“[Cronkite’s report] kind-of hurt our feelings,” says David Wade, COO of EPB. “As a community, we decided to change that, and it’s been a multi-year, multi-faceted approach. The recent changes we have made here are just a continuation on some of those building blocks that were established as our community looked forward so many years ago from being a dying community to becoming a sustainable community.”

An agency of the City of Chattanooga, EPB was established in 1935 to provide electric power to the greater Chattanooga area. Today, EPB is still one of the largest publicly owned providers of electric power in the country, serving more than 169,000 residents in a 600-sq-mi area that includes greater Chattanooga, as well as parts of surrounding counties and areas of North Georgia.

Today, EPB is still one of the largest publicly owned providers of electric power in the country. EPB is building a smarter energy grid, which will reduce power outages and eliminate waste.

“Chattanooga has done a lot of, in some cases, risky and bold work on itself,” says Danna Bailey of EPB. “The work that has been done by those who came before us has been a platform to add to—and an inspiration to us to step up our game and make sure we are working to make the city the best asset it can be with the best infrastructure.”

At EPB, that meant building a smarter energy grid, which would reduce power outages and eliminate waste while improving response times and customer experience. “Several years ago, we started looking at what a next-generation electric system should be,” says Wade. “We realized that it looked much different than it was. We defined it as three things: intelligent, interactive, and self-healing.”

But before an electric grid can achieve that triumvirate, Wade says, it must be able to communicate. So in 2008—thanks in part to a U.S. Department of Energy grant—EPB began construction on a 100 percent fiber optic communications network to support its Smart Grid project. “We looked at building a communications network that would not just have us make a one-time investment that was limited to that improvement, but instead to facilitate improvement over time.”

From there, the utility layered sensors and smart devices in the field and, using software, has improved efficiency and drastically changed the reliability of the system through automation, says Wade. Initial projections estimated a 40 percent improvement in reliability, but Wade and his team often see about 50 percent and sometimes nearly 70 percent.

EPB also earned its PEER certification—a rating process that aims to define, assess, and verify the performance of power grids—from third-party administrator Green Business Certification Inc. Modeled after the LEED green building rating system, PEER also serves as the driving force behind the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) vision to transform power systems.

“What I really like about the PEER certification is using validation, looking at hard data, and putting some standards around it,” says Wade. “We appreciate that USGBC and PEER have created a model that can validate and measure performance.”

A reduction in both number of outages and the duration of outages has even broader impacts. “Of course, we haven’t stopped any cars from hitting poles—we still have the same number of accidents,” says Wade. “But instead of having trucks drive around to find out where that car hit the pole, radio back where they are, have someone looking at a map and telling them to drive to this location and open switches, then drive to that location and close switches, we have automated it.

“The system routes power around that outage without having to have folks in trucks driving around to do that,” he adds. “All of a sudden not only does that improve the service we provide our customers, it saves us hundreds of thousands of miles of driving.”

One of the biggest wastes you can have as an electric utility is from an outage—not just at EPB, but at the customer level. “That sounds like an odd thing,” says Wade, “but if you think about all of a sudden when there is an outage there are businesses out there that lose sales or must throw products away. An important piece of waste and sustainability is how you use power.”

The flow of that power through the entire utilization cycle is something EPB focuses on. “It doesn’t stop when we hand off electricity to a business,” Wade says. “They are using it for some need. If we interrupt it and it causes them to have waste products and uses more electricity to get back to where they were, then we have a whole layer of waste that we don’t talk about much.”

The waste is significant in terms of dollars as well. A recent study by the University of California, Berkeley, found that a utility in the Southeast the size of Chattanooga’s—which serves a 600-sq-mi urban and rural environment comprising 175,000 homes and businesses—would waste approximately $100 million annually due to power outages. “That is a lot of waste down the system,” says Wade. “That is a huge deal.”

But before EPB could change its grid, it had to change its culture; work that started long before the first fiber optic cable was strung. “We have put significant emphasis on and energy into really looking at and changing our culture over the last 15 years,” says Wade.

EPB also earned its PEER certification, which is modeled after the LEED green building rating system. PEER also serves as the driving force behind the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) vision to transform power systems.

“There was a point in time where we were not an easy company to do business with. We acted very much like a monopoly. If you wanted to do business with us, you had to jump through our hoops and we would install service when we felt like it.”

It was an internal problem as well. “It becomes very difficult to leverage communications across our electric system if we can’t communicate across the hall with each other,” Wade says. The major culture shift has created a more collaborative EPB, where employees are more engaged and committed to a mission to serve and improve their community and their customers. “As a municipal that is a huge privilege and responsibility,” he adds.

“We had to make that culture,” says Bailey, “and culture work is never done. But it is faster and easier to get where we need to go because we have this in place.”

New initiatives include a community solar project and leveraging the power grid while learning to use all of the information the new electric system provides in ways “we didn’t see two or even five years ago,” Wade says. That includes identifying pieces of equipment in need of service before a major incipient failure that would have previously gone unnoticed.

EPB has also started leveraging its fiber optic system by selling video, voice, and data products. Because of this, Chattanooga currently has the fastest Internet in the country, known as the “Gig” for its 1-gigabyte per second speed (about 50 times faster than the U.S. average), which has become an economic selling point for the city.
“Giving the ability to add communications and collapse time and space gives our community the opportunity to think differently and act differently,” says Wade. “We are one part of that as our electric system.”

EPB, along with several partners, recently started a relationship through which a microbiology class at a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) school in Chattanooga is taught from the University of Southern California. “Streaming live microscopic images from 1,800 miles away is drastically changing the learning experience of these students in Chattanooga,” Wade says. “We don’t have that type of microscope or instructor. It’s an extremely different learning environment.”

All of this appears to be catching the attention of other utility companies. EPB gets multiple requests and visits a week from those who want see firsthand what Chattanooga is doing.

“One of the coolest things about that, if they come to visit Chattanooga, by interacting we have the opportunity to learn from them,” Wade says. “That must be the best thing about it. We aren’t done learning and there is a lot of value in those conversations.”

LEED Certification

EPB’s downtown headquarters was the first building in Chattanooga to receive LEED certification for Existing Buildings, Operations and Maintenance. This certification focuses on the long term, cultural and operational processes that occur within commercial building. EPB must follow rigorous environmental guidelines in all areas of business, from energy use and recycling to cleaning methods and pest control to help protect our environment. It’s just one of many ways that EPB works to increase the quality of life for the people we serve.

• The LEED Project has an ROI of less than one year.¹
• To date, the Project Building’s occupants saved 5.7 Million kWh. This kWh translated to $420,640 and 4,054 metric tons of CO2. This CO2 reduction is equivalent to the carbon sequestered annually by 3,323 acres of U.S. forest.²
• So far in 2013, the Project Building’s occupants saved 336,374 gallons of water. This translates to $6,701 and is equivalent to saving the amount of water to fill roughly 15 standard-sized U.S. swimming pools.³
• During the LEED Process, the building’s occupants recycled 712 cubic yards, the equivalent of keeping 59 standard dump trucks’ waste out of landfills.⁴
• During the LEED Process, Corporate CSA Program participants bought 3,500 pounds of sustainably grown local produce.⁵
• During the LEED Process, Clean Commute participants avoided an estimated 248,420 miles of conventional travel, an amount equivalent to traveling to San Francisco from Chattanooga 102 times.⁶
• During the official LEED Process, 69 people representing 26 organizations worked over 4,000 hours to make this project happen.⁷

1. Approximately $125,000 spent / $131,650 in annual recurring energy savings = ROI less than one year. This calculation doesn’t include other benefits, such as water savings.

2. 5,746,450 kWh x .0732 (losses rate) = $420,640. CO2 and equivalencies calculated using the US EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator.

3. Data is from EPB’s TN American Water bills. Standard Pool calculation referenced by Ask.com & WikiAnswers: 336,374 gallons/ 22,000 gallons = 15.3 US standard pools.

4. Data is from Internal Recycling Records independently gathered by Reliable Building Solutions. 712 cubic yards/12 cubic yards = 59.3 standard dump trucks.

5. Data from Crabtree Farms delivery records.

6. Data from Internal records; data utilizes employee zip codes for estimated miles and considers travel method. Chattanooga to San Francisco miles calculated using GoogleMaps.

7. Data from internal and external records. Hours include administrative and operational activities, but do not account for time spent outside the LEED Performance Period.

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Peer Power

USGBC’s Performance Excellence in Electricity Renewal (PEER) program takes LEED-like strides toward transforming power systems.

By Kiley Jacques

John F. Kelly, PEER Program lead. Photo: Marc PoKempner

transformation; they viewed it as an advanced learning system.

“LEED was the best model we could find of systemic transformation,” notes Kelly. “We think the reason is that LEED focused on transforming the professionals, the people, instead of the policies, standards, or codes.”

Thus, in 2010, Kelly met with LEED’s chief of engineering, Brendan Owens, to develop a similar approach for the electricity system. The team learned from Owens that he wished initial LEED efforts had started with a more measure-driven and outcome-focused premise. “That was one of [PEER’s] fundamental principles,” says Kelly, “—to focus on capabilities that are measurable and that matter to the customer.”

After five years of research spent looking at LEED’s six levels of performance, the PEER team established their own comprehensive set of principles, which drove how they would select criteria for measuring performance. “Just about everyone we talked to in the industry—from mayors to public service commission leadership and staff to owners of industrial facilities and commercial buildings to microgrid owners—they all thought about four areas of concern unanimously,” notes Kelly.

John Kelly and team establish their own comprehensive set of principles for measuring performance. Photo: Marc PoKempner

The result of all that legwork is a system that measures: reliability and resiliency, energy efficiency and environment, operational effectiveness, and customer engagement. This last category was put in place to address the fact that, currently, there isn’t a supply-demand correlation—even when demand goes up, the price doesn’t change; there’s no curve, which means it is very inefficient. In other words, customers do not receive a price signal so “they just use what they want whenever they want.” Kelly speculates this lack of correlation costs “probably double” what it should.

To address the issue, PEER developers came up with the idea for customer contribution, which looks at how the consumer can contribute services back to the grid; when demand is high, a price signal is sent out. Subsequently, customers reduce their load. (The idea came out of the way LEED buildings lower their demand when the grid is stressed). This type of incentive system has started to emerge in PEER.

With the mission of measurability in mind, each of the four categories includes criteria for which customers receive points. Points are also given for actual performance and capability. For example, with respect to environmental responsibility, PEER assesses the impact of electricity generation and transmission and encourages the adoption of clean energy. The criteria in this category address energy efficiency, air emissions, resource use, renewable energy credits, and power delivery impacts. “Right now most states use metric percent renewable system as a metric for how green their system is,” explains Kelly. “But percent renewable is a technology—it doesn’t tell you anything about the carbon footprint or the energy efficiency performance.” With PEER, points are given for actual efficiency in terms of carbon pollution, water consumption, and solid waste. “The percent renewable may affect those performance outcomes, but points are given for actual outcome, not the technology used,” notes Kelly.

Beyond environmental impact, of course, consumers expect high-quality service from their electricity provider at competitive rates. The intent of the operational effectiveness category is to assist in the identification and elimination of wasteful spending through performance benchmarks. Electricity costs, microgrid contribution, general operating expenses, capital spending or investment, and indirect costs are all analyzed. Customers who demonstrate operational effectiveness have a competitive advantage, in that eliminated waste means lower distribution charges. Kelly notes, that contrary to popular belief, higher reliability doesn’t necessarily mean higher rates. “PEER helps customers get to the point of being able to offer levels of performance not before thought possible while also lowering operating costs.”

As LEED did for the building industry, PEER offers new ways of thinking about energy systems. Now, for the first time, LEED and PEER give professionals a comprehensive understanding, “almost like a whole language,” of what sustainability is. “People are seeing how taking one action can result in addressing a handful of environmental concerns,” says Kelly. PEER adherents are beginning to design and operate much more efficiently and effectively, using a set of tools and strategies that achieve unprecedented levels of performance.

As industry professionals adopt PEER systems, better policies and standards follow. “It’s like having an army out there that’s really trained on a much more effective way of designing operating systems,” enthuses Kelly. To date, there are two levels of professional PEER training: Fundamentals are designed for everyone, and provide basic understanding of all the performance criteria. “It gives them a new way to think about electricity delivery,” says Kelly. Advanced course graduates get a certificate of completion for a much more technical program during which they apply PEER to a project—they implement and score it, and “really use it in their professional lives.” The aim is to develop PEER users, who can go apply it for others. Last year’s advance program served 15 trainees. Kelly predicts 30 to 40 this year, and 100 the next. “We’re hoping to really grow that army of the PEER advanced.”

University of Texas Hal C. Weaver Heating and Powerstation II. Photo: Michael Stravato

Kelly’s vision for PEER includes thermal distribution in addition to electrical, and that it follows a trajectory similar to LEED’s. As Version II and Version III come out, he anticipates it will continue to improve. In 10 years, he foresees 50,000 PEER professionals using it for a range of projects, even if those projects are not PEER certified. “That’s how the transformation starts to happen,” says the forward-thinking Kelly.

“The University of Texas in Austin is an outstanding performer in terms of all of the PEER criteria,” notes Kelly. “Their leadership was dedicated to sustainable energy delivery, and had been working on it for 15 years.” Interested parties hadn’t seen anything in the marketplace that they wanted to model until they saw PEER. “They immediately understood how important it was to have a system like this,” notes Kelly. “They wanted to be one of the first PEER-certified projects so that they could be a shining example of [an institution] that applied all the criteria, and how they could drive such good performance.” Today, their operating budget has been cut in half—from $40 million to $20 million—and their reliability is the best in the country.

Southern California Edison has been working on the demand-response credit—they helped LEED get it into the marketplace. “It’s been a very successful part of the credit,” notes Kelly of the school’s PEER-related efforts. In fact, their environmental policy precisely demonstrates PEER’s own mission, as they “assure accountability for environmental compliance while fulfilling our mandate to safely provide reliable and affordable electric service in environmentally responsible ways.”

Finally, there is the policy initiative enacted by the City of Chicago, which applied PEER to energy procurement. (The city can buy power for all residential customers.) They used the energy efficiency and environmental category in their specification when they went out to bid and evaluate suppliers—they negotiated by demonstrating improved performance at the same cost. “They were not willing to pay more for their power, but they offered the contract to the supplier with the best PEER score,” says Kelly. Ultimately, they even eliminated coal from their system.

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