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Saturday, 22 September 2001  
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Virtual power plants to solve energy crisis

by Kamal Gammampila

The energy crisis manifesting in powercuts has brought misery to the economic and social life of the nation. The crisis is compounded by a drought leaving the country in a perilous predicament. If any good were to emerge from this national calamity, one would hopefully reflect at a future date, that 'it was worth it'.

Theories are presented, and fingers are pointed as to how and why this situation has come about, but much less is postulated as to how to overcome the crisis. Many an expert is resigned to greater darkness in the future, and professes to there being no answer to mitigate at least in part the crisis. This is most perplexing when there is an obvious and a simple answer glaring in their faces.

That is, the exploitation of energy saving technologies, in this instance the use of 'Energy Saving' Compact Florescent Lights (CFLs) in a well-intended way to address the national energy crisis. The remedy is not only ingenious, but has all the technical virtues one could not have dreamed of some years back making its implementation so easy. Non-exploitation of this well-established innovation, is madness itself, especially when the nation is throttled by crises, both economic and energy.

One clear fact is emerging; it is that as a nation we need to review our Power and Energy policies as a matter of priority. That would be the silver lining in the dark cloud.

Bulbs

The incandescent bulbs, for the want of a better definition, are the 'old' type of bulbs. They work by heating a filament or a resistive wire to a very high temperature in an inert gas producing both light as well as heat. The production of heat is an inevitable consequent of producing light by this method. In fact in the conversion of electrical energy, eighty per cent of energy is consumed in producing heat and only twenty per cent is used in the production of light.

Not only are these bulbs highly inefficient, therefore wasteful of energy, in the temperate climate of Sri Lanka, they are also a burden on our air-conditioners and fans. On the other hand, Compact Florescent Lights (CFLs) which work on the basis of a gas discharge hardly produce any heat and have an overall energy conversion efficiency in excess of ninety five per cent. Therefore, CFL bulbs are about four hundred (yes, 400) per cent more efficient than the 'old' type of bulb. Also, producing no heat, they do not add extra burden to the cooling systems.

Technical innovation

The CFL bulb is the most energy efficient technical innovation in the last two decades. Furthermore in terms of replacement equivalents, it is the single electrical item that saves most energy per unit cost, and to save energy all that is required is to replace the 'old' type bulb with a CFL. It couldn't have been simpler if not for the financial constrains on the consumer in purchasing these bulbs. It's true value and potential to a country like Sri Lanka where nearly half the population is yet to be provided with electricity, which lacks in conventional energy raw materials such as coal, gas or petroleum, and has no technological base through which to benefit from indigenous ingenuity, is absolutely immense.

However to benefit fully from this innovation, not only need we appreciate the versatility of its applications, perhaps more so, we as a nation must be more than equally innovative in our political and fiscal policies. Without the latter the former is a non-starter. Given the right conditions, CFLs are capable of solving our energy crisis even as it stands today within days subject only to the availability of bulbs.

Whether a crash program is set in place immediately to mitigate the drought effect or not, a program to address the national energy crisis using emerging technology as in the case of CFLs should be a must in any energy manager's book. The government that makes policies and the treasury that finally bears the cost have vital roles to play in order to make a success of the intentions.

Energy released

Consider the hypothetical case of a household with a single 100W incandescent bulb. This household will draw from the power station 100W of electrical energy. Now consider that this 100W bulb being replaced by a CFL bulb of 25W to obtain the same light energy as before.

The household will now draw only 25W from the power station, leaving 75W spare for others to use. That is, simply by replacing an 'old' type bulb with an 'energy saving' bulb, the household has become a 'Virtual Power Plant' releasing energy to the National Grid. If this were to be repeated by a million households, the energy released to the grid would be 75 MW.

In fact, there are two million two hundred thousand domestic consumers, and the national energy consumption for lighting per consumer (household) is 850Wh per day, spread over 4 hours, the rate of power consumption is 212W. If all the consumers were to replace the equivalent of 100W 'old' type with CFLs, the energy released to the grid will be 165 MW.

On this basis, if all the domestic lighting is from CFLs, a maximum of 350 MW can be released to the Grid. In fact, at a realistic and a practical level in the short-term, if only two thirds of the national domestic lighting is converted to CFLs, the energy released to the grid will be equal to the combined capacities in the Private Power Purchase scheme and the Hired thermal plant at 232 MW.

Last year, the CEB spent eight billion rupees in purchasing power from these suppliers at prices above the average CEB selling prices. The salient point is, that had the CEB or whoever else responsible for the Power and Energy policy spent about 1000 rupees per household, a total of two billion rupees, turning the consumer households into 'Virtual Power Plants', the country would have been spared the current power crisis, and CEB, six billion rupees better off!

Installed capacity

At these prices, the cost of installed capacity is a mere ten per cent of the typical cost of about one hundred thousand rupees per kilowatt installed for a conventional system. With CFL 'Virtual Power Plant', there is no fuel or operational cost, and in addition, one million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year equivalent to a fossil fuel power station of maximum installed capacity will be saved. Indeed the reduction in carbon dioxide emission, because of its positive contribution to the Global Environment, should qualify for a grant from the Global Environment Facility further reducing the cost of creating this energy.

The figure illustrates a typical power demand throughout the day nationwide. For most part of the day, that is from about one o'clock in the morning to about six in the evening, the generating capacity required is about 750MW. During this period, the base load goes up or down about this mean depending on the consumer practices such as the use of fans, refrigerators, televisions, air-conditioners, and lights etc in the domestic and commercial sectors, and plant and machinery in the industrial sector.

Peak demand

Towards the end of the working day, the commercial and the industrial demands drop but the domestic demand rises making a net demand of nearly double the base load rising to a peak of 1370 MW between eight and nine o'clock in the evening as in the illustration. The rise in demand in the night is predominantly due to increased domestic use.

To meet this peak demand, the CEB brings into the Grid all their generating capacity and, subject to the Agreements, energy from Private Power Producers and the Hired plant a total of 230MW capacity. The power cuts imposed in phases throughout the country help the CEB to manage with about seventy five per cent of their usual peak production capacity amounting to a shortfall of about 350 MW. As already shown, technically this shortfall can be bridged.

The national energy demand is greatest in the night with forty per cent being due to lighting of which ninety per cent of the bulbs are incandescent. It is at that time that by employing CFL bulbs, speedily and most cost efficiently, both the immediate and the medium term national energy crises can be solved.

(The author is an independent analyst)

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