Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down
The Cost of Energy » Blog Archive » ETSD: We’re using fewer electrons (among other things)
An unexpected drop in U.S. electricity consumption has utility companies worried that the trend isn’t a byproduct of the economic downturn, and could reflect a permanent shift in consumption that will require sweeping change in their industry.
The US Geological Survey released a report estimating that 85 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of technically recoverable gas hydrates are accessible on the Alaskan North Slope. If produced over 20 years and combined with the conventional gas supply from the North Slope, which has been waiting for a pipeline south for many years, this deposit could supply up to a third of total US natural gas consumption. But that barely scratches the surface of the overall potential of gas hydrates.
The reason this announcement is so significant lies in the words “technically recoverable.” Geologists have known about gas hydrates for a long time, and estimates of global hydrate deposits have been refined to a range of between 100,000 and a million TCF, with the best estimate of US hydrate deposits currently at 200,000 TCF. To put that in perspective, one TCF of natural gas represents about 1% of US annual total energy consumption and contains the same energy as 180 million barrels of oil or 10 billion gallons of ethanol. In other words, that 200,000 TCF estimate is the equivalent of a 2,000-year energy supply for the US, at current consumption levels, of a fuel with half the greenhouse gas emissions of coal.
A high-tech network cuts down on electricity use – Nov. 19, 2008
Reliant operates in a competitive, deregulated electricity market. If homeowners get cool technology that helps them avoid the unpleasant surprise of a big electric bill, Jacobs believes Reliant will retain more customers. And then there’s the green angle. “We as an industry are the single largest emitter of greenhouse gas, and our goal is to help our customers use less, spend less, and emit less,” says Jacobs
Tubercle Technology and wind turbines were made for each other. Tubercles allow turbines to overcome the three major limitations of wind power:
* poor reliability when winds fall or fail
* noise – especially tip chatter caused by tip stalling
* poor performance in unsteady or turbulent air
The Auto Execs didn’t walk!!! But don’t ask about their pay…
The chief executives of General Motors Corp. (GM) and Ford Motor Co. (F) said Wednesday they wouldn’t accept a $1 salary in exchange for government aid to their imperiled companies, as the head of the former Chrysler Corp. did a generation ago.
During a hearing Wednesday, a member of the House Financial Services Committee told Rick Wagoner of GM and Alan Mulally of Ford that reducing their annual salaries to $1 would be an important symbolic gesture as they lobby for $25 billion in loans funded by tax dollars. Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca worked for that wage when his company was bailed out by the government in the 1980s.
Save Energy Star before it becomes a Black Hole
The U.S. government’s Energy Star program is in trouble. Despite all the media references it garners, the program is failing the American public and, without serious intervention, will collapse in on itself to become a black hole of irrelevance and wasted resources.
The Energy Roadmap – Moving Toward Zero Energy Homes
The vision of ‘zero energy homes’ is to transform the residential built environment from a major consumer of energy, to a neutral, or net zero energy environment where the annual amount of energy produced and consumed is equal. More forward looking architects and energy system designers envision homes that are (annually) net producers of energy and able to push energy back into the grid, or fuel vehicles
The power grid today is wasteful, costly, inefficient and dumb – and ill-equipped to address many pressing energy issues, from the need to focus on climate change and carbon cost, to the demand for high reliability. However, the advent of distributed generation, distributed storage, and distributed intelligence will change power infrastructure into an intelligent and more nimble power web.
“Smart grid technologies, like advanced metering infrastructure and demand response services, will enable the transformation of the current grid to a more reliable and intelligent power web,” said Ying Wu, Senior Analyst at Lux Research.
Looks like he has been reading GreenMonk.net!!!
Coming Soon: Improved Lithium Ion Batteries?
A team led by Jaephil Cho at Hanyang University in Korea has now developed a new material for anodes, which could clear a path for a new generation of rechargeable batteries. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, their new material involves three-dimensional, highly porous silicon structures.
Solfocus, whose technology focuses 500x the normal strength of sunlight onto tiny bits of ultra-efficient (ultra-expensive) solar material has just released a new solar unit that it promises has “the highest energy density and energy yield of any photovoltaic system available today.”
Micro Fuel Cells Get Closer to Replacing Batteries
In a recent study, a team of researchers has developed micro-sized direct methanol fuel cells (microDMFC) that achieve significantly improved fuel efficiency and maintain a good power density while operating at room temperature. The energy density (measured in watt-hours per liter) of the new fuel cells is 385 Wh/L, which is superior to lithium ions batteries’ value of 270 Wh/L.
The research, led by Dr. Steve Arscott at the Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics and Nanotechnology (IEMN) in France, working in collaboration with SHARP Corporation in Nara, Japan, is published in a recent issue of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, and a second study has been accepted to the Journal of Power Sources.
Tom Raftery: ‘El futuro pasa por la gestión energética inteligente’ | elmundo.es
Tom Raftery no es un nombre demasiado conocido, aunque no para de dar conferencias por diversas partes del mundo, desde Berlín hasta Nueva York.
Su última parada ha sido Sevilla para debatir en el EBE (Evento Blog España) de un concepto relativamente nuevo, el GRID 2.0 (red de segunda generación), una idea nada fácil de definir, pero que podría traducirse como la redistribución de la energía eléctrica gracias a la tecnología, de un modo similar al que utiliza Internet para distribuir el conocimiento. Una especie de Electranet.
Said in the voice of Kent Brockman:
I for one welcome our new American overlord
This has to be one of the most hopeful pronouncements to come out of the US for decades.
I was speaking at the EventoBlog España conference on Saturday and I made the comment that electricity’s carbon footprint tends to increase as it becomes more expensive.
In follow-up questions, I failed to explain well what I meant so I will attempt to do so here.
Electricity pricing (on the wholesale market) is a function of supply and demand. When demand is high, electricity is expensive, when demand is low, electricity is typically cheap.
For weather based renewables (wind, solar, wave) – they produce power completely independently of the price of electricity, so they produce the same amount whether electricity is cheap or expensive.
Since weather based renewables are on average a constant percentage then they tend to have a higher slice of the market when electricity is in low demand/cheaper.
In other words, weather based renewables are independent of demand, therefore at times of low demand, they have a higher share of the market. This is even more so the case for wind which tends to blow more at night when demand is lower.
As there is a definite correlation between low demand and low price, it can be said by extension that the cheaper the electricity, the lower its carbon footprint!
Climate Progress » Blog Archive » A new record for the hurricane season of 2008
This year is now the only hurricane season on record in the Atlantic that has featured major hurricanes in five separate months. The only year to feature major hurricanes in four separate months was 2005, and many years have had major hurricanes in three separate months
Windows 7: Extending Battery Life with Energy Efficient Applications | pdc2008 | Channel 9
A single application can accidentally halve battery life for the average laptop. This session demonstrates best practices for designing energy efficient applications and shows utilities for diagnosing common application battery life problems.
Energy Efficiency Tips – Computers and IT – DELL COMMUNITY
Dell has created a useful list of energy efficiency tips related to computer usage
How to Make Water from Thin Air : CleanTechnica
EWA Technologies Group has developed a new technology that harnesses the natural humidity in the air, and converts that moisture into drinking water. The process works in three stages: Adsorption of water from the air (getting the water out of the air); desorption of the water (releasing the water out of the containing material); and condensation of the drinking water.
Solar Cells Set New Performance Mark | LiveScience
Researchers have announced a solar energy breakthrough that could lead to its more widespread use with their achievement of the highest efficiency ever for one type of solar cells.
The photovoltaic cells, called dye-sensitized solar cells or Gräztel cells, could expand the use of solar energy for homes, businesses and beyond, the researchers say.
Sustainable Research: Map showing global commercial CCS projects released
Good article on Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS, also called Carbon Capture and Storage) – a technology for reducing output of CO2 with a link to Google Map of commercially significant CCS projects.
SolFocus Installing World’s Largest Concentrated Solar Project in Spain : CleanTechnica
Earlier today, concentrated solar company SolFocus announced that it has signed a deal to install over 10 MW of its systems in Spain for EMPE Solar. Upon its completion in 2010, the $103 million, multi-site project will be the largest concentrated solar deployment in the world
Coating helps solar panels soak up more of the sun | Environment | Reuters
A new type of reflective coating can make solar panels far more efficient, soaking up nearly all available sunlight from nearly any angle, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
The Energy Roadmap – Is ‘Clean Coal’ Barack Obama’s first great energy challenge?
Coal is likely to become President elect Barack Obama’s first great energy policy challenge- as evidenced by the coal industry’s ‘Congratulations’ ad on CNN.com