An “affordable” flow battery technology

An “affordable” flow battery technology is currently under development by researchers at Ann Arbor–based Vinazene Inc, in partnership with Grand Valley State University’s Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center and its Chemistry Department.

The new project — which is funded by a DOE Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant — is based around the use of proprietary, high-capacity organic electrolytes. The use of these organic electrolytes, rather than relatively expensive metals like vanadium, is what will reportedly allow for greater “affordability” — to date, the barrier to wide-scale use of flow battery technologies has been their relatively high costs.vAnother purported advantage of the use of these proprietary organic electrolytes is the ability to specifically tailor the compounds used for higher solubility (amongst other traits). The Vinazene battery will reportedly have a higher energy density than the more well known vanadium-based systems, owing to this higher solubility.

Based on Vinazene’s website, the researchers involved seem pretty bullish on the technology — but then they often do, don’t they? Still, it sounds like there’s potential there. Perhaps something will come of it.

The researchers mention possible uses in remote military. surveillance, and/or telecommunication sites. Other potential uses include those in greenhouse farming and various types of industrial production facilities.
full story here:
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/12/31/affordable-flow-battery-technology-reportedly-developed-vinazene/

Solar power production doubles in US to 12k GW

By Juan Cole | —

Compared to Germany and Spain, the United States is woefully backward in its development of wind, solar and other renewable sources of energy for electricity generation.

But there is some good news on this front, as CleanTech notes. Utility-scale solar power generation in the United States doubled in the past year, from about 6,000 gigawatt hours in 2013 to 12,000 gigawatt hours in 2014. Utility-scale solar is on the verge of passing the symbolic 1% level of US electricity generation. (Statistics don’t count the contribution of roof-top solar, which is the major form of solar energy in the US, so its actual contribution is much greater). Germany, which is not particularly sunny, generates about 7% of its electricity using solar. Spain gets about 5% of its electricity from solar. The US south and southwest and west is so sunny that it is crazy that the country has neglected this source of power. But that neglect is changing, because the price of solar panels has plummeted in the past 5 years.

Wind energy is also growing rapidly in the US. Iowa now gets 27% of its electricity from wind turbines, and South Dakota is also in that range. Some 9 states get at least 12% of their electricity from wind. These states are Colorado, Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, Idaho, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Oregon. The rapid progress of wind power (a 24-fold increase since 2001) can be seen in this graph:

Screen Shot 2014-12-06 at 1.16.13 AM

Non-hydro renewables are now 6% or so of the US energy mix, while with hydroelectric power renewables come to 13%. The US is producing about 5.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year, some 16 tons per person– the highest per capita in the major OECD countries. Just 50 US power plants account for almost as much CO2 as the whole country of Germany. Even if you count the CO2 produced in manufacturing and installing them, over their lifetimes wind turbines generate almost no carbon dioxide, and their fuel is free. If the US could get to 30 percent wind power by 2030, it could reduce its carbon production to 40% under 2005 levels.

Wind provides 21% of Spain’s electricity. This EU report notes:

There are now 117.3 GW of installed wind energy capacity in the EU: 110.7 GW onshore and 6.6 GW offshore.

11,159 MW of wind power capacity (worth between €13 bn and €18 bn) was installed in the EU-28 during 2013 . . . The EU power sector continues its move away from fuel oil and coal with each technology continuing to decommission more than it installs.

The wind power capacity installed by the end of 2013 would, in a normal wind year, produce 257 TWh of electricity, enough to cover 8% of the EU’s electricity consumption – up from 7% the year before.

Congress has kept the tax credit for wind farms this year, but it doesn’t do that much good, since wind entrepreneurs don’t know if the tax break will still be there in 2016 and so still cannot plan out wind farm construction and be sure what their margin of profit will be. But wind and solar are coming down in cost so fast that people with a need for inexpensive energy will keep installing them, even if via cooperatives.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/12/solar-doubles-energy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+juancole%2Fymbn+%28Informed+Comment%29

The missing piece of the climate puzzle

In classrooms and everyday conversation, explanations of global warming hinge on the greenhouse gas effect. In short, climate depends on the balance between two different kinds of radiation: The Earth absorbs incoming visible light from the sun, called “shortwave radiation,” and emits infrared light, or “longwave radiation,” into space.

Upsetting that energy balance are rising levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), that increasingly absorb some of the outgoing longwave radiation and trap it in the atmosphere. Energy accumulates in the climate system, and warming occurs. But in a paper out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MIT researchers show that this canonical view of global warming is only half the story.

In computer modeling of Earth’s climate under elevating CO2 concentrations, the greenhouse gas effect does indeed lead to global warming. Yet something puzzling happens: While one would expect the longwave radiation that escapes into space to decline with increasing CO2, the amount actually begins to rise. At the same time, the atmosphere absorbs more and more incoming solar radiation; it’s this enhanced shortwave absorption that ultimately sustains global warming.
“The finding was a curiosity, conflicting with the basic understanding of global warming,” says lead author Aaron Donohoe, a former MIT postdoc who is now a research associate at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “It made us think that there must be something really weird going in the models in the years after CO2 was added. We wanted to resolve the paradox that climate models show warming via enhanced shortwave radiation, not decreased longwave radiation.”

Donohoe, along with MIT postdoc Kyle Armour and others at Washington, spent many a late night throwing out guesses as to why climate models generate this illogical finding before realizing that it makes perfect sense — but for reasons no one had clarified and laid down in the literature.

They found the answer by drawing on both computer simulations and a simple energy-balance model. As longwave radiation gets trapped by CO2, the Earth starts to warm, impacting various parts of the climate system. Sea ice and snow cover melt, turning brilliant white reflectors of sunlight into darker spots. The atmosphere grows moister because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which absorbs more shortwave radiation. Both of these feedbacks lessen the amount of shortwave radiation that bounces back into space, and the planet warms rapidly at the surface.

Meanwhile, like any physical body experiencing warming, Earth sheds longwave radiation more effectively, canceling out the longwave-trapping effects of CO2. However, a darker Earth now absorbs more sunlight, tipping the scales to net warming from shortwave radiation.

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/global-warming-increased-solar-radiation-1110#

Singapore makes it painfully expensive to operate a car!

My November Trip Highlights – Month 3: "Singapore is clean It is illegal to buy chewing gum and you can be heavily fined if caught spitting on the ground. I remember filling out my disembarkation card as I arrived into the country and on the bottom in capital, bolded red letters it read: “WARNING DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS UNDER SINGAPORE LAW.” Driving is also expensive, as the government uses regulations to discourage driving and encourage bikes and public transport. Before you can even buy a car you have to buy a certificate of entitlement, which changes based on your car and the horsepower. For example, Vanessa’s dad’s BMW had a certificate costing around $80,000. The government uses the certificate as a way to regulate vehicles by raising or dropping the price. Once you have a certificate, you still have to buy a car, then you have to decide what kind of registration you want. There are 3 different levels, designated by license plate color. A black license plate means you can drive whenever, a red plate means you can drive during the evening on weekdays and anytime on weekends and a yellow plate means you have to drive during the evening, except Sunday, which has no restrictions. And it doesn’t stop there. The government sets up electronic toll roads and you must buy the cashcard reader for your car. Toll roads litter the expressways and arterial roads with heavy traffic to discourage use during peak hours and as a way to lower traffic usage. Further, it is illegal to have a car in Singapore over 10 years old, unless you do major engine re-hauls. I found it all fascinating, but what I really noticed was how clean the country was, everywhere."

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flooding good farmland not best choice for BC

Clean Energy commissioned the study to provide up-to-date information to the province, which is expected to make a decision on Site C before the end of the year.

“If government is going to make a decision, then let’s make sure at least that we put our best foot forward and let’s commission this study,” Clean Energy executive director Paul Kariya said on Thursday.

“What government does with the study, whether they agree or disagree – we’ve got that dialogue going on right now.”

That dialogue is taking place as the government mulls whether to proceed with Site C, which would be the third dam on B.C.’s Peace River and has a current price estimate of $7.9-billion.

The project, first proposed in the 1970s, cleared significant hurdles this week when it received environmental approvals from the federal and provincial governments.

But it faces questions about its potential cost and even whether it is needed to meet future energy needs.

B.C. Hydro says the province’s electricity needs are expected to grow by about 40 per cent over the next 20 years, that conservation and efficiency programs won’t be enough to fill the gap and that Site C is the best option when financial, technical, environmental and economic factors are taken into account.

Clean Energy’s new report challenges that position, and maintains the province could save up to $1-billion over 70 years – the projected life of the Site C dam – by pursuing smaller projects including wind installations and run-of-river hydro projects.

Such projects have a contentious history in B.C., including concerns about environmental impacts from river hydro installations over the past decade.

How to build My 50 Dollar Greenhouse » The Door Garden

How to build My 50 Dollar Greenhouse » The Door Garden

The planning is over and construction on my hoop house greenhouse has begun.  I’ve rounded up all of the materials and it looks like I’m going to end up with about $50 in a 165 square ft. green house. Granted I already had most of the materials because I’m an incorrigible pack rat, but even if I had bought everything new just for this polytunnel It would still only come to about $120 $150 – less than a dollar per square ft.  Due to the fact that we are in the midst of a global economic meltdown, and the future is a bit uncertain keeping the cost of this project as low as possible is an important consideration.

After some research I’ve decided to build the structure of the hoop house out of 20 ft. joints of three quarter inch PVC plumbing pipe.  Some similar greenhouse designs that I’ve run across use 10 ft joints of pipe and then fasten everything together with pipe fittings, but I’m saving quite a bit of cash with the long joints of pipe and by not using any fittings – also overall simplicity is improved.  There is one thing though, you can carry 10 ft joints of pipe in the mini van, but hauling 20′ pipe requires a truck and preferably a ladder rack.  However, you could just cut them in half right at the home improvement store and then put them back together when you get home with the coupling that is built into one end of the 20′ long pipe joints – 10′ pipe joints don’t have the built in couplers – just go to the home improvement store prepared with a saw or pipe cutter.

My hoop house green house is going to be 11 feet wide and 15 feet long, and will be about seven and a half feet tall in the center.  You could make one of these as long or as short as you want, but using this design the width needs to be between 10-12 feet.  11 feet wide just happpened to work out with the layout of my garden which has 3 foot wide beds with 5 ft paths between (the wide paths are so that I can keep it tidy with my riding lawn mower) so eleven feet covers two beds and the path between them.  This width also makes the sides go fairly straight up from the ground for the first few feet – I’ve noticed that in some hoop house / polytunnel designs the outer edges are almost unusable because of the slope of the greenhouse sides.

If your Greenhouse is too Flat it will collapse!

You might be tempted to make your greenhouse wider and lower at this point to get more floor space out of it – but be careful.  If you have snow in your area it will slide off of a high peak a lot better than it will if your greenhouse has more of a flattened shape – and the same goes for heavy rains.  If your hoop house shape is too flattened it will cave in the first time it snows or rains really hard!

How to Build the $50 Hoop House

I decided to begin the construction by building the end walls first – even though it would be more fun to throw up the main structure in just an hour or so and make a big showing of progress, I think that in the long run it will be quicker and easier to build the end frames first on my garage floor.

New Li-Ion Batteries Charge 70 Percent in 2 Minutes, Last for 20 Years

New Li-Ion Batteries Charge 70 Percent in 2 Minutes, Last for 20 Years: "A team of researchers in Singapore have developed a next generation lithium-ion battery that can recharge a battery to 70-percent in just two minutes. That means it would charge an entire electric car in just 15 minutes. And here's the kicker: it lasts over 20 years. Normally, it's safe to be skeptical about new battery technology, but there's something rather hopeful about this breakthrough. The new battery isn't altogether new. It's actually just an improvement upon existing lithium-ion technology. The key comes in the form of nanostructures. Instead of the traditional graphite used to create the lithium-ion battery's anode, this new technology uses a cheap titanium dioxide gel, the same kind of material used in sunscreen to absorb UV rays. The scientists found away to turn the compound into nanostructures that speed up the charging process. And speed it up they do. This simple innovation makes lithium-ion batteries charge 20-times faster and last 20-times longer. "With our nanotechnology, electric cars would be able to increase their range dramatically with just five minutes of charging, which is on par with the time needed to pump petrol for current cars," Associate Professor Chen Xiaodong of Nanyang Technological University said in a release. Just imagine what it could do for your smartphone. How To Take Care of Your Smartphone Battery the Right Way Your smartphone is a minor miracle, a pocket-sized computer that can fulfill almost every whim. But … Read more The researchers say they'll have the new technology on the market in just two years. While we've certainly seen fast-charging battery promises in the past, the simple fact that this new battery uses so much existing technology is reason to believe that they're right about that timeline, too. [NTU] "

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