Category Archives: Renewable Energy

What is “Levelized Cost of Energy” or LCOE?

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As a financial tool, LCOE is very valuable for the comparison of various generation options. A relatively low LCOE means that electricity is being produced at a low cost, with higher likely returns for the investor. If the cost for a renewable technology is as low as current traditional costs, it is said to have reached “Grid Parity“.

Source: www.renewable-energy-advisors.com

>”LCOE (levelized cost of energy) is one of the utility industry’s primary metrics for the cost of electricity produced by a generator. It is calculated by accounting for all of a system’s expected lifetime costs (including construction, financing, fuel, maintenance, taxes, insurance and incentives), which are then divided by the system’s lifetime expected power output (kWh). All cost and benefit estimates are adjusted for inflation and discounted to account for the time-value of money. […]

LCOE Estimates for Renewable Energy

When an electric utility plans for a conventional plant, it must consider the effects of inflation on future plant maintenance, and it must estimate the price of fuel for the plant decades into the future. As those costs rise, they are passed on to the ratepayer. A renewable energy plant is initially more expensive to build, but has very low maintenance costs, and no fuel cost, over its 20-30 year life. As the following 2012 U.S. Govt. forecast illustrates, LCOE estimates for conventional sources of power depend on very uncertain fuel cost estimates. These uncertainties must be factored into LCOE comparisons between different technologies.

LCOE estimates may or may not include the environmental costs associated with energy production. Governments around the world have begun to quantify these costs by developing various financial instruments that are granted to those who generate or purchase renewable energy. In the United States, these instruments are called Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). To learn more about environmental costs, visit our Greenhouse Gas page.

LCOE estimates do not normally include less tangible risks that may have very large effects on a power plant’s actual cost to ratepayers. Imagine, for example, the LCOE estimates used for nuclear power plants in Japan before the Fukushima incident, compared to the eventual costs for those plants.

Location

An important determination of photovoltaic LCOE is the system’s location. The LCOE of a system built in Southern Utah, for example, is likely to be lower than that of an identical system built in Northern Utah. Although the cost of building the two systems may be similar, the system with the most access to the sun will perform better, and deliver the most value to its owner. […]”<

 

 

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CanGEA Report Claims Geothermal Creates more Jobs than Site C Dam

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a recent report by a canadian industry group that is promoting geothermal energy, thermal energy generated and stored in the earth, says geothermal operations can create more permanent jobs than the site c dam in northeastern b.c.

Source: www.journalofcommerce.com

>”According to Geothermal Energy: The Renewable and Cost Effective Alternative to Site C, 1,100 megawatts – the same amount as Site C – of geothermal power projects would create more sustainable employment for surrounding communities.

“While Site C promises only 160 permanent jobs, U.S. Department of Energy statistics indicate that the equivalent amount of geothermal energy would produce 1,870 permanent jobs. This does not include jobs that result from the direct use of geothermal heat, which are also significant.”

However, said Alison Thompson, managing director of Canadian Geothermal Energy Association  (CanGEA), which published the report, geothermal projects would result in fewer construction jobs than the Site C dam.

“Geothermal projects would be spread around the province, not all on one site,” she said. “And, unlike Site C, they would not be built all at once. They would be staggered, with construction beginning in the highest-priority regions first.”

According to Dave Conway, a Site C spokesman, the $7.9 billion project will create about 10,000 person-years of direct construction employment, and 33,000 person-years of total employment during development and construction.

Construction will take about eight years.  This includes seven years for  the construction itself and one year for commissioning, site reclamation and demobilization.

Thompson said geothermal energy has other advantages over hydro.  “For example, geothermal power has a lower unit energy cost and capital cost,” she said.  “And, the physical and environmental footprint of geothermal is small.”

The CanGEA report says the “strategic dispersion” of geothermal projects will have lower transmission costs than Site C.

“There is every reason to believe that, given the thoughtful and (methodical) development of B.C.’s geothermal potential, geothermal power could provide all of B.C.’s future power requirements at a lower cost to ratepayers than the proposed Site C project.” […]

“For the most part, Canada’s geothermal power sector lay dormant for the following two decades while interest in the industry continued to grow outside of Canada’s borders.” […]”<

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Concentrated Solar Power Projects in 2014

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“It was a good year for solar power in the USA, with over six gigawatts of photovoltaic (PV) capacity and more than one gigawatt of concentrated solar power (CSP) being added in 2014, bringing the nation’s total solar power capacity to more than 17 gigawatts. That’s a 41% increase in solar power capacity in just one year…”  Source: www.engineering.com

>” Photovoltaic vs Concentrated Solar Power

Photovoltaic technology converts light directly into electricity. PV panels produce DC, which needs to be converted to AC before being placed on the grid. PV panels work best in direct sunlight when they’re pointed perpendicular to the sun’s rays, but they also work reasonably well in diffuse light, even when not pointed directly at the sun. This makes them inexpensive and suitable for rooftops, since solar tracking isn’t required. PV also works in climates that aren’t particularly sunny; Germany gets less sunlight than the northern US, and yet it has a large portion of its power generated by PV.

Concentrated solar power, on the other hand, requires direct sunlight and solar tracking. CSP focuses the sun’s energy and uses the resulting heat to create steam that drives a traditional turbine generator. Even better, the heat can be stored – usually in the form of molten salts – so the CSP plant can generate electricity even when the sun isn’t shining. Because CSP relies on direct sunlight, it’s most suitable for very sunny locations like the American southwest.  […]

US Concentrated Solar Power in 2014

These five major CSP plants went online in 2014 (give or take a few months – one went live in late 2013):

Gila Bend, AZ is the home of the Solana parabolic trough power plant, which provides 250 MW of power to residents of Arizona. The turbine It went live in October of 2013. Spanning 1920 acres, the solar farm includes over two million square meters of reflective troughs and two tanks of molten salts, which provide up to six hours of thermal energy storage. If the stored energy is depleted and the sun isn’t shining, the turbine can be powered by natural gas as a backup.

The Genesis power plant in Blythe CA generates 250 MW of power using a parabolic trough array consisting of more than half a million mirrors. Unlike the Solana plant, Genesis includes no storage or backup fuel. Brought online in April of 2014, designers expect it to generate about 600 GWh of energy each year.

Probably the most famous CSP plant in the US, and the largest of its kind in the world, is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in Ivanpah Dry Lake CA, about 50 miles south of Las Vegas NV. Its three power towers fired up in February 2014, and the facility now produces 377 MW of power. Its annual production is expected to exceed one terawatt-hour. Ivanpah includes natural gas as its backup, but has no on-site storage.

About 270 miles northwest of Ivanpah is the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Tonopah, NV. Originally planned to go online in late 2014, the start date has been pushed back to January of 2015. When operational, this 110 MW power tower should produce nearly 500 GWh per year. Crescent Dunes uses molten salt to store heat, allowing it to generate power for ten hours without sunlight.

The Mojave Solar One facility came online in late 2014 and now generates 250 MW of electricity. Located about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles CA, this parabolic trough array feeds a pair of 125 MW steam turbine generators. The plant should produce about 600 GWh per year. […]”<

 

 

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Renewable Geothermal Power with Oil and Gas Coproduction Technology may be Feasible

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The U.S. has been harnessing geothermal energy since 1960 and if recently announced research projects and startups are successful, even more geothermal power might soon be available.

Source: www.renewableenergyworld.com

>” […]  in the past, wastewater from oilfield production processes was viewed as a nuisance byproduct that needed to be disposed of. But new research has shown that much of the 25 billion barrels of this geothermally heated “wastewater” produced at oil wells each year in the U.S. is hot enough to produce electricity. It is estimated that many of the wells might have clean energy capacities of up to 1 MW.

Oil and Gas Coproduction in the US

In 2008, the DOE developed the first low-temperature geothermal unit in an oil field at the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center (RMOTC) in Wyoming. The well is producing energy and has a capacity of approximately 217 kW. RMOTC continues to test power units produced by Ormat Technologies and UTC/Pratt and Whitney Power Systems at the center and more than 30 oil firms have visited the center to learn about coproduction technology. The technology is also being implemented in Nevada, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Dakota and Texas.

In Nevada, Florida Canyon Mining Inc. is using the 220°F groundwater in a coproduction project that uses ElectraTherm’s 50-kW waste heat generators, aka “Green Machines” to generate electricity.

Energy can be harnessed at working oilfields and used to power them without interrupting their operation. A Gulf Coast Green Energy (GCGE) coproduction project at the Denbury oilfields in Laurel, Mississippi, is using this technique again with ElectraTherm Green Machines.  It replaced Denbury’s electric submersible pump and cut electricity costs by a third. GCGE has a second 50-kW geothermal natural gas coproduction project in Louisiana.

University of North Dakota was awarded $1.7 million through the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Program to install a geothermal Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system at another oilfield operated byDenbury. For two years the plant will be used to develop engineering and economic models for geothermal ORC energy production. The technology could be used throughout the Williston Basin.

Liberty County Pilot Project

Texas is oil country, and the 4000+ dormant oil and gas wells speckled across the landscape provide a new, or perhaps recycled, frontier in geothermal energy production.  To tap some of that energy,Universal GeoPower CEO and petroleum geologist George Alcorn Jr. and his partner, Chris Luchini, a PhD physicist will use the $1.5 million in federal stimulus funds that they were awarded to bring geothermal energy to Liberty County, Texas. The company said that to prepare its DOE application, it worked with Southern Methodist University. The university has performed extensive research on coproduction and has found that it is applicable to an estimated 37,500 oil and gas wells in the Gulf Coast region.

Universal GeoPower’s pilot project is expected to be one of many that will recomplete the wells to produce low temperature, geopressured brine water. The brine will run through a commercial off-the-shelf turbo expander and an ORC binary generator.

Alcorn spoke recently at GEA’s global geothermal meeting in Washington, DC, offering a snapshot of the economic benefits of the process. “The lead-time to revenue generation is about 6 months, whereas traditional geothermal can take up to five years,” he said. “The wells already have known geothermal potential, and capital costs are dramatically reduced.”

Additionally, Alcorn noted, units are installed at existing oil wells, eliminating the need for investment in drilling, new roads or transmission lines. […]”<

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Chile’s Mines Run on Renewables

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Chilean mines are more and more run on renewable energy, which will soon be bigger than conventional energy in Chile. Thanks to China, writes John Mathews.

Source: www.energypost.eu

>” […] Miners in Chile are building independent solar, solar thermal, wind and geothermal power plants that produce power at costs competitive with or lower than conventional fuel supplies or grid-connected electric power.

Consider these facts.

The Cerro Dominador concentrated solar power (CSP) plant (see here for an explanation of the different solar technologies), rated at 110 megawatts, will supply regular uninterrupted power to the Antofagasta Minerals complex in the dry north of Chile, in the Atacama desert. Construction began in 2014. This is one of the largest CSP plants in the world, utilising an array of mirrors and lenses to concentrate the sun’s rays onto a power tower, and utilising thermal storage in the form of molten salts, perfected by Spanish company Abengoa. It will supply steady, dispatchable power, day and night.

The El Arrayán wind power project, rated at 115 megawatts, now supplies power to the Los Pelambres mine of Antofagasta Minerals, using Pattern Energy (US) as technology partner. Antofagasta Minerals has also contracted with US solar company SunEdison to build solar panel arrays at the Los Pelambres mine, with a power plant rated at 70 megawatts; while the related plant operated by Amenecer Solar CAP is rated at 100 megawatts, the largest such array in Latin America when it came online in 2014.

There are many more such projects under review or in the pipeline. The Chilean Renewable Energy Center reported in 2014 that the pipeline of renewable power projects in Chile added up to 18,000 megawatts (or 18 gigawatts), which is more than the country’s entire current electric power grid. […]”<

 

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Swedish Stirling Engine Generator Converts Low Quality Landfill Gas to Energy in Poland

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Swedish Stirling Engine generator specialist, Cleanergy supplies its GasBox generators to two landfill sites in Poland for the production of energy from low quality methane gas emitted from two major, following a successful pilot project earlier in the year.

Source: www.waste-management-world.com

>” […] GasBox – the centrepiece of its Combined Heat & Power (CHP) system – has been specifically developed to generate electricity and heat from low-quality methane gas produced by the decomposition of organic matter at the 2000+ landfill sites across Europe, most of which are more than 10 years old.

According to Cleanergy, many such landfill sites choose to flare the methane they produce.

The European Union Landfill Directive of 1999 states that flaring is only an option if it is impossible to extract energy from the methane gas. But up until today, older landfill sites have often broken these directives because the gas combustion engines traditionally used at newer landfills where methane levels are above 40% simply cannot produce electricity from lower grade, ‘dirty’ methane.

However, at the two Polish landfill sites the methane was released straight into the atmosphere rather than being flared.  To address this, Cleanergy’s GasBox was deployed at the Regional Centre of Waste Management in Domaszkowice in Poland in August.

This 25 hectare landfill site closed in the  2000. Since the installation of the GasBox, the electricity generated has been used to power equipment and to heat and electrify buildings at the site.

Following this success, Cleanergy’s CHP system has also been deployed at the Waste Neutralisation Enterprise in Sulnówko, a 7.5 hectare landfill site.

Anders Koritz, CEO at Cleanergy commented: “We developed our GasBox to meet a specific need – a complete CHP system that can run on low-grade methane gas. Sure enough the industry response since our launch in June has been amazing.”

According to Cleanergy its GasBox addresses this specific problem and is able to produce both electricity and heat from a methane gas concentration down to 18%.

Installed inside a modular container, Cleanergy’s GasBox is an autonomous and flexible stirling engine unit. Also inside the container is a real-time power management system with remote access; a fuel pipe; plus a heat and electricity connection to a house/factory/warehouse with optional grid functionality.

With a claimed ROI of three to five years, the company said that its GasBox is now commercially deployed at several locations in Norway, Slovenia, Sweden (in collaboration with the Swedish Energy Agency) and the UK. […]”<

 

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Indiana Landfill Gas Energy Project Starts Operations

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Republic Services recently announced the start of operations at its latest landfill gas-to-energy project. The new 6 MW project at County Line Landfill involves four engines operating at one energy generation facility.

Source: biomassmagazine.com

>” […] Landfill gas is a natural byproduct of decomposing waste. This project involves extracting gas from within the landfill, processing the extracted gas, and then distributing the processed gas to a generation facility where it is converted into energy that supplies the local electric grid.

According to the U.S. EPA, landfill gas-to-energy projects also reduce reliance on non-renewable energy resources, such as coal or petroleum. The EPA estimates that three megawatts of energy produced from landfill gas is equivalent to preventing carbon emissions generated by the consumption of 16.6 million gallons of gasoline. Based on EPA calculations, the new County Line Landfill gas-to-energy project prevents carbon emissions equivalent to the consumption of more than 32 million gallons of gasoline.

Republic Services partnered with Aria Energy on the design, development and management of the new project. Republic Services and Aria Energy have partnered on four projects to date with a combined generation capacity of more than 39.6 megawatts of electrical power. Republic and Aria are currently working on two additional projects, which combined are expected to create another 15 megawatts of electrical power.

Republic Services has implemented 73 landfill gas-to-energy projects nationwide. Together, these projects harness enough electricity to power or heat approximately 400,000 households. According to the EPA, the combined environmental benefits from these projects are equal to removing more than 4 million cars from our roads or planting more than 4.5 million acres of trees each year. […]”<

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$200m Demand Management Program Approved in NYC to Defer $1 billion SubStation to 2026

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The NYPSC approved Con Ed of New York’s proposed $200 million Brooklyn/Queens Demand Management Program that would relieve overloads in the city.

Source: www.rtoinsider.com

>” […] Con Ed’s proposed Brooklyn/Queens Demand Management Program is consistent with the state’s “Reforming the Energy Vision” program to restructure the electricity market with greater reliance on technology and distributed resources, the commission said. “The commission is making a significant step forward toward a regulatory paradigm where utilities incorporate alternatives to traditional infrastructure investment when considering how to meet their planning and reliability needs,” the order states.

Commission Chair Audrey Zibelman added that because of the recent D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down federal jurisdiction over demand response in wholesale markets, it’s important for state regulators to set market rules for that resource.

Con Ed said the feeders serving the Brownsville No. 1 and 2 substations began to experience overloads in 2013 and would be overloaded by 69 MW for 40 to 48 hours during the summer by 2018. A new substation, transmission subfeeders and a switching station would cost $1 billion, according to the company. The PSC accepted the company’s estimate of the DM Program’s costs and ordered a cap of $200 million.

The program would include 52 MW of non-traditional utility-side and customer-side relief, including about 41 MW of energy efficiency, demand management and distributed generation, and 11 MW of utility-side battery energy storage. This will include incentives to upgrade building “envelopes,” improve air conditioning efficiency of equipment, encourage greater use of energy controls, and establish energy storage, distributed generation or microgrids.

This will be supplemented by approximately 17 MW of traditional utility infrastructure investment, consisting of 6 MW of capacitors and 11 MW of load transfers from the affected area to other networks.  […]”<

 

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Oil Price Slump Good News for Solar Power?

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As global oil prices hit a five-year low, the fossil fuel industry is facing a gathering storm that could spell great news for the solar power industry.

Source: www.pv-magazine.com

” […]

Some analysts had suggested that cheaper oil could initially cause problems for the solar industry. With utilities able – but not guaranteed – to pass on gains to the consumer, the thirst for renewable energy could wane, analysts warned. “Such a scenario could destroy value on existing renewable energy projects and make it difficult to raise financing for future projects,” Peter Atherton, utility analyst at Liberum Capital, told the Guardian.

However, Deutsche Bank energy analyst Vishal Shah yesterday released a report that suggested there would be “limited/no impact from recent oil price weakness” on the solar industry, with PPA prices in the U.S. immune from oil fluctuations. In China, Shah added, government appetite to tackle air pollution also protects the solar industry from external volatility, while the U.S. residential solar market is even more insulated from external forces, which spells good news for companies like Solar City.

In Japan, energy advisor to the government and senior fellow at Mitsui Global Strategic Studies Institute Takashi Hongo told Bloomberg that “renewables are supported by policies, and that is not something that will be amended quickly just because oil prices fall,” suggesting there will be hardly any negative impact to the solar industry.

A warning shot was fired from Lin Boqiang, director of the Energy Economics Research Center at China’s Xiamen University, however. “If oil stays at current prices or weakens through the first half of next year, the impact on new energy would be massive,” Boqiang told Bloomberg. “Weakening oil prices would hamper the competitiveness of new energy.”

[…]

“The fact that oil is so unpredictable is one of the reasons why we must move to renewable energy, which has a completely predictable cost of zero for fuel,” urged Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the opening of the COP20 climate conference in Peru.

A changing tide
Following oil’s dramatic price fall last week, this week began with two seismic announcements that could hammer a further nail into the fossil fuel coffin. First, German utility E.ON announced that it is to pivot away from fossil fuels by 2016, pouring the majority of its resources into the development of renewable energy sources.

Then, a day later, the Bank of England (BOE) wrote a letter to the U.K. government’s Environment Audit Committee announcing that it is to formally begin examining the risks fossil fuel companies pose to financial stability.

BOE governor Mark Carney expressed his concern that much of the world’s proven coal, oil and gas reserves may be “unburnable” if the world is to keep global warming within safe limits.

“In light of discussions with officials, we will be deepening and widening our inquiry into the topic,” wrote Carney. “I expect the Financial Policy Committee to also consider this issue as part of its regular horizon-scanning work on financial stability risks.” […]”

Read more: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/is-the-oil-price-slump-a-boon-for-solar_100017395/#ixzz3LrUAGr88

 

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Electricity storage becomes priority as solar and wind energy cost keeps dropping

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“And the cost of solar power is declining amazingly. Austin Energy signed a deal recently that a solar farm is selling at 5 cents a kilowatt-hour. A recent study by Lazard gave a cost of 5.6 cents for solar and 1.4 cents for wind power (with current subsidies) or 7.2 cents for solar and 3.7 cents for wind without subsidies. Natural gas came in at 6.1 cents and coal at 6.6 cents. The Solar Energy Industries Association claims that in the Southwest electricity contracts for solar energy have dropped 70 percent since 2008.”

Peter Spitz's avatarchemengineeringposts

imgres The rapid advances in the use of solar and wind energy – more in Europe, but now also gaining momentum in the U.S.- has put electricity “storage” front and center. That is because there is no solar production at night and little on cloudy days, while strong winds are unpredictable in most locations. So, the best “model” for these renewable energy sources is to generate as much as possible at favorable times and to “store” excess production for periods when solar and wind energy supply are low.

And the cost of solar power is declining amazingly. Austin Energy signed a deal recently that a solar farm is selling at 5 cents a kilowatt-hour. A recent study by Lazard gave a cost of 5.6 cents for solar and 1.4 cents for wind power (with current subsidies) or 7.2 cents for solar and 3.7 cents for wind without subsidies. Natural gas came in at…

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