July 8, 2009
Posted by OldGuy in solar.Tags: Bill Gross, eSolar, solar energy
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Bill Gross is CEO of eSolar, and thinks he’s finally found a way to use the power of the sun to generate massive amounts of energy. He calls it a “disruptive revolution” in carbon-free energy.
Rather than using direct solar to electric conversion, which remains a technical challenge to do efficiently, Gross wants to use a “field of tabletop-sized glass panels” to reflect solar rays on liquid-filled towers. The heat creates steam to drive a traditional turbine.
The system incorporates video cameras, a bank of Dell servers and complex software to monitor and move the mirrors to track the sun’s position.
Gross claims his power will cost around 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. That would make it less than wind power. But then, Gross has been called a”serial entrepreneur” - he’s launched more than 30 tech companies. He’s also founder of startup incubator Idealab, based in Pasadena, CA.
I hope it works.
Sources: Technology Review/Solar Thermal Heats Up, by Evan I. Schwartz and eSolar website.
Fusion Power Experiment Readied July 7, 2009
Posted by OldGuy in Alternatives.Tags: fusion energy, hydrogen power, Ian Hutchinson, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, MIT, National Ignition Facility
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The $14 billion ITER project in France is hoping to demonstrate fusion – in 2014. But researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA hope to achieve that goal much earlier, hopefully before the end of 2009.
In a sprawling building covering the area of three football fields, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is taking shape. The LLNL approach will use 192 powerful lasers to heat a 2 millimeter hydrogen pellet to a temperature of 100 million °C and a density 100 times that of lead–enough to start a fusion reaction. The planned experiment will only fire the lasers for less than 20 nanoseconds, but the hopes are that will be enough to fuse the hydrogen into helium, with a release of releasing neutrons and x-rays.
If it all works, the lasers will deliver a pulse of power 500 times greater than the peak electricity-generating capacity of the United States. The pulse will ignite the thermonuclear explosion–essentially creating a tiny star.
The resulting chain reaction should continue to burn until the hydrogen fuel runs out, and demonstrate the way forward for a lasting supply of energy. That is, if the system can be made more efficient. While the fusion energy is more than the power of laser energy, it will take 10 times more power to generate the reaction than it will give off.
“Even if NIF is as successful as hoped, they’ll still be a very long way from being in a position to turn this into a practical energy source,” says Ian Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT. But it will, as he says, be “an incredibly impressive technological achievement.”
source: Technology Review/Igniting Fusion, by Kevin Bullis
Energy Saving Parking Solution July 5, 2009
Posted by OldGuy in Alternatives, building green.Tags: energy savings, robotic garage, Robotic Parking, William A. Berry & Son
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Energy savings is not just about better fuel choices or smaller cars. Companies are also introducing innovation in building design and development. Robotic Parking is one way to reduce auto fuel usage and reduce emissions by building parking structures with fewer materials and less stress on the environment.
With a robotic garage, the operator can park twice the number of cars in the same space as a conventional garage – or use half the space to park the same number of cars. It does this by removing the ramps and aisles needed to self-park.
According to William A. Berry & Son, Inc, a Boston-based building construction firm that does installations,
“patrons pull into an entry/exit portal that resembles a garage door and stop on a pallet system. Patrons then turn off their car, take their keys and exit their vehicle. Inside the portal is a computer system where patrons scan their card (either a credit card or parking card) and watch as their vehicle is transferred from the pallet onto a lift. Orchestrated by a master computer system, this lift moves the vehicle and parks it in an assigned space. To exit, the patron enters a well-lit lobby, where they scan their card and wait safely as their vehicle is retrieved and delivered to them facing out and ready to go. With its patented pallet system, robotic parking retrieves the vehicle in approximately two minutes.”
Imaging trading fuel of three hundred cars rolling up or down the ramps for an efficient electric motor. Imaging the fuel and materials savings erecting a structure that is half the size and one quarter the weight. Fewer construction vehicles working fewer days.
We’re not getting rid of autos for many of our cities – they just aren’t designed for public transportation to the suburbs. But having a more efficient place to put all those autos during the daytime when their owners are working can produce aggregate energy savings.
For more information on Robotic Parking, visit their website.
New Nuclear Design Opens Options March 16, 2009
Posted by OldGuy in Uncategorized.Tags: Intellectual Ventures, nuclear fuel rods, nuclear power, reprocessing, traveling wave, uranium-235, uranium-238
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Promising new options for nuclear power production, Intellectual Ventures of Bellview, Washington has described how traveling wave technology could use waste uranium from older reactors to generate power.
Current technology requires specialized technology to refine the common uranium-238 into uranium-235, which splits more easily. But the -235 slows down its rapid energy decay in just 18-24 months, requiring the reactor to be shut down and the rods replaced. The spent rods become hazardous waste that could be reprocessed into bomb-grade uranium.
Intellectual Ventures has described a method to use only a small amount of -235 as a catalyst to create a slow-moving wave through the uranium-238, moving at only a centimeter year. In theory, the reactor could run for decades without refueling.
Among the technical challenges are the cooling methods. This design runs so hot it needs liquid sodium to carry the heat away to the generators. The traveling wave generator would run at about 550ºC; today’s reactors run at 330ºC.
We’re still some time away from producing a commercial traveling wave plant, but this technology has promise. New energy from hazardous waste is win-win.
source: Technology Review
see also Intellectual Ventures
Dollar-a-Watt Solar March 1, 2009
Posted by OldGuy in Alternatives, solar.Tags: cadmium telluride, CdTe, first solar, photovoltaics
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This week, First Solar, Inc announced tests for thin-film photovoltaic panels that dropped the cost per watt generated below $1 per watt. When First Solar began operation in 2004, they were manufacturing panels at $3 per watt.
First Solar, of Tempe, Arizona, is using cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology and needs to get the costs below 65 cents if the installed costs make it beneficial to be installed commercially. Solar panels generally cost $4.81 per watt in commercial quantities. (The lowest thin film module price commercially available is $3.57 per watt in a 60 watt module.)
Unfortunately, a Popular Mechanics review suggests this technology can’t scale up fast enough or easily enough to make much of an impact on national energy needs. CdTe raw materials are difficult to extract and require a great amount of energy to convert into a usable crystalline form.
Cyrus Wadia, a researcher with Univerity of California – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, warns that
“Even if the solar cell market were to grow at 56 percent a year for the next 10 years—slightly higher than the rapid growth of the past year — photovoltaics would still only account for about 2.5 percent of global electricity”
Wadia admits First Solar is capable of producing small quantities of solar cells, “But as soon as they have to start rolling out terawatts, that’s where I believe they will reach some limitations.”
And “even if the solar cell market were to grow at 56 percent a year for the next 10 years—slightly higher than the rapid growth of the past year—photovoltaics would still only account for about 2.5 percent of global electricity.”
sources:
popular mechanics
First Solar Press Release
Solarbuzz Module Prices, Feb 09
NASA Data Could Boost Wind Production December 9, 2008
Posted by OldGuy in Wind Power.Tags: JPL, Paul Dimotakis, QuikScat satellite, SeaWinds radar, wind energy
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NASA has a long history of spinning off cool technology for non-NASA purposes. Coatings, insulation materials, safety improvements, and Tang.
Recently, NASA released the results of their QuikScat satellite. QuikScat was launched in 1999 and uses a microwave radar instrument named SeaWinds to track the speed, direction and power of winds near the ocean surface. Data are also used to predict storms and enhance the accuracy of weather forecasts. Those results reveal ocean areas where winds could produce energy.
Wind energy has the potential to provide 10 to 15 percent of future world energy requirements, according to Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at JPL. If ocean areas with high winds were tapped for wind energy, they could potentially harvest up to 500 to 800 watts of wind power per square meter, according to Liu’s research. Dimotakis notes that while this is less than peak solar power, which is about 1000 watts per square meter on Earth’s surface when the sky is clear and the sun is overhead at equatorial locations, the average solar power at Earth’s mid-latitudes under clear-sky conditions is less than a third of that. Wind power can be converted to electricity more efficiently than solar power and at a lower cost per watt of electricity produced.
Ocean wind farms have less environmental impact than onshore wind farms, whose noise tends to disturb sensitive wildlife in their immediate area. Also, winds are generally stronger over the ocean than on land because there is less friction over water to slow the winds down — there are no hills or mountains to block the wind’s path.
Areas with large-scale, high wind power potential also can be found in regions of the mid-latitudes of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, where winter storms normally track.
source: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab
Arctic Methane Threatens Environment December 5, 2008
Posted by OldGuy in Methane.Tags: frozen tundra, global warming, Methane
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In a previous post, I told you about methane hydrates, chunks of methane buried under the ocean. The issue there is that if the methane is mined the wrong way – if it is exposed to the open air – it will sublimate direct to a gas and accelerate global warming.
This week, NatureNews reported that methane being released into the atmosphere as the arctic tundra begins to freeze. It seems that when the tundra melted this summer, microbes in the groung got active and built up pockets of methane in the ground. Now that the ground is freezing, the surface is contracting and the methane is being released.
In other words, when the area warmed up more than normal this summer, more methane than normal was created. And then when it froze, the methane was released.
All we need now is a way to capture and processes that methane into fuel!
Carbon Sequestration Moves Forward November 23, 2008
Posted by OldGuy in Alternatives.Tags: Big Sky Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, CO2 storage, Department of Energy
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Montana’s Big Sky Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership got a boost this week from the Department of Energy, which agreed to pay $67M toward the project’s $130.6M cost. The project will store more than 2 million tons of carbon dioxide some 11,000 feet underground.
In earlier studies funded by the partnership, it was estimated that the area could potentially yield more than 3,000 billion metric tons in potential storage capacity.
This is the seventh commercial-scale carbon storage award given so far by the DOE.
source: ClimateBiz.com
Onsite Energy Generation November 23, 2008
Posted by OldGuy in Alternatives.Tags: carbon-offset projects, co-generation, Feed-in tariffs, grid parity, Schuchard
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Should your company generate at least a portion of its own energy needs? Ryan Schuchard thinks so.
In an article for ClimateBiz.com, he looks past the recent drop in oil prices to the likelihood that prices will rebound in the next decade, and now is a great time to make the investments, when demand for the equipment is down.
In some regions, the cost of generating onsite renewable energy is already beating electricity bought from the grid. This “grid parity” is currently happening in places like California, Hawaii and Japan, where electricity costs are high and renewable resources are abundant. By 2012, Australia and Italy will likely achieve grid parity, and by 2015 much more of the United States will as well.
The costs can be covered in part with “Feed-in tariffs,” which require utilities to connect small, onsite renewable projects to the grid and pay their generators for surplus energy generated. There are options for funding in the carbon markets for carbon-offset projects.
Partnerships are also a good option to consider. A company could help fund generation devices on a partner’s facility and share the results, with excess returning to the grid.
I’ve heard of projects where the waste heat from manufacturing (in that case, a brewery) is used to drive steam turbines to generate electricity and then provide supplemental heating for an adjoining company.
Schuchard also mentions the value being able to stablize your operating costs by generating your own power. “Investing in onsite renewable energy generation can insulate your company from the shocks, scarcity, and rising prices of energy.”
Wind Turbine Efficiencies Offered November 10, 2008
Posted by OldGuy in Wind Power, energy conservation.Tags: catch the wind, energy efficiencies, LADAR, wind energy
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Virginia-based Catch the Wind has an innovative solution for improving wind turbine efficiency— laser beams. The company’s fiber-optic laser system gives turbines up to 20 extra seconds to adjust to changes in gusts and wind direction. That may not sound like much, but Catch the Wind claims that its system can improve turbine output by 10 percent.
source: cleantechnica.com
Catch the Wind, Inc is based in Manassas, VA
