Wednesday 30 June 2010

Renewable Energy TV: Buildings Go Green for Energy Efficiency



Taking advantage of BP's Deep Horizon catastrophe, President Obama my get it right this time, after dozens of promises broken. Well, at least this time it is not all about dirty dodgy business under the table to invade countries or starting a war to doctor new propagandistic made-up facts, this time it's the effort is made yo change the mentality of America, and hence of the Western world. 

Standing ovation! 

Tuesday 29 June 2010

Enter California's Smart Grid Task Force


You know a problem has gotten out of hand when there’s a task force created to address it. On Friday utility PG&E, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and the city of San Jose announced the creation of the “Smart Grid Task Force” that will tackle an area that has been sorely needed for the smart grid: public education.
The group, which will focus specifically on California, will start out by creating a research report around the economic impacts of the smart grid and members of the force include Oracle, Cisco, Nanosolar, Control4, Coulomb Technologies, Silver Spring Networks and OPower. The task force isn’t the first group like this, and earlier this year 10 companies including IBM, Control4, the Gridwise Alliance, and General Electric, launched the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC), which focuses on consumer education across the U.S.
If you haven’t been following the issue over the consumer backlash and the smart grid in California, here’s a refresher: PG&E didn’t do a very good job of educating consumers on the smart meters being installed at their homes, and there were a lot of complaints, including a lawsuit in Bakersfield, Calif. In (an albeit delayed) response, PG&E publicly apologized for its strategy, which looked at its smart meter roll-out solely as an infrastructure play, and has since then been beefing up its consumer outreach and call centers. This task force is clearly part of that effort.
Will the task force work, and smooth over the smart meter flap? Well, more information for consumers is always better and smarter research can help with better decision-making. I think PG&E has also gotten some pressure from the fledging smart meter industry to expand public education and do it in a group format via well-known consumer brands that score higher on affinity with consumers than a utility brand.
If the backlash over the smart meters in California escalates further it could seriously jeopardize the industry nationally. I think Maryland’s public regulator’s denial of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co’s smart grid project request, which would have deployed 2 million smart meters for all of its customers, was partly influenced by the California backlash. Recently San Francisco’s City Attorney Dennis Herrera rehashed the issue, and asked California’s energy regulators to stop PG&E from installing any more smart meters until a third party investigation into the accuracy of the meters has been completed. I don’t think that request wil go anywhere.
For more research on the smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Natural gas, the green choice?

Posted by Chris Vernon at The Oil Drum: Europe

Natural gas is regarded as a relatively environmentally friendly way of generating electricity. Gas burns cleanly without many of the problems associated with coal. Coal is a chemically complex substance. When it is is burnt, it releases oxides of sulphur (SOx) and nitrogen (NOx), traces of mercury, selenium and arsenic, as well as particulates, and a non-combustible slag remains after burning. Coal mining is also a dirty and dangerous job. Coal emits considerably more CO2 than natural gas per unit energy. However, natural gas (CH4) itself is a potent greenhouse gas, and its release to the atmosphere without being burnt can quickly compensate for the CO2 advantage against coal. ...


If the natural gas leak rate is 3%, the global warming potential of a kilowatt-hour of electricity from gas is equivalent to coal.

So what are pipeline leak rates? A 1997 US Environmental Protection Agency report states US methane leak rates were 1.4 +/- 0.5 % in 1992. The largest source of leakage at that time was compressor components used in the processing, transmission, and storage, followed by the distribution network itself, with the small length of old cast iron pipes leaking disproportionately highly. The natural gas production process also contributes through millions of slowly leaking pneumatic control devices. A larger study carried out from 2005 by Brazil’s largest gas distributer Comgas suggests cast iron pipe leak rates double the EPA study.

A 1990 study for Greenpeace considered the UK distribution network then operated by British Gas. Greenpeace estimated low, medium and high scenario leakage rates of 1.9%, 5.3% and 10.8% respectively. This was in contrast to the 1% claimed by British Gas at the time. The authors were confident leakage rates were above 1.9%. These figures are likely obsolete today as there still existed a large amount of pre-1970 cast iron pipe work, much of it since replaced. In 1990 only 39% of the UK mains and 74% of the service pipes were plastic.

The 1.4% figure is also old, and only refers to the US, but it is a significant magnitude, it represents a 70% increase in global warming potential compared to the CO2 alone and halves the CO2 advantage gas has over coal based on the 360 and 890 g/kWh figures above.

Whilst these figures do not tip gas beyond coal, they halve its advantage. They are also only national. For the US this is quite understandable, but for the UK and Europe, the gas system is changing. Could leak rates become important as natural gas supply routes become longer? As Europe increases its reliance on Russia, as previously stranded gas is brought to market through longer pipelines than before, as a larger number of smaller deposits are exploited and as existing infrastructure ages, it seems likely that leak rates will increase. We often hear about struggles in the former Soviet states related to gas – is the leak rate there one percent or five? Is it economically feasible for the pipeline operator to make investments to stem the last percentage point of a system's leaks?

Is it possible that a ‘green’ gas power station in the UK is making a greater contribution to global warming than one burning coal?



Thursday 17 June 2010

Biofuels land use


Current transport biofuels are mainly made from crops producing starch, sugar and edible oils. In doing so, they divert those crops from providing food. However, the demand for food is highly inelastic. I have never met anyone in an industrialized country who changed his diet because of transport biofuel production. So, additional crops have to be grown compensating for the diversion of starch, sugar and oil to biofuel production. Part of this additional production takes place on existing agricultural soils by increasing productivity. This is not always the case. In a recent paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, it is for instance shown that worldwide the 1970-2005 expansion of two major suppliers of biofuels, sugarcane and soybeans, was characterized by decreasing productivity (1). More importantly however, when the expansion of transport biofuel production is fast, as it currently is, also land that is not under cultivation has to be used for food production. In practice, this is often wooded or forested land. When one compares the aboveground carbon stock of wooded or forested land with the carbon stock on cultivated arable soil, the difference tends to be large. So, in converting forested and wooded land to arable soils, much carbon ‘migrates’ to the atmosphere, as CO2 or CH4, adding to climate change. 



The first state to squarely confront land use change is California. Californian lawmakers intend to include a so-called iLUC factor in their biofuel policies, iLUC being an abbreviation for indirect Land Use Change. This has met with a torrent of abuse from the vested interests in transport biofuel production, but so far Californian lawmakers intend to stick to their iLUC factor.



Currently the European Union is debating the same matter behind closed doors. Some large countries such as Italy and Spain are firmly against the inclusion of an iLUC factor in European decision making about biofuels. The European Commission is apparently in favor of including an iLUC factor, but is rumored to contemplate creative bookkeeping to appease countries such Italy and Spain. Under consideration is apparently an iLUC factor that would have a protectionist objective. The underlying argument seems to be the following. Animal feed is produced as co-product of biofuels. Such a co-product will substitute for animal feed imported form outside the European Union. This is then argued to save tropical rainforests, which would then give a land-use ‘bonus’ to European biofuels. This is actually about the opposite from what lawmakers in California have rightly concluded, and dramatically at variance with the real world impact of expanding biofuel production.



Also, it is worrying that the European Union neglects another aspect of land use, which impacts climate change due to European biofuel production: tillage. Whereas much agriculture in the Americas is currently no-till, in Europeconventional tillage is still the standard. Conventional tillage has a large impact on carbon stocks in soils. Whereas in no-till agriculture there should be no loss of soil carbon, under conventional tillage carbon loss can be large. A recent detailed study about arable land in northern Belgium, dealing with the 1960-2006 period, suggests that the carbon loss form arable soil was about 400 kilograms each year (2). And northern Belgium is not an average part of the European Union because it has a very large animal husbandry sector, which allows for spreading what is almost a mountain of manure over its acres. Much manure substantially adds to the carbon stock in soils. It has been estimated that on average in Europe yearly about 840 kg of carbon is lost from a hectare of arable soil (3). This negatively affects life cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with biofuels derived from crops grown in Europe.



It is time for the European Union to squarely confront the realities of biofuel production in Europe and to include the real impacts on climate of land use, including land use change, in its biofuel policies. 



(1) T.K. Rudel et al. Agricultural intensification and changes in cultivated areas, 1970-2005. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA DOI /10.173/pnas.0812540106



(2) J. Meersmans et al. Changes in organic carbon distribution with depth in agricultural soils in northern Belgium, 1960-2006. Global Change Biology 15 (2009) 2739-2750



(3) L.M, Vleeshouwers and A. Verhagen. Carbon emission and sequestration by agricultural land use: a model study for Europe. Global Change Biology 8 (2002) 519-530

Sunday 13 June 2010

Energy in, energy out


Dr Tim Morgan's report on the titled Dangerous Exponentials is commented in the post Energy in, Energy Out in the Economist's post Buttomwood. I personally think that the findings of Dr Morgan are evident, in quite in the air for the last year, though certainly put together in a brillant manner just until now.  

FROM time to time, one reads analyses that are so gloomy they make your humble blogger seem like Voltaire's Dr Pangloss. Normally, they have the perverse effect of making me feel more cheerful. But having read Dangerous Exponentials, a report by Tim Morgan of the broker Tullett Prebon, I have to accept he has a point.   
There are two main elements to the report, two sets of exponential relationships. The first is the growth in government debt, money supply and inflation. There has been a step change in the figures since 1971, when the link to gold was removed; in past posts, I have discussed the monetary ratchet, in which lower interest rates leads to more debt, which leads to asset bubbles, which then pop; when they pop, authorities cut rates again and the whole cycle starts again. This process has reached its logical conclusion with rates at zero. The authorities have responded by resorting to QE, money printing. This has not resulted in high inflation (yet) because the velocity of money has collapsed (if you like, the money has been hoarded). Tullett warns that QE will have to be rapidly withdrawn when velocity picks up and is doubtful that will be the case. 
The other exponential relates to population and energy. Tullett describes the views of a commentator called Chris Martenson who argues that
The current population of the earth is sustainable only because of an abundant supply of hydrocarbons, and principally of oil.
Tullett argues that global population growth really started to take off in the 19th century, as man learned to exploit hydrocarbons initially coal. These hydrocarbons were a very effective replacment for human labour, creating a massive productivity boost. They allowed food to be produced with fewer people, the released labour to move into industry and the developed world to escape the Malthusian trap in which a growing population exceeded the food supply, causing famine and disease.
Now you can probably see where this argument is going - peak oil - and will be suitably cynical. We have been hearing predictions about resource constraints since the late 1960s.  But the world tends to come up with new supplies of energy and the peak gets postponed.
But Tullett has a more subtle point, and one which seems rather telling. Yes, new energy sources are discovered (tar sands, deepwater oil) but they are much more expensive to produce, both in terms of money and the energy required to extract it.
If you view the wealth of mankind as a function of the equation EROEI, the energy return on energy invested, this is a serious deterioration. The wealth added per unit of energy extracted is declining. But the structure of our societies is built not just on abundant energy but on cheap energy. Think of all those American suburbs without public transport which require people to drive miles to get to work or visit shops.
Whether the result of this deterioration is economic cataclysm, as Tullett hints, is impossible to tell. But I think the broker is right in arguing that the lack of focus on this energy in/energy out equation is
the greatest single black hole in the toolkit that economists use to understand the dynamics of the society in which we live. 
RESPONSE: Thanks for the comments and Doug Pascover is right, the closing mixed metaphor is very ugly. It is not my job to defend Tullett but perhaps my summary didn't do justice to its case. I don't think it's just a matter of higher energy prices leading to lower consumption. The key is the equation; it takes energy to extract energy; the steel for the rigs, the power needed to operate pumps or to refine the oil, or transport the gas etc etc. So as we saw in 2007, higher oil prices can lead to higher prices for other commodities as well. This is in part a tax on consuming nations and a benefit for producing nations. But another way of looking at it is a tax made by the planet on all of us; it simply requires more effort to extract its resources. Doesn't that equate to a fall in our collective wealth?
Yes, we may be able to use energy more efficiently. but given that the cost of extracting oil from tar sands in Canada is so much higher than getting it from the sands of Saudi Arabia, these savings will have to be very great indeed. Alternative energy sources are, in the absence of technological breakthoughs, quite expensive so still shift the energy in/energy out equation in the wrong direction. 
As for the green revolution and food, a lot of this comes down to embedded energy uses, in terms of fertiliser, tractors, irrigation pumps etc. (Not to mention the way we transport stuff round the planet so that nothing is out of season.) 

Thursday 10 June 2010

Is it time to generate your own domestic power?

Will the government's feed-in tariff scheme which guarantees a rate of payment for renewable energy sold back to the grid tempt you to install your own solar panels or wind turbine?...asks Leo & Lucy blog in the Guardian.

Thursday 3 June 2010

The race for smart energy profits


The Business Spectator has an article on the need to educate consumers about energy usage and the opportunity for smart appliance vendors to disrupt the electricity industry -The race for smart energy profits.

We’re going to hear a lot about the potential of smart meters and smart grids to help solve some of the colossal challenges faced in the energy sector. But nothing much will be achieved without smart consumers and smart businesses. And right now, it seems, we don’t have enough of either.
A survey by Accenture finds that Australian consumers are not as smart about energy consumption as they think they are. And it also highlights how the utilities that are supposed to lead into this exciting new era are ill-equipped to cope with the business models of the future, and how they may lose much of their business to retailers, appliance manufacturers and software groups in one of the biggest business disruptions since the entry of the mobile phone.
The Accenture survey found that three quarters of Australians thought they understood enough about the actions they could take to optimise their energy consumption. But most of them were wrong.
When pressed, only about one third were actually aware of the measures they could take, and many confused actions on recycling papers and plastics, fuel efficiency in cars, and water conservation with energy use.
“They think they know, but they don’t,” says Greg Guthridge, the global head of utilities customer care at Accenture. “They all think they do their part to save the environment, but they are talking about recycling, water and petrol usage. They don’t realise that running washing machines at different times of day would save money.”
What worries Guthridge is that this lack of education around energy consumption could cause a backlash against the smart meter concept when it is introduced, possibly due to fears of a lack of control, loss of lifestyle, and privacy issues.
Part of the problem, he says, is a lack of education. And this, in turn, is caused in part because utilities don’t talk to their consumers, except when the consumer has a problem such as a blackout, a high bill or metering problems. It’s a negative relationship, and only 23 per cent of consumers trust the energy utilities they deal with.
Guthridge points out that large petrol companies have done a great job of advertising all alternative fuel options, which is emphasising the point with their end consumers that there are options available that do not have the effect of changing their lifestyle. The energy utilities have not done this as effectively.
This lack of engagement, and the fact that the internal business structures of energy utilities have been little changed for 30 years – unlike, for instance, the telecommunications industry – are going to present a massive opportunity for consumer savvy sectors such as retailers and telcos to muscle into their territory.
Consumers might be attracted to retailers such as Harvey Norman, who could offer – in partnership with appliance manufacturers such as Whirlpool or Fisher and Paykel and telco and software firms – a package of appliances, communications, and home entertainment that is integrated into the home energy management network.
“We are going to see a convergence where retailers will have the opportunity to create a valuable proposition that goes beyond pricing, and behind them you’ve got manufacturing companies like Whirlpool, GE, and Fisher and Paykel that will develop the appliances to talk to each other and manage energy consumption. They will own the home. The energy providers will have to evolve from their one-size-fits all business models.”
This is already happening in the US and elsewhere. The big barrier will be the extent to which utilities and providers will share their customer information, and as I wrote last week, there is a major battle between utilities trying to defend their turf and their future competitors, led by software companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Intel, along with the likes of GE, AT&T and Whirlpool over the release of detailed data on home energy usage.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Green building tour - University of British Columbia, Canada



I quite liked the use (and accent) of the gargage in this video.

Windmill Redefined – New Design

Dutch windmill

Windmills have come to stay as a major source of renewable energy. Given the potential of wind, ample scope is there to remain so. . One major hindrance to the growth of its population is maintainability and its associated cost. As a machine , a wind turbine needs periodical maintenance. It is really a herculean task to do preventive and breakdown maintenance on a windmill . Its construction offers greater challenges in terms of accessibility, serviceability and safety. Maintenance will comedown if machine reliability goes up; but to make it reliable, a combination of best design, superior materials, auto/ self lubricating systems etc have to be in place which is not practicable at a low price. Is it possible to make a windmill which is maintenance friendly? Yes, if the turbine is at ground level . How to redirect wind to the turbine at floor level? This article is meant to present a novel concept of “ Wind turbine at ground level”. 

Changing the Direction of Wind
Air is basically a fluid; it can be made to follow a path determined by a system. A pipe / duct with its open end facing the air stream can transport wind to another point away from stream. A rotatable open pipe with a provision to orient itself to the direction of wind flow will do the purpose. A simple pin- bush arrangement is sufficient to have the swivel arrangement. 

Maximising the Wind Capturing
Now we have known the way of redirecting the wind to a desired location. Level of capturing is restricted by the open end diameter of the duct at the collection side. Obviously, wind collected over a bigger diameter is voluminous , thus a reservoir of more kinetic energy. To make it happen, size of the entire duct needs to be increased, which will complicate the system. We can very well invoke the principle of convergence nozzle in this application. Wind capturing can be maximized by modifying collection mouth to the plain nozzle ( funnel) shape. Nozzle at capturing point helps to minimize the structure size & weight besides improving wind velocity. Collection duct can have more nozzles in intermediate stages which will reduce duct size further. These convergent nozzles can transport wind without much loss of internal energy. Lesser the convergence angle, higher the transfer efficiency. Needless to say, duct is to be free from sharp bends.

Wind Turbine Construction
Wind is captured over a wider area and let out through a smaller opening at the other end. So, size of the turbine can be considerably reduced. If a turbine with a size of 4 mtr is planned in a conventional way- instead capturing tower to the size of around 4 mtr is to be installed as per this principle and whose output can made available at say 1.5mtrs of diameter, after tapering down the duct size gradually and thus it leads the requirement of a turbine of reduced size. This drastically reduces cost on turbine. Also, there is a possibility of installing many turbines along the duct with a single tower.
This concept can be developed to make a Wind Power Plant. Many capturing towers in a cluster can be connected to a single generating location under one roof. Further there is a flexibility to operate the wind turbines selectively by regulating the volume / pressure, using appropriate instrumentation systems, according to the wind flow pattern.

Discharge of Utilized Wind
After extracting the kinetic energy from the wind, it can be let out at the ground level itself.. Better way would be take to the collection zone and let it in the direction opposite to the collection. We use a coaxial ducts for this purpose.

Advantages
• Easier to erect; easier to maintain. Only moving part at height is revolving funnel, whose maintenance can be minimized by the use of appropriate material after heat treatment.
• Smaller turbines ; easier to produce in bulk.
• Quicker implementation.
• Less costlier.
• Above benefits attract more investments in this segment of renewable energy.; more energy generation.
• This concept can be used to ventilate buildings, complexes – helps to minimize the use of exhaust/ refresher fans.
• This principle can be horizontally deployed to improve volumetric efficiency of compressor and generators engines ( A separate article is planned by the author on this subject )

Disadvantages
• This system is confined by the capability to erect capturing towers of larger sizes.

Conclusion
This system is at concept stage and it is a viable one . Researchers and manufacturers can put some more efforts to find out the optimal convergence angle and air letting out system. With this evolution, a paradigm shift in the wind energy technology is certain.

Concept and authored by
K Senapathy B Sc, B Tech, M.S.,
Manager – Production
Lakshmi Precision Tools Ltd.,
Arasur, Coimbatore,
Tamilnadu, India
senapathyk@yahoo.co.in

About the Author
Author is a Production Engineering graduate from Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai, India , with a post graduation in Technological Operations from BITS, Pilani ( India ) and taken up various assignments in Maintenance, Manufacturing and Engineering functions in auto-components industries in India. Currently, working for Lakshmi Precision Tools, Coimbatore , India as Manager-Production.

The jobs of Green-Collar economy





Everybody is familiar with the colorful distinction of the different employment sectors. White collar employment refers to salaried professionals and clerical workers. Blue collar employment involves manual labor. A third sector has emerged and is growing in both popularity and support: the green collar workers
The term was first heard in 1976 in the US Congress. Professor Patrick Hefferman produced the document: "Jobs for the environment - The coming of the green collar revolution, but it took off just until many years later in the US, as step by step it was becoming evident that poverty and pollution go together. 
The Guardian, on 2008 published this: "Green collars have joined the employment wardrobe of blue collars, white collars and pink collars (so-called "female" jobs, such as care assistants or florists, and not white collars that were put in the wash with a rogue sock) and refer to manual-labour jobs in the new ecological economy, from mending bicycles to cladding buildings in solar panels. As much as a quarter of the US workforce could have a "green" job by 2030, says the American Solar Energy Society."
Green collar jobs certainly cover a wide range of sectors. In principle, green jobs are related to the cleaner and sustainable way of doing existing processes, hence practically there is no new green jobs as such. 
According to Van Jones,  a green collar job is a "family-supporting career-track job that directly contributes to preserving or enhancing the environmental quality". The three key principal for a green economy are: equal protection for all, equal opportunity for all and reverence for all creation. 
Table source:  A Renewable World