EcoRadio

Category: Energy Matters

The twentieth century way of life has been made available, largely due to the miracle of cheap energy. The price of energy has been at record lows for the past century and a half.As oil becomes increasingly scarce, it is becoming obvious to everyone, that the rapid economic and industrial growth we have enjoyed for that time is not sustainable.Now, the hunt is on. For renewable sources of energy, for alternative sources of energy, for a way of life that is less dependent on cheap energy. 

  • Counting the cost of drilling down deep

     

    The BP-operated well continues to leak up to 4.5 million litres a day. The World Conservation Union and WWF are also calling for a global halt on deep-sea operations.

    The latest federal government exploration releases confirm a trend towards deep-sea drilling, offering explorers blocks largely around the 1000-metre mark.

    This means that just to reach the point on the sea floor where drilling starts, a floating rig must drop its steel drill string through ocean three times deeper than the Centrepoint Tower is high.

    Industry insiders say drilling at such depths is far more costly, technically challenging and harder to fix in an accident, such as Deepwater Horizon. But with the Montara oil spill inquiry due to report next week, the government plans changes to offshore rig work, moving to untangle red tape and establish a single national regulator.

    Deepwater Horizon was drilling down past 1500 metres of water when gas raced unchecked to the surface and ignited a firestorm that killed 11 crew and sank the rig. Repeated attempts by the charterer BP to halt the worst oil spill in US history have failed.

    Up to eight rigs of the same semi-submersible type as Deepwater Horizon are exploring for oil and gas in Australian waters, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

    Among them is the Chevron-chartered Atwood Eagle, working in 1387 metre-deep waters off North-West Cape – short of what Geoscience Australia says is the nation’s record working water depth of 1501 metres. The sophisticated rigs operate by dynamic-positioning. Despite their massive size, they use engines to ”hover” over a well site, the way a helicopter hovers over a landing pad.

    Mark Randolph, of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems, finds such feats of engineering ”mind-boggling”.

    But Professor Randolph cautions: ”The world is hungry for oil, the challenge is to go deeper, and every so often technology needs to catch up. There is no doubt Deepwater Horizon is going to make the world pause.”

    A former BP deep water explorer, Greg Bourne, now chief executive of WWF Australia, said the cost pressures of this type of drilling meant the locations had to be highly prospective.

    ”The problem is if you screw up in a highly productive rock formation, the consequential flow is automatically very large.” Mr Bourne said the remoteness of Australian offshore fields from any oil industry centre made an accident likely to be even more damaging. ”A dynamically-positioned rig would take several months even to get it to Australia before it could begin drilling a relief well. An immediate moratorium on deep water drilling now would be straight logic.”

    Last August, when the West Atlas rig blew out in only 77 metres of water in the Timor Sea off Western Australia’s Kimberley Coast, it still took 75 days to plug the Montara oil well.

    Evidence to the Montara inquiry has revealed some breakdowns in regulation, and the Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, said he was already predisposed to setting up a new national offshore petroleum regulatory authority. ”I think there are potential existing weaknesses at the moment through the designated authorities, and some of the powers that rest with the states,” Mr Ferguson said.

    But he rejected a call for a ban on drilling at depth in the newly released acreages. He said the government already required comprehensive environmental assessments of all offshore drilling work.

     

  • Ban on coal-fired power plants in NSW

     

    However, Treasury officials said a ban could push electricity prices even higher for consumers already hit with a 13 per cent price rise on July 1 as much-needed new energy would have to come from more costly sources.

    It is also likely to add fuel to the fire over the proposed federal super profits tax with the coal industry expected to claim it was being unfairly punished in NSW by such a policy.

    There are also fears that any restrictions on coal-fired plants could derail plans to privatise the retail sector of the NSW electricity industry.

    The current bidders will be given access to the state’s “data room” from July 1 to assess the value of the sale already estimated to be less than $8 billion. Any restrictions on building new coal-fired power plants could devalue the sale even further.

    A Cabinet minute prepared by the Climate Change Department for Environment Minister Frank Sartor and Energy Minister Paul Lynch outlines options for the Government’s clean energy strategy that is expected to form a major plank of the Government’s green election agenda

    Mr Sartor said last night: “The NSW Government’s policy is to be fuel neutral in relation to any new power generation.

    “It is appropriate that the Government reviews all potential options for future power generation.

    “Development of these policies is ongoing and this matter is yet to be considered by Cabinet.”

  • Transforming Waste Plastic Into an Alternative Fuel

     

    Self-sustainability is the key to the double-tank combustor design. Plastic waste is first processed in an upper tank through pyrolysis, which converts solid plastic into gas. Next, the gas flows to a lower tank, where it is burned with oxidants to generate heat and steam. The heat sustains the combustor while the steam can be used to generate electric power.

    “The prototype can be scaled up to drive a large power plant, which could connect to a plastic recycling center for a constant flow of fuel,” said David Laskowski, an undergraduate student working on the team.
     
    Levendis, who has pursued research on the combustion of plastics and other post-consumer wastes for the past 20 years, is currently focusing on the concept of vaporizing solid plastic waste, which would reduce levels of harmful emissions during the combustion process.

    “The inspiration behind my research is the quest to develop clean, cost-efficient power sources in the face of dwindling fossil fuel reserves,” Levendis said. “It will also help get rid of unsightly, non-biodegradable plastic waste that cannot be recycled.”

    According to Laskowski, calculations show that the new technology has the potential of replacing up to 462 million gallons of petroleum in the United States alone, if all recycled plastics were to be processed.

    “We are currently consuming highly-priced conventional premium fuels (to produce electricity). The fuel developed using this system will lower the cost of electricity for future generations,” Levendis said.

    The team members included Jeff Young, Shane McElroy, Jason Lee, David Laskowski, David Garufi, and Paul Conroy, all senior undergraduate students; and Brendan Hall and Chuanwei Zhuo, who are graduate students.

    With the success of their prototype, Hall and Zhuo plan to continue working with Levendis on further development of the project.

    Teresa Cheong is a media relations assistant in the marketing and communications department at Northeastern University.

  • City brings renewable energy to the little guy

     

     

    The Beginning

    Ellensburg, population 15,000, lies just east of the Cascade Range. Unlike drizzly Seattle, 93 miles to the west, the sun-drenched town gets more than 300 days of rays a year. (But note: Solar power can work anywhere the sun shines.) Residents would often call the city, wanting to know how to install solar panels. “But there was always a problem,” says Nystedt. “It was too expensive, or the wife didn’t want ugly panels on the house, or there was too much shade from trees.”

    Brainstorming with colleagues at a solar conference in 2003, Nystedt came up with an innovative solution — a city-owned solar installation that could feed right into the city’s grid, but would be financed like a cooperative, open to anyone who wanted to invest. The city council liked the idea, but wanted pledges of at least $53,000 from residents before moving forward. Nystedt put the word out, and got $103,000 in response.

    Ellensburg already owned a sunny spot of land next to a major highway, which had the added advantage of advertising the awesomeness of solar power to 15,000 drivers every day. The two-acre site is now home to 10 huge solar arrays and there are plans to add six more arrays, 10 concentrating solar collectors (which look like TV satellite dishes), and eight small wind turbines.

    “The thing I love is that it requires almost no maintenance,” says Nystedt, who goes out on rainy days with his scrub brushes to clean dirt and bird poop off the panels. “There are no moving parts, other than electrons. You build them and they just sit out there and generate energy.”

    The Dreamers

    Gary NystedtGary NystedtGary Nystedt, 58, is a 20-year Ellensburg resident who originally hails from Nebraska. His vision brought the solar project to life, but he’s just as passionate about other forms of clean energy — including not using energy in the first place. As resource manager for the city, he also oversees Ellensburg’s conservation programs, such as home weatherization. His interest in solar energy dates back to his days in architecture school in the late ‘70s, when he studied passive solar design.   

    Recent law school graduate Gary Shaver was working as a consultant for the state energy program when he was called in to help Ellensburg plan its solar system. Since Ellensburg was the first-ever community solar project, Shaver was flying blind. “There were no models to follow, no incentives, really, to speak of,” he says. “It was very much uncharted territory.” (See related Q&A with Gary Shaver.)

    Stanley DudleyStanley DudleyStanley Dudley, 91, is one of the city’s 90 resident investors whose donations fund the project. As a retired engineering professor, he likes the idea of clean energy, but would rather come visit solar panels in the park than install them at home. His house is too far away to get any electricity generated by the solar park, but he doesn’t mind. “My panel sends electricity into the grid. What do I care if I don’t get the electricity?” he says. “Somebody gets it. It’s the same environmental benefit.”

    Walt Kaminski, before he passed away in 2004, brought the local university on board, which turned out to be an invaluable source of free labor. As dean of the Department of Engineering Technology at Central Washington University, based just a few miles away from the solar site, Kaminski got students to write grants, design the adjustable racks that hold up the solar panels, and create the project’s logo — the letters ESC for Ellensburg Solar Community, with rays of sun shooting out from the curve of the C.

    The Outcome

    In the years since Ellensburg’s project stirred its first few electrons, the arrays have generated more than 217,000 kilowatt-hours of energy — enough to power 4,800 homes for one day, and keep more than 304,000 pounds of greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere.

    The project launched with 120, 300-watt photovoltaic panels, the sparkly, blue-tinted panels composed of semiconductors (in this case, crystals) that convert sunshine directly into electricity. The second phase added more panels and 21.6 more kilowatts of energy in 2009.  The third phase, underway now, will diversify the project, adding more panels, as well as solar concentrators and small wind turbines, all for an additional 24 kilowatts.

    Still, Nystedt concedes that the solar panels contribute just a “tiny speck” of the city’s overall power needs — 0.05 percent, to be exact — the rest of which Ellensburg purchases from the Bonneville Power Administration. The BPA operates several hydropower dams along the Columbia River and one nuclear power plant about 80 miles away.

    Only the 25 homes closest to the solar arrays are actually getting the energy generated there. (All solar power gets channeled into the grid through the nearest transformer, which only serves a certain part of the city.) But 90 of the town’s 9,000 homes are investing in the project. “If you extrapolate that percentage out to a big city, like Seattle, that could be significant,” Nystedt says.

    The Money

    So far, the solar community project has cost roughly $500,000 — $264,800 from residents, $53,000 in a grant from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, and $184,400 from the city.  

    Ellensburg pays roughly $6,100, total, back to its citizen investors each year. The amount per person depends on how much they invested. For example, if someone’s contribution was one percent of the total cost, they get a credit for the value of one percent of the total energy produced by the solar park. In a quarter when the solar park generated 13,000 kilowatts of energy, the individual credit would be $6.55. (The value for each kilowatt-hour is based on BPA’s wholesale rate.) The credit continues for 20 years.

    “Pretty much all of our initial investors were doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” Nystedt says. “The more we promote, and design, and manufacture [solar energy] the more the price will come down.”

    The Copycats

    City officials have hosted curious guests from at least a dozen states and two countries (South Korea and Ghana). The success of Ellensburg’s project was instrumental in recent passage of landmark state legislation that provides tax incentives to community solar investors, homes and businesses that produce renewable energy, and manufacturers of renewable energy components such as solar panels or wind turbines.

    In the years since Ellensburg figured out how to make solar power affordable, other communities have followed suit. Though inspired by the Ellensburg approach, each city has made slight modifications to the plan. For example, in Sacramento, Calif., residents subscribe to the one-megawatt Solar Shares program for a year at a time, rather than owning shares, which allows for a shorter commitment. A grass-roots group on Bainbridge Island, west of Seattle, built a community-funded solar installation on the roof of Sakai Intermediate School, channeling the resulting energy to the school. St. George, Utah, has a program similar to Ellensburg’s, in which residents invest in a 100-kilowatt project called SunSmart. The Utah project went online in January 2009.

    It all goes to show, says Nystedt, that a community solar power project is possible anywhere there are passionate advocates of renewable energy, a forward-thinking utility company, and people who want to buy in. “Germany is the largest user of solar power in the world,” he says. “And their weather is less sunny than Seattle.” 

    Claudine Benmar is a freelance writer and editor based in Seattle, Wash. She specializes in health and medical topics.

  • Chilling out in the sun: Solar Cooling

     

    During the last few years, especially in Europe, various new sorption chillers with small- and medium-scale cooling capacity have been developed. Many of these absorption and adsorption chillers have now passed from prototype and pre-commercial installations into small serial production and consequently a rising number of products are expected to enter the market in the coming years.

    Despite a growing interest, the market has nonetheless been slow to develop with accepted figures pointing to German leadership of the European market with close to 40% up until 2004, followed by Spain with more than 27% of the European market. Indeed, by 2008, a total of only 450 to 500 solar cooling systems had been realized worldwide, the vast majority of which are in Europe, where the market has increased in the last five years by 50%–100% annually. Approximately 60% of these systems using absorption chillers, 11% adsorption chillers and 29% open systems (DEC and liquid sorption systems). Even so, the total volume of installations reveals that the solar cooling sector is still a niche market and effectively under starters orders.

    SorTech AG

    SorTech AG develops, manufactures and distributes adsorption chillers for cooling and air-conditioning applications in the small and medium scale performance range up to 75 kW cooling capacity. Using heat as the primary energy source for cold production, including solar or waste heat, the company’s adsorption chillers – available with a nominal cooling capacity of 8 kW (ACS 08) and 15 kW (ACS 15) – are suitable for air-conditioning and cooling of one- or multi-family houses as well as smaller commercial and office buildings. The machines use water as refrigerant, and the company claims innovative coatings, compact design, and an optimized subsystem including the re-cooler as key advantages.

    The company was founded in April 2002 out of Fraunhofer-Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) and the UFE Solar GmbH in Freiburg (Breisgau). During the summer of 2007 a prototype ACS 05, with a nominal cooling capacity of 5.5 kW was tested, cooling the Fraunhofer ISE cafeteria, for example, by means of 20m² flat solar collector field situated on the roof of the Institute. In early 2008 the testing phase was followed with the market launch of the ACS 08.

    In 2009 an improved version of the adsorption chiller range, ACS, was launched and in March 2010, the company joined the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) in promoting a widespread test for solar air-conditioning systems in the practice. Partners include – Solvis GmbH & Co. KG, SorTech AG, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE and the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg.

    Walter Mittelbach is the managing director and founding partner of the company. ‘Due to the lower driving temperature from 60°C, the system is very compatible with solar cooling and district heating’, explains Mittelbach.

    AGO AG Energie + Anlagen

    An absorption chiller manufacturer headquartered in Kulmbach, Germany, AGO AG was founded in 1980 as a specialist in the area of energy supply and facilities and focuses on the three business segments: project development and implementation, operation of facilities as well as service & consulting. For Solar Process Heat AGO provides systems based on Mirroxx Fresnel collectors, suitable within the range of 100 to 200°C and designed for temperatures up to 400°C for cooling power generation and many other applications in combination with absorption chillers for air conditioning and process cooling.

    AGO offers absorption chillers in a range of 50–500 kW cooling capacity and also markets the ammonia/water absorption chiller developed by the Dresden Institut für Luft und Kältetechnik (Institute for Air and Refrigeration Engineering).

    For 2009 AGO AG reported a turnover of about €50 million, some 36% up on the previous year.

    Hans Ulrich Gruber, CEO of AGO AG Energie + Anlagen commented: ‘The fact of us repeatedly having incoming orders on a record high on the one hand attributes to our consequently pursued strategy to expand our operative business activities in Germany and to intensify our expansion on an international basis. On the other hand, it is the result of our concentration on the core competences of AGO AG. Those are for instance the design and construction of highly efficient energy centers for energy suppliers, [and] public utility companies.’

    InvenSor GmbH

    A developer and producer of adsorption heat pumps driven by waste energy or solar heating, currently InvenSor GmbH offers two types of chillers: LTC with 7 kW and HTC with 10 kW of cooling capacity respectively. Exact specifications depend on client systems and requirements.

    InvenSor High Temperature Chillers (HTC) are particularly adapted for solar cooling in a warm climate, operating at a typical ambient temperature of more than 30°C and driving temperatures of 65–95°C. In cooling mode the water chiller unit has outlet temperatures of 6–18°C depending on specification. The compressor of a conventional chiller is substituted by a thermally driven adsorption reactor which is regenerated by solar energy. The evacuated reactor is operated without any active components like pumps or valves inside. Therefore maintenance is limited to the peripherical parts of the machine. The adsorption process operates using water instead of volatile or corrosive fluids that are typically used in many other chilling devices.

    Green Chiller Association

    In March 2009, with a growing market but an apparent lack of awareness of sorption cooling technologies in politics, industry, trade and the public, the Green Chiller Association for Sorption Cooling (Verband für Sorptionskälte e.V) was formed in Berlin, Germany, to develop and promote the solar cooling and thermal cooling markets in Europe and elsewhere.

    Lead by its president, Roland Weidner from EAW, seven companies – AGO AG, Energieanlagenbau Westenfeld GmbH (EAW), InvenSor GmbH, Pink GmbH, SolarNext AG, Sonnenklima GmbH, and SorTech AG – and two research institutes – Fraunhofer ISE and ILK Dresden – became founder members of the Association. Green Chiller aims to represent all technologies, though chiefly closed sorption systems from small-scale and medium-scale water/lithium bromide and ammonia/water absorption chillers to water/silica gel and water/zeolith adsorption chillers.

    With the goal of increasing the awareness of these technologies and considerably increasing the number of solar cooling installations in the next few years, the association recently extended its membership to all technologies and to chiller manufacturers in other European countries.

    MENERGA GMBH

    Launched in 1980 by a small group of engineers with an idea to develop air-conditioning equipment for indoor swimming pools, today more than 650 people are employed at Menerga across three company locations in Mülheim an der Ruhr, as well as in a Europe-wide marketing and service operation.

    Menerga uses liquid desiccant solar cooling technology with its sorption-supported cooling system – which uses sorption to remove humidity from the outside air before cooling. The company’s products can be operated using low regeneration temperatures of about 55–70°C making them suitable for use with solar thermal technology. Furthermore, the products don’t require conventional refrigeration agents.

    Its Sorpsolair products cool by indirect evaporative cooling and sorption-supported air dehumidification, in which water is sprayed into the return/exhaust air of the plate heat exchanger. The resulting evaporation of water withdraws heat from the outside air and temperature reductions of more than 10°C are possible. Equipment providing additional dehumidification of outside air with a sorption system and nominal air output 2,500 m3 / h – 15,000 m3 / h is available from the firm, which supplies products suitable for the air conditioning of low-energy buildings such as schools, office buildings, banks and other public spaces.

    For example, since February 2009 the freight canteen of Munich Airport has been air-conditioned with a 70 kW sorption-supported Menerga Sorpsolair system for the client Flughafen München GmbH using 75 m2 of solar collector.

    Solar Next AG

    System supplier Solar Next is focused on the development and commercialisation of standardised solar thermal cooling kits, as well as comprehensive conceptual design, planning, lay-out and commissioning of solar thermal cooling kits for private, commercial, and industrial applications.

    The firm offers its SolarNext chillii Technology and chillii System Controller for the optimised heat management of modern heating systems as well as services such as the measuring and evaluation of ab- and adsorption chiller systems of up to 105 kW of cooling capacity.

    For example the company’s chillii Cooling Kit ISC7 includes a water/zeolith chiller with a nominal cooling capacity of 7 kW.

    Solar Next says this system is suitable for cooling and air conditioning applications with a minimal cold water temperature of 8°C and at high ambient temperatures, for instance air conditioning of private households and offices.

    However, the company’s absorption chiller chillii ACC50 system features an ammonia/water chiller with a nominal cooling capacity of 50 kW producing temperatures down to -20°C thus making the machine optimally suitable for use in the industry and the food sector and also for hotels, the company says.

    The parent company of SolarNext AG, Hightex, is an international company in the field of tensile fabric engineering.

    MUNTERS

    Sweden’s Munters is a supplier of desiccant evaporative cooling systems (DEC). A listed company and a leading manufacturer of air treatment systems and restoration services based on humidity and climate control technologies. Customers are served in a wide range of segments, the most important being insurance, utilities, food, pharma and electronics. Manufacturing and sales are carried out in more than 30 countries and the group has more than 4000 employees and net sales of about SEK 6570 million (US$876 million).

    The company is organized in three global divisions, two product divisions; HumiCool and Dehumidification, and a service organization MCS (Moisture Control Services).

    From its original focus on humidity control, Munters has gradually expanded its business concept to adjacent areas.

    The company’s HumiCool division was most severely affected by the business climate with the largest business area, AgHort, which sells climate systems to breeding houses and greenhouses, experiencing an unexpectedly sharp decline during the fourth quarter as a result of insufficient financing options among end-customers.

    At the beginning of 2008, an efficiency improvement program designated MEP2 was launched, intended to increase the efficiency of production in manufacturing divisions.

    The company acquired Toussaint Nyssenne in Belgium during the fourth quarter of 2009. Now called Munters Belgium, it will be the base for manufacturing DesiCool products in Europe.

    Yazaki Corporation

    With over 30 years’ experience in developing and manufacturing absorption chillers, Japan’s Yazaki has amassed considerable experience in the development and mass production of absorption chillers, which it began in the 1970s.

    Today, well over 100,000 of the company’s units are in operation worldwide, with more than 2000 installations in the EU alone, making the company the market leader in non-CFC based central air-conditioning solutions with a global cooling capacity installed exceeding 3500 MW.

    The installations offer capacities from 17.5 kW to up to 700 kW for such diverse projects as offices, hotels, hospitals and industrial facilities and was one of the first designers and manufacturers of solar cooling for Solar House 1 in Japan in 1974.

    The 100% privately owned and family-run business is headed up by president and CEO Shinji Yazaki while the chairman is Yasuhiko Yazaki. Headquartered in Susono, Japan there are 170 affiliate companies across 38 countries in 438 locations and an established workforce in excess of 200,000 employees, with 50 engineers exclusively dedicated to the research and development of absorption chillers.

    The Yazaki Water- Fired Chiller (WFC) series is especially suitable for solar cooling as it requires the lowest driving energy temperature (70°C) in absorption technology, the company says.

    Its Aroace chillers are designed for commercial applications and building projects that require chilled water for central air-conditioning systems, using water as a refrigerant, and serve diverse facilities such as hotels, offices, shopping malls, residential homes, hospitals, and small businesses.

    AIL Research Inc.

    The primary mission of US-based company AIL Research, Inc. is to commercialize heat-driven liquid-desiccant air conditioners for their use in applications in, for example, domestic residences, schools, hotels, auditoriums, offices and other types of buildings.

    AIL Research, Inc. was incorporated in 1990 as a research and development (R&D) laboratory focused on developing novel energy technologies and for the past 15 years the company has provided product-development and field-testing services to the gas and electric utility industry, manufacturers and the US Department of Energy.

    The company claims its OA Series liquid-desiccant air conditioners will compete better than absorption chillers in most solar applications because they can easily and efficiently store ‘cooling capacity’ as concentrated desiccant, allowing the solar cooling system to meet the large late afternoon and early evening cooling loads that occur on most buildings. They also require a smaller cooling tower, among other factors, AIL says.

    AIL’s solar specific SOA Series – the end product of a seven year, US$5 million initiative funded by the Department of Energy’s SBIR programme and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory – uses patented low-flow technology and, in addition, requires lower activation temperatures than absorption chillers or solid desiccant systems, the company says. Two models are now available, the OA3000 and the OA6000, following field operation in the summer of 2006. AIL Research says it will accept a limited number of orders for OA Series air conditioners designed for solar cooling.

    Solem Consulting

    A consultancy firm for solar cooling, solar thermal process heat and trigeneration, Solem was founded in 2008 by Paul Kohlenbach in Sydney, Australia, and the company’s first European office opened in the summer of 2009, headed by Uli Jakob.

    Solem offers services including full system design, control strategies, performance simulations, system optimization and complete technical documentation.

    In addition, Solem offers feasibility studies and market analysis, technology evaluations, greenhouse gas emission and power consumption savings calculations, payback calculations, independent tender evaluation and preparation, as well as offering procurement advice and training seminars.

  • Energy Ausralia wins smart grid project

     

    According to Senator Wong, smart meters would give consumers exact energy consumption rates and their cost — information which could lead to households better managing their energy use, she said.

    Energy Networks Association chief executive Andrew Blyth welcomed the news, saying the demonstration project will provide industry with important information on the costs and benefits of smart grid technologies and how they can be used to integrate renewable energy sources as well as improve energy efficiency, quality and reliability