Category Archives: hydro electric

The OIL Drum goes offline – Does that mean that Peak Oil Theory is wrong?

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That is a very interesting question. At one level is is just a case of a bad attribution. It would be like saying if Jane’s stopped publication then there are no airplanes. At another level, as all the authors say that were involved, they may have just run out of new and bright things to say. It could also be that with many other things predicting the END OF THE WORLD, when it never happens, the readers got bored. That several major religions have preached that for thousands of years and nobody has gotten bored yet would speak against that. I have always been skeptical about the doom and gloom nature of the blog itself but when the CIA and the Defense Department believe something then, you have to believe it has some credibility and really oil is a finite resource. So with deep water drilling and fracking we may just be buying time. Then there is global warming. Anyway I drivel on.

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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Finally President Obama Addresses Climate Change – Now how about the Congress

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The jackonapes in congress prattle on about how there is no Global Warming, and even if there is it ain’t man made. Those in the pocket of Big Coal want to find a way to make it cleaner. Like there is a way and America dithers on while China and India rush ahead. The song should go America the stupid with amber waves of insanity. Still at least the president has put something out there.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/obamas-climate-change-speech-three-words-less-coal-finally/66565/

Obama’s Climate Change Speech in Just Three Words: Less Coal, Finally

 

Philip Bump 4,220 Views 9:20 AM ET

The process of climate change is complex and involves a vast array of contributors. But slowing climate change largely relies on one thing, cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and cutting carbon dioxide emissions heavily relies on reducing the use of coal. For all of the president’s intricate proposals during his speech on the topic of climate change today at Georgetown University, nothing is as important as his plan to reduce America’s use of coal.

It’s important to consider the president’s proposals within an economic context. As Senior Administration Officials™ noted during a call on the topic last night, the president made a pledge to reduce carbon (dioxide) emissions in 2009 that the United States has made great progress in achieving. This is largely due to three things out of Obama’s control, however: the slow economy, a drop in electricity demand (in part due to the slow economy), and the increased use of natural gas for electricity production. Electricity production comes down to money, after all; if you figured out a way to generate gigawatts of power by leveraging the power of bare skin, America would be a nudist camp before sunset. We don’t love coal, we love that coal is cheap and is, by now, well-integrated into our power infrastructure.

Obama’s push to reduce coal use has two parts.

Decrease domestic coal use by limiting carbon emissions at power plants. Again: This is the most important part of Obama’s speech, bar none. If he dropped everything else in his plan, this idea would still warrant a significant amount of attention, both here and abroad.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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The Green Energy Council – Covering the world

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These guys cover the globe.

http://www.greenenergycouncil.com/

The International Green Energy Council is an educational and advocacy body. We pride ourselves on educating from kindergarten students all the way up to leaders of nations about energy efficiency, environmental stewardship and renewable energy. We also aid international leaders on creating sound policy and regulatory atmospheres in order to promote expeditious applications for renewable energy and green technologies.

Over the past six years we have worked with 22 Governors in regards to Renewable Portfolio Standards for their states. Furthermore, we are liaison and facilitators with several countries including but not limited to the following: Canada, South Africa, Greece, Senegal, Zambia, Nigeria, Philippines, Netherlands, Russia, Brazil, China, Morocco as well as a host of others. The IGEC is also working with many utility company’s around the Globe to meet their Renewable Energy Portfolio mandates. We have chartered chapters in 68 nations around the World.

The GEC is a professional association comprised of individuals and companies that promote sustainable forms of energy production, renewable energy sources, sustainable design practices and advanced thinking in utilizing education and information for the promotion of being better stewards of our environment while providing National Security Energy Plans to nations around the Globe.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Wave Power – Let us ride a wave into the next week

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Well this has been a weird week. Last week wasn’t much better. But now that the 2 political Party Conventions are over we can get back to the real world. Every once in awhile I check in with waterworld to see how they are coming along. Eventually we will get a bunch of energy from the sea, but right now these guys are struggling. This is an old article. For Monday I will try to find something newer and if I can’t I will move on.

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/wave-power-farm-sets-sail/

America’s Premiere Wave Power Farm Sets Sail

Wave energy is among the impressive list of renewable energy resources that is being developed in the United States. New Jersey-based developer, Ocean Power Technologies has launched a project that features the nation’s first commercial wave power farm off the coast of Reedsport, Oregon. Once the project is completed, wave energy will generate power for several hundred homes in Oregon. The wave power farm operates on the wave energy that is created when a float on a buoy flows with the natural up and down movement of the waves.

This action subsequently causes an attached plunger to follow the same kind of ebb and flow movement. The plunger is attached to a hydraulic pump that changes the vertical movement to a circular motion, which drives an electric generator to produce electricity that is sent to shore through submerged cables.

When the initial project is finished, the first $4 million dollar buoy will measure 150 feet tall by 40 feet wide, weighing 200 tons. Nine more of these crafts will be set in motion by the year 2012 for a total cost of $60 million dollars. About four hundred homes will receive electricity from Oregon’s wave power farm by the completion of the project.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Utility Sized Storage For Electricity Has Never Been A Problem

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The alledged lack of utility size storage has always been the coal and gas minions excuse to the public for distrusting alternative forms of energy. It also has never been true. One of the easiest storage system was proposed in the 50s. That would be pumping water up hill to a reserve and then at night letting it run down hill through a turbine. This creates a complete energy loop that could in theory last forever. Another proposed in the 70s was to heat molten salts and then extract the heat later. The one that always excited me the most was actually proposed in several different places and times; and was actually proposed to capture lightening. All it is is a giant battery in the ground which uses the earth as an insulator. But now that the tech guys are getting into the act, I am sure the utility companies will just throw up their hands and toss in the towel.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/18/new-flow-battery-does-that-cheap-energy-storage-thing/

 

New “Flow” Battery Does that Cheap Energy Storage Thing

February 18, 2012 By

Scientists on the lookout for utility-scale, high efficiency batteries are developing new “flow”systems that that store energy more effectively than lead-acid or lithium-ion batteries, but there’s a catch. The flow batteries in operation now are about the size of a house and they cost more than the equivalent in lithium-ion batteries. The race is on to find smaller, cheaper alternatives and researchers at Sandia National Laboratories believe that they are on to the solution, which is, in fact, a solution of liquid salts called MetILs.

The limits of lithium-ion for wind and solar

Lithium-ion batteries have been the gold standard of energy storage solutions for a long time, but they fall short when it comes to the utility-scale systems needed to keep up with new high efficiency wind turbines and advanced solar technology. The cost of lithium-ion batteries is one factor. Another is their relatively short lifespan, compared to flow batteries. According to Sandia chemist Travis Anderson, a flow battery can withstand about 14,000 cycles, which adds up to about 20 years of energy storage.

Flow battery basics

Flow batteries work by converting chemical energy into electricity. Stephanie Hobby of Sandia explains it thusly:

“A flow battery pumps a solution of free-floating charged metal ions, dissolved in an electrolyte — substance with free-floating ions that conducts electricity — from an external tank through an electrochemical cell to convert chemical energy into electricity.”

Flow batteries charge and discharge rapidly, and they have a long lifespan, but all is not perfect in flow battery land. The most promising systems so far use zinc bromine and vanadium, both of which are “moderately toxic” according to Hobby. In addition, the price of vanadium can spike wildly on the open market.

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God Bless Martin Luther King – I hope he is with you now

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Normally I just post a speech by Martin or put up a tribute of some type. I saw this article in the Bangkok Post and I thought Martin would approve so:

http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/economics/275315/saving-energy-means-saving-money-as-well-as-saving-the-mekong

Saving energy means saving money as well as saving the mekong

In this very fast-changing region, few countries are changing faster than Laos. With economic growth of around 8%, the country is awakening and Vientiane is bustling with new developments, new trucks, and an even brighter outlook. Laos is finally catching up with its neighbours, and though this will take time, the pace and direction is undeniably clear and strong.

However, beneath this strong economic growth is a challenging story. Numerous rivers are being dammed for power production as Laos pursues its vision to become the “Battery of Asia”, and about 90% of this power is for export to Thailand and Vietnam.

Obviously Laos is not the only country growing in this region, and the demand for electricity is understandably strong. But the “Land of a Million Elephants” is becoming the “Land of 50 Dams” and that affects us all. This is because the dams are on the tributaries and water catchments of the great Mekong River. Indeed, according to the Mekong River Commission, nearly one-third of Thailand is actually in the Mekong River basin. The current dams in the Mekong basin produce around 1,600 megawatts yet the potential is estimated at 30,000 MW. And with around 60 million people depending on the Mekong for food, water, and transport the number of people directly linked to the river is huge _ approximately the same as the population of Thailand itself. And these dams will have an uncertain impact on this important inland fishery.

Electricity is vital for economic growth and it is vitally important for countries to have very reliable sources of high-quality power to drive their economies forward. But not all electricity has to be used in an inefficient way, and by getting serious about energy efficiency, the demand growth can be reduced. And this will mean that fewer dams are needed on the precious Mekong and its basin. Countries such as Thailand and Vietnam getting more strict about energy efficiency will better preserve the region’s key river.

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Edward Allen is a technical programme coordinator at the Lao Institute for Renewable Energy and the technical adviser to Sunlabob Renewal Energy. He holds a BA in Geography from Oxford University, and an MSc and Diploma of Agriculture from Imperial College London (Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development). For more on renewable energy issues, see www.sunlabob.com

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Out Of Africa – Disasters are sometimes seen as a good thing

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Damming large rivers to generate electricity seemed like a good thing when there were only 1 billion or 2 people on the planet. But now with a planet nearing a human die back at 7 billion people and having stressed the planet to nearly its bursting point they are causing more problems then they are worth. I only include a couple of paragraphs here but you have to love, “making America the most damming country” part. You go girl..

http://www.internationalrivers.org/africa/environmental-impacts-large-dams-african-examples

Environmental Impacts of Large Dams: African examples

October 1, 1996
Lori Pottinger

Some 40,000 large dams, most of which were built in the past 50 years, now obstruct the world’s rivers. More than 400,000 square kilometers––an area larger than Zimbabwe, and 13 times the size of Lesotho––have been inundated by reservoirs worldwide. The world’s largest impoundment, the 8,500 sq.km. Volta Reservoir behind Ghana’s Akasombo Dam, flooded 4% of that nation’s land area. In the United States, whose 5,500 large dams make it the second most dammed country in the world, we have stopped building large dams, and are now spending great amounts of money trying to fix the problems created by existing dams.

The Environmental Consequences of Big Dams

Although the impacts of large dams have been well documented for some time now, in case after case, new ones are proposed whose environmental impacts are downplayed or even ignored. A 1990 internal survey of World Bank hydroelectric dam projects showed that 58% were planned and built without any consideration of downstream impacts, even when these impacts could be predicted to cause massive coastal erosion, pollution and other problems.

The following are some of the more serious environmental impacts of dams on rivers and the life they support. I have concentrated on the kinds of impacts that might affect the Orange River watershed, leaving out other major dam–caused problems that have affected rivers under different ecological circumstances.

Effects on River Systems

Reducing the flow of water from a river changes the landscape it flows through, which in turn can affect the ecosystem’s flora and fauna. A dam holds back sediments, especially the heavy gravel and cobbles. The river, deprived of its sediment load, seeks to recapture it by eroding the downstream channel and banks, undermining bridges and other riverbank structures. Riverbeds are typically eroded by several meters within a decade of first closing a dam; the damage can extend for tens or even hundreds of kilometers below a dam. Within nine years of closing Hoover Dam in the US, the riverbed below the dam had lowered by more than 4 meters. Riverbed deepening will also lower the groundwater table along a river, threatening vegetation and local wells in the floodplain and requiring crop irrigation in places where there was previously no need. The depletion of riverbed gravels reduces habitat for many fish that spawn in the gravelly river bottom, and for invertebrates such as insects, molluscs and crustaceans. Changes in the physical habitat and hydrology of rivers are implicated in 93% of freshwater fauna declines in North America.

Before the Aswan High Dam, the Nile River carried about 124 million tons of sediment to the sea each year, depositing nearly 10 million tons on the floodplain and delta. Today, 98% of that sediment remains behind the dam. The result has been a drop in soil productivity and depth, among other serious changes to Egypt’s floodplain agriculture. The Aswan Dam has also led to serious coastal erosion, another problem stemming from the loss of sediments in a dammed river. Another example of this problem is along the mouth of the Volta River in Ghana. Akosombo Dam has cut off the supply of sediment to the Volta Estuary, affecting also neighboring Togo and Benin, whose coasts are now being eaten away at a rate of 10–15 meters per year. A project to strengthen the Togo coast has cost US$3.5 million for each kilometer protected. The story is the same on coastline after coastline where dams have stopped a river’s sediments.

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Salmon Once Again Flow Down The White River – Condit dam blown through

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I was going to post about the Nigerian oil spill in my continued meditation on environmental disasters in the recent years BUT its Christmas weekend eve. So instead I am posting a happy event. The White River is now free flowing after they punched a hole in the Condit Dam and this spring salmon will flow down the White River for the first time in 100 years. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it and Happy Holidays to the rest.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/environment/freshwater/us-condit-dam-salmon.html

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For text see:

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wr/cwp/condit.html

Condit Dam Removal Project

Breaching Event

Updated! 10/24/2011 Condit Dam was breached a little after Noon on Wednesday, October 26, 2011. During the event approximately 750 acre feet of water was drained into the White Salmon River downstream of the dam and into the Columbia River. Flows from the breach of the dam are anticipated to transport a plume of accumulated sediment from the reservoir causing turbid water.

Over the course of the next 10 months, dam removal will be conducted and restoration of the former reservoir area completed.

See more project info on the Pacificorp website.

Project Overview

The Condit Hydroelectric Project is located 3.3 miles upstream from the confluence of the White Salmon and Columbia Rivers. Constructed between 1911 and 1913 by Northwestern Electric Company it has been operated by PacifiCorp since 1947. PacifiCorp has chosen to remove the dam rather than seek fish passage required under a new federal dam license.

The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) conducted necessary environmental reviews and issued regulatory approvals associated with the project, including granting a Section 401 Water Quality Certification. The 401 certification under the federal Clean Water Act certifies that water quality standards and other water-protection regulations are met during dam removal and subsequent restoration. The 401 outlines the steps PacifiCorp must take to protect water quality during dam removal.

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Transition Communities – A high tech guy with a low tech place

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This is a pretty complete piece about an oil savvy guy. It is a long piece so go and read the rest.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49304

Published Jun 17 2009 by North Bay Bohemian, Archived Jun 23 2009

Transition communities gear up for society’s collapse with a shovel and a smile

by Alastair Bland

Cheer Up, It’s Going to Get Worse

Three years ago, David Fridley purchased two and a half acres of land in rural Sonoma County. He planted drought-resistant blue Zuni corn, fruit trees and basic vegetables while leaving a full acre of extant forest for firewood collection. Today, Fridley and several friends and family subsist almost entirely off this small plot of land, with the surplus going to public charity.

HOW DOES YOUR...: Home food production is an 'entry-level' survival tactic, says Scott McKeown. (photo: Michael Amsler)

HOW DOES YOUR…: Home food production is an ‘entry-level’ survival tactic, says Scott McKeown. (photo: Michael Amsler)

But Fridley is hardly a homegrown hippie who spends his leisure time gardening. He spent 12 years consulting for the oil industry in Asia. He is now a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute in Sebastopol, where members discuss the problems inherent to fossil-fuel dependency.

Fridley has his doubts about renewable energies, and he has grave doubts about the future of crude oil. In fact, he believes to a certainty that society is literally running out of gas and that, perhaps within years, the trucks will stop rolling into Safeway and the only reliable food available will be that grown in
our backyards.

Fridley, like a few other thinkers, activists and pessimists, could talk all night about “peak oil.” This catch phrase describes a scenario, perhaps already unfurling, in which the easy days of oil-based society are over, a scenario in which global oil production has peaked and in which every barrel of crude oil drawn from the earth from that point forth is more difficult to extract than the barrel before it. According to peak oil theory, the time is approaching when the effort and cost of extraction will no longer be worth the oil itself, leaving us without the fuel to power our transportation, factories, farms, society and the very essence of our oil-dependent lives. Fridley believes the change will be very unpleasant for many people.

“If you are a typical American and have expectations of increasing income, cheap food, nondiscretionary spending, leisure time and vacations in Hawaii, then the change we expect soon could be what you would consider ‘doom,'” he says soberly, “because your life is going to fall apart.”

The Great Reskilling

But is it the end of the world?

Fridley and other supporters of the Transition movement don’t believe it is. First sparked in 2007 in Totnes, England, Transition was launched when one Rob Hopkins recognized that modern Western society cannot continue at its current pace of life as fast access to oil begins to dwindle. Global warming and economic meltdown are the two other principle drivers of the Transition movement, but in an ideal “Transition Town,” society would be ready for such changes.

With limited gas-powered transport or oil-based products, a Transition community’s citizens would live within cycling distance of one another in a township built upon complete self-sufficiency, with extremely localized infrastructure for agriculture, clothes making, metal working and the other basics of life which the Western world largely abandoned to factories in the late 1800s, when oil power turned life into a relatively leisurely vacation from reality.

Now, Transitionists say, it’s time to get back to work—and quick. Localized efforts have sprouted from the ground up in Santa Cruz, Cotati, Sebastopol, San Francisco and many other towns worldwide, where residents and neighbors are putting their heads together and collaborating on ways to relocalize themselves, bolster self-sufficiency and build the resilience that communities will need to absorb the shock of peak oil.

Scott McKeown is among several initiators of Transition Sebastopol. A 53-year-old event coordinator by vocation, McKeown believes that as early as 2012 the global economy could founder. “That’s when it’s really going to hit the fan,” he says. “We’re not there yet, but we will be very soon.”

McKeown founded Peak Oil Sebastopol in late 2007 as a public discussion forum for what was then becoming a popular topic of relevance among social reformers. Yet Peak Oil Sebastopol eventually proved a bit too heavy on the talking for McKeown.

“I wanted to shift from a discussion group to an action-based effort,” he explains. “Transition attracted me as a way in which we could actually begin doing something.”

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More tomorrow.

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Tear Down This Wall Lt. General Robert Van Antwerp

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We need to return to a more natural way to handle our waterways in the Mississippi Watershed. There is farmland that floods. Let it. These are bottom lands that should only be farmed at the farmers expense. There are towns that need to be moved. We can not control the watershed so we should stop trying.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_mississippi_river_flooding

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press – 1 hr 6 mins ago

KROTZ SPRINGS, La. – Renee Ledoux cried when the National Guard and sheriff’s deputies showed up at her front door and warned her she needed to get out to avoid water gushing from the Mississippi River after a floodgate was opened for the first time in four decades.

But by the 5 p.m. deadline Sunday, the 44-year-old Ledoux and her boyfriend Billy Hanchett decided to ride it out one more night on air mattresses inside the empty home in Krotz Springs. They have a camper they plan to stay in on a friend’s property outside the flood zone.

“We really don’t want to go,” Hanchett said. Ledoux added that she felt blessed that they had the camper because a lot of others have nowhere to go except shelters.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama planned to fly to Memphis, Tenn., on Monday to meet with families affected when the river flooded there as well as local officials, first responders and volunteers.

Deputies all over Louisiana Cajun country were warning residents to head for higher ground and most heeded it, even in places where there hasn’t been so much as a trickle, hopeful that the flooding engineered to protect heavily populated New Orleans and Baton Rouge would be merciful to their way of life.

Days ago, many of the towns known for their Cajun culture bustled with activity as people filled sandbags and cleared out belongings. By Sunday, some areas were virtually empty as the water from the Mississippi River, swollen by snowmelt and heavy rains, slowly rolled across the Atchafalaya River basin. It first started to come, in small amounts, into people’s yards in Melville on Sunday. But it still had yet to move farther downstream.

The floodwaters could reach depths of 20 feet in the coming weeks, though levels were nowhere close to that yet in the towns about 50 miles west of Baton Rouge.

Elsewhere, in an effort to keep a major shipping connection between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River open, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved in a fifth dredge to dig sediment out of the Southwest Pass. A high river brings a huge amount of sediment and the dredges were being used to keep the 45-foot channel needed for deep-draft shipping.

Over the weekend, the Port of New Orleans said it had been told by the Coast Guard that shipping probably would continue largely unhindered on the lower Mississippi.

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And that is what they want to protect. Baton Rouge and New Orleans are irrelevant. It’s the refineries, the petro-chemical plants and shipping that really matter. Please read the rest of the article. It is a pretty good “on the ground” coverage. They don’t come to the same conclusions that I do but then that is why I am me. More tomorrow.

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