A unique combination of circumstances, incentives and forward-thinking makes the nation’s fifth largest jail a green facility.

By Penelope Grenoble O’Malley

How did a low-profile county on the east side of San Francisco Bay go from buying all its power off the grid to installing the country’s largest rooftop solar system—1.2 MW—followed by one of the largest (1 MW) fuel cell cogeneration plants in the country?

“Sometimes timing is everything,” says Matt Muniz, energy program manager for Alameda County. “But you have to look for opportunities. Then, when they come about, you have to move quickly.”

Muniz joined Alameda County’s General Services Agency in 1993, three years after the county’s new $172 million Santa Rita Jail was completed. The California Energy Commission had already been established. The California Public Utilities Commission was pushing to control energy costs, which were among the highest in the nation, and deregulation and eventually the California energy crisis loomed on the horizon—to be followed by AB 970, statewide legislation encouraging renewable and alternative energy. In the meantime, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) had initiated its demand-side management program, Power Saving Partners, and although electrical costs for the Santa Rita Jail were 3 to 4 cents lower than commercial buildings, the county decided to respond to PG&E’s request for energy conservation proposals. It was the first of many instances of being in the right place at the right time.

“The eventual goal of the PG&E program was to save 20 megawatts of energy,” says Muniz. “We put in a bid to save 1 megawatt at four cents a kilowatt or $150 annually. By the end of the three-year program, we had received rebates of $3 million.”

Although the county’s conservation proposal covered a number of buildings, the jail was its largest energy consumer. Overall, 12,000 lighting fixtures were retrofitted with energy-efficient T lamps and electronic ballast. Lighting controls were installed throughout the facility, and 550 inefficient, fractional horsepower, exhaust-fan motors were replaced with premium efficiency motors. At the end of the day, electricity costs at the jail were reduced by one-third.

Housing over 4,000 inmates in 18 housing units, the Santa Rita Jail is completely air conditioned and maintains its own laundry and food service operations. Given the circumstances, Muniz took a close look at what was on California’s energy radar and concluded conservation by itself wasn’t enough. Simultaneously, the county board of supervisors signaled it was taking the situation seriously by requiring a 10% internal rate of return on all energy-related projects.

After a stint on a City of Oakland committee also looking at demand-side opportunities, Muniz began seriously considering solar as a way to pick up some of the jail’s power load. Berkeley-based PowerLight Corp. had answered Oakland’s request for proposals, and Muniz was intrigued with what the company had proposed. Solar would work the best when the jail needed it most, during summer months from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Best of all, the PowerLight system was a patented photovoltaic (PV) assembly that, instead of drilling holes to mount solar panels, relied on thousands of foam-backed tiles applied to the existing roof surface.

What PowerLight calls its PowerGuard tiles sit several inches above the roof surface, shading it from the sun and reducing both conductive and radiant heat transfer into the building’s interior. On areas where the tiles were not applied, the county installed a cool-roof coating, which reflects 65% of incoming solar energy and has effectively reduced the roof’s summertime temperatures by 50°F. Aside from its power-generating capabilities, the PowerGuard tiles, in combination with the cool roof coating, have helped reduce peak demand by reducing air-conditioning needs at the jail. The challenge, says Muniz, was whether the solar solution was affordable, especially in light of the county’s new 10% rule.

To make the project work financially PowerLight contracted with CMS Viron Energy Services in Overland Park, KS, for a $1 million replacement of the jail’s chilled water system with a new 850-ton, high-efficiency chiller, including new variable-speed drives, chilled-water pumps, and cooling towers that respond directly to precise, real-time cooling requirements rather than operating full time at 100%. A Utility Vision monitoring and control system developed by CMS Viron automatically reduced peak power consumption during dips in solar-generated electricity. If clouds block the sun for even five minutes on a summer afternoon, the system will automatically reduce power consumption proportionately. In a flash and without necessarily meaning to do so, Alameda County would be showcasing the synergy achievable by combining the latest advancements in PV solar energy and state-of-the-art energy-efficiency measures. Muniz concludes, however, that none of this would have been accomplished had PowerLight not come up with its energy conservation package.

It also didn’t hurt that in the fall of the same year California began experiencing the series of rolling blackouts that preceded the state’s full-fledged energy crisis. Immediately after the solar contract was signed, the state raised incentives from $2.25 to $4.50 per watt, which sweetened the rebate pot. In July 2001, what turned out to be Phase 1 of the Santa Rita Jail solar project—a 519-kW PV rooftop system—was installed on six of the jail’s 18 housing units. Three months later the state raised the 500-kW cap on solar projects, and the county installed a second 131-kW solar system on two additional housing units. By then the energy crisis had hit “big time,” says Muniz. Wholesale prices “went through the roof,” and PG&E raised rates for the jail to 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, effectively doubling the facility’s electrical costs. With the state’s cap now up to a megawatt of incentives, Muniz seized the opportunity and pushed forward Phase III of the jail’s solar installation, which in one big jump brought the total to 1.2 MW. In all, some 9,000 PowerGuard tiles (130,000 square feet) have been installed on 14 of the jail’s 18 housing units.

The cost of the solar plant, cool-roof coating, and energy efficiency upgrades plus roof repairs came to $9.9 million, all of it paid for without dipping into the county’s general fund. By the time the third phase was installed, the Santa Rita Jail boasted the fourth largest solar electrical system in the world and the nation’s largest rooftop system. In addition, it was projected that the insulation benefits of the new roof, the new chiller, and additional efficiency upgrades put the county in line for saving 1 million kWh.

Net dollar savings from the combined solar and energy conservation efforts are projected to be $330,000 annually, which adds up to $8 million over the next 25 years. A large chunk of the project’s cost was handled with $4.2 million in state incentives from the California Energy Commission’s Emerging Renewable Buy-Down Rebates Program and PG&E’s Distributed Generation Incentive Program, both ratepayer-funded programs that have played a major role in solar electric development in California. The county also picked up $435,000 from the California Energy Commission (CEC) by way of the $50 million pot allocated by AB 970, which then Governor Gray Davis signed in 2000. CMS Viron Secured another $250,000 through the California Public Utilities Commission’s cost-cutting demand program, which was administered through PG&E. Added to this was a $780,000 fixed 6% loan and a $1.1 million fixed 3% loan from the CEC’s Energy Efficiency Financing Program for local governments, to be paid off by avoided electricity cost savings over the next 11 years. A $50,000 grant from TreePeople helped pay for the cool roof. Muniz is emphatic that the state’s incentives were critical to making the project happen the way it did. “Otherwise, we would have had to stop where we started, at 500 kilowatts.”

“Matt Muniz was ahead of the curve,” says Sara Birmingham, manager of Self-Generation Incentive Programs at PG&E. “The Alameda County project was probably one of the biggest projects the CEC ever had in its program. Shortly after it was completed, all projects over 30 kilowatts came over to us.”
Once the solar plant was up and running, Muniz began thinking about picking up more of the jail’s power load and contracted with Viron to evaluate onsite technologies that offered cogeneration to help meet hot water demands in the jail’s laundry and kitchen, not to mention 4,000 inmates taking daily showers. From a mix that included engines, microturbines, turbines, and even wind power, the county finally opted for a 1-MW DFC1500 molten carbonate fuel cell from the Danbury, CT–based FuelCell Energy Inc.

By the time the third phase was installed, the jail boasted the fourth largest solar electricity system in the world.

“The fuel cell wasn’t the cheapest alternative,” says Muniz, “but being ultraclean was the determining factor.” An additional advantage was that since fuel cells use chemical energy conversion to produce energy and heat without combustion, they also eliminated the need to meet California’s tough air-quality regulations. The 1-MW fuel cell was also a perfect fit with the jail’s power and hot water needs. The installation would pick up the jail’s baseline 24 hours a day, seven days a week, leaving the solar to pick up most of the peak. Whatever else was needed would come from PG&E.

FuelCell Energy makes 1- and 2-MW fuel cell units, the largest commercial fuel cell plants currently available. The objective in offering units of this size, says Executive Director of Strategic Marketing Andy Skok, is just what Muniz was looking for “to make a dent in taking demand off the grid.” Muniz estimates the 1-MW fuel cell picks up 50% of the jail’s annual power needs (about 8,000,000 kW) and about 20% of the hot water needs with 1.4 Btu of waste heat. Overall system efficiency is 58%. Muniz says that depending on the time of day and outside ambient conditions, in summer months the combined solar installation and fuel cell generate 80%–90% of the jail’s power. At nighttime this drops to approximately 60%–70%, but the load is also diminished (peak load in terms of what the jail imports off the grid occurs at 10 p.m.).

System design and construction for the fuel cell was handled by Chevron Energy Solutions.

Total cost of the project, which was dedicated in 2006, was $6.1 million. Incentives, including $1 million from the US Department of Defense Climate Change Fuel Cell Program, paid for $2.3 million. It is estimated the project will produce a net savings of $6.6 million in energy costs over a period of 25 years, or $266,825 annually. System design and construction was handled by Chevron Energy Solutions in San Francisco. According to Bob Redlinger, Chevron’s director of renewable and distribution energy, one of the benefits of having a company like Chevron on the job is that a third party can make a fast-track project like this work. “One of the values we brought to the project,” says Redlinger, “was meeting some pretty tight construction deadlines related to the incentives. Building like that takes a lot of coordination and construction expertise. It’s particularly challenging in a facility like this because there are a lot of public outreach requirements for contracting, which can be pretty rigorous.”

By the time it began work on the Alameda County fuel cell project, Chevron had acquired CMS Viron and installed Viron’s Utility Vision management system as part of the project. The Web-based system provides the real-time systems information Chevron uses to monitor savings associated with the project, and Muniz says the county is using it to identify periods of peak demand. “The peak could be just one 15-minute period during one part of the month, and the energy management system helps us identify and manage that.”

Combing a fuel cell with solar once again put Alameda County in the industry forefront. There was no other such facility in the country. “Ten years ago,” says Skok, “the solar folks and the fuel cell folks looked at each other as if they were competitors. It’s only been in the last couple of years that they’ve realized the two technologies are very complementary to each other and that installations like this make a lot of sense.

“The incentives are the enabler. As a manufacturer, we need the incentives to be competitive. But as we generate more of these units and our costs come down, the incentives will become less critical. For example, what we were doing four or five years ago that might have cost $10,000 a kilowatt or more is now down in the $3,000 a kilowatt range. We’re looking forward to that trend continuing so that the incentive dollars can be spread over more units.”

At PG&E, Birmingham agrees. “That incentives are particularly critical on projects that are innovative and don’t yet have a lot of market saturation has been fairly well understood in regard to solar. But I don’t necessarily see that same level of discussion on the fuel-cell-industry side of it.

“The state has just approved and is in the process of implementing the California Solar Initiative, a $3 billion program that begins [in 2007]. The intent is to install 3,000 megawatts in the next 10 years. The program is set up to have the rebates decline over time, the idea being that at the end of 10 years the market will have been transformed enough and prices will be low enough that incentives won’t be needed. Right now, PG&E has the most solar customer interconnections of any other utility in the nation: 13,000, representing 100 megawatts. Since 2002 PG&E has provided $150 million in rebates to nearly 300 solar customers.”

Meanwhile, back at the jail, the county is tapped out incentive-wise. Not to worry, says Muniz, who’s got other things on his mind. He’s looking at an “environmentally benign battery technology,” which he describes as being “like a reverse fuel cell. You charge up a battery at nighttime when power is cheap, then use it to peak shave.” Right now Muniz is looking for grant money to demonstrate the technology will work. He’s also sure there’s something he can do with the jail’s foodwaste, such as convert it to methane via an anaerobic digester, then use the methane to fuel the fuel cell.

In addition to the jail, Alameda County operates seven other solar installations, including the two largest solar tracking carports in the country, and is taking advantage of state-mandated net metering to use the grid “as a battery,” as Muniz puts it. The program allows PG&E customers to export unneeded power generated onsite to the grid and receive buyback credit for when they run short.

What does PG&E think about these self-generation developments? “We strongly encourage integrated demand-side management options for customers,” says Birmingham. “And we absolutely support our customers’ right to chose the energy options that make sense for their facility and for their energy needs from a portfolio that includes energy efficiency, demand response, load management, and renewable and clean generation. We definitely include these types of technologies in our long-term procurement forecast when we’re planning what we will need in resource acquisition.”

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors recently adopted a Climate Control Leadership Strategy, which stresses energy that is ultraclean and/or renewable. As if Matt Muniz needed any encouragement. “You look for opportunities,” says Muniz, referring to grants, loans, incentives—whatever will help get the job done. “And when they come about, you get to work.”  

Penelope Grenoble O’Malley specializes in topics related to energy and the environment.

DE - March/April 2007