From: Rita Schenck [rita@iere.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 2:26 PM
Subject: Sustainable Energy Update #4

Dear Friends;

The last few weeks have been very difficult for us. As a result of hard-drive failure we lost much of our mail list, and all efforts to recover it have failed. This was especially discouraging since our list about doubled in size over the previous two weeks. Please help us out by forwarding this message to anyone else you may have forwarded it to in the past asking them to re-sign up for our list. Our apologies ahead of time for the annoyance that this causes.

Despite the computer snafu, we have made good progress in characterizing our energy use on the island, and our consultants, PERI, have made a first estimate of the energy renewable available here. The good news is that the available energy is greater than the needed energy, so it is indeed possible to power the island locally.

Although we are still tweaking and verifying the data, here is our first draft of the annual energy consumption for the island, expressed in Megawatt-Years

Electricity 11.9
Natural Gas 5.2
Heating oil 2.3
Propane 1.2
Firewood 1.1
Gasoline 3.5
Diesel 0.06

Total 25.3

A few notes about these numbers-- they represent the annual usage, and mean that we would have to generate about 220 million kilowatt hours per year to support all our energy needs. We use a lot more energy in the winter than in the summer, so it would be useful (though certainly not necessary) to have energy generation curves that match this usage pattern.

The gasoline figure is calculated based on assuming that we would use electricity to create hydrogen and then run our cars on hydrogen fuel cells. On an energy basis, a hydrogen fuel cell car is about three times more efficient than an internal combustion engine car. This is very important on the island, where our per-capita gasoline consumption is about four times more than that for the rest of King County (1700 gallons/year vs. 450 gallons/yr). It is not clear why we use more gas than the rest of the county, but we are a rural area, with relatively poor bus service, and this may explain the difference.

As of today, I have not been able to track down the fuel use for the ferries, and to be sustainable we would have to include them in our energy profile.

The different renewable energy sources that we think may be useful on the island include: solar, wind, tidal and biomass. None of these is a terrific energy source, but together they are more than adequate to produce the 220 million kWh that we need. Hydro power is not likely to be a good source of energy on the island, although there are probably some locations where enough head is generated to power one or a few homes. As far as I can determine, there are no geothermal sources on the island. Hopefully by our next update we will have the energy source profile laid out to match the energy use profile.

One of the community members here on Vashon Island has plans to put up a meteorological tower that will measure the winds over the course of a year-- this would help him set up a windmill on his property, and he is willing to share that data with the rest of the community. The cost of the tower (which is 33 feet high) is about 1000 dollars. Is there anyone who would be willing to re-use the tower and share some of the purchase cost? We would especially be interested in data near the ridge above Gold Beach, but any data would be better than the very poor data we have in hand now. Contact me if you have any interest and I will connect you with our first volunteer.

About peaking power and energy generation...(apologies to those of you who are completely familiar with this concept). Different power plant types work more or less of the time. Nuclear plants, for example, run at their rated level over 95% of the time. Renewable energy plants only run when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing or the river is flowing. In Seattle, for example, we get about 12.5% of the total possible (or peaking) energy from our solar cells. That means that if we installed a megawatt of solar cells, we would on average get 125 kilowatts of energy out, or about 1.1 million kilowatt hours per year.

This difference between peaking power and actual energy production is one of the reasons why renewable energy is so expensive, and why people value the places like the Great Plains and the Columbia River Gorge that have strong, steady winds, or southern California where there is lots of sunshine. You get more energy production for the same capital investment.

It is becoming clear that the biggest issue for moving the island to energy sustainability will be the cost. Our preliminary estimates are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. As a result, we have begun a dialog with several people who may be able to help us in obtaining funds in the long run. Among them are Jim McDermott's staff and The Pacific Northwest Economic Region (a quasi-governmental body). We will be exploring new opportunities as they come up.

We are also submitting grant proposals to cover our administrative expenses for this project, and have submitted our proposal to the Bullitt Foundation, and will continue to seek funds from appropriate sources.

We invite you to share this note with anyone you believe would be interested. We will gladly add the names of anyone who requests it to this mail list. Likewise, if you wish to be removed, send me a note and I'll remove your name.

Best regards,

Rita Schenck
Institute for Environmental Research and Education
P.O. Box 2449
Vashon, WA 98070

206-463-7430
206-279-1570 (f)
http://www.iere.org