Big bills lead consumers to take
another look at renewable power options
By
Jeff McDonald
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 14, 2000
Here's one byproduct of the summerlong run-up in
energy costs that might pay big dividends down the
road: More and more businesses and homeowners are
looking at alternative ways to light their offices,
power their PCs and tune in their televisions.
Telephones have been ringing long and loud at retailers
that stock solar electric panels, inverters and other
components that can free consumers from the vagaries
of their electric bills.
System installers are busier than ever lining up
new customers. And research into the next generation
of energy production has never been so fast and furious.
"My dealers with Web sites are getting 100 hits
or more a day," said Larry Cooper, a sales manager
at Kyocera Solar Inc., which manufactures solar panels
at a plant in Kearny Mesa.
"They're having to hire (extra) people to answer
the telephone."
Business also is booming at SeaWest WindPower, a
San Diego company that develops turbine electricity
plants, including those vast windmill farms dotting
the deserts outside Tehachapi and Palm Springs.
By the end of next year, SeaWest WindPower will
have completed its 42nd project worldwide, the company
said.
"Wind power is the fastest growing sector in
energy," SeaWest executive David C. Roberts said.
"It's growing about 22 percent a year. It accounts
for less than 1 percent of the energy used in California,
but we're growing."
Fed up with power rates that for many have tripled
under industry deregulation, San Diego Gas & Electric
customers are looking toward renewable and so-called
green energy sources that are fast becoming economically
competitive with conventional power supplies.
In this southwest corner of California, where high
temperatures and coastal breezes are as familiar as
the San Diego skyline, that means solar energy and
windmills are being tapped to power homes and businesses.
Kyocera has signed deals with three San Diego companies
to install industrial solar-electric systems even
larger than its own 50-kilowatt panels in Kearny Mesa.
Cooper declined to identify his customers.
New housing tracts in Carlsbad and El Cajon are
offering homes that can be equipped with solar-powered
water heaters for an additional $2,600.
The housing developments are among the first locally
to participate in a federal initiative to install
1 million rooftop solar water-heating systems across
the country by 2010.
So far, there has been a lot of interest but no
takers, said Shea Homes spokeswoman Teri Shusterman.
"What little extra our buyers have to spend
beyond the price of their homes, they're spending
on upgrades," Shusterman said.
Hot for relief
Even San Diego city school officials, who voted last
week to withhold money owed to SDG&E beyond last
year's rates, are sizing up the power of the sun.
Troy Strand, who owns Independent Energy Solutions
of San Marcos, recently installed solar power systems
at three San Diego campuses, each of which will produce
enough energy for three portable classrooms.
"We're an immature industry," said Strand,
who launched his company two years ago after California
deregulated its energy industry. "We are mom-and-pop
shops that are flying by the seat of our pants."
In Escondido, inventor Arnold Lund has crafted a
prototype wind turbine he says will generate more
than twice as much energy as a conventional windmill.
Lund spent the past several years perfecting his
design and securing a patent. Now he is shopping for
investors so he can develop large-scale models and
put them to work.
Lund mounted a prototype of his invention in the
bed of his pickup to test its energy production. The
prototype will light up six 200-watt light bulbs when
his truck travels 45 mph.
"It'll be much faster to do this than to produce
new gas-fired or coal-fired power plants," said
Lund, a mechanical engineer who holds patents on a
handful of other inventions.
"It takes maybe five years to build conventional
power plants and I can build mine in a year or two.
We could have a wind farm in Boulevard next year."
Traditional power plants that use coal, oil or even
natural gas to produce electricity are among the worst
environmental polluters, spewing hundreds of tons
of soot, smog and other toxins into California skies
every day, the San Diego County Air Pollution Control
District said.
Carolyn D. Chase, a director of the environmental
watchdog group San Diego EarthWorks, embraced the
escalating energy rates, if only because they may
push people to investigate renewable power sources
that do not dirty the skies.
"The
price goes up, people change their behavior,"
Chase said. "That's one thing good about deregulation.
People are starting to much more quickly identify
what they're doing to waste energy."
Mother of innovation
Even before SDG&E ratepayers became the initial
test subjects of an unregulated power market, Californians
increasingly were turning to renewable sources.
According to the California Energy Commission, 12.2
percent of the state's net system power last year
was generated by alternative means -- geothermal,
biomass, solar, wind and small hydroelectric systems
-- a 16 percent increase over the previous year.
In 1998, less than 10.5 percent of California's
electricity was produced with renewable sources. A
year before that, 10.23 percent of the state's energy
supplies came from alternative systems.
"The whole purpose of deregulation was to spur
innovation because our system is incredibly inefficient,"
Chase said. "We need to make investments in cleaner
power."
Under deregulation, consumers are allowed for the
first time to choose their own energy suppliers, although
the new competition has not resulted in lower rates.
To date, some 200,000 customers across California
have switched to new service providers -- and at the
same time signed up for a state consumer credit program
that pays a portion of their monthly bill.
But far fewer Californians so far have taken advantage
of a state rebate that pays up to half the cost of
renewable energy systems. Barely $8 million of $54
million set aside for such rebates has been tapped.
"Is
there more to be done? Yes," energy commission
spokeswoman Claudia Chandler said. "They're still
a little high in terms of the price."
Breaking free
While solar, wind and other renewable energy systems
produce tens of thousands of gigawatt hours every
year, technology that emerges by later this decade
is almost certain to make drastic changes in the way
power is supplied -- much as the 1980s redefined personal
computers and the 1990s saw an explosion of cellular
phone subscriptions.
Investors this year will spend some $800 million
developing products that could render conventional
power delivery systems obsolete within 10 years, according
to Nth Power, a San Francisco venture capitalist firm
specializing in energy utilities. That represents
a four-fold increase in two years.
Researchers already have developed fuel cells that
combine hydrogen with oxygen from the air to create
electricity. The technology could power not only vehicles,
but homes and businesses.
In New York, a Central Park police station has operated
entirely off energy supplied from fuel cells since
May 1999. Also last year, a Nebraska bank turned to
fuel cells to power its credit-card processing office.
Plug Power of Latham, N.Y., is testing dozens of
refrigerator-sized fuel cell prototypes it eventually
hopes to sell to home builders and homeowners all
over the country.
Plug Power -- whose partners and investors include
industry giants General Electric and Sempra Energy-owned
Southern California Gas Co. -- plans to begin mass
marketing its new systems as soon as 2002.
Before that can happen, the devices must be cost-efficient
enough to make them attractive to retail consumers.
But many researchers are confident that such design
modifications are close at hand.
"It's hard for us to fathom what the new technology
is bringing us in terms of power," said George
Douglas of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory,
a U.S. Department of Energy service that tracks energy
research and development.
"Telecommunications was first," Douglas
said. "The electrical utility industry is the
next one that's going to be hit."
Tom and Leeanna Emery have no use for fuel cells
or monthly SDG&E bills. Anchored in a quiet pocket
of San Diego Bay, their 45-foot sailboat "Hillary
Brooke" is powered entirely by solar energy.
"It makes me angry that people aren't smarter,"
said Tom Emery, a shipwright who has lived on the
water for more than 20 years. "Anybody can put
solar panels on their roof."
In the meantime, as energy bills continue to climb,
business people like Kirk Stokes are seizing the moment.
"Deregulation is definitely having a positive
impact on our business," said Stokes, president
of Altair Energy of Escondido, which sells solar electricity
systems.
"But we're not out to feed on people's fears.
SDG&E is doing a pretty good job of feeding that
fire themselves."
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