Preparing Your Airport for Electric Aircraft and Hydrogen Technologies (2022)

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104 C H A P T E R   1 0 10.1 Background Airports get their power from a large patchwork of different private and public entities. There are approximately 3,300 utilities in the United States. The 200 largest utilities serve most cus- tomers and are mainly private, regulated entities. However, public utilities are more likely to serve large public airports. The largest public power providers include the Los Angeles Depart- ment of Water & Power, Salt River Project (Arizona), Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, New York Power Authority, and Sacramento Municipal Utility District. Both public and private utilities usually have very prescriptive ways of planning for future loads, which are constantly changing. Electric loads have been flat or decreasing for most utili- ties since the Great Recession in 2008. Besides the slow recovery, the main driver of decreasing loads is energy efficiency, including laptops replacing desktop computers and light-emitting diode (LED) lights replacing less efficient lighting. Because utilities were used to planning for increased future loads, this was a major shift to their business. In the late 1990s, the last round of major regulatory battles occurred when many states went through “deregulation,” which broke up vertically integrated monopolies in many states and introduced other aspects of market com- petition to wholesale power sales. In the 2010s, the most progressive states set out to reform the way utilities sell electricity services, with mixed results. However, the following technological changes will continue to reshape the power markets. 10.2 Renewables and Battery Technology Utilities have been steadily increasing the amount of renewable energy provided due to a cycle in which public policies have driven adoption, which has led to decreases in costs, which has led to more adoption. Within the United States, California has led the way in installing solar power, and the prices have dropped more than 90 percent in the past decade. Meanwhile, West Texas has led the country on wind deployments, which have also seen very significant price declines. Today, most utilities and independent power producers are investing in wind and solar due to the low prices that allow them to undercut coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. The biggest fed- eral policy drivers have been the Investment Tax Credit for solar and the Production Tax Credit for wind. During this period, wholesale power prices have declined steadily due to increasing penetration of wind and solar, as well as low natural gas prices. However, wind and solar are variable and intermittent power sources, so they cannot be dispatched at exactly the moments when power is needed, which turns the traditional power management equation on its head. Power has been traditionally conceived as end uses and loads that were variable, intermittent, and difficult to predict, while power plants were assumed to be steady and dispatchable assets. Now, end uses are becoming more controllable using smart Electric Industry Trends

Electric Industry Trends 105   sensors and innovative demand response contracts, while the power supplies are constantly varying. The third major disruptive technology that is remaking how utilities and policymakers think about electricity is large-scale batteries that store electricity. Battery quality and reliability have been scaled up from laptops and portable devices, all the way up to cars. The large-scale manu- facturing process has also led to significant price declines (Figure 50). Cost declines have led to their use as grid resources. Batteries are sometimes referred to as the “Swiss Army Knife” of the grid since they can perform so many different functions. At their most basic, they absorb electricity from the grid when price/demand is low, and export back to the grid when prices are high, which allevi- ates congestion on transmission or distribution wires. Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that batteries can provide 13 different services to customers (including airports), distribution utili- ties, regional transmission organizations (RTOs), and independent system operators (ISOs). See Figure 51. For airports, solar and batteries will affect operations more than wind power, which is usually best when built in rural areas. Although solar is subjected to FAA regulations on glare at air- ports, it has already been successfully installed at hundreds of airports. Solar power helps reduce energy bills for airports and can play an important role in an airport microgrid. Battery tech- nology will help improve the economics of solar power by allowing airports to capture more solar energy and to use it when it is most advantageous, through time-of-use bill management or demand-charge reductions. One of the most critical uses of batteries at airports will be to enable DC fast charging of electric aircraft and other electric vehicles with limited distribution upgrades. The stationary batteries will be slow charged over time, and that power will then be Source: BloombergNEF. Figure 50. Volume-weighted average pack and cell price split.

106 Preparing Your Airport for Electric Aircraft and Hydrogen Technologies rapidly transferred to the electric aircraft battery to enable a quick turnaround. Finally, batteries will provide critical fast-acting backup power in support of an airport microgrid. Solar Power As the use of solar power continues to expand, it has become an important energy source at some airports. SFO has solar panels installed throughout airport grounds in locations such as the roofs of auxiliary airport buildings. Many airports are situated on large campuses with auxiliary buildings and land for support facilities, which ideally positions them to generate additional energy and associated cost savings from a solar installation. Support facilities—such as parking lot canopies, consolidated rental car centers, and office buildings—offer ample surface area to locate solar panels (see example in Figure 52). Specific FAA guidelines exist to ensure that solar installations at airports do not conflict with flight operations. Glare and glint studies are conducted to ensure the solar installations will not negatively hamper pilots’ lines of sight. Solar photovoltaic (PV) cells have little to no impact on operations due to their low profile and can convert 14 percent of solar energy that strikes them to be used as electricity. Note: PV = photovoltaic. Source: Rocky Mountain Institute. Figure 51. Services provided by batteries

Electric Industry Trends 107   Solar power also offers opportunities for airports to advance their environmental and social governance priorities. In a new solar installation at JFK, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York Power Authority installed a 5 MW plant for airport consumption and another 5 MW plant that will sell electricity at a discount to nearby low-income neighborhoods. While many airports need a significant amount of electricity to operate throughout the night, precluding them from relying entirely upon solar power, several airports now operate entirely upon solar power. India’s Cochin International Airport became the first to do so in 2015 and has since been joined by South Africa’s George Airport, Seymour Airport in the Galapagos, and Chattanooga Airport in Tennessee. Several other U.S. airports, including Denver and Indianapolis, have built large solar farms that are powering a significant portion of their operation. Some airport solar installations are financed, owned, and operated by a third party, often a utility provider, which requires little capital outlay because the utility provider can sell the energy beyond the airport’s demand to the grid. Other installations are funded by federal grants: Chattanooga Airport’s 2.64 MW solar farm was funded through the FAA’s VALE and Energy Efficiency programs, as was 95 percent of the system cost at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire. 10.3 Related Transportation Trends Electric technology has been developed and launched on various sides of the mobility space, including electric vehicles, bicycles, and scooters. The policy disruption and integration con- cerns that have arisen from these new technologies can serve as examples for future logistical integration and popular acceptance of electric aircraft. Electric Vehicles Electric vehicles, as one of the earliest industry-wide adopters of electric technology, offer an ideal case study for the aviation industry to draw upon for successful and unsuccessful elements of their transition. While electric and hybrid vehicles are more efficient than internal combustion engines in a unit-to-unit (British thermal unit) comparison, the perception that they are “always cleaner” than gas-powered cars is not always true. This depends on the source of the state’s power grid. Figure 52. Solar amphitheater doubling as a parking canopy at Tucson International Airport in Arizona.

108 Preparing Your Airport for Electric Aircraft and Hydrogen Technologies (For example, an electric vehicle would have a much higher impact in a state that relies heavily on coal than in a state that primarily uses hydroelectric or wind power.) Electric vehicles are experiencing integration challenges with existing planning, mobility, and policy framework as the sector continues to innovate and expand. The concerns and debates that occur and the results that electric-vehicle stakeholders achieve will be an excellent litmus test for electric aircraft’s eventual integration. Shared Mobility As with electric vehicles, dockless shared mobility vehicles (particularly electric scooters and bicycles) have posed a significant disruption to urban mobility’s policy and operational spheres. Cities worldwide have had varying policy responses to the deployment of these vehicles on their street, ranging from inaction to strictly defined regulations, vehicle caps, and outright bans. Factors underpinning these policy responses include these vehicles’ market disruption to public transportation, like the disruption put forth by TNCs such as Uber and Lyft, safety risks of operating these vehicles on streets, and their occupancy of sidewalk space when parked. Electric aircraft will, in kind, require policy and operational changes in their operating envi- ronments. The integration challenges and debates of shared mobility vehicles, while on a smaller scale, provide a similarly valuable experience. 10.4 Conclusions and Next Steps Airports are constantly going through cycles of rebuilding their infrastructure. The trends toward electric aircraft and “electrifying everything” will promote additional investment in redundant and reliable backup power. New technologies like solar and batteries will become much more common for airports, helping to control energy bills, along with supporting backup power options. Airports will need to partner with their local electric utility to prepare for load growth in the future for all new electric loads. However, airports must also review energy efficiency and load flexibility options, which will reduce the long-term electric bills but will also save significant capital expenditures required to upgrade peak electric services. As variable renewable produc- tion starts to dominate the grid, load flexibility will become more valuable. Airports may be able to capture some of that value with software and on-site energy assets.