Industry News Briefs
April 9, 2009 Headlines
DOE Touts “Huge Potential� of U.S. Wind Energy Industry
Lower Costs, Stimulus Funds Spur State DOT Building Boom
Industry News
Stimulus Plan Puts Green Firms at Head of The Line
Constructioneer (04/06/09) Kimball, Jeff
Companies proficient in green building methods and building green facilities, along with those with experience in federal government procurement, will be at an advantage as they pursue opportunities to participate in the federal stimulus program. The $789 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stated that green building adherence is mandated and/or preferred in many of the funds that got the most allocations. In the funds provided to federal agencies throughout the legislation, environmentally friendly techniques and projects are urged in almost all the work on facilities and infrastructure improvements, with the language indicating that "green building principles shall be strongly considered," including the use and/or generation of renewable energy and energy efficiency. The Act also specifies that most of the funds will be committed to existing federal agencies for construction and associated projects relating to their own facilities, and for the most part those funds not assigned for federal use will still be managed by federal agencies to allocate to state government. About $28 billion will be allocated to highways and bridges, while $8 billion will go to high-speed rail and $6.9 billion to transit assistance; there also will be a $1.5 billion discretionary fund apportioned by the secretary of transportation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's $7.2 billion fund will be assigned to projects ranging from superfund and underground storage tank remediation to clean water and state assistance grants for brownfields, while the Army Corps of Engineers will receive $4.6 billion that includes $2 billion for environmental infrastructure construction and $375 million for Mississippi River corridor improvements. In cases where funds flow down to the states from the feds, the Act mandates, for the most part, that existing formulas be applied to ascertain allocations of $53.6 billion in state stabilization funding. Agencies are urged by the legislation to spend half of their funds in the first four months, and the Act favors projects ready to go in the first 120 days; however, the deadline for getting projects under way has been pushed back to Sept. 30, 2010, unless otherwise indicated.
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DOE Touts “Huge Potential� of U.S. Wind Energy Industry
U.S. Department of the Interior (04/02/09)
U.S. offshore areas near coastal urban centers have huge potential for wind energy development, says U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. "More than three-fourths of the nation’s electricity demand comes from coastal states and the wind potential off the coasts of the lower 48 states actually exceeds our entire U.S. electricity demand." Salazar says that sustainable sources of energy must be found to meet future demand and wean the United States off foreign oil and gas. "We sit on 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves. We consume 25 percent of its oil. Our dependence on foreign oil is a national security problem, an environmental security problem, and an economic security problem." The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management has identified about 20.6 million acres of public land with wind energy potential in the 11 western states and 29.5 million acres with solar energy potential in the six southwestern states. Furthermore, there are more than 140 million acres of public land in the western states and Alaska with geothermal resource potential. The National Renewable Energy Lab has identified more than 1,000 gigawatts of wind potential off the Atlantic coast and more than 900 gigawatts of wind potential off the Pacific Coast. "We are opening our doors not just to oil and gas and coal, but also to the wise development of solar, wind and wave, biofuels, geothermal, and small hydro on America’s lands," says Salazar.
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Lower Costs, Stimulus Funds Spur State DOT Building Boom
Arizona Republic (03/27/09) Holstege, Sean; Hansen, Ronald J.
The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) says that historic declines in construction costs will help the state achieve even more roadway work using its federal stimulus dollars. ADOT expects that if it can award contracts while the economy still has not rebounded, the state should be able to complete more than 41 planned stimulus projects. Across the country, state transportation departments are realizing big savings from dropping construction costs, and President Obama's stimulus plan specifically sought to get money spent now before costs go up. "I call it a limited-time sale," said Kenneth Simonson, the chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America. "It's the most widespread slowdown in materials in my 37 years as an economist." It is also expected that labor costs will stay low, and Arizona's construction labor pool has already been hit very hard—nearly three times the rate of the industry in general. Arizona is looking to achieve five large projects in urbanized Maricopa County, while smaller jobs such as repaving are on the agenda for more rural areas of the state.
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Green Diamonds: Baseball Stadiums Take a Swing at Energy Efficiency
Scientific American (04/05/09) Hadhazy, Adam
Many baseball stadiums around the country are looking to bolster their environmental credentials in a variety of ways, including the Washington Nationals, whose ballpark is the first Major League Baseball (MLB) stadium certified as a green building, and the Cleveland Indians, who installed an upper deck solar array at Progressive Field. The MLB commissioner's office partnered last year with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for the Team Greening Program, which helps teams figure out ways to help protect the environment and control climate change. Some teams, such as the Philadelphia Phillies, have worked to keep tabs on their carbon footprint and purchase renewable energy credits to offset their ballpark's power use for 2008 and 2009. Like the Nationals, the Minnesota Twins and Florida Marlins are also pursuing LEED certification for their new stadiums, while the San Francisco Giants are retrofitting their park in search of LEED certification as well. The New York Mets' new stadium will include metered hands-free faucets and waterless urinals, while the Yankee's new stadium will include reflectors to amplify stadium light output, thus saving 300 watts per lamp compared to standard field lights. Even the oldest working MLB stadium, Boston's Fenway Park, is adding solar panels to offset 37 percent of the natural gas burned for heating water at the stadium, and 11 BigBelly solar-powered trash compactors have been added as well.
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U.S. Lenders Wary of Funding New Power Plants
Reuters (04/02/09) O'Grady, Eileen
U.S. power plant developers will have difficulty in finding financing in the tight credit market. According to a panel of power industry lenders at the Gulf Coast Power Association conference in The Woodlands, though banks will be equipped to lend capital to the electric industry, loans will be smaller and on much tougher terms. James Metcalfe, managing director of power and utilities for UBS, noted that loan eligibility will be evaluated primarily by credit rating. Furthermore, Richard Randall, managing director for power and project finance for RBC Global Banking, said that banks will no longer be interested in financing long-term projects single-handedly, seeking to limit loans to five to seven years. Lastly, panel members cited a lack of clarity on future power prices, given the potential for renewable power requirements, carbon limits and the return of demand growth as the economy stabilizes.
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Mapping Disasters in 3-D
Technology Review (03/31/09) Grifantini, Kristina
Texas A&M University lab's Robin Murphy and colleagues have developed RubbleViewer, a tool for modeling a disaster scene that they say is more efficient than drawing by hand. The RubbleViewer program is designed to upload pictures that are taken from small unmanned air vehicles (SUAVs), and use the algorithms of the PhotoSynth panorama-making software to combine the snapshots. Three-dimensional (3D) maps are built by extracting information from data points, which is like placing a blanket over a bunch of needle points, says Maarten van Zomeren, a graduate student at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands who helped develop the software. First responders would be able to build a topographic 3D map of an area in about a half an hour. RubbleViewer would allow them to determine the location of possible survivors by clicking on a spot to annotate the map and call up the specific photos. The developers plan to integrate RubbleViewer with SUAVs as well as land-based search-and-rescue robots for an easy-to-use first responders system. The team says the system would be cheaper and more portable than helicopter-mounted lasers.
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Energy Secretary Chu Announces $6 Billion in Recovery Act Funding for Environmental Cleanup
U.S. Department of Energy (03/31/09)
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced $6 billion in new funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for environmental cleanup. Projects identified for funding will focus on accelerating cleanup of soil and groundwater, transportation and disposal of waste, and cleaning and demolishing former weapons complexes. "These investments will put Americans to work while cleaning up contamination from the Cold War era," says Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "It reflects our commitment to future generations as well as to help local economies get moving again." The funding is being administered by the department's Office of Environmental Management.
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GSA Submits Economic Recovery Plans to Congress
U.S. General Services Administration (03/31/09)
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has submitted a $5.55 billion spending plan highlighting the public building projects it plans to accomplish with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which allocates $750 million to renovate and construct federal buildings and courthouses, $300 million to renovate and construct land ports of entry, and $4.5 billion to convert federal buildings to high-performance green buildings. "GSA welcomes this unprecedented and exciting opportunity to contribute to our nation’s economic recovery, address strategic energy goals and reinvest in our public buildings," says acting GSA Administrator Paul F. Prouty.
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ODOT Seeks Car Charging Stations
Portland Business Journal (OR) (03/31/09)
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has become the first state in the nation to solicit bids for a network of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. "This effort to promote consistency in the EV charging network is vital to gaining public recognition and acceptance of the new technologies coming on the market," says Gail Achterman, chairwoman of the Oregon Transportation Commission. Art James, director of the electric vehicle initiative for ODOT's Office of Innovative Partnerships, notes that the state is learning from others' mistakes. In the late 1990s, for example, there were two competing charging technologies employed around Los Angeles. "If you were driving an electric vehicle and running out of juice, if it didn't connect to your vehicle you were out of luck," says James.
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DoD's $7.4B Stimulus Windfall
Federal Times (03/30/09) Vol. 45, No. 5, P. 1; Kauffman, Tim; Castelli, Elise
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) will be allocated $7.4 billion in stimulus funds, and the Pentagon has mapped out how that money will be spent on military facilities. Operations and maintenance is outlined to receive $4.2 billion, while $1.3 billion will channeled into hospital construction. The construction of child development centers will receive $240 million, while $220 million will be dedicated to energy conservation construction projects and $300 million will be apportioned for energy-efficient technology development. Troop and family housing construction projects will be funded with $315 million. New hospitals at Camp Pendleton in California and Fort Hood in Texas will comprise the largest projects in the plan at a combined budget of $1.2 billion, and Defense will undertake a total of 122 construction projects with the stimulus money through 2013. Energy projects are slated to comprise nearly 50 percent of the $3.4 billion in operations and maintenance spending identified so far. DoD intends to purchase thousands of motion sensors to shut off lights when buildings are empty, digital control systems to adjust air temperatures automatically, and meters to track energy consumption. Tens of millions of dollars will be spent to implement alternative energy solutions such as photovoltaic systems that translate sunlight into energy, wind turbines and ground source heat pumps. Pentagon planners have targeted backlogged building and system repairs as their primary spending focus, and the National Association of State Energy Officials President Donald Gilligan says his group would prefer "to see the military services use some of this money to leverage much bigger energy efficiency projects."
Stimulus Bill Funds Intelligent Transportation Systems
Government Technology (03/23/09) Opsahl, Andy
Money from the stimulus bill is being utilized by municipalities in St. Cloud, Minn., and elsewhere to fund intelligent transportation systems (ITS). St. Cloud has received $320,000 to sponsor an upgrade of its traffic-monitoring software, and St. Cloud traffic systems manager Blake Redfield says securing the money was easy thanks to the "joint powers agreement" the city shares with its county and the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT). Traffic signals within St. Cloud are owned by all three entities, which means that they share access and control of the lighting regulation system. "In Minnesota, there just aren't a lot of cities doing a tremendous amount of ITS types of projects, especially communities our size of around 100,000 people," notes Redfield. The St. Cloud ITS purchase became an even more probable candidate for stimulus funding because Mn/DOT desired funding to be channeled into a diverse group of projects. Questions raised by St. Cloud's project include whether state and local stimulus recipients are spurring job growth, which is what President Obama wants the stimulus bill to do, or paying bills already planned for with stimulus money instead of state-generated funds. Mn/DOT district traffic engineer Tom Dumont says that the implementation of the traffic-monitoring software was stepped up with the stimulus money, which could have helped save jobs. On the other hand, Redfield points out that the three agencies involved intended to upgrade the software anyway because the vendor announced that it would halt maintenance service for the existing software in 2011. "It was [a matter of], 'Do we continue the maintenance contract on the old system that we know isn't going to be supported in a couple years, or do we upgrade the system right now?' " says Dumont.
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President Obama's Push to Modernize the Electricity Grid Will Require Agencies to Get A Lot Smarter About How They Track Energy Use
Government Executive (03/09) McIntire Peters, Katherine
Experts say efforts to upgrade the U.S. electric grid will require government agencies to pursue more innovative methodologies to monitor energy usage. Energy Department data reveals that peak demand for energy has exceeded the rate for transmission capacity by nearly 25 percent for the last 27 years. When combined with the growing population, rising use of energy guzzling devices such as large screen TVs and computers, and the added toll of electric vehicles, solar panels and other renewable sources, the U.S. electric grid needs a major overhaul to handle the increased load. Industry experts and politicians alike have pushed for the creation of a smart grid that would improve the reliability, efficiency and security of America's electricity system. However, to do this, the government will need more accurate energy usage patterns. The Energy Department believes advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is the first step to building a smart grid. Advanced metering systems have primarily been installed in metropolitan areas, but the Navy is working to create an international network of advanced, two-way meters that would compile the data needed to incorporate more renewable energy production, lower energy use, and better manage consumption as it relates to production levels and price fluctuations.
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Google's Power Play
Conde Nast Portfolio (03/01/09) P. 108; Waldman, Peter
Google and General Electric (GE) have teamed up on an ambitious project to transform the United States' energy production infrastructure from a model characterized by inefficiency and overconsumption to a decentralized, distributed, and disembodied platform. The ultimate aim is the deployment of energy-smart homes where appliances know when to power up and power down, and where heating and cooling systems automatically adjust themselves to changes in energy prices. Google has visualized a massive computer network that monitors and manages the nation's electricity grid and establishes prices for power according to real-time supply and demand. Google has been focused on energy efficiency for years, and the company discovered that it could lower its servers' overall energy consumption by up to 50 percent below what most other companies use to run their systems by modifying the servers' voltages and power supplies. Google engineer Erik Teetzel says the problem of making money from the distributed electrical grid will be sorted out once the major technical issues are resolved. Google and GE are planning the rollout of an advocacy campaign to lobby for more federal subsidies and incentives for environmentally friendly power.
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Finding the Optimal Plant Design
Membrane Technology (Supplement to Water & Wastes Digest) (03/01/09) P. 16; Pearce, Graeme
Membrane filtration applications in the water industry employ one of three module formats--pressure-driven inside feed (PDI), pressure-driven outside feed (PDO) and submerged vacuum-driven (SUB)--and the distinct traits of the formats lead to variation in the optimum flux for commercial plant design. Plant data from PDI and SUB feed formats demonstrates that the two formats have similar fouling rates for a given flux, and the increase of the fouling rate is exponential with flux. But in the SUB case, the slope of the fouling rate curve is less, likely because of the feed's low turbidity. Most membrane systems utilize a chemical-enhanced backwash (CEB) to sustain performance, which can be executed automatically and whose chemical consumption, waste output and downtime is inexpensive. The process is not completely effective because the cleaning action depends on a short soak period, and so from time to time off-line cleaning or clean in place (CIP) is employed. With CIP, extended soak periods and recirculation or drain down guarantees a greater effectiveness and usually a full recovery or permeability. CIP's shortcomings include a significant loss of production due to downtime and greater volumes of chemical, so care must be taken to limit CIP frequency as much as possible and instead rely on CEB. Membrane permeability can be used to watch over plants to ensure stable long-term performance, and monitoring indices can be assessed from permeability trends. These indices can be employed in conjunction with the permeability data to vary chemical wash frequency and procedures and also forecast CIP intervals.
Make It Brief
Roads & Bridges (03/09) Vol. 47, No. 3, P. 28; Hanson, Vance; Farr, Travis; Mayhew, Deryl
The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has adopted newly accepted techniques to build bridges with unprecedented speed, recently achieving four total bridge replacements on Interstate 80 in just 37 hours. The design-build team of Wadsworth Bros. Construction and Stanley Consultants decided to take a different approach from UDOT's original plan, which had been to replace the decks and approach slabs while using temporary bypass structures during the replacements, with four 16-hour weekend closures planned. Instead, the contractors chose to build new bridges near the existing bridges, then using the weekend closure times to swap the new and old bridges using self-propelled modular transporters. “This project called for a really high level of coordination between the contractor and the designer that really made the difference in being able to open I-80 in less than 24 hours in each case,” said Brett Hadley, a project principal with Stanley Consultants. In the end, the two-weekend project was finished three hours early on the first weekend and eight hours early on the second. Among the innovations were pre-casting the approach slabs near the existing approaches and the use of the same temporary support points for both the new construction and the demolition of the older structures. In addition to setting a new speed record for bridge construction in Utah, the $9.4 million project included several other firsts, including the first total closure of a major interstate trucking route for bridge replacement as well as the first instance of bridge approaches being replaced during the same highway closure as the bridges themselves rather than in separate closures.
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