technology

Sheer number of solar advancements suggests that cheap solar electricity is coming soon

Concentrating solar power is a well-known approach to lowering the cost of solar electricity. You focus sunlight from a large area onto a small one, the same way a magnifying glass can set a piece of newspaper on fire, using one small, high-quality solar cell and a concentrator for a lower total cost than hundreds of slightly cheaper cells. (Or you can use the concentrated heat to drive a heat engine, but not in the example we are about to discuss.)

Morgan Solar has a smart variation on this under development. They start with a clever acrylic concentrator that uses pure optical guiding to concentrate solar energy about 50 times, around the same results as a Fresnel lens, but without the need for curves or a non-zero focus. This already moderately concentrated solar is then concentrated further by a much smaller glass concentrator that also needs no air gap. Because neither concentrator requires an air gap, a tiny solar cell is attached directly to the glass.

So you have an eight-inch acrylic concentrator, a glass concentrator the size of an American nickel, and a solar cell the size of a baby's thumbnail.

There are two ways of improving the electrical grid, each with its own politics and challenges

Two years ago, nobody was talking about the nation's electricity grid; today it's so prominent in the national conversation that Barack Obama mentioned it in his inauguration speech. For energy wonk types, it's pretty amazing.

Lots of politicians and pundits are sort of waving their hands toward the grid as an energy solution, without being very specific about their goals or the policies needed to get there. To add some clarity, it's worth distinguishing two distinct grid issues, each with its own technological challenges, regulatory issues, and political implications.

To simplify matters, think of the grid like the nation's waterways. There are a few big, primary rivers -- the high-voltage, long-distance lines that compose the transmission system. Then there are thousands and thousands of smaller tributaries -- the lower voltage lines that carry electricity from the transmission system to individual homes and businesses, called the distribution system. (I guess the homes and businesses are ... lakes? Ponds? Frankly I haven't thought the metaphor through that far.)

With that distinction in mind, we can discern two grid-related subjects of interest to energy/enviro types:

The National Grid

This has to do with extending the transmission system to address two problems:

• First, there aren't many high-voltage lines that go to the places where renewable energy is most abundant (e.g., the Southwest for solar, the Midwest for wind).

• Second, right now there are (depending on how you count) anywhere from three to seven distinct regional grids that make up the national grid, and they aren't very well connected. While juice circulates relatively freely within these grids, it's difficult to get juice from one grid to another.

The wide grid refers to the effort to build a truly national transmission system: a new high-voltage backbone, with lines spanning the length and breadth of the country, able to carry electricity from anywhere it's generated to anywhere it's needed. Wide grid advocates argue that linking the entire nation together would mitigate the problem of intermittency -- the fact that sun and wind are variable (as opposed to baseload sources that can be turned on and off at will). The more intermittent energy sources are linked together, the more stable and reliable the whole system becomes.

Schwarzenegger tells techies to go ‘green’

HANOVER, Germany — California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger kicked off the world’s biggest high-tech fair Tuesday, telling executives to seize the economic crisis as a moment to shape up and go “green”. Schwarzenegger, this year’s guest of honor at the sprawling CeBIT fair in this northern German city, toured stands with Chancellor Angela Merkel as the […]

Search giant plans to devote more IT expertise to energy issues

If you're a fan of Google's efforts to encourage energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy (i.e. RechargeIT, Clean Energy 2030, and PowerMeter), get ready for more.

A post on the official Google blog says the company plans to "to put even more engineers and technical talent to work on these issues and problems."

Larry Brilliant, the "chief philanthropy evangelist" at Google.org, offered up that bit of news in a post about a larger change at the Google philanthropy arm -- that Google exec Megan Smith will take over day-to-day management of Google.org, allowing Brilliant to "spend more time motivating policy makers, encouraging public and private partnerships, and generally advocating for the changes that we must make as a global society to solve these problems."

More from Brilliant's post:

In this global economic crisis, the work Google.org is doing, together with our many colleagues around the world, to help develop cheap clean energy, find and fight disease outbreaks before they sweep the globe, and build information platforms for underserved people globally, is more important than ever. We stand behind the commitment made in 2004 to devote 1% of Google's equity and profits to philanthropy, and we will continue to iterate on our philanthropic model to make sure our resources have the greatest possible impact for good.

Computer maker expands recycling efforts

PC giant Dell today continues its campaign to be the world’s greenest technology company by rolling out a pair of new recycling programs. The company is adding six states to its partnership with Goodwill Industries that lets customers drop off unwanted electronic devices for recycling at Goodwill retail stories. The network of 1,100-some collection points […]

New site to teach students about green vehicle technology

When you’ve got a spare moment for some mechanical learning, or know a student who does, take a look at the nifty new FuelOurFutureNow.com. The interactive knowledge center is designed to help K-12 students learn about vehicle technology, energy efficiency, climate change, alternative fuels, and the science, technology, engineering, and math that underlie fuel-efficient vehicle […]

Deployment precedes innovation

In energy efficiency circles, the story of Jan Schilham's 1997 redesign of a pumping system for a Shanghai carpet-making factory is famous. Schilham saved 92 percent of pumping energy and lowered capital costs by using a well-known principle: Pumping water slowly through fat, straight pipes reduces friction and saves energy relative to pumping the same volume quickly through narrow twisty pipes.

Why isn't it always done that way? Because the bigger pipes cost more than the energy saving. Schilham's insight was that energy is not the only payback. Fatter pipes lower the size of the pumps and motors required, so even with the additional plumbing expenses, total capital costs are lower. Energy savings in this context are free, or better than free.

In a narrow sense, this was an improvement in cost accounting, not technology. Nothing unknown or untested was deployed. No breakthrough enabled the lower costs -- they'd always been possible. Schilham simply counted a benefit that had been overlooked, demonstrating that a technique usually considered unprofitable actually saved money.

The key that allowed Schilham to exercise his genius was that Interface carpets had already decided to reduce its ecological footprint drastically. "Whether" had already been decided -- Schilham was worrying about the "how." Essentially he was in the position of someone complying with a standards-based efficiency rule.

Super-battery idea wins X Prize competition for next green invention

From the people that brought you private space travel comes another ambitious techno challenge — a hyper-green battery that can store electrical energy in vast quantities, with super-quick recharging abilities and without environmentally harmful components. Today the X PRIZE Foundation announced the winner of its $25,000 YouTube contest to come up with the next “Crazy […]

Against the so-called 'need' for new long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines

The following is a guest post from Carol A. Overland, a utility regulatory attorney and electrical consultant based in Minnesota and Delaware, representing clients in energy dockets including transmission projects, wind, gas and coal gasification generation, and nuclear waste.

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Transition ... transmission ... transition ... transmission ...

That old Bowie hook is on my mind as I represent individuals, community organizations, and local governments opposing high-voltage transmission lines. Today we're at a crossroads in energy, a transition point where the decisions we make, like electricity itself, are binary. What we choose will determine how we use electricity in the future. The first step is to carefully define "need."

Transmission doesn't produce electricity. It is passive infrastructure that just sits there, conducting energy from one place to another. At its worst, though, it's an enabler of dysfunctional energy planning and profit-driven projects that are against the public interest. Claims that we "need" transmission are end-stage conclusions of a many-step planning process that we as a society have not yet consciously begun.

"Need" is a term of art, and the crucial task for energy planners is to define the need. We need energy when we flick the switch, and when we do, that's a utility's need for service of local electrical load. We also need renewable generation, and we have an equally compelling need to reduce the CO2 emissions, pollutants, and toxic waste of electrical generation (a need not readily recognized in energy planning). Energy planners plan for peak "flick of the switch" need, those few very hot summer days or very cold winter nights. How much "flick of the switch" energy do we need? It depends.

Prior to assessing local load-serving need and making demand projections -- before "need" is considered -- the first and unarguably least-cost step is conservation. We can easily make up for an annual projected increase in demand of 1.5 percent through conservation, and can probably cut today's "need" by 10 percent or more, though compound conservation gets more difficult as we cherry pick the easy stuff. The next step before analyzing need is to enact energy efficiency, demand-side management, and load-shifting to cut the peaks and level out the dips. This is also a comparatively least-cost means of meeting demand.

When that's done, and not before, it's time to assess our need for electricity -- the supply side. Utilities, which are in the business of selling electricity and building their infrastructure -- for which we pay, routinely promote sales and exaggerate growth in demand. Because of their overstatements of need in similarly recessionary times, we overbuilt in the 1970s, to the extent that many proposed plants were ultimately canceled. Still so much was built that we haven't needed much utility infrastructure since. We've been through this before, and should be mindful in making investments.