Aeolus

Aeolus: "Horns Rev 1 wake effects. Photographer Christian Steiness. The above photograph shows the turbulence field behind the Horns Rev 1 offshore wind turbines. Unique meteorological conditions on 12 February 2008 at 1300 hours resulted in the wind turbines creating condensation (i.e. clouds) of the very humid air, thus making it possible to see the turbulence pattern behind the wind turbines."

IEA: Building Energy Consumption Can be Cut 33% | The Energy Collective

IEA: Building Energy Consumption Can be Cut 33% | The Energy Collective

In its latest energy roadmap, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says dramatic energy savings could be achieved rapidly if policies which promote energy efficient heating and cooling technologies are adopted.
It is estimated that buildings -- residential, commercial, and public -- account for one-third of the globe's total final energy consumption.  The IEA says this number could be reduced very quickly as a result of the bounty of energy efficient heating and cooling technologies currently available.
According to its report, implementing solar thermal, combined heat and power, heat-pump, and thermal energy storage systems could reduce fossil fuels' share in building space and water heating between 5% and 20% by 2050.  The Agency figures these technologies could cut carbon emissions by 2 gigatonnes in the next 40 years -- roughly one-quarter of today's current building emissions.
Bo Diczfalusy, the IEA's Director of Sustainable Energy Policy and Technology said potential for reducing buildings' energy consumption is immense:  "Energy efficiency and CO2-free technologies for heating and cooling in buildings offer many low-cost options for reducing energy consumption, consumers' energy bills and CO2 emissions in buildings, with technologies that are available today.  Given that space heating and cooling and hot water production consumer perhaps half of all energy consumed in buildings today, the savings potential is very large."
Given that technology is not a barrier, the IEA's report identifies public policy as the most vital requirement needed to make the shift toward more efficient energy consumption in buildings.
New public policy is critical, in the IEA's opinion, because it can circumvent the widespread market barriers currently standing in the way of the deployment of low-carbon heating and cooling equipment.  The report explains that if those purchasing heating and cooling equipment are not given adequate incentives they are not likely to purchase the more efficient technology.
Therefore, the policy needs to be broad and deep in its scope; so it can reach all the stakeholders in the building sector.  The IEA's roadmap highlights four areas where policy support is critical.

1. Increased funding for technology research, development, and deployment (RD&D).  An additional US$3.5 billion per year is needed by 2030.
2. Improved information for analyzing the energy and carbon savings of heating and cooling technologies as well as their life-cycle financial benefits.
3. New policies to transform the sector and increase the low up-take of energy efficient and low carbon heating and cooling technologies.
4. Greater international collaboration and research and development of low carbon heating and cooling technologies.

If strong policy is implemented, the IEA sees the number of installed residential heat pumps growing more than four times by 2050, increasing from today's 800 million to 3.5 billion.  Additionally, solar thermal (water heated by the sun for space and water heating) capacity would grow by a factor of 25, while combined heat and power systems (simultaneous production of heat and electricity for the building to use) would increase 45 fold.  Finally, by 2050, more than half of all space heating and hot water systems could be equipped with thermal energy storage, allowing buildings the ability to store excess energy.
Photo by renjith krishnan.

About Nathanael Baker

Nathanael Baker is the Managing Editor of EnergyBoom. He has been immersed in the areas of renewable energy and climate change for two years. Before joining EnergyBoom, Nathanael was the Director of Research for the DeSmog Blog. In this role his services included providing research to the New York Times and The Economist. A resident of Vancouver, BC, Nathanael has previously written and performed research for the British Columbia Provincial Government. Nathanael holds a B.A. in History from the University of Victoria.

Android @ home unveiled as new wireless standard for home control and automation

Home automation has long suffered from the lack of a consumer-centric approach. Consumer electronics companies have almost universally come around to the new mantra of user experience. Most companies have finally awoken from their deep eighties slumber to realize that a single product can no longer dominate an industry on its own -- the age of the Walkman is over. For success, a product must encompass great software, great services, hardware that just works, and stellar support when it doesn't. In short, the user experience is what sets the product apart. Home automators have yet to realize this but Google's announcement could force the issue.

It's with open arms that I welcome Google into my home, that I willingly prostrate myself at the feet of Matias Duarte. Android@Home is the first concrete step towards realizing the hopes I had ever since Google announced its PowerMeter smart meter partners back in 2009. Surely you remember PowerMeter? Google's free web service that lets home owners monitor their total energy consumption? Probably not, because the device-level component was missing. That all changes with Android@Home since it focuses on automating the products you use on a daily basis: light switches, light bulbs, power sockets, washing machines, window coverings, thermostats, loudspeakers, etc. Every electrical device in the home is fair game.

So far the company has promised partnerships with "several industry players" but has only demonstrated a prototype wireless lightbulb from Lighting Science and an Android@Home media hub. The hub reference design, aka Project Tungsten, combines a Music Beta endpoint with a bridge to your home network to create a pretty compelling distributed audio solution akin to a Sonos ZonePlayer. Now, two devices is nothing. But the potential, the potential is staggering, giving users the ability to drill all the way down from the whole-home energy view to the device and switch level without ever leaving their browser or smartphone app. That's the future I've been dreaming of. That's what could trigger an explosion in sales of home automation gear. Or not. Google I/O launches have a varied history of uptake (uh hem, Wave, Chrome OS, Gears, Friend Connect).

There's an old joke told in the water-cooled confines of the corporate data center that goes something like this: the best part about standards is that we have so many to choose from. A quip that certainly applies to home automation networks. Any DIYer hoping to begin automating their home will first have to select a protocol amongst the Z-Wave, Insteon, ZigBee, or X10 standards, to name just a few. Now we have another: Google. Based upon our conversations with Google at I/O, Android@Home will use a mesh networking protocol that functions in the 900MHz frequency bands just like Z-Wave -- but it's not Z-Wave. Google has developed its own wireless protocol and Android@Home framework that lets Android apps discover, connect, and communicate with electrical appliances and devices in the home. So yes, it's proprietary, but hey, it's "open."

The way I see it, the incumbent industry players could rally behind Google's new networking standard (and enormous brand recognition) or distance themselves from Google entirely resulting in the further fragmentation of the home automation scene. I truly hope it's the former. Just as the burgeoning PC industry required a common OS and application set in order to take root and thrive within corporations, it's my belief that home automation requires a strong centralized developer framework and a common wireless protocol for interconnecting components in order to expand beyond its novelty status into a full-blown consumer offering. Imagine it: the Samsung Galaxy Table Saw, the Apple iSocket, the HTC Temperature Sensor. Come on industry, let's do this. You'll make some money and we'll finally automate the light bulb and switch nearly 100 years since its commercialization.

Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III) « BraveNewClimate

Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III) « BraveNewClimate

An impressive team of scientists were assembled at Argonne under the leadership of Dr. Charles Till, who coordinated his exceptionally talented group in a multi-faceted project to solve all the issues of public concern over nuclear power generation simultaneously: safety, nuclear waste, proliferation, economics, fuel supply and fabrication, and construction. By the time a woefully shortsighted administration shut down the IFR project in 1994, all the problems had been successfully solved and all that was left was to demonstrate the commercial-scale fuel recycling system that would be an integral part of each power plant (hence the “I” in IFR).

IFR Basics

The main difference between a fast reactor and a light-water reactor is the speed at which the neutrons move when liberated by the splitting of an atom. In LWRs, water acts as a moderator, slowing the neutrons and thus increasing the chance that they’ll encounter another fissile atom and cause it to split, perpetuating the chain reaction. In a fast reactor, the neutrons are allowed to move at a considerably higher speed, and for this reason the fissile content of the fuel must be higher (in an IFR it would be about 20% as opposed to the 3.5-5% in a LWR).

LWRs operate with water under pressure, hence the concern about pressure vessel leaks, coolant system leaks, etc, as well as the industrial bottleneck of only a single foundry in the world (though more are being built) capable of casting LWR pressure vessels. Fast reactors, on the other hand, usually use liquid sodium metal as the coolant, at or near atmospheric pressure, thereby obviating the need for pressure vessels. Because the boiling point of sodium is quite high, fast reactors can operate at a considerably higher temperature than LWRs, with outlet temperatures of about 550ºC as opposed to the 320ºC of Gen III reactors. Here is a simplified rendering [x] of a sodium-cooled fast reactor to convey the design features:

As can be seen from the picture, the heat exchanger loop, immersed in the reactor pool, contains non-radioactive sodium, which is piped to a heat exchanger in a separate structure where it gives up its heat to a water/steam loop that drives a conventional (Rankine cycle) turbine. This system assures that in the unlikely event of a sodium/water interaction caused by undetected breaching of the double-walled heat exchanger, no radioactive material would be involved and the reactor vessel itself would be unaffected. Such an event, however unlikely, could result in the cessation of flow through the intermediate loop and thus an inability of the system to shed its heat. In a worst-case scenario where such an event happened with the reactor at full power and operators, for whatever reason, failed to insert the control rods to scram the reactor, the passively-safe system would nevertheless shut itself down safely due to inherent properties of the metal fuel (see below), with the large amount of sodium in the reactor vessel then allowing the fission product decay heat from the core to dissipate.

Metal Fuel: The Ultimate Safety Valve

One of the most important of the many superlatives of the IFR is its use of a metal fuel comprised of uranium, plutonium and zirconium, and the ingenious manner in which the Argonne team solved the problems of fuel expansion and fuel fabrication, as well as the potentially dangerous overheating scenario. Unlike the fuel fabrication of oxide-fueled reactors that requires the dimensions of the fuel pellets to be uniform to very exacting tolerances, the metal fuel for the IFR can be simply injected into molds and then cooled and inserted into metal tubes (cladding) with a great deal of dimensional tolerance, with a sodium bond filling any voids. If an accident situation occurs that would cause the core to overheat, such as a loss of coolant flow accident, the metal fuel itself will expand, causing neutron leakage to terminate the chain reaction, relying on nothing but the laws of physics.

The passive safety characteristics of the IFR were tested in EBR-II on April 3, 1986, against two of the most severe accident events postulated for nuclear power plants. The first test (the Loss of Flow Test) simulated a complete station blackout, so that power was lost to all cooling systems. The second test (the Loss of Heat Sink Test) simulated the loss of ability to remove heat from the plant by shutting off power to the secondary cooling system. In both of these tests, the normal safety systems were not allowed to function and the operators did not interfere. The tests were run with the reactor initially at full power.

In both tests, the passive safety features simply shut down the reactor with no damage. The fuel and coolant remained within safe temperature limits as the reactor quickly shut itself down in both cases. Relying only on passive characteristics, EBR-II smoothly returned to a safe condition without activation of any control rods and without action by the reactor operators. The same features responsible for this remarkable performance in EBR-II will be incorporated into the design of future IFR plants, regardless of how large they may be [xi].

While the IFR was under development, a consortium of prominent American companies led by General Electric collaborated with the IFR team to design a commercial-scale reactor based upon the EBR-II research. This design, currently in the hands of GE, is called the PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module). A somewhat larger version (with a power rating of 380 MWe) is called the S-PRISM. As with all new nuclear reactor designs (and many other potentially hazardous industrial projects), probabilistic risk assessment studies were conducted for the S-PRISM. Among other parameters, the PRA study estimated the frequency with which one could expect a core meltdown. This occurrence was so statistically improbable as to defy imagination. Of course such a number must be divided by the number of reactors in service in order to convey the actual frequency of a hypothetical meltdown. Even so, if one posits that all the energy humanity requires were to be supplies solely by IFRs (an unlikely scenario but one that is entirely possible), the world could expect a core meltdown about once every 435,000 years [xii]. Even if the risk assessment understated the odds by a factor of a thousand, this would still be a reactor design that even the most paranoid could feel good about.

The initial manufacturing and subsequent recycling of the fuel pins themselves is accomplished with a well-understood and widely used electrorefining process, similar to one that is employed every day in aluminum foundries. The simplicity of the system and the small amount of material that would have to be recycled in any power plant—even one containing several reactor modules—is such that factory-built components could be pieced together in a small hot cell at each power plant site. Every 18-24 months, one third of the fuel would be removed from the reactor and replaced by new fuel. The used fuel would be recycled. Approximately 10% of it would be comprised of fission products, which in the recycling process would be entombed in vitrified ceramic and probably stored on-site for the life of the plant. If the reactor core were configured to breed more fissile material than it consumes, then during the recycling process some quantity of plutonium would be removed and fabricated on-site into extra fuel assemblies that could then be used as the primary core load of a new reactor. The long-lived actinides that remain would be incorporated into the new fuel rods, replacing the quantity of fission products removed (and any plutonium that had been extracted for startup fuel for new reactors) with an equal amount of either depleted uranium or reprocessed uranium from LWR spent fuel.

Thus we solve multiple problems at once. The quandary of long-lived nuclear waste is a non-issue since the fission products will decay below the radioactivity level of uranium ore within a few hundred years, (see diagram [xiii]) yet they will be embedded in a stone/glass matrix that won’t leach anything into the environment for thousands of years. The long-lived actinides that cause so much consternation to the public when considering spent nuclear fuel will never leave the site of the IFR power plant (except in the case where new fuel is moved to start up a new IFR), but will instead be recycled back into the reactors, repeatedly, to produce prodigious amounts of clean energy, gradually all being transmuted into either electricity or fission products that pose no troublesome disposal problems. Moreover, all of the spent fuel that has accumulated from operation of past, present and future LWRs can also be consumed as fuel in an IFR; in short, they ‘eat’ nuclear waste.

Energy from Thorium

Energy from Thorium appears to be a promising fail safe technology, with little radiation danger, a good overview.

CALLE Y FACHADA | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

CALLE Y FACHADA | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

good example of low impact, low cost traditional building called vernacular, this makes a lot of sense, and the post and beam makes it earthquake proof too...

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: America's Dangerous Debt

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: America's Dangerous Debt

debt levels of different countries;

exerpt;
So how does Canada stack up against the United States when it comes to federal debt levels? I’ve put together three graphs with which to compare the evolution of the gross federal government debt of Canada and the United States. Figure 1 plots the ratio of Canadian gross federal government debt to United States gross federal government debt. Figure 2 presents the ratio of federal government debt to GDP for each country. Figure 3 plots the ratio of the debt to GDP ratios. The evidence shows that while Canada performed more poorly on the debt front than the United States during the period from the mid 1960s to the 1990s, it has since done a better job. The ratio of Canadian to United States federal debt declined from the early 1980s (Figure 1) but this does not take the size of the economy into account, which occurs in Figure 3. Figure 3 shows that after adjusting for the size of the economy, Canada’s debt situation relative to the United States improves in a consistent and dramatic fashion after 1996. Canada has a higher gross debt to GDP ratio than the United States after 1981 and its debt rises faster than GDP until 1996. After 1996, Canada’s gross debt to GDP ratio begins to fall (as does the American ratio) but the American ratio then begins to rise in 2000 and a crossover occurs between 2001 and 2002.
Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

For the United States, after the improvements in its debt situation that occurred from 1995 to 2000, the years since have seen a steady deterioration of its fiscal position. Its gross debt to GDP ratio is now nearly twice that of Canada’s (about 93 percent compared to 54 percent). By way of comparison, at the end of 2010, Portugal’s gross debt to GDP ratio was 83 percent while Greece’s was 130 percent. However, when net debt is considered, Portugal was at 79 percent, Greece at 110 percent and the United States at 66 percent. The United States is not yet in Euro-bailout territory especially given its untapped fiscal capacity (Federal Sales Tax anyone?) and it is in better shape than Japan or Italy. Nevertheless, it is in dangerous economic territory given its slow steps to grapple with its debt and deficit and so are we given our economic dependence on the United States.

So when will defense, security, foreign meddling be reduced, so much to gain by cuts in imperial ambitions!