Global Cooling: Electricity Peak-shaving Techniques to Offset Climate Change

Abstract

Electricity is the “power to succeed.” However, the United States
faces a hidden electricity crisis, i.e., the “power to fail.” As the economy
grows at 2-3 percent per year, the total demand for electricity has grown
in tandem at 2.1 percent per year over the 1994-2004 period. Inversely,
however, electricity capacity margins, the percent of “spinning” supply
above demand, have declined consistently over the last decade from
25-30 percent in 1992 to about 15 percent today. In fact, the Eastern
Independent Power Grid, with nearly 75 percent of total U.S. electricity
demand, has only a 13.9 percent capacity margin. Additionally, the North
American Electric Reliability Counsel (NERC) forecast in 2006 that over-
all electricity demand will rise 19 percent by 2015 but overall electricity
capacity will rise only 6 percent. This compound total demand growth
coupled with declines in utility plant capacity margins only masks the
serious underlying problem: peak electricity demand, typically for sum-
mertime air conditioning, is growing at 2.6 percent per year, consistently
as fast as total electricity demand. While the nation considers the need
for energy independence critical due to the fact that half the nation’s oil
consumption is imported, the resulting economic consequences of a peak
electricity shortfall would be as bad or worse given the nation’s reliance
on electricity to cool, light, and power motors and computers. That is the
nexus of this article: the available energy technologies and programmatic
procedures to reduce electricity peaks or peak-shaving in the U.S.