Energy For The Future

Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads...

2009-01-26T20:55:00.000-08:00

Well, we'll probably still need roads, but maybe not gas. The term "air cars" sounds very futuristic, a la flying cars and auto-lace tennis shoes. But while the technology isn't anything too new (basically stored compressed air is gradually released to drive a pneumatic engine; here's the Wikipedia article on compressed air engines), if Zero Pollution Motor's vehicle actually do find their way into the US market by 2010 (a claim highlighted in this post at Core77), it would feel very futuristic to be able to walk into a dealership and drive away in a car running on air...it almost sounds like a nonsensical dream.

Roads of the Future

2009-01-26T20:36:00.000-08:00

As a reluctant freeway commuter, I frequently find myself yearning for more clearly-delineated lanes, particularly during rainy nights in Minneapolis (I'm not sure why, but for whatever reasons the lane markings in Minnesota seem to perform horribly during wet conditions). Overhead roadway lighting helps, but is less than desirable for a variety of reasons (ambient light pollution, non-trivial energy costs, maintenance and installation costs, etc.). And after all, the problem often isn't not being able to see the whole road, per se, but rather not being able to see lane boundaries.

With that in mind, Luna Road has developed a line of solar-powered in-pavement LED lights that illuminate lane boundaries (pictured above). Each light is a self-sustaining unit that runs off the power gleaned from the sun, so the net operating energy demand of each light is effectively zero. Not only is this dramatically more efficient than overhead roadway lighting, but it also comes without the ambient light pollution and aesthetic unpleasantries (a sort of yellow haze) that's common with overhead roadway lighting.

As far as I can tell, the big advantage of Luna Road's LED lights over reflective technologies such as Botts' dots and cat's eyes is that Luna's lights provide illumination even when there is no line-of-sight to an original light source (such as a car's headlight). In my limited experience driving in California (where Botts' dots are ubiquitous) I've never found this to be much of a problem. But where I really think Luna's lights could come in handy are in situations where they may be covered by a thin layer of ice or snow, situations in which refelctive technologies may not be too effective. Luna's website doesn't really address whether the lights are "snowplow-proof", but in an email exchange with Richard Sabga (the company's president/founder), I learned that the LR-200 and LR-400 are flush with the road surface and therefore potentially compatible with snowplows (I'd have to see some test results to be completely convinced).

Nevertheless, Luna's LED lights are a very intriguing product and are a great example of a solution that is designed around the benefits (sunlight is ubiquitous, at least in small amounts) and limitations (solar power doesn't scale all that easily) of a carbon-neutral energy source.

Via sustainablog.

Energy is Dynamic

2008-08-02T12:27:00.001-07:00

I used to think that I would have a separate blog for each of my separate interests. It turns out that was unrealistic, so now I have one uniblog called Everything's Dynamic. I've exported all of the posts from Energy for the Future over there, but the comments did not survive the move. Nevertheless, they are still on Energy for the Future ad infinitum, and the posts with comments contain links back to the original post.

The SEADOG

2007-07-10T00:29:00.000-07:00

This is fairly old news, but since it's in my 'hood it shall be mentioned. Independent Natural Resources, Inc. (INRI (not a stock symbol)) has some interesting technology. From their website:

The SEADOG^TM pump captures ocean-wave energy to pump large volumes of seawater, consuming no fuel or electricity and creates no polluting by-products in the process. The pump uses buoyancy to convert wave energy to mechanical energy...There are many applications for the SEADOG^TM pump from power generation to aquafarming. INRI^TM is currently developing seawater desalination systems and hydroelectric energy generation.

I like that their outlook seems realistic. They're not saying that the SEADOG will someday produce all the world's energy; and they're approach of target desalinization as an application seems fairly unique. They seem to have had some positive test data, so expect to hear more about INRI in the future.

LTC vs. The Rest

2007-07-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

So for some reason, I started wondering about companies that might produce lithium-ion batteries for use in plug-in hybrid cars, and by searching for "lithium ion batteries" in Google Finance I discovered the company Lithium Technology Corporation (LTC, traded on the Pink Sheets as LTHU). A post on the Google Finance message boards by zardi...@gmail.com says the following:

GM has partnered with A123 systems, which is a privately owned LTHU competitor. A123 is currently in mass production, they do the batteries for dewalt power tools, same LiFePO4 chemistry. LTHU has been losing money for over a decade, it is run by old men. A123 is a newer company started up by an MIT graduate. I'm still optimistic about LTHU, seems like they could begin mass production any time.

A cursory glance at the A123 website vs. the LTC website would indicate that this comment seems to have some merit. A123 seems like a much more dynamic, entrepreneurial company, while LTC seems content with being a research-based company living on government contracts and grants. This realization dampens my enthusiasm over LTC's announcement that they have successfully retrofitted a Toyota Prius with their batteries to produce a plug-in hybrid capable of 125 miles per gallon. It seems like a more business-savvy company would be able to leverage this development into some sort of money-making (and technology sustaining) enterprise. Why not partner with some vehicle retrofitter in California to produce off-the-shelf plug-in hybrids for eco-conscious California consumers. People are clamoring for plug-in hybrids...what is LTC waiting for?

In a letter to its stockholders, LTC said this:

Over the next few months we plan a quantum leap in our production capacity to satisfy the growing demand for our products. We are still investing heavily in R& D, production machinery and in sales and marketing efforts. We believe that we should steer the company in a way that will build long-run sustainable value, especially in our core areas of competitive advantage where the future value of our company will come from.

They plan to increase production capacity dramatically, but will this plan pan out? Only time will tell, although the same letter mentions some new funding:

Recently, we closed on approximately $25 million in equity financing, which will be used to purchase manufacturing equipment in order to increase production capacity and repay some of our outstanding debt. Our recent equity financing was done with a Luxemburg asset management firm, Fidessa Asset Management S.A and its affiliate. We believe that this group has and will provide us with a strong financial backing.

Hopefully. But for now it seems that A123, which is lined up to produce the batteries in the Chevrolet Volt and Saturn Vue, as well as in hybrid buses for BAE Systems, is the industry leader. Apparently Compact Power, Inc. (CPI) is also supplying batteries for the Volt, so they're another player.

Interestingly, though, neither A123 nor CPI is mentioned by the CEO of LTC, Klaus Brandt, in this interview (search for "Klaus Brandt") on thestreet.com. He cites Johnson Controls (and their partnership with Saft) as their primary competitor, which I suppose makes some sense given the fact that they were awarded one of two contracts with GM to work on the Saturn Vue (the other winner was Cobasys, a.k.a. A123).

Another takeaway from that interview, though, is that Brandt is the new CEO, and given his experience at Duracell and Varta, hopefully he'll move LTC in a more business/entrepreneurial direction. He seemed to express a desire for such a direction, at least.

In any case, here's a little summary of who has a contract with who:

A123/Cobasys - contract for Chevrolet Volt, Saturn Vue, BAE Buses
CPI - contract for Chevrolet Volt
Johson Controls - contract for Saturn Vue
LTC - ???

Why hasn't LTC won any contracts? Can Klaus Brandt snag a contract? There are numerous car companies, and surely someone besides GM is goibe handing out contracts for batteries, right? Maybe an upstart like Hyundai looking to upstage the big guys? Maybe some German company looking to leapfrog past normal hybrids and into the plug-in hybrid market? A123, CPI, and Johnson Controls can't win all the contracts--I would think that none of these alone have the capacity (and track record) to singlehandedly dominate the market. Surely there's enough pie for LTC to get a slice...

Disclosure: I don't own stock in any of the companies listed above, but I'm considering buying some LTC stock (LTHU on the Pink Sheets).

Corn-Based Ethanol - Not A Panacea

2007-01-18T01:34:00.000-08:00

This article, which is a summary of findings of a University of Minnesota study, is a good summary of why corn-based ethanol is anything but a panacea for solving energy problems. Here are the five main reasons offered:

Ethanol production requires almost as much energy as it yields. This is a common argument, but the Minnesota study found that the net energy yield from corn based ethanol is 25%.
It isn’t easy being “green” when growing corn. Corn is not a hassle-free crop, and to get high yields you need a lot of fertilizer. I can't imagine too much organically-grown corn is going to go into ethanol production.
Corn crowds out wildlife. Basically, more corn = less wildlife. However, another potential source of ethanol--prairie grass--is essentially wildlife in the sense that it fosters an ecosystem native to the region in which it grows.
Corn ethanol doesn’t cut enough greenhouse gases. It's not much better than regular old gasoline, and in some respects it's worse.
We can’t grow enough corn. This goes back to the "more corn = less wildlife" idea; the energy yield of corn just isn't enough for us to "grow" our way to energy independence. Sorry, corn.

The authors of the study correctly conclude, in my opinion, that corn-based ethanol subsidies should be discontinued. I'd go a step further and say that all energy subsidies (especially those for oil!) should be discontinued, but that's a discussion for another day. In any case, let's leave the corn for food (and maybe biodegradable plastic) and start developing ethanol sources that are actually worth pursuing.

Popular Science summary of new enegery technologies

2006-06-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

This Popular Science site has some great summaries of future "alternative" energy ideas.

I found out about this site from this post.

New type of wind turbine

2005-11-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

Well, new to me, at least. TMA's vertical wind turbine sounds neat.

I heard about this company from this post at The Energy Blog.

Have all of our problems been solved?

2005-11-06T21:24:00.000-08:00

If this is true, our energy problems may be solved, but the physicists' problems are just beginning.

Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation.

I heard about this story from this Slashdot post.

Update: Here's Blacklight's website.

Powering your home with a fuel cell

2005-10-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

Imagine getting all your heat, electricity, and fuel to run your car from a unit stationed at your home. That's possible with a home-based fuel cell that extracts hydrogen from natural gas. Sure, it's not perfect (you still need natural gas, which continues to be expensive). This article (scroll down; it's after the bit about the hydrogen car) discusses a recent Honda innovation, and this page talks about how the public library of Eden Prairie, MN, is powered by such a unit. From the article about Honda:

In addition to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by some 40%, according to Honda’s calculations, the HES system is expected to lower by 50% the total running cost of household electricity, gas and vehicle fuel.

The really cool advantage of this system is that it uses the heat created as a byproduct of the hydrogen extraction to heat the home. Finally! If you think about it, the byproduct of almost any energy generating/converting process is heat. On a macro scale, think of how much heat is wasted because the heat is generated at a location (i.e. a power plant) where it can't be used. By localizing (individualizing?) energy generation, the heretofore-wasted heat can now be put to good use.

With the price of natural gas continually increasing, I hope this becomes available soon. Even though it runs on natural gas, if there truly is a net energy cost savings of 50%, then it's worth it. And even without a hydrogen car, it may still be worth it just for the home electricity generation and heating.

And imagine if such a unit could be powered by something besides natural gas (wind, solar heat, etc.?)...

Special Report on Energy Conservation

2005-09-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Google's blog search, I found the sustainablog, which had a link to this BusinessWeek Online special report on energ conservation.

Solar Heat vs. Solar Cells

2005-09-23T00:50:00.000-07:00

Give solar heat another point in its battle vs. solar cells. Apparently, there's a growing shortage of polysilicon, the stuff that solar panels are made of. Solar dish and solar trough systems (both of which concentrate solar energy to heat something to produce energy) don't have photovoltaic cells, so they're not affected by increases in the cost of polysilicon. In fact, if anything such a shortage helps those technologies because people/companies/utilities interested in solar power may be increasingly likely to go with non-photovoltaic technologies. The more business that flows towards solar dishes and solar troughs, the cheaper and better those technologies get.

More Solar Energy in the Southwestern US

2005-09-23T00:42:00.000-07:00

A company called Solargenix has gotten the go-ahead to build a solar-trough style electricity generating plant in Nevada. Read more about the story from ther press realease, here. And read more about solar trough technology here, at the ever-informative The Energy Blog.

Using hydrogen to help gas burn cleaner

2005-09-23T00:26:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting story about a company in Canada that is creating a device to help gasoline burn cleaner (and a bit more efficiently) by adding hydrogen to the combustion reaction. Hydrogen is formed by electrolysizing water (with the assistance of some chemicals that apparently don't get involved in the combustion reaction).

Sure, it doesn't really address the problem of oil being a limited resource, but it would (theoretically) dramatically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide resulting from car emissions. If gas can burn clean (really, really clean compared to how it burns now if this device can do everything it claims), then we might as well use oil until we run out.

More Stirling Engine Solar Power

2005-09-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

Another Stirling Solar Dish facility is to be built in California. It's being built by, who else, Stirling Energy Systems. Man, I wish they were a publicly-traded company. Here's their press release.

Interesting Company - WindLogics

2005-09-14T01:10:00.000-07:00

WindLogics is headquartered in St. Paul, but they have an office in Grand Rapids, MN. This article discusses the company. And here's their website.

Basically, they analyze the wind potential of a certain area to help determine the viability of a wind farm in that area. There will be a great deal of wind farm expansion in Minnesota and Wisconsin in the next several years (at least), and it looks like WindLogics is in a good position to feed off of that growth. Too bad it's not a publicly-traded company.

Solar Power and You

2005-09-14T00:40:00.000-07:00

This evening, a very special after-school special: Solar Power and You.

So, umm, anyway...I just saw this article about a huge new solar power facility in California. This is the other solar energy, though. Not photovoltaics--those sorry, 20% efficiency beasts. No, this facility will rely on Stirling dishes to concentrate heat and drive a Stirling engine. Instead of the measly 20% efficiency you'd be lucky to get from photovoltaics, Stirling dishes are about 30% efficient.

The Stirling dishes will be made by Stirling Energy Systems, which sounds like a really neat company. The image to the right (from their website) shows how their machine works. As you can see, it's way more mechanical than a photovoltaic system.

Of course, one would expect an alternative energy project of this [potential] magnitude to have massive government subsidies. Happily, that is NOT the case.

Sacramento is willing to subsidize new solar projects, but SoCal Edison says the price it negotiated with Stirling Energy is so attractive -- "well below the 11.33 cents per kWh" it now pays for peak power -- that it won't seek any state subsidies. That seems certain to cement approval.

So it looks like this is a bona fide case of solar power actually being financially viable. Bonus.

Alternative Energy Stocks to Watch

2005-09-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

This is a pseudo-permanent page that will be updated with stocks and/or funds that deal with or focus on alternative energy.

More on OTEC

2005-09-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

Dr. Liang Nai-kuang, a Taiwanese professor, discusses the possibilities of OTEC here. He raises the idea of storing energy created on offshore platforms (where access to deep, cold water is easier) to create hydrogen via electrolysis, then creating ammonia or methyl alcohol to store the hydrogen for transport, a la these "hydrogen pills."

This is interesting.

Energy from Cold Water

2005-09-13T23:11:00.000-07:00

I read this article from Wired Magazine a while ago and didn't want to forget about it--hence this post. The article is about how cold water (really the difference in temperature between cold water and hot air) can be used for air conditioning, fresh water generation, and even power generation. Plus, you can use the "side effects" to help grow fruit faster.

Running the frigid pipes through heat exchangers produces unlimited air-conditioning that costs almost nothing. Draining their sweat yields an endless supply of freshwater for drinking and irrigation. The cold water also creates a temperature difference between root and fruit that Craven believes speeds growth. And by turning the flow on and off, Craven has found he can further accelerate the plants' growth cycle by forcing them in and out of dormancy - he can get three crops of grapes a year and pineapples in eight months instead of the usual 18.

And to generate electricity:

Pipes draw warm water from the ocean surface and cold water from the seabed. The warm water enters a vacuum chamber and is evaporated into steam that drives an electricity-producing turbine. The cold water condenses the steam back into water for drinking and irrigation.

Bonus.

Update: Here are some links on Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC):

Another Hydrogen Storage/Transport Method

2005-09-12T00:35:00.000-07:00

The Weizmann Institute has released a new study detailing a process to create hydrogen indirectly from zinc-oxide. Basically, the process works by using concentrated solar energy to heat zinc-oxide to a high temperature, thereby transforming it into a gas and resulting in the separation of zinc from oxygen. The zinc later cools and condenses into a powder. Add some water at about 662°F, and the zinc reacts with the water to form zinc-oxide and hydrogen. Now you've got hydrogen and, as a nice little bonus, more zinc oxide with which to start the process anew.

This article explains the process pretty well, as does this article. These first two articles claim the process "generates no pollution," yet this physorg article states (along with a nice animation):

At a heat of above 1200°C (2192F) the ZnO breaks down into Zn and oxygen which in turn recombines with the carbon to create CO as a minor by-product.

This article (which is copied-and-pasted from a Nature article that is only available to premium members, one of which I am not) sheds some light on the carbon-monoxide thing. The process uses coal as a sort of catalyst to reduce the temperature at which zinc-oxide splits into zinc and oxygen, allowing the focused solar energy to provide sufficient heat. The physorg article says, "For the future, the team sees the possibility of replacing the coal completely with biomass thus making the entire process completely pollution free."

But that's not true, either. Just because you're getting the carbon from a "natural" source doesn't mean CO or CO2 won't be produced during the reaction. So there'd still be pollution. The bottom line:

The zinc-forming reaction also releases carbon monoxide from the charcoal, which eventually converts to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In a full-scale industrial process, the carbon monoxide could be harnessed to help produce even more hydrogen from water. But this too would produce carbon dioxide. For now the process produces as much carbon dioxide as extracting the same amount of hydrogen from natural gas, Epstein says.

So, it's not a perfect solution, but that's probably a good thing, because it means it's probably realistic and perhaps commercializable. Is that a word?

Oh yeah, one more thing. The organization that produced this research is the Weizmann Institute, not the Weitzman Institute, as it's referred to in the physorg article.

Hybrid Cars

2005-09-12T00:07:00.000-07:00

This article has a nice review of the various hybrid automobiles available now or in the near future. Of course, you have to take the 0-60 times and EPA mileage with a grain of salt, but the zippiest model is the new Honda Accord Hybrid (0-60 in 6.7 seconds), and the most efficient model is the Honda Insight, which is rated at 60 mpg city, 66 mpg highway. The Accord is pictured to the right.

Hydrogen Pills

2005-09-09T23:31:00.000-07:00

Don't eat these.

“Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank”, says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of Chemistry at DTU.

NOTE: 600 kilometers = 372.822715 mi (from Google)

Why?

2005-09-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

I like to keep track of technological innovations having to do with alternative energy, so I'm going to do it through this "blog," as it were.