Category Archives: Solar

Clean Coal – Doesn't Exist But Promises to Be Expensive

mountaineer_coal

Mountaineer Coal Plant, New Haven, W. Virginia, Photo Copyright, NY Times.

According to Kevin Riddell, in the New York Times, (click here for article) the 20 MW carbon sequestration subsystem at the Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, West Virginia, will cost “well over $100 million.” Ridell says:

American Electric Power is spending $73 million on the capture and storage effort, which includes half the cost of the factory. Alstom, the manufacturer of the new equipment, paid for the other half of the factory, hoping to develop expertise that will win it a worldwide market. Alstom would not say what it spent, but public figures indicate that the two companies are jointly spending well over $100 million.

I pulled out my trusty pencil and paper, and did some calculations. If “half the cost” of the facility is $73 million, then the other half is also $73 million. That “well over $100 million” adds up to about $146 million. For a 20 mw facility, that means $7.3 million per mw. It’s not clear from the article whether this is the cost of the carbon sequestration facility or the costs of the turbine plus the carbon sequestration facility. The article also mentions that the energy costs of the carbon sequestration operation are projected at 15% to 30% of the plant’s output.  “More expensive than solar or nuclear.” Utility scale Solar is $6.5 billion per mw,  89.0% of the cost of this facility, even before you factor in the costs of fuel, mining, and clean-up.

Silicon Solar’s Portable Solar Power Systems

Silicon Solar has a wider selection of Portable Solar Power Systems than we’d recalled, including some, like the flexible (in fact, rollable) panels pictured below, which are presumably fairly robust. We’re not sure which models/systems can be daisy-chained – one of the principal virtues of the Solar Stik system. We hope to be able to manage, in the near future, a comparison either of the respective specifications – or perhaps even a field test.

Global P3 Flexible Solar Panel - 30 Watt output - weight: 1 lb. from Silicon Solar

Global P3 Flexible Solar Panel - 30 Watt output - weight: 1 lb. from Silicon Solar

The Global P3  – at right – at full capture/output generates 30 watts of energy, sells for a bit over $500 – and weighs, according to Silicon Solar – one pound. For those of you on the Standard Metric system – that slightly less than one kilogram.

We hope that government purchases and other economies of scale push prices down further. However, without having data at hand, we think it safe to say that the weight to yield ratios of solar PV systems has been improving.

Alternative Energy Info: Nanosolar's thin-film cells

Alternative Energy Info reports that the thin-film cells, originally announced in 2008, appear to be in production, and that the Nanosolar has been adding employees. From Alternative Energy Info, based on reporting by Earth2Tech:

Earth2Tech has noted that there hasn’t been much news from the thin film company Nanosolar lately.    I haven’t seen much from them either – they’re one of the companies I try to keep a close watch on.   So Reuters decided to check it out and try to find out what was happening in the Nanosolar world.   What they found is that there is some activity going on behind the scenes – Nanosolar has been hiring, and there’s a number of new job and internships opening with the company.   Nanosolar’s CEO, Martin Roscheisen told Reuters that the company is “purposely keeping quiet and plans to start talking again in September.”    But based on the job openings, it looks like Nanosolar has been busy ramping up production.  Nanosolar said last year they had developed a new tool that would allow them to crank out up to 1 gigawatt of their thin film CIGS  solar cells each year, but since Nanosolar didn’t say how many cells they were actually making, it’s always been hard to tell what they’ve actually been doing.  Perhaps September will see some hard numbers.

Nanosolar: No news is good news at Alternative Energy Info .

Via Blogopolis Blueprint .

Brooklyn-based Sudia Lab's outdoor PV table

The Sun Table – which has no moving parts, adjustable stainless-steel legs – and whose wooden frame is made of teak – comes with an inverter and internal battery. Four hours of direct sunlight, according to Sudia, will yield enough energy to use a laptop for hours via the battery. (Use the laptop at/on the table on a sunny day, and the the useful life will be more than four hours, of course).

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The current price is $2,200 and ships within 4 – 6 weeks of order.Our quick calculations suggest that – deductibility aside – this would knock about $30 per month from a New York City residential electric bill.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations based on data from the Public Policy Institute of New York State and Michael BlueJay, aka Mr. Electricity

Sun Table from Sudia Labs

(Cross-posted at Caton Avenue

). Via Solar Today

(March 2008 issue).

8th grader builds four-passenger-plus cargo solar/human powered bicycle

If an eighth grader can do it – albeit an exceptional eighth grader – why can’t they be mass-produced at affordable prices?

8th Grader Builds Solar-Powered Bike With GPS, iPod Dock

The base vehicle used, and the priciest part of the project, was a Switzerland-built ZEM (Zero Emission Machine) 4cycle. It’s made out of an aluminum frame

and each rider can pedal at their own pace. In fact, the 4cycle took 3rd place at the human powered vehicle world championships at Interlaken, Switzerland.

And while the ZEM 4cycle is no longer produced,  they got one from a dealer in Maryland who purchased the last 3 from the US distributor. It cost them $3,900.

“[The SOHH] has replaced our cars for errands around town, and it has grown into more than we envisioned with a lot of interest from the community,” David Dixon Sr. told Wired.com

.

And for the win, they documented the project on their website with all parts and schematics so that anyone can build one. They don’t plan to mass produce the vehicle but would love it if someone else does. Though David Sr. did express an interest in updating the bike with a lighter battery “such as lithium polymer, but no budget for it yet.”

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Sources: Wired.com , The SOHH Project and Gas 2.0 . 

AZ data center goes solar

Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge

reports that

Phoenix IT infrastructure provider i/o Data Centers

is installing a huge array of solar panels on the 11-acre roof of its new Phoenix ONE data center. The company says the photovoltaic panels will generate up to 4.5 megawatts of power to supplement the energy needs of the massive facility.

The installation planned for Phoenix ONE will dwarf all previous efforts to integrate solar power into a working data center. Its output will be nearly three times the 1.6 megawatts produced by the solar panels covering the roof of the Googleplex.

The first phase of 5,000 solar panels in Phoenix is scheduled to be operational in January, and will generate 500 kilowatt-peak (kWp), the company says. The array will be expanded in four additional phases during 2010 to reach a total capacity of 4.5 megawatts-peak.

That’s just a fraction of the 80 megawatts of power capacity that the 538,000 square foot Phoenix ONE data center will need upon completion. The solar power is also expensive, costing about 18 cents per kilowatt hour to generate in a market where grid power is 7 cents.

However, there’s more cleverness and  cost-savings afoot – and Rich Miller of Data Center Knowledge explains some of it in his post Solar Power at Data Center Scale. Read the rest of it there.

Thanks to Preston Gralla of Greener Computing for spotting this and reporting it in his post Will Your Next Data Center Be Solar Powered?

The takeaway for disaster planners is this: if an entire data center can be powered by solar – we can certainly power cloud networks, radio over IP, and enough bandwidth to run, for instance, Sahana, and copper-pair phone lines to keep communications going – on and off the net during emergencies

Solar Stik: portable, rugged, solar (and wind) generation

Solar Stik, invented by Brian Bosley and in business for about ten years, sells easily deployable solar and solar/wind generators which can be easily daisy-chained into an array. We don’t think there are any other systems with these features.

Solar Stik 100 Terra

Chris Crosby of Solar Stik – a woman of nearly infinite patience, given the number of questions I asked more than once – explained that their systems have their origin in marine applications, and started out with water and wind resistance as baseline design parameters.

All of the non-marine systems (and, I gather, some of those as well) break down into Pelikan cases and can therefore be hand-transported.

The ability to interconnect relieves responders from constant monitoring of charging equipment during an emergency, like having many dishes on single burners with different cooking times.

The system can also accept power from marine/vehicle batteries, AC charging – so it can be kept ready with large reserves; the reverse is true – if the sun is shining and the wind blowing, the swappable Power Paks make it possible to harvest energy while it’s available for later use – and transport it and use the energy where it’s needed. In other words, the emergency power use isn’t limited to charging items immediately adjacent to the solar array – a charged Pak can be transported – that is, carried – to where it’s needed.

We’ll try to follow up on this in the next few days, including some comparisons to other systems. In the meantime, however, this gallery should illustrate some of the attributes of the Solar Stik system(s).

Ikea's $20 USD solar/LED lamp

Ikea Sunnan Solar/LED lampIkea is now selling its Sunnan lamp, designed by Nicolas Cortolezzis, which is powered by 2 rechargeable AA batteries, included in the $19.99 price. It has the limitation common to consumer solar-powered lighting devices: 9-12 hours of charging on a sunny day will yield 3-4 hours at 400 – 500 lux (Ikea’s product description is ambiguous, and also says that it will then operate at 300 lux).  However, even in winter, it should provide enough light to get through a few hours’ reading or homework – but perhaps not studying for finals.

Thought of another way – thrree or four of these sitting on the most exposed windowsill all day will provide emergency lighting in several rooms. If they’re placed near mirrors – a common practice with lamps before the advent of electricity – their yield will be increased. And even the best emergency flashlight is ill-suited for reading or working.

The market – despite the absence of government encouragement for eight years – has delivered a reasonably priced emergency household light. IKEA, for its part, doesn’t even mention this use. We’d like to see them price them even lower in bundles. (The Sunnan lam is available in stores and not via the IKEA website).

And it’s ready now – no need to wait for a smart grid, or your local utility to go green, or the government to provide interest-free loans for a PV panel on your roof.

Continue reading →

Eco-Watts v Killer-Watts

Burning fossil fuels and using nuclear power create tremendous waste problems.  Harnessing the sun, the wind, and the heat of the earth use energy with no fuel – therefore no pollution. The question is Eco-Watts v Killer-Watts. The choice is ours!

Back in the late ‘1970’s Amory Lovins , a physicist, coined the term “NegaWatts” to describe the energy that could be saved with conservation and efficiency. “The cheapest energy,” he said, “and the cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use.” A negawatt is a unit of power not consumed.

Lovins’ associate, Marvin Resnikoff, PhD, another physicist, currently at Radioactive Waste Management Associates, then teaching environmental thinking at SUNY University of Buffalo – Rachel Carson College, used the term “nuclear constipation” to describe the nuclear waste problem. It’s an apt metaphor – the waste doesn’t go away.

We are struggling not only with nuclear constipation, but carbon constipation. We burn carbon to get from place to place, to heat and cool our homes. But the carbon doesn’t go away. It goes into the air from under the ground. To paraphrase Al Gore,

We are borrowing from China to buy oil from the middle east and pull coal out of the ground to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. But enough wind blows through the midwest corridor in a day, enough sunlight falls on the earth in FORTY MINUTES to provide the power we need for a year.

Harnessing the wind, the sun, and the earth eliminates these problems. Rather than burning a fuel; wind, solar, and geothermal harness a process. The sun shines whether or not we use solar panels to capture some photons. The wind blows regardless of our decision to use a few particles to spin a turbine. We are hitchin’ a ride on a moving train.

Negawatts – units of power not consumed.

Eco-watts – units of power generated by clean energy systems, by harnessing a process rather than consuming a fuel.

Killer-watts – units of power generated by consuming a fuel, which produces a quantity of pollution, such as carbon dioxide, radioactive wastes, mercury, arsenic, etc.

Go Solar, Make Money

Cassandra Kling, an old friend of mine, currently with Infinite Energy, is sponsoring “Solar Energy Options for your Home” Tuesday, May 12. 7 – 8 PM. Hampton Inn, 16 Frontage Drive, in Clinton, NJ. Find out about Solar technologies, Installation, Incentives, the costs and how to make money. The answer is SREC’s. Go Solar. Fight Climate Change. Make Money.

How to fix GM? A 4 Point Plan:

President Barack Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner. He was replaced by Fritz Henderson, who had been Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer. While I agree that Wagoner should probably have been fired, I think his replacement should have been someone from the outside. Promoting from within is a good thing when a company is doing well, but not when the company is collapsing. General Electric, for example, has always promoted new CEO’s from within. But GE was not in trouble when Welch took over, or when he handed the reins to Immelt. IBM was in trouble when the Board brought in Lou Gerstner, an outsider, to, as he put it, teach that elephant to dance. GM is in serious trouble. As an insider, Henderson may be too in step with the corporate culture to change anything.  As an outsider I can see what Henderson might miss.

So how would I fix GM?

  1. Every car, light truck, and truck that comes off the lot should be a diesel  electric hybrid. Like the Toyota Prius, and GM could license the technology from Toyota, but it should burn diesel fuel. That would pave the way to bio-diesel.
  2. Offer a 2 kw solar electric system with every car. This should be priced at $15,000, installed. It’s $10,500 after the economic stimulus plan’s 30% tax break. It would It would charge the batteries, or power a small home during daylight hours.
  3. Give everyone stock options, and limit salaries to $390,000 – less than the salary of the President of the United States.
  4. Demand that the government – my new management – take over the burden of health care for all my employees, my retirees, and every other citizen. Medicare works well for my father. It would work well for me!

Republican Alternative Energy: Coal, Oil, & Nuclear Power

“The Republican Road to Recovery”  according to John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Thaddeus McCotter, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, John R. Carter, Pete Sessions, Kevin McCarthy, David Dreier, Roy Blunt, who signed it, “Keeps Energy and Fuel Costs Low.” It mentions wind and solar, but focuses on coal, oil, oil shale, offshore drilling, and nuclear power.

The document says “Republicans want energy independence with increased development of all natural resources, including renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.” It doesn’t mention “global warming.” It mentions the term “greenhouse gases” once, stating, incorrectly, that nuclear power doesn’t produce greenhouse gases. Mining, processing, and transporting nuclear fuel, and managing radioactive wastes, produces tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases.

It points out that “Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry … have long fought a renewable wind project in waters off of Massachusetts…. Cape Wind, would provide 75 percent of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket island. “

The document focuses on coal, oil, and nuclear power. These are not clean, renewable, sustainable energy sources.  Ultimately, therefore, it attempts to “greenwash” coal, oil, and nuclear power.

the Administration has already taken steps to hinder the leasing of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) which is estimated to hold at least 19 billion barrels of oil, and Democrats have long championed the prohibition on drilling in the Arctic Coastal Plain – which is estimated to hold 10.4 billion barrels of oil. Furthormore, Democrats continue to block the procurement of advanced alternative fuels from sources such as oil shale, tar sands, and coal-to-liquid technology. U.S. Oil shale alone could provide about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day.

Republicans also support opening the Arctic Coastal Plain to energy exploration and development.

And despite expert agreement that nuclear power is reliable, clean, and affordable without producing air pollution or greenhouse gases, Democrats continue to block its development.

Republicans realize that there are better solutions to restore freedom and security in our energy market.  Republicans recognize the importance of exploring for American oil and gas in an envionronmentally-sound manner and support immediately leasing oil and gas resources in the OCS through an an expedited and streamlined procedure.

Republicans support removing government barriers to new nuclear reactors as long as they meet strict security and safety criteria.

Americans realize that the future of energy is in alternative and renewable sources. In order to promote the development of renewable and alternative energy, Republicans support promoting the leasing of federal lands which contain alternative energy such as oil shale. … spurring a market by using fuels derived from oil shale, tar sands, and coal.