.
FERC staff could “step out” and allow the stakeholder-led process to go where it may. But that too seems unlikely. FERC’s Division of Reliability Standards has a staff of around 20 people dedicated to standards development and approval (not including CIP standards, for which there are additional staff in a separate division). The director of the Office of Electric Reliability also relies heavily on one particular senior staff member and one consultant, neither of whom hesitate to put their opinions ahead of those of NERC or other stakeholders.
An alternative is for the commission to make the Division of Reliability Standards non-decisional and reassign it to the Office of Administrative Litigation. No longer part of the team advising the commission on the approval of standards, these staff would then be free to participate fully in standards development without undermining the authority of the commission. I don’t know whether this would resolve the situation to Mr. Cauley’s satisfaction, but it would allow the commission to feel that it is still involved in the process—contributing rather than interfering.