 Good morning, everyone. We'd like to get started. So if everyone could please take their seats Oh, I love the power of being able to hear the room become quiet like that. Very cool So in any event my name is Carol Werner I am the executive director of the environmental and energy study Institute We are so glad to welcome you here this morning for this briefing which is on a topic that we happen to think is extremely important offers enormous promise for this country that has been tapped but only to a certain degree and that there is enormous opportunity to move forward in the US and certainly around the world on a combination of technologies that can provide so many benefits for us all. So we are so glad that you are here in terms of having a chance to learn more to hear from practitioners with regard to the whole world of district energy, CHP combined heat and power, microgrids and what this means for a more resilient energy efficient infrastructure. We're going to hear about specific examples that marry together energy, environment, economy, reductions in emissions, better overall economic development at a local level, keeping dollars local, providing much greater resilience. So there are so many things and so many exciting cases to hear about that we hope that this will just wet your appetite in terms of looking at how we can really do more. And we also are very very grateful to Senator Shaheen's office who helped us with this briefing and reserved the room and of course Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire has been a wonderful wonderful leader on energy policy and particularly with regard to looking at energy efficiency applications and obviously things like CHP, microgrids, what this means for resilience in the US are issues that are also very dear to her heart. So we are going to hear very briefly some opening remarks from a member of her staff, Ariel Marshall. Ariel? Good morning everyone. As Carol mentioned I'm Ariel. I'm Senator Shaheen's energy staffer. Senator Shaheen was glad to host this EESI event and while she isn't able to be here this morning I'm happy to provide brief remarks on behalf of her office. District Energy, the HP and microgrids, this is an important discussion right now. The two chambers are in the final hours of considering comprehensive energy reform so the fact that this discussion is happening today is is very critical. Today America relies on an aging electricity infrastructure, some of which were originated in the 1880s. Substantial investments and policy changes are urgently needed to improve our transmission and distribution infrastructure. During her time as governor of New Hampshire and now here in Congress Senator Shaheen has led this effort by advocating for the deployment of energy efficient technologies and clean energy technologies. As all of you know the benefits of clean energy is countless. It includes energy savings, improved environmental quality and grid reliability in the event of electricity outages and emergencies and if anyone has any doubt of the importance of these technologies one need only to envision the pictures that we saw of New York after Superstorm Sandy where most of the city was dark except for particular areas that were powered by CHP. In Congress Senator Shaheen has introduced legislation to address the regulatory and technical challenges limiting the deployment of these important clean energy sources on the electricity framework. The Clean Distributed Energy Grid Integration Act and the Heat Through Applied Technology Act or the HEAT Act both pieces of legislation ensure a broader deployment of clean and efficient technologies that will strengthen our energy security, reduce pollution and spur job creation in the clean energy industry. The HEAT Act and key provisions from the Grid Integration Act are we're part of the comprehensive energy package that passed the Senate earlier this year. While the final conference report for the energy bill is still being considered I'm sure all of us are waiting with bated breath. Our office looks forward to continue working with these provisions and to help them become law and we look forward to working with all of you and learning a lot from this important discussion. Thank you. Thanks so much Ariel really appreciate your being here and let me ask did anybody have any particular question that they wanted to ask Ariel just as she sits down? Okay so she will be here for a while at least and um and do feel free to follow up with her certainly after the briefing as well because I know that the office really welcomes input from everybody in terms of talking about this and as I said Senator Shaheen has been an amazing leader and has been absolutely dogged in her efforts here in the Senate. I also wanted to mention that in terms of this briefing we are so delighted to be working with IDEA the International District Energy Association and the Microgrid Resources Coalition and probably many of you know that there is also Microgrid Summit tomorrow and so I think that it's so wonderful to have this briefing in conjunction with this next meeting tomorrow as well so that hopefully more and more people will realize the enormous promise that is before us if we really look at how we can make use of these technologies in our different environments in our cities different kinds of campuses neighborhoods etc so I want to turn first to our first speaker and I am so delighted to welcome Rob Thornton because Rob and I have known each other for many many years and Rob is of course the president and CEO of IDEA the International District Energy Association he has been incredible in terms of his support on behalf of the industry working to not only move projects forward on behalf of so many companies that are involved in these technologies but he has really worked so hard to develop the kind of information the kinds of analytic tools that can really help people make decisions in terms of putting together assessments really looking at what makes sense for their particular situation and as a result of that he has briefed the president of the United States he has basically briefed probably most cabinet members certainly many many people on both sides of the hill as well as he has held enormously wonderful conferences across this country and globally because this is truly a global issue very important here very important in terms of what it can do globally. Rob. Thank you very much Carol and to the team here at EESI thank you so much for your hospitality and your good work in in convening this and I want to thank Ariel and the senator she really has been a champion in our sector for many years and so thank you for your continued support means a lot to us clicker I'll just do I will do page down page down frozen so the staff here at EESI is really good and I'm going to step aside maybe it was dormant for a while seems to have crashed so one thing I learned when you don't know what you're doing step aside have the experts okay here we are and we thank you very much thank you very much so my name is Rob Thornton I'm the president and CEO of IDEA so we're going to talk to you about district energy combining power and micro grids just a quick overview of the agenda Carol introduced us I'm going to give an industry overview sort of a bigger picture and then I'm going to hand it to my colleague Ted Borer from Princeton University and he'll help you understand how how these assets work real time in a campus setting and then we're going to move to the city of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh and and what that city is doing Michael Rooney will share with us how the city of Pittsburgh envisions their future involve investing in district energy CHP and micro grids and then we'll conclude with some comments from Jim Lodge with NRG Energy sort of the national picture NRG is a very large private company they have assets all over the country and Jim will share sort of the opportunities for private public partnership so that's our agenda this is a typical power plant this is a remote coal fired power plant this one happens to be in in England but it could be anywhere in the United States where two-thirds of the energy that goes in is wasted as heat either through the stack the cooling towers or into the nearby ocean lake or river now the our department of energy is wise to this the last quadrennial review they recognize that our power plants on their best day are about 32 percent efficient this was really I think at the underpinnings of the clean power plant so about you know one-third of the energy is creates electricity two-thirds it says here is lost as heat we know where it's going it's not really lost it's just not being used properly so the current us electricity system has an efficiency of about you know in the 30s and I'm not going to get into this sanki diagram and drill all the way down and share with you how little energy useful energy actually gets to the outlet that's not my my point here the point is that there's room for opportunity there's really room for growth we can do better than this in fact in the U.S. when you talk about waste heat from power plants it's a big number it's 36 percent of the total energy consumed in the U.S. it's it's equivalent to the useful energy in industry and buildings so the waste heat from our power plants is a huge opportunity it's it's also a challenge if you were to look at it differently the waste heat from U.S. power plants is greater than the total energy used in a hundred and ninety seven hundred and ninety seven other countries let me repeat that the waste heat from our power plants is greater than the total energy used in every other country in the planet besides three the U.S. Russia and China ladies and gentlemen this you know obviously is a challenge we'd like to think it's really an opportunity energy system you know we've made improvements we're making we're making certainly forward progress integrating renewables but they still don't have the impact that we'd like we're making progress but the U.S. electric in electricity industry has basically been at this efficiency since Eisenhower was in the White House White House now there's another way to do this and it's to generate heat and power locally to combine heat and power or to recover the heat and use it to heat cities and campuses communities it's done really all over the U.S. you just don't know about it in fact this building is on district heating and cooling the capital power plant is down the hill and they'll they'll be adding CHP there exactly the project is underway but what we'd like to talk about is the opportunity to combine heat and power production and use in our cities in our campuses and we are seeing a paradigm shift of some regard we are seeing power plants being located in cities we are obviously seeing a lot more renewable uptake but district energy has really been you know growing largely on our campuses essentially what it is is the power plant is located near the users and you make heat to make power and then you also use the heat instead of dumping it in the river and the trick or the beauty I would say of a district energy system is when you have a network an underground thermal network that connects and integrates multiple buildings can be dozens can be hundreds can be thousands now you have a thermal scale or you can invest in technologies that may not make sense on an individual building basis you really create a market for the thermal energy because you have a means to distribute it and use it in Copenhagen 99 percent of the buildings in Copenhagen don't have boilers 99 percent of the buildings in Copenhagen get their heat from the district heating network and that heat is combined heat and power from power plants waste heat from power plants or it's heat from waste energy plants they don't burn fossil fuel to heat their community and so when you have this scale of a thermal network then you can invest in technologies like waste energy or in Toronto where they built a district cooling network by putting pipes out in the lake they use cold water to air condition the downtown core because they have this thermal network in the city so that allows us to use the heat and move our efficiencies from 30 or 40 percent to 70 80 some of our systems at UT University of Texas Austin operates annually at efficiencies over 90 percent 90 percent of the fuel that gets consumed in that plant is distributed as useful energy and so by combining heat and power cooling heat and power and these thermal grids we can dramatically improve the energy efficiency of our systems here in the US and again when you have this scale now you can apply different technologies like waste energy solar thermal geothermal deep lake water cooling again the scale creates the economic opportunity now what's really also happening in the US we're now seeing some drivers really related to the electricity and we talk of micro grids and those drivers are frankly extreme weather happening more frequently droughts record droughts in all across the country and the challenge for the energy system of managing drought and of course wildfire and it's not just heat extremes a few winters ago we had the polar vortex so we're seeing these extremes of weather that are frankly taxing the electric industry and Carol mentioned you know we a lot of our energy electricity asset is vintage and in need of renewal so the insurance industry is aware of this as well we're now tracking disasters and the payouts associated with them and the growing frequency and so the underwriters are looking at how do we manage our cities our critical mission facilities and what technologies should we be exploring to make our energy systems and our frankly our cities more resilient really the galvanizing moment in our industry was sandy and Ted's going to share more with you because he was right in the teeth of sandy this was a huge storm in 2012 820 miles in diameter was bigger than Irene and Isaac combined it affected 21 states over 8 million people without power 126 fatalities required an army of utility folks coming from Canada and across the country to bring this asset these assets back the estimated losses were over 70 billion dollars it was a storm of epic proportion and really was I think the fulcrum for why many of us are now talking about micro grids Manhattan was really right in the center but some systems stood up they stood up to sandy at Nassau Long Island the district energy system maintained operations South Oaks hospital Hartford hospital wastewater treatment plants you don't realize how important it is to keep the pumps running in a wastewater treatment plant so that overflow doesn't poison the community the local waters that stayed on because of chp Fairfield University became an area of refuge where 98% of the town was without power they moved the kids back onto campus and one of the a couple of the shining examples co-op city this is in the Bronx on the whites it's on the you know it's it's when you're heading from New England it's very visible on the by the Whitestone bridge if this were a city would be the 10th largest city in New York 60,000 residents it's one of the largest housing cooperatives in the world and they have a 40 megawatt cogen plant that makes power heat and cooling for this campus they backed up the con ed grid they actually helped con ed restart so this was really a beacon of of light in an otherwise very dark setting and of course Princeton Princeton stood up to sandy as they did to many other storms and I'll let Ted share more of the details how they did that and how it works but if you're a university or a healthcare facility or even a mayor of a of a city you want to know when the next sandy comes that your buildings your citizens your critical research your patients are safe and frankly that's hard to do if the local power plant is a hundred miles away if it's within your city blocks it makes it a lot easier to deliver resiliency and if it's within your city blocks then you can use the heat and make the whole thing much more efficient and so cities what we're hearing from mayors they want what Princeton has they want greater efficiency and resiliency because they know that sandy wasn't the last storm they also want these types of assets because they integrate very well with intermittent renewables when you have a system with that can operate sort of quickly and responsively now you really become a better asset class for wind and solar plus frankly mayors are dealing with these shuttered coal plants in the loss of tax base they want assets like this high value assets that employ people they want them in their community and if you have this you can use local supply of energy like in Denmark but if you're in Vermont you can use waste wood if you're in St. Louis you can use geothermal and then you're not buying imported power in Vermont they spend they send 16 billion dollars a year out of the local economy to buy oil in Vermont that is an economic challenge if you're using local supply then you get an economic multiplier which we've seen in st paul in great record and let's be honest it used to be the only mechanism the only metric for an employer was what's the price of power that doesn't cut it anymore now new employers whether it's google or a pharma company what's the price of power how resilient is it where's it located and how clean is it today's employer wants to know that the that the energy that they're connected to is clean reliable and resilient it isn't just price anymore and finally one of the benefits of all of this is you actually get an emissions reduction in your region now that may not be the primary driver for some but it is in fact at many of our universities the single largest cut in emissions by improving the efficiency of their central plants now let me just share with you one example in Cambridge the Kendall station is an operating plant nestled right on the Charles River right by MIT 256 megawatts for years it was just a power plant they sold they sold some steam to the local steam system but in fact they were also dumping all their heat must much of their heat into the Charles River and that was actually an environmental challenge recently the plant was acquired by the local district energy provider Veolia they operate the the district steam system in Cambridge and in Boston and saw this plant as a terrific opportunity and so what they did is they made an investment in the plant to make it chp they acquired the plant for 50 million dollars and the reconfiguration was around 35 but then the clever thing is instead of dumping the heat into the Charles they put it in a pipe and they invested in a pipe to supply that heat to buildings in Boston wow brilliant idea but in fact that's the type of investments we can make with these systems in our cities and that 21 million dollars worth of pipe 27 million dollars worth of pipe it was 21 million dollars worth of excellent union jobs pipefitters electricians insulators contractors this is the type of infrastructure investment we should be making and can be making the end result this green steam project in Boston represents about a six percent reduction in their overall emissions it's 475 000 tons less or the equivalent of taking 80 000 cars off the road and if you're a mayor that is a huge metric that allows you to develop if you're in an attainment zone the equivalent environmental impact is 600 football fields of photovoltaic now if you've never ever been to Boston you can't find 600 football fields but that's what these types of assets can do economic development emissions reduction energy security resiliency so now Boston and Cambridge have an integrated thermal smart grid it's district energy it's combined heat and power and it's microgrid and one of the next phase of this project will be to make Kendall station the ability to island and support the pharma and research community that resides in Kendall Square right by MIT really a hot bed of innovation and so i'm going to conclude in in a minute but what we've seen in the northeast with the sandy states is frankly mayors and governors realizing they can't do what they've always done they need what princeton has in new york they started a program the new york prize it was a basically a grant program to support communities evaluating microgrids they had 103 communities submit and they awarded 83 a hundred thousand dollars each to do this first phase of study the next phase they're going to award i think in the neighborhood of 25 or 30 uh that'll nearly uh i think it's going to be 15 or so nearly a million dollars each to do the next phase what they've seen in new york is an overwhelming interest in communities taking control of their energy future they've also at the public utility commission level gone about rev reforming the energy vision which is a fundamental shift in the way the electric utility industries work in new york and we're all watching it carefully uh and you know they are making great progress connecticut same thing not same extreme but investment supporting communities with microgrids two phases now nearly 40 million dollars new jersey a 30 million dollar uh microgrid microgrid deployment grants and they've established a 200 million dollar energy resilience bank essentially to help their communities uh uh with the funding required to deploy these assets massachusetts where i reside has taken also a great leadership now i should also comment that the kendall station one of the one of the drivers there is the massachusetts green communities act which treats heat recovered as a second tier alternative energy portfolio standard and so there really is within the state a mechanism to value these much like solar gets a renewable energy credit those are the sorts of programs we'd like to see promulgated more widely at a federal level uh chp is in the clean power plan it's treated favorably juries out whether that's going to move ahead or not i actually believe that many of the states that are that are supporting it will continue to proceed we will continue to see growth at at state and local level uh regardless of what the federal government does i do want to recognize and thank uh our friends at the department of energy uh and the epa who have been strong supporters of our industry for many years we have within the us we have about 800 operating district energy systems these are operating right now if any of you went to college i'm willing to bet you lived in a dorm that was on district heating these are the systems that just have heating and cooling and still have the opportunity to add cogeneration there's over 290 district energy systems right now in the us that have already done the hard work they've already built the thermal grid they've already aggregated the thermal load now they can move to the next level by adding cogeneration uh really it's a terrific opportunity and uh really we're here to say that we look forward to working with the new administration with congress the house in the senate if there is to be an energy infrastructure bill we want to be part of it because we think that the investments like happened in cambridge can happen in many of these settings and generate great jobs emissions reduction and energy security so with that i'm going to turn it over to i'm going to hand it back to carol and uh thank you so much for your attention thanks rob for laying out that really impressive overview of the kinds of opportunities and examples that that exist in our underway i am very glad to welcome back a tad more uh because uh after sandy we held a briefing looking at the role of chp and district energy in providing the kind of resilience that stood up during sandy and brought in several people uh with who were managing such systems in in the northeast and it was a pretty remarkable story and so it's great that ted borer is here with us today who is the energy plant manager at princeton university he has more than 32 years of experience in the power industry is uh as a professional engineer has a whole background graduate degrees in terms of of mechanical engineering and many other certifications but he has been actively involved in campus energy and carbon emission reduction efforts and i'll never forget his story about what his system was able to do at princeton during sandy and we are so lucky to have him with us today but for people who operate such systems and have gone through those things and can so clearly tell the story it is so important for us to listen and to learn and ted has also been telling the story uh has been providing a great example uh through his talking to many people in in congress uh in various agencies as well as in other conferences and meetings and also writing about this in many many different kinds of publications ted carol thanks a lot so to summarize what she said ted's an energy nerd and really likes to talk about this stuff are you sufficiently caffeinated because we have like 15 minutes to cover an entire college education in terms of uh energy everything that rob just said what i'd like to do is he said here's what you can do and what i want to show you is that this is what princeton does this is what princeton's been doing not because we're heavily funded but because we have enough of a time horizon that we can look forward and say i want to make a decision out there not one that causes me to trip over my shoelaces okay so really this is not a red we're in dc we're right here in the nation's capital this is not a red issue blue issue this is a we want to save money and we want to save the planet and the things that we're doing overlap in that space okay so you can sell this to either side if you want it's really not that hard um i want to show you that we get higher reliability i want to show you one example of a highly integrated microgrid but as much as the generous introduction suggested really princeton is just one example of many many many of this is what you can actually do oh and many of these places have been doing this for a long time um and the microgrids it's sort of three different areas right microgrid combined heat and power and district energy and they all go very nicely together um they offer lots and lots of benefits most of which you already know about because that's why you're here but i want to point out a few of those what's a microgrid okay a lot of people say oh i want to go build a microgrid and frankly that most of them don't even know exactly what that is but really easy simple working definition okay uh on the left hand side we've got the power plant that is the central plant operated by the utility on the right hand side the green guys the happy guys the ones with the microgrid they've got some kind of load and some kind of generation behind a meter they can synchronize to the power grid and they can offer the power grid services when not if when the power grid fails then they can operate autonomously okay so generation plus load behind a meter ability to synchronize and ability to operate autonomously okay the blue guy the sad guy who doesn't have a microgrid they have a microgrid next door and in some ways they're able to bike benefit just by the proximity to someone from a microgrid and i say that because of our experience and one that rob indicated because we were able to keep the lights on during hurricane sandy the steam operating the chilled water operating the research continuity our neighbors the first responders were able to come and muster at the university recharge their radios recharge their phones get a hot meal sit indoors where it wasn't raining make decisions and then go back out into the community so even the proximity of a microgrid helps out you don't have to be the one who owns it convince your neighbors to buy one the university has 180 buildings okay so think of us as a small community representative of something that could scale way up 180 buildings 9 million square feet and sort of one of or several of everything administrative and research and athletic the only thing we don't have a hospital we don't have a dominant graduate school that kind of swings the character of the university it's primarily a very very strong undergraduate and about half of our business is research half of our business is education the half that's research is tremendously energy intense and i think that's part of why we value the reliability and the resilience and the continuity of energy i won't drag you through all the numbers what i want you to see is that we produce electricity we use a gas turbine that is a jet engine this little jet engine was originally designed by general electric for the stealth fighter for the f a 18 and the blue angels have these on their wings so it's a very powerful very responsive military fighter jet engine that we now strap down to the ground we keep the engine still and we use the thrust from the engine to spin an electric generator to make electricity that process like rob indicated is about one third efficient a third of the fuel you put in comes out as useful electricity in most settings the two thirds is wasted all right so if we wanted to make an apple pie right we're going to buy an apple we'll cut two thirds the apple and throw it away and just use one third of the apple to make our pie see that's kind of wasteful in princeton's case and in most of these cases that we're talking about we're going to get much more use out of the apple the only thing we throw away is the core and the seeds okay so in princeton's case we're going to buy the apple and one third goes out and makes electricity i guess that's a bad metaphor but two thirds is going to come out as waste heat and we'll recapture most of the heat energy and deliver that to the university as steam in the winter we use it as steam in the summer we use the steam that's produced as a byproduct of power generation to turn steam turbines to operate our chilled water plant so we still find ways to exploit the waste heat even in the summer we also have energy storage it's very hard to store steam we're right on the cusp of finding ways to store electricity cost effectively and space effectively in fact we're we're looking into that right now but we it's very easy to store cold water so to air condition the university what we do is we make very cold water we send it around it's sort of like the radiator in your car we use that heat we use that cold water to pick up heat from the buildings to cool the buildings off in our case we store that cold water so we might make cold water when it's very inexpensive to buy power we store the cold water until the power is very valuable till the power price is high and then we deliver it to the university at great cost savings but also it adds reliability everything in the plant will break at some point so when the chiller breaks not if the chiller breaks we can back up and say well reliability trumps economics in this moment so what we're going to do is we're going to run the thermal storage energy we'll pump it out of our tank and my campus customers don't feel the problem in the plant I think of the energy plant as an energy conversion box right so on the left hand side we buy electricity we buy natural gas we buy liquid fuel we push it through all these energy conversion devices on the way we accept a free gift of energy from the sun we convert that sunlight into electricity and we mix it with the electricity we've made we send to the campus electricity steam and chilled water district energy rob really explained what we've got a central power plant the benefit of having a central power plant instead of 180 boilers and 180 chillers around the campus is we centralize all the problems we centralize the staff we centralize the tools we centralize the pollution the noise the aesthetic issues and by centralizing it now we have an opportunity to control the emissions the noise the aesthetic issues the people I need a lot fewer people but I need a more highly trained staff very good jobs very technical jobs what we find is this costs more to buy upfront and this has a much much better lifecycle cost the conversation we need to introduce is the idea of lifecycle cost project decision-making you buy expensive upfront and you keep it for a century and it will serve you well for a century again combined heat and power right we've got the jet engine on the left hand side spinning an electric generator a third of the energy that comes into the gas turbine leaves as electricity two-thirds leaves through the catalytic converter through the heat recovery boiler and I capture most of the waste heat so my overall process efficiency can be 70% on average through the year and north of 80% even even skating up next to 90% efficient sometimes during the winter just to reinforce that idea I took real measurements off our control system not sort of theoretical design numbers so on the left you can see there a gas turbine producing electricity is anywhere from 30 to 40% efficient I'll say averaging about 34% efficient but when I combine the heat and the power production I'm well above 80% on average through the year again thermal storage we've got the chiller decoupled from the campus needs so the chiller and the and the campus needs are now decoupled in time so I can operate the chiller whenever I want to whenever power is inexpensive and I can meet my campus needs whenever the campus wants it so we've decoupled those the moment of production from the moment of need and we've decoupled the problems in the plant from the campus customers so by having some kind of energy storage you separate the problems from the customers and you're able to buy energy when it's least expensive and you're able to deliver that energy when it's most valuable here's a picture of our stunningly attractive thermal storage tank it looks like it's 50 feet high it actually is about 50 feet above grade about another 20 feet below grade it's about 80 feet in diameter everybody said there's no place on campus for that and we tried lots of vocations and eventually we found a place that works just fine and it's not aesthetically a challenge it's just fine it works well on campus you can see it's thermally stratified the cold water is denser it sits on the bottom the warm water is less dense it sits on the top so to deliver cooling we pump out of the bottom to recool the tank we pump cold water back into the bottom and displace the warm water picture of our solar field 5.3 megawatts dc four and a half megawatts worth of ac 16,000 solar panels it takes 27 acres okay this provides about 6 percent of the electricity that the university uses today so that's that's a substantial amount it's a notable it's not just symbolic but it's a lot of acres to do that this is where Princeton is different from a lot of the rest of the crowd frankly most of the rest of the crowd it's not the toys that we've gotten the plant most people have very similar equipment but it's the thought process where I think the word we're actually the defining point we're actually the leader we take the Pennsylvania Jersey Maryland interconnection electric price we take the nimax price for natural gas and diesel fuel we measure the current campus loads and the weather prediction looking forward 24 hours in great detail looking forward seven days in less detail and then rather than just taking engineering numbers the design numbers for the equipment that we're operating we actually measure btu's in and kilowatt hours out we measure kwh is in and ton hours of cooling out so we measure in real time how the equipment performs so that we know exactly which piece of equipment to call on in real time by comparison we each buy a car okay we're buying the exact same model car you're going to run yours really really carefully and I'm going to beat mine like crazy I'm hot riding I'm going over roads and small rocks and small animals through the woods and things like that and the car gets broken down they both have the exact same design numbers but over time one is degraded and doesn't perform as well and one is still meeting the manufacturer's specs right so we're not just looking at the design numbers what we're doing is we're saying we're measuring in real time now we're very thoughtful and careful with our equipment but the point is by operating them at different times maybe at full load it works great and maybe a part load it doesn't work so great or over time it's degraded simply by normal operation so we very carefully measure how does it perform at this load point and even if we have two equal pieces of equipment which performs better under the demands that we're offering it today so that's where we're most thoughtful and most careful we also have some business rules which really amount to don't break stuff try not to operate the equipment harder than it should so we're all about life cycle savings not immediate in the moment savings it's really about treat stuff gently so that it lasts a long long time we also take now we've accumulated 13 years worth of historical data so we can look back and say under these under these weather conditions at this temperature at this humidity on this day of the week what energy demands did the university have how much heating how much cooling did we need under this circumstance in the past so we use that to inform our 24-hour forward prediction model that says what we should do and then this system advises us should we generate power by power do some kind of a mix should we burn natural gas or burn diesel fuel should we actually shut down for the weekend because it's so cost effective we might as well buy power from the utility entirely and then there's various other special conditions that this system advises us of this is just a glimpse at the economic dispatch screen there's about 12 different pages that the operators can look at it is expert guidance we still want this information to go through a thinking trained licensed operators brain to make the final decision should i start a gas turbine should i shut down a boiler should i run bring on another chiller because again we're all about treating our stuff thoughtfully not extracting the highest value in the moment we're looking for the highest value over the life of the equipment the red graph is an interesting one you can see a horizontal axis can you guys see the green line up through that all right so that's a 24-hour period below the horizontal axis you can see there's a downward trend on the red that is us charging the thermal storage tank and above the red axis you can see that there is a jaggedy line that goes up and down that is us discharging the thermal storage tank the green is the price of power in that 24-hour period and you can see while we were charging the tank the price of power was maybe 25 bucks a megawatt hour and while we were discharging the tank the value of power was about 250 dollars a megawatt hour so i bought a commodity that cost me 25 bucks and 12 hours later i sold it or i delivered it to my customer when they would have had to pay 250 dollars for that same commodity 12 hours that's pretty good ROI that's pretty good leverage on my investment and we do that every day 365 days a year we predict the lowest price and we deliver at the highest price and we try to span that low and span that high with our power purchase and our power delivery so here's a beautiful day this is the perfect day they don't always happen like this but this is the perfect day 24 hours of power production and power purchase on campus 7 a.m. you can see the sun comes up the red is the solar power production going from nothing at dawn up through maybe three four megawatts average during the day and then dropping off by about 7 p.m. about evening then the blue is the power production on our chp the code generation microgrid or the code generation substation if you want about half load 7 megawatts in the middle of the night and we ramp the throttle forward to full load when power prices exceed our marginal cost of generation and then we back down when the power price is lower than our marginal cost we'd stay running for reliability in case the grid should trip we want to catch the campus loads and can continue to operate even without the grid and we've done that many times hurricane sandy was notable but maybe a dozen times in the history of the plant we've caught the campus load the neighborhood has been dark and we've continued to run and that's very satisfying that's the really good day the purple is the power purchase on the same substation as that blue as the code generation and you see that rectangle on the left hand side that rectangle on the left hand side is all the power that we bought associated with our thermal storage so you can picture that rectangle being placed on top of the center of that curve if we hadn't had thermal storage that's all the power we'd have to buy in the middle of the day at the most expensive when the grid is most stressed if we didn't have thermal storage then the green is the power that we bought on the solar pv substation and you can see that we buy a whole whack of power in the middle of the night on solar pv and then the sun displaces our solar our power purchase during the middle of the day this is the sexy part this is the 24 hour graph of power purchase price and how much we bought at that moment so you can see the red is the price of power in the middle of the night it's low it peaks during the day and then it drops down again in the evening the green is how much we bought early in the day the big black we're buying a whole lot of power when it's inexpensive and you see us avoiding most of our power purchase when it's most expensive and then buying more when it's expensive and buying buying less when it's expensive we've spent 20 years building essentially means to invert the normal power purchase curve almost everybody else buys lots and lots of power when it's expensive and doesn't buy much when it's inexpensive so we build up all these tools generation thermal storage the ability to switch from steam to electric driven cooling and back and forth all these assets really are load shaping but they also give us autonomy this is when it goes right we got lots of really good press we got lots of solid attention for hurricane sandy notes from the mayor proclamations a lot of things in around the country noting how successful we were lots of other people were we were notable in it many others were very quiet but the micro grids that rob noted were also very successful getting through hurricane sandy very nice student video they like bashing the administration when they can amazingly during the storm they came down and interviewed a few of us and said do you mind if we stop by and talk to you well we got a little crisis going on here but sure they made a really really nice video we're not showing it right now but I would commend you to take a look at this it is unbelievably high production value and very complimentary this is what I wanted to get you to and we're going to spend a couple minutes this is like the 300 level this is not entry level discussion this is where we could take the whole national power grid this is what we could do this is where micro grids with the power grid not micro grids in opposition to the power grid but dancing together is really what we want to do how we can get the most benefit from both so we're going to build a really really simplistic power grid model okay everybody knows that it's more complex than that but this is to distill it just to the discussion points right so there's 12 little energy users here let's say they all need 50 megawatts each keep it simple we're going to build a 600 megawatt power plant to serve their needs but we know everything breaks right so we're going to build a whole another backup and we'll put them a hundred miles apart so that most of the crisis the environmental crisis that hit one power plant won't hit the other or they won't both fail at the same time okay so I've got one and a hundred percent redundancy n minus one all right so now I've got 1200 megawatts worth of installed capacity remember that number 1200 megawatts worth of installed capacity 600 primary and 600 is backup it doesn't take a lot of sophistication to understand that there's weak points in our power grid that we designed all right they're more complex in the real grid but you can see that if I break either of those two points somebody's going without power and maybe a lot of people are going without power right if I break either of the two power plants things get much worse right so there's vulnerable points in the plant in the power grid this is where we want to get to this is where we can get to what I want you to see is now I've got those same 12 megawatt 12 12 50 megawatt loads but the users have prioritized things and the users have bought some built some micro grids so you can see see if I can do yeah okay so this guy has built a hundred megawatt micro grid to serve their 250 megawatt loads and when the power grid trips they can serve that they can serve their entire sorry about that they can serve their entire load without the power grid this guy had this guy has performed a little bit of triage aren't we spastic sorry this guy has performed a little bit of triage and he said you know the furniture store during a hurricane I don't need to power that because nobody's going to buy furniture during the hurricane so that's the blue building he has built 100 megawatt backup power or micro grid to serve his total of 200 two buildings totaling 100 megawatts and during the storm they'll forego the non-emergency or the non-business critical needs and they'll keep the two buildings running that are business critical so you can see how they made their own triage the utility can't see beyond the meter so the utility can't make that decision but they're able to make that triage and just supply their emergency needs uh bottom right the utility company's got a 200 megawatt plant and the utility's got another 200 megawatt plant top top left and we could go through each one of these scenarios but you can see that essentially I could break one or even two of the power plants here and all the customers get served all the emergency loads get served I could break any point on the power grid and probably two points on the power grid and all the needs get served oh and I've only got 800 megawatts worth of installed capacity instead of 1200 so less installed capacity with higher reliability with greater opportunity for lower carbon footprint lower total energy spend higher efficiency it's good plus good plus good this is where we want to try to take it thank you very much so thank goodness for an energy nerd so we're now going to turn to Pittsburgh and here from Michael Rooney and we're so glad that he's here with us today Michael is the manager of district energy initiatives at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Energy so this requires him to work very closely with the city of Pittsburgh and surrounding communities he comes from a background of having to do a lot of work with stakeholders and so working with these kinds of systems certainly relies upon a lot of those kinds of skills he has spent a lot of his career working with a variety of nonprofits including care both in Ethiopia as well as here in Washington so we're delighted to have you with us Michael thanks Carol thanks Rob ESI and IDA for letting sort of me come down and tell a little bit about where we are in Pittsburgh why this stuff sort of matters to us at a macro level and Carol mentioned this but I am the sort of the non-energy nerd probably on this panel so for the technical questions I'll defer to these guys so I know I had a few conversations early on so a show of hands Pittsburghers in the room come on don't be shy there we go got a couple all right good we're we're amongst friends then so as Carol was saying I work at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Energy in my role I'm the manager of the district energy initiatives that have sort of cropped up and been a little bit more formalized within the city of Pittsburgh so I work really sort of hand in glove with the mayor's office and the stakeholders at the table on sort of the Pittsburgh district energy front so what I want to do today really is just sort of give everyone an overview of of where we're thinking in this space so why does sort of district energy microgrids CHP what all these things sort of matter to us matter to the stakeholders at the table the university the city foundations private entities well really from sort of the broader city perspective distributed energy resources the ability to sort of create energy efficiencies in the system that's the appeal and there's sort of a three pronged approach one we have obvious sort of greenhouse gas reduction and sustainability objectives as do I think most cities at this point but really there's an economic development argument for us for our region and a benefit for the people who sort of live in and around the city of Pittsburgh we're really focused on sort of putting resilience in the system excuse me so from a business continuity standpoint a lot of the things that Ted had talked about those are the types of thinking that that we're doing sort of at a at a city level and a regional level and then also giving our communities the ability to sort of build resiliency so the city of Pittsburgh at this point has developed a preliminary resiliency plan and a key piece of this is addressing sort of infrastructure and we always talk about sort of multi multi-attributional development so when we invest in infrastructure we want it to also be sort of coupled and have co-benefits so just a quick overview of what I'll talk about again today I'll highlight a little bit about sort of who we are at Pitt what our role is what the district energy Pittsburgh initiative is sort of project and concept development why it matters to us and then close with a few sort of opportunities for for future investment so without further ado I do want to play a video really quickly and get folks a little bit more acquainted chances are you've heard some things about us we're the ones who shoveled iron ore into the blast furnaces and ran our street lights during the day we did the unglamorous work that helped build the nation and we've got the scars to prove it sure we've got a reputation the way we see it we've got a reputation to uphold yeah steel will always be a part of our identity but really it's innovation that's in our DNA from steamboats to glass to steel to aluminum pittsburgh was always at the forefront of innovation we created the modern highway system we powered the first nuclear submarine when the steel industry famously turned our city into hell with the lid off we set about to clean up instituting the first clean air regulations of their kind we know a thing or two about looking challenges in the eye and seeing opportunities hills rivers and valleys forced our 55 square miles into an unruly tangle of roads and bridges out of that grew 90 distinct neighborhoods some have prospered with the city's ups and downs others haven't had a seat at the table in the past progress for some meant decline for others as city residents fled to the suburbs we cut highways through the hearts of vibrant communities leaving large swaths of our diverse population isolated maybe there were times we forgot what we stood for but we always come back stronger we're still creating industries but this time around we're using 21st century technology and engineering to get us there universities nonprofits and businesses are working together to build robots cure diseases and design better products and we're just getting started with smart pgh we're at the cusp of the next revolution in transportation and information technology that has the potential to have huge impacts on the way we live we're deploying the most advanced traffic signals in the world to move people bikes and vehicles both faster and safer these signals actually learn and they're made right here at home we're rolling out smart street lights with sensors that communicate with traffic and even monitor air quality we're building new infrastructure for autonomous and electric vehicles and charging them without fossil fuels and this time we're putting people first training our residents for the jobs of the future and working on the ground in every neighborhood to make certain these technologies are actually making people's lives better smart pgh isn't simply our next project it's our next chance the chance to chart a course to bridge the gaps between ourselves the chance to be the blueprint for other cities like us we're thinkers and doers it's what's allowed us to bounce back to shake off the rust and keep moving our hard-working ethic our spirit of innovation those aren't going anywhere but this time around we've made the decision if it's not for all it's not for us great so um and i'm sure many of you are familiar that was the video that we put together for um our department of transportation smart cities application i always like to show it because i think it gives a sort of a sense of where we were and where we're heading and in in many ways that the the progress of the smart cities group that came together to to put the dot application together really was the culmination of sort of the nexus between energy technology and transportation and that's sort of where this initiative is going so why am i here right so i'm i said at the center for energy i do mostly outreach but really about two or so years ago pit through the center for energy and in collaboration with the city of pittsburgh began sort of exploring the broad energy space in pittsburgh really discussing what was possible in our region so a lot of things that ted and rob have highlighted starting to look at existing systems and also opportunities for new investment and this work fits really nicely sort of with our with our role and our position in the region as sort of a leader in the energy sector working we work really collaboratively with both communities and also industry partners so we're a university wide center focused on energy related research we do span art sciences law business policy school and our area of sort of technical expertise is broad but more specifically it's on the sort of electric power transmission and distribution systems and we're also really focused on reliability resiliency sustainability and affordability so then the district energy pittsburgh initiative what is it so there is an incredible group of stakeholders that has come together to sort of address a lot of the issues that that have been brought up so the district energy initiative is a partnership across pittsburgh stakeholders really with the goal of helping to do two things one is to modernize our existing systems and identify sort of opportunities within those systems for for what the future looks like and the second is really working to identify new opportunities for micro grids for district systems for chp things of that nature and then bringing that group together to actually deploy sort of these innovative technologies so as one piece of the larger sort of district energy initiative in 2015 the city of pittsburgh with pitt as the technical lead signed a memorandum of understanding with the department of energy and we're working with our local national energy technology lab to collaborate on sort of select projects within the city now the mou sort of has the broad goals of creating a large district energy ecosystem within the city but the focus really again on resiliency reliability sustainability security and economics around sort of the energy nexus within pittsburgh we're working specifically with the does job strategy council so looking at workforce development opportunities sort of against the backdrop of infrastructure investment has been a big focus for us and the the agreement also focuses on helping stakeholders in pittsburgh develop sort of financial mechanisms for project deployment designing a policy plan and creating a longer term roadmap and while it sounds pretty high level it is but the mou really was it was a step in sort of galvanizing again the stakeholders at the table and i always like to highlight sort of the logos that we put on and there's other ones that could be on here as well but university of pittsburgh the city the doe our foundation partners have been extremely supportive our local transmission and distribution utility duke and light company energy has been great and our local lab as well so when we discuss sort of the dinner the district energy ecosystem in pittsburgh what are we really talking about well we always sort of lean on this map and it actually started as a lot smaller a map and we've been adding sort of potential projects to it so again those two sort of prongs one is existing systems district systems district heating and cooling systems that are in the city and two is opportunities for sort of new investment so on the sort of existing system side we have and jim will talk a little bit about this but in the north side by the stadiums we have the nrg nrg has a facility our downtown district is served by a steam system that is fairly old and has opportunity for sort of next generation technologies there in the duke and university area if folks are familiar they actually have a combined heat and power plant servicing i believe 85 to 90 percent of their thermal and electric load in oakland where my office is and pitt and cmu and also local hospitals live there's two district systems that are now interconnected that supply thermal load so we have a great opportunity to sort of look at existing systems throughout throughout our city and see what the next iteration of that looks like in addition to that we've really started to build out and think about sort of in our underserved communities two neighborhoods in the east that have historically been sort of high poverty areas what what is the potential for microgrid deployment for just energy infrastructure in those cities and how do we again approach this from a multi attribution level what are the layers that we can develop on top of sort of energy to to bring jobs to those communities to also sort of uplift those communities we are working at a brownfield development site a former steel mill that is slated for redevelopment and in sort of early design plans but again looking at chp microgrid district systems as well there and lastly though i'll highlight we're working with a duke and light company which is our local transmission distribution utility to actually help them think about a microgrid build out behind the meter at their operations and training facility that has huge sort of living laboratory ramifications for us at pit in the work that we do and sort of training the next generation of electrical engineers i think they're also interested in seeing sort of in the microgrid space how they can how those things sort of integrate and interact so the one thing that we did develop as a part of this sort of bigger district energy pittsburgh initiative is the idea of a grid of microgrids and as the city's technical partner on this work pit has helped to develop sort of a longer term visioning plan and this is sort of a central piece of it so included in the grid of microgrids concepts is the idea that you can create microgrid districts throughout the city but not just for the sake of sort of creating them right we want to support critical infrastructure we want to support hospitals we want to support 911 call centers and ems facilities and things of that nature the um the vision ultimately aims to sort of create interrelations between these systems reinforcing grid security again supporting critical infrastructure providing redundancies in the system and again creating business continuity if we're to attract sort of the next generation of business to our city there are there are industries that require sort of high reliability in the system and we want to be really really well positioned to sort of attract them so one idea that we've developed um again looking at sort of the critical infrastructure and resiliency piece of the equation um in the district where the university of pittsburgh and the car and carnage melonset we have three major hospitals that support not only the city but the region they're really regional hospitals um we have two sort of what i call large safe havens um in that area and we have a high concentration of ems city fire and police departments so we've developed an idea uh concept really around sort of a socially responsible microgrid so things that ted was talking about kind of again against the backdrop of superstorm sandy when we start thinking about these things what what happens if if that hits pittsburgh and we want to make sure that we're really well positioned to support sort of not just the business community but really support the citizens so it's again it's that nexus of energy infrastructure and social institutions the project we're working on with duke and light company um highlighted here um we're again working just to help them think through a potential microgrid build out behind the meter at their at their facility with full islanding capabilities and it provides a great workforce opportunity for our students um as well so the last kind of big thing i want to hit is why does energy infrastructure matter to pittsburgh um well we have some history with it that's the first drive-up gas station in the country it's 1913 i believe in east liberty and we also have roots with westinghouse and so we have we definitely have the history but really from a resilience standpoint in pittsburgh you know sort of the value of creating a city that's that's extremely resilient um sort of that that can bounce back from social environmental and economic stresses um we've worked really hard sort of at the city government level um to bolster that that in the work that we're doing and then reliability so you know through through this sort of infrastructure development excuse me specifically microgrids increased reliability in the grid um allows the city to attract sort of critical business again from companies who put a high value on reliability so data centers hospitals manufacturers we all we definitely have sustainability goals as well i think we're on the cusp and and maybe on the right side of the cusp of sort of reinventing how we do business in pittsburgh and really the long-term sustainability of our generation transmission and distribution is crucial to sort of that continued economics success security obviously is a huge piece of this as well again in sort of the face of changing man-made and natural disasters the grid of micro grids concept we think allows sort of our critical infrastructure to stay online in those times and economics i mean the investment in sort of energy infrastructure makes sense we've seen sort of recent investment from outside from companies such as google and uber in our city um but updating sort of our energy infrastructure to come along with that is extremely important and and the stakeholders we have the table all agree on that and then lastly just workforce development you know through collaborations with the university of pittsburgh and the city our utility partners and other industry and sort of manufacturers there's a huge opportunity to fill a labor gap in pittsburgh that that we're currently facing and so we think investment sort of in infrastructure but with an energy overlay really can help sort of create high paying jobs in the short term but also working to train sort of the next generation of electrical grid workers engineers linemen industry professionals so in an attempt to sort of accelerate deployment and just to sort of round things out um yeah i think it's important to note that when you look across pittsburgh we've developed ideas and some projects are moving forward but our sort of micro grid deployment around the city has distinct value propositions and we're approaching them from from sort of a project standpoint and we've had really early successes in convening i think what i would call the relevant and important stakeholders in energy and innovation space including government local state federal universities foundations energy providers on the generation side transmission distribution space industry partners so we have the right folks at the table but there's a there's definitely a need for further investment in both sort of the feasibility and planning areas of a lot of the work that we're doing and really from a larger city of pittsburgh perspective the ability to sort of share across peer cities to be at events like this to hear what folks are doing in other places that allows us to start to build that into our work and lastly i would just say that you know in pittsburgh we have the leadership and the partners who sort of believe that we're well positioned to use energy as a driver in continued economic growth as well as building resiliency into our communities so with that i'll stop and defer any questions to the allotted time so thank you thanks so much michael and i think that it is so interesting to see how a city like pittsburgh wants to as it as it moves forward in this century and is feeling the challenge to become more sustainable more resilient deliver more reliable services to its citizens to its businesses that it is picking up and trying to learn from what we had heard from from rob and from tad and the private sector is a very very important piece of all of this and as as we just heard from michael energy is part of that whole role in pittsburgh as well which brings us to our last speaker on this panel jim lodge who is the vice president for strategy and business development within the business solutions division of nrg energy and energy is a fortune 250 company which is also the largest independent power producer in the us and jim brings a background of having done real projects he's been involved for more than 30 years in energy industry initiatives and an example of what he has done in terms of project is that he had been involved was the developer in 1998 of the north wind phoenix project which is now providing district cooling service at nrg's energy service phoenix to over 12 million square feet of customer buildings in downtown phoenix so again another piece of the whole puzzle and also now helping pittsburgh jim thank you carol i know we're a little short on time but what i did want to do is convey to everyone you know you've heard a lot from folks at princeton university that have a real practical knowledge of this and i think it's very important as we look at developing micro grids to have that reality too often we have folks that you've got the crystal ball and i heard ted say many times it will break and it will break so you have to plan for that and too often you know we we we look at these projects and we we make unrealistic expectations the second part of that to really make a project happen is to have the foundation and when you listen to what we talked about that's going on in pittsburgh you've got to have the stakeholders that believe in this and support this if you don't have both of those those projects aren't going to happen so what i'll do this morning is just take you through really quick um number of our systems across the us and just give you a a sense for the different sizes age um location utility rate structure what my point is is that there's a lot of variation and what i would want to do is dismiss any myths that anyone might have that says well they could do it in princeton because they had this or oh it worked over here because they're deregulated well you've got sizes ages geographic many different changes and what really what we'll talk about is sort of the main core ingredients about how do you take something from an idea and a vision and make it happen um i'm not going to go over this uh carol mentioned a little bit about nrg but i think the big takeaway here is that nrg is both on the wholesale side of the business and the retail side of the business and when i look at district energy i put that in the retail side of the business we're working directly with the end users a little bit about our district heating and cooling systems again if you look across many different areas in the united states different ages we've got 100 year old systems and probably the baby of the family is uh is the phoenix system which is about 15 years old right now steam systems chilled water hot water some with only one some with combinations of others many different types of technologies also so again um one of the things to take away from this is it you know you don't have to develop on these systems and have it be married to a particular type of technology um combined heat and power again you heard rob talk about district energy combined heat and power and many times you sort of talk about the two together because it does make a lot of sense some of our systems you'll see there are that are listed there we're on the previous slide as as rob pointed out there's a number of district energy systems that uh do not have chp some of them that do and a lot of them that are considering it and bringing it together because it makes sense based upon you know the size and the economies of what you can do again a lot of that though has to do again with sort of that spark spreader the differences in price between gas and electric and what works and what doesn't work at the various locations um the reason I put this slide up real quick is because you know we talk about um micro grids and uh ted mentioned a little bit about what's really a micro grid and I think what's happened over time is we've had different components of generation resources that have come on and and I don't know if it was really planned or not but little by little you started putting them all together and sort of the key is and uh we talked about ice tech a little bit in terms of of you need to have the brains to be able to pull all these together because it's great to have lots of resources and flexibility and different options but the challenge is to bring them all together and to optimize that so when we look at an integrated system or micro grids if you and each one of these has been talked about this morning resiliency reliability and sustainability but I'll tell you when you really look at a micro grid how ted defined that every one of these things is key in terms of making it happen and these are the sort of key drivers that really push really ultimately developing a micro grid two examples that we'll talk about one another university but think about it two ends of the corners of the united states very different in many different ways um arizona it's not deregulated it's a regulated state um arizona state university um very focused on sustainability so when you talk about those three themes of the integration sustainability was a huge driver if you notice our 16 megawatts of pv it's just gigantic i mean literally if you've ever been to arizona state and a tempi campus there is not one parking garage not one roof that does not have solar panel not to mention you know ground mount so um very focused on that so sustainability was a key theme however if you look at the combined heat and power plant that nrg operates for the university one of the reasons it's sitting there is because of reliability and resiliency there's a number of the research facilities that are there and what they did not want to ever have happened is the grid be down and there the research facilities are down so again as ted sort of described you know what they want to have a it's not really a good day but it does feel a little good when the lights are out elsewhere on the university even in places and all the research buildings are up and running because we've got that chp going the other thing i would like to say that i think is really important is the importance of the integration between the thermal and the electrical part you know we talked about the thermal storage and the difference in rates and so forth but again that's another way to be able to optimize the integration between the demand side and the supply side so thermal storage is is something that you can create on the supply side however when you look at i think ted showed one of the graphs where the with solar production coming up you know one of the key things about the thermal storage is and this is really true in arizona is as the as the sun starts to come down it's still 100 degrees at midnight so what they're able to do is shift some of the thermal storage to later parts of the day utilize the the production of the solar panels and therefore again what you're trying ultimately trying to do is reduce your on peak purchases of electricity now i'll switch back to the other end of the country a different location very much smaller facility however again if you look at the what what they have in terms of both thermal and electrical capacities very much the same again you're using thermal storage you're using steam turbines you're integrating with pv so again what the real challenge is is to integrate all these these sources of energy and optimize it because the other part of this is all this sounds wonderful but if you can't make the economics work then many of these projects will not get off the ground this is just to sort of bring us back together in terms of the various components again what i would say is though when you look at the energy management that's probably the key part so when people talk about micro grids and lots of times say well they've been around for a long time yeah that's true but the intermittent loads coming and going and that responsiveness that rob mentioned earlier is sort of the key to being able to be nimble that's been part of the challenges um and i was on the electric utility side for a number of years that's part of the challenges on the utility grid so not quite as nimble as what you can be in terms of a micro grid directly at a particular campus or an individual building and then um just wanted to close with um what i see are some of the key components to really making this happen and i mentioned a couple of them already dealing in reality as one certainly having the stakeholders that are there that are supported have the vision but there's got to be a recognition for that value of the resiliency and the reliability it's sort of a natural thing when you look at hospitals and data centers and some of those but then you also heard and talk about in Pittsburgh how they're looking at that from its standpoint of the economic development side and what they need to have um local support that was mentioned government and utilities you know depending upon the structure of this it can make it very challenging to turn a project that looks great um and one in making it happen if you don't have the right structure set up uh against sustainability and efficiency drivers i think are really key again typically you look at this and you see whether it's chp from an efficiency standpoint or being able to integrate even wind um and solar together battery storage thermal storage they all sort of come together timing you know everybody says timing is everything truly truly is you've got to be able to look at the you know make sure that you can be prepared and be ready one thing that's interesting that rob said was that you know you can you know district energy sort of provides the the the basis and the scale to be able to apply a lot of these um technologies however at the same time you can do these from the ground up princeton hospital is a perfect example where they set out they were interested in sustainability efficiency costs all of those things and they did that from the ground up so i i guess what i would my message would be yes there's opportunities to develop brand new projects but there's an also an opportunity to be able to take ones that are already there and be able to turn them into micro grids and then of course you know economics capital being able to actually make these things happen so i think you have to bring all those things together to ultimately be able to have a successful um to take that vision what they have in pittsburgh and turn it into reality thank you thanks so much jim um let's take uh a few minutes for questions since that we are running a little long but i'd love to hear if there are anybody any questions from folks we'll take a few okay right back here sorry to everybody here at the beginning enough can i keep going um the uh you meant there was diesel generation highlighted in in those projects i assume that's i was existing backup infrastructure but why aren't you know as with all the um focus on both resiliency and also sustainability why aren't we considering um gas gen sets for that backup uh yeah there was a number of diesel generators part of that again was the emergency backup so therefore those normally do not run so it's sort of an emergency type of situation we are looking at natural gas generators as well and again i think some of the challenge has been the responsiveness and i know that's changing in terms of some of the technologies in terms of being able to respond quickly um so the diesels that are there are certainly ones that uh um that we see are sort of most cost effective and also being able to to operate very quickly however there's a number of locations that we are sort of the ones that are brand new anyway looking at natural gas yep so we actually do what you're suggesting at our data center we've combined a gas resip engine with an absorption chiller and again it's a form of chp but the h is actually a c so it's a he it's a power and cooling for the data center um and that is also around a 70 plus percent efficiency so exactly what you're describing um okay question in the back and then over here oh in the back just wait for the mic thanks uh salt kinter from dc water i'm working to develop uh a number of potential uh district energy projects here in washington dc and as we've reached out to the potential customers amongst the developer community and suggested we provide them with hot water and chilled water we've gotten pushback and people who suggest that they would actually prefer to receive something at a neutral temperature and i'm wondering if that's a trend uh elsewhere across the country where they'd prefer to receive water and the 70 to 80 degree fahrenheit range as opposed to down in the 40s and then up in the 140s i'll take a quick swing um from princeton standpoint we've been making steam for a good 150 years since the 1860s uh if we were to build our system today we're looking we would be making a hot water system and a chilled water system so i don't think we would go with a a neutral distribution temperature and then heat pumps at the users i think we would like the hot water system to be as uh low temperature as the buildings can sustain can work with and the chilled water in both cases working as close to ambient temperatures as possible but i still would see this chilled water being in the 40s degrees fahrenheit as the supply temperature and the hot water being in the 140 maybe as low as 130 something or more likely highest 150 f a good example to look at who's just done this is stanford university so look on the west coast at stanford there's others ball state there's another for-profit epic those are the ones i would commend you to look at and i might add so the international energy agency has been doing some research on this fourth generation district heating cooling i i guess i would characterize it i don't think buildings are looking for neutral water you know but they're looking for lower lower heating temperatures and actually colder water you know so it requires then the district energy utility to be a four pipe system i would i would argue against the two pipe system that's either heating or cooling that will only cause you problems because in washington dc you have days in in march that are very cold followed by a day that's very hot and you know you you really don't want to put all the work in the building you want to make it easy to operate the building so uh low low temperature hot water district heating is really the norm it's the i guess i'd call the netflix of district heating um i don't want to say it steam is vhs but um but there is uh there really i think as a building owner you don't really want electric driven equipment you want kind of dumb equipment in your building not heat pumps necessarily you really want just fan coils and that makes your building more efficient cleaner and easier but there's if you want to see me later i can give you my card there's a lot of research at the i e a that might help you and i think in europe doing hot water systems has been standard uh for many many years um and okay question my name is eric ackerman i'm with the edison electric institute uh you know investor-owned utilities are in the midst of a uh an a historic uh process of grid modernization we're changing the distribution systems in a in a radical way applying new technologies and utilities as they do that are beginning to focus on as part of their planning to drive their planning on how to help customers optimize their distributed energy applications and so i was very interested in the description that princeton presentation on your future of the grid how how uh that would integrate uh uh distribution so be interested in any further comment on how you see the the uh utilities role evolving in in micro grids i'd say we're we're definitely not here to own uh advocate for a particular technology or a particular ownership model um uh if i were to look at my ideal world it would be one with utilities and micro grids not utilities or micro grids i would look at it as an integrated really the way pittsburgh was describing um that you have pockets of very high resiliency and reliability and then you have maybe a plain vanilla grid and i i see us as dancing with not in opposition to i hope that's helpful uh hey narrick i might add i was with the energy secretary earning monies and he said oh rob district energy back to the future you know edison had it right he had smaller generating stations where he sold the heat too and i think that's you know kind of where we're headed uh particularly in cities or mission critical or you know energy dense applications i think i think really you know the edit if you if you look at the edison electric institute your members were originally combined heat and power producers in most of the cities so i think i think we're going from skinny tie to wide tie back to skinny tie i think there'll be more distributed generation of a smaller scale with the utilities in the driver's seat and we'd like to see the utilities you know come back to modernize these assets so that you know cities and institutions and hospitals get the benefit of your local lower cost of capital your intellectual capabilities and it really is a you know an integration so i i'd like to see that's that's the future we're headed and then i would just add uh sort of again from more the i guess more the broader sort of stakeholder perspective so um in the work that we've been doing in pittsburgh our our utility duking light company has been absolutely fantastic and working with us to try and figure out sort of what is the best model for pennsylvania is a deregulated state we have some regulatory hurdles when we start to talk about these things and they've been at the table and just sort of expressing sort of their interests and i would agree sort of with robin that i think that they play an incredibly important almost pivotal role in a lot of the deployment we're looking at it specifically in pittsburgh and i think it probably is a whole case that is as we look at all of the changes in the power sector going on that this is a real opportunity for utilities to now play an increasingly important role as things continue to evolve any other questions or comments okay so right over here and we'll take this this will be our last and do we have another one okay great so we'll do this one and then an online question can you hear me here we go hi this is setsevinsky with the north star group and i was just curious if anyone's looked at doing this in a rural setting did anyone okay okay do you want to take that one so i was just in denmark a couple of weeks ago and most of the cities and towns in denmark have their own district heating cooling system district heating system it's really quite ubiquitous what's interesting is the the ownership structure is different often it's a cooperative and so you know the farmer who you know sells wheat to the biomass the the tannery provides you know fuel supply these are very wholly integrated sort of you know local owned farm to table energy cooperatives it's also all across germany you know if you look at scandinavia and europe these are really applied in rural settings now the challenge for us in the us is if you're gonna to put pipe in the ground you have to have really some vertical density so most of our systems are in cities where there's a concentration of of energy users you know if you look out in the suburbia where you know homes are on one acre zoning it that probably won't make economic sense but if you're the you know if you look at the danish model or the swedish model you know it's culturally financially politically it's a different model but it but that is happening and is actually being looked at in places in iowa and southern illinois here in the in the us but it's not where i would start if i were investing my money okay and the online question we received the question from an online viewer i think she works for the us green building council us gbc the question is for michael rooney could you please elaborate on the state policy options you've identified that support micro grids and district energy and whether you see any likely traction in pennsylvania sure i think that's a relevant question and i'll probably pool in jim a little bit because i know he's got some background in this so my broad sort of two-second snapshot of how the regulation in pennsylvania plays into the microgrid work that we're doing is that we're a deregulated state therefore our electric utility companies cannot or have divested in sort of the generation ownership model so for instance we'll look specifically at the city of pittsburgh our electric utilities do can light they're a transmission and distribution company only they do not own any generation and so when you start to see where they can sort of fit into the microgrid space obviously we're talking about things that have distributed generation built into the system and so it's hard it's it's actually regular from a regulatory standpoint it's not possible for duke and light company at this point to sort of own generation at the state so that's sort of the big that's the big hurdle but i will say that i think there's it's my understanding that there are certain states that have sort of figured it out or moving in that direction and i think there's opportunity in pennsylvania to work through the regulators with with some of that just a follow-up on that in terms of the the question about district energy the answer is yes in fact nrg is just getting ready to embark on a pretty significant investment for developing a district energy system that's in the uptown area and with university of pittsburgh medical center the mercy hospital is sort of the anchor customer so that's what it takes for a brand new development you typically have to have an anchor so to speak that has enough significance in size and load to be able to make the economics work in that area is right adjacent to a development area so again it's always the chicken and the egg a little bit in terms of the timing but i i think pittsburgh in general has some great opportunities ahead then i'd like to turn at this time to rob to make some closing comments thanks carol so thank you all for joining us this morning and i want to again thank carol and and the staff that the team at esi for their hospitality and their good work and providing this venue for us i also wanted to let you make it where we're holding a microgrid summit tomorrow at the national press club so if those of you who are interested in a deeper dive you know into the technology and and some of the regulatory issues and technologies uh you're you know welcome to join us tomorrow at the national press club will be there all day with a series of panels um i i do want to thank my uh my colleagues on the panel who gave up their time and and energy to join us uh we really are interested in being a resource to all of you um you can find us through w w districtenergy.org we have some materials i'd rather not carry them back on the plane so there's some uh on the shelf over there and out back including a tremendous book for those of you who are with a congressional staff who really are looking to learn more about this United Nations Environmental Program really did a almost a dossier on district energy and in there in this book there are 85 cities case studies of various technologies and how they've deployed it and the regulation and the policy and and the benefits so i'd urge you you know to grab that if you're interested and if we run short please give me your card i'd be happy to we have it online but also the hard copy is really makes for good reading particularly if you have insomnia but uh no it really is a very enlightening book so i want to again thank you for your uh for your attention uh for your interest and if there's anything we can do to help you in your communities or with your congressional staff please don't hesitate to ask we really do want to move the needle forward so thank you all and have a good day thank you and i just want to let everybody know that the video of today will also be up on eesis website along with all of the powerpoint presentations if you do have questions and want to reach any of the speakers let us know we're happy to make those connections and again thank you very very much for coming and thanks for all of those fabulous presentations and i also have a lot more questions i would like to ask all of you but i think what's really really clear is that there is enormous opportunity and we need to be thinking kind of like pittsburgh in terms of the kinds of how the kinds of approaches that we can take to now really improve the situation in our communities across the country and as we all are becoming more aware of the challenges that we're facing we've got a lot of great people to learn from and so thank you all very much for being here