August 30, 2010 11:25 AM PDT
by Martin LaMonica
The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation on Monday proposed a fuel economy label overhaul to reflect how electric and alternative fuel vehicles stack up against gasoline passenger vehicles.
The federal agencies released two new labels that officials expect to be finalized early next year and used in 2012 model year cars. The published labels will be available for public comment for 60 days.
The changed label, mandated by the 2007 energy law, includes the same information on city and highway miles per gallon and estimated driving costs based on 15,000 miles a year now available.
(Credit: Environmental Protection Agency)
But the new labels add more comparative information, rating cars on mileage, greenhouse gas contribution, and other air pollutants from tailpipe emissions. That means that consumers can look at a label to see how one vehicle compares to all available vehicles, rather than only cars in a specific class.
One label proposes grades, ranging from and A plus to a D. There are no failing grades, since vehicles need to comply with the Clean Air Act.
"The idea of the grade is to give a single metric that combines greenhouse gases and fuel economy into one metric," said EPA assistant administrator Gina McCarthy. "We will have information underlying those grades available to consumers when the labels are in place."
The proposed labels address one of the outstanding problems of rating the fuel efficiency with vehicles that don't use gasoline as a fuel source.
General Motors brought the issue into the public spotlight last year, when it said it expected to get a fuel economy rating of 230 miles per gallon for the electric Chevy Volt. As of now, however, the mileage rating for the Volt and the all-electric Nissan Leaf still are not yet certified.
EPA and DOT officials did say plug-in vehicles will have different labels than gasoline-only cars, which will include a miles-per-gallon equivalent number. The electric-car label also includes the anticipated driving range and efficiency expressed in kilowatt-hours per 100 miles.
Making the grade
During a media briefing on Monday, McCarthy said the median grade for passenger cars will be a B-minus.
Electric vehicles that run entirely off of batteries, such as the Leaf, will have a rating of A-plus. Plug-in hybrid vehicles will have a grade of A.
The EPA has modeled where existing cars will fall along the grading bell curve. Hybrids such as the Ford Fusion, Honda Civic, and Toyota Prius will get an A-minus. Fuel-efficient cars such as the Nissan Altima, Toyota Corolla, and Volkswagen Golf will be given a B-plus.
Grades for midsize sedans will range from A-minus to D, and those for SUVs will range from B-plus to D, McCarthy said.
The fuel economy ratings address only tailpipe emissions, and not the "upstream" energy use and pollution related to generation of electricity or oil refining, officials said.
There are also ratings for compressed natural gas vehicles, diesels, and different types of plug-in hybrids, including both the extended-range electric vehicle of the Chevy Volt and Fisker Karma, and plug-in versions of conventional hybrids. (Click PDF of all labels.)
By the time the labels are finalized, the EPA and DOT hope to have a Web site available where consumers could get more information at the point of sale on a smartphone. For example, a person could get an accurate idea of the car's environmental impact, or the cost associated from using electricity to fuel it.
The agencies are seeking consumer feedback through the e-mail newlabels@epa.gov
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20015069-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz0y7NldHMf
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Converted grain bins
Another great conversion idea is homes made from grain bins. Mother Earth News has some how-to instructions, as well as photos of how surprisingly attractive such structures can be. Used grain bins are common in many rural areas, and can often be bought for a song. They aren't even that daunting to move, given the right gear.
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Rutledge, Mo., converted a grain bin into a two-bedroom apartment. According to the center for sustainable living, "We chose the grain bin because it already had walls, a roof and a concrete floor. This made for a simpler project that we could complete in the three months before winter." The pleasant dwelling is insulated with locally sourced straw bales, is powered by solar panels and is heated with wood stoves
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Rutledge, Mo., converted a grain bin into a two-bedroom apartment. According to the center for sustainable living, "We chose the grain bin because it already had walls, a roof and a concrete floor. This made for a simpler project that we could complete in the three months before winter." The pleasant dwelling is insulated with locally sourced straw bales, is powered by solar panels and is heated with wood stoves
Shipping container homes
Architects and homeowners are gradually discovering the benefits of shipping container homes. It turns out that the strong, cheap freight boxes make pretty useful building blocks. They can be loaded with creature comforts and stacked to create modular, efficient spaces for a fraction of the cost, labor and resources of more conventional materials. Shipping containers can be easily insulated and climate controlled, and they are being deployed as disaster-relief shelters and modest vacation homes. In stacking configurations, they are appearing as student housing and even luxury condos.
Would you live in a recycled shipping container? They can also make homes out of the pallets that stuff comes on.
Would you live in a recycled shipping container? They can also make homes out of the pallets that stuff comes on.
9 homes made of the darndest things
By Brian Clark Howard of The Daily Green
Green building — designing homes and businesses to maximize energy and water efficiency and minimize harm to the environment — has been gathering steam across much of the world. In New York City, architects are exploring the exciting potential of growing fresh food in the urban landscape through green roofs and vertical farms. In the Midwest, more folks are taking advantage of home-energy tax credits to tighten up their home's seal, invest in more efficient systems and install renewable energy. In Hawaii, new single-family homes built in 2010 or beyond will be required to heat their water via the sun's rays. People are even taking green digs on the road with them.
Regular folks can green up their current residence in many ways, from swapping out light bulbs to planting shade trees, sealing leaks and so on. This article isn't about those things. It's also not about the latest green dream homes. This article is more along the lines of the famous "hobbit house," which combines elements of the old-fashioned prairie sod house with a whimsical, aspirational, "why not?" attitude.
We don't expect most people will be moving into reclaimed trains, planes and automobiles any time soon. But we do think these home designs are a lot of fun. They show what's possible if we think outside the ticky-tacky box and dream of something different. You may not be reusing an airplane wing today, but maybe you can reuse some lumber or furniture, or perhaps switch to paints that are better for your air quality.
Green building — designing homes and businesses to maximize energy and water efficiency and minimize harm to the environment — has been gathering steam across much of the world. In New York City, architects are exploring the exciting potential of growing fresh food in the urban landscape through green roofs and vertical farms. In the Midwest, more folks are taking advantage of home-energy tax credits to tighten up their home's seal, invest in more efficient systems and install renewable energy. In Hawaii, new single-family homes built in 2010 or beyond will be required to heat their water via the sun's rays. People are even taking green digs on the road with them.
Regular folks can green up their current residence in many ways, from swapping out light bulbs to planting shade trees, sealing leaks and so on. This article isn't about those things. It's also not about the latest green dream homes. This article is more along the lines of the famous "hobbit house," which combines elements of the old-fashioned prairie sod house with a whimsical, aspirational, "why not?" attitude.
We don't expect most people will be moving into reclaimed trains, planes and automobiles any time soon. But we do think these home designs are a lot of fun. They show what's possible if we think outside the ticky-tacky box and dream of something different. You may not be reusing an airplane wing today, but maybe you can reuse some lumber or furniture, or perhaps switch to paints that are better for your air quality.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Solar thermal seeks U.S. breakthrough
July 29, 2010 8:06 AM PDT
by Reuters
Solar thermal power could be close to a breakthrough in the U.S. market, but only if developers can shave costs to beat back competition from photovoltaic solar systems and attract the huge sums needed to finance the renewable energy plants.
While the new technology has been touted as a solution toward moving the United States away from its dependence on fossil fuels, it has so far stumbled because of the high price tag for the massive plants.
Solar thermal companies like BrightSource Energy and eSolar, both of which count search giant Google among their investors, and Spain's Abengoa Solar, have technology that concentrates the sun's rays to heat water into steam and drive a generator.
A solar thermal plant, like this 200-megawatt Abengoa facility in Spain, uses a vast array of mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays.
(Credit: Abengoa Solar)
Traditional photovoltaic modules made by companies like First Solar and Suntech directly convert sunlight into electricity, and make up the largest chunk of the solar market.
Backers of solar thermal have said it would claim the lion's share of large-scale projects in the United States, but a sharp drop in photovoltaic panel prices has drawn much of the market's interest to that technology.
"With panel prices coming down so much for solar PV, solar thermal does not look as cost-competitive anymore," Wedbush analyst Christine Hersey said.
Solar thermal is economical only on a large scale, lifting total project costs into hundreds of millions of dollars, while PV systems can be built piecemeal in smaller steps that are easier to finance.
"It does not make sense to do a [thermal] plant that is less than 100 megawatt," Cowen & Co. analyst Rob Stone said. "That is because of the cost of the steam plant that goes with it."
PV, however, can be used for a wide range of applications, from very large to very small.
"In terms of ubiquity, PV is ultimately going to be the most widely deployed technology just because it's going to show up ranging in size from 500MW projects all the way down to solar cells on the roof of a hybrid vehicle," Stone said.
One megawatt (1 million watts) is enough to power about 800 U.S. homes.
Federal support
The International Energy Agency predicts that several hundred gigawatts of solar thermal power will be built by the middle of the century. (A gigawatt is 1 billion watts.)
Spain is currently the global leader in thermal solar development, with hundreds of megawatts slated for construction.
China is likely to move quickly into the field and is expected to launch a tender for project in the coming weeks, and a European consortium has announced plans to build a massive project in the Sahara Desert.
In a solar thermal facility, mirrors on the ground direct sunlight to a tower in order to generate steam energy.
(Credit: BrightSource Energy)
The U.S. utility market for solar is also expected to grow sharply over the next few years, but that will be possible only with government support, which solar thermal companies have been lobbying for.
BrightSource recently won $1.37 billion in federal loan guarantees, while Abengoa got $1.85 billion in conditional loan guarantees.
"The loan to Solana [a 280-megawatt plant in Arizona] is really an investment in America's environmental future because that loan will be repaid," Fred Morse, a senior adviser to Abengoa, said on a recent conference call.
Morse said those government guarantees were crucial to move the nearly 30 thermal solar projects sought by companies into operation.
"Billion-dollar projects cannot be financed today by commercial banks," he said.
With investment hard to come by, solar thermal technology has been losing ground.
"PV has been increasing and solar thermal has been dipping, as a percentage of the projects being bid, in the last couple of years," Cowen's Stone said.
Environmental concerns
Even as the technology grapples with high costs and financing worries, there are other concerns as well. To make steam, solar thermal technology uses a lot of water, which can cause problems in areas where the resource is scarce.
"A lot of times, you are putting these solar thermal units in the middle of deserts where water is already a rare commodity," Simmons & Co. analyst Burt Chao said.
BrightSource, for instance, is using its federal loan guarantee for three utility-scale solar thermal plants in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California.
"For technologies where they want to use water, trying to get a project like that approved in the Mojave Desert can be very, very difficult," Wedbush analyst Hersey said.
Story Copyright (c) 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
.Additional stories from Reuters
U.S. judge bans planting of genetically engineered beets
Analysis: Regulations, soft economy may hurt utilities' bonds
BP to proceed with relief well after tests
Alabama sues BP for "catastrophic" Gulf oil spill
Topics:Solar.Tags:eSolar,Abengoa Solar,solar thermal,Brightsource.Share:DiggDel.icio.usRedditYahoo! BuzzFacebookTwitter..
Recent posts from Green Tech
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(5 Comments)
prev
next
.by Seaspray0 July 29, 2010 9:24 AM PDT
There are other solar thermal solutions out there, notably one that uses a sterling engine and generates around 25 KWatt each. These are smaller scale but I'm guessing the cost per KWatt will be higher. Any word on those?
Like this Reply to this comment .by Bob_299 July 29, 2010 9:59 AM PDT
One advantage about solar thermal is that it is relatively easy to see a solar thermal plant as a viable long-term facility. It relies primary on non-moving parts (such as mirrors and pipes), and the major moving parts are generators to convert kinetic energy into electricity, which is well-established technology. The relative ease of intuitively grasping what is going on in a solar thermal plant is shared by wind turbines.
By contrast, photovoltaic products are based on electronics reminiscent of semiconductor data processing products. One characteristic they seem to share is rapid technological change. This can be good, but it can also be a turn-off for investors concerned about obsolescence and rate of replacement.
Once solar thermal or wind-turbine facilities are built, the investment is made. A well-built solar thermal plant might continue to operate for a generation without substantial upgrading. By contrast, photovoltaics will foreseeably require relatively frequent upgrades as the technology improves. This suggests that what we are seeing today is the natural path. Photovoltaics are increasingly being used in niche applications, smaller installations off the power grid, while large solar thermal and wind-turbine installations are being developed to provide power to the grid.
Photovoltaics may continue as a niche technology for a generation, until the technology is sufficiently advanced to overcome, through a "destructive innovation," solar thermal and wind-turbine installations as a technology of choice for providing power to those who are currently customers of the power grid.
Like this Reply to this comment .by NocturnalCT July 29, 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Actually each mirror on a plant like this gets moved to aim the sun into the 'oven'. A PV plant can work without this mechanical aspect (although less efficient) but clearly a solar thermal can not. Each mirror has to be aimed individually. Not that hard but it's not a trivial task that can be done with simple mechanical means. Each mirror needs to have independent alt/az control that very smoothly aims the beam. If the motion is not smooth the long distance between mirror and tower means the beam sways back and forth, spreading the energy and perhaps missing the tower part of the time.
I like these thermal plants but they're not as trivial as you make them sound. Then again large scale power generation hardly ever is :)
As far as the desert goes I'm not sure what the deal is with the water. So you start with a few tanker trucks full of the stuff and it goes in a closed system. Every now and then you top it off with another tanker truck. Now if they intend for this to be an open system (steam escapes after driving the turbine) then that's just a dumb design and indeed that'll cause trouble in the desert.
Like this .by gerrrg July 29, 2010 3:02 PM PDT
Do they have a special net for dead birds flying too close to the tower?
Like this Reply to this comment .by hopeful41 July 29, 2010 8:04 PM PDT
As far as government support goes, WE ARE BROKE.
by Reuters
Solar thermal power could be close to a breakthrough in the U.S. market, but only if developers can shave costs to beat back competition from photovoltaic solar systems and attract the huge sums needed to finance the renewable energy plants.
While the new technology has been touted as a solution toward moving the United States away from its dependence on fossil fuels, it has so far stumbled because of the high price tag for the massive plants.
Solar thermal companies like BrightSource Energy and eSolar, both of which count search giant Google among their investors, and Spain's Abengoa Solar, have technology that concentrates the sun's rays to heat water into steam and drive a generator.
A solar thermal plant, like this 200-megawatt Abengoa facility in Spain, uses a vast array of mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays.
(Credit: Abengoa Solar)
Traditional photovoltaic modules made by companies like First Solar and Suntech directly convert sunlight into electricity, and make up the largest chunk of the solar market.
Backers of solar thermal have said it would claim the lion's share of large-scale projects in the United States, but a sharp drop in photovoltaic panel prices has drawn much of the market's interest to that technology.
"With panel prices coming down so much for solar PV, solar thermal does not look as cost-competitive anymore," Wedbush analyst Christine Hersey said.
Solar thermal is economical only on a large scale, lifting total project costs into hundreds of millions of dollars, while PV systems can be built piecemeal in smaller steps that are easier to finance.
"It does not make sense to do a [thermal] plant that is less than 100 megawatt," Cowen & Co. analyst Rob Stone said. "That is because of the cost of the steam plant that goes with it."
PV, however, can be used for a wide range of applications, from very large to very small.
"In terms of ubiquity, PV is ultimately going to be the most widely deployed technology just because it's going to show up ranging in size from 500MW projects all the way down to solar cells on the roof of a hybrid vehicle," Stone said.
One megawatt (1 million watts) is enough to power about 800 U.S. homes.
Federal support
The International Energy Agency predicts that several hundred gigawatts of solar thermal power will be built by the middle of the century. (A gigawatt is 1 billion watts.)
Spain is currently the global leader in thermal solar development, with hundreds of megawatts slated for construction.
China is likely to move quickly into the field and is expected to launch a tender for project in the coming weeks, and a European consortium has announced plans to build a massive project in the Sahara Desert.
In a solar thermal facility, mirrors on the ground direct sunlight to a tower in order to generate steam energy.
(Credit: BrightSource Energy)
The U.S. utility market for solar is also expected to grow sharply over the next few years, but that will be possible only with government support, which solar thermal companies have been lobbying for.
BrightSource recently won $1.37 billion in federal loan guarantees, while Abengoa got $1.85 billion in conditional loan guarantees.
"The loan to Solana [a 280-megawatt plant in Arizona] is really an investment in America's environmental future because that loan will be repaid," Fred Morse, a senior adviser to Abengoa, said on a recent conference call.
Morse said those government guarantees were crucial to move the nearly 30 thermal solar projects sought by companies into operation.
"Billion-dollar projects cannot be financed today by commercial banks," he said.
With investment hard to come by, solar thermal technology has been losing ground.
"PV has been increasing and solar thermal has been dipping, as a percentage of the projects being bid, in the last couple of years," Cowen's Stone said.
Environmental concerns
Even as the technology grapples with high costs and financing worries, there are other concerns as well. To make steam, solar thermal technology uses a lot of water, which can cause problems in areas where the resource is scarce.
"A lot of times, you are putting these solar thermal units in the middle of deserts where water is already a rare commodity," Simmons & Co. analyst Burt Chao said.
BrightSource, for instance, is using its federal loan guarantee for three utility-scale solar thermal plants in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California.
"For technologies where they want to use water, trying to get a project like that approved in the Mojave Desert can be very, very difficult," Wedbush analyst Hersey said.
Story Copyright (c) 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
.Additional stories from Reuters
U.S. judge bans planting of genetically engineered beets
Analysis: Regulations, soft economy may hurt utilities' bonds
BP to proceed with relief well after tests
Alabama sues BP for "catastrophic" Gulf oil spill
Topics:Solar.Tags:eSolar,Abengoa Solar,solar thermal,Brightsource.Share:DiggDel.icio.usRedditYahoo! BuzzFacebookTwitter..
Recent posts from Green Tech
Advanced biofuels maker Gevo files to go public
Is this the burger joint of the future?
Solar power plant plans move ahead in California
LED bulb for general lighting priced below $20
Ford microgrid to combine solar with EV charging
China clean tech's rare-earth advantage
Track Russian forest fire data online
Algae fuel maker PetroAlgae files to go publicRelated
Nevada, Sicily to find staying power in molten salt
Solar power plant plans move ahead in California
Bangkok adding solar to grid
San Diego schools to be over 10 percent solar
Behind the scenes at GE Global Research
A technology race to curb peak energy demand
Countries pledge global support for clean energy
Sun eruptions spit plasma at EarthAdd a Comment (Log in or register)
(5 Comments)
prev
next
.by Seaspray0 July 29, 2010 9:24 AM PDT
There are other solar thermal solutions out there, notably one that uses a sterling engine and generates around 25 KWatt each. These are smaller scale but I'm guessing the cost per KWatt will be higher. Any word on those?
Like this Reply to this comment .by Bob_299 July 29, 2010 9:59 AM PDT
One advantage about solar thermal is that it is relatively easy to see a solar thermal plant as a viable long-term facility. It relies primary on non-moving parts (such as mirrors and pipes), and the major moving parts are generators to convert kinetic energy into electricity, which is well-established technology. The relative ease of intuitively grasping what is going on in a solar thermal plant is shared by wind turbines.
By contrast, photovoltaic products are based on electronics reminiscent of semiconductor data processing products. One characteristic they seem to share is rapid technological change. This can be good, but it can also be a turn-off for investors concerned about obsolescence and rate of replacement.
Once solar thermal or wind-turbine facilities are built, the investment is made. A well-built solar thermal plant might continue to operate for a generation without substantial upgrading. By contrast, photovoltaics will foreseeably require relatively frequent upgrades as the technology improves. This suggests that what we are seeing today is the natural path. Photovoltaics are increasingly being used in niche applications, smaller installations off the power grid, while large solar thermal and wind-turbine installations are being developed to provide power to the grid.
Photovoltaics may continue as a niche technology for a generation, until the technology is sufficiently advanced to overcome, through a "destructive innovation," solar thermal and wind-turbine installations as a technology of choice for providing power to those who are currently customers of the power grid.
Like this Reply to this comment .by NocturnalCT July 29, 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Actually each mirror on a plant like this gets moved to aim the sun into the 'oven'. A PV plant can work without this mechanical aspect (although less efficient) but clearly a solar thermal can not. Each mirror has to be aimed individually. Not that hard but it's not a trivial task that can be done with simple mechanical means. Each mirror needs to have independent alt/az control that very smoothly aims the beam. If the motion is not smooth the long distance between mirror and tower means the beam sways back and forth, spreading the energy and perhaps missing the tower part of the time.
I like these thermal plants but they're not as trivial as you make them sound. Then again large scale power generation hardly ever is :)
As far as the desert goes I'm not sure what the deal is with the water. So you start with a few tanker trucks full of the stuff and it goes in a closed system. Every now and then you top it off with another tanker truck. Now if they intend for this to be an open system (steam escapes after driving the turbine) then that's just a dumb design and indeed that'll cause trouble in the desert.
Like this .by gerrrg July 29, 2010 3:02 PM PDT
Do they have a special net for dead birds flying too close to the tower?
Like this Reply to this comment .by hopeful41 July 29, 2010 8:04 PM PDT
As far as government support goes, WE ARE BROKE.
San Diego schools to be over 10 percent solar
Green Tech
August 10, 2010 9:45 AM PDT
by Candace Lombardi
The old 'pool on the roof' prank will become obsolete in San Diego once this artist's rendering of solar panels on a school building becomes a reality.
(Credit: Amsolar) The standby "pool on the roof" prank so often played on gullible incoming students will no longer be possible at schools in San Diego.
The San Diego Unified School District Board of Education has approved a contract with Amsolar to build and operate 5.2 megawatts worth of solar panels on its properties.
Amsolar specializes in building solar projects in conjunction with schools specifically, and offers an unusual space-for-electricity financing model.
Essentially it works like this. Schools provide their rooftops for use by Amsolar to build and operate solar projects. Amsolar owns, operates, and maintains the solar panel systems, and in exchange for the use of their space the school can buy the electricity generated from solar at a significantly discounted rate.
In this particular case, the San Diego Unified School District signed a 22-year power purchase agreement last week with Amsolar in which all of the electricity generated by the solar panels will be sold directly to the school district. The contract is for 23,000 solar panels to be placed throughout 80 rooftops, and 1,500 solar carports that will provide power to roughly 20 school sites. The 20 sites will each be able to run on 64 percent solar energy.
Amsolar estimates its solar panels can supply 11 percent of the district's total energy needs. It's also estimated the change to solar-generated electricity will save the district between $13 million and $20 million in utility costs. Installation is slated to begin in the fall.
In addition to the Amsolar project, the San Diego school district also has an additional 4.17 megawatts of solar panels that will make its total energy consumption from solar even higher.
The financing model could be ideal for school districts. Many are cash-strapped because of cuts in state budgets across the U.S. and don't have the upfront money needed to buy and install solar panels despite the possible long-term savings in energy bills.
But the model is not exclusive to Amsolar or even schools.
A county in New Jersey has leveraged the space-for-electricity model. Tioga Energy signed a 15-year power of purchase agreement with Morris County, N.J. that includes the installation of 3.2 megawatts of solar panels on county property roofs. Some of the installation will be paid for with county-guaranteed bonds, but Tioga has also agreed to pass on the savings it gets through federal solar-tax incentives by offering the county electricity generated from the solar panels at a 35 percent reduced rate.
. Candace Lombardi, a freelance journalist based in the Boston area, focuses on the evolution of green and otherwise cutting-edge technologies, from robots to cars to scientific innovation. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. E-mail Candace. .
Topics:Solar, Policy, Deals and investments.Tags:San Diego,solar financing,AMSolar.
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.by solitare_pax August 10, 2010 10:31 AM PDT
Sounds like a great use for otherwise unused space - not to mention less wear and tear on school buildings sheltered under these panels.
Maybe the schools ought to see about putting up cell phone towers in the sports bleachers & scoreboards to expand coverage and make some money as well...
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment
.
by Seaspray0 August 10, 2010 10:49 AM PDT
We could also subsidize the classrooms with corporate sponsors like they do the major sports stadiums, maybe even put some ads in the textbooks. Lease out the backside of the scoreboard as a billboard. Who knows what else. Make enough and the schools district could pay us to send kids there.
Like this .by solitare_pax August 11, 2010 7:33 AM PDT
Where I live, large local businesses already do that in the gym and on the sports field to keep the all-important sports programs running.
In the classrooms though, they are still using some textbooks from the Carter administration.
It goes to show you where priorites in this corner of the country lie.
August 10, 2010 9:45 AM PDT
by Candace Lombardi
The old 'pool on the roof' prank will become obsolete in San Diego once this artist's rendering of solar panels on a school building becomes a reality.
(Credit: Amsolar) The standby "pool on the roof" prank so often played on gullible incoming students will no longer be possible at schools in San Diego.
The San Diego Unified School District Board of Education has approved a contract with Amsolar to build and operate 5.2 megawatts worth of solar panels on its properties.
Amsolar specializes in building solar projects in conjunction with schools specifically, and offers an unusual space-for-electricity financing model.
Essentially it works like this. Schools provide their rooftops for use by Amsolar to build and operate solar projects. Amsolar owns, operates, and maintains the solar panel systems, and in exchange for the use of their space the school can buy the electricity generated from solar at a significantly discounted rate.
In this particular case, the San Diego Unified School District signed a 22-year power purchase agreement last week with Amsolar in which all of the electricity generated by the solar panels will be sold directly to the school district. The contract is for 23,000 solar panels to be placed throughout 80 rooftops, and 1,500 solar carports that will provide power to roughly 20 school sites. The 20 sites will each be able to run on 64 percent solar energy.
Amsolar estimates its solar panels can supply 11 percent of the district's total energy needs. It's also estimated the change to solar-generated electricity will save the district between $13 million and $20 million in utility costs. Installation is slated to begin in the fall.
In addition to the Amsolar project, the San Diego school district also has an additional 4.17 megawatts of solar panels that will make its total energy consumption from solar even higher.
The financing model could be ideal for school districts. Many are cash-strapped because of cuts in state budgets across the U.S. and don't have the upfront money needed to buy and install solar panels despite the possible long-term savings in energy bills.
But the model is not exclusive to Amsolar or even schools.
A county in New Jersey has leveraged the space-for-electricity model. Tioga Energy signed a 15-year power of purchase agreement with Morris County, N.J. that includes the installation of 3.2 megawatts of solar panels on county property roofs. Some of the installation will be paid for with county-guaranteed bonds, but Tioga has also agreed to pass on the savings it gets through federal solar-tax incentives by offering the county electricity generated from the solar panels at a 35 percent reduced rate.
. Candace Lombardi, a freelance journalist based in the Boston area, focuses on the evolution of green and otherwise cutting-edge technologies, from robots to cars to scientific innovation. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. E-mail Candace. .
Topics:Solar, Policy, Deals and investments.Tags:San Diego,solar financing,AMSolar.
Recent posts from Green Tech
Advanced biofuels maker Gevo files to go public
Is this the burger joint of the future?
Solar power plant plans move ahead in California
LED bulb for general lighting priced below $20
Ford microgrid to combine solar with EV charging
China clean tech's rare-earth advantage
Track Russian forest fire data online
Algae fuel maker PetroAlgae files to go publicRelated
Concentrated solar to get big Colorado spread
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Solar thermal seeks U.S. breakthrough
Solar power plant plans move ahead in California
Bangkok adding solar to grid
Built-in solar struggles with costs, efficiency
Smart thermostat connects to solar panel app
Massive Calif. wind farm gets $1.2 billion in financing
.by solitare_pax August 10, 2010 10:31 AM PDT
Sounds like a great use for otherwise unused space - not to mention less wear and tear on school buildings sheltered under these panels.
Maybe the schools ought to see about putting up cell phone towers in the sports bleachers & scoreboards to expand coverage and make some money as well...
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment
.
by Seaspray0 August 10, 2010 10:49 AM PDT
We could also subsidize the classrooms with corporate sponsors like they do the major sports stadiums, maybe even put some ads in the textbooks. Lease out the backside of the scoreboard as a billboard. Who knows what else. Make enough and the schools district could pay us to send kids there.
Like this .by solitare_pax August 11, 2010 7:33 AM PDT
Where I live, large local businesses already do that in the gym and on the sports field to keep the all-important sports programs running.
In the classrooms though, they are still using some textbooks from the Carter administration.
It goes to show you where priorites in this corner of the country lie.
Solar structures offer self-sufficiency in disaster
July 14, 2010 10:57 AM PDT
by Candace Lombardi
An Envision Solar carport.
(Credit: Envision Solar) San Diego-based Envision Solar, a manufacturer best known for its solar carports, announced two new products Wednesday that expand on the company's idea to utilize solar energy in unusual places.
The LifeVillage is a series of prefab structures framed with light-gauge steel that employ solar panel roofs and can be deployed quickly to disaster areas to provide temporary shelter and electricity, as well as purified water.
Think of LifeVillage as a low-budget version of a Huf Haus. Only instead of being built by German engineers in a pristine factory, the LifeVillage structures can be built on site by unskilled workers with the prefabricated materials arriving in two standard shipping containers.
One kit includes energy storage batteries, photovoltaic modules and corresponding roofing, a water pumping and purification system, inverters, and lighting. The light gauge steel frame enables the structures to meet international building codes, according to Envision.
A single LifeVillage structure offers 3,500 square feet of self-sufficient living or working space. They're also designed to be flexible and modular so that they can be used alone as a shelter, or in multiples for larger needs such as health clinics in areas with no available utilities. Each module can generate up to 50 kilowatts of power to be used for a combination of things like refrigeration, water purification, communications, or as a large-scale charging source for cell phones.
While the prefab solar building idea would obviously not work for every climate, Envision points out that it could be an ideal source of shelter and energy in areas like Haiti, India, and parts of Africa.
The other product announced Wednesday expands on Envision's existing solar carport structures.
The Envision SolarTree, a solar covered carport, has been coupled with a new tracking system called EnvisionTrak. It tracks sun movement to maximize the amount of solar energy that can be captured by solar panels on Envision carports beyond the peak hours of noon to 3 p.m.
Envision will begin offering Axion Power batteries with its carport systems to store solar-generated electricity for later use after the sun goes down.
"Axion's PbC batteries extend the capabilities of the Solar Tree by enabling it to charge a battery during the day and continue to generate power at night. The combination of these two innovations will drastically impact the capabilities of the SolarTree," Envision CEO Bob Noble said in a statement.
Carports, once largely abandoned in favor of open-air parking lots, have been making a comeback in recent years as solar companies look for underutilized places to put photovoltaic modules, and manufacturers of plug-in electric vehicles look for ways to offer convenient charging stations.
In addition to Envision Solar, SunDurance also does solar-covered carports, and recently announced a project at New Jersey's Mennen Arena. In March, it was announced that Sanyo would provide some of its facilities with solar carports for charging electric bicycles. And in April 2009, the city of Chicago installed tree-shaped solar carports that act as plug-in stations that can recharge two cars at a time. Even Google now has solar carports for its employees.
Comment
I have often thought of the value of solar after a disaster, especially since here in Miami we get fairly frequent hurricanes. When power is out for 3-4 weeks it would be good to have solar power and solar thermal for hot water. Additionally, it would be good to have a rain barrel for water to bathe inand flush the toilets. Drinking water could be had by putting the rain water into clear containers and setting it out in the sun for 6-8 hours, letting the sun kill any bacteria present.
by Candace Lombardi
An Envision Solar carport.
(Credit: Envision Solar) San Diego-based Envision Solar, a manufacturer best known for its solar carports, announced two new products Wednesday that expand on the company's idea to utilize solar energy in unusual places.
The LifeVillage is a series of prefab structures framed with light-gauge steel that employ solar panel roofs and can be deployed quickly to disaster areas to provide temporary shelter and electricity, as well as purified water.
Think of LifeVillage as a low-budget version of a Huf Haus. Only instead of being built by German engineers in a pristine factory, the LifeVillage structures can be built on site by unskilled workers with the prefabricated materials arriving in two standard shipping containers.
One kit includes energy storage batteries, photovoltaic modules and corresponding roofing, a water pumping and purification system, inverters, and lighting. The light gauge steel frame enables the structures to meet international building codes, according to Envision.
A single LifeVillage structure offers 3,500 square feet of self-sufficient living or working space. They're also designed to be flexible and modular so that they can be used alone as a shelter, or in multiples for larger needs such as health clinics in areas with no available utilities. Each module can generate up to 50 kilowatts of power to be used for a combination of things like refrigeration, water purification, communications, or as a large-scale charging source for cell phones.
While the prefab solar building idea would obviously not work for every climate, Envision points out that it could be an ideal source of shelter and energy in areas like Haiti, India, and parts of Africa.
The other product announced Wednesday expands on Envision's existing solar carport structures.
The Envision SolarTree, a solar covered carport, has been coupled with a new tracking system called EnvisionTrak. It tracks sun movement to maximize the amount of solar energy that can be captured by solar panels on Envision carports beyond the peak hours of noon to 3 p.m.
Envision will begin offering Axion Power batteries with its carport systems to store solar-generated electricity for later use after the sun goes down.
"Axion's PbC batteries extend the capabilities of the Solar Tree by enabling it to charge a battery during the day and continue to generate power at night. The combination of these two innovations will drastically impact the capabilities of the SolarTree," Envision CEO Bob Noble said in a statement.
Carports, once largely abandoned in favor of open-air parking lots, have been making a comeback in recent years as solar companies look for underutilized places to put photovoltaic modules, and manufacturers of plug-in electric vehicles look for ways to offer convenient charging stations.
In addition to Envision Solar, SunDurance also does solar-covered carports, and recently announced a project at New Jersey's Mennen Arena. In March, it was announced that Sanyo would provide some of its facilities with solar carports for charging electric bicycles. And in April 2009, the city of Chicago installed tree-shaped solar carports that act as plug-in stations that can recharge two cars at a time. Even Google now has solar carports for its employees.
Comment
I have often thought of the value of solar after a disaster, especially since here in Miami we get fairly frequent hurricanes. When power is out for 3-4 weeks it would be good to have solar power and solar thermal for hot water. Additionally, it would be good to have a rain barrel for water to bathe inand flush the toilets. Drinking water could be had by putting the rain water into clear containers and setting it out in the sun for 6-8 hours, letting the sun kill any bacteria present.
Solar power plant plans move ahead in California
August 13, 2010 8:31 AM PDT
by Martin LaMonica
After a long drought, large-scale solar power is getting closer to returning to the U.S. desert.
The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday gave the green light to power purchase agreements which two utilities have with solar power project developers, a key step toward beginning actual construction.
The approvals in California follow a flurry of activity at the Bureau of Land Management, which created a fast-track review process for solar projects on federal land. Both agencies' reviews are required for permitting the projects which, if finalized and financed, would result in a dramatic increase in solar power on the California grid.
On Friday, the BLM issued its final environmental impact statement for the Chevron Energy Solutions Lucerne Valley Solar Project in the California desert, a necessary step before final permitting approval. That project would bring 1,000 megawatts of generating capacity online in California, enough to supply hundreds of thousands of homes.
BrightSource heliostats use sunlight to make heat, which creates steam to drive a turbine. Click on image for a photo gallery of large-scale solar technologies.
(Credit: Eilon Paz Studio EPP) Earlier this week, the BLM issued final environmental impact studies for two other large projects proposed for public lands in California--the Ivanpa Solar project developed by BrightSource Energy and Calico Solar project developed by Tessera Solar.
In all, there are nine projects in California in the fast-track program which, if completed, would bring over 4,500 megawatts worth of generating capacity onto the grid, according to a tally compiled by Environment & Energy News. The nine projects would cover more than 41,000 acres of BLM land and provide enough power for 3.8 million homes, according to federal estimates.
Demand for these large-scale desert solar projects is driven by a California mandate that requires utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy by the end of the year.
The technologies behind these projects vary. The 392-megawatt Ivanpah project, which technology provider BrightSource Energy expects to start construction on this fall, uses a field of mirrors focused on a tower which heats a liquid to make steam that drives a turbine.
The Calico Solar project in California's San Bernardino County feature giant parabolic dishes which use the sun's heat to drive an attached Stirling engine to generate electricity. Meanwhile, other project developers plan to use arrays of flat photovoltaic panels which can be quicker to deploy than solar thermal systems.
But even though these large solar projects promise a jump in clean energy on the grid, they have faced opposition over the potential environmental impact and water use. BrightSource, for example, scaled back its original project plan for the Ivanpah project to reduce the impact on habitat for endangered tortoises. Tessera Solar plans to use waste water to wash solar panels, according to Environment & Energy News.
Financing for these projects, which can cost hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to construct, is not assured. Banks are wary of putting money into relatively new technology, such as some solar thermal systems.
At the same time, project developers are rushing to finalize permitting before the end of this year because there's a risk that federal tax grant for renewable energy projects will not be renewed next year.
. Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld.
Topics:Solar, Deals and investments.Tags:big solar,CSP,utilities,solar thermal.
Recent posts from Green Tech
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.by Shane39199 August 13, 2010 8:46 AM PDT
this is awesome. gives every state two large scale solar farms and see how far it takes the nation
Like this Reply to this comment .by myles taylor August 13, 2010 9:15 AM PDT
The state of Arizona gets enough solar energy to power the entire country even if we just capture a small percentage of it. We need to start dipping into this great resource that actually powers the planet. Using solar panels just isn't efficient enough and littering the desert with these plants is how we'll free up dependency on foreign oil. Supply electricity with power plans that use renewable energy, and then switch to electric cars. The main problem with electric cars right now is that the electricity still comes from burning fossil fuels.
I know my thoughts on here are probably overly simplistic, but I think we really need to get some backing on this.
Like this Reply to this comment .by js555554 August 13, 2010 10:43 AM PDT
The main issue with electric cars is range. Which equates back to charging requirements. We see wonderful claims coming from electric car companies as to distance that can be traveled between charges. Tesla says they and do 200+ . Others are maybe more reasonable posting ranges of 80 to 120+. But none of them tell you how they came up with there numbers. Measuring max distance between charges using a tread mill with no load on the car except for turning the wheels is always going to look a lot better than a family of four traveling in on a cold Wisconsin winter day with windshield defroster and head lights on. So with even the best current technology, we are going to need a lot of charging time for our clean electric cars. Since a solar plant can only function during cloudless day light hours. Which granted is most days in the desert. We are going to still need to burn a lot of something to keeps all these electric cars, home heating and such, humming.
Like this .by mikedrud August 13, 2010 9:16 AM PDT
I agree that this is great, but I'm conflicted: "Chevron Energy Solutions Lucerne Valley Solar Project" on public land? Nice to know the oil companies are getting yet another chunk of us.
Then again, we don't have much choice. We need energy alternatives NOW.
Like this Reply to this comment .by wabcd August 14, 2010 8:20 AM PDT
This is not an Energy Alternative. This is an expensive SCAM that will increase our dependence on Fossil Fuels. That's why Big Oil is investing in and promoting these Renewable Energy projects.
Like this .by yak2roger August 13, 2010 9:43 AM PDT
This is another example of a GIANT WHITE ELEPHANT.
If it is so economical, let them build it on their own, without
government subsidies. Once you take away the taxpayer money
the whole project collapses.
And I still would't sell out the enviornmentalists who SOMEHOW manage to stop every project that ACTUALLY DOES save us from foreign oil. Somehow, someway, they find a moth, a turtle, SOMETHING that will be endangered so that they can go to court to stop what they have been preaching to the rest of us for years.
Just like they are stopping Nuclear, while the rest of the world uses it VERY safely.
Yukka Mountain wasn't good enough for them because it only preserved the waste for TEN THOUSAND YEARS. Not good enough!
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment
.
by Dumbpeni August 13, 2010 10:43 AM PDT
The federal tax grant for renewable energy projects can only be justified as long as fossil fuel prices stay stable for the long run. The economy is actually choking on high energy (fossil) prices. I cant stress more on how critical it is to have affordable energy prices and to keep energy conservation efforts in force to keep energy costs down. It is very important to remember this..
Like this Reply to this comment .by ecotony August 13, 2010 11:53 AM PDT
Big plants are okay, but we need to move from this model and go to distributed power generation. Each roof top should be made a power plant for that building, with the local utility providing the power at night / poor generation situations.
In Germany, they have subsidized solar to the point that they don't need to build new power plants and are able to take the worst polluting plants off line.
In San Diego, they want to build a power line through a few state and national parks to bring more power into the city. For the billions they want to spend on the project, they could pay for everyone to have a solar panel on their roof and we would have more power, for less cost and it would be clean. However, this would go against the local utility's desire to make more money, so it won't happen.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment
.
by HeavyJim August 13, 2010 4:19 PM PDT
Germany is not building new coal fired power plants? News to the Germans, 26 new plants are scheduled for the next few years.
Like this 1 person likes this comment
.
by negative_ned August 13, 2010 1:41 PM PDT
"The nine projects would cover more than 41,000 acres of BLM land"
Nice
Like this Reply to this comment .by wabcd August 14, 2010 8:32 AM PDT
If you are REALLY interested in the TRUTH about these Concentrated Solar Thermal Power plants and the effectiveness of Renewable Energy as a replacement for Fossil Fuels - read the Analysis here:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
This critique pretty much Rips to Shreds a High Profile Plan to power Australia - the best location on Earth - with Solar Thermal Power plus Wind Energy. And if it won't work there, it sure as hell won't work here.
"....Our revised cost estimate is nearly five times higher than the estimate in the Plan: $1,709 billion compared to $370 billion. The cost estimates are highly uncertain with a range of $855 billion to $4,191 billion for our estimate...."
To use clean, green Nuclear Power instead, would cost about $120 billion
by Martin LaMonica
After a long drought, large-scale solar power is getting closer to returning to the U.S. desert.
The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday gave the green light to power purchase agreements which two utilities have with solar power project developers, a key step toward beginning actual construction.
The approvals in California follow a flurry of activity at the Bureau of Land Management, which created a fast-track review process for solar projects on federal land. Both agencies' reviews are required for permitting the projects which, if finalized and financed, would result in a dramatic increase in solar power on the California grid.
On Friday, the BLM issued its final environmental impact statement for the Chevron Energy Solutions Lucerne Valley Solar Project in the California desert, a necessary step before final permitting approval. That project would bring 1,000 megawatts of generating capacity online in California, enough to supply hundreds of thousands of homes.
BrightSource heliostats use sunlight to make heat, which creates steam to drive a turbine. Click on image for a photo gallery of large-scale solar technologies.
(Credit: Eilon Paz Studio EPP) Earlier this week, the BLM issued final environmental impact studies for two other large projects proposed for public lands in California--the Ivanpa Solar project developed by BrightSource Energy and Calico Solar project developed by Tessera Solar.
In all, there are nine projects in California in the fast-track program which, if completed, would bring over 4,500 megawatts worth of generating capacity onto the grid, according to a tally compiled by Environment & Energy News. The nine projects would cover more than 41,000 acres of BLM land and provide enough power for 3.8 million homes, according to federal estimates.
Demand for these large-scale desert solar projects is driven by a California mandate that requires utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy by the end of the year.
The technologies behind these projects vary. The 392-megawatt Ivanpah project, which technology provider BrightSource Energy expects to start construction on this fall, uses a field of mirrors focused on a tower which heats a liquid to make steam that drives a turbine.
The Calico Solar project in California's San Bernardino County feature giant parabolic dishes which use the sun's heat to drive an attached Stirling engine to generate electricity. Meanwhile, other project developers plan to use arrays of flat photovoltaic panels which can be quicker to deploy than solar thermal systems.
But even though these large solar projects promise a jump in clean energy on the grid, they have faced opposition over the potential environmental impact and water use. BrightSource, for example, scaled back its original project plan for the Ivanpah project to reduce the impact on habitat for endangered tortoises. Tessera Solar plans to use waste water to wash solar panels, according to Environment & Energy News.
Financing for these projects, which can cost hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to construct, is not assured. Banks are wary of putting money into relatively new technology, such as some solar thermal systems.
At the same time, project developers are rushing to finalize permitting before the end of this year because there's a risk that federal tax grant for renewable energy projects will not be renewed next year.
. Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld.
Topics:Solar, Deals and investments.Tags:big solar,CSP,utilities,solar thermal.
Recent posts from Green Tech
Advanced biofuels maker Gevo files to go public
Is this the burger joint of the future?
Solar power plant plans move ahead in California
LED bulb for general lighting priced below $20
Ford microgrid to combine solar with EV charging
China clean tech's rare-earth advantage
Track Russian forest fire data online
Algae fuel maker PetroAlgae files to go publicRelated
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REN21: More than half of new power in U.S., EU is green
Applied Materials exits turnkey thin-film solar, cuts jobs
.by Shane39199 August 13, 2010 8:46 AM PDT
this is awesome. gives every state two large scale solar farms and see how far it takes the nation
Like this Reply to this comment .by myles taylor August 13, 2010 9:15 AM PDT
The state of Arizona gets enough solar energy to power the entire country even if we just capture a small percentage of it. We need to start dipping into this great resource that actually powers the planet. Using solar panels just isn't efficient enough and littering the desert with these plants is how we'll free up dependency on foreign oil. Supply electricity with power plans that use renewable energy, and then switch to electric cars. The main problem with electric cars right now is that the electricity still comes from burning fossil fuels.
I know my thoughts on here are probably overly simplistic, but I think we really need to get some backing on this.
Like this Reply to this comment .by js555554 August 13, 2010 10:43 AM PDT
The main issue with electric cars is range. Which equates back to charging requirements. We see wonderful claims coming from electric car companies as to distance that can be traveled between charges. Tesla says they and do 200+ . Others are maybe more reasonable posting ranges of 80 to 120+. But none of them tell you how they came up with there numbers. Measuring max distance between charges using a tread mill with no load on the car except for turning the wheels is always going to look a lot better than a family of four traveling in on a cold Wisconsin winter day with windshield defroster and head lights on. So with even the best current technology, we are going to need a lot of charging time for our clean electric cars. Since a solar plant can only function during cloudless day light hours. Which granted is most days in the desert. We are going to still need to burn a lot of something to keeps all these electric cars, home heating and such, humming.
Like this .by mikedrud August 13, 2010 9:16 AM PDT
I agree that this is great, but I'm conflicted: "Chevron Energy Solutions Lucerne Valley Solar Project" on public land? Nice to know the oil companies are getting yet another chunk of us.
Then again, we don't have much choice. We need energy alternatives NOW.
Like this Reply to this comment .by wabcd August 14, 2010 8:20 AM PDT
This is not an Energy Alternative. This is an expensive SCAM that will increase our dependence on Fossil Fuels. That's why Big Oil is investing in and promoting these Renewable Energy projects.
Like this .by yak2roger August 13, 2010 9:43 AM PDT
This is another example of a GIANT WHITE ELEPHANT.
If it is so economical, let them build it on their own, without
government subsidies. Once you take away the taxpayer money
the whole project collapses.
And I still would't sell out the enviornmentalists who SOMEHOW manage to stop every project that ACTUALLY DOES save us from foreign oil. Somehow, someway, they find a moth, a turtle, SOMETHING that will be endangered so that they can go to court to stop what they have been preaching to the rest of us for years.
Just like they are stopping Nuclear, while the rest of the world uses it VERY safely.
Yukka Mountain wasn't good enough for them because it only preserved the waste for TEN THOUSAND YEARS. Not good enough!
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment
.
by Dumbpeni August 13, 2010 10:43 AM PDT
The federal tax grant for renewable energy projects can only be justified as long as fossil fuel prices stay stable for the long run. The economy is actually choking on high energy (fossil) prices. I cant stress more on how critical it is to have affordable energy prices and to keep energy conservation efforts in force to keep energy costs down. It is very important to remember this..
Like this Reply to this comment .by ecotony August 13, 2010 11:53 AM PDT
Big plants are okay, but we need to move from this model and go to distributed power generation. Each roof top should be made a power plant for that building, with the local utility providing the power at night / poor generation situations.
In Germany, they have subsidized solar to the point that they don't need to build new power plants and are able to take the worst polluting plants off line.
In San Diego, they want to build a power line through a few state and national parks to bring more power into the city. For the billions they want to spend on the project, they could pay for everyone to have a solar panel on their roof and we would have more power, for less cost and it would be clean. However, this would go against the local utility's desire to make more money, so it won't happen.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment
.
by HeavyJim August 13, 2010 4:19 PM PDT
Germany is not building new coal fired power plants? News to the Germans, 26 new plants are scheduled for the next few years.
Like this 1 person likes this comment
.
by negative_ned August 13, 2010 1:41 PM PDT
"The nine projects would cover more than 41,000 acres of BLM land"
Nice
Like this Reply to this comment .by wabcd August 14, 2010 8:32 AM PDT
If you are REALLY interested in the TRUTH about these Concentrated Solar Thermal Power plants and the effectiveness of Renewable Energy as a replacement for Fossil Fuels - read the Analysis here:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
This critique pretty much Rips to Shreds a High Profile Plan to power Australia - the best location on Earth - with Solar Thermal Power plus Wind Energy. And if it won't work there, it sure as hell won't work here.
"....Our revised cost estimate is nearly five times higher than the estimate in the Plan: $1,709 billion compared to $370 billion. The cost estimates are highly uncertain with a range of $855 billion to $4,191 billion for our estimate...."
To use clean, green Nuclear Power instead, would cost about $120 billion
Friday, August 6, 2010
Solar power now cheaper than nuclear
Researchers in North Carolina compare the relative price of electricity from photovoltaic cells to that from a nuclear plant.
By Katy Rank LevWed, Aug 04 2010 at 8:40 PM EST
Read more: ALTERNATIVE ENERGY, FOSSIL FUELS, NUCLEAR ENERGY, SOLAR POWER
SUPER SUN: Solar energy is, for the first time, more affordable than nuclear energy in North Carolina. Researchers feel this trend will continue. (Photo:Sean McGrath/Flickr)
According to news aggregator Energy Collective, a historic era is upon us because solar power has become affordable. More specifically, solar power has become cheaper than nuclear power.
Crayola goes green with 15-acre solar farm
Pocono Raceway becomes world's largest solar-powered sports facility
Can radio waves kill the need for batteries?
Volcanic island seeks geothermal power
Solar drone lands after record 14 days aloft
The article sites researchers from Duke University in North Carolina, who found that the cost of "producing photovoltaic cells (PV) has been dropping for years ... at the same time, estimated costs for building new nuclear power plants have ballooned." Thus, it's cheaper to put solar panels on houses than to build a new nuclear power plant to service them.
According to the article, this is a crossover moment because the researchers haven't even considered other pros and cons of solar power, including that North Carolina is not a "sun-rich" state. Other states with more sunshine could see more cost savings. The article also references an up-and-coming trend in solar power called concentrating solar power or CSP. According to the story, CSP "promises utility-scale production and solar thermal storage." This means that even after sunset, CSP-fitted homes can generate electricity.
The story lists the crossover price point at about 16 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). This year, in North Carolina, the price of one kWh of electricity from solar energy fell below this point for the first time. Some solar developers offer electricity from solar energy at 14 cents per kWh and predict that this price will continue to drop.
The article ends by emphasizing how important it is to have an energy source that's more affordable than nuclear power, especially given the U.S. Senate's failure to pass a climate and energy bill this year. Since both nuclear and solar power are subsidized by the government, the author points out that "taxpayers now bear the burden of putting carbon into the atmosphere through a variety of hidden charges."
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Posted By Texas Anne - Thu, Aug 05 2010 at 10:10 PM EST
Solar Now!
Since the cost of building a nuclear power plant is so extremely high, why couldn't solar become more cost effective? If the cost of producing solar panels is coming down then I'm inclined to believe that this article may be true. And I for one welcome the good news.
replyPosted By Bob Downs - Thu, Aug 05 2010 at 7:06 PM EST
Solar cheaper?
This study has to be seriously flawed.
Nuclear is much cheaper to produce than 16 cents/kwr and it is
available 24/7, quite unlike solar.
This is the first time I have ever read of such a claim and short
of seeing the details of the study I declare the study to be
wrong.
replyPosted By Joby - Fri, Aug 06 2010 at 8:39 AM EST
RTFA
Cheaper than that to PRODUCE, maybe but not to buy. Also, the technology to store energy so solar energy is available 24/7 is available now, and even referenced in the above article.
But you drank the nuclear kool-aid, right?
By Katy Rank LevWed, Aug 04 2010 at 8:40 PM EST
Read more: ALTERNATIVE ENERGY, FOSSIL FUELS, NUCLEAR ENERGY, SOLAR POWER
SUPER SUN: Solar energy is, for the first time, more affordable than nuclear energy in North Carolina. Researchers feel this trend will continue. (Photo:Sean McGrath/Flickr)
According to news aggregator Energy Collective, a historic era is upon us because solar power has become affordable. More specifically, solar power has become cheaper than nuclear power.
Crayola goes green with 15-acre solar farm
Pocono Raceway becomes world's largest solar-powered sports facility
Can radio waves kill the need for batteries?
Volcanic island seeks geothermal power
Solar drone lands after record 14 days aloft
The article sites researchers from Duke University in North Carolina, who found that the cost of "producing photovoltaic cells (PV) has been dropping for years ... at the same time, estimated costs for building new nuclear power plants have ballooned." Thus, it's cheaper to put solar panels on houses than to build a new nuclear power plant to service them.
According to the article, this is a crossover moment because the researchers haven't even considered other pros and cons of solar power, including that North Carolina is not a "sun-rich" state. Other states with more sunshine could see more cost savings. The article also references an up-and-coming trend in solar power called concentrating solar power or CSP. According to the story, CSP "promises utility-scale production and solar thermal storage." This means that even after sunset, CSP-fitted homes can generate electricity.
The story lists the crossover price point at about 16 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). This year, in North Carolina, the price of one kWh of electricity from solar energy fell below this point for the first time. Some solar developers offer electricity from solar energy at 14 cents per kWh and predict that this price will continue to drop.
The article ends by emphasizing how important it is to have an energy source that's more affordable than nuclear power, especially given the U.S. Senate's failure to pass a climate and energy bill this year. Since both nuclear and solar power are subsidized by the government, the author points out that "taxpayers now bear the burden of putting carbon into the atmosphere through a variety of hidden charges."
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Posted By Texas Anne - Thu, Aug 05 2010 at 10:10 PM EST
Solar Now!
Since the cost of building a nuclear power plant is so extremely high, why couldn't solar become more cost effective? If the cost of producing solar panels is coming down then I'm inclined to believe that this article may be true. And I for one welcome the good news.
replyPosted By Bob Downs - Thu, Aug 05 2010 at 7:06 PM EST
Solar cheaper?
This study has to be seriously flawed.
Nuclear is much cheaper to produce than 16 cents/kwr and it is
available 24/7, quite unlike solar.
This is the first time I have ever read of such a claim and short
of seeing the details of the study I declare the study to be
wrong.
replyPosted By Joby - Fri, Aug 06 2010 at 8:39 AM EST
RTFA
Cheaper than that to PRODUCE, maybe but not to buy. Also, the technology to store energy so solar energy is available 24/7 is available now, and even referenced in the above article.
But you drank the nuclear kool-aid, right?
This Car Runs on Poop: The Bio Bug
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 08. 6.10
Cars & Transportation (cars)
Image credit: Geneco
TreeHugger has talked a lot about the power of poo over the years, and with sewage-powered robots and microbial fuel-cells fast becoming a reality, it's definitely time we rethink our attitude to human waste. But this might be the first time we've covered a poop-powered car—a vehicle that actually runs on human waste. Only one question, doesn't it smell?
According to the BBC, the converted VW Beetle runs on methane derived from sewage treatment, and is a demonstration project of GENECO & mdash, a branch of water utility Wessex Water that specializes in organic waste solutions.
Let's not get too excited yet (I know we are all itching to drive a car powered by poop!). It takes an awful lot of waste to run one vehicle—in fact, it would take the annual output of seventy households to run one such car for 10,000 miles. So this is hardly likely to be the automotive solution for the masses. But it is a novel use of a waste resource. And no, it doesn't smell:
"Despite being powered by fuel created from sewage, the car does not smell unpleasant.-"It performs like a normal car - you wouldn't know it was powered by biogas," a company spokesman said."
Cars & Transportation (cars)
Image credit: Geneco
TreeHugger has talked a lot about the power of poo over the years, and with sewage-powered robots and microbial fuel-cells fast becoming a reality, it's definitely time we rethink our attitude to human waste. But this might be the first time we've covered a poop-powered car—a vehicle that actually runs on human waste. Only one question, doesn't it smell?
According to the BBC, the converted VW Beetle runs on methane derived from sewage treatment, and is a demonstration project of GENECO & mdash, a branch of water utility Wessex Water that specializes in organic waste solutions.
Let's not get too excited yet (I know we are all itching to drive a car powered by poop!). It takes an awful lot of waste to run one vehicle—in fact, it would take the annual output of seventy households to run one such car for 10,000 miles. So this is hardly likely to be the automotive solution for the masses. But it is a novel use of a waste resource. And no, it doesn't smell:
"Despite being powered by fuel created from sewage, the car does not smell unpleasant.-"It performs like a normal car - you wouldn't know it was powered by biogas," a company spokesman said."
Nissan Signs Zero-Emission Partnership With Kagoshima Prefecture to Promote Development of a CO2-Free Island
6 August 2010
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and Kagoshima Prefecture signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly embark on the “Development of a CO2-Free Island” project to create an advanced low-carbon society on Yakushima Island.
Japan’s first World Heritage Site, Yakushima Island is home to some of the country’s oldest trees—the oldest of which may be more than 7,000 years old—and has abundant hydropower.
The partnership will primarily focus on promoting the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on the island and creating an environment where people can safely drive EVs and utilize renewable energy.
Already, Kagoshima Prefecture has offered a purchase incentive for EVs. The prefecture is providing subsidies for installation of chargers, while Nissan has started a project to analyze how to install chargers optimally using drive data analysis technology.
The widely varied topography of Yakushima Island will offer a setting to conduct studies on further refining the navigation system for EVs to more precisely factor in road gradient. A study on utilization of electricity generated by EVs also will be conducted.
Nissan and Kagoshima Prefecture believe the Development of a CO2-Free Island project will be a study in best practices for similar countries and regions throughout the world. They hope to establish a working model for the wide-spread adoption of EVs on remote islands.
Comment
Nissan is already engaged in Hawaii with A Better World to promote eletric vehicles for use on the island. A Better Place also is involved in Irael for the same reasons.
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and Kagoshima Prefecture signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly embark on the “Development of a CO2-Free Island” project to create an advanced low-carbon society on Yakushima Island.
Japan’s first World Heritage Site, Yakushima Island is home to some of the country’s oldest trees—the oldest of which may be more than 7,000 years old—and has abundant hydropower.
The partnership will primarily focus on promoting the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on the island and creating an environment where people can safely drive EVs and utilize renewable energy.
Already, Kagoshima Prefecture has offered a purchase incentive for EVs. The prefecture is providing subsidies for installation of chargers, while Nissan has started a project to analyze how to install chargers optimally using drive data analysis technology.
The widely varied topography of Yakushima Island will offer a setting to conduct studies on further refining the navigation system for EVs to more precisely factor in road gradient. A study on utilization of electricity generated by EVs also will be conducted.
Nissan and Kagoshima Prefecture believe the Development of a CO2-Free Island project will be a study in best practices for similar countries and regions throughout the world. They hope to establish a working model for the wide-spread adoption of EVs on remote islands.
Comment
Nissan is already engaged in Hawaii with A Better World to promote eletric vehicles for use on the island. A Better Place also is involved in Irael for the same reasons.
Ener1 To Supply Li-ion Packs to Hyundai Heavy for Electric Buses; Complete Turnkey Solutions Agreement with Toro
6 August 2010
Ener1 has signed up two new customers for its Li-ion batteries: Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and Toro. Hyundai Heavy Industries in Korea will receive Li-ion battery packs for electric buses; the packs are similar configurations as packs currently in operation in California with AC Transit. The HHI contract is immediate; packs will be in buses on the road this year.
Ener1 will provide Toro with a complete turnkey solution to create a battery-powered mower using the hard carbon mixed oxide, 17.5 Ah cell developed for THINK. Charles Gassenheimer, Chairman and CEO of Ener1, announced both new customers during the company’s Q2 earnings conference call yesterday.
Gassenheimer also said that Ener1 is splitting the company into three product verticals, with profit and loss responsibility:
•Transportation. Transportation comprises light and heavy duty vehicles, military and industrial, and continues to be the company’s primary market. The light duty passenger market remains a focus, but Ener1 is more aggressively pursuing higher-margin opportunities in light-duty fleet, heavy-duty buses, and military applications.
•Small Cell & Consumer. Small Cell represents the legacy business of Ener1 Korea, the business previously referred to as Enertech International.
•Grid Energy Storage. Gassenheimer said that Grid Energy Storage will be an increasing focus for Ener1.
Ener1’s strategy is therefore to build capacity in a way that is customer-agnostic. Shell capacity is the scarce resource and will be allocated to the different business units depending on a stringent assessment of the return on investment for each customer program. When assessing the attractiveness of a new program, Ener1 evaluates not only the headline pricing, but performs a comprehensive business assessment, including the implied engineering costs.
At this stage in the game, getting this right is absolutely critical to ensuring we prioritize the right programs. Programs where Ener1 can leverage an existing R&D spend are therefore particularly attractive. Ener1 is currently developing three different EV module configurations which can satisfy a number of different permutations at the PAC level.
—Charles Gassenheimer
Ener1 has now publicly announced two programs in the light duty passenger vehicle market (THINK and Volvo); one light-duty fleet market (Japan Post); three heavy duty programs, including Hyundai and AC Transit; two grid stores project with SS Car in Russia and PGE in the Portland, Oregon; two military industrial contracts with the TARDEC Humvee program; and the Toro program.
Ener1 is currently installing capacity supply up to 11,000 EV pack equivalents or 260 MWh of lithium-ion battery pack systems. Capacity could be increased to 15,000 EV pack equivalents quickly and inexpensively as customer demand dictates, Rick Stanley, President of EnerDel, noted on the call.
Ener1’s net sales in the second quarter were $16.1 million, an increase of 113% over net sales of $7.5 million in the second quarter of 2009. Net sales were $27.0 million for the six months ended June 30, 2010, an increase of 72% over net sales of $15.7 million in the prior year six month period.
Net loss was $15.5 million in the second quarter of 2010 compared to $13.0 million in the 2009 second quarter. Net loss was $31.0 million for the six months ended June 30, 2010 compared to $20.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2009.
Basic and diluted net loss per share was $0.12 in the second quarter of 2010 compared to $0.11 in the second quarter of 2009. Weighted basic and diluted shares outstanding were 131.8 million and 136.0 million in the second quarter of 2010 compared to 113.8 million and 113.9 million in the second quarter of 2009
Ener1 has signed up two new customers for its Li-ion batteries: Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and Toro. Hyundai Heavy Industries in Korea will receive Li-ion battery packs for electric buses; the packs are similar configurations as packs currently in operation in California with AC Transit. The HHI contract is immediate; packs will be in buses on the road this year.
Ener1 will provide Toro with a complete turnkey solution to create a battery-powered mower using the hard carbon mixed oxide, 17.5 Ah cell developed for THINK. Charles Gassenheimer, Chairman and CEO of Ener1, announced both new customers during the company’s Q2 earnings conference call yesterday.
Gassenheimer also said that Ener1 is splitting the company into three product verticals, with profit and loss responsibility:
•Transportation. Transportation comprises light and heavy duty vehicles, military and industrial, and continues to be the company’s primary market. The light duty passenger market remains a focus, but Ener1 is more aggressively pursuing higher-margin opportunities in light-duty fleet, heavy-duty buses, and military applications.
•Small Cell & Consumer. Small Cell represents the legacy business of Ener1 Korea, the business previously referred to as Enertech International.
•Grid Energy Storage. Gassenheimer said that Grid Energy Storage will be an increasing focus for Ener1.
Ener1’s strategy is therefore to build capacity in a way that is customer-agnostic. Shell capacity is the scarce resource and will be allocated to the different business units depending on a stringent assessment of the return on investment for each customer program. When assessing the attractiveness of a new program, Ener1 evaluates not only the headline pricing, but performs a comprehensive business assessment, including the implied engineering costs.
At this stage in the game, getting this right is absolutely critical to ensuring we prioritize the right programs. Programs where Ener1 can leverage an existing R&D spend are therefore particularly attractive. Ener1 is currently developing three different EV module configurations which can satisfy a number of different permutations at the PAC level.
—Charles Gassenheimer
Ener1 has now publicly announced two programs in the light duty passenger vehicle market (THINK and Volvo); one light-duty fleet market (Japan Post); three heavy duty programs, including Hyundai and AC Transit; two grid stores project with SS Car in Russia and PGE in the Portland, Oregon; two military industrial contracts with the TARDEC Humvee program; and the Toro program.
Ener1 is currently installing capacity supply up to 11,000 EV pack equivalents or 260 MWh of lithium-ion battery pack systems. Capacity could be increased to 15,000 EV pack equivalents quickly and inexpensively as customer demand dictates, Rick Stanley, President of EnerDel, noted on the call.
Ener1’s net sales in the second quarter were $16.1 million, an increase of 113% over net sales of $7.5 million in the second quarter of 2009. Net sales were $27.0 million for the six months ended June 30, 2010, an increase of 72% over net sales of $15.7 million in the prior year six month period.
Net loss was $15.5 million in the second quarter of 2010 compared to $13.0 million in the 2009 second quarter. Net loss was $31.0 million for the six months ended June 30, 2010 compared to $20.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2009.
Basic and diluted net loss per share was $0.12 in the second quarter of 2010 compared to $0.11 in the second quarter of 2009. Weighted basic and diluted shares outstanding were 131.8 million and 136.0 million in the second quarter of 2010 compared to 113.8 million and 113.9 million in the second quarter of 2009
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
By Kevin Kelleher 03.23.09
Illustration: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Problem
A smart grid requires smart electric meters that let households track and manage their power consumption in real time. The Obama administration wants 40 million homes to have technology like this installed within the next three years. But smart meters require smart consumers—or at least attentive ones—and most people don't think about their energy use until it's time to pay the bill or until the lights go out.
Smart Grid Customers
1 Average Consumer
Most customers simply replace their old meter with a smart one. Then they enter some basic preferences—do you care more about cost or reliability?—and input data on their house size and appliances. The system tracks usage and will eventually be able to suggest changes to help users achieve their energy goals. Special vacation settings can be programmed in. Call centers will be ready to help the tech-averse.
2 Energy Donor
Some homes with solar panels on the roof—or a plugged-in hybrid in the garage—will be able to funnel power back into the system, choosing when and how much they send. A homeowner could, for example, arrange to shoot solar power to the grid, instead of to their air conditioner, when the price rises above a certain threshold. That would boost the system's supply precisely when it's most needed.
3 Electricity Geek
By inserting special plugs into their electrical outlets, creative consumers can turn almost anything into a smart appliance—even mundane stuff like hall lights, pool pumps, and garage doors. With a bit of tinkering on the grid program's Web site, savvy users can then manage the power flowing to each appliance and rank them according to the order they should be shut down when prices rise.
Solution Make the meters as easy to use as a TiVo. Then, make them interesting—and worth real money—to folks who like to fiddle. For the $100 million SmartGridCity project in Boulder, Colorado, Xcel Energy and a group of partners are building a system that lets customers manage home electricity use through a Web page that shows energy burned, carbon footprint, and ways to save cash.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_consumers#ixzz0vg7gAWRU
Illustration: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Problem
A smart grid requires smart electric meters that let households track and manage their power consumption in real time. The Obama administration wants 40 million homes to have technology like this installed within the next three years. But smart meters require smart consumers—or at least attentive ones—and most people don't think about their energy use until it's time to pay the bill or until the lights go out.
Smart Grid Customers
1 Average Consumer
Most customers simply replace their old meter with a smart one. Then they enter some basic preferences—do you care more about cost or reliability?—and input data on their house size and appliances. The system tracks usage and will eventually be able to suggest changes to help users achieve their energy goals. Special vacation settings can be programmed in. Call centers will be ready to help the tech-averse.
2 Energy Donor
Some homes with solar panels on the roof—or a plugged-in hybrid in the garage—will be able to funnel power back into the system, choosing when and how much they send. A homeowner could, for example, arrange to shoot solar power to the grid, instead of to their air conditioner, when the price rises above a certain threshold. That would boost the system's supply precisely when it's most needed.
3 Electricity Geek
By inserting special plugs into their electrical outlets, creative consumers can turn almost anything into a smart appliance—even mundane stuff like hall lights, pool pumps, and garage doors. With a bit of tinkering on the grid program's Web site, savvy users can then manage the power flowing to each appliance and rank them according to the order they should be shut down when prices rise.
Solution Make the meters as easy to use as a TiVo. Then, make them interesting—and worth real money—to folks who like to fiddle. For the $100 million SmartGridCity project in Boulder, Colorado, Xcel Energy and a group of partners are building a system that lets customers manage home electricity use through a Web page that shows energy burned, carbon footprint, and ways to save cash.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_consumers#ixzz0vg7gAWRU
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
By Spencer Reiss 03.23.09
Photo: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
It's high noon in July. At 90-plus degrees outside, the masses are jonesing for AC. But it's seriously expensive to keep the juice flowing when demand crests. Firing up turbines that sit idle 360 days a year can multiply electricity costs by a factor of 10. How to keep cool without stressing the grid?
Solution
Pay big users to cut consumption when the need arises. Many utilities already do an ad-hoc version of this, an emergency practice known as demand response that has lately been promoted by Jon Wellinghoff, acting chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Now there's an alternative: Call EnerNOC, a Boston-based company that gangs commercial users who are willing, for a quarterly payment, to trim back operations on 30 minutes' notice. EnerNOC micromanages consumption at 3,400-plus locations from Maine to California. Between dimming lights, adjusting thermostats, and suspending industrial activities, the potential cuts top the output of a large nuclear reactor. And the savings can be huge. EnerNOC's cofounder, Tim Healy, points out that 10 percent of all US generating capacity exists to meet the last 1 percent of demand. Utilities paid EnerNOC $100 million last year simply to stand at the ready—insurance, in effect, against the inevitable days when every AC unit is humming.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_efficiency#ixzz0vg6NV6gm
Photo: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
It's high noon in July. At 90-plus degrees outside, the masses are jonesing for AC. But it's seriously expensive to keep the juice flowing when demand crests. Firing up turbines that sit idle 360 days a year can multiply electricity costs by a factor of 10. How to keep cool without stressing the grid?
Solution
Pay big users to cut consumption when the need arises. Many utilities already do an ad-hoc version of this, an emergency practice known as demand response that has lately been promoted by Jon Wellinghoff, acting chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Now there's an alternative: Call EnerNOC, a Boston-based company that gangs commercial users who are willing, for a quarterly payment, to trim back operations on 30 minutes' notice. EnerNOC micromanages consumption at 3,400-plus locations from Maine to California. Between dimming lights, adjusting thermostats, and suspending industrial activities, the potential cuts top the output of a large nuclear reactor. And the savings can be huge. EnerNOC's cofounder, Tim Healy, points out that 10 percent of all US generating capacity exists to meet the last 1 percent of demand. Utilities paid EnerNOC $100 million last year simply to stand at the ready—insurance, in effect, against the inevitable days when every AC unit is humming.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_efficiency#ixzz0vg6NV6gm
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
By Ben Paynter 03.23.09
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem Regional brokers are responsible for getting enough electrons to their designated areas. At times of peak usage, that means firing up an old, dirty generator (not exactly green) or importing more juice from outside the region (not exactly cheap). Eventually, someone has to build more power plants and infrastructure (wickedly expensive).
Solution
Treat electricity like a commodity—something for which you can gauge demand and set a price in advance. That's what New England's independent system operator started doing last year. In its Forward Capacity Market, the ISO projects how much power the region will need three years ahead and then runs a descending-clock auction for the right to provide it. The ISO doesn't care whether it gets its power from increased production of megawatts or from efficiencies added to the system, so-called negawatts. The agency simply sets the starting price. Result: money saved in power plants and wires, more stable electricity bills, and a homegrown incubator for getting bright green ideas off the drawing board.
$15 The independent system operator announces its need for 32,305 megawatts. Hundreds of wannabe providers—generators and conservers—offer 6,850 MW more than the ISO wants. The auction opens at $15/kW-month.
$9With excess supply, the ISO brings the price down to $9/kW-month, then $8, and so on, shedding bidders—and surplus power—with every round.
$4.50 End of the auction: The ISO reaches $4.50 ... and still has excess electricity, which it offers to take off the providers' hands as well.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_markets#ixzz0vg5LhITi
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem Regional brokers are responsible for getting enough electrons to their designated areas. At times of peak usage, that means firing up an old, dirty generator (not exactly green) or importing more juice from outside the region (not exactly cheap). Eventually, someone has to build more power plants and infrastructure (wickedly expensive).
Solution
Treat electricity like a commodity—something for which you can gauge demand and set a price in advance. That's what New England's independent system operator started doing last year. In its Forward Capacity Market, the ISO projects how much power the region will need three years ahead and then runs a descending-clock auction for the right to provide it. The ISO doesn't care whether it gets its power from increased production of megawatts or from efficiencies added to the system, so-called negawatts. The agency simply sets the starting price. Result: money saved in power plants and wires, more stable electricity bills, and a homegrown incubator for getting bright green ideas off the drawing board.
$15 The independent system operator announces its need for 32,305 megawatts. Hundreds of wannabe providers—generators and conservers—offer 6,850 MW more than the ISO wants. The auction opens at $15/kW-month.
$9With excess supply, the ISO brings the price down to $9/kW-month, then $8, and so on, shedding bidders—and surplus power—with every round.
$4.50 End of the auction: The ISO reaches $4.50 ... and still has excess electricity, which it offers to take off the providers' hands as well.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_markets#ixzz0vg5LhITi
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
By Brendan I. Koerner 03.23.09
Illustration: Lamosca
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
The grid is like the adage about a butterfly flapping its wings; an outage in Michigan can cause blackouts in Florida. While utilities are investing in software to spot problems on their own chunks of the grid, they are reluctant to share that information with one another.
Solution
Trust a third party. Oak Ridge National Laboratory persuaded 30 utilities to share some of their most precious real-time data in exchange for a grid visualization tool that helps everyone. The lab signs a nondisclosure agreement with each utility, then feeds the raw information into a monitoring system called Verde (Visualizing Energy Resources Dynamically on Earth) that tracks grid assets nationwide, as shown in the illustration above. Users can see where inclement weather is developing that might threaten transmission lines—if a thunderstorm is brewing in Kansas, a utility can temporarily reroute its power. Verde also receives a constant flow of real-time data regarding the health of wires, letting operators know if a blackout is sweeping southern Alabama or transmission lines seem congested in South Dakota. Ultimately, a system like Verde will make the grid more efficient. High-voltage lines frequently carry as little as 60 percent of their capacities, since utilities fear sudden power surges. If operators don't have to worry about unexpected crises, they'll be able to transmit more electricity to their customers
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_visualization#ixzz0vg4WTttG
Illustration: Lamosca
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
The grid is like the adage about a butterfly flapping its wings; an outage in Michigan can cause blackouts in Florida. While utilities are investing in software to spot problems on their own chunks of the grid, they are reluctant to share that information with one another.
Solution
Trust a third party. Oak Ridge National Laboratory persuaded 30 utilities to share some of their most precious real-time data in exchange for a grid visualization tool that helps everyone. The lab signs a nondisclosure agreement with each utility, then feeds the raw information into a monitoring system called Verde (Visualizing Energy Resources Dynamically on Earth) that tracks grid assets nationwide, as shown in the illustration above. Users can see where inclement weather is developing that might threaten transmission lines—if a thunderstorm is brewing in Kansas, a utility can temporarily reroute its power. Verde also receives a constant flow of real-time data regarding the health of wires, letting operators know if a blackout is sweeping southern Alabama or transmission lines seem congested in South Dakota. Ultimately, a system like Verde will make the grid more efficient. High-voltage lines frequently carry as little as 60 percent of their capacities, since utilities fear sudden power surges. If operators don't have to worry about unexpected crises, they'll be able to transmit more electricity to their customers
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_visualization#ixzz0vg4WTttG
battery Storage In Super batteries
By Vince Beiser 03.23.09
Photo: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
Electricity is the ultimate just-in-time commodity, sent off to consumers as soon as it's generated. But solar and wind installations produce power only when the sun is shining or a breeze is blowing. If you could bank that energy when it's abundant and release it later as needed, you'd have a more reliable, more environmentally sound power grid.
Solution
Obama's stimulus package includes $2 billion in grants for battery development. For power grids, sodium-sulfur technology is the best bet. It's more efficient and power-dense than zinc-bromide or lead-acid, and in Japan, where NaS batteries are made, enough have been installed to power the equivalent of at least 155,000 homes. Later this year or next, American Electric Power, a major utility serving 11 midwestern states, will install 4 megawatts' worth of NaS cells in Presidio, Texas. That's on top of the 6 megawatts of battery power AEP installed in three other states last year. "We wanted a real thing that really works," says Ali Nourai, AEP's manager of distributed energy resources. "We didn't want to send a technician out every other day to fix some experimental system." Regulatory uncertainties still abound, but utilities across the US plan to bring sodium-sulfur systems online. Soon, more and more cities will come with batteries included.
Other Energy Storage Technologies
Compressed Air
Off-peak power forces air into a sealed space (like an abandoned mine or salt dome); when energy is needed, the air is released and burned with natural gas to spin a turbine.
Flywheels
Huge, heavy wheels get spun up by a generator. When they decelerate, they spit the power back out, providing an uninterruptible backup energy supply.
Pumped Hydro
Water is pushed up an incline to a reservoir. To put electricity back into the grid, the water is allowed to rush back down, driving a set of turbines.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_storage#ixzz0vg3VjXlg
Photo: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
Electricity is the ultimate just-in-time commodity, sent off to consumers as soon as it's generated. But solar and wind installations produce power only when the sun is shining or a breeze is blowing. If you could bank that energy when it's abundant and release it later as needed, you'd have a more reliable, more environmentally sound power grid.
Solution
Obama's stimulus package includes $2 billion in grants for battery development. For power grids, sodium-sulfur technology is the best bet. It's more efficient and power-dense than zinc-bromide or lead-acid, and in Japan, where NaS batteries are made, enough have been installed to power the equivalent of at least 155,000 homes. Later this year or next, American Electric Power, a major utility serving 11 midwestern states, will install 4 megawatts' worth of NaS cells in Presidio, Texas. That's on top of the 6 megawatts of battery power AEP installed in three other states last year. "We wanted a real thing that really works," says Ali Nourai, AEP's manager of distributed energy resources. "We didn't want to send a technician out every other day to fix some experimental system." Regulatory uncertainties still abound, but utilities across the US plan to bring sodium-sulfur systems online. Soon, more and more cities will come with batteries included.
Other Energy Storage Technologies
Compressed Air
Off-peak power forces air into a sealed space (like an abandoned mine or salt dome); when energy is needed, the air is released and burned with natural gas to spin a turbine.
Flywheels
Huge, heavy wheels get spun up by a generator. When they decelerate, they spit the power back out, providing an uninterruptible backup energy supply.
Pumped Hydro
Water is pushed up an incline to a reservoir. To put electricity back into the grid, the water is allowed to rush back down, driving a set of turbines.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_storage#ixzz0vg3VjXlg
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities - Wired
By Bryant Urstadt 03.23.09
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
Building wind turbines and solar farms in the middle of nowhere sounds great. But it's not easy to move all that clean energy to the people. Obama just signed into law $6 billion in loan guarantees for energy projects, including new transmission lines. But constructing those lines will require the approval of landowners and city planners, who want the electricity but not the unsightly high-voltage wires strung across their property.
Solution
Go underground—or underwater. The Trans Bay Cable will link San Francisco to 400 megawatts of power—some from the Altamont Pass wind farms near Livermore, California, and the rest from other sources throughout the state. Set to open in 2010, it's a $500 million project that everyone in the area wanted built ... somewhere else. As a result, the planned route looks like the path an escaped convict would take if he wanted to minimize contact with humans, especially of the activist and bureaucratic kind.
Routing the Trans Bay Cable
Route 1
Along Public Transit Lines (rejected)
Project planners proposed running the cable—about 10 inches thick—along a light rail line. The idea was nixed due to concerns that putting a power supply near mass transit would tempt terrorists.
Route 2
Beside the Railroad Tracks (rejected)
Locating the cable next to freight train tracks would seem like an obvious choice. But there's no room along the BNSF railroad by the bay, and the Union Pacific tracks run through a protected wetland.
Route 3
Next to the Highways (rejected)
There's plenty of room along the state's freeways, but the California Department of Transportation, which likes having the flexibility to widen its roads, forbids running cables beside them.
Route 4
Under the Water (approved)
Halibut and crabs don't have NIMBY issues, so 53 miles of cable will go underwater in a trench dug by water jets. Physically complicated to build and maintain, it will be politically easy to route.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_transport#ixzz0vg1ykBgO
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
Building wind turbines and solar farms in the middle of nowhere sounds great. But it's not easy to move all that clean energy to the people. Obama just signed into law $6 billion in loan guarantees for energy projects, including new transmission lines. But constructing those lines will require the approval of landowners and city planners, who want the electricity but not the unsightly high-voltage wires strung across their property.
Solution
Go underground—or underwater. The Trans Bay Cable will link San Francisco to 400 megawatts of power—some from the Altamont Pass wind farms near Livermore, California, and the rest from other sources throughout the state. Set to open in 2010, it's a $500 million project that everyone in the area wanted built ... somewhere else. As a result, the planned route looks like the path an escaped convict would take if he wanted to minimize contact with humans, especially of the activist and bureaucratic kind.
Routing the Trans Bay Cable
Route 1
Along Public Transit Lines (rejected)
Project planners proposed running the cable—about 10 inches thick—along a light rail line. The idea was nixed due to concerns that putting a power supply near mass transit would tempt terrorists.
Route 2
Beside the Railroad Tracks (rejected)
Locating the cable next to freight train tracks would seem like an obvious choice. But there's no room along the BNSF railroad by the bay, and the Union Pacific tracks run through a protected wetland.
Route 3
Next to the Highways (rejected)
There's plenty of room along the state's freeways, but the California Department of Transportation, which likes having the flexibility to widen its roads, forbids running cables beside them.
Route 4
Under the Water (approved)
Halibut and crabs don't have NIMBY issues, so 53 miles of cable will go underwater in a trench dug by water jets. Physically complicated to build and maintain, it will be politically easy to route.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_transport#ixzz0vg1ykBgO
Garage Invention Turns Restaurants Into Power Plants
By Alexis Madrigal January 7, 2009 | 3:38 pm | Categories: Energy, Environment, Food
Would you like power with those fries?
A new garage-engineered generator burns the waste oil from restaurants’ deep fryers to generate electricity and hot water. Put 80 gallons of grease into the Vegawatt each week, and its creators promise it will generate about 5 kilowatts of power.
That’s about 10 percent of the total energy needs of Finz, a seafood restaurant in Dedham, Massachusetts, where the first Vegawatt is being tested. At New England electricity rates, the system offsets about $2.50 worth of electricity with each gallon of waste oil poured into it.
Vegawatt’s founder and inventor, James Peret, estimates that restaurants purchasing the $22,000 machine will save about $1,000 per month in electricity costs, for a payback time of two years.
"You take this waste resource and make it a profit center," said Peret, who spent four long years cooking up the project in his garage. "When I started telling people, they said, ‘Someone’s gotta have done this.’ I’d run into more people. They’d say, ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this?’ My only response was, ‘I don’t know; it seems like a good idea.’"
While Vegawatt is a small solution, Peret’s invention is a very clever embodiment of several long-cherished alternative-energy ideas: capturing both the heat and power from fuel combustion, making energy where it’s used, and recycling used resources. Big industrial plants that make paper, for example, have long taken advantage of these concepts to save on their utility bills, but the Vegawatt will be the first product that could turn thousands of fast food restaurants into mini power plants.
"Now the restaurant owners are going to be motivated to put every single drop of waste oil into this thing, because it will pay for itself," Peret said.
And importantly, it provides convenience for restaurateurs or Burger
King managers, instead of subtracting it, like so many green solutions seem to.
Restaurants that fry delicious things like chicken and french fries generate dozens of gallons of waste oil that have to be stored in barrels out back. Because used cooking oil is considered a low-grade hazardous material, they haven’t been allowed to just throw it away; they generally had to pay rendering-plant operators to come. But it is now a sellers’ market for grease.
Higher crude prices have made other types of oil more expensive. Biodiesel makers and renderers have become increasingly willing to pay up to 40 cents a gallon for the stuff. There have even been reports of "biodiesel pirates" stealing fryer grease.
In fact, Vegawatt is derived from the home-brew fuel movement that many trace back to Dr. Thomas Reed, who popularized a recipe to convert waste cooking oil into biodiesel more than 20 years ago. Peret converted his truck to run on straight vegetable oil, or SVO to home brewers. But he was troubled by the inefficiency of the process.
"If you want to run waste vegetable oil in your car, it’s not as simple as going behind a restaurant and filling up," Peret said. "People that do this spend the majority of their free time collecting fuel from restaurants."
Peret realized he could use the same engine technology to power an on-site generator and defray a restaurant’s electricity costs.
"It’s not difficult to go from spinning tires to spinning magnets," he said
So he created a test unit — which you can see at the back of his garage in the top photo — that’s basically a diesel generator hacked to run waste cooking oil. It feeds power directly into the restaurant’s electrical system through a 30 amp hook-in.
Vegawatt is more efficient than a typical coal or natural gas plant. Peret said it can capture 70 percent of the fuel’s caloric value. That’s because the generator captures and uses the waste heat it generates.
"All the water [the restaurant] would send to its boiler, instead of sending it straight there from the city, we run it through our heat exchanger first," Peret said. "Depending on the flow, [the water] can go into the hot water heater at 120 degrees." (This non-electrical energy savings is included in the 5-kilowatt rating cited above.)
The big power plants, though technically very efficient, waste most of the fuel they burn. After accounting for all the sources of energy waste "what you are left with … is just 27.6 units of usable energy out of every 100 units you started with," energy researcher Benjamin Sovacool explained in his recent book, The Dirty Energy Dilemma. "In terms of making toast, it would have been nearly four times more efficient just to burn a lump of coal and place your bread over the flame."
Biomass energy sources — like waste wood, switchgrass or cooking oil — are best when used right near the source of their creation. Dragging the stuff creates more emissions and raises the cost of the fuel. Vegawatt doesn’t have that problem. By company estimates, the Vegawatt generates 50 percent less carbon dioxide than a comparable amount of electricity from a coal power plant.
"In terms of the amount of energy that it takes to transport this waste, it’s a french fry," Peret said. "You just feed the guy who is picking up the bucket and pouring it into the system."
Forest Gregg, an alternative-fuels expert and author of last year’s SVO: Powering Your Vehicle with Straight Vegetble Oil, called it a "nifty application and a great business idea."
Gregg also drew attention to a strong part of Vegawatt’s pitch: that it won’t require "intervention or maintenance by restaurant staff."
That’s because when users buy a system — or lease it for $450 a month — they get a service contract with the company for cleaning and maintenance.
The owner of the very first Vegawatt, George Carey (pictured above), seems pleased with the unit, too. He heartily endorses the company on its website, saying, "The Vegawatt system enables me to significantly reduce my energy costs, generate clean energy on-site, and very importantly, reduce the heavy energy footprint of my restaurant."
See Also:
•Tapping the Vortex for Green Energy
•Global Energy Network Depends on a Few Vulnerable Nodes
•How A Google Engineer Hacks His Energy Usage
•Biofuel Startup Strives to Meet Obama’s Green Ambitions
•Obama Voices Biofuel Doubts
•Biofuel Solution at Sea, not on Land
•DOE Invests $125 Million in Synthetic Life to Develop Biofuels …
•Food vs. Fuel: Saltwater Crops May Be Key to Solving Earth’s Land …
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter , Google Reader feed, and project site, Inventing Green: the lost history of American clean tech; Wired Science on Facebook.
Tags: Sustainability
Close Posted by: TR Bob | 01/7/09 | 5:34 pm |
Hats off to James Peret for making something useful with waste cooking oil, other than using it to power diesel powered cars.
Next I would imagine someone capturing all the wasted methane gas from TexMex patrons after a hearty meal of refried beans.
Posted by: Dave Flores | 01/7/09 | 5:40 pm |
Ooops, no more cheap biodiesel, guys!
Posted by: dave | 01/7/09 | 5:58 pm |
Um, the payback calculation is, well, childish. They don’t include the cost for the maintenance contract, or the money you can make selling the oil.
And they don’t say what kind of emissions are produced (other than 50% of the CO2 of a coal plant). There are LOTS of other emissions this thing produces that could be much worse to produce throughout cities everywhere…
Posted by: David | 01/7/09 | 6:12 pm |
That Vegawatt picture is very photoshoped!!
Look at the saturation in the picture and then look at the Vegawatt stickers of sharpness!
Sorry, that’s the nerd in me. Good article, let’s get away from fossil fuels asap!
Posted by: christopher | 01/7/09 | 6:13 pm |
Yeah, but…
…why wouldn’t/couldn’t a restaurant get a fuel oil delivery and then generate its own electricity completely? And why don’t we? I own a furnace, I need hot water, why couldn’t I run a generator instead of a furnace and install baseboards?
I mean, why stop at used oil?
-C
Posted by: andrew | 01/7/09 | 6:15 pm |
@dave
While a story on a blog may have “childish” calculations, it is far superior to some relatively uninformed commenter’s dissnissive approach. How is your suggestion that “other emissions” might be worse than the offset emissions any less childish? Do you have anything stronger than disbelief to support you trollish comment?
Posted by: it's me | 01/7/09 | 6:32 pm |
Capitalism FTW
Posted by: Ross | 01/7/09 | 6:55 pm |
I guess if this things the real deal, it’ll come down to what makes the most economic sense for the business. Selling the oil or using it as fuel to lower your electric bill?
Posted by: Paul | 01/7/09 | 7:02 pm |
10 Points!! Aside from all the noise it must make it’s a great innovation.
There are 2 and 3 stage commercial power plants where a natural gas powered turbine is used to generate electricity with the exhaust going to heat water.
All it needs now is to harness the remaining 30% energy coming out of the exhaust for space heating and/or to run refrigeration via a peroxide cooler and he’s almost at 100% efficiency.
I wish this bloke every success!
Posted by: WarLord | 01/7/09 | 7:17 pm |
Greetings
Good idea but one caveat about the saving. Many regular gen sets use the exhaust heat exchangers to heat water or air. Regular feature in modern Co-Gen.
And yes a modern high efficency gas boiler for resid. baseboard heating can be had with a coil allowing you to heat domestic hot water. Use a solar solution in summer and boiler in winter maybe….
Still a good idea but I’d hope they’d keep things CLEAN and thus safe!
Posted by: Jack | 01/7/09 | 7:38 pm |
Use waste oil to generate electricity and hot water. Great idea. It can reduce the food waster and pollution.
http://www.laptops-battery.co.uk/ibm-thinkpad-t61-battery.htm
Posted by: Michael | 01/7/09 | 7:53 pm |
There is one other down side on this, your bar of soap will cost more, as most soap is made of recycle grease from restaurants and fast food stores
Posted by: Michael | 01/7/09 | 7:55 pm |
There is one other down side on this, your bar of soap will cost more, as most soap is made of recycle grease from restaurants and fast food stores
Posted by: j | 01/7/09 | 9:36 pm |
$1000 a month, at saving of $2.50 per gallon, makes $400 gallons a month.
Assuming they could have sold that oil for 40c a gallon, the lost opportunity is $160.
Note that regardless of leasing or buying it, you receive a contract to service and maintain it. You’re right to point out that they haven’t mentioned the cost of such a contract. Is it free? $100 a month? 10? 50?
Either way, if you estimate a worst case return of $700 savings per month, taking into account maintenence and opportunity cost, you end up with a payback period of ~32 months – 2years, 8 months.
Concerns about the emissions of the generator itself don’t bother me greatly. Once you’re working with a used product, you’re already ahead, since the emissions related to producing the fuel in the first place are no longer counted.
It’s an interesting idea, at the very least.
Posted by: B | 01/8/09 | 12:25 am |
So much for dreams of wandering around restaurants bumming bio-diesel and making your own for next to nothing whilst wearing cut offs with an acoustic out of the case slung over your shoulder.
Now you will have to ride up to the restaurant pump and have them say things like, “Oh sorry dude. It’s December and cold and we use electric heat so there is a deep fryer sludge shortage. Unfortunately the price has gone up man.”.
And so enters the first green middle man.
Isn’t the rule of the game that there is always at least one middle man, definitely at least one tax man, and of course a lot of bad men where there is money to be made?
The future marches on…
Man I sound negative.
*Runs off for a positive sandwich and a glass of juice.
Posted by: Sergio | 01/8/09 | 1:02 am |
Finally bistromatics is invented!
Posted by: Dumpleton Von Snickerpants | 01/8/09 | 1:46 am |
I still prefer Mr. Fusion.
Posted by: Karl Schröter | 01/8/09 | 2:43 am |
BTDT since 2002.
In Germany, people used to pay (a few months ago) up to 1 Euro per liter – that’s almost five US$ per imperial gallon(!) – for used vegetable oil!
Since the oil prices dropped, the price has sunk to about 0,7€/l – that’s probably still more than regular off-the-pump Diesel fuel in some other countries.
Posted by: gwb | 01/8/09 | 6:32 am |
this is typical republican junk. nobody wants to dick around with some piece of grease burning gray metal box. that would take them back to the old coal fired home furnace. Say son would pour some grease in the generator it’s about to run out, and don’t use chinese food grease this time it smells like fish.
Posted by: Homero | 01/8/09 | 7:11 am |
“Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Dear Lord, I know you’re busy, seeing as how you can watch women changing clothes and stuff. But if you help us steal this grease tonight, I promise we’ll donate half the profits to charity.”
–Homer J. Simpson
Posted by: Yves | 01/8/09 | 7:17 am |
Nicely done Peret! Now Sell Sell Sell! Seems like a winning hand.
Posted by: SleepFuriously | 01/8/09 | 7:24 am |
A restaurant in Oceanside CA has been doing this for about 3 years. Using their excess oil to power their refrigerators and freezers. This is a great invention and I’m glad it is spreading.
Posted by: dervheid | 01/8/09 | 7:42 am |
5Kw.
per ?..
hour, day, week? Tell me!
Kw is an INSTANTANEOUS measurement unit. Meaningless in this context without a timebase reference.
Posted by: John Tedder | 01/8/09 | 8:15 am |
I used to own a small restaurant. I had a special dumpster in the parking lot to store the used oil until a big truck came to collect it. Don’t forget to account for the environmental savings of not having a big truck driving around collecting the used oil.
Does the VegaWatt have to run 24/7 to get the $1000 per month savings?
Posted by: muD | 01/8/09 | 9:11 am |
Most of your fast food outlets are independently owned: usually in small regional groups. Most of these guys are looking to save money however they can and this is in the right price range for them to afford. He should do well.
Posted by: mitch | 01/8/09 | 9:39 am |
@gwb
“this is typical republican junk. nobody wants to dick around with some piece of grease burning gray metal box.”
Yes, no one WANTS to do it…that is why a savvy restaurateur would PAY a minimum wage worker to do it.
As ‘it’s me’ said: “Capitalism FTW”
PS: WTF does this have to do with party affiliation?
Posted by: Eric | 01/8/09 | 10:08 am |
@dervheid …
Yes kW is INSTANTANEOUS….
That means that if you run it for an hour, it shaves 5 kWh worth of power from your electric bill.
Watts is power, volts*coulombs/second, you are billed by the kilowatt hour which is a measure of energy…
If you’re gonna act smart at least try to be smart
Posted by: Thinker | 01/8/09 | 11:26 am |
This is fantastic, bravo James Peret, keep up the great work.
Posted by: VICB3 | 01/8/09 | 11:35 am |
Just watch. Some over-earnest enviro true believer will bitch about the Co2 footprint of this thing. Ditto an Air Quality Management Board bureaucrat worring about emmisions.
Posted by: Jason Boatright | 01/8/09 | 11:45 am |
Wow, that is truly amazing. You gotta love it!
jess
http://www.internet-anonymity.net.tc
Posted by: IowaBiodiesel | 01/8/09 | 12:42 pm |
This machine would not be legal in California due to the emissions from that engine. Most restaurants dump a lot of debris into those dumpsters and it would reek havoc on the engine. I hate over simplification, NOTHING is free. UFO is not considered “low level hazardous waste” and trying to get that into my basement, vented to code and abate the noise would prove very problematic. Mid America energy and my insurance underwriter would have a field day.
Posted by: Davoud | 01/8/09 | 12:56 pm |
Why not providing electricity and heat?
The engine produces heat it can be easily used to heat water, which in turn can power radiators.
Posted by: Davoud | 01/8/09 | 12:57 pm |
Why not providing electricity and heat?
The engine produces heat it can be easily used to heat water, which in turn can power radiators.
Posted by: PJ | 01/8/09 | 2:03 pm |
Awesome! More CO2 and particulate matter in our atmosphere.
Posted by: mo | 01/8/09 | 3:16 pm |
in the UK we have to pay for our oil to be collected by a certified waste oil collection company. Long gone are the days when we could sell it.
Posted by: Kirzen | 01/8/09 | 4:38 pm |
5KW Whats?
5KWH?
You have to rate power generation based on power consumed over time, its like saying that your machine can push 500lbs. 500lbs from where to where? How long can it do it? Does it generate 5KW as long as its running? Will it run forever (concievably) on the grease from the kitchen?
Do you realize that 5KWH is worth about 30 CENTS? How could you possibly (as a business) rationalize spending $450 a month on something that (even if its running 24H a day) generates about $7.50 a day? You’d be better off setting up some sort of agreement with the biodiesel folks or the people that clean your frier to dispose of your cooking oil for free, rather than waste over $200 a month on some dude’s pipe dream.
Posted by: Uncle Al | 01/9/09 | 8:47 am |
Combustion rule of thumb: 5 eV for every molecule O2 used. Then 40 KJ/g for pure carbon oxidized to CO2. That said, /_\H(comb) empirical numbers,
coal, -24 to -32 KJ/g
1-dodecanol, -42.266 KJ/g
glyceryl trioleate, -45.3 KJ/g
rapeseed oil, = -40.2 kJ/g (density = 0.92 g/ml)
80 gallons = 302,833 ml = 278,606 g = 1.12×10^7 KJ
[(1.12x10^7 KJ)/(5x10^3 KJ/sec)][(1 min/60 sec)/(7 days) =
5 KW 100% efficient thermal output for 5.3 min/day or 37 min/week. This is a candidate for the Federal Witless Protection Program. The Enviro-whinerism trinity is "expensive, shoddy, deadly".
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | 01/9/09 | 11:25 am |
Peret should target the bigger fast-food chains with this first. They’d love it!
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | 01/9/09 | 11:33 am |
Oh, and how many of the folks commenting bothered to, y’know, Google “Vegawatt” so they could find out more before they started posting about how “noisy” it was? According to the Vegawatt website, it’s a quiet machine
Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/vegawatt/#ixzz0vg0APzAT
Would you like power with those fries?
A new garage-engineered generator burns the waste oil from restaurants’ deep fryers to generate electricity and hot water. Put 80 gallons of grease into the Vegawatt each week, and its creators promise it will generate about 5 kilowatts of power.
That’s about 10 percent of the total energy needs of Finz, a seafood restaurant in Dedham, Massachusetts, where the first Vegawatt is being tested. At New England electricity rates, the system offsets about $2.50 worth of electricity with each gallon of waste oil poured into it.
Vegawatt’s founder and inventor, James Peret, estimates that restaurants purchasing the $22,000 machine will save about $1,000 per month in electricity costs, for a payback time of two years.
"You take this waste resource and make it a profit center," said Peret, who spent four long years cooking up the project in his garage. "When I started telling people, they said, ‘Someone’s gotta have done this.’ I’d run into more people. They’d say, ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this?’ My only response was, ‘I don’t know; it seems like a good idea.’"
While Vegawatt is a small solution, Peret’s invention is a very clever embodiment of several long-cherished alternative-energy ideas: capturing both the heat and power from fuel combustion, making energy where it’s used, and recycling used resources. Big industrial plants that make paper, for example, have long taken advantage of these concepts to save on their utility bills, but the Vegawatt will be the first product that could turn thousands of fast food restaurants into mini power plants.
"Now the restaurant owners are going to be motivated to put every single drop of waste oil into this thing, because it will pay for itself," Peret said.
And importantly, it provides convenience for restaurateurs or Burger
King managers, instead of subtracting it, like so many green solutions seem to.
Restaurants that fry delicious things like chicken and french fries generate dozens of gallons of waste oil that have to be stored in barrels out back. Because used cooking oil is considered a low-grade hazardous material, they haven’t been allowed to just throw it away; they generally had to pay rendering-plant operators to come. But it is now a sellers’ market for grease.
Higher crude prices have made other types of oil more expensive. Biodiesel makers and renderers have become increasingly willing to pay up to 40 cents a gallon for the stuff. There have even been reports of "biodiesel pirates" stealing fryer grease.
In fact, Vegawatt is derived from the home-brew fuel movement that many trace back to Dr. Thomas Reed, who popularized a recipe to convert waste cooking oil into biodiesel more than 20 years ago. Peret converted his truck to run on straight vegetable oil, or SVO to home brewers. But he was troubled by the inefficiency of the process.
"If you want to run waste vegetable oil in your car, it’s not as simple as going behind a restaurant and filling up," Peret said. "People that do this spend the majority of their free time collecting fuel from restaurants."
Peret realized he could use the same engine technology to power an on-site generator and defray a restaurant’s electricity costs.
"It’s not difficult to go from spinning tires to spinning magnets," he said
So he created a test unit — which you can see at the back of his garage in the top photo — that’s basically a diesel generator hacked to run waste cooking oil. It feeds power directly into the restaurant’s electrical system through a 30 amp hook-in.
Vegawatt is more efficient than a typical coal or natural gas plant. Peret said it can capture 70 percent of the fuel’s caloric value. That’s because the generator captures and uses the waste heat it generates.
"All the water [the restaurant] would send to its boiler, instead of sending it straight there from the city, we run it through our heat exchanger first," Peret said. "Depending on the flow, [the water] can go into the hot water heater at 120 degrees." (This non-electrical energy savings is included in the 5-kilowatt rating cited above.)
The big power plants, though technically very efficient, waste most of the fuel they burn. After accounting for all the sources of energy waste "what you are left with … is just 27.6 units of usable energy out of every 100 units you started with," energy researcher Benjamin Sovacool explained in his recent book, The Dirty Energy Dilemma. "In terms of making toast, it would have been nearly four times more efficient just to burn a lump of coal and place your bread over the flame."
Biomass energy sources — like waste wood, switchgrass or cooking oil — are best when used right near the source of their creation. Dragging the stuff creates more emissions and raises the cost of the fuel. Vegawatt doesn’t have that problem. By company estimates, the Vegawatt generates 50 percent less carbon dioxide than a comparable amount of electricity from a coal power plant.
"In terms of the amount of energy that it takes to transport this waste, it’s a french fry," Peret said. "You just feed the guy who is picking up the bucket and pouring it into the system."
Forest Gregg, an alternative-fuels expert and author of last year’s SVO: Powering Your Vehicle with Straight Vegetble Oil, called it a "nifty application and a great business idea."
Gregg also drew attention to a strong part of Vegawatt’s pitch: that it won’t require "intervention or maintenance by restaurant staff."
That’s because when users buy a system — or lease it for $450 a month — they get a service contract with the company for cleaning and maintenance.
The owner of the very first Vegawatt, George Carey (pictured above), seems pleased with the unit, too. He heartily endorses the company on its website, saying, "The Vegawatt system enables me to significantly reduce my energy costs, generate clean energy on-site, and very importantly, reduce the heavy energy footprint of my restaurant."
See Also:
•Tapping the Vortex for Green Energy
•Global Energy Network Depends on a Few Vulnerable Nodes
•How A Google Engineer Hacks His Energy Usage
•Biofuel Startup Strives to Meet Obama’s Green Ambitions
•Obama Voices Biofuel Doubts
•Biofuel Solution at Sea, not on Land
•DOE Invests $125 Million in Synthetic Life to Develop Biofuels …
•Food vs. Fuel: Saltwater Crops May Be Key to Solving Earth’s Land …
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter , Google Reader feed, and project site, Inventing Green: the lost history of American clean tech; Wired Science on Facebook.
Tags: Sustainability
Close Posted by: TR Bob | 01/7/09 | 5:34 pm |
Hats off to James Peret for making something useful with waste cooking oil, other than using it to power diesel powered cars.
Next I would imagine someone capturing all the wasted methane gas from TexMex patrons after a hearty meal of refried beans.
Posted by: Dave Flores | 01/7/09 | 5:40 pm |
Ooops, no more cheap biodiesel, guys!
Posted by: dave | 01/7/09 | 5:58 pm |
Um, the payback calculation is, well, childish. They don’t include the cost for the maintenance contract, or the money you can make selling the oil.
And they don’t say what kind of emissions are produced (other than 50% of the CO2 of a coal plant). There are LOTS of other emissions this thing produces that could be much worse to produce throughout cities everywhere…
Posted by: David | 01/7/09 | 6:12 pm |
That Vegawatt picture is very photoshoped!!
Look at the saturation in the picture and then look at the Vegawatt stickers of sharpness!
Sorry, that’s the nerd in me. Good article, let’s get away from fossil fuels asap!
Posted by: christopher | 01/7/09 | 6:13 pm |
Yeah, but…
…why wouldn’t/couldn’t a restaurant get a fuel oil delivery and then generate its own electricity completely? And why don’t we? I own a furnace, I need hot water, why couldn’t I run a generator instead of a furnace and install baseboards?
I mean, why stop at used oil?
-C
Posted by: andrew | 01/7/09 | 6:15 pm |
@dave
While a story on a blog may have “childish” calculations, it is far superior to some relatively uninformed commenter’s dissnissive approach. How is your suggestion that “other emissions” might be worse than the offset emissions any less childish? Do you have anything stronger than disbelief to support you trollish comment?
Posted by: it's me | 01/7/09 | 6:32 pm |
Capitalism FTW
Posted by: Ross | 01/7/09 | 6:55 pm |
I guess if this things the real deal, it’ll come down to what makes the most economic sense for the business. Selling the oil or using it as fuel to lower your electric bill?
Posted by: Paul | 01/7/09 | 7:02 pm |
10 Points!! Aside from all the noise it must make it’s a great innovation.
There are 2 and 3 stage commercial power plants where a natural gas powered turbine is used to generate electricity with the exhaust going to heat water.
All it needs now is to harness the remaining 30% energy coming out of the exhaust for space heating and/or to run refrigeration via a peroxide cooler and he’s almost at 100% efficiency.
I wish this bloke every success!
Posted by: WarLord | 01/7/09 | 7:17 pm |
Greetings
Good idea but one caveat about the saving. Many regular gen sets use the exhaust heat exchangers to heat water or air. Regular feature in modern Co-Gen.
And yes a modern high efficency gas boiler for resid. baseboard heating can be had with a coil allowing you to heat domestic hot water. Use a solar solution in summer and boiler in winter maybe….
Still a good idea but I’d hope they’d keep things CLEAN and thus safe!
Posted by: Jack | 01/7/09 | 7:38 pm |
Use waste oil to generate electricity and hot water. Great idea. It can reduce the food waster and pollution.
http://www.laptops-battery.co.uk/ibm-thinkpad-t61-battery.htm
Posted by: Michael | 01/7/09 | 7:53 pm |
There is one other down side on this, your bar of soap will cost more, as most soap is made of recycle grease from restaurants and fast food stores
Posted by: Michael | 01/7/09 | 7:55 pm |
There is one other down side on this, your bar of soap will cost more, as most soap is made of recycle grease from restaurants and fast food stores
Posted by: j | 01/7/09 | 9:36 pm |
$1000 a month, at saving of $2.50 per gallon, makes $400 gallons a month.
Assuming they could have sold that oil for 40c a gallon, the lost opportunity is $160.
Note that regardless of leasing or buying it, you receive a contract to service and maintain it. You’re right to point out that they haven’t mentioned the cost of such a contract. Is it free? $100 a month? 10? 50?
Either way, if you estimate a worst case return of $700 savings per month, taking into account maintenence and opportunity cost, you end up with a payback period of ~32 months – 2years, 8 months.
Concerns about the emissions of the generator itself don’t bother me greatly. Once you’re working with a used product, you’re already ahead, since the emissions related to producing the fuel in the first place are no longer counted.
It’s an interesting idea, at the very least.
Posted by: B | 01/8/09 | 12:25 am |
So much for dreams of wandering around restaurants bumming bio-diesel and making your own for next to nothing whilst wearing cut offs with an acoustic out of the case slung over your shoulder.
Now you will have to ride up to the restaurant pump and have them say things like, “Oh sorry dude. It’s December and cold and we use electric heat so there is a deep fryer sludge shortage. Unfortunately the price has gone up man.”.
And so enters the first green middle man.
Isn’t the rule of the game that there is always at least one middle man, definitely at least one tax man, and of course a lot of bad men where there is money to be made?
The future marches on…
Man I sound negative.
*Runs off for a positive sandwich and a glass of juice.
Posted by: Sergio | 01/8/09 | 1:02 am |
Finally bistromatics is invented!
Posted by: Dumpleton Von Snickerpants | 01/8/09 | 1:46 am |
I still prefer Mr. Fusion.
Posted by: Karl Schröter | 01/8/09 | 2:43 am |
BTDT since 2002.
In Germany, people used to pay (a few months ago) up to 1 Euro per liter – that’s almost five US$ per imperial gallon(!) – for used vegetable oil!
Since the oil prices dropped, the price has sunk to about 0,7€/l – that’s probably still more than regular off-the-pump Diesel fuel in some other countries.
Posted by: gwb | 01/8/09 | 6:32 am |
this is typical republican junk. nobody wants to dick around with some piece of grease burning gray metal box. that would take them back to the old coal fired home furnace. Say son would pour some grease in the generator it’s about to run out, and don’t use chinese food grease this time it smells like fish.
Posted by: Homero | 01/8/09 | 7:11 am |
“Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Dear Lord, I know you’re busy, seeing as how you can watch women changing clothes and stuff. But if you help us steal this grease tonight, I promise we’ll donate half the profits to charity.”
–Homer J. Simpson
Posted by: Yves | 01/8/09 | 7:17 am |
Nicely done Peret! Now Sell Sell Sell! Seems like a winning hand.
Posted by: SleepFuriously | 01/8/09 | 7:24 am |
A restaurant in Oceanside CA has been doing this for about 3 years. Using their excess oil to power their refrigerators and freezers. This is a great invention and I’m glad it is spreading.
Posted by: dervheid | 01/8/09 | 7:42 am |
5Kw.
per ?..
hour, day, week? Tell me!
Kw is an INSTANTANEOUS measurement unit. Meaningless in this context without a timebase reference.
Posted by: John Tedder | 01/8/09 | 8:15 am |
I used to own a small restaurant. I had a special dumpster in the parking lot to store the used oil until a big truck came to collect it. Don’t forget to account for the environmental savings of not having a big truck driving around collecting the used oil.
Does the VegaWatt have to run 24/7 to get the $1000 per month savings?
Posted by: muD | 01/8/09 | 9:11 am |
Most of your fast food outlets are independently owned: usually in small regional groups. Most of these guys are looking to save money however they can and this is in the right price range for them to afford. He should do well.
Posted by: mitch | 01/8/09 | 9:39 am |
@gwb
“this is typical republican junk. nobody wants to dick around with some piece of grease burning gray metal box.”
Yes, no one WANTS to do it…that is why a savvy restaurateur would PAY a minimum wage worker to do it.
As ‘it’s me’ said: “Capitalism FTW”
PS: WTF does this have to do with party affiliation?
Posted by: Eric | 01/8/09 | 10:08 am |
@dervheid …
Yes kW is INSTANTANEOUS….
That means that if you run it for an hour, it shaves 5 kWh worth of power from your electric bill.
Watts is power, volts*coulombs/second, you are billed by the kilowatt hour which is a measure of energy…
If you’re gonna act smart at least try to be smart
Posted by: Thinker | 01/8/09 | 11:26 am |
This is fantastic, bravo James Peret, keep up the great work.
Posted by: VICB3 | 01/8/09 | 11:35 am |
Just watch. Some over-earnest enviro true believer will bitch about the Co2 footprint of this thing. Ditto an Air Quality Management Board bureaucrat worring about emmisions.
Posted by: Jason Boatright | 01/8/09 | 11:45 am |
Wow, that is truly amazing. You gotta love it!
jess
http://www.internet-anonymity.net.tc
Posted by: IowaBiodiesel | 01/8/09 | 12:42 pm |
This machine would not be legal in California due to the emissions from that engine. Most restaurants dump a lot of debris into those dumpsters and it would reek havoc on the engine. I hate over simplification, NOTHING is free. UFO is not considered “low level hazardous waste” and trying to get that into my basement, vented to code and abate the noise would prove very problematic. Mid America energy and my insurance underwriter would have a field day.
Posted by: Davoud | 01/8/09 | 12:56 pm |
Why not providing electricity and heat?
The engine produces heat it can be easily used to heat water, which in turn can power radiators.
Posted by: Davoud | 01/8/09 | 12:57 pm |
Why not providing electricity and heat?
The engine produces heat it can be easily used to heat water, which in turn can power radiators.
Posted by: PJ | 01/8/09 | 2:03 pm |
Awesome! More CO2 and particulate matter in our atmosphere.
Posted by: mo | 01/8/09 | 3:16 pm |
in the UK we have to pay for our oil to be collected by a certified waste oil collection company. Long gone are the days when we could sell it.
Posted by: Kirzen | 01/8/09 | 4:38 pm |
5KW Whats?
5KWH?
You have to rate power generation based on power consumed over time, its like saying that your machine can push 500lbs. 500lbs from where to where? How long can it do it? Does it generate 5KW as long as its running? Will it run forever (concievably) on the grease from the kitchen?
Do you realize that 5KWH is worth about 30 CENTS? How could you possibly (as a business) rationalize spending $450 a month on something that (even if its running 24H a day) generates about $7.50 a day? You’d be better off setting up some sort of agreement with the biodiesel folks or the people that clean your frier to dispose of your cooking oil for free, rather than waste over $200 a month on some dude’s pipe dream.
Posted by: Uncle Al | 01/9/09 | 8:47 am |
Combustion rule of thumb: 5 eV for every molecule O2 used. Then 40 KJ/g for pure carbon oxidized to CO2. That said, /_\H(comb) empirical numbers,
coal, -24 to -32 KJ/g
1-dodecanol, -42.266 KJ/g
glyceryl trioleate, -45.3 KJ/g
rapeseed oil, = -40.2 kJ/g (density = 0.92 g/ml)
80 gallons = 302,833 ml = 278,606 g = 1.12×10^7 KJ
[(1.12x10^7 KJ)/(5x10^3 KJ/sec)][(1 min/60 sec)/(7 days) =
5 KW 100% efficient thermal output for 5.3 min/day or 37 min/week. This is a candidate for the Federal Witless Protection Program. The Enviro-whinerism trinity is "expensive, shoddy, deadly".
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | 01/9/09 | 11:25 am |
Peret should target the bigger fast-food chains with this first. They’d love it!
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | 01/9/09 | 11:33 am |
Oh, and how many of the folks commenting bothered to, y’know, Google “Vegawatt” so they could find out more before they started posting about how “noisy” it was? According to the Vegawatt website, it’s a quiet machine
Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/vegawatt/#ixzz0vg0APzAT
Generate Electricity Everywhere
By Spencer Reiss 03.23.09 Wired Magazine April, 2009
Illustration: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
Establishing local-scale power near end users ranks high on everyone's spec list for Grid 2.0. That's one reason Obama's stimulus plan contains a grant that will reimburse property owners for 30 percent of the cost of a solar energy system. But utilities—former monopolies, after all—are reluctant to give up control over their antique, accident-prone grid. And people with enough rooftop real estate to squeeze out serious juice balk at the hassle.
Solution
Create a new class of energy service providers that act as middlemen between power companies and large commercial facilities with big rooftops. For instance, SunEdison builds and maintains solar plants on the rooftops of operations like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, and Kohl's in eight states. It's a win-win arrangement: Electric companies get a trusted partner in power generation, and businesses get green energy at a fixed, competitive rate—without additional investment. The secret sauce isn't photovoltaic panels; it's the networking gear, sensors, and software that let a SunEdison control room in California manage hundreds of solar sites cost-effectively. And that means it's suited for scaling up. Says Mark Culpepper, a veteran of Cisco Systems who is now CTO of SunEdison: "Generating power anywhere you can fit a panel totally changes the dynamic of the energy market."
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_sunedison#ixzz0vfuoBVjO
Illustration: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Problem
Establishing local-scale power near end users ranks high on everyone's spec list for Grid 2.0. That's one reason Obama's stimulus plan contains a grant that will reimburse property owners for 30 percent of the cost of a solar energy system. But utilities—former monopolies, after all—are reluctant to give up control over their antique, accident-prone grid. And people with enough rooftop real estate to squeeze out serious juice balk at the hassle.
Solution
Create a new class of energy service providers that act as middlemen between power companies and large commercial facilities with big rooftops. For instance, SunEdison builds and maintains solar plants on the rooftops of operations like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, and Kohl's in eight states. It's a win-win arrangement: Electric companies get a trusted partner in power generation, and businesses get green energy at a fixed, competitive rate—without additional investment. The secret sauce isn't photovoltaic panels; it's the networking gear, sensors, and software that let a SunEdison control room in California manage hundreds of solar sites cost-effectively. And that means it's suited for scaling up. Says Mark Culpepper, a veteran of Cisco Systems who is now CTO of SunEdison: "Generating power anywhere you can fit a panel totally changes the dynamic of the energy market."
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_sunedison#ixzz0vfuoBVjO
Power to the People: 7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now
By Brendan I. Koerner 03.23.09 Wired magazine
Photo: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Filthy coal-fired power plants spew carbon into the air. A mish-mash of 9,200 generators streams vital electrons along 300,000 miles of aging, inefficient transmission lines and one untrimmed tree in the wrong place could plunge a quarter of the country into darkness. This is our electric grid. A whopping 40 percent of all the energy used in the US—be it oil, gas, wind, or solar—is converted into electrons that travel over these wires. Any attempt at energy reform must begin here.
But this keystone of our 21st-century economy has yet to advance much beyond its 19th-century roots. Considering how wasteful, unresponsive, and just plain dumb the grid is, it isn't surprising that outages—which have been increasing steadily over the past quarter century—cost us $150 billion a year. The real shock is that the damn thing works at all.
Now consider what we will ask the grid to handle in the near future: Demand for electricity is expected to increase by as much as 40 percent in the next two decades—more than twice the population growth rate. To meet that need, we will have to generate an additional 214 gigawatts, a feat that would require the construction of more than 357 large coal plants. We also want to plug in dozens, if not hundreds, of gigawatts of wind and solar power harvested from the most remote corners of the country. And we will want to recharge millions of electric vehicles every night, without fail.
That is why we must fix the grid—reinvent it to be reliable, efficient, responsive, and smart. Washington is already on the case: President Obama has called a new energy agenda "absolutely critical to our economic future," and his stimulus package directs more than $40 billion toward that goal—the largest single infusion of government capital to the energy sector in US history, more than half of which will go to grid-related projects. In the short term, this bonanza aims simply to create jobs. But in the long term, it lays the groundwork for the grid of the future. (About $400 million will go to fund ARPA-E, a sort of Darpa for energy research.) And this is just the beginning: Congress is considering additional legislation in the hope of remaking our energy infrastructure.
Private enterprise is on board as well. Just take a spin through General Electric's Smart Grid Lab in Niskayuna, New York, which will simulate an entire electric system—complete with the kind of state-of-the-art meters, software, and communication tech that will enable a smarter grid. Or check out Google's new PowerMeter, a Web app designed to give consumers instant information about their energy usage.
But technology alone won't solve this mess, because fixing the grid is not a technology problem—it's a system problem on the broadest scale. Political gridlock, broken markets, and shortsighted planning have created a slew of bottlenecks that can't be solved with a bunch of smart meters and fancy routers.
Here, we show how utilities and businesses have begun to tackle those obstacles—from installing new transmission lines to empowering consumers. If we're serious about remaking our energy infrastructure, we'll need to encourage these kinds of fixes and replace our current system of misplaced incentives. Right now, that system encourages everyone involved—customers, utilities, and private industry—to neglect the grid. We have to give those stakeholders new reasons to turn on, engage, and transform.
Go ahead, blame Edison. He's the guy who invented the business model that got us into this mess. Edison Electric Light, founded in 1880, was a vertically integrated monopoly that controlled everything from generation to distribution. (It even owned the bulbs in customers' homes.) As utilities sprouted across the country, they saw no reason to deviate from Edison's successful blueprint.
For its first century, then, the electricity industry was a simple affair. Most states anointed a single utility to provide all the power to its citizens. These utilities owned the plants that generated the electricity, the transmission lines that carried it to substations, and the wires that distributed it to customers. When more power was needed, they simply built another coal-fired plant and spliced it onto the grid. Rates had to be approved by a public-service commission, but otherwise the utilities were autonomous. (They linked their systems to neighboring grids, but mostly for backup.) Electricity was inexpensive and abundant, and the system's reliability was the envy of the world.
What it wasn't? Efficient. Since the utilities had a captive market and seemingly unlimited access to cheap fossil fuels, they had no incentive to upgrade their leaky old plants. No one complained as long as energy was seen as plentiful and harmless. Then came the fuel crisis of the 1970s, along with the rise of environmentalism. In 1978, Congress began chipping away at the utilities' dominance by forcing them to buy electricity from independent generation companies that met efficiency goals. Fourteen years later, the government went much further, ordering the utilities to open their transmission lines to all comers.
The result was utter chaos. Many utilities got out of the generation business and morphed into middlemen, shopping for the cheapest power—often from areas with low labor costs and lax environmental oversight—and transporting it hundreds, even thousands, of miles to their customers. This meant using the links between grids, which hadn't been designed to accommodate such heavy traffic. The grids of distant states thus became closely intertwined, so that an outage in one rural county could affect millions of far-flung customers.
Though power companies were demanding more from the grid, they had no incentive to upgrade it. Every penny a utility spent on grid improvement would potentially benefit plants owned by rivals. And states that exported cheap energy resisted plans for costly new transmission projects, fearing they would lead to higher in-state rates—and angry voters.
As a consequence, the grid has fallen into disrepair, with few major efforts to fix it. Today, utilities allocate just 2 percent of revenue to research. "For God's sake, we contribute less to R&D than the pet food industry does," says Jeffrey Byron of the California Energy Commission. So the grid remains hobbled by unreliable electromechanical switches and analog controllers. During the early minutes of the Northeast blackout of 2003, the Ohio utility whose damaged hardware started the cascade couldn't even monitor its own wires; employees had to phone a regional overseer and beg for updates. By that time, it was too late.
Regulators, meanwhile, have done a terrible job of mandating grid upgrades. Maybe that's because nobody is really in charge. The industry-run North American Electric Reliability Council appoints eight regional agencies to manage grid standards, but they clash with state agencies, which constantly angle for more authority. Adding to the muddle are the quasi-governmental independent system operators and the regional organizations responsible for ensuring open access to transmission lines. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, created in 1977 to supervise regional and national electricity sales, has proven inept at mediating interstate disputes. This thicket of regulation and competing interests strangles any ambitious initiative. As a result, despite ever-increasing electricity demand, fewer than 700 miles of interstate transmission lines have been built since 2000.
To fix the grid, then, we don't need another layer of oversight. We need to tweak the system so that companies are rewarded—not punished—for investing in the grid. Take the case of Duke Energy. Like most utilities, the North Carolina company is not known for its environmentalism. (It has been accused of flouting the Clean Air Act, for instance.) But in 2006, Duke announced its Utility of the Future initiative. This billion-dollar program is designed to smarten up Duke's portion of the grid by deploying customer meters and network-level gizmos that facilitate speedy, two-way communication. It's exactly the sort of upgrade that will help make the grid stable enough to handle wind turbines and plug-in hybrids.
How did the giant utility come around to embracing the smart grid? Probably not out of the goodness of its corporate heart. The costs of building new generation facilities—and the tumbling prices of plug-and-play gadgets—likely made raising the grid's IQ a more efficient way to improve Duke's long-term prospects. Look at the company's recent push toward IP-based open standards for all its grid hardware. Open standards will help operators communicate with one another regardless of utility—turning the grid into an Internet-like ecosystem rather than a scattered network of proprietary islands. But there may be another reason for Duke to become an evangelist of the approach: Open standards would make it easier for the large utility to gobble up and incorporate smaller rivals, since their systems could be integrated with minimal effort.
Duke isn't the only utility to grasp the financial upside of smart-grid projects. Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy is building SmartGridCity, a $100 million effort in Boulder, Colorado, that will allow customers to monitor their electricity consumption via the Web, as well as pump wind and solar energy into the grid. If SmartGridCity is a success, Xcel hopes to persuade public utilities nationwide to invest in similar systems.
This type of investment benefits the grid tremendously and must be encouraged at every turn. According to Roger Anderson at Columbia University's Center for Computational Learning Systems, tweaking the grid's communications capabilities can increase transmission efficiency by 50 percent—no additional wires necessary.
Self-interest has a long, noble history of spurring some of America's greatest infrastructure projects. But it must often be nudged along by cleverly crafted government incentives. The transcontinental railroads, for instance, got a crucial boost from a federal land grant program. These grants, often located in barren quarters of the western US, weren't worth much at the time; the railroad companies laid track through the land in hopes of increasing property values. Energy regulators already have some experience creating similarly ingenious carrots. In the early 1980s, states began to realize that utilities wouldn't become more efficient until their revenue was no longer tied directly to the sheer amount of energy produced. So regulators in dozens of states began to implement decoupling, a policy that rewards utilities for coming in below generation targets. Suddenly, companies could profit by promoting efficiency.
With similar policies, we can push energy companies to make the grid better for everyone. For example, utilities have not been eager to incorporate renewable power from customers' rooftop solar panels or backyard wind turbines. They would be more likely to do so if they were allowed to hike rates or were given tax breaks for making the necessary accommodations.
The grid took more than a century to grow into the unwieldy beast it is now. Given the urgency of climate change, energy independence, and economic demands, we have only a fraction of that time to fix it. But the solution won't spring forth fully formed. This, the greatest engineering challenge of our era, must be solved the same way it was created—piece by piece, with utilities and consumers acting in their own interests. For too long, those interests have been misaligned. It's time for a reset.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_intro?currentPage=all#ixzz0vftS1URJ
Photo: James Day
7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Generate Electricity Everywhere
Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities
Store Power in Super Batteries
Monitor the Electrons in Real Time
Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)
Filthy coal-fired power plants spew carbon into the air. A mish-mash of 9,200 generators streams vital electrons along 300,000 miles of aging, inefficient transmission lines and one untrimmed tree in the wrong place could plunge a quarter of the country into darkness. This is our electric grid. A whopping 40 percent of all the energy used in the US—be it oil, gas, wind, or solar—is converted into electrons that travel over these wires. Any attempt at energy reform must begin here.
But this keystone of our 21st-century economy has yet to advance much beyond its 19th-century roots. Considering how wasteful, unresponsive, and just plain dumb the grid is, it isn't surprising that outages—which have been increasing steadily over the past quarter century—cost us $150 billion a year. The real shock is that the damn thing works at all.
Now consider what we will ask the grid to handle in the near future: Demand for electricity is expected to increase by as much as 40 percent in the next two decades—more than twice the population growth rate. To meet that need, we will have to generate an additional 214 gigawatts, a feat that would require the construction of more than 357 large coal plants. We also want to plug in dozens, if not hundreds, of gigawatts of wind and solar power harvested from the most remote corners of the country. And we will want to recharge millions of electric vehicles every night, without fail.
That is why we must fix the grid—reinvent it to be reliable, efficient, responsive, and smart. Washington is already on the case: President Obama has called a new energy agenda "absolutely critical to our economic future," and his stimulus package directs more than $40 billion toward that goal—the largest single infusion of government capital to the energy sector in US history, more than half of which will go to grid-related projects. In the short term, this bonanza aims simply to create jobs. But in the long term, it lays the groundwork for the grid of the future. (About $400 million will go to fund ARPA-E, a sort of Darpa for energy research.) And this is just the beginning: Congress is considering additional legislation in the hope of remaking our energy infrastructure.
Private enterprise is on board as well. Just take a spin through General Electric's Smart Grid Lab in Niskayuna, New York, which will simulate an entire electric system—complete with the kind of state-of-the-art meters, software, and communication tech that will enable a smarter grid. Or check out Google's new PowerMeter, a Web app designed to give consumers instant information about their energy usage.
But technology alone won't solve this mess, because fixing the grid is not a technology problem—it's a system problem on the broadest scale. Political gridlock, broken markets, and shortsighted planning have created a slew of bottlenecks that can't be solved with a bunch of smart meters and fancy routers.
Here, we show how utilities and businesses have begun to tackle those obstacles—from installing new transmission lines to empowering consumers. If we're serious about remaking our energy infrastructure, we'll need to encourage these kinds of fixes and replace our current system of misplaced incentives. Right now, that system encourages everyone involved—customers, utilities, and private industry—to neglect the grid. We have to give those stakeholders new reasons to turn on, engage, and transform.
Go ahead, blame Edison. He's the guy who invented the business model that got us into this mess. Edison Electric Light, founded in 1880, was a vertically integrated monopoly that controlled everything from generation to distribution. (It even owned the bulbs in customers' homes.) As utilities sprouted across the country, they saw no reason to deviate from Edison's successful blueprint.
For its first century, then, the electricity industry was a simple affair. Most states anointed a single utility to provide all the power to its citizens. These utilities owned the plants that generated the electricity, the transmission lines that carried it to substations, and the wires that distributed it to customers. When more power was needed, they simply built another coal-fired plant and spliced it onto the grid. Rates had to be approved by a public-service commission, but otherwise the utilities were autonomous. (They linked their systems to neighboring grids, but mostly for backup.) Electricity was inexpensive and abundant, and the system's reliability was the envy of the world.
What it wasn't? Efficient. Since the utilities had a captive market and seemingly unlimited access to cheap fossil fuels, they had no incentive to upgrade their leaky old plants. No one complained as long as energy was seen as plentiful and harmless. Then came the fuel crisis of the 1970s, along with the rise of environmentalism. In 1978, Congress began chipping away at the utilities' dominance by forcing them to buy electricity from independent generation companies that met efficiency goals. Fourteen years later, the government went much further, ordering the utilities to open their transmission lines to all comers.
The result was utter chaos. Many utilities got out of the generation business and morphed into middlemen, shopping for the cheapest power—often from areas with low labor costs and lax environmental oversight—and transporting it hundreds, even thousands, of miles to their customers. This meant using the links between grids, which hadn't been designed to accommodate such heavy traffic. The grids of distant states thus became closely intertwined, so that an outage in one rural county could affect millions of far-flung customers.
Though power companies were demanding more from the grid, they had no incentive to upgrade it. Every penny a utility spent on grid improvement would potentially benefit plants owned by rivals. And states that exported cheap energy resisted plans for costly new transmission projects, fearing they would lead to higher in-state rates—and angry voters.
As a consequence, the grid has fallen into disrepair, with few major efforts to fix it. Today, utilities allocate just 2 percent of revenue to research. "For God's sake, we contribute less to R&D than the pet food industry does," says Jeffrey Byron of the California Energy Commission. So the grid remains hobbled by unreliable electromechanical switches and analog controllers. During the early minutes of the Northeast blackout of 2003, the Ohio utility whose damaged hardware started the cascade couldn't even monitor its own wires; employees had to phone a regional overseer and beg for updates. By that time, it was too late.
Regulators, meanwhile, have done a terrible job of mandating grid upgrades. Maybe that's because nobody is really in charge. The industry-run North American Electric Reliability Council appoints eight regional agencies to manage grid standards, but they clash with state agencies, which constantly angle for more authority. Adding to the muddle are the quasi-governmental independent system operators and the regional organizations responsible for ensuring open access to transmission lines. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, created in 1977 to supervise regional and national electricity sales, has proven inept at mediating interstate disputes. This thicket of regulation and competing interests strangles any ambitious initiative. As a result, despite ever-increasing electricity demand, fewer than 700 miles of interstate transmission lines have been built since 2000.
To fix the grid, then, we don't need another layer of oversight. We need to tweak the system so that companies are rewarded—not punished—for investing in the grid. Take the case of Duke Energy. Like most utilities, the North Carolina company is not known for its environmentalism. (It has been accused of flouting the Clean Air Act, for instance.) But in 2006, Duke announced its Utility of the Future initiative. This billion-dollar program is designed to smarten up Duke's portion of the grid by deploying customer meters and network-level gizmos that facilitate speedy, two-way communication. It's exactly the sort of upgrade that will help make the grid stable enough to handle wind turbines and plug-in hybrids.
How did the giant utility come around to embracing the smart grid? Probably not out of the goodness of its corporate heart. The costs of building new generation facilities—and the tumbling prices of plug-and-play gadgets—likely made raising the grid's IQ a more efficient way to improve Duke's long-term prospects. Look at the company's recent push toward IP-based open standards for all its grid hardware. Open standards will help operators communicate with one another regardless of utility—turning the grid into an Internet-like ecosystem rather than a scattered network of proprietary islands. But there may be another reason for Duke to become an evangelist of the approach: Open standards would make it easier for the large utility to gobble up and incorporate smaller rivals, since their systems could be integrated with minimal effort.
Duke isn't the only utility to grasp the financial upside of smart-grid projects. Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy is building SmartGridCity, a $100 million effort in Boulder, Colorado, that will allow customers to monitor their electricity consumption via the Web, as well as pump wind and solar energy into the grid. If SmartGridCity is a success, Xcel hopes to persuade public utilities nationwide to invest in similar systems.
This type of investment benefits the grid tremendously and must be encouraged at every turn. According to Roger Anderson at Columbia University's Center for Computational Learning Systems, tweaking the grid's communications capabilities can increase transmission efficiency by 50 percent—no additional wires necessary.
Self-interest has a long, noble history of spurring some of America's greatest infrastructure projects. But it must often be nudged along by cleverly crafted government incentives. The transcontinental railroads, for instance, got a crucial boost from a federal land grant program. These grants, often located in barren quarters of the western US, weren't worth much at the time; the railroad companies laid track through the land in hopes of increasing property values. Energy regulators already have some experience creating similarly ingenious carrots. In the early 1980s, states began to realize that utilities wouldn't become more efficient until their revenue was no longer tied directly to the sheer amount of energy produced. So regulators in dozens of states began to implement decoupling, a policy that rewards utilities for coming in below generation targets. Suddenly, companies could profit by promoting efficiency.
With similar policies, we can push energy companies to make the grid better for everyone. For example, utilities have not been eager to incorporate renewable power from customers' rooftop solar panels or backyard wind turbines. They would be more likely to do so if they were allowed to hike rates or were given tax breaks for making the necessary accommodations.
The grid took more than a century to grow into the unwieldy beast it is now. Given the urgency of climate change, energy independence, and economic demands, we have only a fraction of that time to fix it. But the solution won't spring forth fully formed. This, the greatest engineering challenge of our era, must be solved the same way it was created—piece by piece, with utilities and consumers acting in their own interests. For too long, those interests have been misaligned. It's time for a reset.
Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_intro?currentPage=all#ixzz0vftS1URJ
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Nutrition Action
Brand-Name Rating
Deep Freeze
Finding Frozen Novelties That Won't Leave a Trace
by Jayne Hurley & Bonnie Liebman, July/August 2010
It’s hot. It’s humid. Something cold and creamy would sure hit the spot…but not a spot that will show up the next time you’re wearing a bathing suit.
The fact is that few Americans can afford to spend many calories on foods like ice cream bars, cups, and sandwiches. It doesn’t matter whether you’re hoping to lose weight or to not gain more. Once you’ve filled up on fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods, there’s not much room left over for the calories, added sugar, and (in some cases) saturated fat in ice cream bars, etc. That’s why we only awarded Better (not Best) Bites.
Here’s how to find frozen novelties that won’t leave a lasting impression on your body.
Information compiled by Amy Ramsay.
Better Bars
What harm could a chocolate-coated ice cream bar do? A typical one like Klondike Original or Dove Dark Chocolate comes with 250 calories and 10 grams of saturated fat (half a day’s worth) plus 4 teaspoons of added sugar (two-thirds of a day’s allowance for women). You’d have to walk briskly for an hour to burn off those calories.
To get a better bar, skip the chocolate coating.
Häagen-Dazs manages to squeeze 300 calories and 13 grams of sat fat into its Vanilla Dark Chocolate bar. It’s a splurge that your arteries and midriff may remember long after you forget.
If you can’t give up chocolate coating, here’s how to lighten the load:
Lower-fat ice cream. Breyers Smooth & Dreamy ratchets down the calories (to about 130) and the sat fat (to around 4 grams) by using light ice cream and by coating just two-thirds of each bar with chocolate.
Hundred-calorie bars by Klondike and Blue Bunny combine low-fat ice cream with a small (2 oz.) serving, but their chocolate-flavored coating keeps the sat fat at about 5 grams. Ditto for Weight Watchers Dark Chocolate Raspberry and English Toffee Crunch bars.
Less-sugar ice cream. Slashing sugar trims calories, but only Blue Bunny Sweet Freedom bars (100 to 190 calories) and Sweet Freedom Lites (100 calories) are sweetened with sugar alcohols and Splenda, not the questionable artificial sweeteners acesulfame potassium or aspartame. But both lines still deliver 5 to 9 grams of sat fat.
Miniatures. Dove Miniatures and Snickers or Twix Minis have only 60 to 90 calories and around 3 grams of sat fat because they’re small (about 1 oz.). That’s not terrible...if you can eat just one. Don’t confuse them with Häagen-Dazs Snack Size bars, which cram 190 calories and 8 grams of sat fat into a smallish (just under 2 oz.) bar.
If you can do without chocolate coating, our Better Bites trim away even more sugar and sat fat:
Truffle bars. Instead of chocolate coating, Skinny Cow Truffle Bars are drizzled with chocolate, so you get just 1½ grams of sat fat. That—plus a small (2.7 oz.) serving and only about 2 teaspoons of added sugar—keeps the calories at 100. Choose from White Mint (our favorite), Caramel, Chocolate, and French Vanilla.
Coffee bars. If you like light coffee ice cream, try a Weight Watchers Giant Latté Bar. At 4 oz., it’s close in size to a Klondike Original, but it has just 90 calories, as do Healthy Choice (2.5 oz.) Mocha Swirl Bars.
Fudge bars. Skinny Cow, Fudgsicle, Klondike, Weight Watchers, Blue Bunny. Almost any fudge (or “soy fudge”) bar keeps the calories at around 100 and the sat fat at 2 grams or less. Exception: Breyers Carb Smart Fudge Bars clock in at 4½ grams.
Skinny Cow Low Fat Fudge Minis drop to 50 calories because they’re small. And Blue Bunny Sweet Freedom Fudge Lites and Fat Free Fudge Bars hover around 50 calories because they’re sweetened with Splenda and the sugar alcohol maltitol.
(Bathroom alert: most sugar alcohols— sorbitol and mannitol are prime offenders—can cause diarrhea in some people.)
Slimmer Sandwiches
A Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich is one heckuva treat. The thick layer of ice-cream-like frozen whey and sugar bookended by two cookies drops 380 calories and 9 grams of saturated fat—plus an estimated 7 teaspoons of added sugar—into your fat cells. The 6 oz. sandwich has the calories of a trimmed 12 oz. sirloin steak.
The only ice cream sandwich to earn a Better Bite.
Breyers, Skinny Cow, Healthy Choice, Good Humor Low Fat, and Weight Watchers drop the sat fat to 2 grams or less and the calories to 150 by using lower-fat ice cream and thinner wafers.
Klondike 100 Calorie sandwiches shave off another 50 calories. And they (like Breyers, all but one Weight Watchers, and some Skinny Cows) contain no partially hydrogenated oil in their wafers. So pick them over Healthy Choice, Good Humor, or the other Skinny Cows, which, we estimate, deliver 0.2 to 0.3 grams of trans fat per sandwich. (That may round down to zero on the labels, but not in your arteries.)
Skinny Cow adds extra calcium to some of its sandwiches, and inulin to all of them. But so far, there’s no evidence that “isolated” fibers like inulin and polydextrose help keep you regular or reduce your risk of disease like the intact fiber in whole grains does.
Getting Personals
“Our luscious, yet light cheesecakeflavored ice cream is now available in your own personal serving,” says the Blue Bunny Web site about one of its Personals Light Ice Cream cups.
Plenty creamy ...and just 150 calories.
If it’s a “personal serving,” why do the calories and other Nutrition Facts apply to only half the container? Are you supposed to share? Leave half for later? Surely, Blue Bunny didn’t want consumers to mistakenly believe that it’s the entire container—rather than half a container—that has just 100 to 130 calories.
Individual cups are all the rage. If they keep you from scooping out more than one serving from a tub, that’s a plus. Just beware that most actually hold about ¾ cup (6 oz.) of ice cream, which is more than the petite ½-cup (4 oz.) serving that’s listed on ice cream pints and quarts.
The ¾-cup serving is one reason why no ice cream cups met our 100-calorie limit for a Better Bite rating. Most Edy’s or Dreyer’s Slow Churned Light ice cream, Slow Churned Yogurt Blends, and Fun Flavors, for example, pack around 200 calories.
Instead, try a Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Frozen Yogurt or any Skinny Cow or Weight Watchers low-fat ice cream cup. Each clocks in at around 150 calories. If you like sorbet, Ciao Bella and Häagen-Dazs keep the calories under 150 by using a 3½-oz. cup.
Creamsicles Grow Up
The classic Creamsicle— a core of low-fat vanilla ice cream surrounded by orange-flavored sherbet—has 100 calories, some 2½ teaspoons of added sugar, and ½ gram of saturated fat. (Smaller versions have 50 to 70 calories.)
Orange juice concentrate replaces some sugar.
But some companies have updated the design. Dryer’s or Edy’s Orange & Cream Fruit Bars, for example, replace some sugar with orange juice concentrate. And Fruitfull and Chunks O’ Fruti cream bars swirl fruit or fruit purée with milk or cream plus sugar.
Fruitfull and Chunks O’ Fruti may be 45 to 60 percent fruit, as the companies claim, but roughly two-thirds of their sugar comes from added fructose and table sugar, not from the naturally occurring sugar in fruit and milk.
Bottom line: Enjoy your fruit-and-cream bar. Just don’t confuse it with a piece of real fruit.
How Sweet It Is
“Good Source of Antioxidant Vitamin C,” says the label of Breyers Pure Fruit bars. Oh, please.
Refreshing, but only 25 percent fruit.
Pure Fruit bars have just 40 calories, which is a plus. But let’s be honest. They’ve got added sugar, so they’re not pure fruit. As for the antioxidants, the company wouldn’t tell us how much (or, more likely, how little) pomegranate juice you get in the Pure Fruit Pomegranate Blends. And while vitamin C is an antioxidant, so far there’s no good evidence that it prevents heart disease, cancer, or other illness.
Pure Fruit isn’t alone. Dreyer’s or Edy’s Antioxidant Fruit Bars boast that they’re “made with super fruits.” But there’s little evidence that elderberry and black currant juice concentrates are more “super” than other concentrates. And so far, only two preliminary studies in people suggest that pomegranate juice may slow prostate cancer or heart disease. So don’t assume that the juice—much less a frozen sugar-and-fruit concoction—can save your life.
If fruit appears above sugar in the ingredient list (as it does in Whole Fruit Strawberry and Mango), don’t be impressed. When a bar contains different kinds of sugar—say, table sugar and corn syrup solids—they’re listed separately, so each appears after fruit. If the sugars were lumped together, they might be listed first.
Deep Freeze
Finding Frozen Novelties That Won't Leave a Trace
by Jayne Hurley & Bonnie Liebman, July/August 2010
It’s hot. It’s humid. Something cold and creamy would sure hit the spot…but not a spot that will show up the next time you’re wearing a bathing suit.
The fact is that few Americans can afford to spend many calories on foods like ice cream bars, cups, and sandwiches. It doesn’t matter whether you’re hoping to lose weight or to not gain more. Once you’ve filled up on fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods, there’s not much room left over for the calories, added sugar, and (in some cases) saturated fat in ice cream bars, etc. That’s why we only awarded Better (not Best) Bites.
Here’s how to find frozen novelties that won’t leave a lasting impression on your body.
Information compiled by Amy Ramsay.
Better Bars
What harm could a chocolate-coated ice cream bar do? A typical one like Klondike Original or Dove Dark Chocolate comes with 250 calories and 10 grams of saturated fat (half a day’s worth) plus 4 teaspoons of added sugar (two-thirds of a day’s allowance for women). You’d have to walk briskly for an hour to burn off those calories.
To get a better bar, skip the chocolate coating.
Häagen-Dazs manages to squeeze 300 calories and 13 grams of sat fat into its Vanilla Dark Chocolate bar. It’s a splurge that your arteries and midriff may remember long after you forget.
If you can’t give up chocolate coating, here’s how to lighten the load:
Lower-fat ice cream. Breyers Smooth & Dreamy ratchets down the calories (to about 130) and the sat fat (to around 4 grams) by using light ice cream and by coating just two-thirds of each bar with chocolate.
Hundred-calorie bars by Klondike and Blue Bunny combine low-fat ice cream with a small (2 oz.) serving, but their chocolate-flavored coating keeps the sat fat at about 5 grams. Ditto for Weight Watchers Dark Chocolate Raspberry and English Toffee Crunch bars.
Less-sugar ice cream. Slashing sugar trims calories, but only Blue Bunny Sweet Freedom bars (100 to 190 calories) and Sweet Freedom Lites (100 calories) are sweetened with sugar alcohols and Splenda, not the questionable artificial sweeteners acesulfame potassium or aspartame. But both lines still deliver 5 to 9 grams of sat fat.
Miniatures. Dove Miniatures and Snickers or Twix Minis have only 60 to 90 calories and around 3 grams of sat fat because they’re small (about 1 oz.). That’s not terrible...if you can eat just one. Don’t confuse them with Häagen-Dazs Snack Size bars, which cram 190 calories and 8 grams of sat fat into a smallish (just under 2 oz.) bar.
If you can do without chocolate coating, our Better Bites trim away even more sugar and sat fat:
Truffle bars. Instead of chocolate coating, Skinny Cow Truffle Bars are drizzled with chocolate, so you get just 1½ grams of sat fat. That—plus a small (2.7 oz.) serving and only about 2 teaspoons of added sugar—keeps the calories at 100. Choose from White Mint (our favorite), Caramel, Chocolate, and French Vanilla.
Coffee bars. If you like light coffee ice cream, try a Weight Watchers Giant Latté Bar. At 4 oz., it’s close in size to a Klondike Original, but it has just 90 calories, as do Healthy Choice (2.5 oz.) Mocha Swirl Bars.
Fudge bars. Skinny Cow, Fudgsicle, Klondike, Weight Watchers, Blue Bunny. Almost any fudge (or “soy fudge”) bar keeps the calories at around 100 and the sat fat at 2 grams or less. Exception: Breyers Carb Smart Fudge Bars clock in at 4½ grams.
Skinny Cow Low Fat Fudge Minis drop to 50 calories because they’re small. And Blue Bunny Sweet Freedom Fudge Lites and Fat Free Fudge Bars hover around 50 calories because they’re sweetened with Splenda and the sugar alcohol maltitol.
(Bathroom alert: most sugar alcohols— sorbitol and mannitol are prime offenders—can cause diarrhea in some people.)
Slimmer Sandwiches
A Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich is one heckuva treat. The thick layer of ice-cream-like frozen whey and sugar bookended by two cookies drops 380 calories and 9 grams of saturated fat—plus an estimated 7 teaspoons of added sugar—into your fat cells. The 6 oz. sandwich has the calories of a trimmed 12 oz. sirloin steak.
The only ice cream sandwich to earn a Better Bite.
Breyers, Skinny Cow, Healthy Choice, Good Humor Low Fat, and Weight Watchers drop the sat fat to 2 grams or less and the calories to 150 by using lower-fat ice cream and thinner wafers.
Klondike 100 Calorie sandwiches shave off another 50 calories. And they (like Breyers, all but one Weight Watchers, and some Skinny Cows) contain no partially hydrogenated oil in their wafers. So pick them over Healthy Choice, Good Humor, or the other Skinny Cows, which, we estimate, deliver 0.2 to 0.3 grams of trans fat per sandwich. (That may round down to zero on the labels, but not in your arteries.)
Skinny Cow adds extra calcium to some of its sandwiches, and inulin to all of them. But so far, there’s no evidence that “isolated” fibers like inulin and polydextrose help keep you regular or reduce your risk of disease like the intact fiber in whole grains does.
Getting Personals
“Our luscious, yet light cheesecakeflavored ice cream is now available in your own personal serving,” says the Blue Bunny Web site about one of its Personals Light Ice Cream cups.
Plenty creamy ...and just 150 calories.
If it’s a “personal serving,” why do the calories and other Nutrition Facts apply to only half the container? Are you supposed to share? Leave half for later? Surely, Blue Bunny didn’t want consumers to mistakenly believe that it’s the entire container—rather than half a container—that has just 100 to 130 calories.
Individual cups are all the rage. If they keep you from scooping out more than one serving from a tub, that’s a plus. Just beware that most actually hold about ¾ cup (6 oz.) of ice cream, which is more than the petite ½-cup (4 oz.) serving that’s listed on ice cream pints and quarts.
The ¾-cup serving is one reason why no ice cream cups met our 100-calorie limit for a Better Bite rating. Most Edy’s or Dreyer’s Slow Churned Light ice cream, Slow Churned Yogurt Blends, and Fun Flavors, for example, pack around 200 calories.
Instead, try a Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Frozen Yogurt or any Skinny Cow or Weight Watchers low-fat ice cream cup. Each clocks in at around 150 calories. If you like sorbet, Ciao Bella and Häagen-Dazs keep the calories under 150 by using a 3½-oz. cup.
Creamsicles Grow Up
The classic Creamsicle— a core of low-fat vanilla ice cream surrounded by orange-flavored sherbet—has 100 calories, some 2½ teaspoons of added sugar, and ½ gram of saturated fat. (Smaller versions have 50 to 70 calories.)
Orange juice concentrate replaces some sugar.
But some companies have updated the design. Dryer’s or Edy’s Orange & Cream Fruit Bars, for example, replace some sugar with orange juice concentrate. And Fruitfull and Chunks O’ Fruti cream bars swirl fruit or fruit purée with milk or cream plus sugar.
Fruitfull and Chunks O’ Fruti may be 45 to 60 percent fruit, as the companies claim, but roughly two-thirds of their sugar comes from added fructose and table sugar, not from the naturally occurring sugar in fruit and milk.
Bottom line: Enjoy your fruit-and-cream bar. Just don’t confuse it with a piece of real fruit.
How Sweet It Is
“Good Source of Antioxidant Vitamin C,” says the label of Breyers Pure Fruit bars. Oh, please.
Refreshing, but only 25 percent fruit.
Pure Fruit bars have just 40 calories, which is a plus. But let’s be honest. They’ve got added sugar, so they’re not pure fruit. As for the antioxidants, the company wouldn’t tell us how much (or, more likely, how little) pomegranate juice you get in the Pure Fruit Pomegranate Blends. And while vitamin C is an antioxidant, so far there’s no good evidence that it prevents heart disease, cancer, or other illness.
Pure Fruit isn’t alone. Dreyer’s or Edy’s Antioxidant Fruit Bars boast that they’re “made with super fruits.” But there’s little evidence that elderberry and black currant juice concentrates are more “super” than other concentrates. And so far, only two preliminary studies in people suggest that pomegranate juice may slow prostate cancer or heart disease. So don’t assume that the juice—much less a frozen sugar-and-fruit concoction—can save your life.
If fruit appears above sugar in the ingredient list (as it does in Whole Fruit Strawberry and Mango), don’t be impressed. When a bar contains different kinds of sugar—say, table sugar and corn syrup solids—they’re listed separately, so each appears after fruit. If the sugars were lumped together, they might be listed first.
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