Companies Unplug From the Electric Grid, Delivering a Jolt to Utilities

[kristopher]

Companies Unplug From the Electric Grid, Delivering a Jolt to Utilities

Michal Czerwonka for The Wall Street Journal

On a hill overlooking the Susquehanna River, two big wind turbines crank out electricity for Kroger Co.'s KR -0.55% Turkey Hill Dairy in rural Lancaster County, Pa., allowing it to save 25% on its power bill for the past two years.

Across the country, at a big food-distribution center Kroger also owns in Compton, Calif., a tank system installed this year uses bacteria to convert 150 tons a day of damaged produce, bread and other organic waste into a biogas that is burned on site to produce 20% of the electricity the facility uses.

These two projects, plus the electric output of solar panels at four Kroger grocery stores, and some energy-conservation efforts are saving the Cincinnati-based grocery chain $160 million a year on electricity, said Denis George, its energy manager. That is a lot of money that isn't going into the pockets of utilities.

From big-box retailers to high-tech manufacturers, more companies across the country are producing their own power. Since 2006, the number of electricity-generation units at commercial and industrial sites has more than quadrupled to roughly 40,000 from about 10,000, according to federal statistics.

Experts say the trend is gaining momentum, spurred by falling prices for solar panels ...

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324906304579036721930972500-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwODExNDgyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email

[PoliticAverse]

1. These companies have not 'unplugged' from the grid. They're still all connected to it. n/t

[msongs]

2. for-profit and shareholder greed are becoming obsolete in the power business...now that people have

alternatives like solar panels and wind turbines. soon enuff all power companies will become non-profit models since jacking customers to pay shareholders will fail

[Benton D Struckcheon]

3. This one made my jaw drop:

BMW AG's assembly plant in South Carolina, which made 300,000 vehicles last year, gets half its electricity from an on-site energy center that burns methane piped to it from a nearby garbage dump.

Given the amount of energy a factory pumping out 300,000 cars uses, that is seriously amazing.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. 11 MW - BMW says it's 30% of electricity demand

but they use the heat as well, and it's 60% of total energy use.

The new system, which is nearing completion, will include two new highly-efficient gas turbine generators capable of producing 11,000 kilowatts (kW) of electricity. These two new co-generation turbines will replace four older, less-efficient turbines. The new turbines have the capability to increase electrical output from 14% up to almost 30% of the plant’s current electrical demand. While the new turbines double the overall electrical output using the same amount of methane gas, through electrical and hot water generation over 60% of the plant’s total energy requirements continue to be provided by methane gas produced at the nearby landfill.

https://www.bmwusfactory.com/bmw_articles/bmw-manufacturing-expands-methane-gas/

[Benton D Struckcheon]

8. Thanks for the clarification,

still pretty amazing. I was just reading something about how much methane wasted food puts out. Methinks we need to do a lot more of this.

[LiberalEsto]

4. Serves the utilities right. They've fucked us over for too long.

Deregulation -- thanks to the repukes -- eliminated utilities' pretense at serving the public and enabled them to do whatever they want, which is relentlessly pursue obscene profits while failing to maintain or upgrade equipment, laying off utility workers and forcing customers to pay the huge costs of their reckless ventures into nuclear energy.

[randr]

5. This trend is another example of how the market

place will resolve our dependence of fossil fuels.

[kristopher]

6. This is the market as a tool, not as an arbiter

It was policy decisions taken on the basis of normative values that created the economic landscape where renewables could compete.