Pitt Ohio opts to use revived electric technology
For its new 21st century headquarters, Pitt Ohio is pulling a page from Thomas Edison's 19th century playbook: direct current.
Discarded by the generation that built the nation's electric grid, the technology Edison pioneered is making a slow but ballyhooed comeback. This rise is being fueled, in part, by companies and others intent on reducing energy costs and promoting green alternatives to the aging conventional electric grid.
Direct current has a new generation of proponents in the scientific community. That includes researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, who are helping Pitt Ohio install a small direct current, solar power system for better efficiency and a 40 percent savings in hardware costs.
It's one of several efficiency efforts the trucking company plans to employ on the $20 million campus it is building in Harmar. It is using recycled and local materials for its building, installing low-energy lighting and pairing solar panels with the direct current to help run its back-up computer system. If that pairing works well, the company may go a step further, installing a mini electric grid just to power its 22,000- square-foot complex.
“A lot of the things we're doing are not just for our company. It's for anybody who's like-minded, progressive in thinking and wants to be responsible stewards of the environment,” said Jim Fields, chief operating officer. “We want to do everything we can to make this region the very best possible.”
Electricity users and producers all over the country are getting creative, trying to overcome an onslaught of simultaneous problems. The grid is aging, vulnerable to mass blackouts and weather disasters from climate change, and confronting competition from conservation efforts and renewable-power adopters who can set up mini grids to power their own needs.
That mix helped to attract a record 225 attendees on Monday to the university's eighth annual Electric Power Industry Conference. It had the most sponsors ever, including Eaton Corp., FirstEnergy Corp. and Ansys Inc., organizers said.
“Now is the timeframe to think about ‘How do we transform that system for the needs of the future?' ” said keynote speaker Patricia Hoffman, assistant secretary at the Department of Energy. “We know that times are changing. We know that we have to take a different look at the electrical system than we have in the past.”
Improvements in how electricity is delivered and the future of mini-grids are a big focus of discussion at the two-day conference. High-tech electronics run on direct current, but the grid is alternating current, leading to a lot of wasted power when electricity gets converted for use. Solar and wind power are often available on small scales, in many cases largely eliminating the need for broad distribution.
The concerns are reliability and cost. Progress is slow as power companies try to figure out how to adopt many technologies into a grid built decades ago, Hoffman said. Even if renewable power continues to take off, society and industry will need to pay to run a traditional grid as a backup and for those who can't afford to install on-site power, she added.
Many users are ignorant of the issues involved, said Emmanuel Taylor, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering who is helping to oversee the Pitt Ohio project. Having a fully direct current system is best for on-site solar systems — to avoid power loss from AC/DC conversions — and will save adopters money in the long run, but the legacy of 100 years of alternating current power makes that the default choice for most people, he said.
“We're starting to bridge that (knowledge) gap,” Taylor said. “The exciting thing about Pitt Ohio is that they're not a nonprofit, they're not a government agency working under a mandate. They're an independent company that sees the value of direct current infrastructure and the micro-grid.”
Power companies should follow suit, said John Swanson, the retired founder of software company Ansys who is developing solar-powered homes in Florida. The advantages of switching to on-site power, especially solar, are growing, even for homeowners, and that makes micro-grids an increasing source of competition for power companies. They're missing a business opportunity by not offering solar panel installation and servicing, he added.
“The utility companies have got to jump on this,” Swanson said. “There's money to be made.'”
But in many instances, government bureaucracy stands in the way, said Anu Narayanan, an associate engineer at Rand Corp. Because of laws on competition, micro-grids are often illegal, and it's so difficult to get permission for them that it can discourage big companies from trying, said Narayanan and Roger Dugan, senior technical adviser at the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm for the utility industry.
“Utilities probably would jump on this if they were allowed,” Dugan said. “But utilities are highly regulated.”
Timothy Puko is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7991 or tpuko@tribweb.com.
