Green Energy WA

In the solar Gemasolar central, a cloudy sky is no reason for depression: thanks to the aunique technology, the energy stored during the sun shines is used to produce electricity at night or on rainy days.

A ‘Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure’ could be inspired by – and dramatically extend – the concept of cross-border grids elsewhere, most notably in Europe and North Africa. Examining infrastructure projects now underway in Asia, how might these organically develop into a ‘Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure’ by 2050?

There has been increasing chatter about so-called “supergrids”, which could join up diverse regions in the power generation market, and help with integrating an increasing amount of renewable energy into the energy system. And such concepts, while until recently very much in the “visionary” category, continue to gain political traction.

The European Commission for example, recently announced proposals for regulation that could aid the development of a Supergrid: Guidelines For Trans-European Energy Infrastructure could be a major step forward in accelerating the building of such much-needed new electricity infrastructure schemes.

The Desertec Initiative – whose philosophy involves developing renewable energy resources in North Africa and ultimately exporting power back to Europe – continues to crystallise its ideas. As we go to press in fact, reports suggest that the location of Desertec’s inaugural solar thermal project could be the desert city of Ouarzazate, Morocco, where parabolic mirrors will cover an area of 12 km^₂.

But what about Asia?

And it is not just Europe where such visionary ideas gradually move out of the realms of fantasy. Over the next four decades, bundled natural gas pipelines, high-capacity electricity cables and fibre optic cables could transform Asia, stretching from Australia’s Southern Ocean to China’s northern province of Mongolia.
Were it ever to be implemented, this visionary infrastructure could serve an energy and data market of two billion people.

The vision – to serve a growing powerhouse

A multilateral, open access, common-carrier energy transmission system in Asia offers greater long-term advantages than ad hoc, bilateral energy transmission arrangements, which discourage new market players and result in rigid, brittle markets.

This is made all the more relevant because in the coming years, Asia will emerge as the world’s largest regional economy. To get from here to there, it needs tens of trillions of dollars of infrastructure. This necessary infrastructure includes road, rail, aviation, telecommunications, not to mention energy generation and transmission capacity. And much of this will be new, not replacement, infrastructure.

A prime example of the current status quo in the energy market is Japan. Japan’s lack of national and international energy network interconnections left the country struggling to meet its domestic power needs following the March 2011 earthquake.

Had an internationally-interconnected energy network been in place, Japan could have imported marginal power supplies from spare electricity in China or South Korea. These could have helped offset the shortfall caused by Japan’s loss of domestic nuclear energy generating capacity.

Gas and renewables in partnership

To illustrate the logic behind a Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure, we begin from the assumption that Asia (and the world) needs to switch to low emission energy sources between now and 2050.

The most practical way to do this is to aggressively replace ageing, dirty, coal-fired base-load power plants between now and 2030 with cleaner-burning natural gas plants.

This will result in near-term greenhouse gas emission reductions, while ensuring ongoing grid stability. During this period, intermittent renewable energy sources will expand rapidly, but off a small base.

By 2030, renewable energy will have grown to the point where it becomes a significant – if not the dominant – carbon-adjusted energy source. At this point, natural gas capacity could be shifted away from providing baseload power, and towards providing peaking power and load-balancing – to a grid dominated by low-emission renewables.

And experts believe this is rational.

Over the short term, natural gas’ cleanliness compared to coal makes it attractive for meeting short-term greenhouse gas reduction needs. Over the long-term, gas’ rapid response qualities make it attractive for ensuring grid stability.

Over the long term, natural gas’ rapid-response qualities are undervalued by serving baseload power markets. Shifting this energy source to load-balancing, therefore, is merely common sense economics.

Meanwhile the benefits to energy markets are clear. Near-term greenhouse gas emission can be reduced through replacing coal, while grid stability can be enhanced during the transition to renewable energy. New investment in natural gas plant and equipment capacity can serve baseload power markets now, and premium-price load-balancing markets later. Meanwhile, renewable energy gets the breathing space it needs as an industry to grow.

Asia has an abundance of both natural gas and low-emission energy it can develop. Many of these resources are located in the same places. That lowers the costs of developing them, not to mention transporting the energy to power-hungry cities.

Of all of Asia’s renewable resources, solar energy is the biggest. China’s Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang are baked in strong sunlight. Virtually all of Australia’s interior has strong solar resources.

China and Australia also have lots of wind. China’s onshore wind resources are in its north. Its offshore wind resources are in the East China Sea. Australia’s onshore wind resources are in its southern regions. Its offshore resources are in the Great Southern Ocean.

Therefore, to apply a simple, two-country model: China and Australia could be connected by high-capacity, high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power lines. These would be similar to those envisaged for carrying solar electricity from North Africa to Europe.

However, there are differences, chief among them being the longer distances involved in Asia, compared to Europe/North Africa. But to counter that the size of Asia’s energy market is much larger, faster growing and far less burdened by legacy infrastructure than that of Europe and North Africa. What’s more, Asia has a much broader array of low-emission energy sources than anything available in Europe and North Africa.

In coming years, Asia’s economic growth rate is similarly expected to be much higher and faster than Europe’s. This will – over time – reduce the overall investment burden required for the infrastructure in the Asian region, as a percentage of the aggregate Asian economy as a whole.

Since the investment will raise energy marketplace efficiency, the benefits will be compounded. And given that Asia requires huge infrastructure investment anyway, the key figure to examine is the additional amount an integrated system would cost, compared to “business as usual” investment.

The technical case

Potentially there could be compelling technical benefits to an Asian Supergrid. To take just one, frictionless interconnection across a large geographic area (like Asia) can enable uncorrelated intermittencies of geographically-dispersed renewable energy sources to partially or wholly cancel each other out. This can increase system stability.

In addition, integrated markets can improve aggregate investment price signals by reducing spurious “noise”. This will speed the discovery of the lowest-price, carbon-adjusted power sources.

This matters because, as above, Asia has a broad suite of low emission energy sources it can develop. These include geothermal from Australia’s interior; biomass from tropical Queensland, Southeast Asia and coastal China. And for their part, wave; tidal; and even ocean thermal energy from Australia and the Indonesian archipelago also hold great promise.

But for all these energy sources to be developed, assured access to market is needed. This access has other benefits too. One of which will be a reduction in the need for expensive but largely idle capacity to be built to handle grid demand fluctuations, peak power needs, and unexpected outages in national markets. Unused capacity in one market can be sold to other markets across-borders.

Natural gas in Asia

In the coming years, huge new gas fields are slated for development in the East China Sea; the South China Sea; Indonesia’s offshore waters; the Timor Sea; Papua-New Guinea; and in Australia’s Northwest Shelf and Queensland.

Present plans are for most of this gas to be developed and shipped to China, Japan and South Korea (the region’s big consumers) in the form of highly-compressed Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). The problem is that LNG has questionable environmental credentials, due to huge internal energy needs. These emit the very greenhouse gases the underlying natural gas is supposed to reduce.

This begs the question: what are the alternatives? One answer could be pipelines. However, lengthy pipelines are expensive. Examined on narrow metrics, they look more costly than LNG.

But this leaves several things out. The most important is that natural gas pipelines create networks. By contrast, LNG can only transport compressed natural gas between two fixed points via a single purpose, single-generation technology. In other words, LNG isn’t readily adaptable to future uses. Pipelines can be. And these have an economic value that needs to be further evaluated.

If high-voltage, high-capacity power lines were built between Australia and China to create a pan-Asian electricity network, natural gas pipelines could be laid alongside. This would lower the investment costs of both pieces of infrastructure, because labour and other logistics costs could be shared.

Also, gas pipelines are flexible. They can carry fuels apart from natural gas. Properly constructed, pipelines can carry hydrogen, CO₂and biofuels.

These are also strong qualitative arguments in favour of bundling a natural gas and electricity infrastructure in order to reap intrinsic network flexibilities. This is particularly so given that fibre optic cables can be tossed in at virtually no extra cost.

‘Bundled’ infrastructure – gas pipelines, high voltage power lines and fibre optic cables – could offer a “1+1=3” outcome for Asia.

A combined electricity, natural gas and communications network would enhance ‘fuel switching’ between electricity and natural gas.

For example, Chinese electricity import demand could be dynamically satisfied through imports of (among others) electricity from:

• Solar or wind energy generated elsewhere in Asia;
• Gas-powered electricity from spare capacity elsewhere in Asia;
• Imports of the natural gas itself, for combustion in a China gas plant.

The flexible network could allow this to occur, particularly if the fibre optic cables enable the rapid transmission of demand and supply information needed to balance markets in real time.

Conclusion – a grand vision

In summary, a Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure could usher in an Asian era of ‘cloud energy.’ This analogy to telecommunications is apt. In the past 20 years, the telecoms industry has been turned upside down by dramatic reforms. These have huge efficiencies. The enabler was the common-carrier Internet.

There’s now a strong argument that the hidebound energy industry should follow in the footsteps of the telecommunications industry.

And that means building a multilateral; common-carrier; open access network – allowing the marketplace to lead the way.

The timing is fortuitous. Asia needs huge amounts of greenfield infrastructure in the coming years, which can be designed largely free of legacy replacement considerations.

With imaginative thinking, a Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create flexibly-designed infrastructure that could last well into the 22nd Century.

NB: the issues in the above article are explored in a research paper by Stewart Taggart, entitled Solar and Wind in Asia Connected by a Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure – recently published by the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

Energy infrastructure

Expectations cause a lot of problems — without expectations, we couldn’t be disappointed. However, it’s impractical not to have any expectations. So, the important thing is really just not to tie your happiness to your expectations too much. Work hard, be good, but also be flexible when it comes to the results. So, with that said, here are some expectations for solar energy in 2012 — hopefully, the good ones will come true (and you know that we’ll be doing what we can to help them along), but expectations are expectations, and only that.

1. Solar costs will continue to drop. It’s expected that solar costs haven’t hit their lowest point yet and that increasing deployment combined with technological improvements will keep the prices falling in 2012. That means solar hitting grid parity in even more places, even without subsidies that include their tremendous health and environmental savings.

2. Solar companies will merge, collapse, and be bought out. Competition is increasing in the solar industry. That doesn’t mean the industry is failing, as some would like to contend, but that it is maturing. The result, however, is that many companies will have to go. I think 2012 will be a year full of solar mergers, buy-outs, and even collapses. (We’ll be getting ready for the wonderful misinformation campaigns coming out of certain industries, media outlets, and political campaigns as that happens.)

3. Solar will continue to boom on rooftops and elsewhere in the U.S. Solar leasing, group purchasing and discount options, and good old solar incentives will continue to put record amounts of solar power on people’s homes and businesses in 2012. Additionally, huge utility-scale solar projects will keep moving forward and breaking new ground. Dropping solar costs, innovative technologies, and innovative business models make the clean energy option increasingly attractive, in numerous shapes and forms.

4. Attacks on the solar industry will get stronger. With solar’s increasing importance and growth, those in the fossil fuel industry or threatened by it will likely increase their attacks on the budding industry, I presume. Solyndra was just the start. How they will do this when solar remains one of the most popular things in the country (with about 95% of Americans in favor of government support for it and increasing deployment) remains to be seen.

5. More feed-in tariffs will drive fast installation of rooftop solar. In North America and around the world, I think we’ll see more governments moving forward with feed-in tariff policies to support solar. Why? Well, simply put, it’s been the most effective policy for driving solar power installation around the world.

6. PACE comeback. I think we’re finally going to see property-assessed clean energy (PACE) financing come back in the U.S. PACE financing was having tremendous success (with no harm to anyone) before Fannie and Freddie Mac inadvertently shut it down. It’s got a strong following of supporters and is a common-sense financing option that has no reason to be sitting on the sidelines.

7. China (& India?) to knock our socks off. China’s solar

ambitions have increased dramatically in the last year (more than once). It doesn’t take China long to act and I think we’re going to see tremendous implementation in 2012. India’s future doesn’t seem as certain, but it hastremendous solar power goals as well, solar is now cheaper than diesel there, and many are projecting that it will become a big solar player soon, perhaps in 2012.

“Global solar photovoltaic (PV) module shipments are forecast to grow from an estimated 22.7 GW in 2011 to 43.8 GW in 2015 according to IDC Energy Insights’ Worldwide Quarterly Photovoltaic Module Tracker,” IDC Energy Insights reports. “At the same time that module prices are declining at a record-setting pace, large markets like China and India have doubled down on future solar plans and adopted extremely aggressive targets.”

“According to IDC Energy Insights most recent PV Module forecast, Asia/Pacific (including Japan) will grow from 22.9% of global module shipments in 2011 to 49.3% in 2015. Europe, which is expected to receive 66.4% of PV shipments in 2011, will decline to just 38.7% in 2015 (see chart below).”

Any other thoughts on what 2012 will bring? I did leave some notable topics out, as I’m not sure what to expect from them. Those include the solar trade dispute between U.S. & German solar companies and China, and solar policies in the UK and other European countries.

Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1547u)

An eco-umbrella maker and a group of holiday cottages have today become the first businesses to benefit from the government’s flagshipRenewable Heat Incentive (RHI), after installing heat pumps in their properties.

The government today announced that Sheffield-based umbrella supplier Booth Brothers and Broadgate Farm Cottages in Beverley, East Yorkshire, will both receive RHI payments of 4.5p per kWh for the next 20 years. Both businesses have installed green heating devices that qualify for the pioneering incentive scheme.

Charles Booth, chief executive ofBooth Brothers, said fitting the 24kW water source heat pump had been a natural next step for the company’s plan to create a “carbon negative” business, following the installation of two wind turbines, solar panels and a hydro-electric system to meet its electricity requirements.

The heat pump, fitted by Earthtest Energy, will power a new underfloor heating system in the company’s offices, housed in an 18th-century former corn mill.

The whole project, which also includes a new ventilation system, cost about £85,000, but Booth Brothers decided to press ahead with the investment despite delays to the launch of the RHI.

“We ‘ummed’ and ‘ahhed’ about the RHI because the technology was so new and the project was delayed when the launch of the RHI was delayed,” he said. “But in the end, we decided to do it on the basis that the RHI would come in.”

Booth’s confidence has paid off and the company now predicts the RHI payments will halve the time it takes to pay back the investment, from 15 years to just seven or eight years.

Elaine Robinson, owner of Broadgate Farm Cottages, toldBusinessGreen that she was delighted when the government launched the RHI last year as she had been looking to install three heat pumps to heat her five cottages since 2008.

She hired Kensa Engineering to fit the first 4.3kW heat pump, followed by a further two devices, for which she is also applying for RHI approval from Ofgem.

In total, the three heat pumps cost more than £40,000 and will provide lower cost hot water and heating than from traditional sources like oil. Robinson expects the RHI payments will help reduce the payback time to about 10 years.

Heat pumps were the obvious choice for her businesses because the cottages lack a mains gas supply and, as such, costs have risen in line with spiralling fossil fuel prices.

Robinson added that an efficient green heating is necessary for her holiday lets, because customers usually visit during summer and winter, when they need more cooling or heating.

However, both Booth and Robinson advised that green heating systems will not suit every business.

“Everybody’s got to consider what works for them,” said Robinson. “If you’re in something for the long term, then this works. But if your plans aren’t quite as long-term as ours, it might not be the right choice.”

Although the first two RHI payments will go to heat pumps, the government is keen to see a range of technologies benefit from the £860m pot, including biomass boilers and solar thermal panels.

According to industry estimates, the RHI scheme is widely expected to reduce payback periods on a wide range of renewable heat technologies to a point where they are competitive with conventional heating systems.

Welcoming the news, climate change minister Greg Barker said he hopes the RHI will help the UK cut its carbon emissions and boost employment.

“It’s fantastic news that the Renewable Heat Incentive has received its first two successful applicants, and this is just the start,” he said.

“Renewable heat is a largely untapped resource and an important new green industry of the future. It’ll help the UK shift away from fossil fuel, reducing carbon emissions and encouraging innovation, jobs and growth in new advanced technologies.”

The government has estimated that the RHI could increase the number of green heat installations seven-fold to about 126,000 and support the thousands of existing jobs in the heating sector.

http://www.businessgreen.com

 

To produce energy from sunlight, light can be converted directly via a photovoltaic cell, or the sun’s heat can be used to boil water to drive turbines producing energy.

But a third way could be developed. This would be a more direct one. It would avoid us the constraints of the first method, with which the conversion can be done with certain frequencies of light. It would also avoid us a complicated process that results from the water boiling technique.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a kind of trap to direct sun; the device consists of a thin layer of tungsten (a very resistant metal). A surface of this layer is facing the sun, and is covered with microscopic traps. The other surface is facing a special type of solar cell and is carved in a structure called a photonic crystal. This crystal allows the structure to emit infrared radiation at a frequency with which they are best absorbed by the solar cell. These two surfaces are created by photolithography which is the same process that allows the manufacture of computer chips.

The tiny traps on the first layer capture the sun’s rays, especially when they are aligned with it. The heated tungsten becomes much warmer than it would otherwise be. To be transformed into energy, the heat is directed to the solar cell through the photonic crystal, whose property is to modify the propagation of electromagnetic waves. 

Basma – Green Energy International Correspondent – 04/01/12

To close the energetic gap that exists in Senegal and boost the solar industry, the “Association For The Promotion Of Solar Energy And Recovery Of The Wind Turbine” was set up by the Senegalese. 

“People were a little disappointed because the authorities have made heavy investments in solar and outcomes were not achieved. This is the main reason why many people do not believe in solar energy,” said Abdul Aziz Ba member of the association. “But we believe in it because we know we have a strong potential and we would really like to clean up the area,” he said while adding, “And that’s why we created this association to boost the solar sector.” 

And also an appropriation of this tool is the only thing that can afford to absorb the energy gap in Senegal at the household level. “Stating that”, it was found that at the sector level, there are shortcomings in relation to managerial knowledge, human resources. 

“The solar industry is also well organized from the point of view of legislation,” as Abdul Aziz Ba says “that’s why we want to provide training which will be complete. Our first targets are those that operate in the sector. There will be a module of law for people to understand how the sector is regulated, what you need to do and what not and how to engage”

It also states that the work to clean the area has already begun. ”We are trying to convince the population level that the sun is only as a tool for their insights and their basic needs. We began to define lines to compensate for any problems.“

Basma – Green Energy International Correspondent – 01/01/12

A team of the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge (USA) is testing a process that could give a much needed boost to the solar energy sector.

It is true that for now, the solar panels are terribly flat whether on the roofs of buildings or fields. Of course, they are given a slight bend or tilt so they can maximize the sun’s radiation, but few facilities can overcome the problem of the moving sun – or rather the rotating earth.

Capture The Sun The Vegetarian Way

In Andalusia, a field of rotating panels in the manner of sunflowers – the solar power plant PS 10 – is enjoying maximum sun exposure. This field was born in 2008. This is the kind of plants that inspired Marco Bernardi and colleagues, through the three-dimensional structure of trees and other plants that depend on sunlight to live.

This doesn’t have as a goal building architecturally complex objects. The tests were performed with a single open cube, for example, and already, the efficiency is improved. Thus, scientists have obtained a doubled power compared to that of a planar structure of the same surface area: 1.92 Wh for the cube against 1.01 Wh for the panel, in a summer day. 

 
Solar Energy: Produce More, Longer

The performance improvement is based on two principles:

- The three-dimensional structure can receive and use the sun’s rays even when they are grazing.

- Reflective panels inserted in the three-dimensional structure and referring to other rays that are not exposed to the sun has the effect of increasing the amount of light received.

Basma – Green Energy International Correspondent – 22/12/11

The World Solar Challenge, Go!

The start of the 2011 World Solar Challenge, the World Championship Of Solar Car, was given on Sunday, October 16. Participants had to cross Australia from the north to the south, which was more than3000 km from Darwin to Adelaide. Among the participants was a Belgian car: the Umica and a Taiwanese car: Appollo VI that stood out.

THE TAIWANESE PARTICIPATION
It was a team from a university supported by Taiwan’s AU Optronics company that could mold solar cells into a solar car, named Apollo VI!
The way this car works is truly fantastic as the solar energy is captured by the performing monocrystalline cells (23%) “Back contact”, which covers an area of ​​6 square meters.
The ultimately flat craft carries a single passenger (the driver) at a speed of 80 km/h with a possible peak of 120 km/h! For 130 pounds, the car has a length of 4.70 meters and a width of 1.80 meters and a height of 1.10 meters.
The aim of the team of 20 students from the National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences is to visit Australia to participate in the louse WSC famous race, the World Solar Challenge, with about forty other competitors! Great challenge in perspective…

THE BELGUIM PARTICIPATION
Organized for the first time in 1987, the World Solar Challenge was a biennial competition through which young engineers envisioned the future of mobility. Vice-world champion in 2007 but forced to retire in 2009 after a collision, the Umicore Solar Team returns in 2011 with big ambitions. Competition was fierce; including students from Stanford, but the Belgian team could count on the participation of Vanina Ickx.
For professional drivers, the World Solar Challenge was truly a challenge with solar vehicles behaving so strangely different (no accelerator pedal, etc.). Three other drivers made it to the team: Jeroen Moens (designer of the suspension and brakes), Boudewijn Sarens (designer of solar panels and electronics) and Claes Brecht (who formerly dealt Umicore Marketing).

In 2009, the winners had fallen at an average speed of 100 km/h, against 90 km/h in 2007 and this year, due to an unpredictable weather announced during the first part of the course, cars speed tended toward the average speed of 2007.
That said, The Umicar Imagine car was capable of giving a peak speed of 120 km/h.

HOW IT WENT
Thirty-seven teams from twenty different countries have developed vehicles that will cross the finish line using only the sun’s energy. This technology has evolved since 1987 which was the date when the first World Solar Challenge race took place. As along with improving the efficiency of photovoltaic cells (most silicon-based this year) and batteries, the average speed of the winner has risen up from 67 to 95 km/h over this year.

During the first stage, only 25 teams managed to cross the checkpoints in time. After twenty-nine hours and forty-five minutes was the team from the University of Tokai, Japan, who won for the second year in a row. Equipped with silicon solar cells with a yield of 22%, the three-wheeled carbon shelled vehicle had traveled the route at an average speed of about 100 km/h.

Basma – Green Energy International Correspondent – 24/10/11