The draft Ninth Northwest Power Plan talks about challenges and opportunities facing the Northwest, and Portland, in the coming years. Among them are the need for a great deal of electrical capacity, the need to make better use of the existing system, and high-tech growth as a major source of new demand. Separately, the plan also discusses commercial-building efficiency, demand response and storage.
Portland’s downtown, I believe, has a potential, partial, solution to these challenges. Four issues being treated somewhat separately, when connected, carry the seeds to this solution.
First, connecting a major new electrical load in many tech markets can take three to seven years, and that is leaving companies with nowhere, and no way, to grow. In addition, starting in 2028, downtown Portland buildings must begin complying with Oregon’s new Building Performance Standard. And the Northwest region itself needs far more electrical capacity than it currently has, as the draft Ninth Power Plan makes clear. Lastly, Portland’s downtown has remained stuck in its efforts to come back from, and face, its current challenges.
These four issues — time to power, the Building Performance Standard, the Northwest energy system’s needs and requirements as outlined in the Ninth Power Plan, and downtown Portland’s need for reinvention — have a common and connected solution.
Portland’s Central City already has roughly 150 Tier One buildings that need to be in compliance with the Building Performance Standard, over 10 million square feet of vacant office space, buildings already connected to the grid, a downtown that needs new work, and a regional power system that needs flexible capacity. To connect, and address, all these seemingly disparate elements, I am proposing an initiative called The Grid-Connected Core.
The Grid-Connected Core organizes and partners with building owners to put downtown buildings back to work as regional energy infrastructure. If we think of a cluster of buildings less as disconnected islands, and more like an energy district, the Core can bring economies of scale to an aggregated purchasing and vendor strategy to address the efficiency upgrades, coordinate with PGE to create one flexible energy resource, and create enough competitive “time-to-power” space to attract new companies to downtown. Participating buildings will also include ground-floor businesses like retail and restaurants to serve the buildings, and the general public.
I am including the full Grid-Connected Core proposal with this comment, and I’ll also submit a preliminary capacity analysis before the comment period closes in October. I hope the Council can take a look at the idea and consider whether it might offer Portland, and the region, a way to put several parts of the Ninth Plan to work, together.
Matt Schulte
matt@lowerboom.com / mattschulte.org / 503-621-7797
