3 Trashy Ideas For Building Greener Cities
posted by: Beth Buczynski 19 hours ago
In a recent post, I highlighted a Swiss study that questioned whether or not recycling is really the greenest fate for plastic waste.
The reader response was passionate and varied, but one comment stood out: Care2 member Julieta S. wrote, "I think we should start making garbage bricks... some would stand for more than hundreds [of] years... right? (please steal this idea)."
While I had never thought of making bricks from trash, it seemed like a sensible way to build green structures using the ultra-durable plastic waste that's causing our planet so much trouble.
Here's what I found...thanks for the idea Julieta!
1. "Ecological Bricks" for Low-Income Housing in Argentina
Argentina's Experimental Center for Economical Housing (Centro Experimental de la Vivienda Económica – CEVE) has developed a brick made of used food (primarily candy) wrappers and plastic (primarily PET) soda and water bottles.
The raw materials are supplied by Córdoba's selective collection plant, collection points in schools and government agencies, plus rejects from the local bottling plant.
The plastics are ground up and then mixed with Portland cement and chemical additives to make the bricks (pictured above) and something CEVE calls "brick plates." The CEVE project hires unemployed youth (between 18-24 years old) to make the bricks. The participants can use the bricks to build their own mini-houses (The Temas Blog).
2. "Byfusion" Machine Makes Building Blocks
It took a New Zealand man 10 years to put together a prototype recycling machine that could turn raw plastic into useful building materials, but now, the "Byfusion" machine is spitting out the building blocks of a multimillion-dollar business.
Peter Lewis' machine can swallow most types of raw plastic and turn it into compacted plastic bricks or other shapes.
A new brick, formed from over 20 pounds of plastic, emerges from the recycling machine every 30-45 seconds.
The rock-hard bricks can be used for garden retaining or landscaping walls, and have other potential uses including shock absorbers behind crash barriers (Otago Daily Times).
3. Interlocking Polli-Bricks Made From Plastic Bottles
Earlier this year, Taiwan jumped to the front page of green websites all over the world when it was announced that a building commissioned by Far Eastern Group was built using bricks made from 1.5 million plastic botles.
These Polli-Bricks create an interlocking shape that's light weight and structural at the same time. When connected, Polli-Bricks almost look like a honeycomb. The building, dubbed the EcoARK, can be taken apart and reassembled at another side with relative ease, and was and later donated to city government in Taipei.
Do you know of other cool building techniques that utilize waste? Share them in a comment!
Read more: plastic, argentina, waste, recycling, taiwan, trash, new zealand, environment & wildlife, green building
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Victoria S. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:35 AM
If it were properly sealed, Plastic can be molded to mimic every thing in nature. Think of all the Forests we could save by no longer cutting them down for building materials. We could properly maintain them by means that have been proven to work for sustainability. All this information exists now, but will not be funded by our Congress or House that are 80% Bought by Wealth that do not want any changes to take place as long as they can keep making huge profits. We have to do this ourselves in our own communities and not wait for them to implement any of this kind of innovation. I have already gotten almost everyone where I work to collect the PVC plastic gift cards and store credits to keep then out of our land fills. If everyone suggest this to the business as a way to be "greener", the companies would remove 700 tons a year of this product that will leach out into our water and cause illness. We The People have to be an underground source of change for the better for us all, while they will do anything for money we will have less use for their money or their useless overpriced services. We can think of ways!
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Michelle Staples says
Sep 30, 2010 6:40 AM
I can see this leading to a whole new industry of ships gathering up the waste in the middle of oceans. Right on!
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nancy sands says
Sep 30, 2010 6:37 AM
GOOD IDEAS!
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Mike Masley says
Sep 30, 2010 6:06 AM
The idea is good, but not sure I would want to live around all of that plastic.
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Mark S. says
Sep 30, 2010 6:04 AM
The best solution (from an environmental POV) would of course be to stop using plastics altogether. And I would hate for a solution like this to lead to even further use of fossil fuels. That being said, it is a brilliant use of the plastics we've already made.
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Kate Kenner says
Sep 30, 2010 6:03 AM
the goal seems like it should be to stop making so many products that are bad for the planet yet that will not happen it seems. It seems like an idea that should be seriously considered. I am tired of picking up plastic bottles and bags every day (I know that bags are not included in this plan.) Somehow I don't think flying them around Pluto is a very good plan, Nyack. There is enough trash out there. Thank goodness in you are not on the committee to dispose of trash.
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Michele Hill says
Sep 30, 2010 5:35 AM
i do see what you mean, this is a great idea, if its safe, BUT what are the numbers?? i know that i think its a 1,3,7 are safe for us to use. the rest are not. even though they sell it to us, like rubbermaid, etc. i'm talking about on the bottom of the containers, anything that is not them numbers and they will leach into our bodies, so if it gets to hot, the fumes, geuss where their going? into us, lungs, etc. if you have a new born, and he gets asthma, Hmm i'd start wondering where he got it. or if you were pregnant and living in that building, and your baby comes out with respitory problems i'd start to wonder exactly how this came about. Don't get me wrong!! i LOVE the fact that they are reusing the plastic, and a huge amount of its going somewhere, but are they safe numbers for us to live in?? if they are, i'm all for it!! **big smile**
Comment
I saw a program last night on CNBC about using plastic water bottles to make shirts, rugs, and other stuff here in South carolina. BMW uses plastic water bottles recycled to make their car seats.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Scotland to Run Off 100% Renewable Energy by 2025
Scotland to Run Off 100% Renewable Energy by 2025
posted by: Jasmine Greene 13 hours ago
While many countries are complaining about the Copenhagen requirements, other countries are striving to go above and beyond the call of duty. Last week Northern Ireland stated that they were hoping to have 40 percent of the country running off renewable energy. This week, new First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond went even further, stating that the country could be running off of 100 percent renewable energy by 2025.
This ambitious goal happened a week after the SNP administration upped Scotland's renewable energy goal from 50 percent to 80 percent by 2020. Salmond announced the 100 percent goal in front of the Scottish Low Carbon Investment Conference citing new Offshore Wind "Route Map" that would focus first on key areas to achieve immediate results:
Investment in infrastructure;
Appropriate supply chain;
Ongoing innovation of technologies and practices;
Regulation of and access to the electricity grid;
Managing the marine environment;
Necessary and available skills;
Finance [Source: NewEnergy]
and also cited priority recommendations to give Scotland the best chance at securing the best-case scenario route map which includes increasing supply and demand of renewable energy, up-skilling or re-skilling of workforces, bringing in large investments and providing incentives to harbor and port owners for offshore wind farms. For the project to be successful, over £200 billion would be needed by 2020 for any chance of success. While this number may sound large, Salmond is confident that they will receive the funding and states, "Investment on this scale established today's North Sea oil and gas industry. Scotland's second wave of offshore energy offers unique investment opportunities..." [Source: STV news].
Salmond's confidence that Scotland could run off of 100 percent renewable energy is also not unfounded. Scotland currently has under 3 GW of renewable energy capacity, mostly from onshore wind turbines, but it has the potential to generate up to 63 GW of low-carbon electricity, under six times more than the current model of fossil fuels and renewable energy. Scotland's major source of energy would come from offshore windfarms and tidal stream power, with hyrdopower, biomass and geothermal making up a small fraction of the total power [Source: Treehugger]. Scotland has already tapped into tidal power after creating the world's largest tidal power plant unveiled at the beginning of September 2010. This power plant generates enough power for 1,000 homes (around 1 MW of energy) [Source: Wired]. The coasts of Scotland could potentially harness around a quarter of Europe's potential offshore wind and tidal capacity and a tenth of its wave resource. Besides being better for the environment, creating alternate power generators would also lead to 60,000 more jobs with 28,000 directly servicing domestic and international wind markets [Source: Business 7].
While Scotland would be weening the country off of fossil fuels, it will continue to maintain some coal and nuclear power plants to supply surplus energy to other countries, most notably the UK. This will actually mean that Scotland produces only 63 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Still, the aim is much higher than the baseline 20 percent standard for the rest of the EU nations and certainly higher than the US.
Read more: environment & wildlife, scotland renewable energy
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Robert B. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:31 AM
The US could do this too.We must eventually do it before it's too late. IF the greedy corporate owned right will either get out of the way or help, not constantly hinder the present administration. We have the resources, what we need is sane rational political will!
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Jennifer Griffith says
Sep 30, 2010 7:28 AM
If more countries would just stop whining & get to work, I'd bet that at least a dozen countries could reach this same goal. It's like the kid putting off doing homework: It has to be done, but whining & procrastinating is just making it worse. Quit whining, sit down, shut up & "git 'er done!"
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Robert B. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:25 AM
Dear "Barry O'Bama"
You seem to be another one of those no-profile frauds who have either been hired to sign up on Care2 to be a pain or you're just doing it on your own. If you can't be constructive , DON'T BOTHER!
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neil a. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:19 AM
Scottish engineers are known(but often forgotten world wide) they built or designed so many engineering projects all over the world & so many went to USA, Andrew Carnegie & so many others. Scotland can do it but should concentrate on perfecting wave power which could be 24/7 & not depend on wind or Sun, looks as if California is getting going. I am Scots & various other nationalities. here in Spain we are hydro, wind, photovoltaic & solar turbine so totally sustainable, if anything is??
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Jo C. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:18 AM
I meant 'throughout' this area. Sorry.
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Martin P. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:11 AM
This is a great step, but i think Scotland could do it! And all the other industrial states of the northern hemisphere should learn a lesson from Scotland!!!
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Donald Jensen says
Sep 30, 2010 7:04 AM
Gene W. Said... "This sounds so great until you look at the statistics, the population of Scotland is 5.1 million people"
It doesn't matter if there are 5 million or 500 million. The US can do this just as easily if we CHOOSE to but as long as the "Climate Skeptic Sheep" continue to support greedy energy, coal and oil production goals, we will live in this filthy environment. And Chris W. said the "Climate Change Gravy Train" Really? Who stands to lose and who stands to profit here? Tax payers or Big Energy? It's big energy that has created the climate controversy for their own greedy interest, not us conscious Americans who are working to save our way of life by preserving the things that sustain us and keep us alive.
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kathie f. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:04 AM
truly commendable and inspiring! instead of whining about having to change and submitting to the proposed standards, scotland is embracing them with their "we can do this and we can do more" attitude; the united states should pay attention instead of listening to big oil lobbyists and continuing to rape the environment and jeopardize the oceans and, in fact, entire ecosystems and ultimately, the planet, with their greed and "more offshore drilling". california, we have a chance in november to make a small difference and start pointing ourselves in the right direction; in 2006 or 2007 voters rejected an initiative that would have required big oil and other other energy monopolies to start exploring renewable energy sources, and, by letting them win that election, we have been paying the price! remember that those who do not learn from past mistakes tend to repeat them. we have so many more resources and so much more funding than scotland, we should be certainly be trying to at least stay in the race to use alternative renewable energy for ourselves!
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Jo C. says
Sep 30, 2010 6:59 AM
I live in West Lothian in Scotland and there are small wind farms being created throught this area. So far, they have placed them in the fields so, no trees have been cut down. They haven't had a detrimental effect on the surrounding areas at all and although they are not the prettiest sight, I'm happy to see them. We all know politicians are great at telling us what we want to hear, but in this case, they're actually getting on with the job.
posted by: Jasmine Greene 13 hours ago
While many countries are complaining about the Copenhagen requirements, other countries are striving to go above and beyond the call of duty. Last week Northern Ireland stated that they were hoping to have 40 percent of the country running off renewable energy. This week, new First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond went even further, stating that the country could be running off of 100 percent renewable energy by 2025.
This ambitious goal happened a week after the SNP administration upped Scotland's renewable energy goal from 50 percent to 80 percent by 2020. Salmond announced the 100 percent goal in front of the Scottish Low Carbon Investment Conference citing new Offshore Wind "Route Map" that would focus first on key areas to achieve immediate results:
Investment in infrastructure;
Appropriate supply chain;
Ongoing innovation of technologies and practices;
Regulation of and access to the electricity grid;
Managing the marine environment;
Necessary and available skills;
Finance [Source: NewEnergy]
and also cited priority recommendations to give Scotland the best chance at securing the best-case scenario route map which includes increasing supply and demand of renewable energy, up-skilling or re-skilling of workforces, bringing in large investments and providing incentives to harbor and port owners for offshore wind farms. For the project to be successful, over £200 billion would be needed by 2020 for any chance of success. While this number may sound large, Salmond is confident that they will receive the funding and states, "Investment on this scale established today's North Sea oil and gas industry. Scotland's second wave of offshore energy offers unique investment opportunities..." [Source: STV news].
Salmond's confidence that Scotland could run off of 100 percent renewable energy is also not unfounded. Scotland currently has under 3 GW of renewable energy capacity, mostly from onshore wind turbines, but it has the potential to generate up to 63 GW of low-carbon electricity, under six times more than the current model of fossil fuels and renewable energy. Scotland's major source of energy would come from offshore windfarms and tidal stream power, with hyrdopower, biomass and geothermal making up a small fraction of the total power [Source: Treehugger]. Scotland has already tapped into tidal power after creating the world's largest tidal power plant unveiled at the beginning of September 2010. This power plant generates enough power for 1,000 homes (around 1 MW of energy) [Source: Wired]. The coasts of Scotland could potentially harness around a quarter of Europe's potential offshore wind and tidal capacity and a tenth of its wave resource. Besides being better for the environment, creating alternate power generators would also lead to 60,000 more jobs with 28,000 directly servicing domestic and international wind markets [Source: Business 7].
While Scotland would be weening the country off of fossil fuels, it will continue to maintain some coal and nuclear power plants to supply surplus energy to other countries, most notably the UK. This will actually mean that Scotland produces only 63 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Still, the aim is much higher than the baseline 20 percent standard for the rest of the EU nations and certainly higher than the US.
Read more: environment & wildlife, scotland renewable energy
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Robert B. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:31 AM
The US could do this too.We must eventually do it before it's too late. IF the greedy corporate owned right will either get out of the way or help, not constantly hinder the present administration. We have the resources, what we need is sane rational political will!
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Jennifer Griffith says
Sep 30, 2010 7:28 AM
If more countries would just stop whining & get to work, I'd bet that at least a dozen countries could reach this same goal. It's like the kid putting off doing homework: It has to be done, but whining & procrastinating is just making it worse. Quit whining, sit down, shut up & "git 'er done!"
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Robert B. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:25 AM
Dear "Barry O'Bama"
You seem to be another one of those no-profile frauds who have either been hired to sign up on Care2 to be a pain or you're just doing it on your own. If you can't be constructive , DON'T BOTHER!
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neil a. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:19 AM
Scottish engineers are known(but often forgotten world wide) they built or designed so many engineering projects all over the world & so many went to USA, Andrew Carnegie & so many others. Scotland can do it but should concentrate on perfecting wave power which could be 24/7 & not depend on wind or Sun, looks as if California is getting going. I am Scots & various other nationalities. here in Spain we are hydro, wind, photovoltaic & solar turbine so totally sustainable, if anything is??
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Jo C. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:18 AM
I meant 'throughout' this area. Sorry.
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Martin P. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:11 AM
This is a great step, but i think Scotland could do it! And all the other industrial states of the northern hemisphere should learn a lesson from Scotland!!!
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Donald Jensen says
Sep 30, 2010 7:04 AM
Gene W. Said... "This sounds so great until you look at the statistics, the population of Scotland is 5.1 million people"
It doesn't matter if there are 5 million or 500 million. The US can do this just as easily if we CHOOSE to but as long as the "Climate Skeptic Sheep" continue to support greedy energy, coal and oil production goals, we will live in this filthy environment. And Chris W. said the "Climate Change Gravy Train" Really? Who stands to lose and who stands to profit here? Tax payers or Big Energy? It's big energy that has created the climate controversy for their own greedy interest, not us conscious Americans who are working to save our way of life by preserving the things that sustain us and keep us alive.
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kathie f. says
Sep 30, 2010 7:04 AM
truly commendable and inspiring! instead of whining about having to change and submitting to the proposed standards, scotland is embracing them with their "we can do this and we can do more" attitude; the united states should pay attention instead of listening to big oil lobbyists and continuing to rape the environment and jeopardize the oceans and, in fact, entire ecosystems and ultimately, the planet, with their greed and "more offshore drilling". california, we have a chance in november to make a small difference and start pointing ourselves in the right direction; in 2006 or 2007 voters rejected an initiative that would have required big oil and other other energy monopolies to start exploring renewable energy sources, and, by letting them win that election, we have been paying the price! remember that those who do not learn from past mistakes tend to repeat them. we have so many more resources and so much more funding than scotland, we should be certainly be trying to at least stay in the race to use alternative renewable energy for ourselves!
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Jo C. says
Sep 30, 2010 6:59 AM
I live in West Lothian in Scotland and there are small wind farms being created throught this area. So far, they have placed them in the fields so, no trees have been cut down. They haven't had a detrimental effect on the surrounding areas at all and although they are not the prettiest sight, I'm happy to see them. We all know politicians are great at telling us what we want to hear, but in this case, they're actually getting on with the job.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Engineers foresee big changes for electric grid
September 28, 2010 4:33 AM PDT
by Martin LaMonica
WALTHAM, Mass.--Technologies now being tested on the grid are a step toward strengthening the U.S. energy infrastructure and boosting the economy, according to speakers at an IEEE conference on the grid.
After relatively little change for decades, the electric grid is poised for a technical facelift that could include small nuclear power plants, new forms of grid storage, a network of electric vehicles, and power electronics that control large flows of energy efficiently, speakers here said yesterday. The IEEE is a professional organization of engineers.
Images: The many faces of the smart grid
The pace of investing in research and development in the power industry slowed over the years, but government policies to improve energy security and reduce pollution are speeding innovation, said Stanley Blazewicz, vice president and global head of technology at utility National Grid.
Energy storage could be a disruptive technology to the electric power industry because it would "firm" up supply of wind and solar power, which are intermittent sources of energy. The U.K., for example, has an aggressive target of getting 30 gigawatts of its power from wind power. (A typical large nuclear plant produces about one gigawatt.) One option to make wind more reliable is to add storage but a significant amount is needed--about 20 percent of the generating capacity, he said.
The most economically viable grid storage technologies right now are for supplying short periods of power to stabilize the grid with flywheels or batteries. Those early applications set the stage for bulk energy storage but utility regulations need to be updated to address energy storage technologies, Blazewicz said.
"Storage breaks a founding principle of the utility industry which is that you can't store the commodity. That principle has driven everything around the industry--the way it's designed, how you regulate it, and the way to make money," he said.
In the near term, electric vehicles have the potential to strain the local distribution grid if several people in the neighborhood charge at once. Based on demographics, National Grid has drawn a map of areas in its region which are likely to have high densities of EVs and is planning its network upgrades on that. Smart charging, where cars charge at off-peak times, is also crucial.
Solid-state lighting is another technology that could make a big impact. For consumers, solid-state lighting, such as LED bulbs, offer a jump in energy efficiency, he said, and the technology allows for factors such as temperature and wavelength to be tuned.
By contrast, Blazewicz said that adding IT and communications to the electric grid--also known as the smart grid--is more evolutionary since utilities are adopting IT to improve automation and efficiency, as many other industries have already done.
He added that when it comes to consumers and the smart grid, it's not clear that consumers will be eager to share energy consumption data and actively manage energy for better efficiency. National Grid plans to work with other companies to offer home efficiency recommendations, because it expects other companies to communicate conservation tips better to consumers, Blazewicz said.
ARPA-E's power electronics gambit
The electric power industry, which contributes about 40 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, offers a number of areas for the U.S. to take a technological lead globally, said keynote speaker Rajeev Ram, the program director for electrical power at the Department of Energy's ARPA-E agency. ARPA-E, which was authorized in 2007 and funded in last year's stimulus plan, is geared toward funding energy technology breakthroughs by focusing on advancing research to the prototype phase, he said.
The ARPA-E program most closely aligned with the electric grid is called Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT), which is funding research in power electronics to reduce the amount of wasted energy in power delivery.
Improvements in power electronics, which match electrical supply with the load, can make a significant difference on the overall efficiency of the grid and other electric components, such as variable speed industrial motors and power supplies. Losses in the distribution side of the electricity grid add up to about 200 million tons or carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent of 56 coal plants, said Ram.
The program is funding research in advanced materials to make equipment such as transformers more efficient and able to handle higher amounts of power in a smaller footprint, he said. The research is also geared at chip-scale power converters which could be used to optimize output of solar photovoltaic arrays and make solid-state lighting cheaper.
Advanced power electronics could result in a 25 percent to 30 percent reduction in electricity consumption in the U.S. But ARPA-E also has an explicit economic goal of improving technical innovation in the U.S. and bringing U.S. manufacturers back to the fore in the power industry, said Ram.
"What we're really trying to do is to help companies develop a product," he said. "We want to accelerate basic science to prototypes."
Small nukes?
In another talk, nuclear weapons and power expert Victor Reis, who is a senior advisor in the Department of Energy, said that small, modular nuclear power systems could be the quickest way to reignite the nuclear power industry in the U.S.
There are at least two designs of nuclear power plants, which use the same fuel as large reactors but are small enough that cost isn't as large a barrier to construction. He named the Babcock & Wilcox mPower modular reactor, which can produce 125 megawatts, and the reactor from NuScale Power, which can produce 45 megawatts.
Reis argued that Department of Energy labs and facilities, which consume a lot of electricity, should be the first customers for these systems in the U.S. This would help scale up production of these systems to help bring the cost down.
The primary barrier to their adoption in the U.S. is political, not the technology or the permitting, he said.
"I believe the DOE is very serious about doing it," he said. "It's hardly a done deal but I think everyone in the department, including Secretary (Steven) Chu recognizes it as very important."
National Grid executive director, Tom King, also focused on energy policy in his morning talk. He said there is available funding from utilities to improve the energy system of the U.S. but the country lacks a policy and regulations to make the grid more efficient and reliable. Blackouts cost $1 billion annually but publicly funded research and development for electricity delivery and reliability is only $170 million, he said.
"The U.S . is one of the few countries that doesn't have a robust roadmap in the use of the energy infrastructure, the use of energy resources, and how we deploy them on a timeline," King said.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017810-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz10pOrvx3T
by Martin LaMonica
WALTHAM, Mass.--Technologies now being tested on the grid are a step toward strengthening the U.S. energy infrastructure and boosting the economy, according to speakers at an IEEE conference on the grid.
After relatively little change for decades, the electric grid is poised for a technical facelift that could include small nuclear power plants, new forms of grid storage, a network of electric vehicles, and power electronics that control large flows of energy efficiently, speakers here said yesterday. The IEEE is a professional organization of engineers.
Images: The many faces of the smart grid
The pace of investing in research and development in the power industry slowed over the years, but government policies to improve energy security and reduce pollution are speeding innovation, said Stanley Blazewicz, vice president and global head of technology at utility National Grid.
Energy storage could be a disruptive technology to the electric power industry because it would "firm" up supply of wind and solar power, which are intermittent sources of energy. The U.K., for example, has an aggressive target of getting 30 gigawatts of its power from wind power. (A typical large nuclear plant produces about one gigawatt.) One option to make wind more reliable is to add storage but a significant amount is needed--about 20 percent of the generating capacity, he said.
The most economically viable grid storage technologies right now are for supplying short periods of power to stabilize the grid with flywheels or batteries. Those early applications set the stage for bulk energy storage but utility regulations need to be updated to address energy storage technologies, Blazewicz said.
"Storage breaks a founding principle of the utility industry which is that you can't store the commodity. That principle has driven everything around the industry--the way it's designed, how you regulate it, and the way to make money," he said.
In the near term, electric vehicles have the potential to strain the local distribution grid if several people in the neighborhood charge at once. Based on demographics, National Grid has drawn a map of areas in its region which are likely to have high densities of EVs and is planning its network upgrades on that. Smart charging, where cars charge at off-peak times, is also crucial.
Solid-state lighting is another technology that could make a big impact. For consumers, solid-state lighting, such as LED bulbs, offer a jump in energy efficiency, he said, and the technology allows for factors such as temperature and wavelength to be tuned.
By contrast, Blazewicz said that adding IT and communications to the electric grid--also known as the smart grid--is more evolutionary since utilities are adopting IT to improve automation and efficiency, as many other industries have already done.
He added that when it comes to consumers and the smart grid, it's not clear that consumers will be eager to share energy consumption data and actively manage energy for better efficiency. National Grid plans to work with other companies to offer home efficiency recommendations, because it expects other companies to communicate conservation tips better to consumers, Blazewicz said.
ARPA-E's power electronics gambit
The electric power industry, which contributes about 40 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, offers a number of areas for the U.S. to take a technological lead globally, said keynote speaker Rajeev Ram, the program director for electrical power at the Department of Energy's ARPA-E agency. ARPA-E, which was authorized in 2007 and funded in last year's stimulus plan, is geared toward funding energy technology breakthroughs by focusing on advancing research to the prototype phase, he said.
The ARPA-E program most closely aligned with the electric grid is called Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT), which is funding research in power electronics to reduce the amount of wasted energy in power delivery.
Improvements in power electronics, which match electrical supply with the load, can make a significant difference on the overall efficiency of the grid and other electric components, such as variable speed industrial motors and power supplies. Losses in the distribution side of the electricity grid add up to about 200 million tons or carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent of 56 coal plants, said Ram.
The program is funding research in advanced materials to make equipment such as transformers more efficient and able to handle higher amounts of power in a smaller footprint, he said. The research is also geared at chip-scale power converters which could be used to optimize output of solar photovoltaic arrays and make solid-state lighting cheaper.
Advanced power electronics could result in a 25 percent to 30 percent reduction in electricity consumption in the U.S. But ARPA-E also has an explicit economic goal of improving technical innovation in the U.S. and bringing U.S. manufacturers back to the fore in the power industry, said Ram.
"What we're really trying to do is to help companies develop a product," he said. "We want to accelerate basic science to prototypes."
Small nukes?
In another talk, nuclear weapons and power expert Victor Reis, who is a senior advisor in the Department of Energy, said that small, modular nuclear power systems could be the quickest way to reignite the nuclear power industry in the U.S.
There are at least two designs of nuclear power plants, which use the same fuel as large reactors but are small enough that cost isn't as large a barrier to construction. He named the Babcock & Wilcox mPower modular reactor, which can produce 125 megawatts, and the reactor from NuScale Power, which can produce 45 megawatts.
Reis argued that Department of Energy labs and facilities, which consume a lot of electricity, should be the first customers for these systems in the U.S. This would help scale up production of these systems to help bring the cost down.
The primary barrier to their adoption in the U.S. is political, not the technology or the permitting, he said.
"I believe the DOE is very serious about doing it," he said. "It's hardly a done deal but I think everyone in the department, including Secretary (Steven) Chu recognizes it as very important."
National Grid executive director, Tom King, also focused on energy policy in his morning talk. He said there is available funding from utilities to improve the energy system of the U.S. but the country lacks a policy and regulations to make the grid more efficient and reliable. Blackouts cost $1 billion annually but publicly funded research and development for electricity delivery and reliability is only $170 million, he said.
"The U.S . is one of the few countries that doesn't have a robust roadmap in the use of the energy infrastructure, the use of energy resources, and how we deploy them on a timeline," King said.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017810-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz10pOrvx3T
Monday, September 27, 2010
Partnerships Aim to Accelerate EV, Smart Grid Development
September 27, 2010
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While GE and Better Place have teamed up to accelerate the global deployment of electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure, with one goal of converting corporate fleets to electric vehicles as a way to lower cost and carbon emissions, Hitachi and Panasonic’s partnership is aimed at creating smart communities.
The collaboration between GE and Better Place, an EV services provider, is focused on four key areas: standards-based technology development, battery financing, joint fleet electrification programs and consumer awareness.
The partnership leverages GE’s global and broad technology portfolio, smart grid expertise, and its new WattStation electric vehicle charger with Better Place’s EV services and infrastructure solution to create scalable solutions that power electric vehicles for nearly all consumers and fleet owners.
GE’s WattStation will be compatible with the Better Place network, enabling consumers to manage charging costs under Better Place’s network, while charging their vehicles using GE’s WattStation. It will guarantee that drivers can “roam” from one charge point to another under one seamless transaction for faster charging.
GE and Better Place also will develop a battery financing program that begins with a pilot project to finance 10,000 batteries in Israel and Denmark, which are the first two markets for Better Place.
The companies also are collaborating to target fleet owners for pilot projects to test a comprehensive fleet electrification offering model in major city centers and connecting highways. The goal is to convert corporate fleet owners to electric fleets, delivering a lower cost of ownership while reducing carbon emissions.
Target pilot locations include cities in North America, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Ontario, Canada, as well as cities in Europe, Asia and Australia. Better Place is already working towards initial network deployments in these markets, beginning in 2011.
Better Place and GE, as part of its ecomagination initiative, also will focus on raising consumer awareness to understand the economic and environmental value of electric vehicles and the infrastructure required for adoption.
The Hitachi and Panasonic agreement is focused on interface development and standardization initiatives to commercialize community energy management systems (CEMS) and home energy management systems (HEMS) to drive the development of “smart” communities. Hitachi brings to the table its expertise in CEMS technologies, while Panasonic offers HEMS technologies.
The companies say in order to create these smart communities, which use information and telecommunication technologies to link power systems based on smart grids, all systems ranging from the energy supply side to the energy demand side must be linked.
CEMS link and manage the supply side — the main electricity grid beginning from power generation facilities, including wind power, large-scale photovoltaic solar power, and other renewable energy systems — and various demand side systems in detached houses, condominiums, office buildings and elsewhere including such systems as electric vehicle (EV) charging, while HEMS connect home appliances, photovoltaic solar power generators, home-use EV chargers, storage batteries and other facilities and equipment to support energy conservation.
Their goal is to jointly develop international standard interfaces for CEMS and HEMS through projects such as the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City project. Hitachi is already providing environmental technologies and solutions for this eco-city project currently under development on the outskirts of Tianjin, China. The two companies will also share market information on CEMS- and HEMS-related businesses.
Seven national smart-grid organizations recently launched the Global Smart Grid Federation (GSGF) to promote best practices and to help accelerate the deployment of smart grid around the world. GSGF will work with government policymakers to execute a national agenda on smart grid, helping governments understand these challenges, including consumer engagement, innovation and capacity building.
Related Stories
Federal Smart Grid Framework Released
Smart Grid Market to Peak at $35B in 2013
U.S. Smart Grid Market Projected to Double by 2014Related TopicsFleets & TransportationGreen TechnologyMajor PlayersPartnershipsSmart GridStrategy & Leadership
While GE and Better Place have teamed up to accelerate the global deployment of electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure, with one goal of converting corporate fleets to electric vehicles as a way to lower cost and carbon emissions, Hitachi and Panasonic’s partnership is aimed at creating smart communities.
The collaboration between GE and Better Place, an EV services provider, is focused on four key areas: standards-based technology development, battery financing, joint fleet electrification programs and consumer awareness.
The partnership leverages GE’s global and broad technology portfolio, smart grid expertise, and its new WattStation electric vehicle charger with Better Place’s EV services and infrastructure solution to create scalable solutions that power electric vehicles for nearly all consumers and fleet owners.
GE’s WattStation will be compatible with the Better Place network, enabling consumers to manage charging costs under Better Place’s network, while charging their vehicles using GE’s WattStation. It will guarantee that drivers can “roam” from one charge point to another under one seamless transaction for faster charging.
GE and Better Place also will develop a battery financing program that begins with a pilot project to finance 10,000 batteries in Israel and Denmark, which are the first two markets for Better Place.
The companies also are collaborating to target fleet owners for pilot projects to test a comprehensive fleet electrification offering model in major city centers and connecting highways. The goal is to convert corporate fleet owners to electric fleets, delivering a lower cost of ownership while reducing carbon emissions.
Target pilot locations include cities in North America, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Ontario, Canada, as well as cities in Europe, Asia and Australia. Better Place is already working towards initial network deployments in these markets, beginning in 2011.
Better Place and GE, as part of its ecomagination initiative, also will focus on raising consumer awareness to understand the economic and environmental value of electric vehicles and the infrastructure required for adoption.
The Hitachi and Panasonic agreement is focused on interface development and standardization initiatives to commercialize community energy management systems (CEMS) and home energy management systems (HEMS) to drive the development of “smart” communities. Hitachi brings to the table its expertise in CEMS technologies, while Panasonic offers HEMS technologies.
The companies say in order to create these smart communities, which use information and telecommunication technologies to link power systems based on smart grids, all systems ranging from the energy supply side to the energy demand side must be linked.
CEMS link and manage the supply side — the main electricity grid beginning from power generation facilities, including wind power, large-scale photovoltaic solar power, and other renewable energy systems — and various demand side systems in detached houses, condominiums, office buildings and elsewhere including such systems as electric vehicle (EV) charging, while HEMS connect home appliances, photovoltaic solar power generators, home-use EV chargers, storage batteries and other facilities and equipment to support energy conservation.
Their goal is to jointly develop international standard interfaces for CEMS and HEMS through projects such as the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City project. Hitachi is already providing environmental technologies and solutions for this eco-city project currently under development on the outskirts of Tianjin, China. The two companies will also share market information on CEMS- and HEMS-related businesses.
Seven national smart-grid organizations recently launched the Global Smart Grid Federation (GSGF) to promote best practices and to help accelerate the deployment of smart grid around the world. GSGF will work with government policymakers to execute a national agenda on smart grid, helping governments understand these challenges, including consumer engagement, innovation and capacity building.
SF Giants Installing Solar Panels at AT&T Park
March 20, 2007
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The San Francisco Giants and PG&E are planning to install 590 solar panels around AT&T Park to generate 123 kilowatts of power for the San Francisco power grid, The Examiner reports (via Green Options).
Although the Giants will be hosting the solar panels and working with PG&E for ongoing promotions, the park will not use the power collected, instead PG&E will sell the electricity its customers. If they did use the energy, it would be enough to power their new high-definition scoreboard screen for the year.
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The San Francisco Giants and PG&E are planning to install 590 solar panels around AT&T Park to generate 123 kilowatts of power for the San Francisco power grid, The Examiner reports (via Green Options).
Although the Giants will be hosting the solar panels and working with PG&E for ongoing promotions, the park will not use the power collected, instead PG&E will sell the electricity its customers. If they did use the energy, it would be enough to power their new high-definition scoreboard screen for the year.
Ze-Gen Gasification Facility to Power Industrial Park
September 27, 2010
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Ze-gen plans to build a $15-million gasification facility at the Attleboro Corporate Campus that will supply energy to the businesses in that industrial park, after three years of testing its waste-to-energy technology in New Bedford, Mass., reports The New England Business Bulletin.
Ze-gen says the “Attleboro Clean Energy Project” could divert 44,000 tons of waste (an average of 150 tons per day) from landfills every year, while creating less pollution and lower emissions than energy production from fossil fuels, according to the article.
Bill Davis, president and CEO of Ze-gen, told The New England Business Bulletin that he hopes to continue to test in its leased New Bedford facility for the next year, and is currently in discussions with the Department of Environmental Protection about renewing its annual Research and Development (R & D) permits to allow it to operate in the city for another year, while construction is under way in Attleboro.
The New Bedford plant has been testing the conversion of waste materials into synthesis gas, or “syngas,” which is fed into a boiler to make steam and electricity. The gasification process uses six materials — wood pallets, railroad crossties, utility poles, non-recyclable source-separated plastics, carpet fibers, and recycled coolant glycol (anti-freeze) residuals — that would have ended up in landfills or incinerators.
The company is in the permitting stage, seeking both state and local permits, reports The New England News Bulletin. Davis said in the article that the company hopes to start preparing for the new facility at the end of the year and be in full operation a year later.
The project is financed by the company’s investors but Davis hopes to qualify for federal incentives. Davis said in the article that the facility will generate a positive return on investment and be commercially viable. The company plans to build similar facilities around the globe that runs on additional waste streams.
Other companies are also looking into gasification technologies to turn waste into energy. As an example, in March, S4 Energy Solutions, a joint venture formed by Waste Management and InEnTec, announced it would build a plasma gasification facility at Waste Management’s Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Ore., that will convert municipal solid waste into clean fuels and renewable energy.
Related Stories
Kodak Gets $9.5M for Water Treatment Facility
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Ze-gen plans to build a $15-million gasification facility at the Attleboro Corporate Campus that will supply energy to the businesses in that industrial park, after three years of testing its waste-to-energy technology in New Bedford, Mass., reports The New England Business Bulletin.
Ze-gen says the “Attleboro Clean Energy Project” could divert 44,000 tons of waste (an average of 150 tons per day) from landfills every year, while creating less pollution and lower emissions than energy production from fossil fuels, according to the article.
Bill Davis, president and CEO of Ze-gen, told The New England Business Bulletin that he hopes to continue to test in its leased New Bedford facility for the next year, and is currently in discussions with the Department of Environmental Protection about renewing its annual Research and Development (R & D) permits to allow it to operate in the city for another year, while construction is under way in Attleboro.
The New Bedford plant has been testing the conversion of waste materials into synthesis gas, or “syngas,” which is fed into a boiler to make steam and electricity. The gasification process uses six materials — wood pallets, railroad crossties, utility poles, non-recyclable source-separated plastics, carpet fibers, and recycled coolant glycol (anti-freeze) residuals — that would have ended up in landfills or incinerators.
The company is in the permitting stage, seeking both state and local permits, reports The New England News Bulletin. Davis said in the article that the company hopes to start preparing for the new facility at the end of the year and be in full operation a year later.
The project is financed by the company’s investors but Davis hopes to qualify for federal incentives. Davis said in the article that the facility will generate a positive return on investment and be commercially viable. The company plans to build similar facilities around the globe that runs on additional waste streams.
Other companies are also looking into gasification technologies to turn waste into energy. As an example, in March, S4 Energy Solutions, a joint venture formed by Waste Management and InEnTec, announced it would build a plasma gasification facility at Waste Management’s Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Ore., that will convert municipal solid waste into clean fuels and renewable energy.
Clean-energy miracles: Myth or viable strategy?
September 24, 2010 4:00 AM PDT
by Martin LaMonica
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--As people consider the best path to a sustainable energy future, two polar ends of a debate are emerging between those who argue for a big boost in technology research and those who advocate more aggressive use of existing technology.
Those who work at incumbent companies in the oil and gas industry don't expect miracles with the ability to transform energy overnight, according to speakers at the EmTech conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday.
At the opposite extreme are techno-optimists, such as Bill Gates and venture capitalist John Doerr, who say that much more money should be plowed into research and development to stimulate clean-energy innovation.
Funding more energy research is a good idea, but don't expect even a sharp increase in spending to turn energy around quickly, said Jose Bravo, chief scientist at Shell Global Solutions, during a panel.
"You don't create miracles by throwing money at something--that's never been the case," Bravo said. "It's not like you'll wake up one morning and Bill Gates has funded a project that saved the Earth."
Many of today's green-technology entrepreneurs and investors have come from the IT industry, where the pace of change has been rapid and relentless. But the major energy transitions that happened in the past--from wood to coal, for example--took decades.
Expecting energy to operate at the same pace as Moore's Law and the world of bits and bytes is misguided, said Elisabeth Moyer, assistant professor of atmospheric science at the University of Chicago.
"There's been a lot of excessive techno-optimism based on people's experience with information technology. It's just not that way in energy. You're constrained by the laws of physics," Moyer said during a talk. "It's going to be big, hard, expensive, and slow. There's really no way around it."
What are your options?
The Obama administration made clean-energy investments a big part of the economic stimulus package and continues to make energy research a priority through a number of initiatives. The ARPA-E agency, for example, is tasked with placing bets on breakthrough energy technologies in areas such as energy storage and recycling carbon dioxide from power plants.
High-profile investor Vinod Khosla, who manages a $1 billion green-technology fund, regularly argues that people underestimate the impact of technology innovation. Khosla chases potential game-changing ideas, such as Calera, which has a process for making cement using waste carbon dioxide, and Kior, a start-up that is testing a process to make bio-gasoline from wood.
"A better way to forecast the future is to invent it because it's been proven that extrapolating the past doesn't work," Khosla said at the ARPA-E Summit in March. Bill Gates, meanwhile, has invested in TerraPower, a company pursuing a nuclear reactor design that would use spent fuel from other nuclear power plants, allowing it to operate for decades without fueling.
Speakers on the energy panel at EmTech yesterday advocated for more technology research and development in renewable energy, biofuels, and carbon capture and storage. But they made clear that the immediate future will continue to be dominated by hydrocarbons and that all energy sources, including renewable energy, come with tradeoffs and costs.
Looking for a clean-energy home run (photos)
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ExxonMobil, for example, has a research and development project with Synthetic Genomics to make liquid fuels from genetically engineered strains of algae. But algae production takes huge amounts of water. Making a modest amount of oil from algae--about 150,000 barrels per day--would require all the water that Mexico City consumes in a day, said Shell's Bravo.
Solar, which accounts for less than 1 percent of power generation in the U.S., is more expensive than wind for making electricity. However, both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated, said John Reilly, associate director for research at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Storage on the grid can help shore up wind and solar, but high costs mean it will be used relatively little--mainly for providing short periods of power under an hour, he said.
The developed world can and should use energy more efficiently, but overall usage around the globe is certain to go up in the coming decades as the developing world uses more energy to raise its standard of living, panelists said. Nuclear power, which is seeing a surge of construction in China, costs about twice what a pulverized coal plant does, Reilly said.
"As soon as you look at something that looks like a silver bullet, you see that it's tarnished and not moving as fast as you thought," he said.
Bridge fuel
One consensus among the energy experts was that use of natural gas will increase significantly in the decades ahead and should be used as a "bridge fuel" to sustainable energy. Oil companies are moving into natural gas, which can be used for heating, electricity generation, and transportation. Natural gas emits about half the greenhouse gases per unit of energy that coal does.
The discovery of large reserves of natural gas in shale rock in the U.S. has changed the overall energy industry equation, said ExxonMobil Senior Technical Adviser Nazeer Bhore. Demand for natural gas will grow 80 percent from 2005 to 2030, a situation that demonstrates how energy changes happen over long periods.
"Nowhere in U.S. (energy) history has something come in so silently and made such a large impact," he said. "Changes in energy are very evolutionary in the short run but revolutionary in the long run."
To a large degree, whether a country should invest in--and count on--energy breakthroughs or fund programs to encourage deployment of existing technologies, such as wind and electric vehicles, is a policy question. On research, ExxonMobil's Bhore said the government should fund "pre-competitive" research and let commercial companies sort out technology winners.
All panelists said that the energy industry needs more policy certainty with regard to greenhouse gases, with Bhore coming out in favor of an economy-wide tax on carbon emissions. With more clarity on the cost of greenhouse gas emissions and the goals of U.S. energy policy, companies could better assess different energy technologies, panelists said.
"We like whatever allows us to make a decision--a price, a tax, whatever framework for us to make a decision," said Shell's Bravo.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017470-54.html?tag=mncol;posts#ixzz10jacenk1
Comments
by pjcamp September 24, 2010 5:23 AM PDT
We are always looking for breakthroughs, but the history of technology shows us that there really aren't that many. Almost all progress is incremental improvements from an existing base. That isn't to say that we shouldn't explore promising possibilities, but it is to say that putting the bulk of our efforts into high risk possibilities is 99% likely to be equivalent to doing nothing in the most expensive possible way.
Like this Reply to this comment by solitare_pax September 24, 2010 5:31 AM PDT
Agreed - it took over a hundred years for oil to completely replace other sources of raw materials for fuel and product manufacturing - just as it took thirty-plus years for computers to go from simple word processing to full-fledged audio-video editing.
Like this by WineMaker5000 September 24, 2010 6:41 AM PDT
There are many breakthroughs!!! Some are even disruptive. But only very few gets massive adoption. I agree with the author that when it comes to technologies that require massive infrastructure to implement, it requires time and huge expenses. At the current pace of new breakthroughs there is a high risks that whatever is being implemented can be disrupted and thus we are in perpetual implementation of breakthrough technologies and it gets expensive. Quite the opposite reason.
Like this 4 people like this comment by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:16 AM PDT
Breakthroughs are made when someone stumbles upon a solution, not when a company hires 10,000 people to 'work'. For example, the advances between 1900 and 1925 (or so) in math and physics and thermodynamics were a result of a small handful of math geeks that finally put two and two together and (literally) brought us from the horse and buggy to the jet engine in a single lifetime. Those few people were, as individuals, so important that they're famous. They were smart and capable and really really interested in what they were doing. Compare that to a program where someone says. "I'll hire a bunch of people and pay them $85,000 a year to work on this stuff". You're not gonna turn 'us ordenary folk' into the best and the brightest, you're gonna get a whole lotta medeocraty.
Like this 4 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:43 PM PDT
To assume all breakthroughs are made my accident is foolish. Breakthroughs like rocket power, jet engines, nuclear weapons and power, radiology, DNA were all made through due diligence. There are literally hundreds of other examples. including physics, astrophysics, chemistry, electronics. You think microprocessors were made by accident? Lets not forget flight and internal combustion engines. Television anyone? Some of these were incremental and some happened literally overnight. In either case, they all happened due to research. If it were up to the fuel companies we would still all have piles of coal in our basements. Once again there are two polar opposite sides in the argument, the fuel companies claiming we should just find better ways to use their products (gee, I wonder why?), and scientists claiming we should put all our funds into research. Both sides have a vested interest in their arguments. The obvious reasonable answer is that we need to find better ways to use what we currently have while increasing funding to try and achieve a breakthrough in power generation and/or energy storage. To say these two options are mutually exclusive is ignorant at best..
Like this by Been_there_Saw_it_before September 24, 2010 12:48 PM PDT
Mr. mike_ekim said it perfectly. Breakthroughs have typically been individual efforts.
Like this 1 person likes this comment by SergeM256 September 24, 2010 2:55 PM PDT
There had been many breakthroughs and many periods of explosive growth, far more explosive than current computer/internet explosion. Invention and quick adoption of steam engine, telegraph, undersea cables, radio, nuclear energy, etc. Breakthroughs are happen when they are ready to happen, not when we want them to happen. Unfortunately, green technology is not ready for breakthrough, no matter how much money we may through in it.
Like this by mike_m_ekim September 24, 2010 11:15 PM PDT
Mergatroid Mania - some comments on your (completely baseless) statements. Your post sounds like a person who thinks the space program is responsible for Tang, Velcro, and radar. Flight - the Wright brothers ran a bicycle shop, no one paid them to research flight. Astronomy - Galileo was not looking for planets, he was just looking at stars, and no one paid him to do it. Physics - Einstein started off in the Swiss patent office and later became a University professor. Among other things Einstein was a philosopher. He was not 'paid to unravel the mysteries of the universe.' He was paid to teach. Atomic models - Neils Bohr studied mathematics and philosophy and then became a professor. No one said 'Hey Niel it's your job to describe the nucleus and figure out if states are quantized.' Electricity - Tesla started out working as an electrical engineer, but it was when he was employed as a ditch-digger for Edison Electric that he worked out polyphase AC - so no one paid him to do that, either. Tesla actually did improve electric motors and generator functionality under contract, but those were incremental improvements to existing devices and not a 'breakthrough tech.' Telecommunications - Edison started out as a telegraph operator, and invented the automatic repeater and other telegraph-related inventions before the phonograph and later he improved the light bulb. No one paid him to invent those things, which is why they were 'his' patents. Engines - Rudolph Diesel was employed doing R&D at a refrigeration company and was not allowed to use company patents for his personal gain, so he started working on other side projects that led to the diesel engine. No one paid Diesel to invent an engine, which is why it's 'his' patent. Transistors - Julius Edgar Lilienfeld got the first patent for a primitive transistor; he was actually researching it for medical uses, trying to make mini-X-ray tubes. No one asked Lilienfeld to invent a transistor for computers. The jet engine and rocket engine are originally derived from Hero's engine and similar devices, they were toys with no practical application. More on rockets and jet engines to follow: Rockets - Early rockets were in the form of fireworks that were later used as weapons; there is no credible evidence that anyone was ever paid to figure out how to invent fire works. It is far more likely that the elements of fireworks were stumbled upon. More rockets - Robert H. Goddard, a physicist and inventor, created and built the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. He was not hired by any company to build a liquid-fuel rocket, and he received ridicule for his work. He also told the Army how to build a bazooka. The army didn't hand out grants to invent a bazooka, he thought it up on his own and figured the Army would be interested. Jet Engines -The first practical gas turbine patent was filed by John Barber, he was a coal master and inventor who developed the gas turbine as a way to power horseless carriages. Again, no one paid him to work on it, he did so because he wanted to. DNA - The study of DNA did not begin with a desire to understand genes or evolution or hereditary traits, DNA research started out when Friedrich Miescher wanted to know what was in the pus of discarded surgical bandages. I hardly see how studying biology has anything to do with engineering or physics; studying biology is understanding what is, it is not creating something new. Nuclear energy - Marie Curie's most important single bit of research (determining that radioactivity is not a result of chemical reactions) was done as part of her thesis work; again, she was not hired by a company or given a grant to determine the source of radiation. If anything she may have been given a research grant because she was poor at the time. She performed much of her research in a shed. She and her husband devised a way to isolate radium but after his death she did not patent it because she did not want a patent to hinder other people's research. She was not paid for her efforts, in fact she toured the United States raising funds to further her research. More nuclear energy - the Manhattan project was a big group of engineers and scientists hired to harness reactivity, but by and large they knew exactly what they were designing and what needed to be done, i.e. split atoms with a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and extract the heat. The idea had been worked out already. They did NOT get a bunch of people together and ask 'who has an idea?' and wait for someone to raise their had and say 'maybe we should do something with atoms.'
Like this by iptofar September 24, 2010 5:41 AM PDT
Was there no discussion of fusion and updated nuclear tech? There has been a tremendous growth in nuclear tech since the US built it's last reactor and the waste processing and reduction tech has also been growing.
Like this Reply to this comment by mlamonica September 24, 2010 5:46 AM PDT
There was some passing discussion of nuclear but not much. Fusion didn't come up and, as I understand it, that's really way out there the future. One investor recently told me fusion said it's on the order of 100 years away.
Like this by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:19 AM PDT
New constuction of nuclear palnts is now in the licensing/regulatory/financing phase. The NSSS portions of the plant (the 'nuclear' part)plants have been (for the most part) designed and are waiting for gov't approval before more final plant designs can be finished. Right now nuclear is not at the 'throw money at it' phase.
Like this by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:51 PM PDT
@ mlamonica That would be unless all the research currently underway produces a breakthrough. @mike_ekim You are not referring to fusion, but fission. There are currently no fusion reactors capable of creating a sustained fusion reaction generating more usable power than they put into the unit to get the reaction.. And yes, they are still throwing money at it. Just google it.
Like this by Been_there_Saw_it_before September 24, 2010 12:53 PM PDT
I have been reading Popular Science since I was ten. I remember the stories about fusion being just a few years away and how it would power the world with no radioactive waste. Now I am 61 and fusion is 50 to 100 years away. Guess I will only see it from the top side of the clouds.
Like this by mike_m_ekim September 24, 2010 11:23 PM PDT
@Mergatroid Mania: correct, gold star for you, I am talking about fusion. notice that every word of iptofar's post after the word fusion is actually about fission. i.e. "...and updated nuclear tech? There has been a tremendous growth in nuclear tech since the US built it's last reactor and the waste processing and reduction tech has also been growing." Or, perhaps you think his comments about waste processing has to do with fusion? And FIY, my company had done work with Westinghouse and GE on new reactor design (NSSS, not BOP) and right now every thing is focused on NRC approval and not figuring out how it will work, but proving that it will work safely. Some sites are allowed early site permits to pave roads and other preliminary. I don't need to Google it, when you Google nuclear power you're Googling what I do. :)
Like this by wabcd September 25, 2010 6:32 PM PDT
Fusion Energy is inevitable, and could easily be commercially viable inside of 20 yrs if funding was provided. The Oiligarchy forbids Gov't funding of Fast-Trak fusion projects, in order to sustain their Energy Hegemony. Fortunately there are Visionaries like Microsoft Co-Founder, Paul Allen. Trialpha Energy has raised $50 million for their Colliding Beam Fusion: http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/06/tri-alpha-energy-nuclear-fusion-patent.html There are at least one dozen fast-track-to-fusion projects in development who have to manage with funding that Oil, NG, Wind, Solar, Ethanol, Clean Coal, Efficiency, Smart Grid Bandits all consider pocket change, or coffee money. Make no mistake about practical Fast-Track Fusion is entirely feasible, but like any tech needs funding and the Energy Establishment doesn't want ANY Cheap, Clean alternatives to its noxious product.
Like this by weegg September 24, 2010 6:08 AM PDT
There are several avenues for revamping our energy grid and structure. First, under the nuclear umbrella why aren't we going to Thorium reactors (completely safe and will allow us to recycle spent rods) while generating energy. Second, mandate all new homes must provide their own power (solar, geothermal, etc.) and encourage older homes to go solar. Third, with EV ramping up start programs to recycle their batteries into storage banks for the grid. We are going to have to, because once the world (and ours) economy recovers watch a huge jump in energy prices (especially oil now that we passed the world peak oil point).
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by i-arman September 24, 2010 7:34 AM PDT
Mandating that new homes provide their own energy will take a $100,000 home, and make it into a $175,000 home. Not a good idea. I agree with the nuclear option completely, though - nuclear energy is clean, powerful, and doesn't randomly cut out like wind or solar...
Like this 1 person likes this comment by bwillner September 24, 2010 7:50 AM PDT
While thorium reactors sound nice, those working on them will tell you that even with full funding, which will require billions of dollars, it will be 20 years before a commercial reactor could be built. Unfortunately, thorium reactor technology was abandoned in favor of uranium decades ago. The military largely funded nuclear power R&D and they were not interested in thorium reactors as it could not provide weapons materials. Before someone jumps on me for this, I am not criticizing the military for this; developing nuclear weapons was an objective and that is what they funded. Unfortunately, no one else was developing nuclear power technology, so uranium technology leaped ahead while thorium did not.
Like this 4 people like this comment by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:21 AM PDT
Completely safe? That's an unfortunate lack of respect. Thorium reactors are completely safe as much as the Titanic was unsinkable. I.e. they become dangerous as soon as people treat them like they are completely safe.
Like this 4 people like this comment by wabcd September 26, 2010 9:07 AM PDT
For those who want to learn about molten salt reactors, see:------------------------------ http://www.energyfromthorium.com/TEAC1/02_LeBlanc_LFRchoices.pdf----------------- David LeBlanc's Denatured Molten Salt Reactor could certainly be developed to commercial production in 5 yrs with a serious effort, as was done many times in the 60's and is easily done with Naval Reactors. The inherently safe design is certainly safer than any comparable sized NG power plant, so that is not an impediment to development. And would supply cheaper electricity than even Coal.
Like this by bwillner September 24, 2010 7:41 AM PDT
There have been many technological breakthroughs in recent years. Many of them are and will have a major impact on energy technology. LEDs for general lighting is now taking off after years of development. Within 10 years, LEDs will be the dominant lighting technology and the old incandescent and fluorescent lighting technologies will be vanishing (unless there is a breakthrough to revolutionize incandescent or fluorescent technology). Power supplies have been transformed from heavy, inefficient transformer-based bricks to compact, lightweight, highly efficient transistor-based switching power supplies. That technological revolution has barely been noticed by the consumer public, but has had a profound effect on electronics design and performance and resulted in huge energy efficiency gains. Efficient switching power supply technology is expanding to higher power applications in industry. Great strides are being made in photovoltaics and, more recently, in large scale battery technologies which will have a major impact on energy as well. These changes cannot be implemented overnight, but they do happen.
Like this Reply to this comment 3 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Switching powersupplies still use transformers. They're just not as big.
Like this by stewartm0205 September 24, 2010 8:04 AM PDT
You need both. We need to start transitioning now and to do that we have to use whats available today. But we also need to improve the current green tech so that it is gets so cheap that there is not debate about replacing fossil fuel with it.
Like this Reply to this comment 3 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Agreed. Very wise....
Like this by QA_Tester September 24, 2010 8:43 AM PDT
Clean energy R&D should not be either or proposition. It is necessary to work on several areas: reduce consumption, clean up energy sources we have now and develop new sources. "Solar, which accounts for less than 1 percent of power generation in the U.S., is more expensive than wind for making electricity. However, both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated, said John Reilly, associate director for research at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Storage on the grid can help shore up wind and solar, but high costs mean it will be used relatively little--mainly for providing short periods of power under an hour, he said." This is true if generation of solar and wind is strictly commercial, meaning it's only done by energy companies and using new lands. However, if we start taking advantage of residential rooftops the need for the amount of land can be reduced. That said, consumers must be able to sell all or portion of what they are generating back to the power company when there is excess energy generated at their homes. Combine that with the smart grid that allows transfer excess energy to were it's needed. Add some commercial buildings to that and need for large tract of lands to be used for commercial solar energy would be reduced.
Like this Reply to this comment 2 people like this comment by tg_iv September 24, 2010 9:06 AM PDT
What difference does it make if algae requires massive amounts of water? The ocean is a massive amount of water and we have direct access to it.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 9:46 AM PDT
I believe that we have many breakthrough solutions in various stages. Because of the accelerated discoveries nowadays, the newer solutions will always pose a risk of making the current ones obsolete, and that is the risk that investors are facing today, so their investments are never full scale to implement a particular solution. Mankind always tinkers and comes up with even better solutions. Take for example Solar PV, many cheaper production methods and designs have recently surfaced after several billions of $$ have been invested in ramping up production of Silicon based PV and now we have the thin film. While the thin film has been heavily invested and are ramping up, still cheaper solar PVs based on plastic, spray on paint like installations are on the horizon. Germany invested heavily in installing gigawatts of solar PV and now those installations are obsolete. The reason is that we have very disruptive breakthroughs that are coming to us at a very rapid pace. The disadvantage is that our rapid discoveries actually makes investments in newer discoveries and technologies riskier.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Squashman2 September 24, 2010 9:56 AM PDT
"You don't create miracles by throwing money at something--that's never been the case," Bravo said. "It's not like you'll wake up one morning and Bill Gates has funded a project that saved the Earth." Spoken like a true OIL company person. No optimism at all. I don't believe wind or solar is our future energy source. We have known for Decades about our energy crisis so don't go comparing this to how fast computers have come along. Shouldn't take 40 years to come up with an alternative solution that is sustainable. We have also known for many years about the potential energy on the moon and we do nothing about it.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:56 PM PDT
Yep, oil company employees are the last people you should ask about this topic.
Like this 1 person likes this comment by duggerdm September 24, 2010 10:43 AM PDT
Our company, (www.biocepts.com) has looked at alternative energy - especially biotechnology related energy sources in depth, because our principals have decades of biotechnology development experience. What we have concluded is that our country's current alternative energy efforts are not being prioritized either strategically or by economics (fiscal or life cycle) and without this prioritization the US has no meaningful strategy for alternative energy development. Most of those promoting projects in the field of bio-energy and especially those making grants in this field are ignorant of the real limitations that prevent significant primary stand alone bio-energy projects from contributions to our long term energy needs ? much less the risks that bio-energy development poses regarding the depletion of critical strategic resources. Consequently there is no practical strategy being applied to alternative bio-energy development. Limiting factors in bio-energy development such as ?peak phosphate? are not even discussed by bio-fuel proponent interests or their government counterparts. While nitrogen and potash are abundant from a variety of sources on earth - phosphate is a very limited resource on earth. All large-scale bio-fuel production and our food crops are dependent on phosphates ? especially at our current growing and unsustainable populations levels. Scientists in recent years have been rapidly revising their estimates of global phosphate reserves - downward. Because all large-scale bio-fuel production efforts compete with food crops (85% use chemical fertilizers containing phosphates) for these phosphates - it?s strategically short sighted to develop such bio-fuels. This is even truer considering that primary energy production concepts using bio-fuels are such a relative short-term solution ? considering our very limited phosphate reserves. Organic production of foods while certainly possible on small scale would only supply less than 10% of the global food needs of the current global population. The sad part here is that the limiting factors like peak phosphate mentioned here are widely known, but we have no alternative energy strategy that reflects them. Why would we use up our phosphates for energy if it only exasperates a near term known food shortage crisis. As much as our company would like to use its biotechnology development skills in alternative energy, it has become very clear to us that as primary energy alternative sources only solar, wind, wave and tidal sources of energy don't hasten the upcoming global food crisis by using up our finite phosphate resources. We do see biotechnology as having a major role in capturing waste products, increasing food production efficiency from a given amount of resources and making food production become efficient and more profitable in the process. Secondary or by-product bio-energy development makes sense, but primary bio-energy development is foolish and has a rather large fatal risk potential for large segments of humanity.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by WineMaker5000 September 24, 2010 11:17 AM PDT
Your company's concept about sustainability is all wrong. You plan on producing biofuels on one way street only taking out without nutrient recycling. There are many companies today whose concepts are highly sustainable when it comes to biofuel production because nutrients such as phosphates and nitrogen are recycled back from the dead tissues after oil or fuel are extracted. Only sunlight and CO2 are the inputs and the water and nutrients are recycled. Take for example the patents filed by Joule. Their system makes diesel directly using only sunlight and waste CO2 in glass barrels. The algae is retained in the system and therefore no nutrients such as phospates are taken out. This is perfectly sustainable and your company have overlooked such approach.
Like this 2 people like this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 11:24 AM PDT
Theoretically you can build a system that recycles the nutrients back into it such as being developed by a few companies that experiments with algae, which are easier to have nutrient cycling built in a closed loop. Sapphire energy for example will inject back the dead cells after fuels are exracted, thus putting back all the nutrients for the growth of next batch of algae. Joule has taken a step further by genetically engineering microorganisms that produces the fuel components directly without having to macerate the microorganisms and harvest only the fuels. Except for the required nutrients to build the modules, everything can become a steady state with no influx of added nutrients and so is highly sustainable and I believe to discuss the current supply of phosphates is moot point. Reports about Joule in CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20016330-54.html?tag=mncol;1n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20003503-54.html?tag=mncol;2n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10295100-54.html?tag=mncol;3n
Like this 1 person likes this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 11:29 AM PDT
Theoretically you can build a system that recycles the nutrients back into it such as being developed by a few companies that experiments with algae, which are easier to have nutrient cycling built in a closed loop. Sapphire energy for example will inject back the dead cells after fuels are extracted, thus putting back all the nutrients for the growth of next batch of algae. Joule has taken a step further by genetically engineering microorganisms that produces the fuel components directly without having to macerate the microorganisms and harvest only the fuels. Except for the required nutrients to build the modules, everything can become a steady state with no influx of added nutrients and so is highly sustainable and I believe to discuss the current supply of phosphates is moot point. Reports about Joule in CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20016330-54.html?tag=mncol;1n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20003503-54.html?tag=mncol;2n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10295100-54.html?tag=mncol;3n Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8618-11128_3-20017470.html?communityId=2069&targetCommunityId=2069&blogId=54&messageId=9886127&tag=mncol;tback#ixzz10TNj55PV
Like this 1 person likes this comment by RWKeyes September 24, 2010 1:50 PM PDT
Phosphates can be harvested from seawater as a byproduct of desalinization. There are many places where agricultural runoff has made aquafers too rich is phophates, which can lead to algae blooms. Perhaps this can be recovered as well. Additionally, as algal oil does not contain phosphates, the nutrients don't leave the algal 'farm' and so the cost is on-time. In summary, I think you are saying the phophate sky is falling, at it isn't.
Like this 1 person likes this comment by RWKeyes September 24, 2010 1:44 PM PDT
A representative of Shell claims that ExxonMobil's algae oil system would use as much water per day as Mexico City consumes. I find this to be suspicious. Perhaps there is a disconnect of reason here...is the volume of water used by the Algae a one-time need? Or is this per-day? And what exactly is this number in some true measure (liters, or at least, gallons...not swimming pools). I don't know much about Exxon's system but I know something of other algae fuel systems and they do not require this amount of water. The comment about Thorium is right on. Thorium is a known quantity, research reactors have been run for over 5 years in the 1960s. The LFTR (liquid floride thorium reactor) solves many of the problems that conventional nuclear reactors have. Don't count out wind, either - new designs which are much more efficient are around the corner, using technology such as counter-rotating secondary turbines. Solar photovoltaic techologies using plastics or carbon nanotubes have a lot of promise, and there is interesting work being done on solar Sterling engines. There's tidal power, geothermal, and even schemes to harness the planet's magnetic field for energy. But I think the safest bet is Thorium.
Like this Reply to this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 2:00 PM PDT
In a closed system, the volume of water used by algae would just be for replenishing leaks and minor losses. For sure, Exxon's algae growing is doomed to fail. Exxon is unsustainable. One should look at Joule's system and Sapphire Energy: http://www.sapphireenergy.com/ http://www.jouleunlimited.com/ And about the Thorium reactors, I have read that they are small and can reuse nuclear waste. How much water would these baby reactors need per megawatt hours of power generated?
Like this 1 person likes this comment by RoyHarvie September 24, 2010 7:12 PM PDT
To Shell: Please take this seriously. Re-consider your role in the energy business. This isn't really a question, but a plea, to help save our planet. Oil is a very valuable commodity, for the petro-chemical side of your business. Great for plastics and synthetics. Excellent lubricant and hydraulic fluid etc. But the most wasteful thing you can do with oil is burn it. Make your long term strategy to get out of the energy business or do something really spectacular like using your massive corporate resources to fund and complete research on LFTRs. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors were invented in the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They ran one for almost 5 years. LFTRs use cheap thorium, are inherently safe, do not produce long term radio-active waste and were abandoned because they are not suitable for making bombs. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk and http://energyfromthorium.com/ Although the principles are proven, there is still some research required for the best materials to have long 50 year plus life. You could set up an LFTR at a tar sands project to create heat and steam without polluting. Put one in a big ship like a tanker and save a bundle on fuel while stopping pollution. Sell them by the thousands and make a fortune. Just don't promote burning oil please. Save this precious substance for future generations. Actually I don't think we should burn anything, coal, biofuels etc. Trying to make these alternatives carbon neutral is not just difficult, it greatly reduces the net energy gained. There are better alternatives. I realise we need to burn fuel for airplanes and rockets, but most other applications can be replaced with electricity. The best answer I could hope for is that you will look into it. Thanks Roy
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by SteveChicago September 25, 2010 9:58 AM PDT
Why was Exxon and Shell even invited to a clean energy conference?? These guys are oil and natural gas explorers. Of course they are going to poo-poo any new energy form that they do not control. They must hate Tesla and Coda, since they do not use any of their products directly. Look at the MIT breakthrough in the lab that generated self assembling solar panels that are suppose to be 40% efficient. That would be twice the current best efficiency. I know that this is lab results and actual will probably be less. But that is a big jump. What happens when we hit 50% efficiency on a solar panel and it is cheap to install? Tie that to en energy storage system in your house. Why not, you have a local furnace, AC, water heater. Forget about the smart grid, what about the smart house.
Like this Reply to this comment by wabcd September 25, 2010 6:53 PM PDT
What a SHAM. Pure Spin and B.S. ------Look at France's meager effort to replace Oil generated Electricity with Nuclear in the 1980's. ------http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/FRTPES.pdf--------. Notice that they replaced half of their total Energy Supply with Nuclear in about 20 yrs, most of it in 12 yrs. This is for a middle wealth nation, with the best health care & social services in the World, one of the most expensive Military's in the World, and during the period improved their Standard of Living & productivity much faster than "renewable special" Germany. And all France did was take a run-of-the-mill GenII American Pressurized Light Water Reactor design, standardized and started building. No modern modular construction. No assembly line production. No CAD or CAM. No advanced electronic control systems. No advanced GenIII designs or computer simulations. ---------------- All France has to do now is Electrify Transport, Nuclear Synthetic Fuels, District Heating and/or expand their Nuclear by another 50% over what they already did. Pretty simple minded, even without using Modern Construction & Design Methods. Check out Germany #1 Renewable Nation on Earth: -------http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/DETPES.pdf------- See the skinny little Red Line - that's Germany's MEGA-EFFORT no-holds-barred Solar & Wind Energy. Tiny compared to their Nuclear NON-EFFORT. -------That is the Truth about Energy - that the Energy Establishment doesn't want you to know.------
Like this Reply to this comment by K A Cheah September 25, 2010 8:46 PM PDT
Using Green Tech to produce energy although it is just promises in the beginning, but it is the first steps in the right direction, the choices of Green Tech used will be of paramount importance to determine the success of these endeavors. Using Natural Gas as the fuel replacement does not 100% really reduce the carbon footprints as Natural Gas combustion produces Carbon Dioxide, Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxides and other polutants as well. Hydro Electric Power is the Tested & Proven Sources of Power Supply as well as the Proven Highly Efficient Titanium Brown Gas Hydroxy HHO Generator Devices' Technologies to run the Petrol and Diesel Engines as the hybrid fuel. There must be clear aims as to what would be the tested, proven & most viable and successful sources of green energy sources that would be with the best potential of mass producing power day and night without fail. Hydro electric power has the greatest chances of success in supplying powers, now for about a century starting with the first Hydro Dam, and now we can have mini-hydro electric power by diverting river water to run new highly efficient & productive direct drive turbines and at every given opprotunities creating multiple mini-hydro electric power sources without the need to dam a river but by just diverting the river water to run these new & direct drive efficient multiple turbines now used in Wind Power production to produce power supply. R&D are necessities in the Advanced Nuclear Energy Technologies adopted by Terra but until now these have not proven to work for France, Germany & Others which are equally advanced & developed Nations in these technologies but those technologies that have been tested & proven must also be encouraged and implemented like the HHO Generator Devices that should be installed & used in all Vehicles to spur reduction and curb in the emission of Greenhouse Gases by giving a tax incentive on the cost of installation of one such device in each of the existing petrol and diesel engines' vehicles that will not be easily replaceable with electric or hybrid vehicles as yet. Renewable Energy Hybrid vehicles' solutions to mitigate global warming, without any need for picking waste sugars' residues & land use !!! In order to mitigate global warming, there is no way that the whole world could immediately convert all their existing polluting petrol and diesel engine driven vehicles to electric and hybrid cars, trucks, boats & ships. These latter type of cars are expensive to adopt and took great effort to produce. Therefore, it will take a much longer time for such vehicles to go mainstream. Also tapping Sugar Residues' Conversion to Gasoline when in use will also pollute the atmosphere even if when this technology is made really successful which will take much longer time to mature. In the meantime, all the existing petrol and diesel engine driven vehicles will still be polluting the atmosphere but these vehicles have still retained their market value and they are not easily replaceable. Therefore, the only solution to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases by say 50% to 90% is by turning them into HHO (Hydroxy) hybrids running on both fossil fuel and water-produced gases called HHO (hydrogen and oxygen) or 'brown gas' which has been the tested and proven. The technology uses the excess electrical energy, produced by the vehicles' alternators, which would have otherwise being wasted if left untapped, to convert water into HHO or 'brown gas' to run the vehicles' engines. This is by installing 'HHO generators' made partially of 316L stainless steel and partially of titanium as electrodes. Coal and gas-burning power stations could also use HHO or 'brown gas' (using similar technologies) as a hybrid fuel as well. There are proven local and international companies that produce such HHO generator devices for sale and the governments of the world's nations should spearhead their adoption through tax incentives so that the whole world can achieve its goal of achieving a 40% reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases to 2005 levels or more as per committed at the recent Copenhagen Summit. Although the Copenhagen Summit agreement is not legally binding, it is morally binding on us to save our world from further destruction by impending natural disasters caused by global warming. If oil can spill like it is now due to an accident or human errors in the Gulf Coasts of USA causing widespread pollution in that Area, what if an accident or human error occurs in the Nuclear Plants anywhere in USA it will not only cause pollution but disasters in Human Life in contamination of the whole surrounding environments for centuries, therefore Nuclear Power Production should also be strictly avoided at all costs as nobody can guarantee that accidents or human errors will not recur such as the Chernobyl Nuclear disasters repeating itself.
Like this Reply to this comment by tsport100 September 26, 2010 2:33 AM PDT
What a surprize, the incumbents talking down their competition. Renewable energy is "constrained by the laws of physics" and I guess that means electronics and therefore Moores Law isn't? What a ridiculous statement! "One consensus among the energy experts was that use of natural gas will increase significantly in the decades ahead" again, no surprize hearing this from incumbents, they sell the stuff. What's their argument against wind and solar? "both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated" So drilling and mining for fossil fuels don't destroy huge amounts of land and transporting the stuff across the planet is an easier and cheaper problem to solve than regulating the grid? I've heard enough!!!!!!!!!!
Like this Reply to this comment by wabcd September 26, 2010 8:50 AM PDT
Solar @ >$40k per kwavg, Wind @ >$11k per kwavg. Both require a shadowing Fossil Fuel power source to supply most of the Wind/Solar/NG energy. About 80-90% of the energy comes from NG. Cycling inefficiencies in that 80-90% waste as much fuel as the Wind & Solar would save. A complete waste of money.------------------------------------------ Even a wealthy nation like the USA would go bankrupt trying to finance a significant Renewable Energy power source. See my above comment for the failure of Germany's all out effort on Renewable Energy vs the incredible success of France's Nuclear.------------------------------------ the World's Foremost Environmentalist, James Lovelock, has correctly determined that ONLY NUCLEAR ENERGY can replace fossil fuels.-------------------------------------------------------------: The Natural Energy of the Universe - James Lovelock on Nuclear Power:------------------------------------- http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/06/natural-energy-of-universe-james.html
Like this by sanenazok September 26, 2010 12:27 PM PDT
The way I see it, if there's going to be breakthrough, it will have to be in solar. Wind is already at 90%+ efficiency as far as motors are concerned, while solar is in the 20's. Neither has a chance against breeder nuclear plants, though. Funny how a story about magical future tech does not mention the magic capacitors that EEStor has been promising since 2006. http://green.autoblog.com/2008/03/29/zenn-claims-they-will-launch-eestor-powered-ev-in-fall-2009/ Oh wait they'll have a demo out before the end of 2011. Great, I guess the illuminati are dragging the approval processes.
Like this Reply to this comment by FredC1212 September 26, 2010 1:08 PM PDT
If there were some consensus among the world's great scientists that a certain path would lead to the very high probability of a certain result, like physicists and the atom bomb, then throwing money at a goal might be the way to go. But as long as there is no general consensus, the due diligence approach is the tried and tested methodology which will, hopefully, deliver much needed breakthroughs in energy production before we fossil fuels are exhausted and we have to turn to breeder reactors, or horses and sails.
Like this Reply to this comment by nunya82 September 26, 2010 7:57 PM PDT
everyone who thinks we need to think along the lines of that same hundred year old framework is just a brainwashed naysayer. thats exactly what the powers that be want you to think. the answer lies in thinking outside the box. just look at you tube and type in seg generator or or www.magpower.us they want us to think we have to keep using their existing infastructure. tecnology is different than it was in the early 1900s. real alternative viable resources have been known about for decades. people have likely been killed over it. they want everyone to think that there is no easy ways to create energy so that we have to keep paying for their heavy equipment to dig up coal then pay for their trains to haul it around and so on. wake up!
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017470-54.html?tag=mncol;posts#ixzz10jjEBb6w.
As is frequently the case, the discussion is as informative and stimulating as the article that started it.
by Martin LaMonica
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--As people consider the best path to a sustainable energy future, two polar ends of a debate are emerging between those who argue for a big boost in technology research and those who advocate more aggressive use of existing technology.
Those who work at incumbent companies in the oil and gas industry don't expect miracles with the ability to transform energy overnight, according to speakers at the EmTech conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday.
At the opposite extreme are techno-optimists, such as Bill Gates and venture capitalist John Doerr, who say that much more money should be plowed into research and development to stimulate clean-energy innovation.
Funding more energy research is a good idea, but don't expect even a sharp increase in spending to turn energy around quickly, said Jose Bravo, chief scientist at Shell Global Solutions, during a panel.
"You don't create miracles by throwing money at something--that's never been the case," Bravo said. "It's not like you'll wake up one morning and Bill Gates has funded a project that saved the Earth."
Many of today's green-technology entrepreneurs and investors have come from the IT industry, where the pace of change has been rapid and relentless. But the major energy transitions that happened in the past--from wood to coal, for example--took decades.
Expecting energy to operate at the same pace as Moore's Law and the world of bits and bytes is misguided, said Elisabeth Moyer, assistant professor of atmospheric science at the University of Chicago.
"There's been a lot of excessive techno-optimism based on people's experience with information technology. It's just not that way in energy. You're constrained by the laws of physics," Moyer said during a talk. "It's going to be big, hard, expensive, and slow. There's really no way around it."
What are your options?
The Obama administration made clean-energy investments a big part of the economic stimulus package and continues to make energy research a priority through a number of initiatives. The ARPA-E agency, for example, is tasked with placing bets on breakthrough energy technologies in areas such as energy storage and recycling carbon dioxide from power plants.
High-profile investor Vinod Khosla, who manages a $1 billion green-technology fund, regularly argues that people underestimate the impact of technology innovation. Khosla chases potential game-changing ideas, such as Calera, which has a process for making cement using waste carbon dioxide, and Kior, a start-up that is testing a process to make bio-gasoline from wood.
"A better way to forecast the future is to invent it because it's been proven that extrapolating the past doesn't work," Khosla said at the ARPA-E Summit in March. Bill Gates, meanwhile, has invested in TerraPower, a company pursuing a nuclear reactor design that would use spent fuel from other nuclear power plants, allowing it to operate for decades without fueling.
Speakers on the energy panel at EmTech yesterday advocated for more technology research and development in renewable energy, biofuels, and carbon capture and storage. But they made clear that the immediate future will continue to be dominated by hydrocarbons and that all energy sources, including renewable energy, come with tradeoffs and costs.
Looking for a clean-energy home run (photos)
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ExxonMobil, for example, has a research and development project with Synthetic Genomics to make liquid fuels from genetically engineered strains of algae. But algae production takes huge amounts of water. Making a modest amount of oil from algae--about 150,000 barrels per day--would require all the water that Mexico City consumes in a day, said Shell's Bravo.
Solar, which accounts for less than 1 percent of power generation in the U.S., is more expensive than wind for making electricity. However, both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated, said John Reilly, associate director for research at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Storage on the grid can help shore up wind and solar, but high costs mean it will be used relatively little--mainly for providing short periods of power under an hour, he said.
The developed world can and should use energy more efficiently, but overall usage around the globe is certain to go up in the coming decades as the developing world uses more energy to raise its standard of living, panelists said. Nuclear power, which is seeing a surge of construction in China, costs about twice what a pulverized coal plant does, Reilly said.
"As soon as you look at something that looks like a silver bullet, you see that it's tarnished and not moving as fast as you thought," he said.
Bridge fuel
One consensus among the energy experts was that use of natural gas will increase significantly in the decades ahead and should be used as a "bridge fuel" to sustainable energy. Oil companies are moving into natural gas, which can be used for heating, electricity generation, and transportation. Natural gas emits about half the greenhouse gases per unit of energy that coal does.
The discovery of large reserves of natural gas in shale rock in the U.S. has changed the overall energy industry equation, said ExxonMobil Senior Technical Adviser Nazeer Bhore. Demand for natural gas will grow 80 percent from 2005 to 2030, a situation that demonstrates how energy changes happen over long periods.
"Nowhere in U.S. (energy) history has something come in so silently and made such a large impact," he said. "Changes in energy are very evolutionary in the short run but revolutionary in the long run."
To a large degree, whether a country should invest in--and count on--energy breakthroughs or fund programs to encourage deployment of existing technologies, such as wind and electric vehicles, is a policy question. On research, ExxonMobil's Bhore said the government should fund "pre-competitive" research and let commercial companies sort out technology winners.
All panelists said that the energy industry needs more policy certainty with regard to greenhouse gases, with Bhore coming out in favor of an economy-wide tax on carbon emissions. With more clarity on the cost of greenhouse gas emissions and the goals of U.S. energy policy, companies could better assess different energy technologies, panelists said.
"We like whatever allows us to make a decision--a price, a tax, whatever framework for us to make a decision," said Shell's Bravo.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017470-54.html?tag=mncol;posts#ixzz10jacenk1
Comments
by pjcamp September 24, 2010 5:23 AM PDT
We are always looking for breakthroughs, but the history of technology shows us that there really aren't that many. Almost all progress is incremental improvements from an existing base. That isn't to say that we shouldn't explore promising possibilities, but it is to say that putting the bulk of our efforts into high risk possibilities is 99% likely to be equivalent to doing nothing in the most expensive possible way.
Like this Reply to this comment by solitare_pax September 24, 2010 5:31 AM PDT
Agreed - it took over a hundred years for oil to completely replace other sources of raw materials for fuel and product manufacturing - just as it took thirty-plus years for computers to go from simple word processing to full-fledged audio-video editing.
Like this by WineMaker5000 September 24, 2010 6:41 AM PDT
There are many breakthroughs!!! Some are even disruptive. But only very few gets massive adoption. I agree with the author that when it comes to technologies that require massive infrastructure to implement, it requires time and huge expenses. At the current pace of new breakthroughs there is a high risks that whatever is being implemented can be disrupted and thus we are in perpetual implementation of breakthrough technologies and it gets expensive. Quite the opposite reason.
Like this 4 people like this comment by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:16 AM PDT
Breakthroughs are made when someone stumbles upon a solution, not when a company hires 10,000 people to 'work'. For example, the advances between 1900 and 1925 (or so) in math and physics and thermodynamics were a result of a small handful of math geeks that finally put two and two together and (literally) brought us from the horse and buggy to the jet engine in a single lifetime. Those few people were, as individuals, so important that they're famous. They were smart and capable and really really interested in what they were doing. Compare that to a program where someone says. "I'll hire a bunch of people and pay them $85,000 a year to work on this stuff". You're not gonna turn 'us ordenary folk' into the best and the brightest, you're gonna get a whole lotta medeocraty.
Like this 4 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:43 PM PDT
To assume all breakthroughs are made my accident is foolish. Breakthroughs like rocket power, jet engines, nuclear weapons and power, radiology, DNA were all made through due diligence. There are literally hundreds of other examples. including physics, astrophysics, chemistry, electronics. You think microprocessors were made by accident? Lets not forget flight and internal combustion engines. Television anyone? Some of these were incremental and some happened literally overnight. In either case, they all happened due to research. If it were up to the fuel companies we would still all have piles of coal in our basements. Once again there are two polar opposite sides in the argument, the fuel companies claiming we should just find better ways to use their products (gee, I wonder why?), and scientists claiming we should put all our funds into research. Both sides have a vested interest in their arguments. The obvious reasonable answer is that we need to find better ways to use what we currently have while increasing funding to try and achieve a breakthrough in power generation and/or energy storage. To say these two options are mutually exclusive is ignorant at best..
Like this by Been_there_Saw_it_before September 24, 2010 12:48 PM PDT
Mr. mike_ekim said it perfectly. Breakthroughs have typically been individual efforts.
Like this 1 person likes this comment by SergeM256 September 24, 2010 2:55 PM PDT
There had been many breakthroughs and many periods of explosive growth, far more explosive than current computer/internet explosion. Invention and quick adoption of steam engine, telegraph, undersea cables, radio, nuclear energy, etc. Breakthroughs are happen when they are ready to happen, not when we want them to happen. Unfortunately, green technology is not ready for breakthrough, no matter how much money we may through in it.
Like this by mike_m_ekim September 24, 2010 11:15 PM PDT
Mergatroid Mania - some comments on your (completely baseless) statements. Your post sounds like a person who thinks the space program is responsible for Tang, Velcro, and radar. Flight - the Wright brothers ran a bicycle shop, no one paid them to research flight. Astronomy - Galileo was not looking for planets, he was just looking at stars, and no one paid him to do it. Physics - Einstein started off in the Swiss patent office and later became a University professor. Among other things Einstein was a philosopher. He was not 'paid to unravel the mysteries of the universe.' He was paid to teach. Atomic models - Neils Bohr studied mathematics and philosophy and then became a professor. No one said 'Hey Niel it's your job to describe the nucleus and figure out if states are quantized.' Electricity - Tesla started out working as an electrical engineer, but it was when he was employed as a ditch-digger for Edison Electric that he worked out polyphase AC - so no one paid him to do that, either. Tesla actually did improve electric motors and generator functionality under contract, but those were incremental improvements to existing devices and not a 'breakthrough tech.' Telecommunications - Edison started out as a telegraph operator, and invented the automatic repeater and other telegraph-related inventions before the phonograph and later he improved the light bulb. No one paid him to invent those things, which is why they were 'his' patents. Engines - Rudolph Diesel was employed doing R&D at a refrigeration company and was not allowed to use company patents for his personal gain, so he started working on other side projects that led to the diesel engine. No one paid Diesel to invent an engine, which is why it's 'his' patent. Transistors - Julius Edgar Lilienfeld got the first patent for a primitive transistor; he was actually researching it for medical uses, trying to make mini-X-ray tubes. No one asked Lilienfeld to invent a transistor for computers. The jet engine and rocket engine are originally derived from Hero's engine and similar devices, they were toys with no practical application. More on rockets and jet engines to follow: Rockets - Early rockets were in the form of fireworks that were later used as weapons; there is no credible evidence that anyone was ever paid to figure out how to invent fire works. It is far more likely that the elements of fireworks were stumbled upon. More rockets - Robert H. Goddard, a physicist and inventor, created and built the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. He was not hired by any company to build a liquid-fuel rocket, and he received ridicule for his work. He also told the Army how to build a bazooka. The army didn't hand out grants to invent a bazooka, he thought it up on his own and figured the Army would be interested. Jet Engines -The first practical gas turbine patent was filed by John Barber, he was a coal master and inventor who developed the gas turbine as a way to power horseless carriages. Again, no one paid him to work on it, he did so because he wanted to. DNA - The study of DNA did not begin with a desire to understand genes or evolution or hereditary traits, DNA research started out when Friedrich Miescher wanted to know what was in the pus of discarded surgical bandages. I hardly see how studying biology has anything to do with engineering or physics; studying biology is understanding what is, it is not creating something new. Nuclear energy - Marie Curie's most important single bit of research (determining that radioactivity is not a result of chemical reactions) was done as part of her thesis work; again, she was not hired by a company or given a grant to determine the source of radiation. If anything she may have been given a research grant because she was poor at the time. She performed much of her research in a shed. She and her husband devised a way to isolate radium but after his death she did not patent it because she did not want a patent to hinder other people's research. She was not paid for her efforts, in fact she toured the United States raising funds to further her research. More nuclear energy - the Manhattan project was a big group of engineers and scientists hired to harness reactivity, but by and large they knew exactly what they were designing and what needed to be done, i.e. split atoms with a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and extract the heat. The idea had been worked out already. They did NOT get a bunch of people together and ask 'who has an idea?' and wait for someone to raise their had and say 'maybe we should do something with atoms.'
Like this by iptofar September 24, 2010 5:41 AM PDT
Was there no discussion of fusion and updated nuclear tech? There has been a tremendous growth in nuclear tech since the US built it's last reactor and the waste processing and reduction tech has also been growing.
Like this Reply to this comment by mlamonica September 24, 2010 5:46 AM PDT
There was some passing discussion of nuclear but not much. Fusion didn't come up and, as I understand it, that's really way out there the future. One investor recently told me fusion said it's on the order of 100 years away.
Like this by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:19 AM PDT
New constuction of nuclear palnts is now in the licensing/regulatory/financing phase. The NSSS portions of the plant (the 'nuclear' part)plants have been (for the most part) designed and are waiting for gov't approval before more final plant designs can be finished. Right now nuclear is not at the 'throw money at it' phase.
Like this by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:51 PM PDT
@ mlamonica That would be unless all the research currently underway produces a breakthrough. @mike_ekim You are not referring to fusion, but fission. There are currently no fusion reactors capable of creating a sustained fusion reaction generating more usable power than they put into the unit to get the reaction.. And yes, they are still throwing money at it. Just google it.
Like this by Been_there_Saw_it_before September 24, 2010 12:53 PM PDT
I have been reading Popular Science since I was ten. I remember the stories about fusion being just a few years away and how it would power the world with no radioactive waste. Now I am 61 and fusion is 50 to 100 years away. Guess I will only see it from the top side of the clouds.
Like this by mike_m_ekim September 24, 2010 11:23 PM PDT
@Mergatroid Mania: correct, gold star for you, I am talking about fusion. notice that every word of iptofar's post after the word fusion is actually about fission. i.e. "...and updated nuclear tech? There has been a tremendous growth in nuclear tech since the US built it's last reactor and the waste processing and reduction tech has also been growing." Or, perhaps you think his comments about waste processing has to do with fusion? And FIY, my company had done work with Westinghouse and GE on new reactor design (NSSS, not BOP) and right now every thing is focused on NRC approval and not figuring out how it will work, but proving that it will work safely. Some sites are allowed early site permits to pave roads and other preliminary. I don't need to Google it, when you Google nuclear power you're Googling what I do. :)
Like this by wabcd September 25, 2010 6:32 PM PDT
Fusion Energy is inevitable, and could easily be commercially viable inside of 20 yrs if funding was provided. The Oiligarchy forbids Gov't funding of Fast-Trak fusion projects, in order to sustain their Energy Hegemony. Fortunately there are Visionaries like Microsoft Co-Founder, Paul Allen. Trialpha Energy has raised $50 million for their Colliding Beam Fusion: http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/06/tri-alpha-energy-nuclear-fusion-patent.html There are at least one dozen fast-track-to-fusion projects in development who have to manage with funding that Oil, NG, Wind, Solar, Ethanol, Clean Coal, Efficiency, Smart Grid Bandits all consider pocket change, or coffee money. Make no mistake about practical Fast-Track Fusion is entirely feasible, but like any tech needs funding and the Energy Establishment doesn't want ANY Cheap, Clean alternatives to its noxious product.
Like this by weegg September 24, 2010 6:08 AM PDT
There are several avenues for revamping our energy grid and structure. First, under the nuclear umbrella why aren't we going to Thorium reactors (completely safe and will allow us to recycle spent rods) while generating energy. Second, mandate all new homes must provide their own power (solar, geothermal, etc.) and encourage older homes to go solar. Third, with EV ramping up start programs to recycle their batteries into storage banks for the grid. We are going to have to, because once the world (and ours) economy recovers watch a huge jump in energy prices (especially oil now that we passed the world peak oil point).
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by i-arman September 24, 2010 7:34 AM PDT
Mandating that new homes provide their own energy will take a $100,000 home, and make it into a $175,000 home. Not a good idea. I agree with the nuclear option completely, though - nuclear energy is clean, powerful, and doesn't randomly cut out like wind or solar...
Like this 1 person likes this comment by bwillner September 24, 2010 7:50 AM PDT
While thorium reactors sound nice, those working on them will tell you that even with full funding, which will require billions of dollars, it will be 20 years before a commercial reactor could be built. Unfortunately, thorium reactor technology was abandoned in favor of uranium decades ago. The military largely funded nuclear power R&D and they were not interested in thorium reactors as it could not provide weapons materials. Before someone jumps on me for this, I am not criticizing the military for this; developing nuclear weapons was an objective and that is what they funded. Unfortunately, no one else was developing nuclear power technology, so uranium technology leaped ahead while thorium did not.
Like this 4 people like this comment by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:21 AM PDT
Completely safe? That's an unfortunate lack of respect. Thorium reactors are completely safe as much as the Titanic was unsinkable. I.e. they become dangerous as soon as people treat them like they are completely safe.
Like this 4 people like this comment by wabcd September 26, 2010 9:07 AM PDT
For those who want to learn about molten salt reactors, see:------------------------------ http://www.energyfromthorium.com/TEAC1/02_LeBlanc_LFRchoices.pdf----------------- David LeBlanc's Denatured Molten Salt Reactor could certainly be developed to commercial production in 5 yrs with a serious effort, as was done many times in the 60's and is easily done with Naval Reactors. The inherently safe design is certainly safer than any comparable sized NG power plant, so that is not an impediment to development. And would supply cheaper electricity than even Coal.
Like this by bwillner September 24, 2010 7:41 AM PDT
There have been many technological breakthroughs in recent years. Many of them are and will have a major impact on energy technology. LEDs for general lighting is now taking off after years of development. Within 10 years, LEDs will be the dominant lighting technology and the old incandescent and fluorescent lighting technologies will be vanishing (unless there is a breakthrough to revolutionize incandescent or fluorescent technology). Power supplies have been transformed from heavy, inefficient transformer-based bricks to compact, lightweight, highly efficient transistor-based switching power supplies. That technological revolution has barely been noticed by the consumer public, but has had a profound effect on electronics design and performance and resulted in huge energy efficiency gains. Efficient switching power supply technology is expanding to higher power applications in industry. Great strides are being made in photovoltaics and, more recently, in large scale battery technologies which will have a major impact on energy as well. These changes cannot be implemented overnight, but they do happen.
Like this Reply to this comment 3 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Switching powersupplies still use transformers. They're just not as big.
Like this by stewartm0205 September 24, 2010 8:04 AM PDT
You need both. We need to start transitioning now and to do that we have to use whats available today. But we also need to improve the current green tech so that it is gets so cheap that there is not debate about replacing fossil fuel with it.
Like this Reply to this comment 3 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Agreed. Very wise....
Like this by QA_Tester September 24, 2010 8:43 AM PDT
Clean energy R&D should not be either or proposition. It is necessary to work on several areas: reduce consumption, clean up energy sources we have now and develop new sources. "Solar, which accounts for less than 1 percent of power generation in the U.S., is more expensive than wind for making electricity. However, both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated, said John Reilly, associate director for research at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Storage on the grid can help shore up wind and solar, but high costs mean it will be used relatively little--mainly for providing short periods of power under an hour, he said." This is true if generation of solar and wind is strictly commercial, meaning it's only done by energy companies and using new lands. However, if we start taking advantage of residential rooftops the need for the amount of land can be reduced. That said, consumers must be able to sell all or portion of what they are generating back to the power company when there is excess energy generated at their homes. Combine that with the smart grid that allows transfer excess energy to were it's needed. Add some commercial buildings to that and need for large tract of lands to be used for commercial solar energy would be reduced.
Like this Reply to this comment 2 people like this comment by tg_iv September 24, 2010 9:06 AM PDT
What difference does it make if algae requires massive amounts of water? The ocean is a massive amount of water and we have direct access to it.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 9:46 AM PDT
I believe that we have many breakthrough solutions in various stages. Because of the accelerated discoveries nowadays, the newer solutions will always pose a risk of making the current ones obsolete, and that is the risk that investors are facing today, so their investments are never full scale to implement a particular solution. Mankind always tinkers and comes up with even better solutions. Take for example Solar PV, many cheaper production methods and designs have recently surfaced after several billions of $$ have been invested in ramping up production of Silicon based PV and now we have the thin film. While the thin film has been heavily invested and are ramping up, still cheaper solar PVs based on plastic, spray on paint like installations are on the horizon. Germany invested heavily in installing gigawatts of solar PV and now those installations are obsolete. The reason is that we have very disruptive breakthroughs that are coming to us at a very rapid pace. The disadvantage is that our rapid discoveries actually makes investments in newer discoveries and technologies riskier.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Squashman2 September 24, 2010 9:56 AM PDT
"You don't create miracles by throwing money at something--that's never been the case," Bravo said. "It's not like you'll wake up one morning and Bill Gates has funded a project that saved the Earth." Spoken like a true OIL company person. No optimism at all. I don't believe wind or solar is our future energy source. We have known for Decades about our energy crisis so don't go comparing this to how fast computers have come along. Shouldn't take 40 years to come up with an alternative solution that is sustainable. We have also known for many years about the potential energy on the moon and we do nothing about it.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:56 PM PDT
Yep, oil company employees are the last people you should ask about this topic.
Like this 1 person likes this comment by duggerdm September 24, 2010 10:43 AM PDT
Our company, (www.biocepts.com) has looked at alternative energy - especially biotechnology related energy sources in depth, because our principals have decades of biotechnology development experience. What we have concluded is that our country's current alternative energy efforts are not being prioritized either strategically or by economics (fiscal or life cycle) and without this prioritization the US has no meaningful strategy for alternative energy development. Most of those promoting projects in the field of bio-energy and especially those making grants in this field are ignorant of the real limitations that prevent significant primary stand alone bio-energy projects from contributions to our long term energy needs ? much less the risks that bio-energy development poses regarding the depletion of critical strategic resources. Consequently there is no practical strategy being applied to alternative bio-energy development. Limiting factors in bio-energy development such as ?peak phosphate? are not even discussed by bio-fuel proponent interests or their government counterparts. While nitrogen and potash are abundant from a variety of sources on earth - phosphate is a very limited resource on earth. All large-scale bio-fuel production and our food crops are dependent on phosphates ? especially at our current growing and unsustainable populations levels. Scientists in recent years have been rapidly revising their estimates of global phosphate reserves - downward. Because all large-scale bio-fuel production efforts compete with food crops (85% use chemical fertilizers containing phosphates) for these phosphates - it?s strategically short sighted to develop such bio-fuels. This is even truer considering that primary energy production concepts using bio-fuels are such a relative short-term solution ? considering our very limited phosphate reserves. Organic production of foods while certainly possible on small scale would only supply less than 10% of the global food needs of the current global population. The sad part here is that the limiting factors like peak phosphate mentioned here are widely known, but we have no alternative energy strategy that reflects them. Why would we use up our phosphates for energy if it only exasperates a near term known food shortage crisis. As much as our company would like to use its biotechnology development skills in alternative energy, it has become very clear to us that as primary energy alternative sources only solar, wind, wave and tidal sources of energy don't hasten the upcoming global food crisis by using up our finite phosphate resources. We do see biotechnology as having a major role in capturing waste products, increasing food production efficiency from a given amount of resources and making food production become efficient and more profitable in the process. Secondary or by-product bio-energy development makes sense, but primary bio-energy development is foolish and has a rather large fatal risk potential for large segments of humanity.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by WineMaker5000 September 24, 2010 11:17 AM PDT
Your company's concept about sustainability is all wrong. You plan on producing biofuels on one way street only taking out without nutrient recycling. There are many companies today whose concepts are highly sustainable when it comes to biofuel production because nutrients such as phosphates and nitrogen are recycled back from the dead tissues after oil or fuel are extracted. Only sunlight and CO2 are the inputs and the water and nutrients are recycled. Take for example the patents filed by Joule. Their system makes diesel directly using only sunlight and waste CO2 in glass barrels. The algae is retained in the system and therefore no nutrients such as phospates are taken out. This is perfectly sustainable and your company have overlooked such approach.
Like this 2 people like this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 11:24 AM PDT
Theoretically you can build a system that recycles the nutrients back into it such as being developed by a few companies that experiments with algae, which are easier to have nutrient cycling built in a closed loop. Sapphire energy for example will inject back the dead cells after fuels are exracted, thus putting back all the nutrients for the growth of next batch of algae. Joule has taken a step further by genetically engineering microorganisms that produces the fuel components directly without having to macerate the microorganisms and harvest only the fuels. Except for the required nutrients to build the modules, everything can become a steady state with no influx of added nutrients and so is highly sustainable and I believe to discuss the current supply of phosphates is moot point. Reports about Joule in CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20016330-54.html?tag=mncol;1n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20003503-54.html?tag=mncol;2n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10295100-54.html?tag=mncol;3n
Like this 1 person likes this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 11:29 AM PDT
Theoretically you can build a system that recycles the nutrients back into it such as being developed by a few companies that experiments with algae, which are easier to have nutrient cycling built in a closed loop. Sapphire energy for example will inject back the dead cells after fuels are extracted, thus putting back all the nutrients for the growth of next batch of algae. Joule has taken a step further by genetically engineering microorganisms that produces the fuel components directly without having to macerate the microorganisms and harvest only the fuels. Except for the required nutrients to build the modules, everything can become a steady state with no influx of added nutrients and so is highly sustainable and I believe to discuss the current supply of phosphates is moot point. Reports about Joule in CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20016330-54.html?tag=mncol;1n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20003503-54.html?tag=mncol;2n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10295100-54.html?tag=mncol;3n Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8618-11128_3-20017470.html?communityId=2069&targetCommunityId=2069&blogId=54&messageId=9886127&tag=mncol;tback#ixzz10TNj55PV
Like this 1 person likes this comment by RWKeyes September 24, 2010 1:50 PM PDT
Phosphates can be harvested from seawater as a byproduct of desalinization. There are many places where agricultural runoff has made aquafers too rich is phophates, which can lead to algae blooms. Perhaps this can be recovered as well. Additionally, as algal oil does not contain phosphates, the nutrients don't leave the algal 'farm' and so the cost is on-time. In summary, I think you are saying the phophate sky is falling, at it isn't.
Like this 1 person likes this comment by RWKeyes September 24, 2010 1:44 PM PDT
A representative of Shell claims that ExxonMobil's algae oil system would use as much water per day as Mexico City consumes. I find this to be suspicious. Perhaps there is a disconnect of reason here...is the volume of water used by the Algae a one-time need? Or is this per-day? And what exactly is this number in some true measure (liters, or at least, gallons...not swimming pools). I don't know much about Exxon's system but I know something of other algae fuel systems and they do not require this amount of water. The comment about Thorium is right on. Thorium is a known quantity, research reactors have been run for over 5 years in the 1960s. The LFTR (liquid floride thorium reactor) solves many of the problems that conventional nuclear reactors have. Don't count out wind, either - new designs which are much more efficient are around the corner, using technology such as counter-rotating secondary turbines. Solar photovoltaic techologies using plastics or carbon nanotubes have a lot of promise, and there is interesting work being done on solar Sterling engines. There's tidal power, geothermal, and even schemes to harness the planet's magnetic field for energy. But I think the safest bet is Thorium.
Like this Reply to this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 2:00 PM PDT
In a closed system, the volume of water used by algae would just be for replenishing leaks and minor losses. For sure, Exxon's algae growing is doomed to fail. Exxon is unsustainable. One should look at Joule's system and Sapphire Energy: http://www.sapphireenergy.com/ http://www.jouleunlimited.com/ And about the Thorium reactors, I have read that they are small and can reuse nuclear waste. How much water would these baby reactors need per megawatt hours of power generated?
Like this 1 person likes this comment by RoyHarvie September 24, 2010 7:12 PM PDT
To Shell: Please take this seriously. Re-consider your role in the energy business. This isn't really a question, but a plea, to help save our planet. Oil is a very valuable commodity, for the petro-chemical side of your business. Great for plastics and synthetics. Excellent lubricant and hydraulic fluid etc. But the most wasteful thing you can do with oil is burn it. Make your long term strategy to get out of the energy business or do something really spectacular like using your massive corporate resources to fund and complete research on LFTRs. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors were invented in the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They ran one for almost 5 years. LFTRs use cheap thorium, are inherently safe, do not produce long term radio-active waste and were abandoned because they are not suitable for making bombs. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk and http://energyfromthorium.com/ Although the principles are proven, there is still some research required for the best materials to have long 50 year plus life. You could set up an LFTR at a tar sands project to create heat and steam without polluting. Put one in a big ship like a tanker and save a bundle on fuel while stopping pollution. Sell them by the thousands and make a fortune. Just don't promote burning oil please. Save this precious substance for future generations. Actually I don't think we should burn anything, coal, biofuels etc. Trying to make these alternatives carbon neutral is not just difficult, it greatly reduces the net energy gained. There are better alternatives. I realise we need to burn fuel for airplanes and rockets, but most other applications can be replaced with electricity. The best answer I could hope for is that you will look into it. Thanks Roy
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by SteveChicago September 25, 2010 9:58 AM PDT
Why was Exxon and Shell even invited to a clean energy conference?? These guys are oil and natural gas explorers. Of course they are going to poo-poo any new energy form that they do not control. They must hate Tesla and Coda, since they do not use any of their products directly. Look at the MIT breakthrough in the lab that generated self assembling solar panels that are suppose to be 40% efficient. That would be twice the current best efficiency. I know that this is lab results and actual will probably be less. But that is a big jump. What happens when we hit 50% efficiency on a solar panel and it is cheap to install? Tie that to en energy storage system in your house. Why not, you have a local furnace, AC, water heater. Forget about the smart grid, what about the smart house.
Like this Reply to this comment by wabcd September 25, 2010 6:53 PM PDT
What a SHAM. Pure Spin and B.S. ------Look at France's meager effort to replace Oil generated Electricity with Nuclear in the 1980's. ------http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/FRTPES.pdf--------. Notice that they replaced half of their total Energy Supply with Nuclear in about 20 yrs, most of it in 12 yrs. This is for a middle wealth nation, with the best health care & social services in the World, one of the most expensive Military's in the World, and during the period improved their Standard of Living & productivity much faster than "renewable special" Germany. And all France did was take a run-of-the-mill GenII American Pressurized Light Water Reactor design, standardized and started building. No modern modular construction. No assembly line production. No CAD or CAM. No advanced electronic control systems. No advanced GenIII designs or computer simulations. ---------------- All France has to do now is Electrify Transport, Nuclear Synthetic Fuels, District Heating and/or expand their Nuclear by another 50% over what they already did. Pretty simple minded, even without using Modern Construction & Design Methods. Check out Germany #1 Renewable Nation on Earth: -------http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/DETPES.pdf------- See the skinny little Red Line - that's Germany's MEGA-EFFORT no-holds-barred Solar & Wind Energy. Tiny compared to their Nuclear NON-EFFORT. -------That is the Truth about Energy - that the Energy Establishment doesn't want you to know.------
Like this Reply to this comment by K A Cheah September 25, 2010 8:46 PM PDT
Using Green Tech to produce energy although it is just promises in the beginning, but it is the first steps in the right direction, the choices of Green Tech used will be of paramount importance to determine the success of these endeavors. Using Natural Gas as the fuel replacement does not 100% really reduce the carbon footprints as Natural Gas combustion produces Carbon Dioxide, Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxides and other polutants as well. Hydro Electric Power is the Tested & Proven Sources of Power Supply as well as the Proven Highly Efficient Titanium Brown Gas Hydroxy HHO Generator Devices' Technologies to run the Petrol and Diesel Engines as the hybrid fuel. There must be clear aims as to what would be the tested, proven & most viable and successful sources of green energy sources that would be with the best potential of mass producing power day and night without fail. Hydro electric power has the greatest chances of success in supplying powers, now for about a century starting with the first Hydro Dam, and now we can have mini-hydro electric power by diverting river water to run new highly efficient & productive direct drive turbines and at every given opprotunities creating multiple mini-hydro electric power sources without the need to dam a river but by just diverting the river water to run these new & direct drive efficient multiple turbines now used in Wind Power production to produce power supply. R&D are necessities in the Advanced Nuclear Energy Technologies adopted by Terra but until now these have not proven to work for France, Germany & Others which are equally advanced & developed Nations in these technologies but those technologies that have been tested & proven must also be encouraged and implemented like the HHO Generator Devices that should be installed & used in all Vehicles to spur reduction and curb in the emission of Greenhouse Gases by giving a tax incentive on the cost of installation of one such device in each of the existing petrol and diesel engines' vehicles that will not be easily replaceable with electric or hybrid vehicles as yet. Renewable Energy Hybrid vehicles' solutions to mitigate global warming, without any need for picking waste sugars' residues & land use !!! In order to mitigate global warming, there is no way that the whole world could immediately convert all their existing polluting petrol and diesel engine driven vehicles to electric and hybrid cars, trucks, boats & ships. These latter type of cars are expensive to adopt and took great effort to produce. Therefore, it will take a much longer time for such vehicles to go mainstream. Also tapping Sugar Residues' Conversion to Gasoline when in use will also pollute the atmosphere even if when this technology is made really successful which will take much longer time to mature. In the meantime, all the existing petrol and diesel engine driven vehicles will still be polluting the atmosphere but these vehicles have still retained their market value and they are not easily replaceable. Therefore, the only solution to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases by say 50% to 90% is by turning them into HHO (Hydroxy) hybrids running on both fossil fuel and water-produced gases called HHO (hydrogen and oxygen) or 'brown gas' which has been the tested and proven. The technology uses the excess electrical energy, produced by the vehicles' alternators, which would have otherwise being wasted if left untapped, to convert water into HHO or 'brown gas' to run the vehicles' engines. This is by installing 'HHO generators' made partially of 316L stainless steel and partially of titanium as electrodes. Coal and gas-burning power stations could also use HHO or 'brown gas' (using similar technologies) as a hybrid fuel as well. There are proven local and international companies that produce such HHO generator devices for sale and the governments of the world's nations should spearhead their adoption through tax incentives so that the whole world can achieve its goal of achieving a 40% reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases to 2005 levels or more as per committed at the recent Copenhagen Summit. Although the Copenhagen Summit agreement is not legally binding, it is morally binding on us to save our world from further destruction by impending natural disasters caused by global warming. If oil can spill like it is now due to an accident or human errors in the Gulf Coasts of USA causing widespread pollution in that Area, what if an accident or human error occurs in the Nuclear Plants anywhere in USA it will not only cause pollution but disasters in Human Life in contamination of the whole surrounding environments for centuries, therefore Nuclear Power Production should also be strictly avoided at all costs as nobody can guarantee that accidents or human errors will not recur such as the Chernobyl Nuclear disasters repeating itself.
Like this Reply to this comment by tsport100 September 26, 2010 2:33 AM PDT
What a surprize, the incumbents talking down their competition. Renewable energy is "constrained by the laws of physics" and I guess that means electronics and therefore Moores Law isn't? What a ridiculous statement! "One consensus among the energy experts was that use of natural gas will increase significantly in the decades ahead" again, no surprize hearing this from incumbents, they sell the stuff. What's their argument against wind and solar? "both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated" So drilling and mining for fossil fuels don't destroy huge amounts of land and transporting the stuff across the planet is an easier and cheaper problem to solve than regulating the grid? I've heard enough!!!!!!!!!!
Like this Reply to this comment by wabcd September 26, 2010 8:50 AM PDT
Solar @ >$40k per kwavg, Wind @ >$11k per kwavg. Both require a shadowing Fossil Fuel power source to supply most of the Wind/Solar/NG energy. About 80-90% of the energy comes from NG. Cycling inefficiencies in that 80-90% waste as much fuel as the Wind & Solar would save. A complete waste of money.------------------------------------------ Even a wealthy nation like the USA would go bankrupt trying to finance a significant Renewable Energy power source. See my above comment for the failure of Germany's all out effort on Renewable Energy vs the incredible success of France's Nuclear.------------------------------------ the World's Foremost Environmentalist, James Lovelock, has correctly determined that ONLY NUCLEAR ENERGY can replace fossil fuels.-------------------------------------------------------------: The Natural Energy of the Universe - James Lovelock on Nuclear Power:------------------------------------- http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/06/natural-energy-of-universe-james.html
Like this by sanenazok September 26, 2010 12:27 PM PDT
The way I see it, if there's going to be breakthrough, it will have to be in solar. Wind is already at 90%+ efficiency as far as motors are concerned, while solar is in the 20's. Neither has a chance against breeder nuclear plants, though. Funny how a story about magical future tech does not mention the magic capacitors that EEStor has been promising since 2006. http://green.autoblog.com/2008/03/29/zenn-claims-they-will-launch-eestor-powered-ev-in-fall-2009/ Oh wait they'll have a demo out before the end of 2011. Great, I guess the illuminati are dragging the approval processes.
Like this Reply to this comment by FredC1212 September 26, 2010 1:08 PM PDT
If there were some consensus among the world's great scientists that a certain path would lead to the very high probability of a certain result, like physicists and the atom bomb, then throwing money at a goal might be the way to go. But as long as there is no general consensus, the due diligence approach is the tried and tested methodology which will, hopefully, deliver much needed breakthroughs in energy production before we fossil fuels are exhausted and we have to turn to breeder reactors, or horses and sails.
Like this Reply to this comment by nunya82 September 26, 2010 7:57 PM PDT
everyone who thinks we need to think along the lines of that same hundred year old framework is just a brainwashed naysayer. thats exactly what the powers that be want you to think. the answer lies in thinking outside the box. just look at you tube and type in seg generator or or www.magpower.us they want us to think we have to keep using their existing infastructure. tecnology is different than it was in the early 1900s. real alternative viable resources have been known about for decades. people have likely been killed over it. they want everyone to think that there is no easy ways to create energy so that we have to keep paying for their heavy equipment to dig up coal then pay for their trains to haul it around and so on. wake up!
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017470-54.html?tag=mncol;posts#ixzz10jjEBb6w.
As is frequently the case, the discussion is as informative and stimulating as the article that started it.
ADT adds energy controls to home security service
September 24, 2010 9:43 AM PDT
by Martin LaMonica
When you arm your alarm system when you leave the house, how about automatically turning off all the lights and resetting the thermostat?
Home security service company ADT next month will roll out a service that does exactly that. It's a home-automation system that uses a network of wireless sensors to let people control thermostats and lights along with their traditional home monitoring service.
Called ADT Pulse, the service uses software from start-up iControl that provides the consumer portal application as well as the back-end software, said Lewis Long, the company's vice president of residential and small business marketing today. ADT will also provide a touch-screen tablet device, made by GE Security, for controlling the system, which has other applications, such as weather and news.
There are a growing number of home energy management technologies, which include everything from power monitors to Web portals made available through utilities, and many companies vying to provide energy-related products and services to end users.
The ADT Pulse system can be accessed through a PC, smart-phone application, or dedicated device for controlling thermostat, lights, cameras, and home security settings.
(Credit: ADT)
Verizon, for example, is developing a combined home energy management and security service that the company hopes to start testing later this year.
Similar to Verizon, ADT's approach is to offer additional services to its home alarm service in an effort to get more customers. The ADT Pulse system is designed to lower overall energy usage by cutting down on wasted energy and give people remote control over the thermostat, lights, and other connected devices such as cameras which use the Z-Wave protocol.
The energy-related package includes a thermostat, light switches, and a wireless module that lamps (or any other appliance) plug into. All those devices, as well as the security keypad and touch-screen controller, connect to a central hub about the size of cable modem. That connects the home router via an Ethernet cable.
The set-up lets people use a Web site to schedule a thermostat, lights, and other connected devices, such as door and window sensors or fire monitors. A person could, for example, program all the lights to turn off at a certain time every day or set thermostat settings. The system can also be accessed through an iPhone, Android phone, or the touch-screen tablet.
The company is looking to expand the service by connecting to utility meters in the future, Long said. That would allow people to view how much energy a whole house uses and what the impact of different adjustments is.
ADT started testing the service, which was first announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2009, earlier this year and now has it in about 4,000 homes. Long said that anecdotally, people have been able to cut electricity use by about 20 percent, which would be a very significant savings. Many smart grid companies with home energy monitoring systems expect consumers can lower energy anywhere from a few percent to 15 percent.
The base package costs $399 for installation and $47.99 per month. The package with lighting and thermostat controls is $749 for installation and $49.99 per month. The package that includes cameras and video feeds of the home is $1,249 and $57.99 per month.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017556-54.html?tag=mncol;posts#ixzz10jYXYKlX
by Martin LaMonica
When you arm your alarm system when you leave the house, how about automatically turning off all the lights and resetting the thermostat?
Home security service company ADT next month will roll out a service that does exactly that. It's a home-automation system that uses a network of wireless sensors to let people control thermostats and lights along with their traditional home monitoring service.
Called ADT Pulse, the service uses software from start-up iControl that provides the consumer portal application as well as the back-end software, said Lewis Long, the company's vice president of residential and small business marketing today. ADT will also provide a touch-screen tablet device, made by GE Security, for controlling the system, which has other applications, such as weather and news.
There are a growing number of home energy management technologies, which include everything from power monitors to Web portals made available through utilities, and many companies vying to provide energy-related products and services to end users.
The ADT Pulse system can be accessed through a PC, smart-phone application, or dedicated device for controlling thermostat, lights, cameras, and home security settings.
(Credit: ADT)
Verizon, for example, is developing a combined home energy management and security service that the company hopes to start testing later this year.
Similar to Verizon, ADT's approach is to offer additional services to its home alarm service in an effort to get more customers. The ADT Pulse system is designed to lower overall energy usage by cutting down on wasted energy and give people remote control over the thermostat, lights, and other connected devices such as cameras which use the Z-Wave protocol.
The energy-related package includes a thermostat, light switches, and a wireless module that lamps (or any other appliance) plug into. All those devices, as well as the security keypad and touch-screen controller, connect to a central hub about the size of cable modem. That connects the home router via an Ethernet cable.
The set-up lets people use a Web site to schedule a thermostat, lights, and other connected devices, such as door and window sensors or fire monitors. A person could, for example, program all the lights to turn off at a certain time every day or set thermostat settings. The system can also be accessed through an iPhone, Android phone, or the touch-screen tablet.
The company is looking to expand the service by connecting to utility meters in the future, Long said. That would allow people to view how much energy a whole house uses and what the impact of different adjustments is.
ADT started testing the service, which was first announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2009, earlier this year and now has it in about 4,000 homes. Long said that anecdotally, people have been able to cut electricity use by about 20 percent, which would be a very significant savings. Many smart grid companies with home energy monitoring systems expect consumers can lower energy anywhere from a few percent to 15 percent.
The base package costs $399 for installation and $47.99 per month. The package with lighting and thermostat controls is $749 for installation and $49.99 per month. The package that includes cameras and video feeds of the home is $1,249 and $57.99 per month.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017556-54.html?tag=mncol;posts#ixzz10jYXYKlX
SolarCity: Solar financing to become a commodity
September 27, 2010 4:00 AM PDT
by Martin LaMonica
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--SolarCity is a cross between a solar installer and software company, which will give the company an edge as solar leases become commonplace, according to CEO Lyndon Rive.
The San Francisco-based start-up is one of the pioneers in offering financing for residential solar power, which eliminates the hefty upfront cost of photovoltaic panels. The model has served SolarCity well, which has grown rapidly in the past three years and could go public within two years, Rive said.
Lyndon Rive, CEO SolarCity
(Credit: SolarCity)
Consumers can lease panels from SolarCity, which owns and maintains them for 20 years. Through the arrangement, customers' monthly electricity bills go down by about 10 percent to 15 percent, according to Rive, who was at the EmTech conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday.
But eventually, offering some sort of financing, either through a lease or a power purchase agreement, will become a commodity, he said. Indeed, more and more solar installers are offering financing to homeowners interested in solar, but unable to invest $25,000 to $40,000 upfront for a full system.
To stay ahead of others, SolarCity has developed a software system which could be called customer relationship management (CRM) for solar. It smoothes out the process of delivering a bid to consumers, handling permits and incentives, and designing installation.
"Our differentiator has never been our lease. It's the entire customer experience," said Rive, who cofounded the company with his brother Peter after working at a software company. "As the economy and the financial markets stabilize, financing will be a commodity."
Rather than the installer bringing in a third-party financing company, SolarCity can offer a full offering, sort of like how Apple offers an end-to-end offering, Rive said.
As for going public, Rive said the company is cash-flow positive now although shrinking state incentives for solar power do make it harder to lower customers' bills through a lease. SolarCity now offers installation services in five states and is looking to expand in the Northeast next.
An IPO "is not my exit. That's my start. I have to deliver solar to millions of homes," he said.
Using storage to firm solar on the grid
In addition to seeking to expand nationally, SolarCity is involved in two projects that are on the cutting edge of solar technology.
The company is working with Pacific Gas & Electric and the University of California at Berkeley to see how storage can make solar panels a reliable power source for utilities.
A 2.8 kilowatt system installed by SolarCity in Beaverton, Ore.
(Credit: SolarCity)
Right now, utilities can't count on distributed solar panels as a power source as they would a power generation plant because there are variations in weather. With the battery program, SolarCity will develop a system to aggregate power from solar panel-charged batteries so that grid operators can plan on their contribution. The battery packs will be supplied by electric-vehicle maker Tesla Motors.
In Hawaii, large numbers of distributed solar panels risk causing instability in the grid by providing more power than the grid can use, Rive said. In Maui, there's been a halt to solar installations so the local utility can better understand the impact, he said.
"Over the next two or three years, it will become more of a problem (in California) but we have to figure out how to reduce the cost of the batteries," he said.
In another project, SolarCity will be installing thin-film solar panels from MiaSole and First Solar at Wal-Mart, which put out a bid specifically to advance thin-film solar panels.
Price competition between traditional polycrystalline silicon and thin-film panels is going to be brutal in the years ahead, Rive said. "It's going to be a battle. It's going to be a bloodbath," he said.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017590-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz10jWqhtDt
by Martin LaMonica
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--SolarCity is a cross between a solar installer and software company, which will give the company an edge as solar leases become commonplace, according to CEO Lyndon Rive.
The San Francisco-based start-up is one of the pioneers in offering financing for residential solar power, which eliminates the hefty upfront cost of photovoltaic panels. The model has served SolarCity well, which has grown rapidly in the past three years and could go public within two years, Rive said.
Lyndon Rive, CEO SolarCity
(Credit: SolarCity)
Consumers can lease panels from SolarCity, which owns and maintains them for 20 years. Through the arrangement, customers' monthly electricity bills go down by about 10 percent to 15 percent, according to Rive, who was at the EmTech conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday.
But eventually, offering some sort of financing, either through a lease or a power purchase agreement, will become a commodity, he said. Indeed, more and more solar installers are offering financing to homeowners interested in solar, but unable to invest $25,000 to $40,000 upfront for a full system.
To stay ahead of others, SolarCity has developed a software system which could be called customer relationship management (CRM) for solar. It smoothes out the process of delivering a bid to consumers, handling permits and incentives, and designing installation.
"Our differentiator has never been our lease. It's the entire customer experience," said Rive, who cofounded the company with his brother Peter after working at a software company. "As the economy and the financial markets stabilize, financing will be a commodity."
Rather than the installer bringing in a third-party financing company, SolarCity can offer a full offering, sort of like how Apple offers an end-to-end offering, Rive said.
As for going public, Rive said the company is cash-flow positive now although shrinking state incentives for solar power do make it harder to lower customers' bills through a lease. SolarCity now offers installation services in five states and is looking to expand in the Northeast next.
An IPO "is not my exit. That's my start. I have to deliver solar to millions of homes," he said.
Using storage to firm solar on the grid
In addition to seeking to expand nationally, SolarCity is involved in two projects that are on the cutting edge of solar technology.
The company is working with Pacific Gas & Electric and the University of California at Berkeley to see how storage can make solar panels a reliable power source for utilities.
A 2.8 kilowatt system installed by SolarCity in Beaverton, Ore.
(Credit: SolarCity)
Right now, utilities can't count on distributed solar panels as a power source as they would a power generation plant because there are variations in weather. With the battery program, SolarCity will develop a system to aggregate power from solar panel-charged batteries so that grid operators can plan on their contribution. The battery packs will be supplied by electric-vehicle maker Tesla Motors.
In Hawaii, large numbers of distributed solar panels risk causing instability in the grid by providing more power than the grid can use, Rive said. In Maui, there's been a halt to solar installations so the local utility can better understand the impact, he said.
"Over the next two or three years, it will become more of a problem (in California) but we have to figure out how to reduce the cost of the batteries," he said.
In another project, SolarCity will be installing thin-film solar panels from MiaSole and First Solar at Wal-Mart, which put out a bid specifically to advance thin-film solar panels.
Price competition between traditional polycrystalline silicon and thin-film panels is going to be brutal in the years ahead, Rive said. "It's going to be a battle. It's going to be a bloodbath," he said.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017590-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz10jWqhtDt
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Whopper of a wind farm opens off Britain
World's largest offshore project has 100 turbines — so far
A boat powering through the Thames estuary on Thursday provides perspective of just how big the wind turbines there are.
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 9/23/2010 11:59:42 AM ET
-LONDON — The world's largest offshore wind farm had its grand opening Thursday — and its location on the estuary of the Thames River makes it a showcase for Britain's push to move beyond fossil fuels.
So far, 100 wind turbines have been planted in waters up to 80 feet deep across the estuary in southern England. The idea is to produce enough electricity, 300 megawatts, to power the equivalent of 200,000 homes.
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Each turbine is nearly as tall as a 40-story building and the blades are at least 65 feet above the water for clearance with vessels. No turbine is closer than 1,600 feet to another and the entire "farm" covers an area of 22 square miles.
Up to 341 turbines will be installed over the next four years.
With Thursday's opening, which tops a 91-turbine farm off Denmark, Britain now has more offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world combined.
"We are in a unique position to become a world leader in this industry," British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said in a statement before he attended the grand opening. "We are an island nation and I firmly believe we should be harnessing our wind, wave and tidal resources to the maximum."
Britain now gets three percent of its electricity from renewables but aims to get 15 percent by 2020. As part of that, the government this year awarded licenses to wind farm developers in a program that could deliver up to 32 gigawatts of generation capacity and require investment of more than $117 billion.
Critics of the $1.4 billion wind farm include some nearby residents who object to the sight of the giant towers, some visible from shore. The farm starts about seven miles from shore.
Environmental groups tend to back wind power as long as projects are not in areas of significant bird flight paths.
The new wind farm met that standard. It's an "important stride forward," said Craig Bennett of the British chapter of Friends of the Earth.
But the group also wants Britain to guarantee funding of at least $3 billion a year for the recently created and government-funded Green Investment Bank, which aims to boost private-sector spending on low-carbon technology.
"I know that there is still more to do to bring forward the large sums of investment we want to see in low-carbon energy in the U.K.," Huhne said, "and we as government are committed to playing our part."
One embarrassment to the government is that only 20 percent of the investment in the new wind farm has gone to British firms. The farm is owned and operated by Swedish energy company Vattenfall, and the largest chunk of expenditure has been to Denmark's Vestas for the wind turbines.
Global interest
The promised vast expansion of Britain's offshore wind resources is proving to be a powerful lure for companies not normally associated with renewables but keen to generate eco-friendly and reliable sources of revenue.
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Engineers, consultants and oil rig makers around the world are setting up new divisions and partnerships in order to get a foothold in the market, which offers secure returns to those building and running the turbines.
"It's attractive for a lot of companies that are looking for contracts," said Ian Simm, chief executive of green fund firm Impax Asset Management, which has holdings in companies such as Vestas.
"The fundamental point that makes it attractive is scale and government commitment, and the fact that industrial companies can learn the facts of success in one offshore environment and be able to transfer the majority, if not all, of those skills to other countries," he said.
However, clearer statements from the government on renewables incentives are still needed to support wind farm developers and really kick-start the market, according to Sarwjit Sambhi, managing director of power generation at Centrica, which has won the rights to develop up to 4.2 gigawatts of offshore windpower in the Irish Sea.
"There is a general theme across this in that we haven't passed the tipping point yet where the industry is confident enough that there is a long-term pipeline of projects."
Britain's potential
The Offshore Valuation Group, made up of government and industry organizations, estimates if Britain were to develop just 29 percent of its potential offshore resource, this could deliver 169 gigawatts of capacity by 2050 and turn Britain into a net exporter of electricity.
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..This would involve installing 7.2 gigawatts a year — roughly equivalent to 1,000 7.5 megawatt turbines — with fixed offshore wind accounting for 5.4 gigawatts of the average annual build rate needed.
The supply chain needed for this would have annual revenues of nearly $100 billion in 2050 and employ around 145,000 people directly, according to the Offshore Valuation report.
As a result shipbuilders and companies that specialize in making oil rigs are also entering the wind market.
SeaEnergy Executive Chairman Steve Remp, who has worked in the offshore oil and gas market for 30 years, expects the market for equipment vessels to take off at the beginning of 2012.
"I foresee a sizeable industry evolving that calls on the engineering expertise in working offshore in deep water," he said
A boat powering through the Thames estuary on Thursday provides perspective of just how big the wind turbines there are.
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 9/23/2010 11:59:42 AM ET
-LONDON — The world's largest offshore wind farm had its grand opening Thursday — and its location on the estuary of the Thames River makes it a showcase for Britain's push to move beyond fossil fuels.
So far, 100 wind turbines have been planted in waters up to 80 feet deep across the estuary in southern England. The idea is to produce enough electricity, 300 megawatts, to power the equivalent of 200,000 homes.
More world news Israeli settlement slowdown ends; talk push goes on
Jewish settlers broke ground on a new daycare center deep inside the West Bank Sunday ahead of the government's end to 10-month-old construction slowdown. A peace talk push continued.
.Suspected U.S. missile attacks kill 7 in Pakistan
Afghan officials say British woman kidnapped
Blast near Fallujah kills 4 Iraqi police
German police: 12 dead in crash of Polish bus
Each turbine is nearly as tall as a 40-story building and the blades are at least 65 feet above the water for clearance with vessels. No turbine is closer than 1,600 feet to another and the entire "farm" covers an area of 22 square miles.
Up to 341 turbines will be installed over the next four years.
With Thursday's opening, which tops a 91-turbine farm off Denmark, Britain now has more offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world combined.
"We are in a unique position to become a world leader in this industry," British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said in a statement before he attended the grand opening. "We are an island nation and I firmly believe we should be harnessing our wind, wave and tidal resources to the maximum."
Britain now gets three percent of its electricity from renewables but aims to get 15 percent by 2020. As part of that, the government this year awarded licenses to wind farm developers in a program that could deliver up to 32 gigawatts of generation capacity and require investment of more than $117 billion.
Critics of the $1.4 billion wind farm include some nearby residents who object to the sight of the giant towers, some visible from shore. The farm starts about seven miles from shore.
Environmental groups tend to back wind power as long as projects are not in areas of significant bird flight paths.
The new wind farm met that standard. It's an "important stride forward," said Craig Bennett of the British chapter of Friends of the Earth.
But the group also wants Britain to guarantee funding of at least $3 billion a year for the recently created and government-funded Green Investment Bank, which aims to boost private-sector spending on low-carbon technology.
"I know that there is still more to do to bring forward the large sums of investment we want to see in low-carbon energy in the U.K.," Huhne said, "and we as government are committed to playing our part."
One embarrassment to the government is that only 20 percent of the investment in the new wind farm has gone to British firms. The farm is owned and operated by Swedish energy company Vattenfall, and the largest chunk of expenditure has been to Denmark's Vestas for the wind turbines.
Global interest
The promised vast expansion of Britain's offshore wind resources is proving to be a powerful lure for companies not normally associated with renewables but keen to generate eco-friendly and reliable sources of revenue.
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Engineers, consultants and oil rig makers around the world are setting up new divisions and partnerships in order to get a foothold in the market, which offers secure returns to those building and running the turbines.
"It's attractive for a lot of companies that are looking for contracts," said Ian Simm, chief executive of green fund firm Impax Asset Management, which has holdings in companies such as Vestas.
"The fundamental point that makes it attractive is scale and government commitment, and the fact that industrial companies can learn the facts of success in one offshore environment and be able to transfer the majority, if not all, of those skills to other countries," he said.
However, clearer statements from the government on renewables incentives are still needed to support wind farm developers and really kick-start the market, according to Sarwjit Sambhi, managing director of power generation at Centrica, which has won the rights to develop up to 4.2 gigawatts of offshore windpower in the Irish Sea.
"There is a general theme across this in that we haven't passed the tipping point yet where the industry is confident enough that there is a long-term pipeline of projects."
Britain's potential
The Offshore Valuation Group, made up of government and industry organizations, estimates if Britain were to develop just 29 percent of its potential offshore resource, this could deliver 169 gigawatts of capacity by 2050 and turn Britain into a net exporter of electricity.
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..This would involve installing 7.2 gigawatts a year — roughly equivalent to 1,000 7.5 megawatt turbines — with fixed offshore wind accounting for 5.4 gigawatts of the average annual build rate needed.
The supply chain needed for this would have annual revenues of nearly $100 billion in 2050 and employ around 145,000 people directly, according to the Offshore Valuation report.
As a result shipbuilders and companies that specialize in making oil rigs are also entering the wind market.
SeaEnergy Executive Chairman Steve Remp, who has worked in the offshore oil and gas market for 30 years, expects the market for equipment vessels to take off at the beginning of 2012.
"I foresee a sizeable industry evolving that calls on the engineering expertise in working offshore in deep water," he said
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