2017- seasons of ..power plant selfies?

How do we define this year? As 2017, a year that many considered exhausting, terrifying, and tumultuous, comes to a close, how do we value it? In the classic song from Rent, “Seasons of Love,” they ask how do you measure a year in the life- “In daylights, in sunsets, In midnights, in cups of coffee?” From the age of 5 to 21, many people have structure; they experience 16 years of summer and winter breaks. Seasons pass and there is always the next gap to look forward to. In adulthood, there are no given moments. We have to create the ones that are important to us. We are left with the question of how we track, measure, and appreciate our years?

I’d like to say I’m measuring my year in terms of where I have been and what I have done. How many new people I have interacted with, cultivated knowledge about and empathy for. How many states I visited for the first time and revisited. How many facilities I wrangled my way into. How many times I sat down to a blank sheet of paper and took the daring step to put my thoughts down, and type the first words of something I would share with the world.

I often find myself writing pieces that justify what I am doing, that show myself what I have done (this one included) and  accomplished on paper. Maybe you do the same.

We, as people, and our years, are worth more than what we produce. There are other great things about our years. 

For me, this year was about learning and exploration. 

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One year ago, I didn’t know the difference between transmission and distribution (you don't either? read about how power gets to you).  I would pass large facilities on the highway and wonder what was inside. What were the covered mounds of salt or resources alongside large tanks? How did it get there and where was it going?  While I may not be able to speak to all the piles, I certainly can spot a coal plant, nuclear plant, or incinerator and have an idea of the inputs.

I took the steps to get inside the plants and industry, and indulge my curiosity.  And there were people who thought it was worthwhile, who stood beside me, and even financially supported the investigative endeavor. The George Washington University supported the effort with a grant to fund my travels; the World Resources Institute invested resources in helping me cultivate knowledge and exposure. Then there were the people who invested time and money into my exploration, without knowing what would come of it. Duke Energy Renewables opened their doors to me to their largest solar farm in North Carolina  and showed me around the Renewable Control Center where they watch their renewable assets. The good people at Covanta’s Newark incinerator endured my harassment when I was working to get an invite to “media day.”

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Editors, professors, colleagues, and friends asked around and put me in touch with resources. Strangers tipped me off to when a boat was heading out to the offshore wind farm, and I managed to get on it, and have a moment of career awakening. 

People posted on their personal Facebook pages about Electric America and my journey, to share and support the message.

I can say that once I reached a threshold of targeted outreach, the industry was relatively open, receptive even. 

I am choosing to count the doors opened; photos taken; smiling selfies at power plants; and whole-hearted endeavors, of which I’ve experienced many. And, of course, situations in which I felt utterly uncertain, and entirely out of my comfort zone.

How are you reflecting on your year? And what do you value from it? 

Cheers to this moment and the moments that define your 2017 - whatever they may be. Seasons of smiles, new experiences, cold showers, love notes, frozen computer screens, shared desserts or even selfies at solar farms.  

Electricity Production & Storage- Corrections

In the following piece "Why Salt is This Power Plant's Most Valuable Resource" for Smithsonianmag.com I inaccurately described how electricity is produced in the first three paragraphs. I regret the errors. 

Correction:

Power companies are not always making more power than they expect you to consume; they make exactly what you demand. They have enough power plants and technical know-how to make exactly the right amount of electricity at the moment it is demanded by homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals on the grid.

Additional explanation:

There are enough power plants to provide electricity during peak moments, meaning at other times, when demand is lower, some power plants are shut off and sit idle. This can happen, for example, when wind turbines are spinning hard but demand is low and a nuclear plant or a coal plant is already providing sufficient power. The coal and nuclear plants take longer to shut down and start up again.

If power from the wind farms is not needed, the wind farms may be shut down, instead of the coal or nuclear plants, and the potential energy is effectively wasted, along with the environmental benefit.

The swing in energy demand and the longer shutdown and startup times for baseload power plants discourage the use of some renewables, specifically wind power, which is generated mostly at night when winds are strongest.  In short, a lot of electricity, and importantly, clean electricity, is produced at the wrong time.  

That’s where energy storage comes in. Storing energy when it's made and releasing it when it's needed helps keep the grid reliable and paves the way for introducing intermittent renewables like wind and solar to the mix.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE!

The Nuts and Bolts of Kauai Solar and Battery Storage

The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) is a small utility. It provides electricity to about 33,000 homes and businesses on Kauai and has about 25,000 active members. Energy cooperatives are organizations that provide power to their customers, who own a share of the cooperative as  members and ratepayers. The organization is run as a nonprofit, and in the case of KIUC, owns the power plants, and the transmission and distribution infrastructure to bring the electricity to the customer.

Rural electric cooperatives serve 75% of the geographic U.S., but only 12% of the population because there are fewer people to serve per mile of transmission line in rural areas. Cooperatives were founded as a way to electrify parts of the country where investor-owned power companies didn't want to go because it was less lucrative.  Because member-owned cooperatives have no shareholders, the cooperatives serve only their members (the electricity customers) and their employees. 

The cooperative model, especially in rural area or islands, has produced amazing developments in the power sector, and innovation that some for-profit companies have not been able to achieve.

In March of this year, KIUC and Tesla completed a solar and battery storage facility in Lihue, Kauai on a former sugar plantation

 It is a 13 MW solar farm ( 2600 times the capacity of the average 5kW PV system found on an American rooftop), with an accompanying 52Mwh worth of battery storage, making the installation one of the biggest battery energy storage facilities in the country, behind utility scale battery deployment in Southern California. There are 272 Tesla Powerpacks set up next to 55,000 solar panels  According to KIUC, there are many sunny days when 90 percent or more of day time electricity demand is met by the island’s solar farms. The batteries can power 4500 homes for four hours, or about 18% of the island’s homes. 

On islands it is often easier to make the financials work for new, creative power solutions because they typically face a high price of electricity to start.

This is also part of the reason that Block Island Wind Farm came to be, which is the only operational offshore wind farm in the United States, which serves Block Island and its cooperative power company (Block Island Power Company). Prior to receiving power from the wind farm, Block island was also dependent on diesel fuel, importing nearly 1 million gallons of diesel every year.

Kauai is still dependent on oil for a large part of its power supply. About 60% of the electricity on the island comes from oil power plants, and the other 40% from renewable energy sources, including solar+battery, hydropower and biomass. The solar and battery storage facility displaces 1.6 million gallons of diesel per year, enough to fill a Tacoma truck 76,000 times.

Hawaii has a state goal to be powered by 100% renewable energy sources by 2045.

Time on the Tea Farm, Kauai, Hawaii

Monday I arrived in Lihue, Kauai.  After a long, early flight on which I did not sleep I was picked up by my second cousin who I had not seen in 8 years. Reunited! Reunited as young adults in Hawaii (who can adventure and drink), what’s better than that?

He drove me back to the family’s home, a large tea farm consisting of 4 primarily wood bungalows, and a wooden walkway to connect them all. They were built one at a time and the family continued to move from one to the other until the main living area was built. It is essentially an extensive overgrown tropical forest that they converted into usable land that produces a couple of types of tea, and is home to a herd of goat and chickens.

(Look out for video of my cousin helping a goat get its head out of a metal fence).

The family has owned and run the tea farm for the last 15 years. I grew up seeing photos of my cousins on wild adventures among beautiful landscapes- beaches and oceans with daunting mountains in the background. I was jealous since my teenage years, and as an avid tea drinker and someone who can appreciate time among a beautiful landscape in remote area in an earthy home (who couldn’t?) it didn’t take long for me to identify my next destination. And with a built-in tour guide and travel companion in my cousins there was little to dissuade me from planning a trip.

The farm is excellent at resource management and using local resources to create a nearly self-sustaining home life. They compost their food scraps, reuse cartons and crates. They milk the goats for drinking milk and goat milk soaps.  They grow the hens they eat and eggs they sell.  Sometimes they even shoot wild pigs that shouldn’t be on their land, and local townspeople drain, roast and eat it for day. The feeling on the farm is somewhere between an oasis and a wild jungle. They have to physically haul trash into town so they keep it to a minimum.  There are no plastic bags on Kauai. Stores provide paper bags but you are encouraged bring your own bags to the store.

Some of the work I do on the farm is collecting lauhala leaves which are spiky and do not break down. They get stuck in the weedwackers and mowers so the land must be cleared of them. The property has a burn permit, so when they need to clear land they use the leaves to burn an area. We also have picked peanuts or small leaves that look like clovers, which are nitrogen fixing and prosper easily, and replant the in areas that are muddy or dry without any greenery.

(Look out for video of me and my muddy shoes).

At night the moon shines so bright that you almost forget that it’s night. It’s the only light in the area and it’s really beautiful, especially when there is a full moon.

On Wednesday I visited a 13 MW solar facility in Lihue, Kauai and they are one of the largest sites with utlity scale Tesla batteries. The batteries can power 4500 homes for 4 hours, and are used primarily at ight to send the solar to the grid, rather than for frequency controls, which is a common function of small scale batteries on solar and wind farms.

After that and some logistics work at a coffeeshop we headed to Kauai Community Radio (KKCR) where I had my first on air interview! That was pretty exciting. I was the “Out of the Box” show form 4-6 p.m. with Jimmy Trujillo.  The KIUC representative who I had met earlier that day texted me the next day that she listened in and thought I was great, which was wonderful to hear. I’ll see if I can get the snippets from KKCR radio website, but I’m just happy  and proud of myself for getting on air with them (simply by reaching out), and promoting Electric America, and speaking well about an important issue. It was super fun.

I played basketball with some locals with my cousin. The number of places in and out of the country where I have played is growing, and I love adding new spots to the list (Kauai; DC; NJ; Sevilla, Spain).  Those are the main updates from Kauai for the time being.

Be sure to check out my photo series form the Tesla/KIUC Solar +Battery Storage site on instagram over the next week!

Aloha and Mahalo.

Is This Really Happening? A Moment of Career Awakening

That moment when you feel like you’ve cheated the system. Like life is too good for this to be real, for this to be an option.

I had that moment on a boat in the Atlantic. I looked around and saw people in neon colored life vests, equipped with ropes and carabiners, and got myself a slice of their reality. There were no other women aboard the ship, yet I felt comfortable, like that was where I was supposed to be. We dropped off men to each of the large wind turbines in Deepwater Wind’s offshore wind farm off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, and shuttled them from site to site. I spoke with the captain, and watched bags of food and equipment swing high above my head, roped up to the team on the high platform. I watched as they climbed the ladders of the yellow base, and as they came back down to the ship. I noted all of the moving parts of the sophisticated operation of coordinating and executing maintenance on the huge mechanical islands that comprise the only offshore wind farm in the U.S.

I came home and relayed my experience, and was almost waiting for someone to stop me, and say “how’d you end up with the coolest job ever?” or “that’s a job?” Then I realized it’s only the coolest to me. I enjoy the challenge of finagling my way inside. Of running from office to harbor to transmission station to get the information I needed for the story, and the contacts to find my way into the front of the boat where I could get the best shot. Of not knowing when the boat would dock again on shore- if it’d be at sea for 2 hours or 12 (it ended up being 2).

I enjoy soaking up information wherever it may come- in interviews, at a bar after a day of interviews, or at the inner harbor chatting with the harbor manager hoping to spot a boat that was destined for the turbines. As a journalist, I learn about people’s reality, and share it with the world. Then I move on to capturing the next. This is work that I can not only swallow, but I can get excited about. I am able to see other people’s jobs, home lives, families, and study them. Learn from them. And contextualize them for readers.

I realized this is how a teacher must feel when he/she has control of a classroom or has facilitated an “ah-hah” moment for a student. Or how a performer feels on stage. I was one of the crewmen (in a way) on that Thursday in June, living an alternative reality. With my articles and photos, I am providing the window into their world. And I absolutely loved it.

Meanwhile, since coming home from the trip (1 day in Falmouth, 1 day in Bourne, 1 day in Hingham & Medford at a rooftop solar site, 3 days on Block Island to see the offshore wind farm) I have so much to digest. It is information overload. The people, the places, and the angles for stories are all bubbling in my mind.

Do I comment on the energy market, show the human component, or share personal revelations?  There is extensive follow-up work that comes with an experience like that- going through recordings, notes, and photos to get quotes right, to distill relevant information for other trips or stories, to identify follow-up sources to confirm information. Then there is the question of who my audience is- where to publicize my article once completed? Do I engage with the utilities and developers? Do I sell it to newspapers and wait to post it on my own site?

In addition to organizing my thoughts and content in all forms of media, I  need to review my finances from the trip, and organize contacts. I’ll edit photos and finalize stories. Post, hashtag, share, publicize and distribute through appropriate channels. Determine appropriate channels. Find or build a market for my content.

I am creating my form of success, my small business. And it will be messy, no doubt about it.

But I will forever cherish that moment on the Atlantic. As long as I keep reliving that feeling, the one where I’m on top, where I’m cheating the world because I found what feels right, then I think everything else will fall in line.

That’s my career awakening. And I'm sticking to it.

2 Years, and a Life Flipped Upside Down

It was two Easters ago that I visited my first transformer substation. I remember because there was a Do Not Enter sign, and no one was on guard, presumably because it was Easter.  My dad and I didn’t enter, but I did take some photos from the outside, and they would become my most influential series, informing my next work and this year’s project.

In January 2017 I left my job in Washington, DC with the ambition of and intention to photograph and write about power plants across the country. The idea had been building for a while. The seeds were planted even prior to my first job, while I was undergraduate at The George Washington University, and probably at that first substation.  

Through my studies, my passion had become climate change, the underdog of phenomena and complex world issues. It is something that affects every facet of every industry, a sweeping, all-inclusive problem that wasn’t going away or really getting better. No one was talking about it, or changing their behavior, and I knew I needed to dedicate my career and life to bringing attention to it. Climate mitigation and adaptation are paramount, and unlike other problems, the cost of inaction increases each year.

Senior year of college in my black and white photography class, I was fully responsible for the development and execution of a final project.  I was thinking about themes, and landed on the intersection of nature and infrastructure. Power lines and trees; power lines and water; bridges and fauna. The juxtaposition was stark and in every corner.  As I noticed and began to shoot the subjects, I saw nature and infrastructure side by side in every eye shot. I could not unsee it.

After graduation I began working at a sustainability consulting firm. On my vacations I would tour facilities- wastewater treatment plants, recycling centers, and wind farms. I called them “nerdcations,” and lucky for me, I had a couple of friends and family who would come along, and stop at the first urban coastal wind farm in the US on the way to the beach (Atlantic City Utilities Authority tours).

When thinking about it, I realize this is the result of an extraordinary curiosity for how things work and for the systems that underpin our day to day activities- where poop goes, how we get clean water, how recycling happens, and where our power comes from (read why electricity makes me tick here).   I had a list of never ending questions for whoever would take them. I strove for clarity in the classroom, on the basketball court, in the lunchroom, in conversations with adults or kids.  Throughout my whole life I always needed  to learn more, to relate, and to understand. That I am curious and ever-analyzing, with a natural intuition to question, probably stems from my upbringing in a Jewish education-centered household. It is also reflective of my care for the world and people around me.

Now I am able to do that every day, full time, and shed light on the issues that are most pressing and relevant to all people- natural resource management,  the effects of climate change, the psychology of influencing people and changing behavior.

Two easters later, I begin to execute the vision that had been forming for  years, even when I didn’t know it. I photograph energy infrastructure every week, and am dedicating the foreseeable future- at least the next year - to it.  I now have the support of the George Washington University in a different way, via the Shapiro Traveling Fellowship.  Today when I drive I have to remind myself to keep my eyes on the road and not the powerlines and power towers.

There have been lots of questions from friends and family (to be expected, thankfully)...

What have you been doing? When are you leaving? Where are you going? Is your writing going to matter and be understandable to me, someone outside the world of energy and the environment? How often will you post? What about?

So here it goes- what I’ve been up to and where I am at

The first month was spent largely securing funding- completing fellowship applications and securing associated mentorship and planning resources. I had saved money to do this project but I was open to getting financial backing from other places than my savings account.  I searched for interested parties, and explored what subject areas and facilities I would target. I began to design my project, and put into place the avenues and resources to execute it. I also got involved with the Rutgers Energy Institute and one of the professor’s companies, Greenhouse Gas Industries LLC. There I began to research New Jersey energy resources and policy.  

In the second month, March, I set up the blog and started writing. I made contacts, developed story ideas, set a schedule for posting (which indubitably has changed, and will continue to evolve). I took my first trip to Florida to visit my grandma and my great aunt, where I was also able to visit the newest and cleanest waste-to-energy plant in the country  (read my post here). I also started working on a white paper on the prospects for offshore wind, solar, and energy storage in NJ.

In April, I celebrated Passover, continued to plan for stories, and develop contacts,and reach out to facilities to plan my trip. I started to tap into the local artist community, and show and sell my photography. My friends and family came out to the Pancakes and Booze NYC show, my NYC photography debut (More Pancakes and Booze Info). I attended the RAW artist show to support a new friend. This Friday, 4/21/17, I’ll be showing some of my nature pictures at 529 Arts Avenue in NYC at the Spring Time Open Mic (more details here).  I started reading the big climate and energy books:

This Changes Everything- Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Anne Klein  check it out here

and

The Quest- Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin

check it out here

And of course, the big kaboom, I experienced and continue to experience the utter shock, bliss, and overwhelming freedom of receiving the fellowship.

Like many other people, I have never not had some place to be and go at all times...a schedule, obligations, structure etc. It is freeing and paralyzing all at once.  Hopefully in the next weeks and months I will increasingly embrace it and hug it till it can’t disappear. April is also when I began to stress about everything I didn’t know, and about what would come of this year.  But even just by writing about it, I start to feel better.

Where the Wind Takes Me

I have been cultivating leads, talking to journalists, studying bloggers, and cold calling facilities to get an in. I’ve identified  the places I want to see, and am writing them here, so you can you can hold me accountable and get excited for what’s to come..

1. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station , Tonopah, Arizona - the largest nuclear power plant in the U.S.

2. Grand Coulee Dam, Columbia River, Washington - the largest hydropower electricity producer in the U.S.

3. Davis, West Virginia-  A place with a strong historic coal legacy and a blossoming solar and wind industry alongside it.

4. The Geysers, Mayacama Mountains, California-  Largest geothermal power plants in the country and world.

5. Compressed Air Energy Storage, McIntosh, Alabama- The  only energy storage facility of its kind in the country, using compressed air to store energy.

6. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), Carlsbad, New Mexico- Nuclear fuel rod disposal site.

Suggestions, thoughts, places or people I need to meet? Please

contact me here.

Conquering May- What’s up Next?

So this blog will be my sounding board where I try different styles, tones, articles, subjects (all related to climate), and where you can tell me what you think.

It will certainly be a journey- a travel adventure and a professional and personal journey.  I’m excited to  figure out what I like to write about,  and how to communicate about energy and the environment in a way that’s digestible, informative, and enjoyable to read, and  cross paths with extraordinary people that shape my trip.

And  this month I would like to-

• Name my project
• Streamline and rock social media
• Plan two trips

Feel free to send suggestions! In the meantime, I’ll be observing, photographing, inquiring, writing, and posting!

Molly