On the morning of September 15 I was scheduled to give a speech in favor of the Lake Powell Pipeline project – the speech was set to be given in Hildale, in front of Twin Cities’ (now idle) power plant. An engineering professor from SUU was set to give a speech in opposition to the pipeline project, but when it was time to give our speeches/press conference, he wasn’t there – a phone call found out that he’d hurt himself and so was unable to come down from Cedar City. So I gave my speech unopposed, then answered questions from all – in all I spent two hours preaching. (Note: since I don't have a photo related to my speech, I've attached a photo from the Lodge Canyon hike - this is Kat going down the first rappel.) Following is the text of my speech:
Cost of Hydro Power; including O&M and the Pump Storage Concept
“Creating Dialogue to Facilitate Informed Decisions”
By way of introduction, my name is Colin Jack; I’m an electrical engineer and I hold a professional engineering license in several states, including Utah and Arizona. I have over 20 years of experience in electric power; in the analysis, planning, design, construction, and operation of electrical power systems. As a power engineer, I have worked in 25 countries including the United States. I’m currently working as the Director of Engineering at Dixie Escalante Rural Electric Association, which serves about 15,000 customers here in southern Utah and northern Arizona.
For those of you not familiar with us, Dixie Escalante is a non-profit electric cooperative, owned by its customers, all of whom are members of the cooperative. At Dixie Escalante our members currently enjoy the lowest power rates in the State, if not the whole nation. We haven’t had a rate increase for 14 years, precisely because of responsible and careful long-term planning. Now, with the dramatic cost increases in materials, fuel, and labor over the past few years, we can’t promise to go another 14 years without a rate increase, but we can promise that our non-profit cooperative philosophy and long range planning will keep us more than competitive.
Dixie Escalante currently purchases power from the Quail Creek hydro plant, owned and operated by the Washington County Water Conservancy District. Our cooperative purchases the energy generated by the hydro plant, which helps pay for the water project. The Quail Creek reservoir, with the associated hydro power generator, has been a good project for both parties, given the fact that Dixie Escalante’s members in Washington County needed the water.
Dixie Escalante, the Water Conservancy Districts, and all public utilities, have the legal and moral obligation to plan for the future. Running out of resource, whether it’s power or water, is not an option. When our customers flip a switch or turn a knob, they expect results – the lights to come on or water to come out of the tap. If we do our job right, our customers never even have to think about us being there. The proper planning process involves multiple steps, including: 1) a future demand analysis, based on historical consumption and projected growth trends; 2) a long-range plan, that determines the most economical configuration for the future system to provide adequate service within the limits of service quality standards – this step is vital so that you know what you’re working towards; 3) an annual or bi-annual construction work plan, in which you evaluate your existing system, take a look at your long range plan, and determine what of the planned projects actually need to be completed right now so that everything is in place just before it’s actually needed – you can’t afford to get behind and run short. In all of these planning steps there are both technical and financial analyses – the proposed projects have to both deliver the product AND be the most economical choice. This planning process insures that the utility doesn’t end up wasting valuable resources on short-sighted projects that are out of capacity before they’re fully depreciated or, conversely, are obsolete before they are ever fully utilized. This planning process, along with stringent national standards, is what separates us from utilities in third world countries where they don’t enjoy reliable power or water supplies.
I understand from looking at this morning’s program that the reason for us all to be here today is to “Create Dialogue to Facilitate Informed Decisions”, specifically on the topic of hydro power and the pump storage concept, so I will do my best to provide some information to help facilitate some informed decisions.
First, everyone needs to come to the realization that it is false logic to assume that just because you don’t build it, that they won’t come. So you can’t limit the growth of Washington, Kane, or Iron counties by limiting the resources available to the present and future residents. I recently attended a lecture given by the esteemed Dr. Douglas Alder, former president of Dixie College, and he wisely counseled: “Growth can’t be limited, so it must be managed.” And let me remind you, “growth management” is outside the jurisdiction of the utilities – it is in the hands of the local municipal, county, and state governments. Also, it is not within the utility’s authority to dictate the consumption of their customers – we can and do educate our customers to help eliminate waste, but we are still operating under a market driven economic system here in the United States of America, and utilities are obligated to provide services to all comers allowed in by government.
Second, I understand that various federal agencies have been tasked to perform an independent cost/benefit analysis to determine the least cost solution to our water needs, given all of the various technical options, and either confirm that the proposed pipeline is the best option to meet our water needs or determine what would be the best alternative. So, of course we can’t responsibly make a decision or even take a position on the proposed pipeline and associated hydro-power facilities until after the current Federal study is completed.
Given those two point of reference, I can provide you with some technical information to help you understand the factors that must be considered in such a feasibility study:
1. Washington County Water Conservancy District, as has the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, has installed hydro-electric generators in their water projects not only to utilize the captured potential energy but also to help offset the costs of the water, making the water storage and flood control more affordable. In Dixie Escalante’s varied portfolio of power resources, we include hydro power from both Glenn Canyon and Quail Creek reservoir. Given the fact that hydro-power is relatively inexpensive and clean renewable energy, it would be grossly negligent NOT to capture the potential energy from the elevation difference on this pipeline into Washington County.
2. At least as far as electricity consumption, conservation is not enough to get us by. County-wide the growth rate of power consumption is 6%. If we achieved EPRI’s aggressive conservation targets, we could potentially lower that to somewhere around 4% - that would be a very significant reduction. What that means is that the demand for power in Washington County is projected to be over 800MW by 2020 when the Lake Powell Pipeline, with its associated hydropower generating plant, is currently scheduled to come on-line. Now, if we were to achieve the most aggressive conservation measures currently being proposed, and lower the growth rate of power consumption by 25%, we could potentially lower that 2020 peak to somewhere around 700MW. Even if we all, as consumers, implement drastic cuts in our consumption, we’re still looking to increase the power supply in Washington County by around 300MW in the next dozen years.
3. There is a need for LOCAL power resource. St. George City and Dixie Escalante are building a 1MW solar farm and St. George is building a 40MW gas-fired power plant. But, if you’ll recollect, we need to find an extra 300-400MW. And of that 300-400 extra MW that we’ll need in the next 12 years, it would be advantageous for us to develop a significant portion of that locally. Whereas Dixie Escalante has enough clean coal-fired resource available to meet our demand for the next 25 years, it is located far away from and here in southern Utah we often find ourselves constrained by the limited capacity of our regional transmission agent. Rest assured that we are working with our transmission company to try to ensure that they’ll build the required transmission facilities to meet our current and future needs, but their response is not always as fast or as favorable as we’d like, which could potentially leave the county with rolling black-outs. Which is why I say we need some local power resources.
4. Which brings us to: #4 Pumped storage. The technology of “pumped storage,” one of the only large scale means of storing energy – there are no batteries in the MW range – is where you have a potential fall of water, such as down the Hurricane Cliffs, with a reservoir for the water on top and one at the bottom, and you hold the water in the upper reservoir until the time of the peak electrical demand, and then you let the water fall to generate electricity during that peak consumption time. Then, you can also use electric pumps to pump the water back up the hill at night, using your excess electrical capacity during the off-peak period, to re-store that potential energy for the next peak demand period. In Washington County we have a significant difference between our high demand during the day, usually peaking between 4 and 6PM, and the low demand at night, between 10PM and 5AM, when the local industries are shut down and most of the residents are sleeping. Pumped water storage allows the power system to utilize its unused generating capacity in the middle of the night to store up energy for the coming day, thereby creating energy for the upcoming peak. This is something that no other renewable energy resource can accomplish.
Speaking of renewable energy, this seems like an opportune moment to touch on that subject, however briefly. You’ll recollect that Washington County is going to need between 300 and 400MW of new resource in the county over the next 12 years, either in the form of new generation or new transmission lines or, preferably, some of both. I’ve heard a lot of clamor, at least from the media, for the implementation of solar power, especially given our local sunny climate. I hope that those doing the clamoring are sincere and plan to put their money where their mouth is because Dixie Escalante and St. George City are currently in a joint venture on a 1MW solar farm. We’re going to spend at least $6M in materials on the project, and thus far have only received commitments for subscriptions for less than 1/10th of 1% of that project. But even if we get the project fully subscribed, we’re still only talking about 1MW out of a shortfall of 300 or 400MW. I guess that all begs the question of doing 300 or 400 such solar farms. Unfortunately, I must inform you that each MW of solar power requires 6 acres of land and $6-10M, each, which is considerably more than any other type of generation, 6-10 times the cost per MW of natural gas-fired generation. So you can easily do the arithmetic and understand the physical and financial constraints involved with massive solar generation.
And what about wind generation? We all know that it’s always windy down in Hurricane; except for the fact that it’s not. According to both the NREL and Dixie’s own wind studies in conjunction with the State of Utah, there is no commercially viable wind resource in Washington County; not at any price. Besides which, neither the best solar nor the best wind are dispatchable and so can’t be counted on to be generating when the demand for power is peaking. Which will always lead us back to conventional generation resources and transmission lines. I share this data with you all in the spirit of giving you enough information to facilitate informed decisions.
Now, let me provide you with a bit of international perspective. Having worked overseas for ten years I can tell you first hand that we do not want to go back to the bad old days before adequate and reliable electricity and indoor plumbing. Our grandparents could have told us that, but they’re not around to remind us and our generation seems to be the first to have forgotten what it’s like to be without electricity and water. As I mentioned in my introduction, I spent ten years working on rural electrification projects in 25 different developing nations because everyone knows that electricity is absolutely critical for the development and maintenance of a tolerable standard of living. Sadly, since returning to the United States two years ago, I’ve observed the constant attack on the American energy industry, literally the world standard, threatening the very lifeblood of our country. Is it possible that we don’t recollect that without a robust portfolio of electric generation we’ll go dark as a country, as a state, and especially here in southern Utah, where we can’t survive a summer without refrigeration?
I can confirm from personal experience that having the electricity that we enjoy in Utah is infinitely preferable to the alternatives that come where there is no such resource:
1. premature deaths associated with a lack of vaccines due to no refrigeration,
2. respiratory diseases due to cook fires in the home,
3. house fires due to open flames on candles and kerosene lamps,
4. tragic disfiguring burns when little kids pull kerosene lamps over on themselves,
5. lack of physical security due to lack of street lighting,
6. lack of education and literacy due lack of adequate lighting in the home at night,
7. lack of information due to lack of internet or TV or radio news,
8. food insecurity due to lack of power for irrigation and grain milling,
9. unrestrained population growth due to lack of entertainment such as TV and movies,
10. deforestation as populations centers forage for firewood as a primary source of energy,
11. localized droughts caused by the changes in microclimates due to the deforestation, and
12. lack of industry and other employment opportunities due to a lack of power machinery.
Believe it or not, all of the dozen preceding points are documented justifications for funding affordable and sustainable rural electrification in developing nations. And here in the U.S. it seems that we’re trying to go backwards. It makes me really sad.
So, let me conclude by telling you, as an engineer who analyses things in the light of cold hard and objective facts: whether or not this pipeline and associated hydropower generation plant gets built should be determined strictly on the merits of the demand and cost/benefit analysis; fuzzy unfounded fears should not be factored in to the equation – there is no room for emotion in the technical analysis.
Thank you.
“Creating Dialogue to Facilitate Informed Decisions”
By way of introduction, my name is Colin Jack; I’m an electrical engineer and I hold a professional engineering license in several states, including Utah and Arizona. I have over 20 years of experience in electric power; in the analysis, planning, design, construction, and operation of electrical power systems. As a power engineer, I have worked in 25 countries including the United States. I’m currently working as the Director of Engineering at Dixie Escalante Rural Electric Association, which serves about 15,000 customers here in southern Utah and northern Arizona.
For those of you not familiar with us, Dixie Escalante is a non-profit electric cooperative, owned by its customers, all of whom are members of the cooperative. At Dixie Escalante our members currently enjoy the lowest power rates in the State, if not the whole nation. We haven’t had a rate increase for 14 years, precisely because of responsible and careful long-term planning. Now, with the dramatic cost increases in materials, fuel, and labor over the past few years, we can’t promise to go another 14 years without a rate increase, but we can promise that our non-profit cooperative philosophy and long range planning will keep us more than competitive.
Dixie Escalante currently purchases power from the Quail Creek hydro plant, owned and operated by the Washington County Water Conservancy District. Our cooperative purchases the energy generated by the hydro plant, which helps pay for the water project. The Quail Creek reservoir, with the associated hydro power generator, has been a good project for both parties, given the fact that Dixie Escalante’s members in Washington County needed the water.
Dixie Escalante, the Water Conservancy Districts, and all public utilities, have the legal and moral obligation to plan for the future. Running out of resource, whether it’s power or water, is not an option. When our customers flip a switch or turn a knob, they expect results – the lights to come on or water to come out of the tap. If we do our job right, our customers never even have to think about us being there. The proper planning process involves multiple steps, including: 1) a future demand analysis, based on historical consumption and projected growth trends; 2) a long-range plan, that determines the most economical configuration for the future system to provide adequate service within the limits of service quality standards – this step is vital so that you know what you’re working towards; 3) an annual or bi-annual construction work plan, in which you evaluate your existing system, take a look at your long range plan, and determine what of the planned projects actually need to be completed right now so that everything is in place just before it’s actually needed – you can’t afford to get behind and run short. In all of these planning steps there are both technical and financial analyses – the proposed projects have to both deliver the product AND be the most economical choice. This planning process insures that the utility doesn’t end up wasting valuable resources on short-sighted projects that are out of capacity before they’re fully depreciated or, conversely, are obsolete before they are ever fully utilized. This planning process, along with stringent national standards, is what separates us from utilities in third world countries where they don’t enjoy reliable power or water supplies.
I understand from looking at this morning’s program that the reason for us all to be here today is to “Create Dialogue to Facilitate Informed Decisions”, specifically on the topic of hydro power and the pump storage concept, so I will do my best to provide some information to help facilitate some informed decisions.
First, everyone needs to come to the realization that it is false logic to assume that just because you don’t build it, that they won’t come. So you can’t limit the growth of Washington, Kane, or Iron counties by limiting the resources available to the present and future residents. I recently attended a lecture given by the esteemed Dr. Douglas Alder, former president of Dixie College, and he wisely counseled: “Growth can’t be limited, so it must be managed.” And let me remind you, “growth management” is outside the jurisdiction of the utilities – it is in the hands of the local municipal, county, and state governments. Also, it is not within the utility’s authority to dictate the consumption of their customers – we can and do educate our customers to help eliminate waste, but we are still operating under a market driven economic system here in the United States of America, and utilities are obligated to provide services to all comers allowed in by government.
Second, I understand that various federal agencies have been tasked to perform an independent cost/benefit analysis to determine the least cost solution to our water needs, given all of the various technical options, and either confirm that the proposed pipeline is the best option to meet our water needs or determine what would be the best alternative. So, of course we can’t responsibly make a decision or even take a position on the proposed pipeline and associated hydro-power facilities until after the current Federal study is completed.
Given those two point of reference, I can provide you with some technical information to help you understand the factors that must be considered in such a feasibility study:
1. Washington County Water Conservancy District, as has the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, has installed hydro-electric generators in their water projects not only to utilize the captured potential energy but also to help offset the costs of the water, making the water storage and flood control more affordable. In Dixie Escalante’s varied portfolio of power resources, we include hydro power from both Glenn Canyon and Quail Creek reservoir. Given the fact that hydro-power is relatively inexpensive and clean renewable energy, it would be grossly negligent NOT to capture the potential energy from the elevation difference on this pipeline into Washington County.
2. At least as far as electricity consumption, conservation is not enough to get us by. County-wide the growth rate of power consumption is 6%. If we achieved EPRI’s aggressive conservation targets, we could potentially lower that to somewhere around 4% - that would be a very significant reduction. What that means is that the demand for power in Washington County is projected to be over 800MW by 2020 when the Lake Powell Pipeline, with its associated hydropower generating plant, is currently scheduled to come on-line. Now, if we were to achieve the most aggressive conservation measures currently being proposed, and lower the growth rate of power consumption by 25%, we could potentially lower that 2020 peak to somewhere around 700MW. Even if we all, as consumers, implement drastic cuts in our consumption, we’re still looking to increase the power supply in Washington County by around 300MW in the next dozen years.
3. There is a need for LOCAL power resource. St. George City and Dixie Escalante are building a 1MW solar farm and St. George is building a 40MW gas-fired power plant. But, if you’ll recollect, we need to find an extra 300-400MW. And of that 300-400 extra MW that we’ll need in the next 12 years, it would be advantageous for us to develop a significant portion of that locally. Whereas Dixie Escalante has enough clean coal-fired resource available to meet our demand for the next 25 years, it is located far away from and here in southern Utah we often find ourselves constrained by the limited capacity of our regional transmission agent. Rest assured that we are working with our transmission company to try to ensure that they’ll build the required transmission facilities to meet our current and future needs, but their response is not always as fast or as favorable as we’d like, which could potentially leave the county with rolling black-outs. Which is why I say we need some local power resources.
4. Which brings us to: #4 Pumped storage. The technology of “pumped storage,” one of the only large scale means of storing energy – there are no batteries in the MW range – is where you have a potential fall of water, such as down the Hurricane Cliffs, with a reservoir for the water on top and one at the bottom, and you hold the water in the upper reservoir until the time of the peak electrical demand, and then you let the water fall to generate electricity during that peak consumption time. Then, you can also use electric pumps to pump the water back up the hill at night, using your excess electrical capacity during the off-peak period, to re-store that potential energy for the next peak demand period. In Washington County we have a significant difference between our high demand during the day, usually peaking between 4 and 6PM, and the low demand at night, between 10PM and 5AM, when the local industries are shut down and most of the residents are sleeping. Pumped water storage allows the power system to utilize its unused generating capacity in the middle of the night to store up energy for the coming day, thereby creating energy for the upcoming peak. This is something that no other renewable energy resource can accomplish.
Speaking of renewable energy, this seems like an opportune moment to touch on that subject, however briefly. You’ll recollect that Washington County is going to need between 300 and 400MW of new resource in the county over the next 12 years, either in the form of new generation or new transmission lines or, preferably, some of both. I’ve heard a lot of clamor, at least from the media, for the implementation of solar power, especially given our local sunny climate. I hope that those doing the clamoring are sincere and plan to put their money where their mouth is because Dixie Escalante and St. George City are currently in a joint venture on a 1MW solar farm. We’re going to spend at least $6M in materials on the project, and thus far have only received commitments for subscriptions for less than 1/10th of 1% of that project. But even if we get the project fully subscribed, we’re still only talking about 1MW out of a shortfall of 300 or 400MW. I guess that all begs the question of doing 300 or 400 such solar farms. Unfortunately, I must inform you that each MW of solar power requires 6 acres of land and $6-10M, each, which is considerably more than any other type of generation, 6-10 times the cost per MW of natural gas-fired generation. So you can easily do the arithmetic and understand the physical and financial constraints involved with massive solar generation.
And what about wind generation? We all know that it’s always windy down in Hurricane; except for the fact that it’s not. According to both the NREL and Dixie’s own wind studies in conjunction with the State of Utah, there is no commercially viable wind resource in Washington County; not at any price. Besides which, neither the best solar nor the best wind are dispatchable and so can’t be counted on to be generating when the demand for power is peaking. Which will always lead us back to conventional generation resources and transmission lines. I share this data with you all in the spirit of giving you enough information to facilitate informed decisions.
Now, let me provide you with a bit of international perspective. Having worked overseas for ten years I can tell you first hand that we do not want to go back to the bad old days before adequate and reliable electricity and indoor plumbing. Our grandparents could have told us that, but they’re not around to remind us and our generation seems to be the first to have forgotten what it’s like to be without electricity and water. As I mentioned in my introduction, I spent ten years working on rural electrification projects in 25 different developing nations because everyone knows that electricity is absolutely critical for the development and maintenance of a tolerable standard of living. Sadly, since returning to the United States two years ago, I’ve observed the constant attack on the American energy industry, literally the world standard, threatening the very lifeblood of our country. Is it possible that we don’t recollect that without a robust portfolio of electric generation we’ll go dark as a country, as a state, and especially here in southern Utah, where we can’t survive a summer without refrigeration?
I can confirm from personal experience that having the electricity that we enjoy in Utah is infinitely preferable to the alternatives that come where there is no such resource:
1. premature deaths associated with a lack of vaccines due to no refrigeration,
2. respiratory diseases due to cook fires in the home,
3. house fires due to open flames on candles and kerosene lamps,
4. tragic disfiguring burns when little kids pull kerosene lamps over on themselves,
5. lack of physical security due to lack of street lighting,
6. lack of education and literacy due lack of adequate lighting in the home at night,
7. lack of information due to lack of internet or TV or radio news,
8. food insecurity due to lack of power for irrigation and grain milling,
9. unrestrained population growth due to lack of entertainment such as TV and movies,
10. deforestation as populations centers forage for firewood as a primary source of energy,
11. localized droughts caused by the changes in microclimates due to the deforestation, and
12. lack of industry and other employment opportunities due to a lack of power machinery.
Believe it or not, all of the dozen preceding points are documented justifications for funding affordable and sustainable rural electrification in developing nations. And here in the U.S. it seems that we’re trying to go backwards. It makes me really sad.
So, let me conclude by telling you, as an engineer who analyses things in the light of cold hard and objective facts: whether or not this pipeline and associated hydropower generation plant gets built should be determined strictly on the merits of the demand and cost/benefit analysis; fuzzy unfounded fears should not be factored in to the equation – there is no room for emotion in the technical analysis.
Thank you.
