Subject: [pafiber] comments re Council's 4-23-07 meeting (on the environment)

From: "Jeff Hoel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:42:25 -0600

FYI.

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Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:36:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Jeff Hoel" <[email-masked]>
Subject: comments re Council's 4-23-07 meeting (on the environment)
To: [email-masked]
CC: [email-masked], [email-masked]

Council members,

Re Council's 4-23-07 meeting on the environment:

Several Council members expressed an interest in photovoltaics (PV).
I think that's good.  Does the Utilities Advisory Commission (UAC) know
about your interest?  What would you like them to do to follow up?

Council Member Kleinberg suggested doing something with Stanford to
install more PV.  I wasn't sure why she singled out Stanford.  Is it that
they are more forward-thinking than other customers?  Or more able to
make long-term investments?  Or that they have lots of roofs that aren't
shaded by trees?  Or that they have deep pockets?

In response to Council Member Kleinberg, Karl Knapp said that PV wasn't
yet cost-effective -- it costs about 25 cents per kWh, and it would be
a shame to buy now if in a few years it would be half that.

Later, I looked in Travis Bradford's book, "Solar Revolution."  On page
110, there's a graph that shows that for "low sun" locations like Seattle,
the 2003 cost was about 25 cents per kWh, but for "high sun" locations
like Los Angeles, the 2003 cost was about 15 cents per kWh.  Also, it
predicts that by 2014, costs will be about half of 2003 costs -- and will
continue to decrease after that.

The Bradford book cites SolarBuzz
<http://www.solarbuzz.com>
so I looked there.  On the home page, it lists various PV costs as if it
were reporting stock market prices.  More details are provided on the
pricing page:
<http://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarPrices.htm>
(I think the cited "residential" costs are misleading because they
include battery backup.)  Still more details (including "Key Assumptions")
are provided here:
<http://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarIndices.htm>
The cost of capital makes a huge difference.

Has staff analyzed specifically what PV should cost Palo Alto, now and in
the future, given Palo Alto's specific circumstances (insolation, cost of
capital, etc.)?  I'm thinking back-of-the-envelope calculations, not a
fancy study.  I'm also thinking the city should post the result online
in a conspicuous place.

---

During oral communications, Abhay Bushan asked why Palo Alto couldn't
offer residents who installed PV the opportunity to sell power back
to the grid at time-of-day prices.

Later, Council Member Drekmeier asked whether time-of-day pricing of
electricity was available to residential customrs.  Karl Knapp said
it was available to commercial customers but not residential customers.

After Knapp left the meeting, I asked him some more questions and he
was happy to answer them.  CPAU offers time-of-day pricing (which requires
a time-of-day meter) to commercial customers.  But so far, no customers
have signed up.  Apparently the city's time-of-day prices have to reflect
its time-of-day costs, and the potential savings aren't that attractive.
Also, Karl said, since businesses tend to be open during the day, their
electric needs tend to be during the day, and they can't readily shift
their electric needs to times when electric prices would be lowest.

The kind of time-of-day meter envisioned for this service would aggregate
measurements over an extended period so that the meter would have to be
read -- either by visiting it or by calling it by phone -- only
infrequently.

---

I don't remember whether Bushan also asked whether Palo Alto could offer
a residential PV program which would permit the resident, over the course
of a year, to make more money by selling power to the grid than it cost
him to take power from the grid.  (This is a question of policy, not
technology.)

----

In my email message to Council of 8-1-06, I pointed out that on 7-18-05,
Council approved spending $606,179 for some meters (electric, gas, and
water) that could be read wirelessly by driving down the street, but did
not have a time-of-use functionality.  I thought it was a mistake.  What
does Council think now?

---

Years ago, at a UAC meeting, I asked Commissioner Ferguson about
time-of-use electric pricing, and he said there was a privacy issue
associated with collecting the time-of-use information required.  What
does Council now think about that?

---

Clarksville, TN, is in the process of building a citywide municipal FTTH
network that will go to every home and business.
<http://www.clarksvillede.com/refQA.html>
<http://lafayetteprofiber.com/Blog/2006/11/clarksville-tn-votes-in-fiber-72-vote.html>
The reason for building the network was said to be making the electric
system more reliable.  Time-of-use metering is included.  There was
a referendum to decide whether the FTTH system could also be used to
offer Internet, TV, and phone services.  It passed with 72% of the vote.

---

Jeff

-------------------
Jeff Hoel
731 Colorado Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94303
-------------------

PS:  Someone mentioned that there will be a new city website next month.
Good.  I hope it makes Google searching easier.

For example, if I search for "PV site:www.cityofpaloalto.org" I get 8 hits.
But if I search for "PV site:city.palo-alto.ca.us" (that is, if I use
the "obsolete" website name) I get 93 hits.

Also, if I search for "PV site:www.cpau.com" I get 50 hits.

Ideally, I could just search "PV site:www.cityofpaloalto.org" and find
everything the city has about PV.

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