Negawatt

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future

by Gretchen Bakke  · 25 Jul 2016  · 433pp  · 127,171 words

bill. The problem becomes, given that all these various customers are still on the grid, how the electricity they don’t use—their so-called “negawatts”—might be counted, paid for, and deployed. This is the real story behind contemporary grid reform: not just valuing electrons made by unusual producers, but

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watts were no longer needed. What he saw when he looked at his grocery store was not a power plant but a machine for making negawatts; it was that machine that all of the rest of us had trouble seeing precisely because it looked, and worked, exactly like a grocery store

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in terms of the various ways that the whole thing had been redesigned not to need it. Or, as Amory Lovins (who coined the term “negawatt” way back in 1990) said, “Customers don’t want kilowatt-hours; they want services such as hot showers, cold beer, lit rooms,” and this can

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the sun, cooling from fan-made breezes rather than chemical air-conditioning, and wattage not used because it isn’t needed. These saved-watts or negawatts are the electric power a machine or a building or a lighting system or a factory doesn’t use. Though a

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negawatt is a theoretical, rather than a real, unit of non-power, it serves the purpose of allowing us to measure and quantify avoided consumption. Given

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less. (Not “less-is-more,” mind you, but “the same with less.”) At least, this is the goal of those committed to an accounting of negawatts and equally of the man who manages the most energy-efficient Albertsons in the United States. Even ten years ago, the answer to this desire

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that saving kilowatt-hours was expensive precisely because retrofitting inefficient buildings with more efficient technologies is the least cost-effective way to achieve the goal. Negawatts simply cost too much to be worth their while. This is the reason why there is only one Albertsons with a fuel cell and a

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to deal with the mess and bother. This is precisely why, as long as investment in retrofitting remains the main means of bringing about a negawatt revolution (or, in our case, a negagallon one), it won’t happen. The efficiency and conservation measures necessary to insure a drastic community-wide drop

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that so seamlessly integrates power-saving systems that even its most constant users would be shocked to know that they are moving through a massive negawatt machine. The other half of the secret is to get the grid to do most of the work in this direction for us. We need

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) this non-use will get factored into our financial thinking about the grid, and its reform. If it can be given a stable price, a negawatt will matter as much to how actors big and small choose to reform our grid as a tax cut, a subsidy, or a guaranteed low

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can be linked to efficient buildings that automatically deploy grid-scale conservation. At times this is accomplished by something as simple as dimming the lights. Negawatts, in other words, can now be ordered up by the utility and delivered by an Albertsons. Network enough of these power-savers into a flexible

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gas combustion turbines to thirty-five hundred rooftop solar installations (three hundred of which also have deployable battery storage) to fourteen reliable, flexible, medium-scale negawatt producers to thirty thousand electric cars. It can then use the resources of each—generation, deployable efficiency, storage—to balance out demand with production capacity

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be among the means we use to network our resources—those that produce power as well as those that negate or reduce consumption—then a negawatt will need a stable value. It will need to become a currency whose worth everyone can agree upon so that it might be transacted without

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microprocessor pushed into every crack it will be able to take anything we can throw at it—variable generation, distributed generation, small power, big power, negawatts, nanogrids, mobile storage, weird weather—and integrate these into a self-balancing, highly reliable system. Such a grid would be something like a national (or

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, http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown-climate-change-renewable-energy-20151007-story.html. “using less electricity more efficiently”: Amory Lovins, “The Negawatt Revolution” in Across the Board XXVII vol. 9, September 1990, 21–22. significantly more people: From Katherine Tweed, “U.S. Electricity Demand Flat Since 2007

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as a battle over federalism, and whether FERC is going too far and getting into state territory.” “stimulate much-needed investment”: “Selling It by the Negawatt,” Economist, December 2, 2014, http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21635404-demand-response-industry-consolidating-selling-electricity

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-negawatt. irregularities are highlighted: Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2007). or a puddle of tar: Jacob Von Uexküll distinguishes

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, here, here addiction to electricity, here cost of retrofitting, here and imperfect things, here and infrastructure visibility, here, here and need for grid overhaul, here negawatts, here and preference for common grid, here surcharge for renewables, here virtual power plants, here wireless systems, here Hunter, Don, here Hurricane Irene, here hydropower

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Energy Plan, here National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), here, here, here national security, here natural gas, here natural gas plants, here natural gas turbines, here negawatts, here Neri, Joseph, here net metering, here, here Nevada Las Vegas smart meter radiation, here solar power in, here, here, here New Hampshire, here New

Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid

by Meredith. Angwin  · 18 Oct 2020  · 376pp  · 101,759 words

be popular with businesses, but it is very popular with some environmentalists—the ones who favor less energy use and favor paying for “negawatts.” (Armory Lovins introduced the “negawatt” concept in 1985. It basically consists of setting economic incentives for using less electricity.) If you have connected Energy Star appliances and a

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price of, 335 summer planning and, 172–174 trend toward increased use, 99–101, 364–366 wind power and, 152 negative energy prices, 208, 357 “negawatts,” 322 net metering, 201–202, 226, 235, 285, 291–295, 293, 295, 300, 302, 305–306, 351, 361 Nevada, net-metering in, 294–295, 351

Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations

by Nandan Nilekani  · 4 Feb 2016  · 332pp  · 100,601 words

into the system. Energy efficiency has in fact been dubbed the ‘fifth fuel’, and Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute has coined the term ‘negawatt’ to describe power saved through efficiency or conservation.13 Energy efficiency is being driven by innovations across multiple areas.14 Renewable energy sources, in particular

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. http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21639016-biggest-innovation-energy-go-without-invisible-fuel 14. 1 March 2014. ‘Negawatt Hour’. Economist. http://www.economist.com/news/business/21597922-energy-conservation-business-booming-negawatt-hour 15. 15 January 2015. ‘Renewables. We make our own’. Economist. http://www.economist.com/news/special-report

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are Thekeys to Sustainability

by David Owen  · 16 Sep 2009  · 313pp  · 92,907 words

of the park’s two-thirds reduction of its pre-solar power demand—a form of virtual energy that Amory Lovins has usefully named the “negawatt.”) A further complicating factor regarding all forms of electric power is that demand for electricity in the United States is certain to change radically in

Food and Fuel: Solutions for the Future

by Andrew Heintzman, Evan Solomon and Eric Schlosser  · 2 Feb 2009  · 323pp  · 89,795 words

.aceee.org/. 16. This and other information about energy efficiency can be found in A. Lovins and H. Lovins, “Mobilizing Energy Solutions.” 17. A. Lovins, “Negawatts, 12 Transitions, Eight Improvements and One Distraction” Energy Policy 24, no. 4: 331–343. See also World Alliance for Decentralized Energy, “World Survey of Decentralized

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber  · 29 Oct 2024  · 292pp  · 106,826 words

but the machines aren’t working. But crypto mining can instantly stop and instantly start back up again. So it’s a competitive provider of “negawatts,” or on-demand reductions in electricity demand. Renewables tend to be less predictable than other kinds of power, so, in an indirect sense, crypto mining

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans

by Mark Lynas  · 3 Oct 2011  · 369pp  · 98,776 words

unnecessary use, whether that generating capacity is powered by diesel, nuclear fission, or the sun. (The energy-efficiency guru Amory Lovins calls these saved units “negawatts,” in a play on megawatts.) In the Maldives, antiquated fridges and air-conditioning systems place a huge burden on electricity supplies; much of this could

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story

by Kurt Eichenwald  · 14 Mar 2005  · 992pp  · 292,389 words

Implementing Findings & Principles for Joint Action on Western States Power Markets,” “ESPA Letter on Open Access,” “Summary of Democratic Alternative Bill,” “Federal Demand Buy-Down (‘Negawatt’) Proposal,” “LNG,” and “Carbon Dioxide.” Finally, the author also reviewed copies of notes taken during the meeting by a participant. 17. Dialogue of Skilling’s

The new village green: living light, living local, living large

by Stephen Morris  · 1 Sep 2007  · 289pp  · 112,697 words

would be that energy efficiency is an investment, not a hardship. The cheapest kilowatt is one you don’t have to buy, a concept called negawatts. Studies show that the cost of buying efficiency is about half the cost of buying energy. Purchasing a product that uses less energy than another

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet

by Varun Sivaram  · 2 Mar 2018  · 469pp  · 132,438 words

industrial power customers already regulate their demand at a greater scale. In most of the major U.S. electricity markets, they can sell negative megawatts (“negawatts”) of power savings alongside the megawatts of power supplied by conventional power plants.43 But this is just the beginning for demand response. A wave

The Switch: How Solar, Storage and New Tech Means Cheap Power for All

by Chris Goodall  · 6 Jul 2016  · 271pp  · 79,367 words

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

by Richard Heinberg  · 1 Jun 2011  · 372pp  · 107,587 words