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Archive for December, 2010

Yet another city is offering incentives to homeowners to use thermal energy storage for night time wind power. As the percentage of wind power on the grid increases we may see more incentives to help store the excess with this kind of simple distributed energy storage.

Now the city of Summerside on Canada’s Prince Edward Island is asking homeowners to buy a special heating unit to help them store excess night time wind energy the city is producing. It is offering a break on their electricity bills in return.

Because wind in the region blows more at night, when the demand is lowest, wind farms can wind up selling at a loss, or even giving away power at those times.

The need for storage for wind power is great. Most of the storage being considered is at the utility scale. But ceramic block thermal heating units in homes can turn a night time energy excess into another valuable form of energy for use in cold climates. Heat.

Currently Prince Edward Island is selling about 15 per cent of the energy from its wind turbines to the mainland, because it cannot use all the electricity generated locally, because most of the power is generated at night. Like the 100% wind powered island of Vinalhaven in Maine, which had the same problem, it wound up having to sell its night time wind power excess at lower rates.

So, to solve the problem, at a recent council meeting, the city announced a new program asking homeowners to buy a special, ceramic space heater that is set to receive night time wind electricity, store it as heat, and release the heat slowly over 24 hours. The heaters use high-density ceramic bricks. This type of thermal energy storage is already in use in homes in the UK to even out peak demand on its electricity grid.

City administrator Terry Murphy said the heaters are really no different than a furnace.

“The demand for the heat can be adjusted as you do today. In other words, you can set your thermostat at certain levels. It will be no different with this here,” said Murphy.

The heaters cost about $2,000 each, but they save money over the long term, due to the low price of off peak power. But savings over the long term frequently is not enough to move people to act. So to encourage homeowners to step up to help even the grid, the city is offering an extra break on electricity prices, in hopes of getting at least 100 residents to invest in one of the heaters in 2011.

“We’re looking at about $600 a year that could be beneficial to the consumer,” said Murphy.

Image: HomeDesignFind

Related stories on thermal energy storage for night time wind:
Maine Residents Get $6,000 to Store Wind as Slow Heating
Is Distributed Thermal Storage Next?
100% Wind-Powered Island off Maine

NASA aerospace engineer Mark Moore is using a $100,000 federal grant to research what it will take to create a jet stream-based wind industry 30,000 feet above the ground.

The reason the US government is interested in developing the jet stream is that up there, winds blow consistently at 150 miles per hour, so futuristic satellite-based wind turbines or kite-type turbines such as those from Kitegen and Magenn flying at that altitude have the potential to generate 50 times the gigawatts that ground-based turbines can. So far, the early Magenn prototype flies at 1,000 feet.

“At 2,000 feet, there is two to three times the wind velocity compared to ground level,” Moore said. “The power goes up with the cube of that wind velocity, so it’s eight to 27 times the power production just by getting 2,000 feet up, and the wind velocity is more consistent.”

50 times greater energy density

Higher still: 30,000 feet is where this new resource will play out. If you can send turbines further up, to 30,000 feet, into the jet stream, “instead of 500 watts per meter for ground-based wind turbines, you’re talking about 20,000, 40,000 watts per square meter,” Moore said. “That’s very high energy density and potentially lower cost wind energy because of the 50-plus fold increase in energy density.”

Moore has undertaken the wind-power study to streamline the development of R&D and to reduce friction between competitors for airspace. As more kite-type wind turbines are moving from the pie-in-the sky idea to the deployment stage, one entity needs to develop a plan that makes it possible to coexist in the same airspace; only NASA has that kind of experience.

That means dealing with current Federal Aviation Administration regulations and with those that might be necessary to accommodate an airspace that includes manned aircraft, the unmanned aircraft in the future, plus wind-borne energy turbines. The jet stream is very useful to commercial airlines, because the much greater wind speeds greatly reduce their need for fuel.

One solution? Site future potential jet-stream-based wind farms in little-traveled areas of the jet stream over the ocean.

“Offshore deployment of these airborne systems probably makes the most sense in terms of both airspace and land use”, says Moore, “because there is little to no demand for low altitude flight over oceans 12 miles offshore.”

His research also involves some of the core capabilities of NASA in aeronautics, composite materials and air space management. So leaders in this area of the wind power industry, as well as other government agencies, including the Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, have been working with NASA on the research.

“They welcome this study because they’ve never dealt with flying systems and NASA has,” Moore said. “You can’t come up with advanced concepts until you understand the requirements well, and frankly, I don’t think anybody understands the requirements well.”

As we catapult into a real clean energy future, the sky is the limit.

Image: Flikr user unknown_adventure
Susan Kraemer@Twitter

Related stories on kite-based wind turbines:
Astounding EROI of Kitegen Ready to Test
New Floating Wind Turbine Harvests Energy From On High

Source: NASA via Amy Dusto at Discovery News

Think of highly portable wind turbines that can adjust their height to take advantage of the best winds, and you’ve got the next generation of airborne wind energy devices. A 100-kW model from Magenn Power, Inc. is about to go on the market, so let’s dig a little deeper into the idea of harvesting energy through a kite string.

Airborne Wind Energy

The basic principle is simple: instead of anchoring a wind turbine to the ground, you float it up and make its tether double as a grid connector. Their portability, ease of installation and minimal use of land space could make airborne turbines ideal for innumerable small scale uses,  including disaster relief and other emergency services.

Many Places for Airborne Wind Energy

One potential use for airborne wind energy is at sites that are not suitable for on-ground alternative energy installations. For example, airborne turbines could be tethered at brownfields as part of the U.S. EPA’s RE-Powering America’s Land program, or at construction sites where extra space is minimal. They could also become an important alternative energy source for outdoor festivals and other temporary events (which are already beginning to introduce solar power and pedal power, by the way).

Magenn’s Airborne Turbine

The Magenn Power wind turbine, called MARS, differs from a kite-style wind power system in that it’s held aloft by helium rather than relying on the force of wind. It’s basically a blimp that houses rotors which spin on a horizontal axis. It can range up to 1,000 feet, and the system includes a battery so energy can be used immediately on site, stored for later use, or transferred to the grid. The company foresees a diverse market that includes isolated communities and remote facilities such as cell towers or mines, as well as farms, factories and the aforementioned disaster relief.

Image: Airborne wind turbine courtesy of Magenn Power, Inc.

I normally don’t post project descriptions and requests for investment on here, but I’m making a special exception for this project. It is for a district solid and liquid waste-to-energy facility in the the Central Region of Ghana. We’re big fans of waste-to-energy projects, of course. And the following project seemed like something worth sharing.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE: The objective of the project is to establish an inter-district scale waste-to-energy facility at Edina Essaman in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa, to combat environmental degradation, global warming and climate change while providing energy to needy communities

CURRENT PROBLEM DESCRIPTION: At present solid waste and sewage collected from the communities, towns and other settlements in the catchment districts are deposited at a site at Edina Essaman without treatment. The situation causes environmental pollution including the emission of greenhouse gases contributing to climate change while simultaneously creating sources of disease vectors that periodically lead to the outbreak of cholera epidemics and other sanitation-related diseases in the communities.

TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM: The problem described above is to be tackled by establishing a waste treatment facility that employs biomethanation (“biogas”) technology to treat the organic fraction of incoming waste. The end products of the treatment process will consist of biogas which will be used for electricity production as well as direct fuel supply and digested residues which will be processed into good quality organic fertilizer. The fertilizer will be used in part to rehabilitate the degraded land on which the waste is deposited.

PROJECT EXPECTED OUTPUTS: The facility to be established to serve a catchment population of 200,000 will consist of:

1. 100 metric tons per day capacity Modern Pollution-free Biomethanation Sewage Treatment Plant;
2. 200 metric tons per day capacity Modern Biomethanation Solid Waste Recycling Plant;
3. 7.95 Megawatts Bio-electric Power Station and Bio-fuel Gas Plant;
4. Greenhouse gases reduction: 58,200 metric tons per annum of CO2 equivalent.

PROJECT COST: The cost of the project is estimated at US$12,574,250

PROJECT BENEFITS:

1. The project will result in the derivation of clean energy for needy communities.
2. The project will result in the provision of both short and long-term sustainable employment for more than 1,200 persons.
3. The project will be self sustaining by the use of the energy and fertilizer derivatives for socio-economic applications.
4. The project will assist in environmental improvement and ecological restoration of the degraded land on which waste is deposited.
5. Considerable amounts of greenhouse gases emissions will be saved, thus mitigating global warming and climate change.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

The project proponents are looking for investors for this project on a Build Own Operate basis. Interested investors may kindly contact the project proponents at the address below:

Global Works Ltd
P. O. Box DC 549
Dansoman, Accra
Ghana
TEL: +233 244 449614; +233 277 579481
Email: globalworks.limited@gmail.com

Geothermal energy is getting popular among the Indian energy companies and government policymakers. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy had commissioned a research, development and demonstration program involving geothermal energy. The program aimed at locating the potential geothermal energy exploration sites in several states across the country.

The program covered states like Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Many of these states have confirmed the identification of geothermal potential sites. Some of the most active geothermal sites are believed to be located in Jammu & Kashmir with significant resources potentially present in Himachal Pradesh and in central India.

Thermax, a capital goods manufacturer based in Pune, has entered an agreement with Icelandic firm Reykjavík Geothermal. Thermax is planning to set up a 3 MW pilot project in Puga Valley, Ladakh (Jammu & Kashmir). Reykjavík Geothermal will assist Thermax in exploration and drilling of the site.

Ladakh is one of the remotest locations in India. With almost no availability of basic amenities such as food, ration and electricity the inhabitants are almost completely dependent on goods imported from other states and power generated from diesel generators. The villages in this mountainous region are so far apart that connecting them all through transmission lines is practically and economically unfeasible.

Therefore, a local resource which is available around the year seems to be the only solution for the power woes of this region.

India’s first fully-operational commercial geothermal power plant is likely to come up in 2012 in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The plant will be set up by GeoSyndicate Power Private Limited, a company backed by the Indian Institue of Technology (Bombay). The company has already entered in a Power Purchase Agreement with a local power distribution company through the Non-conventional Energy Development Corporation of Andhra Pradesh.

India’s largest industrial group, Tata Sons, is also planning to foray into geothermal energy-based power generation. Tata Power is planning to invest in geothermal power plants in the state of Gujarat. Tata Power has elaborate plans to invest in various renewable energy options like solar energy and wind energy. Since the government of Gujarat has a favorable policy towards investments in renewable energy-based power generation sector, Gujarat has a special place in Tata Power’s green energy expansion.

Significantly, Tata Power bought 10 percent stake in Australian enhanced geothermal systems firm Geodynamics for $37 million.

Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi recently announced that his government would soon announce geothermal energy-centered power generation policy to attract investments from Indian as well as foreign companies.

According to the research conducted by D. Chandrasekharam, Professor and Head — Department of Earth Sciences, IIT Bombay, the estimated power generation capacity of geothermal resources in India is about 10,600 MW. Geothermal energy has not been taken seriously by the Indian government.

However, with the announcement of National Action Plan on Climate Change in 2008, which contained broad policy directives for promotion of renewable energy infrastructure, several Indian and foreign companies have showed increased interest in green technologies. The investors are expecting that the government would offer financial incentives to geothermal energy-based power plants as well and therefore several companies are getting attracted to this sector which seems to have a promising future.

Image: Stuck in Customs/CC

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