Giant batteries

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/giant-gravel-batteries-could-make-wind-power-consistent-energy-option

The unpredictability and non-uniformity of wind is one of the largest technical problems facing wind farms. A company in Britain thinks it has figured out how to use argon gas and 200ft barrels of gravel to store electricity in a high volume, low loss, low cost manner. If it works, the devices would capture excess energy in windy times for use when the skies are calm.

Their pilot project is only 23 feet tall. This is still too big for a house, but a large apartment block or shopping center could have some solar panels and small wind turbines hooked into something like this. They could also be useful in a smart grid set up accepting extra energy if a broken link causes a surge. Rather than cascading surges and blowouts, the batteries could absorb the extra energy and return it once the grid is stabilized.

Micro hydro?

With all this rain, we bought ourselves a rain barrel. For a few bucks at Ocean State Job Lot, we got a 150 gallon barrel and set it up in time for the latest deluge. It was full by noon the next day.

All the water flowing off our roof got me thinking about how much energy could be produced if you funneled it all through a turbine. It seems like it should be a lot (picture the energy involved in dropping a full 150 gallon barrel off of a two story building). My rough calculations for a 1000 square foot roof, two story building, with 50 inches of rain annually (Worcester county) is 1 3/4 kWh.

A Google search turned up some patent applications, but nothing concrete...

Super bugs

No, I'm not going to write about drug resistant TB and its friends. I'm talking about the microbes Craig Venter is going to make. He is talking about engineering microorganisms that can make biofuels from sunlight, air, and water.

I don't know too much about his plans, but I've written in the past that algal biofuels seem to be the only biofuel tech that makes sense on a large scale. Most other approaches compete with food production. I've heard that he is starting with marine algae so as to avoid conflict with fresh water needs.

I also know that Venter is not someone to bet against in this arena. As with sequencing the human genome, the science isn't in doubt here. The question is whether it will work at a useful scale. I hope he can do it and suspect he will. One of his moves (and this is no secret formula) is to use money to lure really smart and creative folks to his cause. He just hired a friend of mine away from our lab.

Another good TedTalk

Shai Agassi's talk at TED this February, presented his vision for how we could make electric cars feasible now and why it's the best way to go now. He's not the most amazing speaker, but there are quite a few good ideas in here.

The key idea of the whole thing, and the idea behind BetterPlace, is swapping batteries instead of charging them. If automated, it could be quicker than fueling up a gas car. It starts to make the electric car pretty appealing.

The rest of the talk is a rambling mix of tales of his attempts to get governments to buy into his vision and more reasons why we need to make the switch to electric. One bit I liked was his a recounted conversation with someone from the Israeli government in which he proposed turning some large tract of land into a solar farm that would power all the cars in the country. His point was that they'd not hesitate if that same piece of land held enough oil to run those cars for some number of years. The solar power would never run out. I really like that point of view for setting aside large tracts of land for solar.

100 mile diet for America!

In the not too distant past, energy conservation and renewable power sources were just the concern of tree huggers and "cocaine sniffing sierra club yuppies." I think it was 5 years ago, I first read something arguing that energy conservation should also be the concern of hawkish conservatives. This was the first time I saw the term "energy independence". Now, with the addition of religious groups who see humans as the stewards of God's creation, there is some momentum to take on climate change.

However, as I've complained before, global warming is just one of many bad things caused by unsustainable practices. The reckless burning of fossil fuels is just one of many bad things we are doing to the planet and ourselves in the name of short-term profit. There are very few regulations on what can be dumped into landfills and waste water. Nor are there enough controls on what goes into food and consumer goods. This is a problem both for the planet because chemicals and antibiotics that we are dumping both commercially and from our homes will do bad things to ecosystems. It's also bad for people, because there has been no testing for what these chemicals do to people in small doses. This is just one more of many things that is going to come down harder on those without the resources or education to speak up for themselves.

Anyway all this is why we decided earlier this week to try to reduce the amount of prepared and mass-produced food in our diet. It's not the 100 mile diet, but it's more small producers and locally grown stuff. Not long after we made this decision, it came out that something else was contaminated in China. While the tainted Chinese milk likely was not a terrorist act, it underscored to us just how easy it would be to sicken and kill a whole lot of people by putting something in the food supply. The chain is so long with mass produced food that it'd be pretty easy to do.

In addition to making me a little uneasy, it got me thinking that, like energy independence before it, food security will be the next formerly eco-friendly idea to get taken up by the right in the name of national security.

Oh yeah!?

I'm not really the type to pipe up and get into an argument when people say things like "there's just not enough sunlight for solar to replace coal" or "I don't by organic because it's fertilized with manure". My instincts tell me that these statements are wrong, but I'll lose the argument every time because I don't have all the facts at my finger tips. I can do research later and refute everything, but it's like coming up with the perfect retort for that bully long after he's gone. The first example came up recently, and I let it go, but I figured this blog gives me a chance to set the record straight (to no one in particular).

Last year, Scientific American published an in-depth article explaining just how we could power the entire country on solar. Granted it would be a huge investment, but it would work. It involves building huge collectors in the southwest and building a new transmission network to get the power where it's needed. One of the problems was how to make solar energy available at night, most storage techniques are untested, expensive, lossy, or all of the above. They propose storing heat in salt domes or something.

Two recent developments will alleviate most of these problems. First, researchers at MIT figured out an efficient way to use solar energy to directly separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Traditional electrolysis zaps water with a current to pull the molecules apart. This takes far more energy than can be recouped by burning the hydrogen. The new method is much more efficient. Second, Australian researchers figured out how to make fuel cells without platinum. That should reduce the cost of pulling the energy back out of the hydrogen.

Storing energy as hydrogen may also help the transmission issue. I don't know the numbers, but it could be more efficient to build a hydrogen infrastructure rather than transmitting electricity directly.

Cellulosic ethanol

One of the most intelligent things I've read on ethanol production lately comes from an anthropologist:

It seems to me that most of these drawbacks come from insisting on a monoculture, which -- if you have an efficient cellulose processing capacity -- I don't see why you care about. A real natural marsh or tallgrass ecosystem can't stand much mowing, but if you could tune a multispecies ecology for biofuel production, that would pose much less risk of invasive potential, and would be less trouble to look after. The tallgrass ecosystem was based on burning, anyway, so you should be able to maintain the soil while taking out hydrocarbons with minimal fertilizing.

Good insight, this. Cellulose is, for the most part, cellulose. At the point we commercialize cellulosic ethanol, it doesn't matter what the crop is. Just take whatever grows best locally and run with it.

I still think crop based biofuels are only a short term and/or small part of the solution. We can reduce our energy consumption many, many ways. We still need to eat. But if cellulose can be harvested from otherwise un-farmed land, maybe in lieu of prescribed burns, it'd be a win-win situation.

Oasis

It interesting that an country whose wealth comes largely from oil is doing something this radical.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/21/climatechange.energy

My guess is that they understand that sustainability isn't just about energy. It's about all our resources. They only have oil and sun and both are limited. But they also have wealth and some foresight.

Granted, Abu Dhabi is pretty much a beacon of capitalism and excess, but it's still a cool idea. Good for them.