I cringe when I think of the recent hours upon hours I've spent burrowing into the welter of details - some significant but most minute - having to do with the justifications for a variety of distributed-energy (DE) projects.

For those requiring turbines large enough to drive battleships across the bounding main, decisions can be made by properly briefed boards of directors based on generally understood economic principles. And maybe a similar situation can occur on relatively small-scale projects - HVAC comes to mind - where the decision process takes place at a level closer to the washroom. That leaves the rest, which I'm hesitant to call "the majority" because the complexities involved in the broad range of projects tend to drive people screaming away from the table early in the process.

A fact of life is that nearly every DE project is unique and, being so, often requires effort seemingly in excess of what's justified for something that seems to offer little if any benefit in head-to-head cost-savings over what is already available on the grid. Only when you look at other factors (see this issue's Guest Editorial by Joe Iannucci) - most of which are difficult at best to quantify - does the true value of the DE proposition become apparent.

Our Approach to Value Assessment

By the end of 2004, we will have presented something on the order of 40 case studies of up-and-operating DE projects principally in North America. In these, it is our intent not just to highlight the activities and their economics but also to delve into the challenges, concerns, and rationale underlying decisions critical to project success. Here are the general guidelines I ask my writers to consider as they build their articles:

• What DE activities are involved and what are the goals?
• When did the project owners begin to think about this activity, and what motivated them to move forward
• Who was involved in the "discovery" processand, if consultants were involved, how were they selected?
• What did they see as the alternatives to (a) the project and (b) the way it would be handled?
• What were the expectations at the outset? What factors predominated their thinking as they approached taking action
• When and by whom was the decision to proceed made?
• Who was involved in the action, and what were the principal issues each faced?

Further, after describing construction/installation activities at various stages and from the perspective of those physically engaged in the project, my writers are asked to consider these:

• What surprises - painful as well as pleasant - surfaced, and how were they handled?
• When the project was completed, how well did the results match expectations?
• What were the lessons learned?

While straightforward economics are a factor in all of these areas, they often are not the most important in the eyes of the project owner, and that's what we hope to tease out with this approach.

It is in the telling of such stories that we expect DISTRIBUTED ENERGY to become a reference guide to those in our audience contemplating DE in their operations. Moreover, we hope that you will see many of your own concerns addressed and perhaps answered in the experiences of those whose projects are chronicled in these pages.

Send John an email

DE - March/April 2004