Environmental Alternatives

Energy
Energy Break-Throughs
Related Topics

De-Regulation

• The "average American home" consumes about 30 kilowatt hours per day.
• PHANTOM LOADS!  A wireless phone or inkjet printer (even when its turned off) can be a bigger energy hog than a hair dryer.
• Cut your energy cost by up to 99% by using super efficient LED lights.  The U. S. Department of Energy reports that each year in the United States, holiday lights consume 2.2 terawatt-hours, that’s 2.2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), of electricity. At 10 cents per kWh, that’s US$220 million annually to power our displays.
• Take a walk throughout your house/apartment.  Try to identify what you think are the biggest electrical energy users.  Choose ONE ROOM to analyze:  Make a list of everything that runs on electricity in ONE room, but don't include battery operated items such as clocks or smoke detectors.  DO include any built in appliances, lights or clocks, not just the things that plug into a wall socket.  Now think about ways you can reduce the electrical load (use) in the one room you selected.  Then walk through the next room.

The World Alliance for Decentralized Energy
http://www.localpower.org/index.htm

Hazardous Waste as Fuel

Consider
Hazardous Waste as Fuel

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In Manila there have been over 10,000 solar lights using soda bottles.  The poor families lives in shanty houses covered with corrugated metal roofs. The 1 liter PET soda bottle contains water, with a little bleach to prevent mold.  The light comes in from a hole in the roof like a solar tube.  The bottles disperse the light 360 degrees. The brightness is equal to a 55 or 60 watt light bulb, but this light comes from the sun.

http://www.reuters.com/video/2011/07/11/bringing-light-to-the-poor-one-liter-at?videoId=217059469&view=217059469&sp=3400&refresh=true

Here is the link to "A Liter of Light" non profit organization.
More videos in English and tagalog:
http://isanglitrongliwanag.org/

NUCLEAR PLANT SITE WILL HOST REGION'S LARGEST SOLAR-ELECTRIC INSTALLATION
An abandoned nuclear power plant site in south-central Washington will soon begin producing electricity--from the sun, not from splitting atoms. The Northwest's largest solar-electric installation, with a projected capacity of 35 kilowatts to 50 KW, is planned for the WNP-1 nuclear plant site in the Tri-Cities area. This solar undertaking is a joint venture of Energy Northwest, Bonneville Power Administration, Bonneville Environmental Foundation, Western S.U.N. Cooperative, at least one corporate sponsor and the U.S. Department of Energy. "Everyone talks about solar but no one ever does it," said BPA's Tom Osborn. Solar energy is widely considered too expensive, as was wind power a decade ago, he noted.
"We have to start somewhere." Energy Northwest will own and operate the solar plant, according to an April 20 news release. At least some of the proposed 50-KW capacity--perhaps half--could be installed as early as July. Estimated energy production is 80,000 kilowatt hours annually when the project reaches full size. This represents "an important step forward for solar energy in the Northwest," said Rachel Shimshak of Renewable Northwest Project in the news release. "Taken together with the several hundred megawatts of new wind energy now in the pipeline, it is evidence that renewables are ready."
http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/conweb/conweb64.html#cw64-6

THREE BUSINESSES COMMIT TO 100-PERCENT NEW RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY
Three Puget Sound-area companies will voluntarily pay more for their electricity in support of renewable energy. The three enterprises--Xantrex Technology, Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters and Global Energy Concepts--will indirectly buy all their electricity from renewables under milestone agreements announced in early April. These are reportedly the
first Northwest companies to commit to 100-percent new renewable energy via "green tags" procured through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. The green tag purchases by the three western Washington businesses will help finance new renewables for the regional grid, via BEF. BEF president Angus Duncan called this "a truly extraordinary commitment" by the three companies. "They are exemplars for other folks in the region who have the same impulses but haven't acted upon them," he said at an April 4 ceremony at Snohomish PUD headquarters in Everett. Company officials cited business as well as philosophical reasons for paying electricity premiums estimated in the range of 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. Xantrex--which, based on that number and its 2000 consumption, will pay approximately $20,000 more
annually for power at its manufacturing plant in Arlington--will use clean energy as a marketing tool. The maker of power inverters for renewable systems will affix a logo declaring its 100-percent green energy status to all products shipped out of the factory.
http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/conweb/conweb64.html#cw64-7

OREGON IOU RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS CAN SOON CHOOSE RENEWABLES RATE OPTION
Residential electric customers of Oregon investor-owned utilities will soon be able to choose a time-of-use rate, one of several green resource rates, or an environmental mitigation rate, in addition to the traditional cost-of-service rate now offered by Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp. The Oregon Public Utility Commission on March 20 approved the
new portfolio of options, which will also be offered to small non-residential customers, beginning Oct. 1. Oregon's electric industry restructuring law requires the two IOUs to offer a market-based option and at least one renewable resource rate by the October deadline. Actual tariffs for the rate options still must be developed and some of the finer points worked out, but members of the Portfolio Advisory Committee, which developed the options, are pleased with the proposal. So are renewable energy advocates. "This portfolio will allow smaller utility customers meaningful choices that will further stimulate the market for renewable energy," said Peter West, assistant director of Renewable Northwest Project, in a news release. The next step is for the OPUC to approve a bidding process for the renewable resource options, according to OPUC
senior utility analyst Rebecca Hathhorn, who served on the advisory group.  This bidding process should occur "extremely expeditiously," she said, as the utilities must file tariffs for the new options by June 1.
http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/conweb/conweb64.html#cw64-8

NORTHWEST UTILITY ENERGY SAVINGS DROP 40 PERCENT FROM 1997 TO 2000, RTF SURVEY FINDS
Utility-reported energy savings in the Pacific Northwest dropped nearly 40 percent from 1997 to 2000, according to a newly released survey by the Regional Technical Forum. The RTF study further documents the decline of energy conservation across the Northwest since the mid-1990s. It found collective utility-reported savings of 49.91 average megawatts in 1997, 36.56 aMW in 1998, 35.06 aMW in 1999 and 30.61 aMW in 2000. Meanwhile, utility-reported conservation spending plunged from $86.7 million in 1997 to $54.4 million in 2000, a drop of about 37 percent. These downward conservation trends do not uniformly apply to the 105 Northwest utilities hat responded to the survey--some actually increased their energy savings over the four-year period. In addition, the RTF's utility-supplied data are somewhat inconsistent and incomplete across the region. This is a "more cursory" summary than the Green Books assembled by the Northwest Power Planning Council in the early- to mid-1990s, acknowledged RTF member Ken Corum of the Council. It's probably accurate regionwide within a margin of error of 10 to 15 percent, he said. Nevertheless, Corum told Con.WEB, "The general shape of what's been going on in the way of conservation is reasonably well-reflected here. It's much lower than it was in the mid-1990s." But he also expects regional conservation numbers to rise again in the next two to three years. RTF survey tells a tale of declining conservation.
http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/conweb/conweb64.html#cw64-9

BRIEFS:
California Gov. Davis Signs $850 Million Conservation/Renewables Bills;
Two Solar-Electric Projects Win BEF Grant Funding;
Portland Business Wins Energy Efficiency Award;
Alliance Releases Lighting, Activities Reports;
BPA Wins Energy Star National Award;
Customer Publications Available from Northwest Regional Group
http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/conweb/conweb64.html#cw64-10
For more information:
http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/conweb/conweb.html

"To imply that we're flattening Appalachia is so untrue. We're creating level land for Appalachia."

-- Bill Caylor, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, claiming that the destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining- blowing the tops off mountains to get at the coal beneath- performs the "necessary" function of creating flat land for development.

BONN, Germany, December 4, 2001 (ENS) - The reservoirs of the world are losing their capacity to hold water as erosion brings silt down to settle in behind dams, the chief of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned today.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-04-03.html

The potential of wave energy is big.  We mean, really, really big.  How big?  Consider this: A sliver of ocean, roughly the size of Lake Washington, could power the entire state of Washington.  No wonder a worldwide race is shaping up to harness all this power.  And our state of Washington is in the middle of the action.

    These are interesting times for wave energy.  The energy stored in ocean waves is enormous -- easily able to rival wind or coal or nuclear as a major energy source.  The $64,000 question is how to build the best gizmo to capture that energy.  Lots of different technologies and lots of talented engineers are in the hunt.

• Some systems float a series of tubes across choppy seas.  Each tube is connected by an articulating joint.  As the tubes move up and down in the waves, the joints -- which are really hudraulic pumps -- force oil at high pressure through pipes to spin a turbine.
• In other systems, crashing waves fill giant chambers on shore, compressing air that then drives a turbine.
• Yet others use the up-and-down wave motion to jig a permanent magnet past stationary windings on a stator.
• AquaEnergy has developed what it calls the AquaBuOY system, which uses the up-and-down motion of a wave-riding buoy to alternately compress and expand rubber hoses.  The compression phase forces seawater through a pipe to drive a turbine.

So here's what happens:
    A wave crest sweeps under the buoy and forces it up.  The huge, 7-foot-diameter acceleration tube is attached to the buoy, so it also rises.  The top hose pump is attached to the top of the acceleration tube, so it has to rise, too.  However, the other end of the top hose pump is attached to the piston, which has a massive amount ow water sitting on top of it (all the water in the 7-foot-diameter aceleration tube.)  That piston does not want to move, at least not anywhere near as fast as the buoy.
    The top of the hose pump rises with the buoy, but the bottom of the hose stays put with the piston.  That means the tube has to stretch, which it can do because it's rubber.  When the hose pump stretches, its inside space is compressed, forcing the seawater in the hose to squirt out a pipe at the top.  A check valve prevents water from squirting out the bottom of the hose pump.  The force of this expulsion drives a Pelton wheel turbine, producing electricity.
    Now, as the wave passes and the buoy drops into a trough, the acceleration tube also drops, pushing down on the top of the hose pump.  But the piston still remains pretty much unmoved, so the hose pump is compressed, which expands ints internal space and allows more seawater to rush in.  At the same time, the lower hose pump is stretched, and it squirts out water into the same pipe that leads to the turbine.  This way, for each stroke up or down by the buoy/acceleration tube, water will be expelled into the turbine.
    This sounds simple, but the engineering is complex, and this design has never been tested in the ocean.  The rest of the process uses proven technology -- the transmission of the electricity to shore via underwater cable.  The multi-speed tubine produces "wild" alternating current electricity (unsynchronized AC of varying frequency, or cycles per second).  This AC is rectified to direct current (DC) and routed to shore by a high-voltage DC cable.  Once on shore, the DC is run through an inverter and converted to AC electricity of proper hertz and phase and delivered to the power grid.
    The HVDC cable is a better way to transmit electricity underwater because, unlike AC, DC is largely unaffected by the high capacitance of long undersea cables.  Underwater, AC cables produce a strong electromagnetic force field that drains power.  That problem is avoided with HVDC cables.  And DC transmission avoids the extremely low frequency electromagnetic force fields that are controversial for their effects on health.  That may be good news for the clams.

The main light source of the future will almost surely not be a bulb. It might be a table, a wall, or even a fork.  An accidental discovery announced this week has taken LED lighting to a new level, suggesting it could soon offer a cheaper, longer-lasting  alternative to the traditional light bulb. The miniature breakthrough adds to a growing trend that is likely to eventually make Thomas Edison's bright invention obsolete.  LEDs are already used in traffic lights, flashlights, and architectural lighting. They are flexible and operate less expensively than  traditional lighting.

Happy accident
Michael Bowers, a graduate student at Vanderbilt  University, was just trying to make really small quantum dots, which are crystals  generally only a few nanometers big. That's less than 1/1000th the width of a human hair. Quantum dots contain anywhere from 100 to 1,000 electrons. They're easily excited bundles of energy, and the smaller they are, the more excited they get. Each dot in Bower's particular batch was exceptionally small containing only 33 or 34 pairs of atoms. When you shine a light on quantum dots or apply electricity to them, they react by producing their own light, normally a bright, vibrant color.  But when Bowers shined a laser on his batch of dots, something unexpected happened.

"I was surprised when a white glow covered the table," Bowers said. "The quantum dots were supposed to emit blue light, but instead they were giving off a beautiful white glow."

Then Bowers and another student got the idea to stir the dots into polyurethane and coat a blue LED light bulb with the mix. The lumpy bulb wasn't pretty, but it produced white light similar to a regular light bulb. The new device gives off a warm, yellowish-white light that shines twice as bright and lasts 50 times longer than the standard 60 watt light bulb. This work is published online in the Oct. 18 edition of the Journal f the American Chemical Society.

Better than bulbs
Until the last decade, LEDs could only produce green, red, and yellow light, which limited their use. Then came blue LEDs, which have since been altered to emit white light with a light-blue hue. LEDs produce twice as much light as a regular 60 watt bulb and burn for over 50,000 hours. The Department of Energy estimates LED lighting could reduce U.S. energy consumption for lighting by 29 percent by 2025. LEDs don't emit much heat, so they're also more energy efficient. And they're much harder to break.

Other scientists have said they expect LEDs to eventually replace standard incandescent bulbs as well as fluorescent and sodium vapor lights. If the new process can be developed into commercial production, light won't come just from newfangled bulbs. Quantum dot mixtures could be painted on just about anything and electrically excited to produce a rainbow of colors, including white. One big question remains: When a brilliant idea pops into your mind in the future, what will appear over your head?

The UN climate change negotiations, now getting under way in Delhi, have focused international attention once
more on the problem of global warming.

Experts agree there is a need to switch to renewable forms of energy if production of greenhouse gases is to
be curbed. Now an Icelandic team has invented a radical device which can produce electricity from water.

The Thermator could play a major role in the non-polluting economies of the future.

The Thermator contains a semi-conductor crystal ©Varmaraf

It works by something called the thermo-electric effect, which scientists have known about for many years.

But while thermo-electric generators have mainly been used to power spacecraft, such as Voyager and Galileo
using heat from radioactive materials, the Thermator is firmly rooted on Earth and works on nothing more than
hot water.

Professor Thorstein Sigfusson, of the University of Iceland, says it works by translating the difference between
the temperature of hot and cold water into energy.

He explains: "In between the hot and the cold side are crystals made of semi-conductors.

"As the heat is transferred through these crystals part of it is converted from heat energy into electric energy."

Professor Sigfusson said there was potential for using all sorts of excess heat to fuel Thermators and he
added: "In car engines for example, only a fraction of the heat produced is turned into propelling energy."

The average electricity consumption of a family of four in the USA is about 30 kiloWatt hours per day.
The average electricity consumption of a family of four in Japan is about 9.3 kiloWatt Hours per day.

On one hand, Japanese homes are smaller than most American homes.  On the other hand, many Japanese homes have 'all' the latest electrical appliances, toys, games, devices, etc, down to the heated toilet seats!  Want to see how Japanese communities are focused on reducing waste, conserving energy, and improving efficiency?
(see Japan For Sustainability:  http://www.japanfs.org/index.html)

    Despite their substantial energy saving benefits, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) present a unique challenge for the environmental and energy efficiency communities. Even though CFLs contain only a very small amount of mercury – about 100 times less than an average home thermometer – many stakeholders, including solid waste departments and mercury-reduction advocates, are working to keep large accumulations of bulbs out of landfills. Utilities can play a leading or supporting role, a choice that needs to be made on the local level.
    The CFL Disposal Kit was developed to help utilities understand this issue by reviewing the role of mercury in fluorescent lamps, the confusion caused by some media coverage shortly after the 2001 energy crisis, and the specific challenges of recycling CFLs. It also offers options and tools for utility participation in promoting proper CFL disposal.  This kit contains information about proper disposal of CFLs and provides program options for utilities wanting to develop CFL disposal programs for their customers. You’ll find tools, messaging and training materials to support these programs, as well as information about other factors that may impact utility-run CFL programs.

President Bush said in his State of the Union speech that he wants to reduce our oil imports from the Middle East by at least 75% by 2025.
Currently, Middle East oil fuels about 10% of America's energy needs, mostly for transportation.

Some of the technologies that Bush mentioned — such as clean coal, solar, wind and nuclear — would be used mainly to produce electricity, so they wouldn't make much of a dent in the country's oil addiction.

So how realistic is the President's goal? Here's a look at the emerging technology:
 

Cellulosic ethanol
This type of ethanol is made from switch grass, sawdust and other plant waste, and it is chemically identical to conventional ethanol, made mostly from corn. Ethanol mixed with gasoline can be used in cars and trucks on the road today without any modification.

However, the technology and production infrastructure are still in their infancy. Companies would need to build multimillion-dollar plants relatively close to farms to make cellulosic ethanol economically feasible.

"It's going to need a dramatic infusion of dollars to make it happen," said Marchant Wentworth, a clean-energy specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Grain ethanol has been around for more than a decade, but it still accounts for only 2% of what goes into gas tanks.
 

Hydrogen
This lighter-than-air gas powers vehicles or generators that have fuel cells, which have virtually zero tailpipe emissions, aside from plain water vapor. But unlike ethanol, using hydrogen would require not only entirely new vehicles, but also an entirely new infrastructure, including plants that make hydrogen (by using electricity to extract hydrogen from water) and "gas" stations that sell it. Fuel cell-powered cars already exist, but they are mostly experimental and are far from mass production.

"It's so far in the future that it's not something you can hang your hat on right now," said Karen Wayland, an energy specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
 

Clean coal
Coal accounts for 23% of U.S. energy needs and 52% of U.S. electricity production, but it creates a lot of pollution. High-tech power plants can turn coal into a gas and take out pollutants such as mercury and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the exhaust. The President has proposed spending $218 million more next year — an increase of 22% — on research and development for such technology. But experts said it's not enough to make it an everyday reality by 2025.

"Clean coal does exist, but it's no more cost-effective than solar power," said Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at University of California at Berkeley. "A 22% increase in funding is just not a Manhattan Project-type effort that we need."
 

Nuclear and hydroelectric
Environmental concerns and the immense cost of building these types of power plants mean there is virtually no projected growth in these sources without major policy shifts. Nuclear power accounts for about 8% of U.S. energy needs, and hydroelectric power, about 2%.
 

Solar and wind
These sources account for barely two-tenths of a percent of U.S. energy needs.

"It could increase vastly, but it depends entirely on policy," Borenstein said. Solar technology in particular is expensive. It costs about 35 cents to produce a kilowatt-hour of solar power, compared with about 5 cents for coal and 9 cents for wind. Solar power isn't for every region, and it wouldn't be feasible in the New York area.

Wind power could be harnessed almost anywhere in the country, including the Appalachian Mountains and on – or off – Long Island.

If this breakthrough, which has actually been around for a couple of years now, lives up to its claims, we are indeed on the verge of an absolutely major revolution in the world energy scene!   In a similar arena, I have been corresponding with a company in New Zealand seeking to manufacture a TPV cell (developed by a Boeing engineer!) that can convert thermal energy (from my biomass-fueled furnaces) quietly into electricity at theoretically 100 times the energy density of solar cells.  Lots is happening to unseat king oil from the despot’s throne in the near future.  Read the two articles below.
LAD

 In a scientific breakthrough that has stunned the world, a team of South African scientists has developed a revolutionary new, highly efficient solar power technology that will enable homes to obtain all their electricity from the sun. This means high electricity bills and frequent power failures could soon be a thing of the past.

The unique South African-developed solar panels will make it possible for houses to become completely self-sufficient for energy supplies. The panels are able to generate enough energy to run stoves, geysers, lights, TVs, fridges, computers - in short all the mod-cons of the modern house.

Nothing else comes close to the effectiveness of the SA invention.  The new technology should be available in South Africa within a year and through a special converter, energy can be fed directly into the wiring of existing houses. New powerful storage units will allow energy storage to meet demands even in winter. The panels are so efficient they can operate through a Cape Town winter.  While direct sunlight is ideal for high-energy generation, other daytime light also generates energy via the panels.

A team of scientists led by University of Johannesburg (formerly Rand Afrikaans University) scientist Professor Vivian Alberts achieved the breakthrough after 10 years of research. The South African technology has now been patented across the world. One of the world leaders in solar energy, German company IFE Solar Systems, has invested more than R500-million in the South African invention and is set to manufacture 500 000 of the panels before the end of the year at a new plant in Germany.

Production will start next month and the factory will run 24 hours a day, producing more than 1 000 panels a day to meet expected demand. Another large German solar company is negotiating with the South African inventors for rights to the technology, while a South African consortium of businesses are keen to build local factories.

Solar cell technology has remained essentially unchanged since the phenomenon was first noted in the 1800s. The standard for today’s devices is still the silicon-based panels that have been steadily refined over the past half-century. Present conversion efficiencies are between 10 and 15 percent. In direct sunshine you can bank on between 100 and 150 watts per square metre of panel.

How to improve on that? Consider this telling comparison: a typical conventional panel uses silicon slabs over 350 microns thick because of the material’s poor absorption properties; the Alberts method produces a five-micron film. That’s a quarter of the thickness of a human hair.

So it’s thinner. That doesn’t necessarily make it better. But it is. “Let me put it this way,” says Alberts. “From the solar energy point of view, what we have developed is the best-absorbing material known to us.” Not only that, but it’s cheaper to produce.

He is talking about a patented semiconductor material, copper indium gallium selenium sulphide or Cu(In,Ga)(Se,S)2 for short. Five elements that, taken separately, are pretty pointless as collectors of sunlight. But then they’re subjected to a bit of high-tech alchemy… or should that be domestic science?

“You know, it’s a recipe… the whole thing is much like baking bread,” he says. “You start off with ingredients that have certain characteristics, and after mixing, preparing and baking you have a product whose characteristics are completely different to what you started with.”

Professor Alberts says the thin film technology he and his team developed can generate up to 150 watts of electrical power at a cost below R10 per watt peak. He adds that it has demonstrated not only high efficiency, but also long-term performance stability. “The pilot plant demonstrated that these thin film solar modules could be produced by highly scalable and proven industrial technologies such as physical vapour phase deposition and diffusion processes.” Commercial-scale thin film modules are being produced with output powers between 10 and 40W in direct sunlight.