Future Energy Technology News

[pstarr]

Are you interested in the future of energy or not? if not then don't bother ...

Interest in what?

It is required of you (the COC, the code of conduct, is an absolute must-read) to at least summarize what caught your attention in these articles. It is apparently something about 'sustainability?' What is that? Why is it a hot topic?

Pstarr: Check out the other postings "vampyregirl" has blessed the board with. He basically does exactly this same thing each time: dumps some "Gee look at this nifty technology" slop on the board and then skips on down the lane back to cornucopian land.

I know. That's why I so eagerly await (her?) postings.

[pedalling_faster]

Let's try to turn this into a useful discussion. What, if anything, should the oil companies do about resource depletion? I argue - not much.

First they could stop intentionally misinforming folks (GW, resource depletion, etc.) and start actually educating people (peak oil, Hubbert's analysis in particular, etc.). But that is not their critical agenda, which is to makes gobs of cash.

it depends on how they define themselves.

if they re-define themselves as an "energy company", there's a lot they can do about energy depletion.

In fact I think it would be a huge mistake and a misallocation of resources for an oil company to invest in renewables. The reason is that it is not there core business, and there is no synergy with any of their core businesses. Think about it, what do oil companies do well? They find oil, they produce it, they refine it, and they distribute it. What does any of that have to do with manufacturing solar panels and windmills?

yes, good management has to take care of rusting facilities. ref. this dissertation on rust in the oil industry by Matt Simmons
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/OTC%202008.pdf

but, the large oil companies have a lot of the pre-requisites for survival after cheap oil.

engineering staffs, marketing, product distribution, and GOBS of cash. and, land.

Lockheed is one of the major investors in Stirling Energy's first large pilot plant (solar thermal.) I wonder if Lockheed is going to end up being one of the big energy companies.

[35Kas]

Actually, vampy posts this species of spam on the boards because she is a worshiping Shell employee that thinks all and everything that spawns from Shell's PR dept. is a gift whose peakoil members all deserve to bask at in awe.

[outcast]

Or she's pointing out that sometimes things change in responce to changes in their environment, whether economic, natural, or otherwise.

[gt1370a]

if they re-define themselves as an "energy company", there's a lot they can do about energy depletion.

Well, I disagree, and this gets to the real point. You can't just arbitrarily define your company as something and then be successful at it - your strategic goals have to be based on your resources and capabilities. Otherwise, companies who really ARE good at it will put you out of business.

Your idea is very vogue in business school right now, and the example always used is the railroad companies. If only they had defined themselves as "transportation companies," they would still be thriving, right? I disagree. I think companies like Ford would have still made better cars than them, would have run them out of the car business, and then because of all the money they wasted on cars, the whole company probably would have failed taking the railroad division down with it. The reason - nothing about moving things around on track has to do with designing, manufacturing, or selling cars.

Furthermore, does it matter that the railroad companies failed? Would things be any different today if they had modified their strategy and went into making cars? I don't think it matters - the market just re-allocated their capital, equipment, and people into a different industry.

So, bottom line, I think in 50 or so years, most of the oil companies will cease to exist regardless of what they do now. And I think that changing strategy is probably just a waste of shareholder money. Of course my opinion doesn't really matter, but I do invest accordingly.

[vampyregirl]

Vampyregirl, this is not the first time a major oil company has addressed serious issues of resource depletion, planetary decline, "sustainability," etc. And then done little.

BP, British Petroleum renamed itself "Beyond Petroleum." But folks saw through that and so BP changes back. It's called "greenwashing."

Let's try to turn this into a useful discussion. What, if anything, should the oil companies do about resource depletion? I argue - not much. In fact I think it would be a huge mistake and a misallocation of resources for an oil company to invest in renewables. The reason is that it is not there core business, and there is no synergy with any of their core businesses. Think about it, what do oil companies do well? They find oil, they produce it, they refine it, and they distribute it. What does any of that have to do with manufacturing solar panels and windmills? Is there any reason to think that the oil companies would be successful in alt energy, or would they just be out-competed by companies like GE or specialty companies that have resources and capabilities for things like research, manufacturing, turbine design, etc.? Now, the oil companies DO have a distribution network, so maybe something like biofuels would make some sense.

Personally I think the best thing for oil companies to do is give their excess profits back to the shareholder. The shareholder can then reinvest that money in companies that do renewable energy well. Spending the excess profits on things like web sites to educate the public about renewable energy is, in my opinion, a waste of shareholder money.

Royal Dutch Shell has LOTS of experience in alternative energy. Shell was the very first petroleum producer to install wind turbines in harburg Germany in 2000. In 2001 Shell installed the Rock River wind park in Wyoming. Since then Shell Wind Energy has installed wind parks in Texas, Colorada, and recently West Virginia, the Mount Storm wind energy project that I posted about. In Europe the Egmond aan Zee offshore wind park has production capacity of 108MW and Shell has equity in the La Muela wind park in Spain.
Shell provided solar panels for the rural electrification project in Xinchiang province China and has now partnered with Saint Gobain to build next generation panels in Saxony, Germany using advanced CIS technology to produce cheaper panels to compete with retail electricity. The plant will produce enough panels for an additional 6,000 European households per year.
Shell is an ENERGY PRODUCER not just a petroleum producer.

[bratticus]

Why Solar Can't

[Graeme]

Wind And Solar Powered Car In Development

A company that is currently developing such a car, with the added element of wind power, is RORMaxx Automotive. Dubbed Formula AE, you won't see the vehicle in any showroom soon as it will just be a working, full-scale racecar prototype. However, it will incorporate some interesting new technology and concepts that the auto industry may benefit from.

The engine to be used in the Formula AE will be an advanced current induction motor capable of a 212kw power output. The vehicle is expect to be able to accelerate from 0 to100 kilometers per hour in under four seconds, with a top speed of 250 kilometers per hour. Energy storage will be in the form of lightweight Lithium Phosphate batteries and ultra capacitors.

The Formual AE will be covered with flexible, thin film solar cells which are expected to extend the car's range by 15-40%, but the most interesting part of the vehicle is its wind power aspect. Energy lost under the friction of air will be recovered through 4 intakes and directed into turbines containing brushless synchronous alternators. The power generated will then be stored in ultra-capacitors.

When substantial power is instantly demanded, such as in rapid acceleration, the Formula AE's inverter will switch the vehicle from battery power to the ultra-capacitors which will be able to deliver the energy necessary in such situations more effectively. Ultra capacitors also have the advantage of being much faster to recharge than conventional battery technology.

energymatters

[Graeme]

Coming Soon: Hydrogen and Electric Vehicles From Toyota

Toyota plans to begin selling a hydrogen-powered car in 2015, and a two-seater electric vehicle in 2012, the company announced Tuesday at the North American International Auto Show.

Like other auto industry executives, Mr. Takimoto said the future of hydrogen vehicles depends on consumer acceptance as well as the availability of hydrogen refueling stations. “On each side, it will take time,” he said.

But he said Toyota had to proceed. “We will run out of any alternative strategies if the oil supply diminishes,” Mr. Takimoto said. “Oil consumption will increase, and the supply could become unstable.”

nytimes

[Graeme]

Storing sun’s energy key to energy independence

It's widely accepted that our future energy needs will be met by experimental and theoretical technologies. Possibilities include "clean" coal, advanced "breeder" nuclear reactors, hydrogen fuel cells, and batteries with enough storage capacity to back up power plants.

Nathan Lewis, a chemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology, has spent three decades researching another option: harnessing solar power to create fuels that can replace oil and gasoline.

Lewis: More energy from the sun hits the earth in one hour than all the energy consumed on our planet in an entire year. We just can't run all our factories for one hour at full bore and then shut them down for the rest of the year. To exploit the sun and to have a technical energy systems solution you have to capture, convert and store it. We still don't have a way to store electricity on a massive scale. If you can't store it, you can't do much with it, and it's especially pronounced when you have intermittent resources, like wind and solar. In principle, you could rely on them [solar and wind power] exclusively.

newsobserver

[gt1370a]

Royal Dutch Shell has LOTS of experience in alternative energy. Shell was the very first petroleum producer to install wind turbines in harburg Germany in 2000. In 2001 Shell installed the Rock River wind park in Wyoming. Since then Shell Wind Energy has installed wind parks in Texas, Colorada, and recently West Virginia, the Mount Storm wind energy project that I posted about. In Europe the Egmond aan Zee offshore wind park has production capacity of 108MW and Shell has equity in the La Muela wind park in Spain.
Shell provided solar panels for the rural electrification project in Xinchiang province China and has now partnered with Saint Gobain to build next generation panels in Saxony, Germany using advanced CIS technology to produce cheaper panels to compete with retail electricity. The plant will produce enough panels for an additional 6,000 European households per year.
Shell is an ENERGY PRODUCER not just a petroleum producer.

I'm not arguing that it can't be done, I'm just arguing that it's not the best use of their resources (including capital). What was the return on investment for those projects? Did Shell have some key resource or capability that allowed them to do it better than, say, GE or a utility company? As a shareholder, would I want Shell to invest my money in these types of projects, or would I be better off if they just paid me a dividend?

The question is philosophical and probably can't be proven one way or another, I'm just saying I believe in general that companies should stick to their core business, and only get into other businesses when there are synergies to be gained from existing operations.

[Graeme]

Lead-Carbon: A Game Changer for Alternative Energy Storage

For several months I’ve been telling readers that emerging lead-carbon battery technologies will be game changers in alternative energy storage. Last week, The Economist published an article about Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) titled “Lead-acid Batteries Recharged” and I found a recent report from Sandia National Laboratories on its side-by-side testing of lead-acid, lead-carbon and Li-ion batteries. Now that Axion’s management is talking to the press and Sandia is releasing independent data, I feel free to explain more fully why lead-carbon technology is so disruptive. I don’t like table pounding, but this is probably the most important Seeking Alpha article I’ve written.

Lead-carbon batteries are different from other types of batteries because they combine the high energy density of a battery and the high specific power of a supercapacitor in a single low-cost device.

The DOE’s 2008 Peer Review for its Energy Storage Systems Research Program included a slide presentation from Sandia that summarized the results of its cycle-life tests on five different batteries including a deep-cycle lead-acid battery, two lead-acid batteries with carbon enhanced pastes, a split-electrode lead-carbon battery (the Ultrabattery) and an advanced lithium-ion (Li-FePO4) battery.

In addition to the cycle-life data represented by the colored lines, the Sandia graph provides parenthetical power data expressed in terms of “C rates;” a measure of the time required for a battery to deliver its stored energy.

As the Sandia graph shows, they began testing the lead-carbon Ultrabattery at a 1 C rate, doubled the power and tested at a 2 C rate and then doubled the power again and tested at a 4 C rate. By the time the testing was completed, the Ultrabattery had survived more than 17,000 cycles at increasing C rates. This is just one series of tests, but it provides irrefutable proof that lead-carbon is re-writing the rules when it comes to both cycle-life and battery power.

seekingalpha

[Graeme]

Scientists Find New Way to Produce Hydrogen

The team found that the aluminum clusters react differently when exposed to water, depending on the sizes of the clusters and their unique geometric structures. Three of the aluminum clusters produced hydrogen from water at room temperature. "The ability to produce hydrogen at room temperature is significant because it means that we did not use any heat or energy to trigger the reaction," said Khanna. "Traditional techniques for splitting water to produce hydrogen generally require a lot of energy at the time the hydrogen is generated. But our method allows us to produce hydrogen without supplying heat, connecting to a battery, or adding electricity. Once the aluminum clusters are synthesized, they can generate hydrogen on demand without the need to store it."

physorg

[Graeme]

Ex-Microsoft Scientist Crafts Nuclear Reactor Startup

Intellectual Ventures, the high-level think tank created by ex-Microsoft chief scientist Nathan Myhrvold, is going nuclear.

The firm is getting prepared to spin out a company called TeraPower that will develop nuclear reactors that run primarily on natural or depleted uranium, rather than enriched uranium. With un-enriched fuel, the reactors could be loaded up with fuel and sealed for 30 to 60 years.

greentechmedia

[Graeme]

Crossfire Fusor - Aneutronic Nuclear Fusion Reactor

The CrossFire Fusor is a nuclear fusion reactor that is a combination of electrostatic confinement and magnetic confinement forming penning traps, electrostatic acceleration, injection of charged particles through magnetic cusps, magnetic reconnection, electrostatic and magnetic lenses, intended mainly to produce fusion power for thrusting spacecrafts. The name Fusor is short for fusion reactor, and the name CrossFire is due to both confinement and injection is done three-dimensionally.

The CrossFire Fusor consists of superconducting magnets for confining radially charged particles. The magnets are disposed to form a magnetic cusp region where the charged particles are injected in an electrostatic way, for that is applied an electric voltage at this region. At distal ends of the magnets are applied electric fields for trapping longitudinally the reactants allowing products to escape. It was designed by Moacir L. Ferreira Jr. initially for propulsion purposes, however, it can be used as a power plant using a method called of electricity conversion by neutralization process.

articlesbase

[Graeme]

Cheaper Fuel Cells

Researchers have shown that arrays of vertically grown carbon nanotubes could be used as the catalyst in fuel cells. The carbon nanotubes, which are doped with nitrogen, would be much cheaper and longer lasting than the expensive platinum catalysts used now.

More than half the cost of fuel-cell stacks comes from platinum, according to the Department of Energy. "Fuel cells haven't been commercialized for larger-scale applications because platinum is too expensive," says Liming Dai, a materials-engineering professor at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, who led the work. "For electrodes, you need a cheaper material that still has a high performance."

technologyreview

[Tanada]

Cheaper Fuel Cells

Researchers have shown that arrays of vertically grown carbon nanotubes could be used as the catalyst in fuel cells. The carbon nanotubes, which are doped with nitrogen, would be much cheaper and longer lasting than the expensive platinum catalysts used now.

More than half the cost of fuel-cell stacks comes from platinum, according to the Department of Energy. "Fuel cells haven't been commercialized for larger-scale applications because platinum is too expensive," says Liming Dai, a materials-engineering professor at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, who led the work. "For electrodes, you need a cheaper material that still has a high performance."

technologyreview

It isn't the cost of the fuel cells that kills this technology, it is the fact that Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source! If I am running an electric system and I have two choices, hydrogen for a fuel cell or a battery, I am picking the battery 80%+ of the time. Why? Well for one thing if its properly designed I can plug it in almost anywhere I can find an electrical outlet. For another I don't have to worry about Hydrogen leaks, or finding a filling location, or all the maintenence associated with the tankage and fuel cell system. There would have to be a HUGE cost advantage for hydrogen fuel cells for them to compete successfully against batteries. If your only advantage is the abillity to fill up on long trips to keep going a hybrid electric has them all beat up because the infrastructure for that already exists.

[Graeme]

I was merely posting a story about catalysts, not hydrogen production, which is another story. I do expect that all these technical issues will be solved if not already.

Here is another story about an unrelated issue.

Silicon Substitute

Solar panels that are cheaper to make than the silicon versions that dominate the market today could play a key role in shrinking what many people consider to be solar power's dark side: its high cost.

These panels, based on a technology known as "thin film," convert sunlight into electricity using little or no silicon, the price of which had been surging until the economic downturn put a dent in demand.

While thin-film panels sell for as much as 40% less than their silicon counterparts, they also, on average, produce roughly half as much energy per square meter, meaning they require more panels and a larger installation area to generate the same amount of electricity.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123378465974249285.html

[Graeme]

Solar power beamed from space within a decade?

The concept of Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) has been doing the rounds for decades with fantastic claims of 24 hour a day solar power beamed from space via microwave to any point on earth. A start up company called Space Energy, Inc says it plans to develop SBSP satellites to generate and transmit electricity to receivers on the Earth's surface. To do this, the company plans to create and launch a prototype satellite into low earth orbit (LEO). The hitch: this concept is based on as yet unproven technology.

http://www.gizmag.com/solar-power-space-satellite/11064/

[Graeme]

Toyota’s dream – a car made of seaweed

Toyota is taking the concept of green cars literally with the development of a hybrid concept car made from seaweed which will to be shown at the Melbourne International Motor Show in Australia this week. The 1/X (pronounced one-Xth) gets its name because it envisages a hybrid-powered car of the future with a fraction of the environmental footprint of today's cleanest cars.

http://www.gizmag.com/toyota-1x-seaweed-hybrid/11096/