Renewable ENERGY

If UAVs starts running on the solar system, then it will save lots of expensive fossil fuel and the add-ons in the form of greenhouse effects. Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology are working on a model of a solar-powered unmanned flight system for round-the-clock surveillance. They have christened their baby as the Green Falcon. This solar UAV aspires not only to save lives but millions of dollars too by using the most up-to-date green technology. Queensland University of Technology is aiming to make the services of this unmanned air vehicle commercially available within 24 months following successful flight tests.

Green Falcon Solar Powered

The Green Falcon is outfitted with a next generation warning system complete with remote sensing and visual data capabilities. Both of these facilities enable this UAV to detect bush fires in Australia that have caused huge damage in terms of lives, money and property. Another possibility is monitoring fires. The university’s aerospace avionics engineer Dr Felipe Gonzalez states, “Bush fires in Australia have killed many people and caused millions of dollars in damage. The Green Falcon is a next-generation warning system with remote sensing and visual data capability.”

The best thing about this UAV is it consumes solar energy during the day and stores it in an onboard battery pack. This battery powers the aircraft after dark. It is also fitted with infrared cameras. These cameras will be handy during search operations in locating distressed people and relay the information to emergency services on the ground. Another advantage of this UAV according to Dr. Gonzalez is “Unlike manned aircraft, which have restricted air time, unmanned aerial vehicles could provide 24 hours surveillance and coverage of disaster areas.”

Green Falcon has a wingspan of 2.5m and weighs 4kg (8.8lb) without a payload. This UAV contains 28 advanced highly efficient monocrystalline solar cells. Green Falcon also boasts of a maximum power point tracker, a purpose-built energy management system and a proficient lithium-ion battery. This UAV also requires minimum maintenance cost. It can be hand-launched for easy operation. Operator on the ground can obtain and react to images and videos sent by the plane.

This UAV can also be utilized for coastal scrutiny, atmospheric and weather research and prediction, environmental, forestry, agricultural, and oceanic monitoring and imaging for the media and real-estate industries. Gonzalez shares his opinion, “The Green Falcon is lightweight, it can be hand-launched and costs are low compared with other UAVs available today.”

The design supports improved swarming capabilities compared with other UAVs, says Gonzalez, which will allow the Green Falcon to provide coverage over large areas in as short a time possible, particularly useful in rescue or fire monitoring missions.

The first test flight of the Green Falcon was performed in June. To perform further experiments fund of A $50,000-80,000 ($45,000-75,000) is needed.

The Arizona Corporation Commission’s Line Siting Committee voted unanimously, 10 – 0, to recommend approval of a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility for the 340 MW Hualapai Valley Solar project after two days of intense hearings. Mohave Sun Power is proposing to build a parabolic trough facility in the Mohave Desert in Arizona, just south of Las Vegas. The expected cost of the project is over $2 billion.

Executive Director, Mitchell Dong, said after the approval, “We are very pleased that the Line Siting Committee recognizes the value of solar power of Arizona and specifically in Mohave County. We are especially appreciative of the committee’s support of the project using wet cooling given its primary water source from the City of Kingman’s wastewater treatment plant. This innovative combination of solar power and the use of reclaimed water will set a model for future solar thermal plants in Arizona, the Southwest and in the deserts of the world.”

Solar Energy Parabolic

The Committee also conditioned its approval on the preferential hiring of local residents given the very high unemployment in Mohave County. The project is expected to employ over 1500 workers during construction and over 100 during operations.

The project is currently negotiating a power purchase agreement (PPA) with a major utility in the Southwest for a long term offtake contract. Negotiations are also underway for an engineering, procurement and construction contract with a global contractor to construct the facility. The sponsors are in the process of arranging financing for the facility, which is expected to close before the end of 2010 in order to qualify for the US Treasury cash grant in lieu of solar investment tax credit. It is anticipated that part of the financing will come from the US Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee program.

While the US dilly-dallies with its offshore wind power efforts – and has yet to have a single wind turbine planted in its coastal sea bottom – the UK is set to go gangbusters.

(The only offshore wind generators in the US are mounted on sailboats to charge batteries.)

The Crown Estate, which owns the seabed of the UK’s territorial waters, has announced the successful bidders for each of the nine Round 3 offshore wind zones. If planning and consents go through, and projects are built to capacity, the UK could have more than 32 gigawatts of new offshore wind power generation.

GigaWatts

The developers who have signed exclusivity zone agreements are:

• Moray Firth Zone, Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd which is 75% owned by EDP Renovaveis and 25% owned by SeaEnergy Renewables – 1.3 GW
• Firth of Forth Zone, SeaGreen Wind Energy Ltd equally owned by SSE Renewables and Fluor – 3.5 GW
• Dogger Bank Zone, the Forewind Consortium equally owned by each of SSE Renewables, RWE Npower Renewables, Statoil and Statkraft – 9 GW
• Hornsea Zone, Siemens Project Ventures and Mainstream Renewable Power, a consortium equally owned by Mainstream Renewable Power and Siemens Project Ventures and involving Hochtief Construction – 4 GW
• Norfolk Bank Zone, East Anglia Offshore Wind Ltd equally owned by Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft – 7.2 GW
• Hastings Zone, Eon Climate and Renewables UK – 0.6 GW
• West of Isle of Wight Zone, Eneco New Energy – 0.9 GW
• Bristol Channel Zone, RWE Npower Renewables, the UK subsidiary of RWE Innogy – 1.5 GW
• Irish Sea Zone, Centrica Renewable Energy and involving RES Group – 4.2 GW

All of the developers are European companies.

The European Wind Energy Association says 45,000 jobs will be created in building the capacity. The UK government is more optimistic saying 70,000 jobs by 2020.

If fully built out by 2020, as hoped for, the new offshore wind will provide 25 percent of the UK’s power needs.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, “Our policies in support of offshore wind energy have already put us ahead of every other country in the world. This new round of licenses provides a substantial new platform for investing in UK industrial capacity. The offshore wind industry is at the heart of the UK economy’s shift to low carbon and could be worth 75 billion and support up to 70,000 jobs by 2020. This announcement will make a significant and practical contribution to reducing our CO2 emissions and the Government will work with developers and The Crown Estate to support the growing offshore wind industry and help remove barriers to rapid development.”

What could be the first US offshore wind farm, Cape Wind, planned for Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts, has hit a new snag. Two American Indian tribes in the state say the turbines will disrupt their spiritual greeting of the sunrise and disturb ancestral burial grounds, now under water. The tribes want all of the Sound listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Park Service, which determines such things, is considering their request.

Extraction Energy from the Oceans

Energy can be extracted from the oceans in five basic ways:

1. – Waves – Kinetic and potential energy in ocean waves can be harnessed using modular technologies.

2. – Salinity gradients – At the mouth of rivers where fresh water mixes with salt water, energy associated with the salinity gradient can be harnessed using pressure-retarded reverse osmosis process and associated conversion technologies.

3. – Tide – Potential energy contained in tides can be extracted by building barrage or other forms of construction across an estuary.

4. – Temperature gradients – Thermal energy resource due to the temperature gradient between the sea surface and deepwater can be harnessed using different Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) processes.

5. – Tidal or marine currents – Kinetic energy in tidal (marine) currents can be harnessed using modular systems.

High Technology in the Solar Thermal Industry

thermal solar

The solar thermal industry has used low-tech technology until relatively recently and been largely concerned with small domestic and building applications for heating water, or cooking by solar power. However, the solar thermal industry is now taking a more sophisticated direction and progressing to higher-tech solar power applications bringing relatively large electricity generation projects in a good number of countries. Some of these solar power electricity generation schemes have been in existence for a number of years on a trial basis.

Solar cooling, although still a very small application with around 90 solar cooling systems in the world, is making rapid steps.

Solar thermal collectors are divided into 3 categories, according to temperature, with low, medium, or high temperature collectors. Low temperature collectors are flat plates chiefly used to heat swimming pools directly. Medium temperature collectors are usually flat plates and are used directly for creating hot water for residential and commercial use. High temperature collectors concentrates sunlight using mirrors or lenses and are chiefly used for electric power production. These are known as CSP (Concentrating Solar Power). In use described as ‘direct’ solar energy or heat is used to heat water, buildings, or for factory process, and not transformed into electricity.

Electricity Supply Industry in Sweden

Swedish electricity market have been achieved ahead of target and by July 2000 all customers with access to the high voltage grid had free choice. The market has now been opened 100%.

The wholesale electricity market is considered competitive, as Swedish power generation is part of the regional Nordic market (which also includes Denmark, Finland and Norway). The electricity retail market exhibits higher than average switching rates.

Sweden is a member of Nordel, the Organisation for Electric Power Co-operation in Nordic Countries, a common electricity market which provides a market place for spot deliveries on a daily basis, as well as a market for financial contracts. As a resuIt, Sweden has 9 interconnections with Norway, 6 with Denmark, 5 with Finland and one newly completed with Germany. The connection with Germany is via the Baltic cable. This enterprise was established to place a 250 km DC cable with a capacity of 600 MW between Sweden and Germany.

Solar Thermal Technology

Solar thermal is a relatively new technology which has already shown enormous promise. It is a larger energy source than is commonly perceived and currently provides about half the energy generated from wind power and more than geothermal, solar photovolatics and ocean energy combined. At the end of 2007 there was 94,000 MW of wind power, 149,000 MW of solar thermal collectors for water heating and building heating or cooling installed, but only 415 MW of high temperature solar thermal collector generating capacity and about 9,000 MW of solar PV capacity.

With few environmental impacts and a big resource, solar thermal energy offers an opportunity to the sunniest countries of the world, comparable to that currently benefiting European nations with the windiest shorelines.

Solar thermal power uses direct sunlight, so it must be sited in regions with high direct solar radiation. Among the most promising areas of the world are the South-Western United States, Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean countries of Europe, Iran, Pakistan and the desert regions of India, the former Soviet Union, China and Australia.

In contrast, solar photovoltaic cells use both direct and indirect, diffuse solar radiation and they are suitable in areas with indirect, diffuse solar conditions, such as many north European regions and is more effective in cold conditions.

In many regions of the world, one square kilometre of land is enough to generate as much as 100-200 GWh of electricity per year using solar thermal technology. This is equivalent to the annual production of a 50 MW conventional coal or gas-fired power plant.

Wind Energy Industry Brought Surprises in 2008

2008 turned out to be a year of surprises in the wind energy industry. Global wind energy installed capacity was 95 GW by the end of 2007 and was estimated that it would reach 125 GW by the end of 2008. It has been doubling every three years during the last decade. The extraordinary growth in 2008 was due to unexpected increases (estimated) of 8 GW in China and 8.5 GW in the USA. It was not unexpected that these two countries did well but the scale of their growth was astonishing. These two surges altered the global distribution of wind power, taking the US from 17.9% in 2007 to 20.3% in 2008 and China from 6.4% to 10.8%.

Global growth had slowed to 25% in 2006 but rose to 28% in 2007 and remained at that level in 2008.

The annual global wind market value in 2007 totalled €25 billion ($37 billion), an increase of 39% on €18 billion ($23 billion) in 2006 (in current values). Prices rose from $1.03 million per megawatt in 2005 to $1.21 million in 2006 and $1.26 million in 2007. The price rise was driven partly by the increase in demand but also by the increase in the price of raw materials, especially cold steel, which rose by 58% between 2005 and late 2008.

A Snapshot of Ocean Technology in 2009

Today, more than 25 countries are involved in developing relevant conversion technologies for harnessing ocean renewable resources for electricity generation and/or other purposes, such as desalination, heating for aquaculture and other uses.

Over 300 wave and tidal devices have been suggested up to the present time, but very few of these are in an advanced state of development. One technology, Pelamis, is leading in terms of development with a medium sized grid-connected scheme being installed in Portuguese waters now.

Ocean energy is mostly in an experimental stage and apart from the 40 year old tidal barrage at La Rance in France, the first ocean energy projects are now being installed and about to be commercialised.

The market is poised for expansion and is expected to grow to 1 GW of installed capacity at an annual market size of $500 million by 2015, but these figures are very broad. Investment to date in the ocean power market has been just over $500 million since 2001, which is relatively small compared to other renewable energy market segments. More than $2 billion will be invested to build commercial ocean wave power farms by 2015. Another $2 billion will go towards research and development globally over the next six years.

There are 396 million gas meters in the world today with annual demand rising to an estimated 34.9 million in 2012. Accompanying this figure is a large number of refurbished meters, which have been verified, recalibrated, and used for replacement. Refurbishment of meters may increase if European countries follow in the footsteps of Germany, where new metrology regulations have removed the age limit and have increased the amount of refurbishment taking place in that country.

Unlike electricity and water, piped gas is not available in every country. Most of the piped gas is natural gas although there is still some city gas manufactured from coal or oil and some LPG is delivered by pipeline, mainly to industrial consumers.

Even within regions there are wide variations in the penetration of gas. For example, in northern Europe, Germany is the second largest gas consumer after the United Kingdom. However, the Scandinavian countries are small users of gas because of the use of coal in Denmark and hydropower in the other three countries, and increasingly nuclear, despite Norway being the largest gas producer in Europe and one of the largest in the world.

With global demand for LPG rising to 34.9 million meters in 2012, annual growth will be 4.0%. There will be variations in the growth rates in different regions of the world due to significant domination by a number of major markets. Growth of 8.7% in China, as the country converts from city gas to natural gas and the government promotes the use of gas as a clean fuel, extensive expansion of gasification in Russia, and continued growth in the USA at 5.5% will lift the world average, compensating for slower growth in other countries.

In value terms, the world market will grow to US$1.6 billion in 2012. The main growth will be in Asia, which will increase from US$440 million in 2007 to US$517 million, and Europe, which will grow from US$336 million to US$385 million. North America will increase from US$287 million to US$375 million.

The United States and Japan are the two largest markets for gas meters (with Japan including LPG meters). The US market is forecast to grow at an annual rate of 5.5% from 5.6 million meters in 2007 to 7.3 million in 2012. Gas meter growth will reflect surges in household growth and increasing AMR deployment. To date, the largest AMR installations in North America have been in the electricity utility sector; however, the gas utility sector is now expected to start gaining momentum.

Japan will grow by 1.4% from 5.2 million (piped natural gas and LPG) to 5.6 million meters in 2012. Growth will be considerably higher if installation of a new residential ultrasonic meter is not restricted to replacement of existing mechanical meters.

Growth in Europe will be the slowest, increasing at 2.9%. In the CIS, the intensive gasification of new regions of Russia will lead to growth of 4.5%, with slower growth in the other republics. According to industry reports, the market in Germany is in decline since metrology changes now permit gas meters to remain in service after 24 years, as long as they meet verification requirements.

China is the third largest gas meter market in the world with 29 million consumers and is poised to overtake Japan to become the second largest by 2010. The government’s decision to develop the natural gas market and to increase its share in primary energy holds significant challenges for local gas distribution companies, which are accustomed to distributing manufactured gas. The majority of Chinese cities have traditionally been supplied with manufactured gas, and there is now a need for a nationwide standardised approach to gas conversion. The largest single gas distribution company in Shanghai has 3.37 million customers.

The number of cities using natural gas has been predicted to increase to 270 in 2010 but this may be optimistic. India is still a small market for gas meters but will grow very fast in the next few years as new distribution networks for residential supply come into service. Demand for gas has grown by 6.6% annually and was expected to reach a rate of 14% in 2005. Two distribution companies (GCGL and MGL) have 450,000 customers between them, and Gail, the national natural gas transmission utility, has formed a number of distribution partnerships to expand distribution to 16 cities. The growth of customers and meters is estimated to be at least 15% per year.

While the argument over wind farms, ruined vistas and dead birds rages, U.S. inventor Scott Brusaw is quietly doing his own thing with the solar roadway model. The plan is to replace all that asphalt with solar panels laid under a high-strength plastic layer.

The panels may also feature LED road warnings and built-in heating elements that could prevent roads from freezing. Each Solar Road slab can develop around 7.6 kwh of power each day. Right now, the tech costs about $7,000 for a 12’ x 12’ slab, so replacing America’s highways will be a costly process. That being said, replacing the 25,000 square miles of roadways across the lower 48 with solar panels would create more energy than the U.S. consumes. If widely adopted, they could realistically wean the US off fossil fuels: a mile-long stretch of four-lane highway could take 500 homes off the grid. If the entire US Interstate system made use of the panels, energy would no longer be a concern for the country.

In addition, every Solar Road panel has its own microprocessor and energy management system, so if one gives out, the rest are not borked. Materials-wise, the top layer is described as translucent and high-strength. Inhabitat says it is glass, which seems odd, especially since Solar Roadways claims the surface provides excellent traction. The base layer under the solar panel routes the power, as well as data utilities (TV, phone, Internet) to homes and power companies.

Overviev, when multiple Solar Road Panels™ are interconnected, the intelligent Solar Roadway™ is formed. These panels replace current driveways, parking lots, and all road systems, be they interstate highways, state routes, downtown streets, residential streets, or even plain dirt or gravel country roads. Panels can also be used in amusement parks, raceways, bike paths, parking garage rooftops, remote military locations, etc. Any home or business connected to the Solar Roadway™ (via a Solar Road Panel™ driveway or parking lot) receives the power and data signals that the Solar Roadway™ provides. The Solar Roadway™ becomes an intelligent, self-healing, decentralized (secure) power grid.

The Department of Energy gave $100,000 to upstart company Solar Roadways, to develop 12’ x 12’-foot slabs, dubbed “Solar Roads,” that can be embedded into roads, pumping power into the grid.

solar roads

The engineering challenges are immense, adds materials scientist Richard Brow of the Missouri University of Science and Technology, another glass expert. But glass can be strengthened by compressing its surface using special heating techniques or, at a molecular level, swapping ions in the glass itself. Such enhanced glass is 10 times stronger than the conventional variety and is used, for example, in smart phones to withstand the pressures of texting.

Brow says: “Can you go from a teenager’’s thumb to a truck? That’’s a pretty big leap, but 10 years ago we didn”t think you could make a 15-micron piece of glass for what’’s relatively rough handling in a PDA,”

Glass has been used to build footbridges, such as the Chihuly Bridge of Glass in Tacoma, Wash. And new glass ceramic composites with increased toughness have been developed for the photovoltaics industry, Brow adds—but that might boost the price of the resulting panel.

In the meantime, Brusaw is spending $40,000 of the DoT’’s money to build a prototype from chemically hardened glass panels that can be purchased today. He will experiment with various types of solar cells, from thin-film to traditional monocrystalline silicon photovoltaics, and he will try to strike the right balance between transparency—so the panel works to deliver at least several thousand kilowatt-hours of electricity each day—and road-gripping texture, which will block some of the light. “If you have perfectly clear glass, you get perfect PV efficiency. But [with] perfectly smooth glass, everybody slips off the road,” he notes. “Glass manufacturers can cut grooves into the glass in a hatch-type pattern. We”ll try various methods and see what holds up.”

The solar roadway will also offer embedded LEDs to illuminate the road and display information, whether the actual traffic directions, such as lane markers, or messages such as “SLOW DOWN.” And, should electric cars become popular, powered pavement could also offer recharging stations wherever such panels are installed.

The first test of Brusaw’’s crystalline vision will be when the prototype is delivered to the DoT on February 12, 2010. And the DoT’’s challenges will be followed by some durability testing by the inventor with a pickax, sledgehammer and, depending on the prototype’’s fortitude, guns. Then it’’s on to parking lots and perhaps fast food restaurants. “Parking lots are much better than going right out onto the highway.You have slow-moving, lightweight vehicles. We can learn all the lessons there before moving into the fast lane.” Brusaw says.

Electric-cars can use AC or DC type motors:

The DC motor, then it may run on anything from 96 to 191 volts. Many of the DC motors used in electric cars come from the electric forklift industry.

The AC motor,probably is a three-phase AC motor running at 240 volts AC with a 300 volt battery pack.

DC installations will be simpler and less expensive. A typical motor will be in the 20.000-watt to 30.000-watt range. A typical controller will be in the 40.000-watt to 60,000-watt range (for example, a 96-volt controller will deliver a max of 400 or 600 amps). DC motors have nice feature that you can overdrive them (up to a factor of 10-to-1) for short periods of time. That is, a 20.000-watt motor will accept 100.000 watts for a short period of time and deliver 5 times its rated horsepower. This is great for short bursts of acceleration. The only limitation is heat in the motor, too much overdriving and the motor heats up to the point where it self-destructs.

AC installations allow the use of almost any industrial three-phase AC motor, and that can make finding a motor with a specific size, shape or power rating easier. AC motors and controllers often have a regen feature. During braking, the motor turns into a generator and delivers power back to the batteries.

Right now, the weak link in any electric car is the batteries. There are at least six significant problems with current lead-acid battery technology:

They are heavy (a typical lead-acid accumulator weighs 1.000 pounds or more).

They are bulky (the car we are examining here has 50 lead-acid batteries, each measuring roughly 6″ x 8″ by 6″).

They have a limited capacity (a typical lead-acid battery pack might hold 12 to 15 kilowatt-hours of electricity, giving a car a range of only 50 miles).

They are slow to charge (typical recharge times for a lead-acid pack range between four to 10 hours for full charge, depending on the battery technology and the charger).

They have a short life (three to four years, perhaps 250 full charge/discharge cycles).

They are expensive (approximately $2.000 for the battery pack shown in the sample car).

Cranbury, NJ (October 20, 2008)—BlackLight Power (BLP) Inc. today announced the successful independent replication and validation of its 1,000W and 50,000W reactors based on its proprietary new clean energy technology. BLP’s 50,000W reactor generated over 1 million joules of energy in a precise measurement made by Rowan University engineers, led by Dr. Peter Jansson. The independent study included full characterization of a proprietary solid fuel to generate the energy before and after the reaction.

Professor of engineering at Rowan University, Dr. Jansson says: “Our experiments on the BlackLight technology have demonstrated that within the range of measurement errors the significant energy generated, which is hundred times the energy that could be attributed to measurement error, cannot be explained by other known sources like combustion or nuclear energy. The ability to generate such tremendous power in this controlled process demonstrates that the claim by BlackLight Power that it is able to demonstrate repeatable heat experiments based on their technology can be replicated by independent scientists.”

The BLP process continues to be replicated and validated by independent scientists and has received interest from financial institutions and power utility plant operators around the world. BLP plans on licensing its technologies.

Randell Mills, Chairman, CEO, and President of BlackLight Power Inc. says: “This is the result that the world has been waiting for to engage this technology and provides validation that the energy generated using the BlackLight technology is no longer an academic argument. The BlackLight Process generates more than two hundred times the energy of burning hydrogen that can be harnessed to replace the thermal power in coal, oil, gas and nuclear power plants. These experimental results prove that the new power source discovered in our labs has the possibility to make a profound impact in our current energy-strapped economy.”

Dr. Jansson’s team conducted 55 tests of the prototypes, including controls and calibrations, during a nine-month study. Test results indicated that energy generation was proportional to the total amount of solid fuel, and only one percent of the one million joules of the energy released could be accounted for previously known chemistry. These results matched earlier tests conducted at BlackLight’s “R&D” center, in Cranbury New Jersey.

A former CEO of Westinghouse and current board member of BlackLight Power Michael Jordan says: “The offsite replication and independent testing announced by Dr. Peter Jansson and his team of scientists underscore the business viability and impact of BlackLight’s new energy source as the opportune replacement of coal-based fuels and will go down as one of the most important advances in the field of energy in the last fifty years.”