Archive for 'Sähkö'
Sustainable Energy Blog
Posted on February 20, 2010, under Sekalaista, Sähkö.
Lähde: Leonardo ENERGY - Sustainable Energy Blog
Wind Turbine Stymied By Cold Weather
Posted on February 2, 2010, under Polttoaineet, Sekalaista, Sähkö, Uutiset.
This is sure to stir up some controversy about the reliability of renewable energy. The following video shows a news report from Minnesota about 12 wind turbines that won’t operate in cold weather due to an issue with the hydraulic fluid. The Minnesota State Municipal Power Association paid $300,000 for each of the turbines. What an amazing and tragic oversight. The news report indicates that there’s a plan to heat the fluid but that would likely require the use of electricity or fossil fuels thereby negating the benefits of the turbine.
There’s a very good lesson to be learned here. As excited as people are about bringing clean, renewable energy to their communities they should always perform due diligence when evaluating clean energy projects or vendors. In Minnesota you would need to have absolute assurance that a system exposed to the elements (which I would imagine could get extreme in Minnesota in the winter) will perform in all weather conditions.
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Bill Gates On Clean Energy
Posted on January 21, 2010, under Polttoaineet, Sekalaista, Sähkö, Uutiset.
Bill Gates has a new website called Gates Notes where you can find out more about Mr. Gates, his charitable foundation and his thoughts on a variety of topics. One of the posts on his site is a podcast series on energy. There are four audio files in the series in both Windows Media and MP3 format. I’m currently digesting the content right now. For the most part it sounds like a lot of common sense coming from a person (obviously very smart) who has done plenty of homework on the topics discussed. I’ve linked to the MP3 versions of the files below. Have a listen and see what you think.
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A Year Of Waiting
Posted on January 17, 2010, under Polttoaineet, Sekalaista, Sähkö, Uutiset.
As I survey the clean energy landscape at the beginning of the new year I think about the prospects for technological milestones and breakthroughs in 2010. We’re coming out of a year where billions of dollars have been either granted or loaned to companies in the name of the next generation of clean energy. You name it and it was probably funded, or at least approved for funding, in 2009. Wind projects, biofuels, battery technology, fuel efficient motor vehicles, energy efficiency, enhanced geothermal, grid-scale energy storage and smart grid are some of the key technology initiatives that were funded. So there’s a lot of hope that we’ll start to see the fruits of this funding in 2010. Don’t count on it though.
When I think about 2010 it seems to me that this will be a year of waiting in the clean energy space. That’s not to say that major projects such as wind and solar farms won’t be completed in 2010. Many projects will be completed but it won’t be the tipping point year for many of the newer and most promising technologies. The reasons for that would make sense to most anyone who knows a little bit about the clean energy space. Take the funding for example. Once the press releases are a day old the hard work on many of these projects begins. After all, you don’t get a check from the Department of Energy one day and start building batteries the next day. Matching funds to meet the government requirements need to be finalized. Planning needs to take place. People need to be hired. Contracts need to be negotiated and signed. Those are just a few things that typically take place before a project begins in earnest. It’s a lot of work and it takes time. The bigger the project, the longer the lead time. And there’s also the matter of projects or technologies that are underway but will not meet expectations.
What follows is a summary of some key clean energy technologies and how they are likely to fare in the current year.
Electric Vehicles - Both Nissan (the Leaf) and GM (the Chevy Volt) have promised to introduce their version of the electric automobile in 2010. The cars will be made available late in the year and in limited markets, primarily California. While there will be a lot of noise leading up to their respective launches most consumers won’t have access to buy one of these vehicles if they wanted to. Those that do live in the right markets probably won’t be able to afford the $30,000 – $40,000 price tag after Federal tax incentives. By the end of 2010 electric vehicles will still mostly be a curiosity. The ones that are on the road will definitely turn heads though.Wind Power - Most onshore development will take place in the Upper Midwest. Northeast onshore development will be slowed by issues related to cost and location related opposition. Simply put, there are a lot more open spaces in the Upper Midwest. Land is cheaper there and developers are less likely to run into opposition due to “pollution” of the skyline. Offshore development off of the Northeast coast and in the Great Lakes will continue to be planned, discussed and debated. Cape Wind in Massachusetts will probably get the green light to move ahead by the Secretary of the Interior but either way construction will not start before the end of the year.
Biofuels - Ethanol is on the shelf as a source of fuel for motor vehicles. Notice that you’re not hearing anything about flex fuel vehicles anymore. The chart below shows the trends for web searches on the term “flex fuel vehicle”. Batteries are the next great hope. You’ll be hearing a lot more about “advanced biofuels” such as cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel.
Enhanced Geothermal - We’re still a long way off from a major breakthrough in harvesting energy from the heat within the earth. Conventional geothermal energy is a available in a small portion of the country. Enhanced geothermal promises to bring the technology to many other areas of the country. Unfortunately recent endeavors to prove the technology have not ended well. AltaRock Energy (funded in part by the DOE and Google) shut down their California project in 2009 due to drilling problems. They’ll take another crack (no pun intended) at it in 2010 with a demonstration project in Oregon.
Smart Grid - By the end of the year more electric customers than ever will have advanced meters installed in their homes. That number will still represent a very small portion of total electric consumers as most of the meters will be located in areas of Texas, California and Colorado. Many more smart meter projects are in the works due to 2009 funding commitments from the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) but those projects require a certain amount of lead time before meters start getting installed. Electric utilities are also dealing with issues related to financing in an environment when demand is reduced due to the recession and customers are wary of any innovations that might increase their electric bill. PG&E’s problems with their smart meter customers in Northern California are a notable development that will probably influence other utilities to choose their roll out timelines carefully, perhaps alotting more time for customer outreach before installing new meters over a wide area.
There is going to be a lot of activity in 2010. There’s no doubt about that. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of results though. At least not as much as many would hope for. Progress will be made but it won’t be obvious to the average consumer. In the years that follow 2010 we’ll start to see more of the fruits of the hard work and investment taking place today
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Optimisation of Photovoltaic Plants : Economic Cable Sizing
Posted on January 16, 2010, under Sekalaista, Sähkö.
Over-sizing the cross section of a cable beyond the result of voltage and current theoretical calculations is, in most of cases, a worth investment that is easily amortised by the electricity bill savings (reduction of Joule losses). In the case of a photovoltaic (PV) installation, the allocated price for energy (feed-in tariff) is much higher than the market price, getting amortised much faster.
Together with an improved profitability of the project, there are additional advantages when using bigger cable sections:
Lähde: Leonardo ENERGY - Sustainable Energy Blog
Google’s Energy Plans
Posted on January 8, 2010, under Polttoaineet, Sekalaista, Sähkö, Uutiset.
Google has done a good job throwing mainstream media reporters off of the scent when it comes to their recent filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The New York Times Bits Blog (which is a tech focused blog) seemed to take the following quote from a Google rep at face value.
“We want to have the ability to procure renewable energy to offset power usage of our operations,” said Niki Fenwick, a Google spokeswoman. Ms. Fenwick said that having access to more renewable energy could help the company fulfill its goal to become “carbon neutral.”
Well that’s what Ms. Fenwick said, but simply procuring renewable energy is probably not the end game here. Here’s why. In Google’s application they have applied to become a power marketer. That means they will be able to buy and sell electricity on the wholesale market. Okay, fine. But check out the following passage from the FERC filing.
In addition to engaging in sales of electricity that are unregulated by the Commission, Applicant proposes to act as a power marketer, purchasing electricity and reselling it to wholesale customers. Applicant may also engage in other, non-jurisdictional, activities to facilitate efficient trade in the bulk power market, such as arranging services in related areas such as transmission and fuel supplies.
That section of the filing clearly indicates that Google Energy plans to do much more than just purchase renewable energy. They plan to sell energy too. Later on in Section III, Paragraph D of the filing you’ll find the following statement.
Applicant requests authority to sell specified ancillary services that the Commission has authorized market-based entities to sell in the markets operated by…
They go on to list almost all of the organized electricity markets in the U.S. as places where they would like to sell ancillary services. For those not in the know, ancillary services involves providing services, such as energy reserves for example, to the electric grid that help to maintain the stability and security of the grid. We don’t need to delve too much further into the details of that to know that it goes beyond merely providing for Google’s own energy needs.
There are many options for Google Energy with respect to electric market participation if their application is approved by the FERC. It’s true that Google Energy could simply purchase electricity to meet their own needs and do nothing more. But Google could do that without becoming a power marketer. The filed application indicates that Google has even larger aspirations than just purchasing power from the markets. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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When Smart Grid Meets Cloud Computing
Posted on December 27, 2009, under Polttoaineet, Sekalaista, Sähkö, Uutiset.
There may not have been two phrases that garnered much more buzz in 2009 than “smart grid” and “cloud computing.” They have a lot in common too. Both refer to a collection of technologies that few people understand in depth. Both are understood to refer to forward looking, game changing technologies. And both have the potential to change the paradigms of their respective industries. Only one of the technologies (that would be cloud computing) is truly consumer focused at this time and although smart grid aspires to be a consumer focused technology it will likely have to piggy back on the cloud to get there.
The consumer side of smart grid involves meters that collect data on usage frequently and then make that data available to the consumer so that they can either manually or automatically (depending on how smart their appliances are) alter their electric usage during times of peak demand. That altered behavior will theoretically reduce the need for expensive and peaking generation that consumers pay for every day but only runs a few hours a year. As a result the system realizes both environmental and economic benefits. It sounds great but before the consumer can alter their usage patterns they need to get access to the data. That’s where the need for cloud computing architecture enters the scenario.
In the world of smart grid utilities will be storing much more data about customer usage than they do now. Most utilities currently take one reading of an electric meter for an entire month. With smart meters in place utilities will be storing thousands of readings a month for each meter. That means utilities will need lots and lots of databases (data centers actually) and applications to access and analyze that data. Computing power is going to be a big deal but it isn’t nearly the sweet spot for utilities. It should come as no surprise that computing giants like IBM, Google, Oracle and Microsoft are lining up to service utilities as they transfer to smart grid technology. So the data storage issues should be sorted out. Don’t forget about the customer though.
In order for the customer to be involved they need access to the data being captured by the utility and they probably need it in real time for the whole scheme to be effective. Customers will need to know, “How much power am I using RIGHT NOW, not fifteen minutes ago.” If smart grid technology delivers on its promises the utility should know that but getting the data to customers in a user friendly manner will be a trickier proposition. That’s where cloud computing platforms enter the situation again. All this data is stored somewhere (out there) in the cloud and that means the customer should have access to that data anytime they have an internet connection. Google’s Gmail service is a great example of a cloud computing service. All the data sits in a data center somewhere and a person’s local computer or iPhone or Blackberry can access that email via a web browser or other specialized program. All the heavy lifting (catching the mail, filtering spam, storage, indexing for search) happens in the cloud. And so it will need to be with customer meter data. Perhaps people could get meter data updates via email. Why not?
Two very necessary functions that utilities are not so good at involve data access and interfaces. In the world of smart grid customers will need user friendly access to data. That doesn’t mean they will visit the utility website every so often and download a csv or pdf file. User friendly means that customers must have access on the platforms, devices and in the format of their choosing. At the computer? Yes. On the mobile phone? Yes. Automatically? Yes. Via text message? Yes. HTML? Text? Yes. Yes. What will customers do with the data? If you’re the utility it really isn’t any of your business. The customers have a right to the data. And that also means they have a right to choose the interface that serves up the data to them. So once open access has been granted the customer can make the choice of interface.
Utilities may choose to make interface options available to consumers. Both Google and Microsoft have been promoting products (Google Power Meter and Hohm respectively) that can serve as an interface for utility customer meter data. But consumers may want to use other interfaces. An iPhone application to display meter data is far from a far fetched idea. How about sharing meter consumption on the Facebook page or Twitter account? Why not? People share a lot of things that you wouldn’t expect them to these days. There are many, many possibilities. Utilities have a few options here. You can try to think of all the possibilities, code applications to meet the needs then release and support them. An interesting idea but not advisable. Or utilities could offer application programming interfaces (API) that allow developers access to meter data given the permission of the customer. Or utilities could just lock the data into their own system giving customers limited access.
If the utility proponents of smart grid want the idea to take off they better seriously consider the API option. Because if you want a technology to take off you need to get people behind it. People will get behind it if they have options for accessing and using their meter data. Remember, the data belongs to the customer as much as the utility. It’s likely that they (or some enterprising software developer) will find a better use for it than the utility will. If you’re looking for some simple examples of the API option see the Twitter API. It allows developers to write applications that access a Twitter users “updates” with the permission of the user. Now think of frequent meter readings as status “updates” that the customer may want to make available to some application for whatever use suits them. Consider the image below which shows the Twitter “connection” window. It shows what applications have been given access to the Twitter updates of a particular user.
Approved Twitter Applications
Why not have a dashboard like this available to a utility customer? There’s no good reason why the customer shouldn’t have these features. Cost might be raised as a potential issue. Remember that utilities are going to have to give access to this data anyway. Giving limited access may end up costing a lot more in the long run if the technologies of smart grid are not sufficiently utilized to offer the promised benefits. Limited access could have a public relations cost associated with it as well. Imagine consumer advocates saying, “There go the utilities again, promising transparency and access to data as a result of new technologies, then failing to follow through.” Cloud computing, with it’s (theoretically) infinitely expandable architecture helps to make it possible.
Smart grid and cloud computing need to go hand in hand in order for the customer focused aspects of smart grid to be successful. Cloud computing offers great opportunities for both the utilities and customers. The technology vendors are out there. The data centers are out there. The application developers are out there. The utility industry just needs to join the party and meet them halfway.
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PSERC Webinar - Integrating Wind Power Efficiently into Electricity Markets Poses New Regulatory Challenges
Posted on December 23, 2009, under Sekalaista, Sähkö.
Lähde: Leonardo ENERGY - Sustainable Energy Blog
It’s Time For Clean Energy Companies To Deliver
Posted on November 29, 2009, under Polttoaineet, Sekalaista, Sähkö, Uutiset.
During his Presidential campaign President Barack Obama pledged, “…to transform our entire economy – from our cars and our fuels to our factories and our buildings.” In the last few months President Obama’s administration has made good on that pledge by unlocking billions of dollars in government coffers to benefit companies developing clean energy technologies in a wide variety of industries via stimulus grants and Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees. In fact, the DOE has looked more like the Treasury Department in recent months. Since the beginning of October the DOE has awarded well over $5 billion.
The dollars are flowing to companies large and small. Automotive start ups like Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive, companies with little track record and no profits to speak of, have scored nearly $1 billion combined in guaranteed loans. Meanwhile established car companies like Ford and Nissan have been granted $5.9 billion and $1.6 billion respectively to further development of electric vehicles. That’s in addition to the government’s purchase of General Motors at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.
Outside the auto industry we’ve seen companies such as Solyndra, a solar power start up based in Silicon Valley that qualified earlier this year for a $535 million DOE loan guarantee. Prior to the loan guarantee Solyndra had been funded to the tune of $800 million in private venture capital financing. At the beginning of September the DOE also announced over $500 million in grants given mostly to large wind power developers. Since then many large utilities across the country have benefited from over $3 billion in smart grid stimulus awards. More recently the DOE has announced more than $600 million for energy storage projects.
If you look at the entire list of what has been funded so far you’ll see that no technology has been left behind. Electric vehicles, solar, wind, smart grid, geothermal, energy efficiency, energy storage and carbon capture have all received funding. Thus one of the biggest obstacles to the development of new clean energy technologies has been removed. The collapse of the credit markets and oil prices dried up the investment pot. But the U.S. government has stepped in to fill the vacuum. So companies now have access to the capital they need to develop better batteries, construct manufacturing plants, research future technologies and much more.
With the financing obstacle removed for many companies, the only thing that’s left for companies to do now is to deliver on their promises. Electric car manufacturers have promised affordable vehicles that eliminate (or greatly reduce) the need for gasoline use in day-to-day transportation. Solar producers have promised gigawatts of solar facilities across the deserts of the southwest and rooftops across America. Wind power developers have promised clean, reliable, emission free electricity with very low impact to the environment. Smart grid companies have promised a new age of energy information technologies that will virtually eliminate blackouts and give consumers unprecedented control over their energy use and costs. Geothermal developers have promised a vast supply of emission free, uninterrupted baseload power from deep below the surface of the earth. On top of all the promises we’ve heard many times over the past decades there is also the promise of millions of “green jobs” as a result of a new clean energy economy.
The billions of dollars in play right now may only represent a down payment on future possibilities for clean energy development in the United States. Results are important though. If you have an investor who throws in a million dollars most of the time they want to see some progress before they commit more money. In this case the investors are the American people who’ve heard promises about the benefits of affordable electric vehicles and solar technology for decades. If public support for new energy investment erodes in 2010, politicians, especially ones up for re-election, will get the message and adjust their influence accordingly. That’s why it’s so important that clean energy companies show that they can produce the technologies they have promised, with the benefits that they have promised, at a cost that the majority of the public can afford.
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Feed-In Tariffs : SERN interviews Miguel Mendonça, from the World Future Council
Posted on November 18, 2009, under Sekalaista, Sähkö.
Our partner SERN, the Sustainable Energy Regulation Network, has interviewed Miguel Mendonça (World Future Council Research Manager) on feed-in tariffs. Xavier Lemaire, who already provided a webinar about off-grid regulation, carried out the interview.
Lähde: Leonardo ENERGY - Sustainable Energy Blog
