Rice enlists in energy conservation program

By Molly Chiu     8/17/12 7:00pm

 

Over the summer in Houston, as temperatures soar, so does energy consumption. Rice University is doing its part to conserve energy and save money by participating in CenterPoint Energy's EnergyShare, a program designed to encourage major energy consumers to reduce load demand on the electric grid during peak hours in order to prevent rolling power outages. 

Energy companies are required by the Public Utility Commission of Texas to offer energy efficiency programs to residents and businesses, according to CenterPoint Energy Manager of Program Implementation Jarrett Simon. 

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"If everyone can use a little less, we can offset the growth [of load usage], and we can push off building a new power plant," Simon said. 

This year the program, which began in 2008, has 330 participants. Each participating entity must engage in one to five periods of reduction in electricity usage between June 1 and Sept. 30. Participants will receive a 30-minute warning and will then be expected to reduce their energy load or switch to alternate forms of power for up to four hours. In return, CenterPoint will pay participants $40 per kilowatt of load reduction, Simon said. 

Rice has engaged in one curtailment period so far this summer, on June 28. Facilities, Engineering and Planning sent an email to the entire campus community asking students, faculty and staff to turn off lights and some appliances and to close doors and windows. The Rice Central Plant also turned off air conditioning in 20-minute increments in all campus buildings except research areas, labs and the BioScience Research Collaborative, according to the email. 

Rice Energy Management Coordinator Eric Valentine said the curtailment period reduced Rice's power consumption by three megawatts during that period. 

To put this in perspective, one megawatt of electricity powers 200 homes during peak usage hours in the summer and up to 500 homes on a regular day, according to Electric Reliability Council of Texas representative Robbie Searcy. 

Valentine said the reduction was a significant percentage of Rice's typical electricity usage. 

"This is in the range of 20 percent of our typical summer connected load," Valentine said. 

While CenterPoint is responsible for bringing the power from plants to homes and businesses via poles and wires, ERCOT manages the power and therefore can mandate when curtailment periods will take place, according to Simon. 

"ERCOT looks at how much [power] generation they have and what the load is," Simon said. "Once they start getting close [to a critical point], they start sending out alerts to us to go ahead and call [participants in our] load management program."

ERCOT manages the power grid for 80 percent of Texas, including Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, according to Searcy. 

"Public response to calls to conserve energy consumption last year really helped prevent blackouts," Searcy said. 

According to Simon, CenterPoint customers have not experienced any rolling power outages this summer or last summer. Simon said he credits load-sharing programs like EnergyShare with preventing outages. According to Simon, program participants this summer would enable a load reduction of at least 150 megawatts if necessary. 

To help conserve energy, Simon said he recommends turning up the temperature on the thermostat. 

"The [Environmental Protection Agency] cites keeping it at 76 degrees when you're home," Simon said. "You might not think that a few degrees make a difference, but they do." 

Air conditioning is the biggest consumer of electricity at Rice during the summer, and monitoring the temperature helps conserve, Valentine said. 

"If an area is too cold or too hot, report it [to] energywaste@rice.edu," Valentine said. 

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