Renewable Energy and Technology Blog

Carbon friendly algae

kobear — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:09:38 +0000

So, why didn’t anyone think of this before? Take algae that consume CO2, make big pens in the ocean, and engineer them to digest the waste that has seeped into the ocean. Oh yeah, then harvest the algae to be turned into a petroleum replacement.

The benefits?

No displacement of farmland or forest to grow the algae (it’s in the ocean).
It takes out more CO2 from the atmosphere than the process puts in.
It’s not like we will run out of CO2 and dirty sea water any time soon.

Link to full article here.

A touch of realism for the alternative energy crowd?

kobear — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:05:28 +0000

Everyone wants to be aggressive with saving energy, saving money, and changing the world. But David MacKay, a professor at the University of Cambridge, and author of Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air, thinks that the approaches we are taking do not take into account the scope and breadth of changes that are required.

Read the full article here.

Solar power from space

kobear — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:34:13 +0000

Here is a disconcerting thought: Solar energy collected in space, converted to microwaves, and beamed directly down to earth to your neighborhood. Anyone who has worked with microwave towers knows that you may not want to get in the path of the microwave beam.

Not that I am against this technology! With proper use of no-fly zones around the receiver, we could have lots of power, and feed the homeless with cooked poultry.

Full article here. Video of the technology below:

Renewable Energy Map

kobear — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:43:28 +0000

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has made a great Flash based map of renewable energy potential and facilities within the United States. It is an interactive map that shows where current and future wind faciltiies are located within the states, as well as biofuel and biodigester facilities. There is even a drop-down selector to show you which areas have the most potential for wind, solar, biogas, and cellulosic biomass.

The map can be found here.

Planned Florida city aims for solar self-sufficiency

kobear — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:52:08 +0000

Planning on building a new city? Here is a suggested checklist for how you should do it:

Make the only power plant in the city be a solar plant: Check
Put a solar panel on every house and business rooftop: Check
Install a city-wide wireless data network to support smart energy grid technologies: Check
Install community based electric vehicle recharge stations: Check
Sell the excess power not used back to the grid: Check
Actually build all of this in a place that people will WANT to live: Check!

Developers Kitson & Partners are planning to build Babcock Ranch, which will incorporate all of these features.

The city of Babcock Ranch will include 6 million square feet of retail, commercial, office, civic, and light industrial space. The entire project is expected to cost $2 billion. Projected prices for the planned 19,500 homes were not provided, but the homes should be “affordable for workers and families across the economic spectrum,” according to Kitson & Partners.

Heck, I’d consider living there if all this works out!

Full article here.

Slow wind turbines

kobear — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:42:06 +0000

When I think of slow wind turbines, I think of smaller, urban type turbines that are meant for confined areas without the capacity for large scale wind farms.

I guess I am wrong, and with industry watchers predicting that much of the future growth of wind power will be in the low- to medium-wind segments, this quote from this article sums it up quite nicely:

”Lower wind-speed turbines certainly open up more land for development,” said Rich Reno, platform leader for General Electric’s new 2.5-megawatt wind turbine. “Larger turbines open up the opportunity to get more megawatts out of a given piece of land.”

Full article here

How semiconductors could save the world…

kobear — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:31:53 +0000

We all know that the continued trend of semiconductors shrinking has a tangible benefit to the environment: they consume less power. But until now, noone has really put any kind of tangible numbers behind what has been accomplished, or what the potential is.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has published a report that, among it’s findings, shows that:

“Looking only at productivity gains in electricity consumption, we estimate that deployment of semiconductor technologies—whether in consumer goods, industrial operations, or the production of alternative energy resources—has generated a net savings of about 775 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity in the year 2006 alone. This is on the order of a 20 percent savings for the entire U.S. economy.”

Very compelling indeed. The summary is here, and the PDF of the report is here.

On-Vehicle Hyrdogen Storage

kobear — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:18:11 +0000

There are many technical challenges that must be overcome in order to have a viable hydrogen vehicle platform for mass consumption. One of those major problems is how to safely and cost effectively store hydrogen onboard the vehicle for use in either combustion or fuel-cell applications. The standard method involves cooling and compressing the gas into a liquid form, which is both costly and dangerous, given the correlary to Newtons First law of motion (eg: cars in motion tend to not only stay in motion, but also crash in a fiery blaze)

This new material is being developed as a hydrogen “sponge”. For this type of storage material, surface area is king; and 1/13th of an ounce of this material has as much surface area as an entire football field. It solves the compression problem, but it still needs to be cooled down to about -195 C.

Read the full article here.

Distributed solar power plants

kobear — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:26:40 +0000

Solar Cells

It looks like finally someone is taking a better approach to spurring solar power use by individual consumers. There have been cases where power companies have installed cells on rooftops for large businesses, then sell that power directly back to the building tennant, but those have mostly been isolated cases.

This is going to install cells on invidual residential homes, to help eliminate the initial estimated install cost of $10,000.

Full article here

Fuel Cell funding from DOE slashed

kobear — Sun, 10 May 2009 03:10:36 +0000

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it makes sense to focus funding from the Department of Energy on technologies that will make a difference in the short to near term. On the other hand, the a main reason why Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology is “10 or 15, 20 years” away is because more research and innovation are needed. That can only be accomplished with funding.

Oh well. Read here