The Cutting Edge

Natalie Brandweiner catches up with Austin Energy’s Andres Carvallo, to get the lowdown on the technology involved in building the smart grid, and what it really means for consumers.

“Obviously part of the challenge with national goals is that some places have an easier journey towards certain goals than others and not all places are created equal”
-Andres Carvallo, Austin Energy

‘Smart grid’ seems to be the word on everyone’s lips. Obama’s commitment to establishing a new federal infrastructure seems to have everyone buzzing around smart grid, smart meters and the environmental consequences, and Austin Energy CIO Andres Carvallo is no exception.

“I’m in charge of the technology division, planning, development and operations across the company,” explains Carvallo. “I’ve been here six and a half years and we have been driving a transformation since then.”

Carvallo’s passion for smart grid began in 2006, during which he was often found giving talks and formulating company strategy to incorporate the innovative technology. “We have been working on it since then and our Smart Grid 2.0 will go live in August of this year. We’re currently managing 200,000 devices real time, and by the end of July we’ll be managing half a million devices and we’ll have full coverage of 440 square miles and a million consumers.”

Education
Keeping consumers informed of the development of smart grid technology is a primary focus of all utilities attempting a successful roll out of the system, and for Austin Energy the same is true. Carvallo introduced the ‘Change your generation’ software program, in a bid to transform the way in which consumers use energy. As one of the main goals included in the program, education of all its stakeholders – employees, regulators and large industrial customers, as well as its commercial and plain residential customers – is vital to ensure smooth implementation of the grid.

“We’ve done a very good job of putting together the game as a day-in-the-life scenario. The tool is all about filling the gap of future generation needed by Austin Energy, and there are some parameters and limitations around how one goes about doing that. You’ve got to think about availability, capacity and all the issues with time and cost and carbon footprint and so on. When you look at the game and play with the game, you can decide then to submit your solution to us. We are hoping to get a significant number of cases. The game has been played quite a bit: we’re expecting that between now and the end of the year, we’ll probably get 50,000 or 100,000 recommendations,” he explains.

“The game has been used by a lot of people to talk about the issues of carbon and green energy and the portfolio mix of electric utility,” he continues. “By only that measure it’s already been a success. It’s a companion to a program that we have around a public participation process where we are engaging our customers in an open way – if you had a voice on the amount of energy usage, how would you go about participating? How would you go about choosing which languages to do?

“The participation process has been going on for a while now. It started in the fall of last year and we have been sharing with our customers all our challenges and all the inner details of our business, and also the goals that we have. We have had 12 town hall meetings and we have had all kinds of surveys online. We’ve reviewed in detail all aspects of the business – from energy efficiency to carbon offsets to cost – and we have created a very sophisticated handbook that we give to customers. It’s been very successful.”

Technology
Austin’s smart grid system is anticipated to go live in August, and a vast array of technology is needed to ensure this happens effectively. Along with hardware and software, communications technology is highly important, with the company using fiber for the back end and wireless technology for the last mile.

Crucially important to customer education and streamlining the system has been the replacing of typical meters to smart meters. “We have deployed sensors across the infrastructure to monitor all kinds of things, from detection of faults to temperature to all kinds of harmonics, as well as the different elements of the infrastructure,” says Carvallo.

“All those devices are feeding information into a meter data management in a distribution management system, and those systems are all communicating. In the case of the meter data management system it’s communicating with the billing system, it’s communicating with the conservation and marketing engines, it’s communicating with the distribution management system, and the distribution management system is interacting with the devices that it manages real time, and then it’s integrated into our SCADA system.”

Austin Energy is at the forefront of new generation development, having operated the first fuel cell in Texas. For many years the company has been a big proponent of distributed generation and has been innovative in the technologies it uses. The fuel cell operated for five years as a tester and was decommissioned last year. 

“It was plugged into the grid for about five years and it was a way for us to test the viability of that technology as another solution versus central power plant generation. We have a big appliance around distributed generation and part of our effort on Smart Grid 2.0,” he says.

Renewables
As the country gears up for a federal push on renewables, having already set the blueprint for forward-thinking innovation, great things are expected of Austin Energy. In April of this year, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of the DOE, issued a press release highlighting the top 10 sellers of green energy. Unsurprisingly, Austin Energy was ranked number one. As the biggest seller of absolute megawatts of green power, Austin Energy has surpassed all other electric utilities for seven years. Wind and other renewable energy sources currently represent 11 percent of the company’s portfolio, with a goal of achieving 30 percent by 2020.

“We have chosen to build a solar PV power plant across 300 acres. It’s 30 megawatts and will be the largest of its kind in the US to date. It’ll go live in 2010 and is expected to power 5000 homes. Earlier this year we also announced the creation of a deal to operate a biomass plant, generating 100 megawatts which will also go live in about a year and a half, and again that solar plant and the biomass plant are steps towards reaching that 30 percent mix. So our total output as an electric utility is 2700 megawatts and we are hoping that one-third of those 2700 megawatts will come from renewable energy by 2020.”

President Obama’s Plan for America is setting targets of 10 percent of energy to be sourced from renewables by 2012, and it has become common for utility companies to set their own individual target of 30 percent. Austin Energy is no different. Carvallo tells me that they have had this target for almost four years, prior to Obama and his energy reformation proposals.

“We’re also focusing on energy efficiency; we have a target of reaching 700 megawatts of saved energy by 2020. We did 600 megawatts over the last 25 years and having national goals is a good thing. Obviously part of the challenge with national goals is that some places have an easier journey towards certain goals than others and not all places are created equal. Some places are heavy duty hydro, like the west coast versus the east coast, which predominantly produces coal. So if you have goals with carbon or goals with efficiency or goals with renewables, they can now be optimized and be as aggressive nationwide. The west and the south coast could do better,” he says.

Austin Energy is certainly standing out as one of the big players, and as Obama continues in his quest to give renewables a permanent seat at the energy table, Carvallo is most definitely one man championing the cause.

Andres Carvallo is Chief Information Officer at Austin Energy, where he is responsible for the technology vision, planning, development and operations across the enterprise. Prior to Austin Energy, he held senior executive titles at large companies such Philips Electronics, Digital Equipment Corporation and Borland.

Sights on solar
Austin Energy is planning to set aside 300 acres, located just outside of Weberville, Travis County, to build on of the world’s largest solar power facilities. Through a partnership with Gemini Solar Development Co., Austin would be the exclusive client and pay $10 million a year for 25 years for the power generated.

The plant is due to open in 2010 and predicted to produce enough energy annually to power up to 5,000 homes.

However, there is some dispute as to whether this would raise the monthly electricity bill of an average homeowner, and there is also concern from some of Austin’s largest manufacturers as to the cost of their bills.

“We have been sharing with our customers all our challenges and all the inner details of our business, and also the goals that we have and it’s been very successful”
-Andres Carvallo, Austin Energy