Big money is backing wind power, and the number of investors ready to step up to the plate continues to grow. But according to an article in Renewable Energy World, that growth is hampered by a lack of a nationwide “electronic transmission superhighway”.

In the sixties America created the interstate superhighways that now crisscross our nation. Now, our country’s energy security depends on a new interstate initiative. Will the U.S. government step up to the plate?

“Across the country, hundreds of wind projects comprising tens of thousands of wind turbines are on hold because no one wants to step forward and pay for upgrades that will primarily benefit others. The obvious solution to this problem is a policy framework that will allow firms interested in building new transmission to collect the costs of the infrastructure investment from those who will benefit from it.”

Richard Sergel, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and Kevin Kolevar, DOE’s assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, have pointed out in recent testimony before Congress that all low-carbon technologies, from large-scale wind projects to concentrated solar power, and even nuclear and “clean coal” technologies, require an updated electric grid because they are most often located in remote areas. The map above shows the Transmission Superhighway Vision put forth by the American Wind Energy Association and American Electric Power, an investor-owned utility that spans 11 states.

Photo Credit: AWEA

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When you think of the future of solar power, you normally envision flat panels out in some massive field, blinding the sheep for miles around, or even the small panel up on your roof. What you’re unlikely to imagine is a bloody great big tower in the middle of nowhere.

A not so new energy concept has been unveiled by EnviroMission Limited in South Melbourne, Australia, and it harkens back to an idea demonstrated more than 20 years ago. It is basically small amount of panels on the ground, centering around a massive tower. The collectors warm the air near the surface, and then channel it up the tower. Turbines placed at the bottom make electricity created by the updraft.

“It’s a combination chimney, windmill, greenhouse,” said Kim Forté of EnviroMission Limited, who have designed a kilometer-high tower, and now are hoping to build it somewhere in southwestern USA.

This is basically an improved and improvised version of a solar chimney, a centuries old technique for providing ventilation throughout a home, using an updraft to move air throughout a home. EnviroMission are hoping though, to build much larger structures, in both width and height. The width is obvious, as the more solar panels there are the more chance there is of generating the heat at ground level. But the taller the tower is, the more powerful the suction is going up the chimney.

EnviroMission are looking at building a tower that would reach 800 to 1000 meters in to the sky. It would be surrounded by a greenhouse canopy some 2.5 kilometers in radius. “It is a sizeable footprint [on the land], but with the rising cost of carbon fuels, it’s becoming more commercial,” Forté said.

The advantage of a solar tower over normal solar cells is definitely not efficiency, as a tower is only a tenth that efficient as cells. But on the other hand, a tower is much less expensive to build. A 200-megawatt tower such as described above would cost upwards of a billion dollars. But according to a 2005 industry report, this would imply a 10 cent per kilowatt-hour charge, which equals out to be roughly a third of the cost of electricity generated from solar cells.

Solar power is definitely one aspect of our power generation future. But whether we will look towards efficiency or cost is yet to be determined.

Source

Photo Credit: EnviroMission Ltd.

Wind turbines and solar photovoltaic have become the iconic symbols of clean energy and environmental consciousness. But what about the other less ’sexy’ forms of clean energy? Well, of course using less energy is the cleanest form to use, and it is usually the most cost-effective. But for people who want to increase the uptake of energy from clean sources, it may be more difficult. Unfortunately, not everyone has a strong enough wind or solar resource to make those investments cost-effective. Many folks living in urban settings would find it virtually impossible to implement either of those technologies. However, geothermal can provide or assist with heating and cooling needs for urban and rural alike. Geothermal exchange can be scaled for a single family home on up to entire city blocks, or more.

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Especially in the North American west, the geothermal resource is quite accessible. Now there are essentially two kinds of (residential) geothermal and I will not go too far into the details other than to say that one kind only needs to dig down 6-12 feet to tap the earth’s stored temperature. The other kind may take hundreds of feet of drilling but taps into a much hotter source. (There are also utility-scale geothermal facilities that are being developed in places where the source cannot be ignored, because hot waters bubble all the way up to the surface. Iceland, for example, gets 26% of its energy from geothermal and they get their remaining energy from hydro).

I ran across this article at The Oil Drum and thought it was too tasty to pass up. It describes a new design to help concentrated solar power (CSP) increase efficiency and reduce cost.

Here’s the problem: solar thermal collectors focus the sun’s heat onto a clear tube of fluid (see: Intro to Solar Thermal). The collectors generate the most energy when the sun’s rays are parallel with the tube of fluid. Since the sun moves across the sky throughout the days and seasons, it only reaches this “sweet spot” certain hours each day. But, if the solar collectors could move to track the sun, their power output could increase dramatically. Keep in mind that CSP is one of the most efficient forms of solar power. (more…)

Xtreme Concentrated Solar Power: if a magnifying glass is like lightning to ants, this would be their atomic bomb.

We already know that concentrated solar power (CSP) is shaking things up in the solar industry. A subset within the industry is turning up the heat. “Extreme” Concentrated solar magnifies intense sunlight onto a solar cell, at temperatures that could melt it, to boost efficiency for less money.

The holy grail of renewable energy is not just efficiency but competitive pricing. Most consumers don’t want to wait 5-10+ years to earn back their investment in energy savings, assuming that they can afford solar. Never mind the added value of generating some of your own energy. Utility-scale facilities hinge not only on cost, but infrastructure. If you build your solar/wind farm in the desert, transmission lines may not come out to meet you. So when someone claims to have a cheap, efficient solar technology, people pay attention.

Extreme Concentrated Solar stands out because it claims to be affordable and very efficient. Unlike solar-thermal (CSP), which utilizes the heat of the sun, this technology still converts light into power (photo voltaic). So many solar companies have attempted to reduce cost by rising to industrial scale, but this method takes the opposite approach. XCPV (extreme concentrated photo voltaic) uses very small solar panels combined into a module design, and modules are infinitely scalable. (more…)

There are a lot of cool gadgets out there, but there’s a fine line between what’s cool and what’s useful. This is a green list of gadgets that are useful, but boast the extra-cool factor of using renewable energy. No batteries required!

10. The Ship has Landed

The lightship is a solar-powered LED mounted on suction cups. Result: a portable, hands-free, solar light. It’s even weather proof and weighs a slim 8oz. For under $15, this is the best 8 hours of clean light I can think of, and I might just get one for my car/camping trips/travels.

9. High-tech pool toy? (more…)

They say everything is bigger in Texas and that certainly applies to the giant windmills that have replaced oil derricks in the rural area of Sweetwater, in Nolan County. According to the New York Times, the towers stand 20 stories high and the turbine blades are as long as a football field, and farmers can earn $500 per month for each turbine they allow built on their land. Texas is now the largest producer of wind power in the United States, with $700 million in investment injected into wind projects in January alone, enough to power 100,000 homes.

But even bigger news to those who would like to see some attention paid to America’s rural economic health, is the impact that these wind farms are having on the rural economy. Property values have doubled, teens are staying in the area after graduation to work in the growing number of wind power jobs, and the downtown area is in a state of renewal.

“Since the wind boom began a few years ago, the total value of property here in Nolan County has doubled, and the county judge, Tim Fambrough, estimated it would increase an additional 25 percent this year. County property taxes are going down, home values are going up and the county has extra funds to remodel the courthouse and improve road maintenance…Wind companies are remodeling abandoned buildings, and new stores, hotels and restaurants have opened around this old railroad town.” –Clifford Kraus, New York Times

But this rural revival is in danger of an early death unless Congress extends the federal renewable energy tax credits that have helped fuel wind energy growth. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) estimates that over 116,000 U.S. jobs and nearly $19 billion in U.S. investment could be lost in just one year if the tax credits are not renewed by Congress. These jobs are in the areas hardest hit in today’s economy: construction and manufacturing. Concerned citizens should contact their elected representatives to encourage them to act to extend the federal renewable energy tax credits.

We renewable energy advocates love our silicon solar cells, but they come at a price: the process of making silicon generates massive amounts of heat and is a great, big electricity hog.

“Quartz rocks placed in electric-arc furnaces exude oxygen as superheated gas, leaving molten silicon. Just venting all that heat without setting something afire is a concern.” — Jon Van, Chicago Tribune

Now a company has found a way to make money capturing and using that heat, to make steam to run electrical generators. Illinois company Recycled Energy Development LLC, or RED, announced it has closed a deal with West Virginia Alloys, a silicon making subsidiary of Globe Metallurgical, Inc. The deal allows West Virginia Alloys to lock in a price for its electricity for 25 years; since that’s their largest cost of doing business, they’re happy. And since West Virginia’s electricity comes from burning coal, the state is pretty happy about having a way to help offset the millions of tons of greenhouse gases produced there. RED is getting big money from a deal made with Denham Capital Management, a private equity firm fueled by $1.5Billion from Bill Gates and Harvard University.

French researchers are trying to develop a way to get electricity from rain, claiming the mechanical energy of raindrops could be enough to power low-energy devices.

It’s not exactly as sexy as harnessing that big ball of fire in the sky or a towering wind turbine. But a clean, 21st century energy system means trying to get energy out of pretty much anything. According to Discovery News, here’s how the rain power could work:

The method relies on a plastic called PVDF (for polyvinylidene difluoride), which is used in a range of products from pipes, films, and wire insulators to high-end paints for metal. PVDF has the unusual property of piezoelectricity, which means it can produce a charge when it’s mechanically deformed.

[Researchers] embedded electrodes into a thin membrane of PVDF, just 25 micrometers thick (it takes 1,000 micrometers to make one millimeter). Then they bombarded the sheet with drops of water varying in diameter from 1 to 5 mm.

As the drops hit the material, they create vibrations, which creates a charge. The electrodes recover the charge for use as power.

The biggest raindrops make the biggest vibrations, and the research team can make at least 1 microwatt of continuous power with the largest drops so far. It’s too early to say now whether we’ll be able to get stable electricity from rainshowers, it’s great that there are researchers like these who think outside the box. (Cloud power, anyone?)

Discovery News
Photo credit: Malene Thyssen

Tidal power isn’t really talked about a lot here in the U.S., but it’s always exciting when a fresh renewable energy technology enters the equation. To wit: Britain just launched a first-of-its-kind contraption that will generate tide power for the Isles.

This past weekend, a 122-foot, 1.2 megawatt upside-down-windmill-looking-thing headed out to sea from the same dock that built the Titanic. The device, called SeaGen, will make enough energy from tidal power to feed about 1,140 homes and is the world’s first commercial-scale system for making electricity from marine currents, according to the Independent. (more…)