https://www.wired.com/story/want-unlimited-clean-energy-just-drill-the-worlds-hottest-well/?utm_source=digg

There’s treasure buried deep beneath the viridescent foothills of Tuscany’s Apennine Mountains, where the stark metal trusses of the Venelle-2 drilling tower mark its location like an X on a map. This geothermal well reaches nearly two miles beneath the surface to a region where temperatures and pressures are so high that rock begins to bend. Here, conditions are ripe for supercritical geothermal fluids, mineral-rich water that exhibits characteristics of both a liquid and a gas. It’s not exactly gold, but if Venelle-2 could tap into a reservoir of supercritical fluids and use them to spin a turbine on the surface, it would be one of the most energy-dense forms of renewable power in the world.

But getting there isn’t so easy. Boring deep into the ground risks triggering an earthquake if a large chunk of rock slips out of place. This risk was amplified at the Venelle-2 well, which aimed to breach the K horizon, a poorly understood boundary between the hard rock near the surface and the more pliant rock below. What would happen when the drill punched through this layer into the supercritical fluids below was anyone’s guess.

And for now, the mystery remains. Drilling at Venelle-2 stopped just shy of the K horizon when temperatures at the bottom of the well overwhelmed the equipment. Sensors at the bottom of the well indicated temperatures had breached 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures 300 times greater than at the surface. Nevertheless, Venelle-2 is the hottest borehole ever created, and it demonstrated that it’s possible to drill at the extreme end of supercritical conditions. And this week, a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that it could be done without producing any major seismic activity.

The authors say they hope their study will assuage fears that all geothermal drilling causes earthquakes. After all, the public usually hears about geothermal wells only when something goes wrong. But Venelle-2 shows that “there are also many positive cases of wells drilled for geothermal purposes,” says Riccardo Minetto, a researcher at the University of Geneva and coauthor of the study.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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The post GeoEarth Power – Forget fusion power, nuclear, coal or natural gas appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

Ryan Tollefsen REALTOR®
Unity Home Group at Keller Williams Realty Alaska Group
101 W. Benson Blvd. Suite 101
Anchorage, AK 99503

Check out my all new Great Alaskan Getaway Guide

http://www.constructiondive.com/news/more-buyers-want-green-homes-real-estate-agents-say/439944/

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Go to the web links and read. More next week.

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The post Home Energy Efficiency – From a Realtor’s perspective appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.thelocal.ch/20170521/swiss-vote-for-gradual-nuclear-phaseout-preliminary-results/

Swiss vote for gradual nuclear phaseout

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The post The Swiss Endorse Renewable Energy – If a land locked mountainous country can do it appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

http://www.sciencesplus.ca/en/resource/1503

What’s New for Renewable Energy

Energy drives social and economic development. In the past, the discovery of oil triggered an unprecedented industrial revolution that had significant impacts on our quality of life. A single litre of oil provides as many calories as two to twenty weeks of human labour, enough energy to fuel our growing industries, heat our homes, and get us from point A to point B quickly.

However, with an alarming scarcity of fossil fuels and growing energy demands on the horizon, especially for emerging economies, the search for sustainable means of production is not only imperative for the preservation of the environment—it is also becoming highly lucrative. That is why renewable energy is receiving more and more attention from governments and businesses. There is talk of a new industrial revolution, one that is all about green energy.

Since the Kyoto Protocol, most countries have increased the proportion of their budget invested in energy with the potential for long-term sustainability. We can already see results; even in 2006, 18.6% of the world’s electricity came from renewable resources. Of that percentage, hydraulic energy (hydroelectric dams, underwater turbines, tidal power plants, etc.) constituted 89%, biomass constituted 5.7%, and wind power, geothermal energy, and solar power constituted 3.5%, 1.7%, and 0.2%, respectively.

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This is a huge site. Go there and read. More next week.

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The post This Is A Cool Site – That is if you are into Renewable Energy appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.centralilfoodbank.org/

https://www.centralilfoodbank.org/documents/AnnualReportFinalPDFWeb.pdf

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Go there and read the whole site. Look around. More next week.

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The post Geothermal Energy Will Save Money All Over The House – But it’s not cheap appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/27/when-it-comes-to-renewable-energy-buffetts-not-blo.aspx

Here’s What Warren Buffett Thinks About Renewable Energy

By Jason Hall | More Articles
November 27, 2013

“Rule No. 1: Never Lose Money. Rule No. 2: Never Forget Rule No. 1.”
–Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is famous for both his legendary investing acumen, and his simple, straightforward investing advice. For years, alternative energy has been viewed as non-competitive with traditional energy production from coal and other fossil fuels, making them money-losers for most investors.

Buffett’s own Berkshire Hathaway  (NYSE: BRK-B  ) subsidiary MidAmerican Energy is heavily investing in alternative energy sources, including both wind and solar. And considering that MidAmerican produces more than $1.2 billion in annual “ammo” for Buffett’s “elephant gun,” the story on renewables is clearly changing.

Should investors follow the Oracle into “green energy” to make more greenbacks? Let’s take a look.

MidAmerican has been investing in wind energy for a decade, and is easily the largest producer of wind energy in North America; wind actually accounts for more than 30% of the company’s total energy generation capacity. Current projects will move the total to almost 40%.

MidAmerican has relied on both General Electric  (NYSE: GE  ) and Vestas  (NASDAQOTH: VWDRY  ) for wind turbines for different projects. A large project in California, which deployed more than 300 megawatts of power generating capacity, featured 100 Vestas wind turbines. GE’s turbines, on the other hand, are the most commonly used in MidAmerican’s fleet

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Go there and read.  More next week. When it is my birthday, YAA.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOMaqe0LOmo

The days when all the lies are proven false is right here and right now. Wind, solar and geothermal can replace coal gas and oil. And hthey can do it in the industrial heartland. It is the future and ain’t it grand?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/10/17/us-germany-renewables-boom-idUKTRE79G0N420111017

Analysis: Renewable “gold rush” powers Germany’s north shore

(Reuters) – Renewable energy has created a “gold rush” atmosphere in Germany’s depressed north-east, giving the country’s poorhouse good jobs and great promise.

The natural resources attracting investors and industry are of a simple variety: wind, sunshine, agricultural products and farm waste such as liquid manure.

The rush to tap green resources in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state is reminiscent of the frenzies that came with gold or oil discoveries in past centuries. The buzz can be felt in towns and sparkling new factories across the Baltic shore state.

“Renewable energy has become extremely valuable for our state,” said its premier, Erwin Selling, in an interview with Reuters. “It’s just a great opportunity — producing renewable energy and creating manufacturing jobs.

“From an industrial point of view we’d been one of Germany’s weaker areas. But the country is abandoning nuclear power. That will work only if there’s a corresponding — and substantial — increase in renewables. It’ll be one of Germany’s most important sectors in the future. We want to be up there leading the way.”

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The post Germany Gets 20% Of Its Power From Renewables – After the renewable gold rush appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

http://peakenergy.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/our-clean-energy-future.html

Aug 19

Our Clean Energy Future

Posted by Big Gav

Following on my recent post bidding Farewell to The Oil Drum, I’d like to have a look at what I view as our longer term future for energy production and consumption.

As noted in my previous post, for the time being the combination of unconventional oil extraction and the ramping up of extraction of natural gas (from both conventional and unconventional sources) has continued to push the point of peak oil production out into the future, defying the predictions of the more pessimistic peak oil observers. During this period we have seen a boom in the research and development of solutions to help us eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels, which I’ll explore in this post.

Solutions can be divided into 3 groups :

• Renewable energy – solar power, wind power, geothermal power, hydro power, ocean energy and biomass derived power (including biofuels)
• Distribution of renewable energy – energy storage and the electricity grid
• Adopting alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels – electric transport, bioplastic, alternatives to fossil fuel based fertiliser and new models for manufacturing, construction and agriculture

Renewable Energy

The graphic below shows the energy available from renewable energy sources annually compared to global energy consumption. The numbers are intended to give a rough idea of relative scale – for any given energy source a wide range of estimates can be found in the literature so the numbers are indicative.

These numbers in some ways understate the amount of energy potentially available (ignoring solar power potential at sea or in space, for example, or wind power at high altitudes or far offshore, or geothermal power deep below the surface of the earth) but still serve the demonstrate that the renewable energy available to us is orders of magnitude larger than our current global energy consumption.

The contribution made by renewable energy to our energy needs is expected to exceed that made by gas (and double that made by nuclear power) by 2016, though progress needs to be accelerated if we wish to create a sustainable energy system.

Solar power

Solar power is the largest energy source available to us, dwarfing all other sources – renewable and non-renewable. Approximately 36,000 Terawatts of power could be captured by land based solar power generation – compared to current global energy use of around 16 TW. As a result, most of the plans floated for shifting to 100% renewable energy (examples include proposals by Mark Jacobson and Stuart Staniford and local plans for countries like Germany and Australia) rely primarily on solar power.

Solar power is not only the largest energy source available to us but it is also the fastest growing energy source, with solar power generation increasing by over 58% in 2012.

There are a number of options for harnessing solar power – power generation using solar photovoltaic (PV) cells and solar thermal arrays along with passive solar techniques such as solar hot water heaters.

I have been of the view that solar thermal power generation (also known as concentrating solar power or CSP) would become our most important source of power in the longer term. This view was based on a number of advantages that solar thermal possesses – it does not require rare or expensive materials (enabling it to scale without hitting resource limits), it can be built on (and is best suited to) arid land that has few other uses, it can incorporate energy storage (thus avoiding the intermittency issue), it is compatible with the existing centralised generation model and it can be combined with traditional sources of power generation (coal or gas) in hybrid power plants that allow an easy transition using existing connections to the electricity grid.

An area of desert around 250 km by 250 km covered with solar thermal power generation could supply all the world’s current electricity demand.

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Go there and read a really long article. More next week.

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The post The OIL Drum goes offline – Does that mean that Peak Oil Theory is wrong? appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/a-peak-at-solarcitys-new-energy-efficiency-software?

Has SolarCity Created the Amazon 1-Click for Energy Efficiency?

“We believe SolarCity has the best database of residential energy use of anyone in the world.”

Stephen Lacey: June 28, 2013

After SolarCity shifted its energy efficiency strategy and pulled back from doing residential retrofits in-house, the solar services behemoth is moving straight into intelligent efficiency.

GTM’s Eric Wesoff recently reported on SolarCity’s evolving business plan and the resulting changes that company executives say will scale residential efficiency in the same way solar services have scaled residential solar.

But solar is very different from efficiency. For the most part, solar is very standardized and installations are uniform from home to home. Efficiency retrofits encompass an extraordinarily broad category of activities and skills. Incentives are also quite different for efficiency, making it more complicated from a financial perspective. That’s why only a handful of U.S. solar contractors have offered efficiency as an in-house service.

SolarCity decided that doing the retrofit work itself was not the best way to scale. Instead, it has turned from manpower to the power of big data.

The secret sauce is a “simulation engine” that shows homeowners exactly how much they’re spending on energy everywhere in their house. The initial database was created using information from 16,000 home energy audits performed over the last five years. It relies on an algorithm developed at the Department of Energy that crunches 100 million calculations per home for each individual energy efficiency audit (which is still performed by SolarCity when installing solar).

“The simulation software looks at every component in a home in relation to one another,” said SolarCity COO Peter Rive. “Every ten minutes, it thinks about what one thing is doing and about its effect on the rest of the systems within the home.”

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The post Should SolarCity Change Its Name – Changing their name to EfficiencyCity appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

http://business-news.thestreet.com/sj-r/story/petersburg-school-nominated-solar-energy-program/1

Petersburg school nominated for solar energy program

PETERSBURG — The PORTA School District could soon add more solar power to its alternative energy portfolio.

Thanks to a wind turbine, solar panels and geothermal heating installed in 2009 at PORTA High School, the district has been saving about $350,000 a year in energy costs, School Superintendent Matt Brue said.

Now, a former student who works for Joule Solar Energy in New Orleans has nominated PORTA Central School for a program that aims to bring solar panels to schools through crowdfunding

Oakland, Calif.-based Mosaic offers an online platform for individuals to invest in solar projects.

When Bob O’Hara received an email from Mosaic saying that the company was looking for schools to work with, he thought of PORTA Central.

O’Hara, 29, attended PORTA schools through eighth grade before enrolling at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School in Springfield. He moved to New Orleans after graduating in 2002 to attend Tulane University, but he still visits his parents in Petersburg regularly.

He likes to check out the wind turbine at the high school on his visits and thought PORTA Central would be a good candidate for solar panels because of its long, south-facing roofline.

O’Hara said he also knows the district has been facing budget cuts due to dwindling state funding.

“One way to be able to invest in a school is to help them with their energy costs,” he said.

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