Category Archives: Renewable Energy

Liquid Air Processes for Energy Storage and Power – Grid & Transportation

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A 19th-century idea might lead to cleaner cars, larger-scale renewable energy.

Source: www.technologyreview.com

>”Highview Power’s process is 50 to 60 percent efficient—the liquid air can yield just over half as much electricity as it takes to make it. Batteries, by contrast, can be more than 90 percent efficient. But the new process can make up for its inefficiency by using waste heat from other processes (see “Audi to Make Fuel Using Solar Power”). Highview has demonstrated that low-temperature waste heat from power plants or even data centers can be used to help warm up the liquefied air. The system can also last for decades, while batteries typically need to be replaced every few years. This longevity could help reduce overall costs.

Several companies are developing ways to improve the efficiency of compressing air, which could also make the liquefaction process more efficient (see “LightSail Energy Snags $37M in Funding” and “Compressed-Air System Could Aid Wind Power”). Liquefied air is about four times more energy-dense than compressed air, and storing it at a large scale takes up less space.

Liquid air might also prove useful in cars and trucks. An inventor named Peter Dearman has made a compact system that, instead of relying on large heat exchangers, uses antifreeze injected into an engine’s combustion chamber to recycle heat that would otherwise be wasted. He built a ramshackle prototype and showed that it could power a car. Ricardo is working on a version that could eventually be commercialized.

Liquid air stores energy at about the density of nickel–metal hydride batteries and some lithium-ion batteries, the kind used in hybrid and electric cars now. But it has a key advantage—it can be poured into a fuel tank far faster than a battery can be recharged, says Andrew Atkins, a senior technologist at Ricardo. The engine would run on liquid nitrogen—basically liquid air with the oxygen removed—and would emit only nitrogen. The carbon emissions associated with the engine would depend on the power source used to liquefy the nitrogen.”<

Canadian green building market shows strong growth into future reported by CaGBC

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The Canadian green building market has grown in the last few years and is expected to continue its strong growth in years to come, according to a recent report released by the Canadian Green Building Council (CaGBC).

Source: dcnonl.com

>”The report projects the figure to grow in upcoming years and a shift to happen as firms ramp up their green projects to more than 60 per cent. The main factors triggering the green trend include companies wanting to do ‘the right thing’ when it comes to social and environmental responsibility.

“Doing the right thing was very important to a lot of the respondents, which surprised me…obviously the Canadian industry has a lot social consciousness” added Mueller.

Companies are also experiencing significant cost savings through various efficiencies.

Eighty two per cent of building owners and developers report decreases in energy consumption compared to similar buildings and 68 per cent of owners/developers report decreases in water consumption.

In Canada, businesses reduced their operating costs by 17 per cent through green buildings in 2014, ahead of the global average of 15 per cent in 2012.

[…]

 

The top sectors currently with green projects expected to be certified LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) are, new institutional construction, new commercial construction, new low-rise residential, new mid and high-rise residential, and existing buildings/retrofit.

“In the public sector, the institutional sector, there’s a very strong commitment to build buildings to the LEED standard,” Mueller added. “Our focus is very much on building the LEED standard.”

Green Building is also beginning to build a strong business case for itself, according to the report.

Thirty seven per cent of owners project a spike in occupancy rates, 32 per cent expect improved tenant retention, 26 per cent expect improved lease rates and 13 per cent forecast a higher return on investment.

The median payback period for investment on a new green building is eight years, according to the report.

According to Mueller, owners and developers who are repeat green builders usually maintain a positive experience, but it’s the first timers that need to be shown the right steps in pursuing green building.

“If you’re an owner doing it for the first time, you have to be diligent, you have to be prudent to select the right consultants,” he said. “You have to do your due diligence and we certainly will be at the council to help first-time users to apply the LEED program and to make sure they have a positive experience.”<

Virtual Power Plants (VPP): A New Tech Based Utility Model for Renewable Power Integration

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Today’s global energy market is in the midst of a paradigm shift, from a model dominated by large centralized power plants owned by big utilities to a mixed bag of so-called distributed energy generation facilities — smaller residential, commercial and industrial power generation systems &mdas

Source: www.renewableenergyworld.com

>”Virtual Power Plants

One distributed generation technology with significant growth potential is the virtual power plant (VPP). In the VPP model an energy aggregator gathers a portfolio of smaller generators and operates them as a unified and flexible resource on the energy market or sells their power as system reserve.

VPPs are designed to maximize asset owners’ profits while also balancing the grid. They can match load fluctuations through forecasting, advance metering and computerized control, and can perform real-time optimization of energy resources.

“Virtual power plants essentially represent an ‘Internet of Energy,’ tapping existing grid networks to tailor electricity supply and demand services for a customer,” said Navigant senior analyst Peter Asmus in a market report. The VPP market will grow from less than US $1 billion per year in 2013 to $3.6 billion per year by 2020, according to Navigant’s research — and one reason is that with more variable renewables on the grid flexibility and demand response are becoming more crucial.

Asmus called VPPs “an ideal optimization platform for the coming transformation of the power grid,” adding that both supply and demand flexibility will be increasingly necessary to accommodate fast ramping periods and address corresponding supply forecast errors.

German utility RWE began a VPP in 2012 that now has around 80 MW of capacity. According to Jon-Erik Mantz, commercial director of RWE Energy Services in Germany, in the near future flexibility will become a commodity. Virtual power plants generate additional value from the flexibility they can offer the grid, he said-so, for RWE, “this is why we concentrate on building VPPs.” As large utilities’ market share falls in response to growing self-consumption, he said, utilities can still “be part of a VPP and profit.”

Dr. Thomas Werner, senior key expert in product lifecycle management at Siemens, said that in order to integrate diverse smaller energy sources, “You need an energy management system with good data models which represents energy resources on the one hand and, on the other, the energy market environment.” Werner believes VPPs fulfill these conditions and are the best way to integrate a growing number of power sources into the grid and the market.

“VPPs can be handled like other conventional generation,” he said. “They can target different energy markets and regulatory environments. They can play as important a role as conventional concentrated generation.”

“No Real Competition”

“From my point of view, there is no real competition for the VPP concept,” Werner said, pointing to VPPs’ use of cheap and ubiquitous information and communication technologies, while other technology trends like building energy storage systems incur comparatively heavy costs. VPPs can also avoid expensive installation costs in, for example, a home system, he notes. Self-consumption for home or industrial use is hampered by having to produce “the right amount of power at the right time.”

VPPs can deliver needed energy at peak usage times, and can store any surplus power, giving the energy aggregator more options than would exist in a single power plant. Other advantages include improved power network efficiency and security, cost and risk savings in transmission systems, increased value from existing infrastructure assets and reduced emissions from peaking power plants. And, importantly, VPPs can also enable more efficient integration of renewable energy sources into the grid by balancing their variability.

For example, explains Werner, if one wind power source generates a bit more energy than predicted and another generates a bit less, they will compensate for each other, resulting in a more accurate forecast and making it easier to sell the capacity in the market or to use it in power systems operation.

A VPP can also combine variable renewable power sources with stable, controllable sources such as biomass plants, using the flexibility of the biomass source to smooth out any discrepancy between planned and actual production.”<

Geothermal Energy: Superior to Natural Gas for Powering the Electrical Grid

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See on Scoop.it – Green & Sustainable News

Geothermal resources provide about 3,440 MW of power to the United States electrical grid as of early 2014.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>”In a recent report, the Geothermal Energy Association explored geothermal power’s unique values that make it essential to the U.S. energy mix.  These plants have the same important baseload qualities coal now provides for over two thirds of the electric power generation in the nation.  Geothermal can be a high-value substitute for baseload fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, providing firm, clean power 24 hours a day regardless of extraneous conditions.

“As state and national policies move to significantly reduce climate changing power emissions, geothermal is a baseload clean energy that can replace baseload fossil fuels at a minimum cost to the power system,” says Karl Gawell, GEA’s executive director.

Gawell explains that as the grid uses more variable energy resources, which it most certainly will, the flexibility of geothermal energy is an attribute that regulators are still learning about.  “Flexible geothermal can help firm the system, allowing for imbalance, and is able to provide supplemental reserve,” he adds.

The U.S. continues to make strides toward a cleaner energy mix largely through wind and solar contracts to meet goals of state Renewable Portfolio Standards. This creates a greater need for firming power, and although geothermal can provide this as well, it could get lost in the mix if natural gas becomes a fallback to offset intermittency.

In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama called natural gas “the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.” Geothermal energy, too, provides the same stabilizing function as natural gas and comes with unique environmental and economic ancillary benefits. Ancillary services support the transmission of electricity from a supplier to a purchaser and include scheduling and dispatch, reactive power and voltage control, loss compensation, load following, system protection, and energy imbalance.

A geothermal plant can be engineered to optimize these services. In most geothermal plants built today, operators can increase or decrease the amount of power being generated in order to match load requirements — such as making up for gaps caused by intermittency.   Geothermal energy and natural gas play a similar role to the power grid with the capability to dispatch, or to change a facility’s power output by ramping up or down depending on system needs.”<

See on www.renewableenergyworld.com

UK Bioenergy: Dedicated Biomass Plants no Competition for CHP Plants

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As Ed Davey, U.K. Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, spoke to the Environment Council in Brussels, saying: “We call for urgent action on reaching an ambitious 2030 energy and climate change agreement, to spur on investment in green, reliable energy,” at home in Britain t

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>”Biomass with CHP

In contrast with dedicated power only biomass plants, biomass-fired combined heat and power installations are continuing to attract investment in the UK, given that they still qualify for significant government support.

A number of these projects have made advances over the previous few months. For instance, RWE Innogy UK (formerly RWE npower renewables), is in the final stages of commissioning its Markinch Biomass CHP plant in Fife, Scotland. This 65 MW plant will supply up to 120 tonnes of industrial steam per hour to paper manufacturer Tullis Russell. RWE Innogy is investing some £200 million (US$300 million) in the development, which was built by Metso and Jacobs.

In October 2013 Estover Energy revealed that planning consent has been granted by Dover District Council for its proposal to develop a £65 million (US$100 million) biomass-fired CHP in the South East of England at Sandwich, in Kent. Generating 11-15 MWe and 8-12 MWth, the plant will use locally sourced low-grade wood as fuel.

Construction is forecast to begin in spring 2014 at the Discovery Park science and technology park.

And in the July, the Helius Energy-developed CoRDe biomass energy plant in Rothes, Speyside, Scotland began operations, using by-products from nearby malt whisky distilleries to produce renewable energy and an animal feed protein supplement, Pot Ale Syrup. Construction began in 2011 on the 8.32 MWe and 66.5 t/h pot ale evaporator plan. The total development and construction costs of the project were £60.5 million. …”<

See on www.renewableenergyworld.com

Scientists Convert Algae into Crude Oil in Less than One Hour

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory engineers a way to turn algae into usable crude oil without a million years wait or harmful and expensive chemicals.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>Department of Energy scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory say they’ve reduced nature’s million year process of turning algae into crude oil to one than takes less than an hour. The engineers created a chemical process that produces crude oil minutes after it is poured into harvested algae. The reaction is not only fast, but also continuous since it produces a recyclable by product containing phosphorus that can then be used to grow more algae.   […]

The scientists say with additional conventional refining, the crude algae oil can be converted into a variety of fuels for aviation, gasoline burning cars, or diesel vehicles. Meanwhile, the wastewater can also be used to yield burnable gas or elemental substances like potassium and nitrogen, which, along with the cleansed water, can grow more algae.

The new process promises to reduce time and save money compared to other techniques by combining several chemical steps and skipping the process of drying out the algae. Instead, the new process uses a slurry that contains as much as 80 to 90 percent water while eliminating the need for complex processing solvents like hexane to extract the energy rich oils from the algae. Elliott said in addition to saving time, “there are bonuses, like being able to extract usable gas from the water and then recycle the remaining water and nutrients to help grow more algae, which further reduces costs.”<

See on inhabitat.com

Biofuel Start-Up Uses Drought Resistant Jatropha Plant Seeds

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Advances in molecular genetics and DNA sequencing technology have allowed a San Diego start-up to domesticate jatropha, a plant with seeds that produce high-quality oil that can be refined into low-carbon biofuel.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>Hailed about six years ago as the next big thing in biofuels, jatropha attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in investments, only to fall from favor as the recession set in and as growers discovered that the wild bush yielded too few seeds to produce enough petroleum to be profitable.

But SGB, the biofuels company that planted the bushes, pressed on. Thanks to advances in molecular genetics and DNA sequencing technology, the San Diego start-up has, in a few years, succeeded in domesticating jatropha, a process that once took decades.

SGB is growing hybrid strains of the plant that produce biofuel in quantities that it says are competitive with petroleum priced at $99 a barrel. Oil is around $100 a barrel.

The company has deals to plant 250,000 acres of jatropha in Brazil, India and other countries expected to eventually produce about 70 million gallons of fuel a year. That has attracted the interest of energy giants, airlines and other multinational companies seeking alternatives to fossil fuels. They see jatropha as a hedge against spikes in petroleum prices and as a way to comply with government mandates that require the use of low-carbon fuels.<

See on www.nytimes.com

Fortum inaugurates new waste-to-energy CHP plant in Sweden

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The new power plant unit, Brista 2, produces district heat for local residents and electricity for the Nordic power market from sorted municipal and industrial waste.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>”Brista 2 is already the fourth CHP plant we have commissioned this year in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Combined heat and power production is at the core of our strategy, and whenever possible we utilise renewable and local fuels,” says Per Langer, Executive Vice President of Fortum’s Heat Division.

Production capacity of the new Brista plant unit is 60 megawatts (MW) heat and 20 MW electricity. The annual heat production, about 500 gigawatt-hours (GWh), corresponds to the annual heating needs of about 50,000 mid-sized homes. The estimated annual electricity production of Brista 2 is 140 GWh. Fortum co-owns the plant (85%) together with the municipal energy company Sollentuna Energi (15%). <

See on online.wsj.com

UN and World Bank promote sustainable energy financing

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The United Nations and the World Bank announced what they call “a concerted effort” by governments, international agencies, civil society and the private sector to scale up financing for sustainable energy.

 

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>Kim stressed that financing is key, with $600 billion to $800 billion a year needed from now until 2030 to reach the goals for access to energy, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.

“We are now starting in countries in which demand for action is most urgent,” he said. “In some of these countries, only one in 10 people has access to electricity. It is time for that to change.”

Ban praised achievements already attained such as Brazil’s ‘Light for All’ programme that has reached 15 million people, Norway’s commitment of 2 billion kroner ($330 million) in 2014 for global renewable energy and efficiency, and Bank of America’s Green Bond that has raised $500 million for three years as part of its 10-year $50 billion environmental business commitment.<

See on www.renewableenergymagazine.com

Renewable Geothermal Power – a Vast & Untapped Energy Resource

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There are no plans for new coal plants to be built in the United States. This opens doors for the geothermal industry possibly more than ever before in U.S. history.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

> Geothermal energy is a renewable source of electricity that has the same important baseload qualities […]  (of coal for) electric power generation in the U.S. at a fraction of the cost.

“Baseload is always better,” […] “[I]t assures a steady revenue stream which is much better for financing.”For a nation that’s thinking to the long term, geo plants are:

Firm. They can run 24 hours a day regardless of extraneous conditions.Flexible. Geothermal’s flow can be load following or allow for imbalance, can provide a spinning reserve or a non-spinning reserve, and works well as replacement or supplemental reserve.

Falcone says of geothermal’s flow options: “By being able to load follow, geothermal can be reduced during low need time and increased without much effort. There is no need to store power that cannot be used. The price of power can be kept lower than other renewables since more of it is sold than the intermittent power sources like wind and solar.”

Falcone adds, “There are now efforts to marry solar with geothermal so that extra power can be produced during sunny peak hours.

“There is no need to invest in fossil fuel to create heat in order to generate power, so the environment is better off.”But today’s solicitations for renewable energy in Western states tend to ignore these unique benefits of geothermal power. Additional long-term analysis shows geothermal plants are:

Small. Geothermal-impacted land in 2030 is expected to be around 7.5 km2/TW-hr/yr, as opposed to 9.7 .5 km2/TW-hr/yr for a coal plant.Hardy. Long-lasting geothermal plants include those at The Geysers in California (since the 1960s) and at the Lardarello field in Italy (since 1904).<

See on www.renewableenergyworld.com