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Quarterly Journal 2020 | Quarter 1

The Oklahoma Association of Energy Engineers

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Greetings AEEOK Members and Colleagues:

The AEEOK Chapter started 2020 off strong with our annual conference cohosted by Oklahoma Renewable Council (OREC), 20/20 Envision the Future. The food and speakers were great, and we had over 150 in attendance, even on a cold and wet January day. A big thank you to Mary Foley and Nina Carlson for organizing the event.

My favorite presentation was from Terry Simonson on the topic of C-PACE for Oklahoma. We are hopeful this new program will pass at the state legislation level so that the program will launch in the great state of Oklahoma. Please take a minute to learn about C-PACE and how this unique financing mechanism will influence energy efficiency, beneficial electrification, and renewable energy projects. Visit INCOG’s website http://www.incog.org/CPACE.html to learn more.

As a member of AEEOK or an advocate for energy efficiency, let us not forget the valuable role we play for our organizations where we work, the service we provide to our customers, and our commitment to the communities where we live. We should always strive for excellence. Here are my thoughts on why excellence so important:

1. The buildings or industries we touch as a professional AEEOK member reflect on the industry as whole. So always give your best to customers. If you are unsure of a technical issue, reach out to your colleagues for help.

2. Keep in mind the overall mission of improving the well-being of people. For example, reducing the energy intensity cannot comprise comfort or indoor air quality.

3. Energy efficiency for buildings or processes is good for our customers’ pocketbooks and the planet.

There is unlimited opportunity and potential to make a positive impact in many ways for Oklahoma. So for 2020, get going AEEOK membership – let’s make EE the first choice and only choice!

Thank you all,

Tom KorpalAEEOK President

Welcome from the President:

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Our Board Members

Lyle Stogner

Burl Ray Chambers

SecretaryTreasurer

Tom KorpalPresident

Mary Foley Event Director

Trent Marlett

Dr. HiteshVora

KylahMcNabb

Executive MemberExecutive Member Executive Member

Kerry Rowland

TysonTaussig

Past PresidentExecutive Member

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Regulators are going to have to catch up with developers who are installing cutting-edge battery storage technology in Oklahoma to boost the amount of power available on the region’s grid.

Developers of the Skeleton Creek project, which will go live in stages over the next two years, discussed that issue and other interesting facts about their plans as part of a renewable energy conference held this week in Oklahoma City.

Questions that must be resolved include defining how to establish nameplate capacities for battery storage projects and then how to use them to meet regional power demand needs that are ever-changing as more wind and solar capacity is added to grids.

Currently, natural gas-fired generating stations are a preferred way to supply that balancing power, but batteries could change that over time.

Engineers, renewable enthusiasts at Oklahoma renewable energy conference discuss advantages, challenges associated with newest technologiesBY JACK MONEY, THE OKLAHOMAN | JANUARY 24, 2020

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NextEra is building the Skeleton Creek project, expected to generate about 1.8 million megawatt hours of energy annually, in Garfield, Alfalfa and Major counties. When it opens, it will be the largest facility of its type in the world.

Its power will be bought by Western Farmers Electric Cooperative, which supplies energy to both the grid operated by the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and to 21 distributive cooperatives across Oklahoma and parts of New Mexico it serves.

In 2018, it generated about 6 million megawatt hours of power, while its customers consumed nearly 13 million megawatt hours during the same period. It sells power to and buys power from the SPP's open market.

The SPP's grid covers all or parts of 13 states between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River valley between the Red River on Oklahoma’s south border and the U.S./Canadian borders.

Phased deployment

Skeleton Creek will become operational in phases.

The first piece, Skeleton Creek Wind, will be able to generate 250 megawatts of energy when it comes online this year.

Skeleton Creek Solar will be able to generate 250 megawatts of energy. It will come online in 2023 along with Skeleton Creek Energy, which will have the ability to store and furnish 200 megawatts of energy for four hours on a full charge.

Currently, there are very few regulations that cover the battery technology. But Casey Moye, a project director with NextEra, and Phillip Schaeffer, the principal resource planning engineer with Western Farmers, remarked the SPP found itself in similar circumstance when large-scale wind projects were just beginning to get built.

Over time, SPP and its members developed and adopted rules enabling the technology to effectively be implemented into the system, and both men said they expect the same will happen again.

For now, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued an order that requires the SPP and other regional grid operators to develop rules to define nameplate capacities for storage projects (an important issue, as investment tax credits that help make them affordable are tied to that number).

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“The question of how much capacity is appropriate for battery storage products is still being debated across much of the country,” Schaeffer said, adding that questions about how it will be used still must be resolved.

“Many grid operators would prefer to just turn on a natural gas plant when a need for more power exists and to not have to deal with a new technology.”

Moye and Schaeffer discussed the Skeleton Creek project in a breakout session that was part of the annual energy conference hosted by the Oklahoma Association of Energy Engineers and the Oklahoma Renewable Energy Council.

Renewables key

Participants in other breakout sessions during the conference gathered to talk about other renewable energy technologies and programs.

This year’s conference, titled “2020, enVISION the Future,” was held this week in Oklahoma City.

Tom Korpal, president of the engineers association and a district energy services leader for Trane, a subsidiary of Ingersoll Rand, helped open the conference by telling how his company is working to address global climate change and how far it hopes to get in the next decade.

“Things will be more complex in 2030,” Korpal said, noting current projections estimate the middle class will continue to grow and that urbanization trends will continue.

To meet those needs, energy engineers will be increasingly turning to using renewable sources of power.

It is about how we can interconnect our networks and build cities of the future in a sustainable manner,” he said.

Opening session attendees also heard from Matthew Ellis, part of a team that is building electric vehicle charging stations across the southwest for Francis Energy.

Ellis told how his company successfully built and deployed a network of more than 250 fast chargers at about 110 locations across Oklahoma during the past few years and its future plans.

“Our goal is to replicate this across surrounding states,” he said.

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Join Us for the

AEEOK TRADE SHOWDATETHURS March 26

11:30AM – 1:30PM

Aloft – Tulsa Downtown200 Civic CenterTulsa, OK 74103

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Imagine how much cheaper concrete, glass, steel and other building elements would be if the energy required to produce them was free. What’s more, imagine how much better for the environment it would be if the intense energy requirements for these building materials came from renewable sources rather than fossil fuels.

One new company — a “secret” start-up backed by Bill Gates called Heliogen — thinks it has made a breakthrough in these regards. The company has invented an improved method of concentrated solar energy that could supply heat for manufacturing and other industrial processes, according to CNN.

The breakthrough involves using concentrated solar — that is, using mirrors to focus solar energy to a single spot — to achieve high temperatures not previously possible. The company uses artificial intelligence to move the mirrors to the perfect locations and at the perfect angles to focus solar energy to a single spot. This allows the system to produce temperatures hot enough to make steel and concrete.

Solar Breakthrough Could Disrupt Building Product ManufacturingBY GREG ZIMMERMAN, BUILDING OPERATING MANAGEMENT AND FACILITIESNET.COM | NOVEMBER 21, 2019

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Concentrated solar isn’t new, but it had only been able to produce temperature up to 1,049 degrees F, not hot enough for manufacturing, so renewable energy technology hadn’t yet disrupted these industries. This new technology can produce temperatures up to 1,832 degrees F, according to Engadget, hot enough for the manufacturing process of a variety of building materials.

The company is also working on new energy storage solutions to store the heat created so that manufacturing could continue when the sun isn’t shining.

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Wind energy has made its way deep into the heart of Oklahoma’s Little Dixie.

On Tuesday, Southern Power announced that its 100-megawatt Wildhorse Mountain Wind Facility in the Ouachita Mountains in Pushmataha County is operational.

It is the only operating project generating power using wind to be located so far south and east in the state, at least for now — something industry advocates attribute to technological upgrades involving blades and turbines that have made it possible to generate a usable stream of energy at increasingly low wind speeds.

These days, a steady breeze of 3 to 4 miles per hour suffices, opening up southeastern Oklahoma to wind development opportunities that previously weren’t feasible, said Mark Yates, vice president and Oklahoma director of the Advanced Power Alliance.

Southern Power energizes Ouachita Mountains wind farm in southeastern OklahomaBY JACK MONEY, THE OKLAHOMAN | FEBRUARY 12, 2020

Photo Credit: Southern Power

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“Fifteen years ago, you would not have been able to develop a project of this type in southeast Oklahoma," he said.

The other reason projects are beginning to move into that part of Oklahoma is to escape from congestion-related issues involving the grid covering northern and western parts of the state as additional wind, solar and storage technology projects continue to be designed and built.

Yates said there is about a 2-gigawatt queue of pending wind energy projects across the state, plus another 6 gigawatts of pending solar projects that are in some stage of development.

“Clearly, we have no expectation that everything in the queue will get built,” Yates said, “but we have a lot still to come.”

As for the Wildhorse Mountain project, Southern Power officials said it is selling associated renewable energy credits and the electricity the plant produces for the next 20 years to the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp.

Wildhorse Mountain consists of 29 pole-mounted wind turbines manufactured by Vestas, which Southern Power hired to maintain.

Southern Power acquired the facility in May 2018 from Renewable Energy Systems, the developer that built the project and created 250 jobs at peak construction.

Southern Power officials stated Tuesday the project fits Southern Power's strategy to acquire and develop projects covered by long-term contracts with counterparties that have strong credit support.

With the addition of Wildhorse Mountain, officials stated Southern Power's wind portfolio now consists of more than 2 gigawatts, making up nearly half of its 4.5 gigawatts of renewable assets that include more than 40 solar and wind facilities that are operating or under construction.

"Wildhorse Mountain Wind Facility is our fourth wind project in the state of Oklahoma, and we are pleased to see this project achieve commercial operation," stated Mark Lantrip, Southern Power’s CEO.

"This additional facility showcases our commitment to the development of wind energy and is an excellent addition to our growing renewable fleet."

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COMING SOONAEEOK will be offering AEE Renewable Energy Professional Certification training this summer. Stay tuned for more dates and more details!

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Petros PACE Finance, LLC has closed two Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) transactions totaling $4.9 million with Ross Group, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based commercial real estate owner and developer, to finance energy-saving building measures in the redevelopment of two properties into hotels in downtown Tulsa.

Ross Group secured $3.2 million in C-PACE financing for the recently completed renovation and conversion of the historic building into a 90-room Hilton Curio hotel, in addition to $1.7 million in C-PACE financing for the construction of the 116-room Holiday Inn Express & Suites — Downtown Tulsa. The deals mark the first C-PACE transactions to close in Oklahoma.

Two Hotels Are First Properties in Oklahoma to Use C-PACE Financing for Energy Efficiency UpgradesBY EMILY HOLBROOK, ENERGY + ENVIRONMENT LEADER | FEBRUARY 3, 2020

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On Dec. 4, 2018, OSU celebrated its 1,000th industrial assessment/energy audit milestone performed by OSU’s Industrial Assessment Center (IAC). IAC team members, acting and retired faculty, OSU administrators, officials from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Rutgers University, and Wichita State University gathered at CEAT’s newest undergraduate laboratory, ENDEAVOR, to celebrate. The industrial assessment/energy audit was performed the following day at ASCO Aerospace.

The IAC helps small and medium sized U.S. manufacturers save energy, improve productivity and reduce waste by providing no-cost technical assessments conducted by university-based teams of engineering students and faculty. The program began in 1976, funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce, with four university programs, then called Energy Analysis and Diagnostic Centers

Industrial Assessment Center at Oklahoma State University celebrates 1,000th Industrial Assessment milestoneOKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY | FEBRUARY 18, 2019

From left: Abhimanyu Sah, IAC Student; Dr. Paul Tikalsky, CEAT Dean; Jon Chisum, Maintenance/Facilities Manager of Asco Aerospace USA; Dr. Ron Van Den Bussche, Associate Vice President for Research; Bruce Tifft, Asco Aerospace USA; John Smegal, US DOE; Pragya Niraula, IAC Student; Justin Kirby, IAC student; Dr. Hitesh Vora, OSU IAC Director; Dr. Michael Muller, Rutgers University; Devarshi Tharwala, IAC Student; Dr. Mehmet Bayram Yildirim, WSU-IAC Assistant Director; Dr. Chuck Bunting, CEAT Associate Dean of Research; Evan Hawk, IAC Student; Dr. Deepak Gupta, WSU-IAC Assistant Director; Dr. Michael McCombs, IAC Professional Staff member

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(EADC). The program moved to the DOE in 1978. In 1980, the program was expanded to include additional universities. It was at this time Oklahoma State University’s School of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) joined the list of participating universities.

OSU IAC is home to one of the oldest and most successful industrial energy-efficiency offices in the nation. OSU IAC has been continuously operational since 1982 when Dr. Wayne Turner, Emeritus Regents Professor in IEM founded the chapter. Turner led OSU IAC from 1982-2001, when he retired. Steven Parker, now the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Energy Engineering, was one of his first engineering student team members. Dr. William Kolarik, also an Emeritus Regent’s Professor of IEM, took over from 2001-2017 until he retired. Currently Dr. Hitesh D. Vora, assistant professor of mechanical engineering technology, is leading this center as the acting director. The current OSU IAC program is funded by the DOE with $1.8M for the years of 2016 to 2021.

“The IAC team continues to support economic development in Oklahoma by helping manufacturers improve their efficiency and lower their energy costs,” said Ed Kirtley, assistant dean of the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. “I believe this adds to our state’s competitiveness in national and international commerce. Consequently, this brings jobs to our state which benefits all Oklahomans.”

There are 28 IACs in the United States and OSU IAC is one of the centers serving the small and mid-sized manufacturers from the state of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and North Texas. OSU IAC is the first to reach the 1000th assessment milestone among the 28 IACs nationwide.

“My first-hand experience with OSU IAC and Dr. Vora has included the 1,000th industrial assessment celebration this past December. What an accomplishment!” said Dr. Kenneth Sewell, OSU vice president for research. “I was impressed to learn that the OSU IAC is the first IAC nationwide to reach this milestone.”

Overall, the IAC program has achieved over $4.5 billion of implemented energy cost savings since its inception. Particularly, the OSU IAC program has contributed $308.2 million or 30.28 Tbtu of implemented energy cost savings since 1982, according to the DOE IAC Database.

“This single OSU/DOE energy partnership has saved Oklahoma industries more than three times the State’s annual investment in all of the Oklahoma State University and more than 20 times the 37-year total investment OSU pays off to impact the industry of Oklahoma,” said Paul Tikalsky, Dean of CEAT.

The structure of IAC program is also unique and innovative and fulfill the land-grant mission of Oklahoma State University to provide good economic impact to the region. The OSU IAC program integrate the three important pillars - teaching, research, and outreach of the land-grant mission. The main mission of IAC is to provide small and mid-sized manufacturers with industrial assessments or energy audits at no cost to help reduce energy and waste and increase

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productivity, at the same time, educating and training students to make them capable of becoming the next generation of energy, waste, and productivity professionals. The related goal is to provide all the training and education to the students and make them skillful before they graduate and later easily find the job and work as an energy engineer. In addition, the mission of IAC is to work throughout the region to coordinate with utilities, manufacturing extension programs, and manufacturing associates to provide potential clients (in addition to the ones directly served) with relevant information on plant energy conservations and the facilitation of effective and efficient energy management systems. In addition to providing technical support to the small to mid-sized manufacturers through energy assessments, the IAC program offers several other important benefits. Apart from the routine energy audits which cover a broad scope of industrial settings and subsystems, the IACs also provide technical material and workshops promoting energy efficiency. Under the leadership of Dr. Vora, the OSU IAC currently emphasis more efforts in smart manufacturing, cybersecurity for energy efficient manufacturing, productivity improvement, and ISO 50001 along with the existing areas of energy management.

For more information about OSU’s IAC, contact Dr. Vora at hitesh.vora@okstate.edu or 405-744-9578, or visit iac.okstate.edu.

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