Another ARPA-E Winner: General Compression’s Renewable Energy Storage Ramps Up in 30 Seconds
March 6, 2011
One of the success stories at the recent Department of Energy ARPA-E summit held to highlight innovators funded under the $400 million to find renewable energy innovations in the Recovery Act, is General Compression (GC). The Massachusetts MIT spin-off start-up is developing an innovative compressed air energy storage system built into wind turbines that will help get more renewable energy on the grid.
Just in time, too. At the end of last year, California made storage mandatory. And last week, FERC just proposed that fast storage be paid better than slower storage, because we will need it more.
And this start-up makes fast storage: 30 seconds! (It sure pays to have a Nobel Prizewinner running the DOE! Remember when an oil man ran it?)
Energy storage is becoming more critical because it helps utilities quickly ramp up or down grid supplies to balance more renewable power. (FERC Wants Smaller, Faster, Distributed Storage to Speed Renewables)
General Compression is developing a variation on compressed air energy storage (CAES) with a compressor right in the nacelle of a wind turbine. Once the air is compressed, it is pumped underground for storage, and then when needed, can be expanded again to make electricity.
Like traditional CAES, their system stores the compressed air in salt formations or saline aquifers to store the compressed air. Theirs can ramp up in just a very speedy 30 seconds, have an 8 to 300 hour discharge, and store 2 MW, or up to 1,000 MW – the size Cal-ISO says California will need when it gets 33% renewable power on its grid in 2020.
But unlike traditional CAES, theirs needs no natural gas generator to unload the power again from its compressed state, so it is 100% clean storage.
And by not being reliant on nearby natural gas, it can be sited anywhere in the country, sited near existing wind farms, and near existing transmission. This is key, as we seem to be moving in a regulatory direction where wind farms are being required to supply their own storage.
It is modular, so it can scale up or down. It can be built in arrays of modular units, from 2 MW to 1,000s of MWs. And because it is fuel-free, it is cheaper to run over time.
The company also naively assumes that, because it is uses no fossil fuels, it will be easier to permit, too. Green, climate safe, fuel-free and all that. Well, yes, in a sane world. Maybe in Europe. But at Cleantechnica, we see the opposite. Clean solar or wind takes years to permit.
But filthy fossil power has tantrums when asked to wait two months – McConnel and Inhofe’s Mining Jobs Protection Act gives the EPA just 60 days to approve or veto coal mining permit applications: if no decision, permit is therefor automatically “granted”!
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 1 hour ago
Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) with a compressor right in the nacelle of a wind turbine is indeed great innovation. The way research is going on in Renewable Energy especially Solar and Wind shows the ambitious targets set by US in Renewables will certainly be achieved.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
New Fuel Cell Turns Ordinary Soft Drinks into Clean Energy
March 6, 2011
A research team in China has come with a new technology that could give new meaning to the words “energy drink.” The team is developing a tiny fuel cell that runs on ordinary soda pop, the kind you can buy in a supermarket. The use of a common, inexpensive ingredient was no accident, as the team hopes to develop a low cost version of the fuel cell that could be widely used to power miniature implantable medical devices as well as small portable electronics.
Energy from Soda Pop
Elsewhere in CleanTechnica we’ve covered a group of students who are developing ways to make ethanol biofuel from waste soda pop, which bottling plants dispose in mass quantities for various reasons. The process is based on fermentation and uses microbes to break down the sugars in soda. In contrast, fuel cells use a chemical reaction to create electricity. The Chinese researchers used an enzyme called bilirubin oxidase, which reacts with the glucose in the soft drinks. The result is something called a biofuel cell.
Building a Better Biofuel Cell
The U.S. Navy has been developing a microbial fuel cell with some success (microbial fuel cells involve the entire organism), but biofuel cells based on enzymes have proven more elusive. The U.S. Air Force has had a soda pop biofue cell under development for a number of years. The Chinese research looks promising due to its use of carbon nanotubes formed in the shape of horns, which produces higher surface area, lending more power and stability to the reaction.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 1 hour ago
A good innovation. Fuel cells are finding great many applications nowadays.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP), India
Another ARPA-E Winner: General Compression’s Renewable Energy Storage Ramps Up in 30 Seconds
March 6, 2011
One of the success stories at the recent Department of Energy ARPA-E summit held to highlight innovators funded under the $400 million to find renewable energy innovations in the Recovery Act, is General Compression (GC). The Massachusetts MIT spin-off start-up is developing an innovative compressed air energy storage system built into wind turbines that will help get more renewable energy on the grid.
Just in time, too. At the end of last year, California made storage mandatory. And last week, FERC just proposed that fast storage be paid better than slower storage, because we will need it more.
And this start-up makes fast storage: 30 seconds! (It sure pays to have a Nobel Prizewinner running the DOE! Remember when an oil man ran it?)
Energy storage is becoming more critical because it helps utilities quickly ramp up or down grid supplies to balance more renewable power. (FERC Wants Smaller, Faster, Distributed Storage to Speed Renewables)
General Compression is developing a variation on compressed air energy storage (CAES) with a compressor right in the nacelle of a wind turbine. Once the air is compressed, it is pumped underground for storage, and then when needed, can be expanded again to make electricity.
Like traditional CAES, their system stores the compressed air in salt formations or saline aquifers to store the compressed air. Theirs can ramp up in just a very speedy 30 seconds, have an 8 to 300 hour discharge, and store 2 MW, or up to 1,000 MW – the size Cal-ISO says California will need when it gets 33% renewable power on its grid in 2020.
But unlike traditional CAES, theirs needs no natural gas generator to unload the power again from its compressed state, so it is 100% clean storage.
And by not being reliant on nearby natural gas, it can be sited anywhere in the country, sited near existing wind farms, and near existing transmission. This is key, as we seem to be moving in a regulatory direction where wind farms are being required to supply their own storage.
It is modular, so it can scale up or down. It can be built in arrays of modular units, from 2 MW to 1,000s of MWs. And because it is fuel-free, it is cheaper to run over time.
The company also naively assumes that, because it is uses no fossil fuels, it will be easier to permit, too. Green, climate safe, fuel-free and all that. Well, yes, in a sane world. Maybe in Europe. But at Cleantechnica, we see the opposite. Clean solar or wind takes years to permit.
But filthy fossil power has tantrums when asked to wait two months – McConnel and Inhofe’s Mining Jobs Protection Act gives the EPA just 60 days to approve or veto coal mining permit applications: if no decision, permit is therefor automatically “granted”!
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 1 hour ago
Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) with a compressor right in the nacelle of a wind turbine is indeed great innovation. The way research is going on in Renewable Energy especially Solar and Wind shows the ambitious targets set by US in Renewables will certainly be achieved.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
New Fuel Cell Turns Ordinary Soft Drinks into Clean Energy
March 6, 2011
A research team in China has come with a new technology that could give new meaning to the words “energy drink.” The team is developing a tiny fuel cell that runs on ordinary soda pop, the kind you can buy in a supermarket. The use of a common, inexpensive ingredient was no accident, as the team hopes to develop a low cost version of the fuel cell that could be widely used to power miniature implantable medical devices as well as small portable electronics.
Energy from Soda Pop
Elsewhere in CleanTechnica we’ve covered a group of students who are developing ways to make ethanol biofuel from waste soda pop, which bottling plants dispose in mass quantities for various reasons. The process is based on fermentation and uses microbes to break down the sugars in soda. In contrast, fuel cells use a chemical reaction to create electricity. The Chinese researchers used an enzyme called bilirubin oxidase, which reacts with the glucose in the soft drinks. The result is something called a biofuel cell.
Building a Better Biofuel Cell
The U.S. Navy has been developing a microbial fuel cell with some success (microbial fuel cells involve the entire organism), but biofuel cells based on enzymes have proven more elusive. The U.S. Air Force has had a soda pop biofue cell under development for a number of years. The Chinese research looks promising due to its use of carbon nanotubes formed in the shape of horns, which produces higher surface area, lending more power and stability to the reaction.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 1 hour ago
A good innovation. Fuel cells are finding great many applications nowadays.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP), India
U.S. Flushes 12.5 Trillion Gallons of Energy Down the Drain Every Year
Researchers from Newcastle University in the U.K. have done the math, and on the surface it looks pretty grim. Every year, the U.S. flushes about 12.5 trillion gallons of energy right down the drain. They’re actually talking about potential energy, in the form of biofuels that could be recovered from wastewater. That alone could form a big part of the renewable energy picture, but wait there’s more – much, much more.
Renewable Biogas from Sewage
Regular readers of Cleantechnica are probably used to us raving about the energy potential in wastewater (yeah, sewage). Sewage-to-methane biogas equipment is becoming commonplace at treatment plants, where it is usually used to run equipment at the site. The City of San Antonio recently bumped it up a notch by selling its sewage biogas into a commercial pipeline, and we should also note that agricultural biogas is becoming a big deal, too. The U.K. researchers estimate that a gallon of wastewater contains enough energy potential to run a 100-watt light bulb for five minutes, which doesn’t sound like all that much until you multiply that by 12.5 trillion.
More Good Stuff from Sewage
In addition to biogas, sewage can yield a plethora of renewable benefits. Depending on the presence of contaminants, it can be dewatered and used as a natural soil amendment. Researchers are also looking into refining biofuel from the “trap grease” in sewage, and even making renewable bioplastics from sewage. To ice the cake, the typical treatment plant is a sprawling facility often located in a relatively remote area, providing the potential for wind turbines and solar power installations – and let’s not forget the potential for kinetic hydropower, too.
Who’s Afraid of $4 Per Gallon Gas?
Sewage-to-biogas isn’t the answer to all of our nation’s energy woes, but exploiting the energy potential of wastewater is going to play a big role in a diverse, renewable energy picture – and it’s locally sourced, too. We’re dealing with yet another price spike at the gas pump right now, but the time is fast approaching when the U.S. economy will no longer march in lockstep with global market trends for a single type of energy.
Comments
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 2 hours ago
Good Article.Renewables can play a crucial role in Energy Mix of US.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
6 March 2011
20% More Efficient CCS Cleaning Up Coal Plants – With Rust!
March 5, 2011
Among presenters at the recent ARPA-E summit were researchers trying rust to capture carbon dioxide more economically from Ohio State University. Last year’s $5 million grant from ARPA-E had enabled their research to the point where a 250 kilowatt demonstration plant is ready to test how well it works and what it costs.
Instead of exposing the coal to air, using a technology already proved in the lab, the team, led by Professor Liang-Shih Fan of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is producing a highly concentrated stream of carbon dioxide using chemical looping, making it easier to capture.
In this case, they will use iron, cycling it between iron oxide (rust), and metallic iron – in a chemical loop.
Most coal plants burn coal in air, which is mostly nitrogen. “You have to waste a lot of energy to separate the nitrogen from the carbon dioxide,” says Fanxing Li, a researcher from the group.
Technical process
The coal is first gasified, a common process converting coal to syngas (carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas).
The syngas is exposed to particles of iron oxide which act as an oxygen carrier and the reaction causes the iron oxide to release its oxygen, forming metallic iron. The oxygen oxidizes the carbon monoxide, forming carbon dioxide and hydrogen, steam.
The hydrogen and carbon dioxide can now be separated and the steam condensed, leaving concentrated carbon dioxide.
Then the metallic iron is exposed to the oxygen in air, forming iron oxide again – in a chemical reaction that generates heat, which is used to generate electricity – and returns to the first chamber to react with more syngas, closing the loop.
Export to China
Coal is cheaper than renewable energy in part because coal plants in the US have already been built and paid for, and the current costs reflect just the ongoing operating costs of fueling them – but with any capital expenditures to build additional equipment to capture the greenhouse gases emitted when coal is burned, the equation changes.
So the coal energy industry resists the investment. Adding carbon capture machinery adds about 50% to the cost, and running the machinery can add 30-35%, so carbon capture can add as much as 85% to the cost of the electricity produced.
Most people are just as distrustful of CCS as fossil energy owners, but – because coal can never be clean. The ideal would be to never mine any more coal (which I agree with).
But there are countries that are just adding their first coal plants now, and they are not already entrenched in the dirty power plant processing that we have inherited in the US. So it makes sense to me to solve at least the generation side for them, even though the mining side will never be clean, and export the cleaner technology.
Even if we can’t ever stop mining itself in this country, like everyone in the world, we will all still benefit from lower greenhouse gas emissions in China and India, where they are interested in finding cleaner coal.
The results so far are encouraging, and suggest this will be 20% more efficient than conventional CCS processes, with 100% carbon capture. First results will be out at the end of March.
Comments
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 3 hours ago
Yes. The Efficiency of Coal powered plants need to be increased in view of stiff competition from Renewables. The rust is a major problem.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
6 March 2011
Farmers Adding Much More Renewable Power Than Expected
March 4, 2011
According to a new census from the USDA, farmers are reducing their costs by embracing renewable energy to power their operations in very unexpectedly big way. The use of renewable sources focused just on the use of solar panels, wind turbines, and methane digesters.
The tremendous rise in the degree of adoption of renewable energy in itself surprised and pleased the Agriculture Department, which under Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is attempting to spread the use of renewable energy on farms in order to cut greenhouse gases which that could make farming in the US among the worst casualties of climate change by the end of this century, and almost impossible within the next few centuries.
The report is even more encouraging in that it covers adoption only up through the end of 2009. Surprisingly to me, methane digesters came in last among the three sources. By that the end of 2009, 121 US farms were using methane digesters to make energy for farm operations. Another 1,420 farms were using wind turbines to power farm operations and 7,968 were using photovoltaic solar electric or solar thermal energy.
Solar PV provides electricity. One California fruit grower uses solar to power pumps to irrigate land, or it can be used for any electrical use. Solar thermal collectors use the heat of the sun to provide hot water, which could be used to heat barns – with the hot water piped through a concrete floor supplying radiant heating – or to provide hot water for food or wine processing. Cogenra Solar combines both types of solar for maximum efficiency at a winery in Northern California.
California led the nation with almost 25% of all farms nationwide using renewable energy. Runners-up were Texas, Hawaii and Colorado with at least 500 operations using their own renewable energy power on the farm.
But the gap in the Midwest breadbasket may be good news too, because it may be due to competing good renewable energy policy in some states designed to encourage renewables. Midwestern farms are hosting wind turbines supplying utility-scale power to the grid. Iowa for example, allows companies to pay farmers to host turbines on farms.
These Midwestern turbine-hosting farms would not be included in this survey since these turbines are owned and operated by those energy companies that simply lease farm land in order to supply the general grid. Thus Iowa farms, while maybe not powering their own operations, were nevertheless by 2009, already supplying a staggering 15% of Iowa electricity just from wind turbines, set in their fields of amber grain.
The money saved by farmers with renewable energy was cheering too. Farmers in nearly every state reported savings on their utility bills. The savings were especially noticeable in New York, where, utility bill savings reported by respondents topped $5,000 for 2009.
Comments
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 2 hours ago
Infact Renewable are best suited to Farmers. In Developing countries Solar Pumps,Windmills,Windturbines for decentralised power,Biogas Digesters besides Energy Saving can play major role in supplementing the conventional energy.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
6 March 2011
35% Fuel Savings in Store for World’s Largest Kite-Powered Ship
March 6, 2011
Agribiz giant Cargill is planning to test a giant kite on a “handysize” shipping vessel later this year, making it the largest kite-powered ship in the world. The use of wind power is expected to cut the ship’s use of low grade bunker fuel by up to 35%, depending on wind and weather conditions. If the demonstration project proves successful, it could lead to a radical improvement in the shipping industry’s ability to rein in its greenhouse gas emissions.
Global Shipping and Greenhouse Gases
It’s a bad news/good news thing. Global shipping churns out a significant amount of air pollution, mainly due to its use of low grade “bunker” fuel. Apparently, if shipping was its own country, it would be the sixth-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, it may be relatively easy (relatively, mind you) to get those emissions under control, because a relatively small number of vessels – 90,000 – transports about 90 percent of world trade.
Kite-Powered Shipping
Unlike sails, which are anchored to a ship by masts, Cargill will be testing a true kite tethered by long ropes, resembling a giant parasail. The company is working with sailpower expert SkySails. Kite powered ships are not entirely new – the world’s first commercial kite-powered ship was launched in 2008 – but SkySail has stepped up the technology with an automated system designed to manipulate the kite for maximum efficiency. The next step is to find a ship owner (Cargill does not own ships, it charters them) willing to host a test of the latest sustainable technology. That shouldn’t be too hard; the shipping industry is beginning to transition into full on green mode and Maersk, for example, has just rolled out a new line of energy-saving ships.
A Comeback for Sailing Ships
High tech kites are just one way in which the shipping industry is rediscovering the benefits of clean, renewable energy. In a twist on convention, one company is testing a system based on rigid sail-like panels, which can double as wind power and solar power collectors. Shipping industry leaders see the writing on the wall both in terms of oil prices and in tighter environmental regulations at seaports, so the prospect looks good for more sustainable energy innovations in the future.
Comments
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 2 hours ago
Great Innovation.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
6 March 2011
FERC Wants Smaller, Faster, Distributed Storage to Speed Renewables
March 4, 2011
At the February 17th business meeting, FERC proposed that we pay more for the now more valuable fast response energy regulation provided by the newer and more responsive energy-storage technologies, because these are the ones that we will soon need more of, according to a report at Energy Prospects.
No one doubts that more storage is needed on the grid as we add more renewable energy, so we can keep electricity supplies even. Traditionally, the slower amount of storage needed in the past has been adequately ramped up in time by pumped hydro, steam turbines and combustion turbines.
But as we add more renewables, we need to create faster, more nimble and responsive storage.
From this new need has sprung an assortment of innovative large-scale battery systems, flywheels, electric-vehicle-to-grid systems, and even demand response agreements with large commercial customers – that can cycle refrigeration units off for a few minutes, for example – that are able ramp up or down much faster than the traditional sources.
In wholesale markets, “slower, larger resources are being given a compensatory advantage for their size while faster, smaller resources do not similarly receive compensation for their ramping speed,” FERC said at the meeting.
Currently, utilities pay resources to keep capacity off line, so it is there when needed to ramp up. But the smaller, faster ones we will need more in the future, are currently paid less.
FERC cited the example of a 30-MW slow resource that would receive a larger capacity payment for regulation than a 10-MW fast resource, but the two resources would receive the same amount for real-time regulation provided, even though the smaller, faster resource is increasingly more useful. The ramp-up speeds needed can be a matter of a few minutes, or even seconds.
For example, Beacon, with a 20 MW flywheel energy-storage system in New York, said its flywheels can ramp up at 4 MW per minute when dividing regulation capacity over five minutes, but the actual ramp rate is 300 MW per minute, fully deployed in four seconds.
Speaking for California, which now gets 18% from renewables, Cal-ISO said that once it reaches 20% online, the grid will need to be able to raise or lower electricity supplies by about half a gigawatt, and that this will rise to a full gigawatt by 2020 when we have 33% renewables on the grid.
So the provision of fast response frequency-regulation services in California must total a gigawatt (1,000 MW) by 2020. (the state has already passed regulations making this kind of accompanying storage mandatory, to rise along with renewables, as they ramp up)
Cal-ISO already has launched a regulation energy management mechanism that would allow energy-storage devices with 15-minute storage capability to participate in Cal-ISO markets. The mechanism uses the five-minute real-time energy market to manage the state of charge for energy-storage devices.
Supplying this new market will be a large new innovation-driven distributed-storage industry, and not without bumps along the way.
Comments
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 1 hour ago
Good Article. I entirely agree.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Wind Energy Expert
Liquid Air Tested to Store Renewable Energy in UK
March 2, 2011
Yet another innovative way to store renewable energy is being tested in the UK by a cryogenic company, Highview Power Storage, whose liquid air energy storage could be up to 70% efficient and cost just $1,000 per kilowatt.
Why the race is on to invent storage
Renewable energy without storage does not produce a convenient and steady supply of energy, just as coal, until the railroad was invented, did not. Coal requires an endless supply of mined coal trucked in via railroad to keep producing steadily. Just as coal needed the railroad for its steady supplies of fuel, renewable energy needs to invent storage for a steady supply of variable energy.
With renewables, sometimes there is too much energy for the grid, which cannot handle it. Wind is especially a problem, with some states having to give wind power away for free at night when no one can use it. People may be asleep, but the energy must go somewhere.
How this invention works
The Highview unit would use an unused excess at times of low demand to power refrigeration units to cool air to around -190 °C – which turns air into liquid nitrogen for cryogenic energy storage.
Once the refrigerators, powered by the renewable energy, have chilled the air to a liquid, it is then stored in a tank at ambient pressure – about 1 bar. When electricity is needed, the liquid air is subjected to a pressure of 70 bars and warmed in a heat exchanger.
Rewarming liquid air creates a gas to power a turbine
Just allowing the liquid air to warm again produces a high-pressure gas that can drive a turbine to generate electricity. Using just ambient air heat to warm it, the process recovers around 50% of the electricity that is fed in, but it becomes up to 70% efficient if a source of heat is available. Waste heat could be harnessed inexpensively from a nearby industrial or power plant, and used to heat the cooled air to warmer-than-air temperature for a power boost.
Next step
A 300 kilowatt cryogenic energy storage system has been tested for the last nine months, storing and supplying electricity to the UK grid. It has proved proof of concept and that the process is economical, as the supplies needed are inexpensive. Next, Highview plans to build a 3.5 MW, commercial-scale system by late 2012, building it up into an 8 to 10 megawatt storage plant by early 2014.
Till now, the company has been buying the supplies, but it has now added an on-site liquefaction plant, and will begin producing its own liquid air or cryogenic liquid nitrogen from late March, which will reduce costs.
Other ways to store renewable energy:
Techniques we’ve covered that are being tested so far include
Utility scale
Gravity hydro under rivers: Pump Hydro Underground to Store Wind Power
In caves: For Baseload Wind Cheaper than Fossil Fuels
In boxes: Storing Renewable Energy in Boxes of Air.
In new kinds of batteries: Metal-Air Battery With 11 Times the Energy at Half the Cost?
Distributed energy
In hundreds of homes, using thermal energy storage: Maine Residents Get $6,000 to Store Energy as Heat
In ice storage on commercial rooftops, for use in air conditioners: Make Ice at Night to Store Wind Energy
By distributing the storage among multitudes of electric cars (promising, once we have enough electric cars)
Traditionally, energy has only been stored in pumped hydro – only useful when enough gravity-fed water is available. Water is pumped to the top by night-time cheap wind power, and when surges are needed, dropped to activate water turbines.
But as we add more clean renewable energy, additional storage will need to be invented and commercialized to go with it. This will create whole new industries to do that, the way coal created the need to build the trans-continental railroad. (Wind Storage Worth Trillions)
This is why the Obama administration funded the DOE to find and push innovation in this sector (Top ARPA-E Funding Goes to Renewable Storage in “Liquid Battery”) and why states leading the way in renewables are also leading the way in storage. (California Proposes First Renewable Energy Storage Requirements)
Comments
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 2 hours ago
In Renewables (non grid connected) the problem lies in storage at an affordable price. Hitherto only Battery Storage is followed. There were attempts for Flywheel storage. The new and innovative liquid air storage when successful on a large scale will be a boon for Renewables.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP), India
6 March 2011
How Denmark Will Integrate 50% Wind Power by 2025
March 5, 2011
Denmark gets 20% of its energy from wind power, and plans to get to 50% by 2025. So it is frequently debunked by the opponents of wind power (the extractive energy industry) as “having to export most” of its wind power across its borders.
Others claim the export figure is as little as 0.1%, but perhaps the question itself misses the point. Normally having a commodity that you are in a position to sell is seen as a good thing.
All renewable energy sources can work together balancing each other, and the more options there are to balance output within the widest possible geographic region, the better.
The Denmark/Sweden/Germany/Norway/Finland market boasts significant (variable) hydro power, and on the other hand, district heating systems that can store surpluses.
So an exhaustively detailed paper presented today by Andrew Smith of London Analytics looked at hourly power data from 2000-2010, hourly price data from 2006-2010, and minute-by-minute data from the last twelve months, has some useful insights, on integrating 50% wind by 2025.
It concludes that Denmark is able to use its high-capacity inter-connectors at the border to smooth variations in wind generation at the minute by minute level. But, even more, it balances variations in demand in neighboring countries, due to fluctuating hydro power in neighboring countries.
Wind generally works best when farms are spread a larger geographic area, both for the variation in wind speeds, which get evened out over larger areas with variation in weather conditions, and in demand which also evens out by crossing time zones so that the people who use electricity are waking up and going to sleep at different times.
To export (and import), Western Denmark has an AC connector to Germany that can export at 1500MW and import at 950MW, 740MW of DC connectors to Sweden, and 1040MW of DC connectors to Norway. Eastern Denmark has a 1900MW AC connector to the Swedish grid, and a 600MW DC connector with Germany.
Denmark is only 16,621 square miles, half the size of Maine, and serves electricity to a home population of just 5.5 million. But one neighbor alone, Germany, has a population of 81 million, so enabling exports of electricity makes sense from a market point of view.
The study found that higher prices across the border was more of a determinant for exports than lack of demand at home, with high prices were driven by variations in regional weather conditions such as the dry years reducing hydro power in Norway and Sweden.
In order to integrate 50% onto the Danish grid, the report recommended integrating all the distributed players in the market, on both the supply and demand side, to meet future balancing needs.
One such source of balancing is the country’s extensive heat storage capacity in the Danish district heating systems. Previous energy researchers had found that “As a rough estimate between 20 and 30 GWh energy can be stored as useful heat.”
30 GWh of heat storage in a grid with up to 5 GW of wind capacity installed, would provide the needed sink for peaks of wind energy generation, by itself.
Denmark is frequently held up as a case study of a grid successfully integrating wind penetration of 20%, and so as it ramps up to 50%, so it has lessons for the US.
But fears about exporting electricity across borders is hardly one of them.
Comments
Dr.A.Jagadeesh 2 hours ago
Yes. It is possible. Infact Denmark was once leading in Wind after US. Then Germany and Spain surpassed. I worked in Wind Energy in Denmark and I know how Wind Farm Co-operatives there operate Wind Turbines.
Denmark’s Energy Plan 2025•Foresees stabilisation of energy consumption•Increasing renewable contribution to 30% of demand–Across all sectors•A high fraction of renewable energy will be wind power that is intendeddisplace imported coal and gas in the electricity sector•Wind generated hydrogen used in transport can displace oilSuccessful implementation will demand new thinking and new techniques.
West Denmark has the World’s highest wind capacity, kW per capita
•West Denmark0.88 kW
•Ireland (end 2006)0.34 kW
•Spain0.34kW
•Germany0.22 kW
Measures announced are consumer-friendly
•East –West inter-connector will deliver up to 600 MW more wind power to East Denmark
–Which has less wind capacity because it blows less
•Use of over-flow electricity to provide district heating
–Will save fuel and CO2emissions
•Demand will be encouraged at periods of high wind output…
–…by demand-side pricing
–…saving fossil generation and/or imports across the inter-connectors.
EveryMWh of Danish wind power is subsidized by the Danish consumer…
•Wind energy that is exported at a low spot price exports both subsidy ANDCO2emission reductions directly to Norwegian, Swedish and German consumers
•…whereas every MWh of wind energy consumed insideDenmark ”returns the subsidy to the consumer”, saves fuel imports and really reduces Danish CO2emissions(Source:.incoteco,VRB Power Systems).
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Wind Energy Expert
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
6 March 2011
South Korea Shatters World Record With Gigantic Off-Shore Wind Farm
November 9, 2010
South Korea just announced the investment of $8.2 billion to build a gigantic 2,500 MW offshore wind farm, according to Wind Daily. It is part of a $36 billion investment to meet its targeted greenhouse gas reduction pledged after the Copenhagen Climate Accord.
At 2,500 MW, this simply dwarfs current offshore wind farms. Europe, the current world leader, now has offshore wind farms that are in the 300 – 400 MW range.
It is even more than twice the size of China’s recently announced gigantic 1,000 MW off-shore wind farm which holds the current world record for the largest planned offshore wind farm.
South Korea pledged a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. To meet the target, it plans a total investment of $36 billion over the next five years.
The tiny but energy-intensive nation will spend the money in a public/private partnership to develop renewable energy sources to replace the oil and gas it now uses in electricity generation. The offshore wind farm is part of that at $8.2 billion.
The first step in the offshore wind farm will be the construction of a “proving area” by 2013 to test the first 20 of the 5 megawatt turbines that will be used throughout. Assuming all goes well, by 2016 it will comprise 900 MW, with 180 turbines. The final 300 turbines will be installed by 2019 to complete the 2,500 MW farm.
The nation’s first renewable energy standard was announced in September. It requires that large electric utilities (that supply more than 500 megawatts per hour) must source at least 10% of their electricity from renewable energy, like solar and wind, by 2022.
The US also just approved plans for its first offshore wind farm off the Massachusetts coast. Cape Wind will be a 300 MW farm and will use smaller 3.5 MW turbines supplied by the German company Siemens.
European companies rose to pre eminence in turbine production as a result of the EU-approved Kyoto Accord which phased in cap and trade legislation to reduce greenhouse gases by adopting and developing more renewable power.
Comments
South Korea has ambitious plans to harness Renewable Energy. Certainly they will do well in offshore wind farms.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
13 February 2011
World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Begun by China
October 23, 2010
China, which shot to world leadership in turbine production after passing renewable energy legislation (together with local construction mandates) in 2005, has begun building the world’s largest off-shore wind farm in Bohai Bay, a few hours from Beijing. The engineering design and construction of what will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm at 1,000 MW, according to Ordons energy news, is being undertaken by the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC),
It is not that unusual for offshore oil to develop offshore wind technology. The two share some of the same technical and engineering issues. Stat-Oil in Norway is also investing in offshore wind development, because many of the engineering solutions found to develop offshore oil, are also applicable to the development of offshore wind, like building platforms in deep sea.
Once complete, in 2020, the Bohai Bay wind farm, just three hours from Beijing, will be the largest off-shore wind farm in the world, at 1,000 MW. The current world’s largest offshore wind farm in Europe just started sending power to the grid in September from a 300 MW array of turbines in the North Sea.
To build the massive infrastructure needed, nearby Tianjin has received an investment of $2.2 billion from the Chinese government. The potential is for a staggering 750 Gigawatts of offshore wind power off the coast of China, more than twice the potential 330 GW off the Atlantic coast of the US, which itself would power the East Coast twice over.
Comments
1. Dr.A.Jagadeesh 2 hours ago
Yes. China can do it. In least time,China now occupies second position in Wind Enerfgy in the world.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
13 February 2011
By: Susan Kraemer
Storage is needed to harvest the full yield available from intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar. One of the options is compressed-air storage; till now only possible in underground caverns. But SustainX Energy Solutions; a Dartmouth College start-up that got $4 million in VC funding from Polaris Venture Partners and Rockport Capital this year is working on compressing and storing air in cheap off-the-shelf shipping containers.
Over the next two years SustainX will try to develop a way to cram 4 megawatt-hours worth of stored energy into each 40-foot long container and to reduce the energy that it currently takes to compress and release air by about 70%.
The goal? A renewable energy storage system with the portability and scalability of a battery and the economy and capacity of a cave. Make that a portable cave.
Cheap storage is needed. A lot of research dollars are going into building a variety of storage options for renewable energy to extend their contribution to the grid. We have too much wind at night and too much solar in the day: but seldom overlapping in any one region.
The breakthrough better battery is being funded by ARPA-E and sought by hundreds of researchers and companies from the traditional fly-wheel manufacturers to new nanotech start-ups.
Utilities are looking into storing energy in compressed-air in caves, in gravity; by pumping water up - to let it drop when needed - or in rolling batteries; by loading up extra juice at night into electric cars - to be dispatchable back to the grid again at peak with interactive vehicle-to-grid technology.
PG&E is one public utility scouting for caves suitable for compressed-air storage capable of storing 3,000 megawatt-hours (or 300 megawatts for ten hours). There are already a few compressed-air facilities in the world where off-peak electricity is used to pump air underground for storage. During peak-demand times, the air is released and pushed through a turbine to make electricity. Utility-scale battery storage systems only deliver 1 or 2 megawatts for a few hours.
But underground limestone caverns aren’t always right where you need them; at least with the right geological attributes that make them safe as depositories. You need the portability and scalability of a battery and the economy and capacity of a geological feature.
The president of SustainX; Dax Kepshire conceived his modular scalable portable “cave” system to find that solution. Portable compressed air storage could be big simply because it is a very cheap tech. Even more so now, since Dan’s portable “caves” could be the unused shipping containers that are piling up in ports around the world.
Comments
The main constraint with wider usage of solar and wind energies is their intermittent nature and storage cost. Hitherto off grid applications are only through Battery storage. Compressed air storage of Wind energy offers promise.
Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) is a way to store energy generated at one time for use at another time. At utility scale, energy generated during periods of low energy demand (off-peak) can be released to meet higher demand (peak load) periods.
Compression can be done with electrically powered turbo-compressors and expansion with turbo 'expanders' or air engines driving electrical generators to produce electricity.
The storage vessel is often an underground cavern created by solution mining (salt is dissolved in water for extraction) or by utilizing an abandoned mine. Plants operate on a daily cycle, charging at night and discharging during the day.
Compressed air energy storage can also be employed on a smaller scale such as exploited by air cars and air-drivenlocomotives, and also by the use of high-strength carbon-fiber air storage tanks.
South Korea pledged a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. To meet the target, it plans a total investment of $36 billion over the next five years.China, which shot to world leadership in turbine production after passing renewable energy legislation (together with local construction mandates) in 2005, has begun building the world’s largest off-shore wind farm in Bohai Bay, a few hours from Beijing. The engineering design and construction of what will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm at 1,000 MW, according to Ordons energy news, is being undertaken by the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC),
Once complete, in 2020, the Bohai Bay wind farm, just three hours from Beijing, will be the largest off-shore wind farm in the world, at 1,000 MW. The current world’s largest offshore wind farm in Europe just started sending power to the grid in September from a 300 MW array of turbines in the North Sea.
Storage is needed to harvest the full yield available from intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar. One of the options is compressed-air storage; till now only possible in underground caverns. But SustainX Energy Solutions; a Dartmouth College start-up that got $4 million in VC funding from Polaris Venture Partners and Rockport Capital this year is working on compressing and storing air in cheap off-the-shelf shipping containers.
Cheap storage is needed. A lot of research dollars are going into building a variety of storage options for renewable energy to extend their contribution to the grid. We have too much wind at night and too much solar in the day: but seldom overlapping in any one region.
Comparison with batteries
Compressed air systems have advantages over conventional batteries including longer lifetimes of pressure vesselsand lower material toxicity. Newer battery designs such as those based on Lithium Iron Phosphate chemistry suffer from neither of these problems. Compressed air costs are potentially lower, however advanced pressure vessels are costly to develop and safety-test and at present are more expensive than mass-produced batteries.
As with electric storage technology, compressed air is only as "clean" as source of the energy that it stores. Life cycle assessment addresses the question of overall emissions from a given energy storage technology combined with a given mix of generation on a power grid(Source: Wikipedia).
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
20 January 2011
New Floating Wind Turbine Harvests Energy from on High
December 31, 2010 in Clean Energy, New Technology, Wind Energy
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
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.
Susan Kraemer
makes 15 kilowatt hours of sunny electricity daily
NASA Takes a Look at the Jet Stream to Get 50 Times More Wind Power
December 31, 2010 in Wind Energy
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,”
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,”
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
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,”
As we catapult into a real clean energy future, the sky is the limit.
Comments
1. Dr.A.Jagadeesh 3 days ago
The idea looks exciting on paper? But at what cost? Lightning also produces enormous power. But when to expect lightning? Even OFF SHORE WIND FARMS are to catch up in Developing countries? Such research may be luxury for NASA but there are other forms which can bring energy at affordable price.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP),
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
Blog: http://www.drjagadeeshncda.blogspot.com
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