Custom Energy Efficiency: Hotels

I don’t think I have ever appreciated a hotel as much as I did during a trip to Houston for a cleantech tradeshow. The humidity was off the charts and it felt like I was slowly melting into the sidewalk going to and from the show each day. But the second I stepped into that hotel, everything was perfect.

The temperature was just right- not frigid, but certainly cool enough to be a fantastic antidote for the sweaty, sticky heat outside. My room was lit softly, a welcome relief from the glaring sun, but still bright enough to read and work comfortably. And best of all, I had full control over everything in my small empire- dimmers for the lights, temperature control and timers for the air conditioning.

These much-appreciated conveniences come at a steep price for hotels who spend an average of 6 to 10% of all operating costs on energy. Up to 75% of that is eaten up by space conditioning, with an average of 30% just for air conditioning. For hotels in hotter climates (like steamy Houston), air conditioning energy consumption is closer to 50% and represents a major burden on a hotel’s bottom line.

Here are just a few ideas for hotels looking to save energy…

Lighting

This is the go-to area that most people think of first for energy savings. While energy efficient ways of lighting up a hotel should be employed, these measures are really a small part of a larger set of changes needed. On average, lighting only makes up 12-18% of overall hotel energy use, so energy efficiency gains will have a relatively small impact on the overall energy profile of the hotel. Fortunately, making lighting more energy efficient is relatively easy:

Energy efficient bulbs make the most out of the existing lighting system. Not only do CFL bulbs and LED lights (appropriate for things like exit signs) use less energy, but they also have a longer lifespan which cuts down on replacement costs.

Occupancy sensors can make a substantial difference to the energy usage of lighting. Most hotel rooms are only occupied for a fraction of the day, and it is estimated that over 75% of guest room lighting energy consumption happens when the room is empty!

Having smart sensors like these ones, that turn off lights when a guest leaves their room can result in huge efficiency gains. Significant savings can also be made by installing occupancy sensors in public areas like meeting rooms, restrooms, hallways, etc.

Space Conditioning

As mentioned above, space conditioning eats up the majority of a hotel’s energy. It offers the single largest opportunity for energy savings and the related cost reductions.

Insulation can make a big difference in the energy efficiency of any building, and hotels are no exception. If your hotel is poorly insulated, all the improvements in the world for your heating and cooling system will be secondary to the gains you can make by upgrading your insulation.

Air conditioning is a huge energy pig in hotels. It gobbles up a massive amount of energy, and often hoteliers feel at a loss for how to change this. Guests demand constant cooling when it is hot out- I’m embarrassed to say that I honestly would have pitched a fit if my hotel room was not air conditioned in Houston! So hoteliers cannot simply turn off the A/C to save energy.

Stay tuned for details in a feature article on Smartcool’s results for hotels like JW Marriott, Hilton and Radisson, which will be published later this week in the Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers (CiBSE) Journal Hotel & Leisure Supplement.

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Solar PV’s 44% Efficiency Record, Thanks To NREL & Solar Junction

 
Here’s a great solar PV story from the good folks over at NREL (note that we’ve already covered Solar Junction’s 44% solar cell efficiency record, but this post below goes above & beyond that first one):

An operator inspects a photolithography tool used to manufacture high-efficiency Solar Junction concentrator solar cells. NREL’s pioneering multijunction work led to the Solar Junction SJ3 solar cell with tunable bandgaps, lattice-matched architecture, and ultra-concentrated tunnel junctions. Credit: Daniel Derkacs/Solar Junction

It takes outside-the-box thinking to outsmart the solar spectrum and set a world record for solar cell efficiency. The solar spectrum has boundaries and immutable rules. No matter how much solar cell manufacturers want to bend those rules, they can’t.

So how can we make a solar cell that has a higher efficiency than the rules allow?

That’s the question scientists in the III-V Multijunction Photovoltaics Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) faced 15 years ago as they searched for materials they could grow easily that also have the ideal combinations of band gaps for converting photons from the sun into electricity with unprecedented efficiency.

A band gap is an energy that characterizes how a semiconductor material absorbs photons, and how efficiently a solar cell made from that material can extract the useful energy from those photons.

“The ideal band gaps for a solar cell are determined by the solar spectrum,” said Daniel Friedman, manager of the NREL III-V Multijunction Photovoltaics Group. “There’s no way around that.”

But this year, Friedman’s team succeeded so spectacularly in bending the rules of the solar spectrum that NREL and its industry partner, Solar Junction, won a coveted R&D 100 award from R&D Magazine for a world-record multijunction solar cell. The three-layered cell, SJ3, converted 43.5% of the energy in sunlight into electrical energy â€" a rate that has stimulated demand for the cell to be used in concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) arrays for utility-scale energy production.

Last month, that record of 43.5% efficiency at 415 suns was eclipsed with a 44% efficiency at 947 suns. Both records were verified by NREL. This is NREL’s third R&D 100 award for advances in ultra-high-efficiency multijunction cells. CPV technology gains efficiency by using low-cost lenses to multiply the sun’s intensity, which scientists refer to as numbers of suns.

Friedman says earlier success with multijunction cells â€" layered semiconductors each optimized to capture different wavelengths of light at their junctions â€" gave NREL a head start.

The SJ3 cells fit into the market for utility-scale CPV projects. They’re designed for application under sunlight concentrated to 1,000 times its normal intensity by low-cost lenses that gather the light and direct it at each cell. In regions of clear atmosphere and intense sunlight, such as the U.S. desert Southwest, CPV has outstanding potential for lowest-cost solar electricity. There is enough available sunlight in these areas to supply the electrical energy needs of the entire United States many times over.

Bending Material to the Band Gaps on the Solar Spectrum

NREL Principal Scientist Jerry Olson holds examples of the first multijunction cells that were developed in the 1980s based on his scientific breakthrough.

Sunlight is made up of photons of a wide range of energies from roughly zero to four electron volts (eV). This broad range of energies presents a fundamental challenge to conventional solar cells, which have a single photovoltaic junction with a single characteristic band gap energy.

Conventional cells most efficiently convert those photons that very nearly match the band gap of the semiconductors in the cell. Higher-energy photons give up their excess energy to the solar cell as waste heat, while lower-energy photons are not collected by the solar cell, and their energy is completely lost.

This behavior sets a fundamental limit on the efficiency of a conventional solar cell. Scientists overcome this limitation by using multijunction solar cells. Using multiple layers of materials in the cells, they create multiple junctions, each with different band gap energies. Each converts a different energy range of the solar spectrum. An invention in the mid-1980s by NREL’s Jerry Olson and Sarah Kurtz led to the first practical, commercial multijunction solar cell, a GaInP/GaAs two-junction cell with 1.85-eV and 1.4-eV bandgaps that was recognized with an R&D 100 award in 1990, and later to the three-junction commercial cell based on GaInP/GaAs/Ge that won an R&D 100 award in 2001.

The researchers at NREL knew that if they could replace the 0.67-eV third junction with one better tuned to the solar spectrum, the resulting cell would capture more of the sun’s light throughout the day. But they needed a material that had an atomic structure that matched the lattice of the layer above it â€" and that also had the ideal band gap.

“We knew from the shape of the solar spectrum and modeling solar cells that what we wanted was a third junction that has a band gap of about 1.0 electron volt, lattice-matched to gallium arsenide,” Friedman said. “The lattice match makes materials easier to grow.”

They concentrated on materials from the third and fifth columns of the periodic table because these so-called III-V semiconductors have similar crystal structures and ideal diffusion, absorption, and mobility properties for solar cells.

But there was seemingly no way to capture the benefits of the gallium arsenide material while matching the lattice of the layer below, because no known III-V material compatible with gallium arsenide growth had both the desired 1-eV band gap and the lattice-constant match to gallium arsenide.

That changed in the early 1990s, when a research group at NTT Laboratories in Tokyo working on an unrelated problem made an unexpected discovery. Even though gallium nitride has a higher band gap than gallium arsenide, when you add a bit of nitrogen to gallium arsenide, the band gap shrinks â€" exactly the opposite of what was expected to happen.

“That was very surprising, and it stimulated a great deal of work all over the world, including here at NREL,” Friedman said. “It helped push us to start making solar cells with this new dilute nitride material.”

Good Band Gaps, but Not So Good Solar Material

The NREL team that shared the 2012 R&D 100 award for the world-record SJ3 multijunction solar cell include, from left, Aaron Ptak, John Geisz, Sarah Kurtz, Brian Keyes, Bob Reedy, and Daniel Friedman; unpictured team members are Jerry Olson and Steve Johnston. Credit: Dennis Schroeder / NREL

The new solar cells NREL developed had two things going for them â€" and one big issue.

“The good things were that we could make the material very easily, and we did get the band gap and the lattice match that we wanted,” Friedman said. “The bad thing was that it wasn’t a good solar cell material. It wasn’t very good at converting absorbed photons into electrical energy. Materials quality is critical for high-performance solar cells, so this was a big problem.”

Still, NREL continued to search for a solution.

“We worked on it for quite a while, and we got to a point where we realized we had to choose between two ways of collecting current from a solar cell,” Friedman said. “One way is to let the electrical carriers just diffuse along without the aid of an electric field. That’s what you do if you have good material.”

If the material isn’t good, though, “you have to introduce an electric field to sweep the carriers out before they recombine and are lost,” Friedman said.

But to do that, virtually all impurities would have to be removed. And the only way to remove the impurities would be to use a different growth technique.

Using Molecular Beam Epitaxy to Virtually Eliminate Impurities

Solar cells are typically grown using metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy, or MOVPE.

“It works great, except you always get a certain level of impurities in the material. That’s usually not a problem, but it would be an issue for this novel material, with the gallium arsenide diluted with nitrogen,” Friedman said.

A different growth technique, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), is done in such an ultra-high vacuum â€" 10 to the minus 13 atmospheres â€" that it can lower the impurities to the point where an electric field can be created in the resulting photovoltaic junction. And that would make the otherwise promising gallium-arsenide-dilute-nitride material work as a solar cell.

“The only problem was that there was no one in the entire world manufacturing solar cells by MBE,” Friedman said.

But that was soon to change.

Partnering with a Startup out of Stanford University: Solar Junction

A Stanford University research group with expertise in the use of MBE for other electronic devices saw an opportunity, and around 2007, they spun out a startup company they named Solar Junction.

Because Solar Junction was a mix of enthusiastic recent Ph.D.s and experienced hands from outside the established solar cell field, “they weren’t tied to the constraints of thinking this couldn’t be done, that the only economically viable way to make solar cells was with MOVPE,” Friedman said.

The federal lab and the startup got together. Solar Junction won a $3 million DOE/NREL Photovoltaic Technology Incubator contract to develop a commercial multijunction cell using dilute nitrides, and also received more than $30 million of venture-capital funding for this commercialization effort. To see more about NREL’s Incubator projects, see the NREL news release.

“So Solar Junction had this good idea. But now they had to prove that you could actually make a high-efficiency solar cell with this,” Friedman said. “Otherwise, who cares? People can make a lot of claims, but it’s very simple to know whether you have a good solar cell or not â€" you just measure it.”

It didn’t take that long, Friedman said. By 2011, NREL had certified a new efficiency record for Solar Junction’s SJ3 cell. The cell achieved an efficiency of 43.5% under concentrated sunlight, a significant step beyond the previous multijunction efficiency record of 41.6%, and far beyond the maximum theoretical efficiency of 34% for traditional one-sun single-junction cells.

Dilute-Nitride Junction Eliminates Need for Heavy Germanium Layer

With the new dilute-nitride junction, the germanium layer, which constitutes about 90% of the weight of the cell, is no longer needed. That may not be a big deal when it’s part of a huge fixed utility-scale array. But when solar cells are used to power satellites, reduction in weight means a smaller rocket is needed to launch into space, potentially reducing costs significantly. The lighter weight is also essential for the military, which is increasingly asking soldiers to carry backpacks that include solar devices to power electronics.

Serendipitously, if the germanium substrate is retained, it has essentially the ideal band gap of 0.7 eV for a fourth junction, perfect for capturing longer wavelengths of the solar spectrum. That paves the way for a 50%-efficient solar cell in the not-distant future.

The cost to manufacture the SJ3 cell is competitive with that of the industry-standard GaInP/GaAs/Ge cell, according to Solar Junction. Its greater efficiency translates to significant cost-of-energy savings.

According to a report released this fall from IMS Research, the CPV market is forecast to double in 2012 and reach almost 90 megawatts. The World Market for Concentrated PV (CPV) â€" 2012 predicts installations of CPV will grow rapidly over the next five years to reach 1.2 gigawatts by 2016.

Because of its design and size, SJ3 is an instant plug-in replacement for the standard cell now used by the space and CPV industries. So, for example, if a 40%-efficient cell were replaced with a 44%-efficient cell, this would instantly increase the entire system power output by close to 10%.

“This is really a classic example of NREL developing something and then industry picking it up and running with it and making it a great commercial success,” Friedman said. “We started with some very basic materials research. We took it to the point where it made sense for industry to take over and take it to the marketplace.”

“We conceived the cell, demonstrated the individual parts, and let the world know about it,” Friedman said. “But Solar Junction put all the parts together with record-breaking results, made it work with MBE, and commercialized it at a time when no one else seemed to be interested in or able to do it.”

And now, utilities are ordering the SJ3 cells so fast that Solar Junction has depleted its pilot-scale stock and gone into partnership with manufacturer IQE to ramp up to full manufacturing scale.

Learn more about NREL’s photovoltaic research.

â€" Bill Scanlon

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Bamboo Bikes, Build Your Own At Bamboo Bicycle Club’s Monthly Courses

 
The Bamboo Bicycle Club, a bicycle company located in east London, is now offering monthly courses where they will teach you how to build your own custom bamboo bike. And for comparatively cheap, too â€" the total expenses are only £389 for the full weekend course and bike frame. That’s compared to the £1,199 or so for an entry level Bamboo Bikes frame. Or the £1,868 to £3,650 for a top of the line Calfee bike.

For the more DIY types, this sounds like a great deal. The £389 gets you a computer-designed custom frame and a full weekend of learning the craft of building a bamboo bike from the owners/engineers, James Marr and Ian McMillan. Here’s a description of the process from James Stewart of the UK’s Guardian.

“On day one, the boys show you how to select bamboo for strength â€" not only its diameter but that proposed cuts will fall between nodes â€" and how to mitre joints before tubes are epoxied lightly in place on the jig: first the front triangle composed of 40mm diameter bamboo; then the thinner, more fiddly seat and chain stays. Chromoly tubes are inserted for the handlebars, forks and seatpost and stainless steel dropouts are slotted into the chainstays.

“With its jigs and power tools and design plans, the course is a leap of faith for someone whose idea of DIY is flatpack assembly. Accurate mitring for a clean joint can be tricky, for example. Yet James and Ian buzz cheerfully between workbenches, supervising every cut, triple-checking every joint, and will take over if a task seems insurmountable.

“Sunday is a more relaxed day of building the lugs. Or rather, wraps: hemp webbing wrapped around the joints and dropouts then epoxied to form a strong bond that disperses loads evenly throughout the frame. With a final polymer coating for waterproofing, the bike is ready for wheels, brakes, gears, saddle etc; and the club offers gear packs at discounted prices.”

If you’re worried that a self-built bike will be of inferior quality to one that you can buy, the owners are quick to address your misconception. Ian has ridden his bike for over a year on a 16-mile commute without any damage, and James attempted to and failed to destroy his bike while off-road over three months of testing. “To be honest, our bikes are over-engineered â€" we use larger diameter tubes and over-thick layers of hemp â€" but I prefer it like that,” James says.


 
Before settling on the idea to show people how to build their own bikes, the owners of the company had been planning on just creating a boutique bike store. But “we realised we didn’t want just to sell frames. We wanted to share the joy of making something; the craft of creating something unique and sustainable,” James explains.

So they created the Bamboo Bike Club, more of a community than a traditional company since its opening in September.

“Some people love the build, but for me these workshops come together when the bike is on the road,” James says. “They’re so light, so effortless to ride. So much fun to ride too â€" take a Harley-style retro bike, add 10 and you’re still not close.”

Image Credits: BambooBicycleClub.org

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Big Storms and Fracking: What's at Stake?

Amy Mall, Senior Policy Analyst, Washington, D.C.

Here in Washington, D.C. the winds are fast, furious, and loud as we await the brunt of Hurricane Sandy. Winds have been clocked up to 90 mph as the storm hits land with the lowest pressure ever recorded in the northeast. Images of a crane dangling off a Manhattan skyscraper are as scary as the reports that flooding will occur as far north as Vermont and New Hampshire.

West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio are all expected to be hit by the storm. What could it mean for fracking sites in the Marcellus shale?

One of the greatest risks at these sites are spills and what is called "stormwater runoff." 

Under the Clean Water Act, there is something called the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) rule which includes requirements for oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response to prevent oil discharges to navigable waters and adjoining shorelines. The rule requires specific facilities to prepare, amend, and implement spill prevention plans. Sounds like a no-brainer. But in Fiscal Year 2011, EPA officials visited 120 sites oil and gas development sites and found 105 were out of compliance-- 87.5%. (Note: these do not have to be oil production sites. For example, natural gas pads may have enough fuel for drill rigs stored on site to trigger this requirement.)

Almost every single oil and gas site inspected lacked a mandatory spill prevention plan meant to protect our rivers and streams. This is an unacceptable flouting of our environmental laws.

In addition to a spill prevention plan, oil and gas companies should have something called a Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan. During a rainstorm, flowing water can pick up pollutants along the way, including toxic materials like fracking chemicals or fracking waste. Most companies are required by the Clean Water Act to get a stormwater permit by submitting a Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan outlining precautions the company will take to avoid illegal discharge of pollutants and impacts to nearby rivers and streams. Ensuring prevention of stormwater run-off is not rocket science. It requires simple measures such as sufficient berms and containment systems. But the oil and gas industry is exempt from having to get a permit, which means regulators do not have to approve a pollution prevention plan--or even see if a company really has one for each site.

This is all increasingly terrifying as Sandy bears down on the Marcellus region, where there are many open pits filled with fracking and related waste. Because the oil and gas industry is also exempt from our hazardous waste laws, no one knows exactly how dangerous the waste at any particular site might be, but we know it can be very toxic and also radioactive. NRDC opposes storing of fracking and production waste in these open air pits, but it is still allowed.

What does a flooded wellpad look like? Here is a photo of a flooded wellpad in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, after Tropical Storm Lee in September, 2011:

Photo credit: Carol French, used with permission.

And here is a photo of how dangerously close millions of gallons of potentially toxic fracking waste can be to homes, in this case in Washington County, Pennsylvania:

Photo credit: Robert Donnan, used with permission. 

NRDC opposes having dangerous fracking waste stored so close to people's homes. Hurricane Sandy is terrifying for many reasons. For people living next to fracking waste sites, one of them is that the storm may flood these sites and cause toxic substances to flow onto their land, their home, or their farm. It is well past due for the toxic waste loophole for the oil and gas industry to be closed.

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Will Alberta clean energy “firsts” add up to more in 2013? Here’s hoping…

If Alberta was a book, it wouldn’t be fair to judge Canada’s third-largest economy only by its oil-soaked cover.

Sure, the oil and gas sectors are the largest contributors to Alberta’s economy. Yes, documents recently obtained by Greenpeace reveal a far too cosy relationship between the provincial government and industry, if pipeline safety reviews are any indication.

But beyond the ruling Conservative government and the dominance of the petroleum sector are a growing number of progressive Albertan municipalities and entrepreneurs working toward a future not entirely dependent on fossil fuels.

Many achievements, in fact, mark firsts for Canada. The Town of Okotoks, a 15-minute drive from Calgary, was the first community to heat an entire neighbourhood with a solar district heating system. Calgary’s light-rail transit system, the CTrain, is the first to get all of its electricity from wind power.

This year, Edmonton became the first municipality to produce ethanol at a commercial scale from its municipal solid waste.

Meanwhile, a Calgary-based company called Borealis GeoPower aims to generate geothermal power from the hot wastewater that emerges as a byproduct of oil and gas production in the northern Alberta town of Swan Hills â€" another first, potentially.

One project this writer is eagerly following is developing in Medicine Hat, a municipality often referred to as “Gas City” because of the discovery in 1883 of major natural gas reserves.

Medicine Hat is attempting to prove that, even in a cold northern place like Alberta, energy from the sun can be harnessed directly at existing thermal power plants to displace the use of fossil fuels.

This isn’t a new idea. It’s been talked about since 2007, when the city commissioned a feasibility study to determine if it could be done and made good sense.

Medicine Hat is, in fact, the best place in this massive country to put up solar panels. The city gets more sunlight over a year than any other Canadian city â€" nearly 50 per cent more sunshine than Toronto.

Would you believe even more than Miami?

Medicine Hat’s plan is to install solar collectors (a type known as parabolic troughs) that can concentrate sunlight so much that the heat produced can turn water into steam. That steam will be fed into the steam generators at the municipality’s existing 203-megawatt thermal power plant, which normally relies on natural gas to produce steam.

Once completed, likely before next fall, it will be the first concentrated solar power (CSP) project built in Canada, as well as the first one ever integrated directly into a natural gas plant.

In October, the city selected Colorado-based SkyFuel to supply eight of its solar collector assemblies for the project, which will be capable of offsetting the equivalent of 1.1 megawatts of electricity normally generated from natural gas.

It’s not much, given the size of the plant, but as a demonstration project it will answer all sorts of questions. Can it scale up? Where else in Alberta would this approach be used? Could it work at coal-fired power plants and in the oil sands to offset natural gas used in bitumen extraction?

How economical is it, both today and as technology improves and costs fall? Who knows, maybe it will prove more cost-effective than carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies as a way to comply with federal environmental regulations, which will start to kick in come 2015?

One can only hope that the many “firsts” that Alberta is achieving in the area of clean energy will begin to add up and gather collective momentum, and at the same time get the province’s energy-dependent economy on the path to diversification.

Solar. Geothermal. Energy from waste. Wind. All of it will be needed to reduce Alberta’s dependence on fossil fuels, which currently represent more than 90 per cent of its power generation.

The province’s municipalities and entrepreneurs are leading the way, and they deserve the support and encouragement of all Canadians if we are to tackle climate change as a country.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies.

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Show Me The (Fossil Fuel) Money

 
Have you ever read news coverage of an energy or climate issue and thought to yourself, “Why is that spokesperson defending fossil fuels, slamming clean energy, and denying climate change?” As you may suspect, it’s because they receive financial support from pro-fossil fuel interests â€" a fact rarely mentioned in media coverage.

“Fossil Fuel Front Groups on the Front Page,” a new report from the Checks and Balances Project, reveals financial ties between proâ€"fossil fuel think tanks and the world’s biggest fossil fuel interests, with a transactional relationship of funding for national media coverage.

According to the report, fossil fuel interests gave at least $16.3 million dollars in direct funding to the ten most-quoted proâ€"fossil fuel advocacy organizations from 2006-2010. Internal materials suggest a strategy of targeting funds from those with the most to lose by a shift toward the clean energy economy.

“Contributions will be pursued for this work, especially from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate (change) policies.” -Heartland Institute fundraising document

Fossil Fuel Funds Buy Fossil-Friendly Quotes

So what does all that cash buy? Media coverage â€" and quite a lot of it.

From 2007-2011, Checks and Balances found these funded groups and their policy experts were mentioned at least 1,010 times in coverage of energy issues in America’s 58 most-read newspapers, plus the Associated Press and Politico. That averages four mentions per week during on some of the most high-stakes clean energy and climate policy issues of our time.

These organizations also enjoyed heavier coverage in some of America’s most influential newspapers. 31% of all coverage came in six outlets â€" the Associated Press, Politico, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Christian Science Monitor. (The Wall Street Journal was not included because its articles are not publicly searchable).

Unsurprisingly, a majority of their quotes supported fossil fuel sources while attacking clean energy or environmental support, often using similar messaging:

• 43% attacked environmental or energy regulations
• 18% attacked clean energy technologies
• 17% promoted fossil fuels

Context is Key, Disclosure is Not

While this may not seem like an overwhelming amount of media mentions, a little context puts the situation into perspective. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a decades-old federally funded entity created to advance energy technology, was only mentioned 236 times in the same publications that mentioned the fossil-fuel interests 1,010 over the same period.

But the large amount of pro-fossil coverage wouldn’t be unfair except for one major fact â€" the quoted spokespeople or media outlets only disclosed financial ties to fossil fuel interests 6% of the time. In more than half of all coverage (53%), media outlets only mentioned the organization by name, with another third of mentions only including vague ideology (conservative, 17%; free market, 8%; libertarian, 6%).

Difficult Problem, Simple Solution

Add it all up, and a sinister picture becomes clear: the fossil fuel industry provides direct funding to select policy analysts, who use similar messaging to promote fossil fuels while attacking clean energy, across the most influential newspapers in America, without disclosing funding sources that compel their positions.

And the worst part is, it’s working. Credible estimates of federal fossil fuel subsidies approach $52 billion annually, while clean energy funding mechanisms like the Production Tax Credit are left to wither on the vine. Media coverage isn’t solely to blame â€" lobbying absolutely plays a role â€" but it’s a big aspect in how policymakers determine positions.

Fortunately, one simple solution to this problem exists â€" transparent disclosure of funding sources from spokespeople. Checks and Balances advocates media ask one question for quoted sources: “Do you get money, directly or indirectly, from interests that stand to benefit from what you are saying?”

That’s a question worth asking. But my money’s on these fossil-funded spokespeople avoiding the answer.

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Can Obama Really Force a Chinese Owned Company to Sell a Wind Farm?

In a word â€" yes.

Last week the President issued an order requiring Ralls Corporation, which is owned by Chinese nationals (and is closely associated with the Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Sany), to cease development activities and divest its interest in four wind farms in Oregon. The order was issued based on recommendations from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). CFIUS is responsible for reviewing foreign investments in the U.S. to ensure that foreign ownership of U.S. assets will not present a national security risk.

CFIUS, which is an inter-agency committee led by the Secretary of the Treasury has been in place for 37 years and despite a handful of high-profile actions is an often forgotten hurdle in using foreign capital for things like energy infrastructure investment in the U.S. In 2005 CNOOC (the China National Offshore Oil Corporation), which is in the process of buying Canadian oil company Nexen, abandoned its acquisition of Unocal Corporation after it became clear that CFIUS would be used to block its acquisition of the U.S. oil company on the basis that the Chinese government controlled company’s ownership of critical energy infrastructure in the U.S. was a national security risk. (See more: Why China’s Purchase of a Canadian Oil Company is NOT Harmful to U.S. National Security)

The following year rumors and the suggestion by some select members of Congress that they would push for a CFIUS review of the deal scuttled the acquisition of U.S. port operator P&O by Dubai Ports World (Dubai Ports is truly a fascinating story on how Washington really works).

Ralls Intends to Fight the Order

The current Ralls case, requiring the divestiture of interests in four small wind farms isn’t about the ownership of wind farms as critical energy infrastructure â€" the issue was proximity to a U.S. Navy weapons training and testing facility and the potential for spying or interference with the drone program. This is not the first forced divestiture under CFIUS (the first President Bush forced the sale of a Seattle-based Manufacturing company MAMCO by a Chinese company), but usually CFIUS is invoked before a deal gets done and as Dubia Ports showed, just the threat can be enough to make a company walk away from a deal. (See more: ‘National Security’: Obama Blocks Chinese Wind Farm Ownership in Oregon)

Ralls has publicly stated its intention to fight the order. Regardless of the outcome (and beating CFIUS seems like long odds), this CFIUS order will have a significant cost to Ralls and this wind investment. This incident won’t cause Ralls or Sany to exit the U.S. market (though the absence of the Production Tax Credit might), but it will likely make both groups much more cautious about how they buy and develop wind farms.

Conclusion: A Lesson in Due Diligence

While the direct impact of this presidential order will be negligible in the overall energy investment landscape in the U.S., it is an important reminder of the key role that CFIUS plays in access to capital for the energy market in the U.S. Foreign control over network assets like pipelines and electric transmission, and certainly nuclear generation are particularly likely to result in CFIUS review and action. The result is less foreign capital available to support building and upgrading those types of facilities, which has a trickle-down effect on the rest of the energy industry. Lack of pipelines limits oil and gas exploration, lack of transmission increases the cost for potential electric generation projects.

The Ralls/CFIUS story is big news, if for no other reason than it reminds us of the critical role CFIUS plays with foreign investment in U.S. energy infrastructure as well as how easy it is to miss important aspects of energy deals without very careful project diligence and review. (See more: 5 Reasons Why Good Energy Projects Don’t Get Financed)

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New class of power inverter could mean cheaper, faster hybrid vehicles

ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2012) — With a laboratory breakthrough once thought impossible, an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis assistant professor has invented a new class of power inverter that could put cheaper and more efficient renewable energy products on the market.

Professor Afshin Izadian, a researcher at the Richard G. Lugar Center for Renewable Energy at IUPUI, has invented a power inverter that employs just a single switching transistor and generates infinite-level voltages.

Power inverters are at the heart of several renewable energy technologies. Solar power, battery storage, electric vehicles, motor drives and manufacturing robots all use inverters to generate AC power efficiently.

However, the current inverters with multiple switching transistors generate limited voltage levels, are heavy, generate unwanted harmonics (voltage frequencies) and require filters to reduce the harmful effects to the electric grid.

Izadian's invention, the result of a creative reconfiguration of an electrical circuit during a laboratory experiment, would make inverters cheaper, lighter and therefore more efficient than current models.

"The thrilling moment of any research is when your thoughts, designs and implementations come out right and you reach the goal," Izadian said. "An on-demand change of voltage polarity might not seem very exciting, but it becomes increasingly important if you can accomplish it while maintaining desired voltage amplitudes."

Izadian, who has a doctorate in electrical engineering and is a former postdoctoral researcher from UCLA, teaches in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. While studying how voltage levels and polarities are created in inverters, he made his discovery. In a creative moment at his lab bench, he began reconfiguring an inverter circuit and discovered a new property technique to create infinite voltage levels and invert the voltage polarity of power circuits. This discovery in turn leads to a corollary insight that the researcher employed to create the new class of inverters.

Not only did the bench test work, it lead to the discovery of several other circuits and controllers for high-power inverters with lower switching loss, higher voltage performance and lighter reconfigured circuits.

For example, unwanted harmonics are greatly reduced with Izadian's invention. This means car manufacturers can reduce the size and insulation of traction motors so that electric vehicles can be made cheaper. The size and weight of the power electronics can also be reduced, which can boost fuel economy in hybrid cars and buses. Such advantages translate into wider adoption of green technologies and more affordable renewable energy for homes, vehicles and businesses.

"The Lugar Center is a tremendous asset to the school's creative and innovative research process," said David J. Russomanno, dean of the School of Engineering and Technology. "We are delighted with Dr. Izadian's work and the possibility that his inverter can impact the renewable energy market. His efforts are a quintessential example of the cutting-edge research that enhances the school's image and reputation and allows us to compete in the renewable energy arena."

Izadian's work is under review by a technical journal, and several large companies have shown interest in the new inverters. They are interested in how Izadian's breakthrough can result in simpler, cheaper and smaller systems with better performance than today's technology.

Izadian has several patents pending on his invention and is seeking research funding to complete the development of the analysis and controls needed for commercial viability. Products could be ready for the marketplace in as little as three years.

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Community Power: Renewing Communities Through Renewable Energy

 
This is a post that was shared with me quite awhile back and offered up for reposting. Thanks to Christmas, I finally got the time to take a look and repost it. Enjoy!

A joint article by 
Samantha Go and Devika Narayan, SolSolution 
Mümtaz Derya Tarhan, The Community Power Report

”…achieve something extraordinary, as a community”

Who would have a better understanding of a community’s needs than community members themselves? And who can come up with better solutions to those needs but the community itself?

Whether the need is economic, financial, environmental, or a combination of the three, local communities can respond to such needs through community-based renewable energy projects â€" or as we call them, Community Power projects.

There is much meaning behind the name Community Power. It does not only refer to electrical power generated by a community; it also implies individual and community empowerment.

Community Power enables individuals to take steps towards the betterment of the environment, their communities, and also their personal finances. It also enables these individuals to gather for a common purpose and achieve something extraordinary, as a community. This is where true economic, environmental and social sustainability lies. Through igniting individual behaviour change and community solidarity, Community Power starts an empowering process that enables communities to provide local solutions to their local needs for the long term.

Local Ownership Pays Off â€" For Everyone!

Local ownership accounts for 50% of all economic activity created by a project

Whether the locally generated electricity is sold to the grid or used to offset electricity costs through net metering or behind-the-meter usage, project owners receive a direct financial benefit from community power projects. A recent study from Germany revealed that half of all economic activity generated through a project returns directly to the pocket of project owners, or in other words, community members.

Community-based energy projects not only benefit their owners economically, but they lift up the entire local economy through additional employment and business opportunities as well as the creation of surplus dollars.

Local Energy Leads to More Sustainable Local Jobs

A National Renewable Energy Laboratory study found that the impact of community-owned projects on jobs creation during construction period is 1.1 to 1.3 times higher than corporate ones, and 1.1 to 2.8 times higher during operations period.

The employment and investment impact of community-owned projects can also go beyond a local community. Community ownership played a pivotal role in Germany and Denmark becoming global leaders not only in renewable energy generation but also in energy research & development and systems manufacturing. Currently, more than 50% of Germany’s renewable power is generated by community-based projects, and 80% of Denmark’s world-renowned windmills are cooperatively owned.

Going back to the local level, it has been shown that the surplus dollars generated by community-owned projects through ownership, employment and other business activities have a high chance of being spent within the community. A study by Iowa Policy Project shows that financial resources that remain in the community are more than five-fold for small wind projects owned by local community members compared to large wind projects owned by out-of-state companies.

Community Power uplifts the entire local economy

Community Power projects are versatile, because their strength lies in a local community’s strength. Communities may be urban or rural; have a large tax base or not; may have a strong potential for whether solar, wind, biomass or hydro power. There is something that Community Power can do for all of them.

Community Power Leads Us Towards ‘Negawatts’

While some may think the environmental benefits of community power projects go without saying, they actually go much deeper than one may initially think! Yes, generating our electricity from clean sources is important, but in order to combat climate change in a comprehensive and sustainable manner, conservation is indispensable. It is even widely recognized that conservation before any energy generation takes place is much more cost and time effective than combating the negative effects of climate change after the fact.

As underlined by Patrick Devine-Wright, the current scheme of centralized global electricity production from traditional sources creates a significant ‘spatial and psychological distance’ between energy generation and energy use. In simpler words, we just flick on and off without knowing where and how out electricity is generated, and without even a basic understanding of the economic, social, environmental, and personal impacts of electricity generation and use.

Community Power helps us understand
the impacts of our electricity
generation and consumption choices

Local ownership provides community members a direct stake in clean energy generation, and thereby reduces that ‘spatial and psychological distance’ and encourages a culture and behaviour change regarding electricity use. Community members, who are now more aware of how and where their electricity is generated, are also much more likely to consume it wisely.

In shorter words, Community Power helps individuals become more connected to themselves, the environment, their community, and to the world.

Securing Our Energy Future

Besides generating clean energy, community-owned projects also provide a more comprehensive and sustainable solution to our energy issues.

Generating electricity close to where it is consumed reduces efficiency losses during transmission. This can speed up the transition towards distributed power generation from centralized sources, protect the environment, and generate economic benefits at the micro and macro levels.

Remember the major blackout in 2003, anyone?

Distributed generation also increases a local grid’s reliability towards reducing its dependence on outside sources. It is safe to say that Community Power paves the way towards a safer and more reliable energy future.

Social Empowerment

Community power projects are not only gaining momentum because of the economic and environmental advantages they provide, but also because of the immense social benefits they offer. Community-owned power projects encourage community-building and social cohesion as a group of ordinary citizens is presented with the opportunity to come together and achieve something extraordinary.

Students discover the true impact of solar panels on their school by looking closely at real-time solar data.

An essential part of ensuring community power projects keep thriving lies in communicating the benefits of renewable energy and community ownership. Educating the public about the significant impact and tangible benefits that community power projects offer can also help convince higher-level policy makers that they can take actions that significantly improve the quality of life in their neighbourhoods and districts. And where better to start the chain of education than with our future leaders?

Today, most of us just flick switches on and off without knowing where the electricity that powers our many gadgets comes from. Patrick Devine-Wright attributed this ‘psychological distance’ between energy generation and energy use to the current scheme of centralized global electricity production from traditional sources. One significant way in which we can bridge this mental gap is to educate our younger generation about where their electricity comes from. When kids are taught about energy production, it allows them to feel more connected to themselves, the environment, their community, and the world.

(Photo: Courtesy of Communities for Renewables)

Take SolSolution for example. They are a Boston-based green startup that provides solar energy solutions for K-12 schools and are dedicated to educating our next generation about renewable energy and community power. It has a clear yet powerful dual mission that seamlessly fuses community power and education.

The solar panels on the roofs serve as a catalyst for engaged, hands-on learning, and the students play an integral role in assessing their own school’s solar capacity. The panels drive students’ curiosity and interest in renewable energy projects and green entrepreneurship opportunities. By experiencing a solar installation firsthand, students are motivated to take their experience another step further. Whether it be talking with a skeptical parent or teacher about the benefits of green energy or being inspired to pursue their very own community power project, students’ newfound knowledge moves them to take action. This, in turn, inspires parents, teachers, and neighbors to get involved after they witness how excited their kids are about green energy initiatives. By educating our future leaders and the general public about the importance and value of community power projects, many people will be motivated to make a difference in their own communities, fueling new, lasting and effective community power initiatives. When students are provided with the chance to see the concrete benefits of clean energy solutions, it allows them to connect what they are learning inside their science and math classrooms with possibilities outside the classroom in the present and future to make a difference for the world.

Community power projects are capable of producing great economic benefits both at the micro and macro levels and building a strong foundation for a safer and more reliable energy future. But the social benefits that they bring are where the real magic lies. These locally-owned projects have the capacity to bring entire neighbourhoods together by strengthening their core identity as a green community. From there, this joint, concerted effort can demonstrate the measurable and significant impact individual choices and actions have on our environment. That sense of ownership leads to a sense of pride in a community, improving the natural and social environment overall. Isn’t that the type of neighborhood you want to live in?

Students are not the only community members who can benefit from learning about and starting their own community power projects. Anyone has the power to start a community power project, and by teaching people to embrace the positive change that comes along with community-based renewable energy projects, we can light up the path to a better, brighter future for us all.

What do you think about Community Power? What can it do for your community? Please feel free to contribute to our conversation by leaving us a comment below. Or you can tweet us with your thoughts and questions @thecpreport with hashtag #PowerUp.

Follow SolSolution on Twitter @thesolsolution and The Community Power Report @thecpreport

Samantha Go and Devika Narayan, SolSolution 

Mümtaz Derya Tarhan, The Community Power Report

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Energy Efficiency Saves New England $260 Million In Transmission Costs

 
Energy efficiency represents the biggest potential to cut consumer costs and reduce power demand â€" one report has found America is just 43.8% efficient. While individual projects show small results, when they accumulate across a regional grid, efficiency savings add up quickly, as New England’s grid operator recently discovered.

Is that an LED bulb in the iconic Maine lighthouse?

State and private programs designed to reduce consumer energy demand have recently cut the need for $260 million in planned transmission system upgrades across the six states within the ISO-New England (ISO-NE) region. The announcement was made during ISO-NE’s energy-efficiency forecast, the first multi-state outlook in the U.S.

Big Investments = Big Energy Savings

ISO-NE is one of the nation’s largest grid operators, managing electricity supply and demand for 14 million people in 6.5 million households and businesses across 8,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 350 generators. The system has more than 32,000 MW of capacity, including more than 2,000 MW of demand response resources.

Roughly $1.2 billion was spent across the ISO-NE region from 2008-2011, resulting in a total reduction of 3,502 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in electricity use. The average state reduced electricity consumption 876 GWh annually, with total summer peak demand savings of 514 megawatts (MW).

The overall effects of these savings are hard to ignore. Regional peak demand is only forecast to grow .9 percent from 2012â€"2021 (roughly 2/3 the previous estimate), with a flat annual growth in energy consumption over the same period, and winter peak demand actually projected to decline nearly .5 percent.

Lower Demand Leads To Lower Infrastructure Costs

In the long term, this consumption decline will have a major impact. From 2015â€"2012, ISO-NE estimates annual savings of 1,343 GWh from energy efficiency â€" roughly the same amount of electricity used by 2 million average homes in the region. New England will spend an estimated $5.7 billion on energy efficiency program over the same time period, according to the report.

As a result, ISO-NE was able to lower long-term planning needs for the system’s grid beyond 2020. “Revised analysis shows that the region can actually defer 10 transmission upgrades that earlier studies showed were needed to ensure system reliability,” said Stephen Rourke, vice president for system planning. “By deferring these upgrades, the region will save an estimated $260 million.”

Energy efficiency programs across the region were comprised of relatively simple steps, like encouraging consumers to swap out incandescent light bulbs for efficient lighting like CFLs or LEDs, upgrade HVAC systems and building insulation, purchase Energy Star appliances, or integrate more efficient industrial processes and motors.

Diverse Funding Streams Foot the Bill

Funding for the 125 different individual programs has come from four main sources: state-designated funding, revenue from the system’s Forward Capacity Market (long-term capacity sales), a designated “systems benefits charge” on ratepayer bills, and revenue from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Energy efficiency programs have been the largest recipients of RGGI investments by far, garnering 66 percent of all carbon auction revenue to date, according to the RGGI 2011 Investment Report.

Given all this, it’s no surprise New England leads the U.S. in the energy efficiency economy, with Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all listed in the annual ranking of the top ten most energy efficient states.

Image Credits: Maine lighthouse image via Shutterstock; electricity demand chart via ISO on Background presentation

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Doctoral student developing next generation of lithium-ion batteries for longer lasting mobile devices, electric cars

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) — Sometimes even batteries can use a boost of energy, according to the focus of a Kansas State University graduate student's research.

Steven Arnold Klankowski, a doctoral candidate in chemistry, La Crescent, Minn., is working under Jun Li, professor of chemistry, to develop new materials that could be used in future lithium-ion batteries. The materials look to improve the energy storage capacity of batteries so that laptops, cellphones, electric cars and other mobile devices will last longer between charges.

Additionally, lithium-ion batteries that can store energy and deliver power more rapidly will be a more viable alternative power source for vehicles and machines powered by alternative energy, Klankowski said. For example, solar- and wind-powered technologies could switch to the battery in the evening when there is a lack of wind or sunlight to produce energy.

"The battery market is moving very fast these days as everyone is trying to get an advantage for their electric vehicles and cellphones," said Klankowski, who also has a background in materials engineering. "As our devices get smarter, so must our methods to supply greater amounts of portable electrical energy to power these devices."

For his research, Klankowski is developing and testing a high-performance nanostructure of silicon coated onto carbon nanofibers for the use as an electrode in lithium-ion batteries. The electrodes, which look like a dense brush, give the battery greater charge capabilities and storage capacity. This is anticipated to replace current commercial electrodes that are made from simple carbon-based materials.

The material being developed and improved by Klankowski helps the electrode store roughly 10 times the amount of energy as current electrodes -- giving the batteries a 10-15 percent improvement in current battery technology.

"We're trying to go for higher energy capacity," Klankowski said. "To do that we're looking at if we can store more energy per the electrode's size or mass, and if we can use that energy more quickly to make the battery like a capacitor. Batteries and capacitors are on opposite sides of the energy storage field. We'd like to move them both closer together."

In the lab, Klankowski looks at how the characteristics of the lithium-silicon-alloy material differ with each production cycle and how those characteristics can be improved to move lithium-ion batteries closer to capacitors.

The material is also studied for its ability to store energy. Tests, which simulate a battery's operation, repeatedly charge and discharge the material with energy.

According to U.S. Department of Energy's requirements, a battery must remain at 80 percent capacity after 300 charge-discharge cycles.

"A battery today tends to die after 400-500 cycles or three years," Klankowski said. "One of the things we'll want to improve on is that lasting performance. It won't be much of an advantage if your phone's battery can last for 36 hours for the first few months but then only two hours after that. With the progress we are seeing, I hope one day to drive from Manhattan to my folks' house in Minnesota on a single battery change."

A patent application for the material has been filed with Kansas State University Research Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit corporation responsible for managing technology transfer activities at the university.

Klankowski was one of five doctoral students at Kansas State University to recently earn a scholarship from the research foundation to help him further develop his research.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Kansas State University, via Newswise.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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How Your EV Battery Could Save Your Life One Day

 
The Department of Defense has been experimenting with microgrids that can suck the energy out of electric vehicle batteries whenever some extra juice is needed. The aim is to help provide military facilities with energy independence in case of massive grid disruptions. If EV battery microgrid technology proves itself in military use, it could easily ripple out into the civilian world, and it could have a huge impact on the ability of communities to recover after extreme storms like Hurricane Sandy.

When Climate Change Meets Home Health Care

When Hurricane Sandy struck the New York metro area, the aftermath revealed that two seemingly disconnected trends are on a collision course.

On the one hand, you have climate change leading to more extreme storms, with consequent disruptions in electricity supply and fuel transportation.

On the other hand, you have an explosion in health care technology that is enabling more people with life-threatening conditions to live at home or in small residential facilities. That includes robotic devices that can help the elderly or persons with disabilities to live independently.

So, what are all these folks going to do when the power goes out? Petroleum-fueled backup generators are the conventional solution, but as Hurricane Sandy revealed, liquid fuel supplies can be disrupted for many days after an extreme storm.

Backup generators also add a strong element of risk from carbon monoxide poisoning as well as creating noise and odor issues.

The EV Battery Microgrid Solution

Back in 2010, we noticed that an EV battery microgrid for the U.S. Marine Corps was getting a workout at the Twenty-Nine Palms base in California, with plans for another at Wheeler Air Base in Hawaii.

More recently, our sister site Gas2 noted a military smart microgrid project called SPIDERS, covering additional bases in Hawaii and Colorado.

Los Angeles Air Force Base has also become the first federal facility of any kind to replace an entire fleet of vehicles with new EVs, which could lead to smart microgrid integration.

An EV Battery Microgrid in Every Pot

The general concept is that electric vehicles, with their powerful high-tech batteries, can serve as mobile energy storage devices.

Aside from being used in emergencies, EV battery storage could also be used to help smooth out spikes in energy demand, enabling a facility (or a home) to rely more on intermittent sources like wind and solar.


 
Meanwhile, car manufacturers are already transitioning EV battery microgrids into civilian use.

After Sandy struck, GM and ABB demonstrated a microgrid system that used five Chevy Volt batteries, and Nissan is testing a home battery backup system based on its Leaf EV.

The icing on the cake would be to charge up those EV batteries using alternative energy, and those clever folks at the Pentagon have already thought of that. Last spring, the Army got its first solar-powered microgrid installed at TARDEC, the Army’s advanced vehicle research center in Michigan.

Image: Plug-in EV by vm2827

Follow me on Twitter: @TinaMCasey

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Green Storage: New Funding for Catching the Shine of the Sun, and the Stirring of the Wind

 
When the sun shines, illuminating and inciting photosynthesis for plant life, we also catch it with our solar panels. We catch these rays to use them for our electricity needs, and we catch them to hold for times when the sun is hidden away. When the breeze blows, when wind stirs and incites, green power is also plentiful. However, at other moments when consumers need energy, the wind is not always blowing nor are the sun’s rays raining down on us. Renewable energy sources, solutions, rely on the timekeeping of Mother Nature. Sources have an intermittent flow, so storing the energy produced is necessary for the wider use of green energy.

Wind power sunset â€" green energy

$600,000 Innovation Grant from ARPA-E

To give renewables more with which to work, even greater potential for powering our daily needs, a team led by engineers and chemists at Harvard University will use a one-year, $600,000 innovation grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agencyâ€"Energy (ARPA-E) program to develop a new type of storage battery. The grant may be subject to renewal beyond a year, depending on performance. The award is part of a $130-million funding effort by ARPA-E through its “OPEN 2012” program, designed to support innovative energy technologies.

Green energy storage has to be viable â€" it cannot add much to the price of renewable electricity without making it unacceptably expensive.

Green energy

Practical economics is a great concern. Hopeful that this work will be put into cost-effective form, the researchers are examining how to improve on their “flow battery.” The technology offers grid-scale electrical energy storage based on eco-friendly small, organic molecules. Practical implementation is everything for the program. Researchers are collaborating with Sustainable Innovations, LLC, a commercial electrochemical system developer.

“Storage of very large amounts of energy is required if we are to generate a major portion of our electricity from intermittent renewable sources such as wind turbines and photovoltaics,” says lead investigator Michael Aziz, Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). “Currently no cost-effective solution exists to this large-scale storage problem. Flow batteries may make stationary storage viable in the marketplace, and that will enable wind and solar to displace a lot more fossil fuel.”


 
“We think our particular approach could have advantages over other flow batteries, such as higher power density, high efficiency, inexpensive chemicals, and a safer type of energy storage,” says Aziz. “The success of this program would render intermittent renewables like wind and photovoltaics dispatchable at will, and thereby permit them to supply a large fraction of our electricity needs.”

Wind turbines at Greenway parking lot, Chicago

One of the key features of this new technology is that it includes a type of highly rechargable fuel cell â€" flow batteries are suitable for storing large amounts of electrical energy in the form of liquid chemicals, which are flowed past the electrochemical conversion hardware and stored externally in inexpensive tanks that can be arbitrarily large. This permits the designer to independently size the electrochemical conversion hardware (which sets the peak power capacity) and the chemical storage tanks (which set the energy capacity).

Aziz believes that using a particular class of small organic molecules may be the key. These molecules, which his team has already been working on, are found in plants and can be synthesized artificially for very low cost. Aziz is working on this most needed storage with: Roy Gordon, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science at Harvard, who will be responsible for the chemical screening and synthesis of molecules and of practical electrocatalytic and protective coatings; Alán Aspuru-Guzik, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard who will use his pioneering high-throughput molecular screening methods to identify optimal molecules; and Trent M. Molter, President and CEO of Sustainable Innovations, LLC, who will provide expertise on implementing these innovations into commercial electrochemical systems.

“While not eliminating fossil fuels, flow battery storage potentially eliminates a barrier to doing so within the existing energy system and market,” says Aziz.

The Funding Behind This and Other Positive Changes: ARPA-E

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agencyâ€"Energy, known as ARPA-E, was launched in 2009 to seek out transformational, breakthrough technologies that are too risky for private-sector investment but have the potential to translate science into great leaps in energy technology, the potential to form the foundation for entirely new industries and have large commercial impacts. ARPA-E has attracted over 5,000 applications from research teams, which have resulted in over 180 groundbreaking projects worth nearly $500 million. More information on the program is available at www.arpa-e.energy.gov.

Image Credits: wind power sunset â€" green energy by photography.andreas; green energy by Truthout.org; wind turbines at Greenway parking lot, Chicago by John Picken

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Green Storage: New Funding For Wider Use Of The Sunshine & Wind

 
When the sun shines, illuminating and inciting photosynthesis for plant life, we also catch it with our solar panels. We catch these rays to use them for our electricity needs, and we catch them to hold for times when the sun is hidden away. When the breeze blows, when wind stirs and incites, green power is also plentiful. However, at other moments when consumers need energy, the wind is not always blowing nor are the sun’s rays raining down on us. Renewable energy sources, solutions, rely on the timekeeping of Mother Nature. Sources have an intermittent flow, so storing the energy produced is necessary for the wider use of green energy.

Wind power sunset â€" green energy

$600,000 Innovation Grant from ARPA-E

To give renewables more with which to work, even greater potential for powering our daily needs, a team led by engineers and chemists at Harvard University will use a one-year, $600,000 innovation grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agencyâ€"Energy (ARPA-E) program to develop a new type of storage battery. The grant may be subject to renewal beyond a year, depending on performance. The award is part of a $130-million funding effort by ARPA-E through its “OPEN 2012” program, designed to support innovative energy technologies.

Green energy storage has to be viable â€" it cannot add much to the price of renewable electricity without making it unacceptably expensive.

Green energy

Practical economics is a great concern. Hopeful that this work will be put into cost-effective form, the researchers are examining how to improve on their “flow battery.” The technology offers grid-scale electrical energy storage based on eco-friendly small, organic molecules. Practical implementation is everything for the program. Researchers are collaborating with Sustainable Innovations, LLC, a commercial electrochemical system developer.

“Storage of very large amounts of energy is required if we are to generate a major portion of our electricity from intermittent renewable sources such as wind turbines and photovoltaics,” says lead investigator Michael Aziz, Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). “Currently no cost-effective solution exists to this large-scale storage problem. Flow batteries may make stationary storage viable in the marketplace, and that will enable wind and solar to displace a lot more fossil fuel.”


 
“We think our particular approach could have advantages over other flow batteries, such as higher power density, high efficiency, inexpensive chemicals, and a safer type of energy storage,” says Aziz. “The success of this program would render intermittent renewables like wind and photovoltaics dispatchable at will, and thereby permit them to supply a large fraction of our electricity needs.”

Wind turbines at Greenway parking lot, Chicago

One of the key features of this new technology is that it includes a type of highly rechargable fuel cell â€" flow batteries are suitable for storing large amounts of electrical energy in the form of liquid chemicals, which are flowed past the electrochemical conversion hardware and stored externally in inexpensive tanks that can be arbitrarily large. This permits the designer to independently size the electrochemical conversion hardware (which sets the peak power capacity) and the chemical storage tanks (which set the energy capacity).

Aziz believes that using a particular class of small organic molecules may be the key. These molecules, which his team has already been working on, are found in plants and can be synthesized artificially for very low cost. Aziz is working on this most needed storage with: Roy Gordon, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science at Harvard, who will be responsible for the chemical screening and synthesis of molecules and of practical electrocatalytic and protective coatings; Alán Aspuru-Guzik, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard who will use his pioneering high-throughput molecular screening methods to identify optimal molecules; and Trent M. Molter, President and CEO of Sustainable Innovations, LLC, who will provide expertise on implementing these innovations into commercial electrochemical systems.

“While not eliminating fossil fuels, flow battery storage potentially eliminates a barrier to doing so within the existing energy system and market,” says Aziz.

The Funding Behind This and Other Positive Changes: ARPA-E

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agencyâ€"Energy, known as ARPA-E, was launched in 2009 to seek out transformational, breakthrough technologies that are too risky for private-sector investment but have the potential to translate science into great leaps in energy technology, the potential to form the foundation for entirely new industries and have large commercial impacts. ARPA-E has attracted over 5,000 applications from research teams, which have resulted in over 180 groundbreaking projects worth nearly $500 million. More information on the program is available at www.arpa-e.energy.gov.

Image Credits: wind power sunset â€" green energy by photography.andreas; green energy by Truthout.org; wind turbines at Greenway parking lot, Chicago by John Picken

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Cost Of Solar Systems In US Continues To Decline

 
A new report from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has shown that the installed price of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems across the United States fell substantially in 2011 and continued the decline through the first half of 2012, supplanting solar as an integral part of the American economy and mindshare.

The news was reported in the latest edition of Tracking the Sun, an annual PV cost-tracking report released by Berkeley Lab.

The report found that the median installed price of residential and commercial PV systems which were completed in 2011 fell by approximately 11-14% from the year before.

Additionally, prices in California fell by an additional 3-7% within the first six months of 2012.

The drop in price for installed systems is due in part to the massive reduction in PV module prices, which have been falling dramatically since 2008, and part of the reason why balance of system manufacturers are now accounting for 68 percent of the total costs for the average PV project.

Even though balance of system is making up a higher percentage of project costs, overall prices have fallen. The report notes that non-module costs such as balance of system, labour, marketing, overhead, and inverters have all fallen significantly over time.

“The drop in non-module costs is especially important,” notes report co-author Ryan Wiser of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, “as these costs can be most readily influenced by local, state, and national policies aimed at accelerating deployment and removing market barriers.”

The median installed price of PV systems installed throughout 2011 was $6.10 per watt (W) for residential and small commercial systems less than 10 kilowatts (kW) in size, and was $4.90/W for larger commercial systems of 100 kW or more in size, whereas utility-sector PV systems which are larger than 2,000 kW in size averaged $3.40/W in 2011.

Report co-author Galen Barbose, also of Berkeley Lab, stresses the importance of keeping these numbers in context, noting that “these data provide a reliable benchmark for systems installed in the recent past, but prices have continued to decline over time, and PV systems being sold today are being offered at lower prices.”

The authors of the report also believe that US PV prices will continue to drop as a result of large-scale deployment programs, but that other factors are also important in achieving installed price reductions.

There were variations in the PV system pricing when compared across states. The median installed price of PV systems less than 10 kW in size that were completed during 2011 ranged from $4.90/W to $7.60/W depending on which state they were being constructed in.

Additionally, the report shows that PV installed prices are good indicators of economies of scale, with the median price for systems smaller than 2 kW coming in at $7.70/W while the median price for a large commercial system greater than 1,000 kW in size was only $4.50/W. Utility-scale systems larger than 10,000 kW were even lower, with most systems ranging from $2.80/W to $3.50/W.
 

 
Sadly, as the cost of installed PV systems have fallen, so have the incentives. According to the report, the median pre-tax value of such cash incentives ranged from $0.90/W to $1.20/W for systems installed in 2011, depending on system size. But these numbers have decreased by roughly 80% over the past ten years, and by a massive 21-43% from just 2010 to 2011.

The report, Tracking the Sun V: An Historical Summary of the Installed Price of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2011, by Galen Barbose, Naïm Darghouth, and Ryan Wiser, may be downloaded from: http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/LBNL-5919e-REPORT.pdf.

Source: Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

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