Buildings With Integrated Wind Generation

Beyond Turbines

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 ~ Here comes another unusual-looking building, the Strawscraper, which employs a hair-like covering which the wind ruffles to produce electricity:

The system utilizes Piezoelectric technology, which turns movement into electricity that can be stored for later use. The hair’s tiny movement is safe for birds and humans and isn’t noisy like traditional turbines can be. But Strawscraper isn’t all about the brains, it also has the beauty. The hair covering the building creates the illusion of movement, giving the normally static city skyline the illusion of motion.

While London's Strata Tower is still "expected" to generate perhaps 8% of the building's energy needs, after three years there is as yet no indication of the actual power produced. Perhaps sensibly, a power estimate is not being offered for the Strawscraper.

My prediction? It looks a lot like a scratching post, so beware giant predatory Siamese cats.

Pterofin

Renewable Energy Using Biomimicry

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 ~ My friend Wally Kempkey has been working very hard on this for many years.



Not only is it incredibly cool and creative, the concept is very well-suited to slow currents. Faster currents can be harnessed by conventional turbines like those made by Hydrovolts and others, but such currents are comparatively rare. Slower currents can be found all over the world in watercourses both natural and man-made. While the power generated can be small, the Pterofin device would provide huge value in off-grid developing world locations for water pumping or trickle-charging batteries.

Want a scale model for your desk? Give some love on Kickstarter.

Why Clean Energy Matters

It's The Emissions, Stupid

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 ~ It's a significant part of the greenhouse gas emissions problem:

Graphic by Emmanuelle Bournay, UNEP/GRID-Arendal

What part of this surprises you the most?

Learn more about the UN Environmental Programme here.

Download high-resolution versions of this graphic here.

A Renewable Future

Present-Day Germany

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 ~ Europe's largest national economy hit a milestone in the first half of this year—for the first time, 25% of German electricity generation came from renewable sources.

Wind energy was the largest contributor of green power, accounting for 9.2 percent of all energy output... Biomass, or material acquired from living organisms, accounted for 5.7 percent and solar technology for 5.3 percent.

Germany is the largest market for electricity in Europe, and has long been a leader in boldly reshaping its energy policy, including forswearing all nuclear after Japan's Fukushima disaster.

Interestingly, the policy has been driven the past many years by the country's conservative parties. Preserving resources and the environment for the future is a truly conservative notion, a truth lost on this country's radicals who inappropriately like to be called conservative.

Coal and Wind

Blackouts in India

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 ~ As much as 10% of the world's population is without electricity following the second massive grid outage in India this week.

Blame is being spread around among an outdated, rickety grid, a lack of generation capacity, government inefficiency and corruption, a failure to follow agreed-to consumption limits by various states, poor energy pricing that encourages wasteful consumption, and, as one routinely expects from the corporate cheer-leading quarter, supposedly strangling environmental regulations. All of these are true at least in part, but the bigger cause is a failure to plan and build a stronger commitment to renewable energy.

Solar Facts

Myths and Misinformation Must Yield

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 ~ An excellent infographic that shines the positive light on solar it increasingly merits:

Solar:

• Is getting cheaper
• Reduces electricity costs long-term
• Generates a net surplus of energy
• Works on cloudy days
• Is becoming competitive with fossil fuels

As I posted earlier, solar has also been proven as an effective base-load energy source.

Baseload Solar

It Can Be Done

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 ~ Many have asserted that renewable energy generation is impractical because it is too variable and too intermittent. Not true, as installations in Spain demonstrate:

Gemasolar, which officially launched last month (May 2011), is a 19.9-MW plant with a 15-hour ‘battery’. Gemasolar’s expected production is 110,000 MWh per year—or about enough to fully power 25,000 households. Because it can store energy, this 19.9 MW generates the equivalent of a 50 MW solar power plant without storage, according to Mr. Arias.

Gemasolar’s battery consists of two tanks of molten salt thermal energy storage that allows the solar plant to generate on-demand electricity: during the evening, during cloud cover or rain, or even days or weeks later.

Gemasolar, and similar renewable energy generation installations is part of the solution that allows us to create a renewable energy future. It is possible with wind too.

A Renewable Energy Future

80% By 2050

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 ~ A new study by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) shows that the future of electrical energy could be composed primarily from renewable technologies. Is it really possible?

It's not the first such study. Several others have come to similar conclusions. The NREL study adds further rigor and detail to the argument and makes a straightforward statement:

Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.

Solar Around the World

Another Electric Vehicle

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 ~ If hybrid and all-electric cars and airplanes can be built, then why not a boat? Billed as the world's first solar circumnavigation by boat, the voyage of the MS Turanor PlanetSolar took almost 585 days:

The catamaran has a solar PV surface area that covers more than 530 square meters with a capacity of 93.5 kilowatts. That onboard power has been enough to lead the crew from Monaco through the Straight of Gibraltar, past Cuba, to Miami and Mexico, through the Panama Canal, across the span of the Pacific, to the eastern coast of Australia, up through Southeast Asia to Hong Kong, westward to the southern tip of India, into the Gulf of Iman, back down and into the Red Sea, where it crossed through the Suez Canal and back into the home waters of the Mediterranean.

It's a piece of nerdy coolness to power a boat from solar energy (and to give it a name from J.R.R. Tolkien) but rather impractical when another renewable energy source—wind—can be mechanically harnessed. Wind also can be converted to electricity with higher efficiency than solar. Still, it is another demonstration that our remaining enslaved to fossil fuels is no more than a choice, and a poor one at that. We could make other choices.

Boat details here.

(h/t Renewable Energy World)

Micro Power Loans

Empowering Communities

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 ~ Hundreds of thousands of people have electricity because of distributed generation from small renewable energy systems financed by micro lending:

The Solar Home System (SHS) dissemination programme in Bangladesh is considered to be one of the most successful of its kind in the world, bringing power to rural areas where grid electricity supply is neither available nor expected in the medium term.

The program started in January 2005 and nearly 350,000 SHSs were installed by the summer 0f 2009, most of which had a rated power output of 50W. Systems came with 3-4 compact flourescent light bulbs. Owners benefit from lighting, especially in their kitchens and courtyards, and also use the systems to charge batteries, power radios, and even run 12V televisions. While statistics are lacking, it appears that some owners are using the power in their small stores and restaurants, boosting their income.

Record Wind

In Two States

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 ~ The overheated and ignorant rhetoric on gas prices continues its steady drone.

Meanwhile, renewable energy from wind recently set records in two states.

Energy Lies—XI

"Renewable Energy Mandates Raise Electricity Rates"

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 ~ A common trope among defenders of fossil energy is that mandating renewable energy punishes ratepayers by forcing utilities to pass on increased generation costs.

But there's no truth to the charge:

Upon examining electricity rate data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration spanning the decade from 2000-2010, a Center for American Progress analysis found zero statistically-significant difference in how renewable electricity standards affect changes in rates.

Energy Lies—IX

"Obama's Anti-American Energy Policy"

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 ~ Sure, it's bombastic in the ugly style of modern political campaigns, but to accuse the American President of being "outrageously anti-American" is tantamount to an accusation of treason. Newt Gingrich should be mortified for his intemperance, but, as his past amply shows, he is beyond shame.

So what has President Obama on energy policy done to provoke the vituperative Georgian so? Two things: not rushing approval of Keystone XL, and being too keen on electrifying our transportation sector.

Gingrich is not just disrespectful and obnoxious, he's also both wrong on the facts and, surprisingly for a self-styled historian, wrong on the nature of what is American.

Electricity in the Developing World

Small Scale, Local Generation

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 ~ The need for electricity throughout the developing world is immense and will continue to grow. Unlike in the industrialized countries, much of the developing world does not have large centralized power plants and transmission lines to carry that power to widely-spread users. Nor are they likely to ever have such a system:

Building out the power grid can be prohibitively expensive, which is why in many countries, like Haiti, less than three quarters of the population have grid access. Pike Research’s Clint Wheelock says just for the transmission portion alone it can cost at least $500,000 per mile. And that’s without the distribution portion and any kind of the grid intelligence (smart grid) that is getting all of the investment this year.

Energy Lies—VI

"Renewable Energy Standards Boost Electricity Rates"

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 ~ Do state mandates for renewable energy generation increase electricity rates?

Some of the usual suspects, like Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, labor to convince you they do. But the signature claim, that ratepayers fork over more in states with a RES, is a classic case of lying with statistics.

Let’s start with their first assertion:

Renewable energy standards, by design, are intended to drive up energy costs — requiring utilities to use more expensive and often less reliable sources of energy. Not surprisingly, such laws have hit ratepayers hard. States that have a binding RES now have electricity costs that are 39 percent higher than states that don’t have a binding RES.

That’s a scary number. But it’s also totally meaningless. The problem is that these states had higher rates before they ever put the RES in place.

States with high electricity rates before continue to have electricity rates. Also, rates are affected by many factors, not just the existence or details of a RES. In fact the 5 states with the most installed wind and solar power saw the least increase in electricity prices over the past 6 years.

Impacts are either overblown or outright false:

Wind Up

FERC Sides with Wind Farms Over BPA

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 ~ How much do we need a smart grid?

Last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) cannot use its monopoly power to force wind farm operators to curtail generation, an action the BPA took in response to a surfeit of hydro power this past spring.

At the time, BPA claimed that they had to curtail wind generation to protect salmon populations. Wind producers argued that BPA should have continued to buy all their generation and could have sold the power elsewhere. BPA's decision cost them both crucial revenue and the production tax credits on which their financing, and hence, the overall project viability, depended.

FERC has now largely agreed with the wind farm operators that BPA could have sent the power to California and instead curtailed generation there.

Wind farm owners, including independent developers and utilities who own their own projects, say the problem is about money, not too much electricity.

"The agency has painted this issue as being about fish and physics," said Stefan Bird, senior vice president at PacifiCorp Energy. "It's about discrimination and dollars."

DeLorean EV

Return to Back to the Future

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 ~ Yes, but will it have a flux capacitor option?

Wind Turbines

Near Palm Springs, CA

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 ~ Heading west from Palm Desert on I-10 in California I am always amazed at the enormous number of wind turbines that flank the highway. Some are quite old and no longer functional but others are spinning away. Today there was very little wind until we got through the pass. The radio was playing some great music, but I had to "remaster" this to make it fit the video segments.



There's something captivating about wind making power all down the highway.

Update: Redid video, uploaded to YouTube and embedded here.

A Steady Wind

Firmer When Further Flung

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~ As many have long suspected, variable renewable energy sources, like wind, can be made more firm through numbers. Adding enough wind turbines and spreading them geographically smooths out the variability of individual wind turbines.

The impact is significant, and the optimized system varies from 15 to 50 percent of capacity, compared to individual turbine variability that's twice as large. Over a longer period (a year), the optimized (combined) system provides significantly more reliable power to the electric grid. It reduces periods of zero output to a few hours per year, effectively zero probability.

Still, it always comes back to the grid. If we cannot reallocate distributed generation from where it is available to where the load is, none of this matters. A better grid is what will truly unlock the promise of renewable energy.

US Energy By State

Consumption, Renewable Production Varies Widely

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~ The US Department of Energy has revamped their web site. One of the many new things is an interactive map that shows per capita energy consumption (in kilowatt-hours) by state.

It's surprising how much it varies, from New York, with the lowest consumption of 57,322 kWh per person to Wyoming, with the highest consumption of 280,103 kWh per person, more than 5 times as much. Why is that?

Also interesting is renewable energy production by state. According to the map, Washington State produces 92.25% of its energy from renewable sources (chiefly hydro) and 10.96% of the renewable energy of the nation as a whole—242.16B kWh. This is the biggest percentage of any state. Iowa is next with 158.2B kWh and 7.16% of total US production, almost all from biomass.