POWER PEOPLE TO THE

Most of us don’t think about electricity outside of two scenarios: our monthly bill is due, or our power goes out.

We’ve lived with power lines so long that they’ve become a part of the landscape. We no longer notice them running down our streets or along our highways.

Our entire modern lives rely upon the energy grid, yet we don’t know anything about it, even though it runs right through our neighborhood.

What is it? Where is it? What if something happens to it? c ould we run out of power?

this month, while our air-conditioners are running full blast, might be a good time to find out.

Where exactly is the energy grid?

We’ve heard about it and vaguely knoW it’s responsible for ensuring that our DVRs record our favorite shows, our laptops and mobile phones can be recharged, and our air-conditioners continue humming to stave off the summer heat. (Plus it powers our lights, refrigerators and other such minor things.)

But where is the energy grid? It sounds obscure, but it’s actually in plain sight all around us.

“It’s not a grid in a sense of square grid,” says Bill Muston, manager of research and development for Oncor, which delivers electricity to Dallas homes. Muston instead describes the grid as “radial.”

Those giant high-voltage transmission lines around the city, the ones on Audelia between Church and Royal, for example? Power generated by gas, coal, wind and other sources at 550 plants throughout the state travels through lines like those and into Dallas.

The high-voltage transmission lines carry up to 345,000 volts and can transmit anywhere between 50 and 500 megawatts of energy at a time, which power between 10,000 and 100,000 homes at peak demand. That power then “goes through transformers to step it down to 12,500 volts, and those are called substations,” Muston says. Neither Oncor nor other electrical entities publish maps of the grid flow or substations for security reasons, but “there’s no secret,” Muston says. A large grouping of metal poles and wires in a gated area is hard to miss.

For example, there’s a substation by the boat houses at White Rock Lake, and one west of Audelia near the high voltage transmission lines between Church and Royal.

Where did Texans’ energy come from in 2012?

NaTural gas 44.6 percent Coal 33.8 percent NuClear 11.8 percent WiNd 9.2 percent Hydro, biomass, solar aNd sTorage 0.6 percent

Source: electric reliability council of texas, Inc. (ercOt)

The substations then transmit the power to various “districts” around the city and deliver it to the transformers and utility lines near our homes. One transformer — what looks like a cylindrical tube attached to a utility line — serves between four and eight homes, Muston says. The transformers convert the electricity into either 240 volts, powering electric stoves or dryers, or 120 volts, powering just about everything else in a home.

The high voltage transmission grid is networked across the state, so “if you lose one segment of it, it just keeps going,” Muston says.

“The outages occur more at the district level where you have trees fall onto lines or drivers hit poles.” t he texas grid is called ERCO t and is run by the Electric Reliability Council of texas. Why does texas have its own grid?

Read our web story at lakehighlands.advocatemag.com.

How to make the electric company pay you

L StreetS North reSideNt Weston Brown didn’t install solar panels on his roof for environmental reasons. He saw it as an investment.

Brown spent $25,000 on the panels four years ago, “but the economy was in the pits,” he says. “You could make over $150 a month for six or seven months. You couldn’t earn that kind of money if you invested $25,000 in stocks.”

He’s talking about the money he made through an energy buy back program, which paid him for solar power generated by his house. Before the panels, Brown paid $400 to $500 a month on his summer electric bills.

“And that’s just my wife and I, no kids running in and out, and keeping the drapes pulled,” Brown says. After the panels, however, “I got credit for everything I produced subtracted from my bill. The neighbors were spending $400, $500, $600 a month during the summer months, and I was spending $150.”

Energy buy back plans have evolved over the years, and of the companies that offer such plans to Dallasites now, Brown feels TXU Energy has the best offer. Through the program, the energy created by the solar panels on his house are first used to power Brown’s home. When his home isn’t using all of the solar energy created, it goes back into the grid, and TXU tracks and credits him for that energy.

It’s a lower credit than it used to be, he says, more like $40 or $50, “but it still helps,” Brown says. “I mean, everything helps.” His summer electric bills now hover around $70 to $80, with winter bills more like $30 to $40, he says.

The energy overhaul of Brown’s home began with a tornado that came through 10 years ago and forced him to replace his roof, he says. He paid a little extra to install sheets with aluminum on one side to reflect sunlight away from his home, plus added a “blanket” under the roof for extra installation. Around the same time, he replaced all of the windows in his circa 1959 house with low-E glass, which also reflects sunlight.

“All that stuff helps. Our house is more thermally efficient,” Brown says. “You’ve got to spend some money to save money.”

He says his roof “is not the very best” for solar panels. Brown lives in a one-story home with a peaked roof. Oak trees shade the front, so the panels are on the back of his roof, which aims west, and they generate the most energy between noon and 3 p.m., he says.

“If somebody had solar panels [that received sunlight] from 9 in the morning until sun goes down, that’s the ideal situation,” Brown says. “A flat roof would make out pretty good because the sun is hitting directly on the panels all day long.”

Even though Brown doesn’t have the “ideal situation,” he doesn’t have any regrets about installing the solar panels.

“I would do it again,” he says.

Hello, sunshine

2 texas’ ranking among u s states for rooftop solar potential

10 texas’ ranking among u s states for actual solar panel installations

13,000

Homes powered by the 64.1 megawatts of solar panels texans installed in 2012

20

Percentage of u.s. annual electricity needs that could be met if every eligible home and business rooftop installed solar panels

$12,938

Incentives offered by Oncor when a residential customer installs an 8.3 kilowatt solar panel system in 2013; visit takealoadofftexas.com for information

Sources: Solar Energy Industries Association, Green Mountain Energy and Oncor

Q. Whom should I call when the lights go out?

A. 1.888.313.4747. That’s the Oncor Electric Delivery number. Oncor delivers all of the electricity to Dallas, Fort Worth and many surrounding areas.

Q. If I sign up for a ‘green’ electricity plan, does that ensure the power reaching my house is produced by wind, solar or another renewable energy?

A. Nope. Coal, natural gas and nuclear power are still being pumped through your transmission lines and into your home, most likely. But you are guaranteeing that the amount of renewable energy you are paying for will be piped into the power grid.

“Regardless of which retail electricity provider a customer chooses, there is no way to separate electricity on the power grid based on how it was generated,” says Juan Elizondo, a spokesman for TXU Energy. “When a consumer purchases a retail electricity plan with renewable electricity, that amount of renewable energy is put onto the power grid. It may or may not be the power that reaches that customer. Those consumers are ensuring that renewable power is put onto the grid, and they are supporting the further development of renewable resources.”

“Think of the electric grid as a giant bathtub that is constantly being filled from many different faucets, and each one represents a different electricity generation source such as coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, etc.,” says Katie Ryan, spokeswoman for Green Mountain Energy. “Each time you use electricity, you drain a little water from the bathtub. As the demand for electricity from renewable sources increases, more of the clean water goes into the tub — and less of the dirty water from fossil fuel sources is needed.”

Q. Is there any way that renewable energy could grow so popular in Texas that customer demand would overtake supply?

A. Yes, in theory.

“The demand for renewable energy is what makes it grow,” Ryan says. “When demand exceeds supply, renewable energy gets built.”

16,000

Are renewable energy plans the easiest way to be green?

6,000

Pounds of CO2 emissions avoided in a year by someone who participates in a 100 percent renewable energy plan and uses an average of 1,000 kilowatt hours per month

Pounds of newspapers that would have to be recycled to equal avoiding 16,000 pounds of CO2 emissions

Source: Green Mountain Energy