Energy Security Postscript and Next Chapter

Long-time readers of the SGSB might have wondered if they'd ever see another post. Me too. After producing an average of 1+ posts per week since its inception 5 years ago, I cut way back after leaving IBM in 2013 to give myself more time to focus on consulting. And now there's a new development to report.

4 month ago I shuttered my security strategy business and began my first day on the job at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). It's one of the Department of Energy's national labs, and it's the one most squarely positioned at the intersection of energy infrastructure and national security. Let's call that energy security.

My INL title: Senior Cyber & Energy Security Strategist - may sound a little pretentious, but it pretty accurately captures what I was hired to do. If you visit the lab's home page or the INL Twitter feed it seems like nuclear energy research and related nuclear work are its dominant activities. But while nuclear energy research and fuels fabrication were its origin in the 1940's and its historic mission, with the help of its massive and remote test range that includes grid-scale transmission, distribution and communications assets, the lab I just joined does a ton of research and applied work on power and industrial control systems, Smart Grid and wireless communications, cyber and physical security and resilience, renewables, microgrids, energy storage and more.

Nuclear energy R&D, and full nuclear fuel lifecycle work (including non proliferation) will always be a significant part of that nation's requirements, and the INL mission, but nuclear energy is arguably the most reliable portion of our non fossil fuel baseload, but INL is quietly becoming something much more - and more important - than its nuclear legacy might suggest.

Without going into too much detail, the lab's customers now include not just DOE's nuclear energy organizations, but also DOE's renewables, resilience and cyber-physical security components too. DHS has become a major customer, as the lab hosts the ICS-CERT cyber security overwatch function for the US grid and other critical infrastructures, and performs other leading edge cyber and physical security roles as well. DoD is a very large customer too, for energy, security and communications test functions, rounded out by direct work with utilities and energy and telecom technology suppliers.

In short, INL in 2014 is not the lab many people think it is. While it's yet to update its image online, a visit to Idaho Falls quickly confirms that this is one of the nation's preeminent Energy Security lab resources. Nuclear energy is and likely always will be a key element, but without making much noise about it, INL has become so much more, and I'm very very lucky to be a part of it.

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Postscript to the Postscript post: Though my blogs are in suspended animation, I continue to speak in public, and albeit more frequently and tersely, on Twitter @andybochman. As the Twitter profile reveals, I continue to work out of my home office in Boston while hitting the road most often for DC, and of course, now, Idaho.

More on the Model: are Utilities Planning for the Future or Hoping it Doesn't Come?

A few weeks ago I posted about threats to the traditional investor owned utility (IOU) business model and I'm still soaking in what EEI and others are saying. Since then, I:

• Attended a presentation on the future of renewables at MIT given by energy futurist Dr. Eric Martinot. You can download Martinot's full 2013 report HERE and follow his periodic updates HERE
• Also had a great conversation with another energy futurist, Chris Nelder, after reading his Greentech Media Article titled "Adapt or Die: Private Utilities and the Distributed Energy Juggernaut". Nelder's personal site is HERE
• Read THIS from Bloomberg, a name not normally associated with wild or starry eyed cleantech visions. Bloomberg analysts are predicting very strong gains with renewables comprising up to 37% of total power produced by 2030

I'm not a self proclaimed futurist, nor do I play one on TV or the Web. And I know if I was on a debate team, I could find plenty of arguments (e.g., low cost natgas, end of renewables subsidies, slow updake of EVs, etc.) for thinking it'll be business as usual for IOUs for decades to come.

2011 (exceedingly short) Energy Security Book List

There are two new books out in the last few months I want you to know about. Whether you have time to read them, even if I am successful in getting you worked up about them, well, that's another story. So again, it's only two books, which is probably one or two more than you'll be able to get to given your current workload. But here's why you should give them a shot.

Neither addresses cyber security too much, but I consider all of this part of the broader "energy security" domain, and as such, this info is part of the foundation one needs to understand the full context of our cyber security, privacy and compliance landscape, where it's been and where it's going.

The first one is by former Austin Energy CIO Andres Carvallo, called The Advanced Smart Grid: Edge Power Driving Sustainability. Co-authored with frequent technology writer John Cooper, this book is relatively short at ~200 well illustrated pages, and is a pleasure to read. I'm going to re-use some of the laudatory words I recently posted in an Amazon review.

Before they invite you to travel with them into the future, Carvallo and Cooper do a solid job of orienting the reader with concise summaries of where the grid came from, how it's evolved over time, and as accurately as possible, how it's doing in its current state. For the many immigrants who've recently moved to energy from other sectors (like me), this is a great grounding.

The authors then look past the current climate of activity, much of it initially fueled with government grants, to a phase where business drivers alone dictate what gets deployed next. Ultimately, they begin to unveil for us a blurry but emerging vision of "the advanced Smart Grid", that's predicated on pervasive IP networking, tons and tons of data, microgrids, EVs, virtual power plants, new business models and more.

I particularly liked this point when the authors did pause for a moment on security:

As a foundational infrastructure, the Smart Grid cannot afford to get out in front of its ability to remain secure.

That's right ... what a concise way of saying so much. For me, it was well worth the time, and depending on your background and/or day job, it might be for you too.

Book number two is from one of the (if not, THE) true giants of global energy thinking over the past decades, Daniel Yergin. Best known (to me, anyway) for his biblical telling of the history and future of the oil industry in The Prize, his new book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, expands in scope to consider all energy sources. Recently reviewed in the NYT, this excerpt seems apropos:

When it comes to assessing the world’s energy future Mr. Yergin is a Churchillian. He argues that we should consider all possible energy sources, the way Winston Churchill considered oil when he spoke to the British Parliament  in 1913. “On no one quality, on no one process, on no one country, on no one route, and on no one field must we be dependent,” Churchill said. “Safety and security in oil lie in variety and variety alone.”

... and one more thing, for which the a smarter grid is the essential precursor:

One of Mr. Yergin’s closing arguments focuses on the importance of thinking seriously about one energy source that “has the potential to have the biggest impact of all.” That source is efficiency. It’s a simple idea, he points out, but one that is oddly “the hardest to wrap one’s mind around.” More efficient buildings, cars, airplanes, computers and other products have the potential to change our world.

Sounds great, right? Well, the bad news for you travelers is that, from a weight perspective, is that it tops 800 pages, though if you get the ebook version it's as light as can be. Now reading it, or the majority of it, that's another story. If it's too much for you to consider, maybe you can wait and hope for a movie version. But I wouldn't count on it.

Happy reading!

Photo credit: Miamism on Flickr.com

Reading the Smart Grid Tea Leaves in the Era of Abundant Natural Gas, Falling Renewables Prices, and Perpetual Cyber Attack

Heck, these aren't tea leaves, these are clear direction signals, neon lights flashing what's coming in letters 100 feet high. The late-night rantings of some cellar dwelling blogger? Far from it, everything below was on the May 31, 2011 front page of the Wall Street Journal when I made my customary pilgrimage to wsj.com over the first coffee of the morning:

• Germany is officially moving off of nuclear power ... entirely ... sooner than you might think possible for such a huge, industrial economy. Natural gas and a huge push on renewables are how they're going to get there
• US and global companies and governments are under cyber attack ... constantly ... seriously. Lockheed claims to have successfully detected and defended against this latest assault, but they are not always successful
• The US, aware of the rising tide of attacks, is trying to figure out how to push back ... with kinetic military force. Not sure how successful that's going to be

Renewables costs are falling and will continue to do so. For this we leave the Journal and turn to a guest blog at Scientific American:

The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America.
10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. Solar capacity is being built out at an exponential pace already. When the prices become so much more favorable than those of alternate energy sources, that pace will only accelerate.

This is even better, from ABC News in Australia: Renewable energy will only get cheaper: study.

Question 1: Can the current grids handle the projected levels of natural gas and intermittent renewable power in Germany and elsewhere? Part of the solution may be GE's new highly efficient and fast ramping turbine that should make natural gas a better renewables backstop. But surely it'll take more than this.

Question 2: Can we build out the new grid in ways that make it reliable and secure enough to handle all this change? That remains to be seen, and remains the ongoing subject of this blog.

OK, time for more coffee!

Girding the Grid for Renewables

Economic cycles wax and wane, rebates and tariffs come and go, but guided by clear heads and pure hearts (not to mention lured by the prospect of future profits), technology-driven innovators march on.

These two indicators indicate that the grid's going to have a lot more renewables to manage in coming years:

• SmartGridNews on the UN's global renewables forecast
• Greentech Media solar sales update and forecast

So we'd better keep building out the new grid so it can handle all of this intermittency, right? Storage technology will play a key role and needs to get a lot better than it is today.

And we also might want to make the entire thing secure while we're at it. Banks can (and now, quite frequently, do) refund fraudulent charges made to your hijacked accounts, but it's not clear how utilities will make businesses or homeowners whole when cyber attacks disrupt power delivery.

Photo credit: Jumanji Solar on Flickr.com

Renewables Grid Giga-boost: Google and Friends Commit to Fund Undersea Wind Power

Not just offshore, mind you, but offshore and under water.  We're talking high voltage transmission lines in the deep blue sea off the USA's east coast mid section. If you're thinking this is another green jobs initiative from the current administration, you're wrong. It's the private sector doing what it does best: seeing a problem, doing some analysis, realizing it's an opportunity, and putting some skin in the game despite known and quantified risks.

Covered in all the major news outlets today, including the WSJ, this is great clean tech news as well as energy security news. Here's why:

• It's a win for renewables as it'll now be much easier and cheaper (and therefore, much less risky) to deploy big offshore wind turbines 
• It's a win for energy security as one of the most congested parts of the national grid will have more pathways and options for routing electricity, especially in the NY/NJ region
• This should help the perpetually stalled Cape Wind project get out of the blocks. If folks down south can pull off a wind infrastructure project of this magnitude, how come forward looking, business minded, PhD-educated, renewables friendly northerners have been arguing about this modest first step for 10+ years with nothing to show for it? Wind energy in Massachusetts is in danger of being OBE - overcome by current events

For me, the second point on energy security is also a boost for Smart Grid security. Absent hostile submarines with cable cutter-enabled frog men, this transmission addition will give grid operators more room to breath, even as it makes it more likely they'll be figuring out how to best manage gigawatts of new intermittent power over the next several years. We'll be relying on more technology to handle this challenge of course - here's to ensuring it's developed and deployed with security in mind: up front, built in, and by design.

Calling all Energy Idealists, or: Where is Chris Davis?

For those of us immersed in energy matters in our day jobs, it may be hard to imagine that there's a virtual farm system out there where independent self-starters working in other fields imagine alternative uses of their energy. To whit, I wrote energy tech blogs for years before I had the good fortune of landing (via M&A) in a company that's staking its future on being an important part of our country's and the world's energy future. Now this has happened again, to a close friend of mine.

Not long ago my Air Force Academy classmate (1985) and Discovery Channel energy co-blogger Chris Davis wrote a post announcing my departure from Discovery, and the launch of two new blogs, one of which you're now reading. Well, the the tables are now turned and it's Chris who recently left his loyal readers wondering what became of him.

One of the last posts Chris did before wrapping up his Discovery Channel tech assignment was called "Visualizing the Electric Car 2015" and it gives you a feel for how forward-leaning his thinking is on renewables tech in general and Vehicles to Grid (V2G) in particular. Now, having transitioned from two decades of pure construction jobs to Dallas-based electric services co Facilities Solution Group (FSG), Chris is paid to pursue his passion.

Today he's active in North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) future transportation initiatives, bridging his expertise and experience in the building industry with what he knows about electric cars, Smart and microgrids, to accelerate that organizations' great work. We talk all the time, and he's one of the happiest, most fulfilled people I know.

For anyone visiting this blog from a vocation far removed from Smart Grid, energy management and/or other renewables-enabling pursuits, and wishing they were closer to the action, please take courage from our examples. If Chris and I could make the leap, so could anyone. And the energy future needs many more talented, passionate people to get involved and make it happen.

Photo credit: Chris Davis on 4 Pass Loop Route, Snowmass, Colorado. Click on it for much larger version

Calling the Next Generation of US Energy Rock Stars

Some folks are suspicious of anything the government tries to do beyond defending our borders and protecting national interests abroad. Others believe that government can do much more. I'm kind of in between, generally valuing a small footprint Federal government, but every once in a while applauding innovation in government when it shows up.

Such is the case with a new DOE organization, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which came to life just this year and has been given a $400 million boost to get itself and its first bunch of projects off the ground. ARPA-E is not about incremental improvements in energy science; no, it focuses exclusively on high risk, bet the farm, swing for the fences, change the world energy technologies.

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Update: here's a list of recent ARPA-E awards for transformational energy technologies.

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A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of being in the first row when new ARPA-E director, Dr. Arun Majumdar, introduced the ARPA-E Fellows Program to a capacity audience at MIT. Saying the goal of his org is to boost US competitiveness in Energy Tech (ET) by helping to find and nurture the "Next generation of "Energy Rock Stars", Majumdar noted his own existence was thanks to the pioneering artificial fertilizer breakthroughs of American scientist Norman Borlaug. He went on to show how many energy technologies first discovered in the US like photo-voltaic solar and lithium ion storage now have little-to-no market leadership nor manufacturing presence in the country. This trend he plainly aims to turn around.

One thing you can say for sure: whether ARPA-E advances technologies that benefit the grid directly or finds ways to greatly increase the capabilities of renewable power generation or storage, it all grows the Smart Grid one way or another. By the way, Majumdar came across as warm, brilliant, determined and 100% sincere. I for one am rooting big time for him and his world changers.

Photo Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Highly Consumable Smart Grid & Renewable Energy Info via Podcast

RenewableEnergyWorld has just produced four smart grid podcasts for your edification, accessible in a short article that begins with this nice imagery:

If demand on today's electrical grid looks like a rough landscape of high peaks and low valleys, demand on tomorrow's "smart grid" will look more like a series of rolling hills.

Check 'em out.