Renewable Energy Resources

Rising environmental concerns have prompted state legislation that mandates renewable portfolio standard (RPS), requiring electric utilities to own or procure renewable resources. At present, thirteen states have some form of RPS and a RPS is currently debated on a federal level.  Beyond the mandated RPSs, regulators, utilities, and municipalities have taken voluntary actions to evaluate the cost-effectiveness and operation of renewable energy resources for potential inclusion their jurisdictions.

E3 professionals provide advice on such questions as:

• What are renewable resources that can meet a state’s RPS?

• What are the cost and performance characteristics of renewable resources?

• What renewable resources are commercially viable?

• What renewable resources are technically feasible?

• How to procure renewable resources?  If a competitive process is used, how to select the winning bidders?

• How to assess renewable energy’s cost-effectiveness in the context of local integrated resource planning?

• How to develop a procurement plan that obeys the RPS, while prudently managing the cost and risk of procurement?

E3 at Work

• E3 is currently working with the California Energy Commission (CEC) to develop a methodology for evaluation of renewable distributed generation (DG) assessment.  The project is sponsored by the Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) funding and has been conducted in conjunction with four California municipal utilities (San Francisco Public Utilities Commission/Hetch Hetchy, Alameda Power & Telecom, City of Palo Alto Utilities, and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District).  The goal of this project is to develop a screening methodology for evaluating potentially successful renewable DG projects for California municipal utilities. E3, along with our partner Electrotek Concepts, is refining a combined economic and engineering renewable DG evaluation process that allows us to capture many of the implicit benefits of renewable DG and identify the highest value technology and location for renewable DG installation.  Once completed, the methodology will be provided to a broader audience in the State and elsewhere.

• Dr. Orans and Ms. Baskette evaluated the economics of land leases for new and re-powered wind developments for a utility client interested in increasing wind power into their electricity portfolio.