Archive for the 'Generation' Category

20 predictions for the next 25 years

Published on November 15, 2011 in Economy, Environment, Generation, Sustainability and Transport. Closed

Interesting excerpt from an article in The Guardian earlier this year,  20 predictions for the next 25 years.  The full article is available here.

Energy: ‘Returning to a world that relies on muscle power is not an option’

Providing sufficient food, water and energy to allow everyone to lead decent lives is an enormous challenge. Energy is a means, not an end, but a necessary means. With 6.7 billion people on the planet, more than 50% living in large conurbations, and these numbers expected to rise to more than 9 billion and 80% later in the century, returning to a world that relies on human and animal muscle power is not an option. The challenge is to provide sufficient energy while reducing reliance on fossil fuels, which today supply 80% of our energy (in decreasing order of importance, the rest comes from burning biomass and waste, hydro, nuclear and, finally, other renewables, which together contribute less than 1%). Reducing use of fossil fuels is necessary both to avoid serious climate change and in anticipation of a time when scarcity makes them prohibitively expensive. It will be extremely difficult. An International Energy Agency scenario that assumes the implementation of all agreed national policies and announced commitments to save energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels projects a 35% increase in energy consumption in the next 25 years, with fossil fuels up 24%. This is almost entirely due to consumption in developing countries where living standards are, happily, rising and the population is increasing rapidly. This scenario, which assumes major increases in nuclear, hydro and wind power, evidently does not go far enough and will break down if, as many expect, oil production (which is assumed to increase 15%) peaks in much less than 25 years. We need to go much further in reducing demand, through better design and changes in lifestyles, increasing efficiency and improving and deploying all viable alternative energy sources. It won’t be cheap. And in the post-fossil-fuel era it won’t be sufficient without major contributions from solar energy (necessitating cost reductions and improved energy storage and transmission) and/or nuclear fission (meaning fast breeder and/or thorium reactors when uranium eventually becomes scarce) and/or fusion (which is enormously attractive in principle but won’t become a reliable source of energy until at least the middle of the century). Disappointingly, with the present rate of investment in developing and deploying new energy sources, the world will still be powered mainly by fossil fuels in 25 years and will not be prepared to do without them.

- Chris Llewellyn Smith is a former director general of Cern and chair of Iter, the world fusion project, he works on energy issues at Oxford University.

So what is our government doing about providing for our energy security in the future when it’s unoversally accepted that renewables will NOT provide enough energy no matter what we do with them.  Build an interconnect?  Check.  But now we’re leaving ourselves open to being more dependent on other people’s energy if we assume that the interconnector will safe guard our future.  Why isn’t the government pushing an indigenous industry in biofuels and biomass on a massive scale?  They’ve actually de-incentivised the production of ethanol and cars that can run on them.  Why?  Following food riots in poorer countries recently, due to locals not being able to afford corn as the market price for corn had increased as, predominantly in America, corn was being used up to produce ethanol.  Subsequently ethanol appears to have become a dirty word and the Irish government didn’t want to be seen to be supporting it.  Of course ethanol which was being produced in Ireland at the time was being produced from a by product of the dairy industry – milk whey.  The production of this wasn’t taking the food out of anybodies mouths.  Thanks to the governments knee jerk reaction the sale of E-85 bioethanol was no longer viable in Ireland and so Maxol withdrew it.  Brazil has a thriving ethanol industry, producing ethanol from sugar cane.  Again no one is being deprived of food due to the choice of raw material for their ethanol industry.  The Brazilian government has been strategically developing this industry since the oil crisis at the beginning of the 70′s and now over 70% of all cars in Brazil run on domestically produced ethanol.  Could we revitalise our defunct sugar industry.  Could we revitalise rural, agricultural areas by providing a ready market to farmers for their sugar AND milk from dairy herds which they would otherwise be paid by Europe not to produce because the eurocrats, justifiably, don’t want another milk/butter/etc lakes and mountains forming again.  If we have the capacity in terms of farmers and agricultural land which is either not being used or not being used efficiently, could we develop a viable biofuel economy here in Ireland?

Below is a Sankey Diagram for Ireland’s energy inputs and outputs.  Everything is expressed in Kilo Tonnes Oil Equivalent (KTOE).  Interestingly, on the output side you can see that Transport is by far the biggest consumer of energy in Ireland, the bulk of which is imported.  That’s true for today as well as projections out to 2020.
If government policy concerned itself with promoting the indigenous production of biofuels for transport through the means outlined above, think what it could do for the entire economy, not just the rural economy.
Which would you rather have the Green party pursue – a policy to encourage that kind of activity or one where they’re more worried about hunting for example?  Tell our politicians to take their heads out of their collective backsides.

MiNukA

Published on September 5, 2011 in Generation. Closed

I recently read an interesting article about district power generation systems.  There are obvious benefits to a localised versus a centralised power generation and distribution – for one you avoid the transmission losses associated with channeling all power generated to a centralised distribution hub only to be redistributed, in some cases back to where it came from originally, again incurring transmission losses.  We have such a system in place here in Ireland.  The efficiency of systems like what we have here in Ireland is approximately 40% if I remember correctly.  At any rate it’s a fairly shocking figure.  For every 1000 kgs of Coal we put in at the power station, we see only 400 kgs worth out at the plug socket in your house. I was gob smacked when I found out about this.  Wind power doesn’t fare any better either only with wind power they talk about installed capacity, ie the rated output from a turbine, presumably under some ideal conditions etc.  Not only will you never see 5 kilowatts out of a turbine rated at 5 KW, you then suffer the transmition losses associated with the sending all the generated leccy to the centralised distribution hub.  And that’s when the wind blows.

So how about having a decentralised system with power generated locally where it is consumed using much smaller power stations.  Any excess generated power can be fed in to the grid or any shortfall can be met from the grid.  But predominantly the area surrounding the power generation facility consumes the power generated there.  There could be other benefits such as a district heating system (like what we see in the nordic countries).  Such a system would require predictability if it was to ensure that only a minimum of power would need to be imported from the grid in the event of a surplus.  Therefore wind alone would not work.  Hydro might, afterall there are apparently over 6000 known water mill sites in Ireland, so if it was good enough in the past to mill corn/drive machinery/etc. perhaps we could use it again as a resource to generate power?  Fossil fuels while reliable in terms of providing an energy source is not sustainable and in the long term is not reliable.  Bio-mass and or biofuels could also be used and will certainly become more economically viable as the price of traditional fossil fuels continues to rise.  How about nuclear?  There have been several key advances in this technology, minimising the waste and hazards associated with this type of generation.  Thorium, MSR etc.  Here’s where the interesting article comes in though.  Look at all of the military vessels sailing the seas which are powered by small, sealed, self contained nuclear power plants.  They’re good for a few decades use between refuelling, are built in a factory (so quality control can be maintained) and delivered as a module.  With the fall off in military spending several manufacturers are turning to power generation for homes and businesses.  If the gen IV advances in reactor design were applied to these sealed modules, it could possibly provide small scale nuclear power suitable for a district combined heat and power system which was relatively safe (I’m not going to catagorically state that it’d be perfectly safe) and much cheaper than a conventional nuclear power plant, of which we’d need at least 2 in Ireland to provide redundancy and backup in the event that one needed to be shut down.
These modules would be miniature nuclear devices.  Mini Nukes.  Or to give it a snappy, modern name, MiNuks.  The manufacturer’s first series of commercially viable examples could, conceivably, be designated the A Series.  Giving us the MiNukA.  Unluckily for the New Zealand Honey industry perhaps, I’m sure the Manuka honey producers would be at pains to differentiate the name of their wonderful honey from a small nuclear device.

Vertical Axis wind turbines

Published on August 9, 2011 in Generation, Sustainability and Technology. Closed

It’s been a queitly held interest of mine, at least in the field of wind energy, but I always felt that the vertical axis wind turbine’s day would come.  Yes these turbines are less efficient than the standard propeller bladed turbines we see sprouting up on many hilly locations, but they work with wind from any direction without need to turn themselves into the wind like prop based units.  And as exibited by Dr. Bill Becker with his Aerotecture aeroturbine, they can operate in any wind strenght and self govern without the need for any braking mechanism (cost/complexity issues) or turning out of the wind (reduced productive time).  They also remind me of the “sail” on Kevin Costner’s boat in Waterworld which looked very cool – the sail that is, not the film.

An article on the Beeb’s website now describes how Caltech is using these vertical axis turbines to generate greater energy yields than when using standard prop type turbines.  They speak about schooling fish and turbulence – basically you can place these turbines more densely on a given size of land plot in comparison to prop bladed turbines as they are unaffected by the turbulence which governs how far apart prop based turbines must be placed, thereby increasing the yield per given plot of land by up to 10 times.  Simples.