Jan
27
A Government Divided Against Itself Is a Mess
January 27, 2012 | 4 Comments
This contrasts with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) standing record of never approving a new reactor design. The December 2011 “approval” by the NRC of the Westinghouse AP1000 is not a new reactor at all; rather it’s a next generation design of existing technology.
Clearly U.S. Federal government is working at cross-purposes. A fine, expensive and consumer and industrial damaging mess is sure to ensue.
The DOE has new cost-sharing arrangements with private industry to support design and licensing activities. With considerable astonishment, taxpayers are going to be funding one agency to pay the fees of another. Make that Astounded.
Small Modular Reactor Samples. Click image for the largest view.
The good news, aside from the circumstances is the DOE intends ultimately to fund up to two designs for small modular reactors (SMR) through a cost-shared partnership, which will support first-of-a-kind engineering, design certification and licensing. The draft Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is now out to solicit input from the industry for preparing a full FOA that’s aiming at a reactor deployment date about 2022.
The DOE’s FOA seeks applications for two grants, estimated to total $452 million over five years. The funding anticipates paying up to half the cost of developing and deploying perhaps two small modular reactor designs.
The tooth gnashing fact is that’s not going to be enough money and it leaves all but the chosen one or two designs at a major disadvantage. This after the Solyndra debacle and others has thoughtful observers realizing that bureaucrats are picking the winners before the competition starts. That is a terrible policy; a huge waste of resources and the best design is sure to be left out when historic experience is considered. It will be a lobbyist’s game any moment now.
At issue are small, compact reactors of around 300 MWe and lower in capacity, a third or less of the size of the typical commercial nuclear power plant built so far. These kinds of plants could potentially offer a range of features in terms of safety, construction and siting as well as potential economic benefits. But if only one or two are chosen the circumstances for users will be limited or force excess costs to make a mandated choice instead of an optimal one for the situation.
At this size reactors are modular or have a ‘plug and play’ nature, which means they could be made in factories and transported to generation sites. That manufacturing approach over a custom build method offers economies of scale reducing both capital costs and construction times. The small size could make them suitable for small electric grids and markets that cannot support large reactors costs, production or regulatory expense.
Bravely, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu described the funding as a “significant step” in designing, manufacturing, and exporting small modular reactors. It takes courage to come out with what is obviously a poorly thought out policy. Yet, the bravery may be driven by the Congress abandoning its responsibility to organize the law in a fashion that resembles common sense.
Chu is bright enough and has enough outside the beltway experience to understand and say, “America’s choice is clear – we can either develop the next generation of clean energy technologies, which will help create thousands of new jobs and export opportunities here in America, or we can wait for other countries to take the lead.”
Meanwhile – the NRC remains embroiled in a managerial mess. The commissioners and the Chairman are still at odds, and the oversight of the media has disappeared, the Congress along with it. There is no reasonable expectation anything of consequence is going to happen any time soon, and it’s an election year as well.
There is a lot at stake if such a plan proceeds. Westinghouse is developing its own 200 MWe SMR, and the information has escaped that Westinghouse’s approved AP1000 nuclear reactor design was supported through a cost-shared agreement with DOE. This information leads one to suspect that Westinghouse may be looking for a quick taxpayer funded catch up.
There is a long list of technologies with potential. (See Brian Wang’s page at NextBigFuture.)
NuScale Power Inc’s 45 MWe NuScale reactor and Babcock & Wilcox’s 160 MWe mPower should both be eligible, too. The NRC is currently involved in pre-application activities on both designs in anticipation of a design certification application for the NuScale reactor in the first months of 2012, followed by one for the mPower design towards the end of 2013. These one should think, are the leaders.
The list of good ideas out there is grand, covering three major technologies. The light water reactors list includes Babcock & Wilcox, NuScale Power Inc., Westinghouse and Holtec’s Inherently Safe Modular Underground Reactor at 140 MWe.
The high temperature gas-cooled reactors are coming from AREVA’s Antares, General Atomics model called Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor and Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Ltd.’s reactor named conveniently, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor.
The liquid metal cooled and fast reactor list is equally impressive. Here are GE Hitachi’s Nuclear Power Reactor Innovative Small Module, Hyperion Power Generation’s Hyperion Power Module and Toshiba’s – Toshiba 4S for Super Small, Safe and Simple.
That’s 10, add in a couple of thorium fueled ones and that would be a dozen. The Feds expect to give one or two 40% of a billion dollars head start. How is that going to work out for the country?
Wouldn’t it be better to just completely revamp the NRC?
Admittedly the DOE must be under stress from the machinations over at the NRC. And from a government mind, that plan might seem great. For the rest of us it looks like a waste from the start and a market distortion for decades, perhaps centuries to come.
Ugh.
Jan
26
Canadian Tech May Give Geothermal New Prospects
January 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment
For seven years Ontario’s inventor Ian Marnoch has been developing a new kind of “heat engine” that he says can generate electricity more economically from lower-grade heat. While that heat could come from anywhere: the ground, the sun, or an industrial waste process, geothermal needs a much better temperature spread to achieve wide ranging use.
In today’s circumstances the main player is big temperature differentials where steam can be made to drive a Rankine thermodynamic cycle – commonly thought of as a turbine connected to a generator. There are other ways using such circulation fluids like ammonia and freon types that will work as well. These are often binary systems where two steps are used to get to flowing and working heat.
All the Rankine based ideas rely on a fluid heating up, expanding and vaporizing to drive a turbine or Stirling engine that makes mechanical motion to generate electricity. The vapor is then cooled, condensing it back into a fluid that is recycled back through to repeat the process.
Ian Marnoch Shows His MTP Engine. Click image for more info.
Marnoch’s heat engine works using the principle a little differently. There is no phase change in the vaporization of the working fluids. Marnoch’s system relies on dry pre-pressurized air that expands as it’s heated and contracts as it’s cooled. That change in volume and pressure causes pistons to move that can generate electricity.
Marnoch isn’t the first to grasp this, but Marnoch has configured his machine such to get an edge over other technologies. He says his engine configuration can process heat much faster and at bigger volumes than Rankine machines.
“It can process about three times as much heat by value as an Organic Rankine machine of the same size,” says Marnoch, adding that his heat engine can be designed to be much smaller and, therefore, less expensive. All good.
But the new advantage is it can tap into lower temperatures that aren’t viable with other technologies. This technology doesn’t need the boiling ammonia up to boiling water and beyond levels of temperatures.
Here’s the key – all Marnoch’ cycle needs is the right temperature differential, the spread between the heat source and the heat sink. That could be cool air, the water in well, a deep mine shaft or the temperature at the bottom of an old oil or natural gas well.
Lots of folks are going to be realizing the opportunities are huge in the natural environment.
The news is all Marnoch needs is a 20º C (38º F) or higher temperature spread and there’s potential to generate electricity. The system becomes more economical the wider the gap. That’s a lot of territory and the geothermal value can be heat or a heat sink.
It’s quite an idea for mechanical energy from low temperature heat spreads.
Marnoch and a team of PhD students and professors at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) have been working to perfect his patented heat engine. Funding from the Canadian and Ontario governments have supported development of the machine for the past five years with early seed money from The Ontario Power Authority and Ontario Centres of Excellence. The latest prototype of the machine is at UOIT’s new Clean Energy Research Laboratory.
Marnoch is understandably eager to get the machine out in the field and tested in a real-world situation. Companies are lining up. Canada’s St. Marys Cement is exploring using the Marnoch engine to generate electricity from the waste heat of its Bowmanville cement plant. Martin Vroegh, environmental manager at St Marys said, “It is in very early discussions but we are very enthusiastic about the potential and what this can mean for industries with large volumes of low-grade waste heat.”
Marnoch knows the current situation saying, “We just need to get out there and prove it works.”
With essentially any temp range where better than 20º C or 38º F can be had on the cheap money can be made or savings held or costs can be recovered. Some folks are going to sit up and notice and Marnoch’s machine will get market legs. Next up after field demonstrations is going to be working to more models and mass market pricing.
Go Marnoch!
Jan
25
Better LENR News From Greece
January 25, 2012 | 4 Comments
The Praxen Defkalion Green Technologies Global Ltd. (PDGT) firm that was and then wasn’t a partner with Andrea Rossi in marketing the E-Cat LENR reactor has announced the permitting of third party evaluations of their product named “Hyperion”. PDGT had for a time an opportunity to learn what Rossi has accomplished and since is proposing they have a different take on LENR and are now ready to cooperate with recognized and reputable scientific and business organizations to test and evaluate the Hyperion reactor.
Back at the end of November PDGT offered news that a series of third party tests on Hyperion products were scheduled to be performed within the first months of 2012. That test proceeding is being handled privately and was to take place after a certification of some kind.
The Defkalion Hyperion Multieactor Diagram
The new announcement is a major confidence builder as the firm is offering qualified engineers from institutions and industry a first look with their own instrumentation. Obviously at this time the offer isn’t to ship units out of their control, rather the offer is to provide the first look and the opportunity to confirm the claims and identify the applicability and estimate the savings and energy availability. It is a shrewd move and there very likely will be takers.
The objectives at this early stage are simple. Determine the excess heat of reactor discharge without a cooling apparatus to determine a total energy consumed to energy production ratio. Also on the list is a radioactivity measurement and operational stability handled by the Hyperion control system.
The press release offers extensive details on the conditions PDGT hopes to hold through negotiations with test offers. In fact the conditions describe the firm’s resources and a kind of standard such that all tests will have similarity in protocol and the results can be relevant to others. That’s an advantage to everyone at this stage.
Moreover, the firm is making clear they have minimum standards of test conduct. At this stage LENR is a controversial technology. The base the level of doubt is the technology is not even credible. The caution involved is not just protective of the firm’s proprietary technology, the caution also should firewall out the time and resource wasting detractors.
This stage is a very impressive boost for both PDGT and the LENR community. While Mr. Rossi is at least greatly annoyed, and justifiably incensed, the PDGT effort may well boost his own efforts to a more accepted level faster.
The puff part is the Hyperion’s new very high discharge temperature, capable of exceeding 650º C. That’s enough to drive steam turbines and getting close to dry steam.
At those discharge temperatures PDGT is suggesting the third party test can expect at least a 1:20 ratio of consumed energy to produced energy. Its also way past what might be installed in homes. PDGT seems to looking at heat production and more industrial applications.
After the press release is a comment section that includes some impressive persons. Jed Rothwell who runs the respected LENR-CANR.org was there to straighten up some visitors’ questions. By early this morning the comments were getting quite sophisticated and precise in their assessment for the PDGT test offer. The comments are a worthwhile read on their own.
LENR has got legs under it now. Things are sure to move faster and news should be much more important and worthy of attention to a much wider audience.
A Hat Tip to NextBigFuture for seeing the news first and getting the links up fast!
Jan
24
The Sparks of Economic Destruction
January 24, 2012 | 6 Comments
Your humble writer had a tense conversation with a former banker yesterday over the points that trigger economies to topple out of their comfortable zone. Amazingly this banker is convinced the problem is not spending enough money from the government down to the poor. The belief is printing money or “quantitative easing”, going into debt, eating through reserves and savings, devaluing assets are all good ways to encourage more consumption and investment.
Or simply put, the policy of the U.S. and the European Union is the banker’s idea of a solution.
Nothing could be further from the facts.
In the real world money is supposed to be a medium of exchange. People are trained to believe and try to insist that the money alone is a form of wealth. It is so because of credit, with credit systems earning interest income on money is possible. Without the interest paying for the use of other people’s money, the hot motivator of the earning a profit without people working is missing. Most of the developed world even guarantees that money in certain circumstances can never be lost with deposit guarantees. Without a credit system money would have to be invested to earn an income and that would make money a medium of exchange again.
When money itself is wealth it becomes a commodity, just like oil, corn or gold and even one’s house. All those products, on to other agricultural items, other energy, metals and more including the money have less price stability. It can get pretty confusing and complex for people to make life work when the goods and services in life have changing prices. Add that money has a price in relation to the goods and other money such as with other countries’ money and its value relative to what it can buy is constantly moving too, then anxiety replaces confidence.
Governments, the press and media insist on overlooking important points. The spark that set off the financial crises in the EU over how to bail out Greece came from riots over reducing government benefits, some layoffs and cutbacks. With tax increases off the table, the Greek government chose to threaten a default on the interest paid to its debt holders – and the nation of Greece is getting way with it.
The Greeks have managed to export their profligacy to the whole of the EU. The answer has been to overlook the honest need to reduce government spending and shift the problem to over the whole EU and countries whose financial firms hold both Greek and EU debt. The result is the EU’s money has gone down from the mid $1.40s to below $1.30, about a 10% cut shared across the whole EU. That cut the purchasing power of everyone in the EU by about 10%. It’s a wonder that riots haven’t spread to all the other countries of the EU.
In the U.S. the first warning signs are taking place as well. Both Wisconsin and Ohio have tried to face down excessive spending with austerity. The answer has been, most notably in Wisconsin, the affected folks “occupied” the statehouse. But U.S. states don’t control the money value, so for now the impact is limited while the pressure builds. If the folks in Wisconsin manage to recall the governor and return to overspending, the profligacy will find a way to spill over the boarders to other states, a sure thing when the Federal government gets involved.
All of us worldwide are using money whose value is determined by the exchange value with other currencies. There is no place for governments and policy makers to hide the consequences of their actions for long periods of time. We’re all in the foreign exchange market whether we’re aware or not – and very very few people have the resources to hedge themselves a period of safety.
Those sparks of economic destruction are events that push policy to do unwise things. Riots, occupying government buildings and the reactions they cause put emotions ahead of thinking through the reality for proper policy.
Perhaps everyone can adjust to the circumstances where the value of their work or the income from their investments and savings is subject to the sentiment of market’s views of the policies of governments. It’s an unlikely idea. Handling the constantly moving prices of the necessities of life is for most people a significant challenge. With the volatility of the value of money also at risk for everyone it’s a wonder the economy is a healthy as it is.
To build confidence for consumption and investment, the value of the money has to be stabilized. With everyone trying to keep “whole” on the money they already have the priority ahead of building and improving their lives and the economy as a whole, the economy just stagnates.
Until policy makers realize the job is to keep the value of the money in circulation steady all the events around the world are sparking destruction of money value. Oddly, many people think research and development funding are not government tasks. That could be said to be true and when government tries to pick them its seems to always blow up in everyone’s face.
But to stir the economic pot and stimulate activity a steady stream of “new, better and cheaper” have to keep coming.
In the meantime, the government is printing, borrowing, eating reserves and savings, and devaluing assets including the currency. Someday one of those sparks will be one too many.
Jan
23
Natural Gas Will Be Changed to Oil
January 23, 2012 | 4 Comments
U.S. innovation, technology and willingness to share it has created an abundance of natural gas for the U. S. and will impact the rest of the world in the coming years. There is also a great deal of natural gas that is ignored, where pipe-lining to market is impractical or uneconomic. The price differential of cheap gas and expensive oil also provides a major incentive to recover exploration risk capital when gas is found and oil is not.
Petrobras, the Brazilian based petroleum firm is reported to have qualified and approved a new technology to convert natural gas to synthetic crude oil. The Petrobras’ CENPES Research and Development Centre completed its trials of the CompactGTL unit prompting Nicholas Gay, chief executive of CompactGTL to say, “The [Petrobras] test program has produced some extremely positive results and has shown the plant can be robust, with the operational availability (the percent of time a unit would operate) expected of large scale commercial facilities. We can now progress our plans in conjunction with clients throughout the world to develop commercial scale modular gas to liquid plants.”
CompactGTL offers a modular GTL solution for a variety of natural gas to liquids conversion needs. The modular design and the implicit lower investment cost suggest the vast resource of non-marketable natural gas could become sources of crude oil. That allows a pressure free containment and no temperature input that could then bring the liquid and more energy dense syncrude resources to market.
CompactGTL technology features proprietary catalysts and reactor designs derived from plate and fin heat exchanger manufacturing techniques. Modular plant design, incorporating multiple reactors in parallel, provides a flexible, operable solution to accommodate gas feed variation and decline over the life of the oilfield. The firm is suggesting reactors can be relocated. No huge installation needs to be built.
At the heart of the process are two banks of modular reactor blocks. Using an advanced derivative of plate and fin heat exchanger technology, these reactors allow the precise control of heat and gas flow over proprietary metal-supported structured catalysts, located in a regular array of thousands of closely spaced channels. It’s looking like a factory mass production plan instead of custom built installations.
The first stage CompactGTL reactor uses Steam Methane Reforming to convert natural gas into syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The syngas is fed into the second reactor where it is converted via the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process into synthetic crude oil, water and a ‘tail gas’ composed of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and light hydrocarbon gases.
At this first introductory point it looks as though the CompactGTL needs only the natural gas and water source as inputs with a start source for the heat. As the graphic shows, the steam cycles and the FT reactor refuels the first reformer reactor.
A key engineering advantage is the close relationship between the two reactors providing efficient management of the overall system. The two reactions are tuned to work together to maximize efficiency and minimize waste streams depending upon the specific application and location of the plant. The water produced in the Fischer-Tropsch reaction can be treated to remove impurities and recycled back into the steam reforming process.
CompactGTLs proprietary catalysts and the shared activities of the two reactors is planned to offer a self-contained plant operating a stable process that won’t need an oxygen supply.
To recap, natural gas is a wonderful fuel, but is doesn’t transport easily or cheaply over great distances. Moving down pipelines with customers each few hundred feet works great. Big resources can justify large investments in pipelines to get to a market. But in much of the world and in remote or deep water locations the gas is just shut in, burned off for no use other than safety, or worst of all just vented into the atmosphere to the justified horror of the global warming folks.
Jeremy Coller, the investor behind the CompactGTL effort understands the impact a breakthrough on the investment needed to get natural gas to market said, “With this approval from Petrobras the company has passed a critical milestone, demonstrating its leadership in an area with the potential to be a game-changer for oil and gas exploration.”
Its looks like a game-changer, indeed.
Jan
20
Natural Hydrogen Storage Found
January 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Hydrates are a water ice and usually a natural gas compound that have been explored by researchers as a source of alternative fuel or storage medium for CO2. The PNNL researchers note at first discovery the hydrogen storage value approaches the goal of a Department of Energy standard and could make hydrogen hydrates practical and affordable for storage.
Using computer analysis of the ice and gas compound reveals key details of its structure and researchers have accurately quantified the molecular-scale interactions between the gases of either hydrogen or methane, also known as natural gas – and the water molecules that the form cages around them.
While hydrogen is the most interesting use of hydrates, PNNL chemist Sotiris Xantheas the lead author said, the results could also provide insight into the process of replacing methane with carbon dioxide in the naturally abundant “water-based reservoirs.”
Here’s the marvel revealed in the research as put by Xantheas, “Current thinking is that you need large amounts of energy to push the methane out, which destroys the scaffold in the process. But the computer modeling shows that there is an alternative low energy pathway. All you need to do is break a single hydrogen bond between water molecules forming the cage – the methane comes out, and then the hydrate reseals itself.” This revelation has major implications on natural gas recovery.
Previously Xantheas and the colleagues used computer algorithms and models to examine the water-based, ice-like scaffold that holds the gas. Water molecules form individual cages made with 20 or 24 molecules. Multiple cages join together in large lattices. But those scaffolds were empty in the earlier analysis.
To find out how fuels can be accommodated inside the water cages, Xantheas and colleague Soohaeng Yoo Willow built computer models of the cages with either hydrogen gas – in which two hydrogen atoms are bound together – or methane gas, a small molecule made with one carbon and four hydrogen atoms.
In the hydrogen hydrates, the idea that could potentially be used as materials for hydrogen fuel storage, a small hollow cage made from 20 water molecules could hold up to a maximum of five hydrogen molecules and a larger cage made from 24 water molecules could hold up to seven.
The maximum storage capacity equates to about 10 weight-percent, or the percentage of hydrogen by mass in the chunks of ice.
However packing hydrogen in that tight puts undue strain on the system. But it nearly doubles the DOE’s goal for hydrogen storage above a 5.5 weight-percent.
Now the story gets intuitive, innovative and just clever. Experimentally, hydrogen storage researchers typically measure much less storage capacities. The computer model showed them why: The hydrogen molecules tended to leak out of the cages, reducing the amount of hydrogen that could be stored.
The PNNL team found that adding a methane molecule to the larger cages in the pure hydrogen hydrate prevented the hydrogen gas from leaking out. The computer model showed the researchers that they could store the hydrogen at high pressure and practical temperatures, and release it by reducing the pressure, which melts it.
Understanding how the gas interacts and moves through the cages can help chemists or engineers store gas and remove it at will.
Willow and Xantheas’ computer simulations showed that hydrogen molecules could migrate through the cages by passing between the figurative bars of the water cages. However there’s a problem to work out, the cages also had gates: Sometimes a low-energy bond between two water molecules broke, causing a water molecule to swing open and let the hydrogen molecule drift out. The “gate” closed right after the molecule passed through to reform the lattice.
With methane hydrates, some fuel producers want to remove the gas safely to use it. So, Willow and Xantheas tested how methane could migrate through the cages.
The water cages are only big enough to comfortably hold one methane molecule, so the chemists stuffed two methane molecules inside and watched what happened. Quickly, one of the water molecules forming the cage swung open like a gate, allowing one methane molecule to escape. The gate then slammed shut as the remaining molecule scooted into the middle of the cage.
Xantheas explains, “This process is important because it can happen with natural gas. It shows how methane can move in the natural world. We hope this analysis will help with the technical issues that need to be addressed with gas hydrate research and development.”
The team’s work is still all in the computer, but the insight should allow a broad spectrum of researchers a blueprint for experimentation and the beginning steps of processes and engineering. The best news is the storage rate is very high and the temperatures are in an easy to access zone with common refrigeration and low energy requirements to do the warm up. The engineering challenge to today is substantial, but some very good minds are going to light up with this news.
Jan
19
Political Insolence For the Entire World to See
January 19, 2012 | 4 Comments
Your shocked, humbled and deeply embarrassed writer apologizes to the whole of Canada, in particular those who have risked and worked, invested and managed the development of their resources and willingness to work with us to benefit from them.
The President’s act is another and fundamentally flawed move to put his own political career ahead of the welfare of the nation’s citizens and our great neighbor to the north. The calculation can only be to choose the campaign contributions and votes of the extreme environmentalists ahead of everyone else quickly in the plot to get the issue out of the news.
One wonders though, can the labor organizations who stand to lose billions of dollars in payroll and product sales forgive this? There will be added costs to already record high gasoline, diesel and jet fuel for consumers, can they forget the betrayal? Home foreclosures are in the millions – can any politician cuckold an economy any more directly? By any responsible standard the President’s move was wholly political and in his own perceived self-interest. It is an insolent act against hundreds of millions of people and betrayal of the responsibility of the office.
It might seem odd that the political calculation involved didn’t even use the 34 days remaining from the Congressional mandate to attempt to come up with a better solution. Clearly, it’s a gamble, in that pushing the application off the table and into the wastebasket – the oil people can very well reapply, and should as well as go straight to court, as soon as possible – that the one major economic project that is “shovel ready” will be forgotten by November.
The announcement was simply an attempt to save the President from the ogres of the environmentalists. When you read the press release its plain the decision is not final nor do the merits of the project involve doubts. Instead its looks like cowardice, the project has been through the whole of the now three year process, made peace with the states through which it would pass and would have been approved by the Department of State if the President had simply kept hands off.
The question before the citizens and the media, if they can be the fifth estate again and not in the thrall of the President, is reconciling the astonishing news yesterday from the President’s own Council on Jobs and Competitiveness when presenting its 72-page report prescribing how the U.S. can recover by recommending moving forward on projects like the XL Pipeline.
Now before anyone gets anti democrat, Ms Clinton runs the Department of State and the Department long ago stated the Keystone XL pipeline is the preferred option. Some might recall that the Environmental Protection Agency was objecting again, but that was brushed off by the administration, leaving the decision up to the President.
And Ms. Clinton has her head down today.
The flip side is the OPEC folks have to be thrilled. It offers Iran another actual example of the character of the U.S. President. Ratcheting up the venom looks like a sure thing now and the threat measure for our military will have to be adjusted upward – we have just been exposed to more risk.
Meanwhile . . . the oil will get moved to someone eventually. Much will come this way with pipeline upgrades, tighter management and – more risk. Much more will go to Asia, the long way to a market and we’ll be getting more from much further away from much less reliable sources.
What do the environmentalists think? There will be oil recovered, moved by pipeline and now very likely by rail, trucks and by seagoing tankers. That’s somehow better?
Oddly for many observers, “Big Oil” who weren’t all that into the fray, have been handed a major loss. They were topped by the radical environmentalists at the Whitehouse. Now even if you lean toward a safe and wonderful planet like your humble writer, environmentalists aren’t much on keeping up the mortgage payment, feeding and clothing the kids or saving for old age. Their reality has a strong case of tunnel vision. We do need them for the squeaks, but lets not let them wreak our lives or the country.
If energy security, building up an economy, making sure products like petroleum are handled the safest way and showing the world responsible conduct are sensible expectations of a president, we’ve been badly let down.
The hardest part is the 20,000 who’ve been waiting for months for the call back to work that went home last night to tell families it “ain’t gonna happen”.
Sometimes shame can be gut wrenching. I’m Sorry. But the support for the project has just been reinforced.
Jan
18
Sensing the Wind Is Getting Better Results
January 18, 2012 | 1 Comment
Wind speed primarily determines the power generated by a wind turbine. On a wind farm in which the turbines experience the same wind speeds but different “shapes”, most easily seen as turbulence affecting the wind profile, the turbines will produce different amounts of power.
Wind Turbines by Jacqueline McBride at LLNL
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Sonia Wharton and colleague Julie Lundquist of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are looking at that issue calling it “stability”. Their paper appeared in the Jan. 12 edition of the journal Environmental Research Letters, where Wharton and Lundquist examined turbine-generated power data, segregated out the atmospheric stability, to determine the power performance at a West Coast wind farm.
The pair has found by looking at the stability of the atmosphere, wind farm operators could gain greater insight into the amount of power generated at any given time. The result is surprising; while it seems obvious that power generated at a set wind speed is higher under stable conditions and lower under strongly unsteady conditions, the average wind power output difference is as high as 15% less wind power generation when the atmosphere is unstable.
Wharton said, “The dependence of power on stability is clear, regardless of whether time periods are segregated by three-dimensional turbulence, turbulence intensity or wind shear.”
The pair rolled in time to the research, while turbulence is a relatively well-known term in assessing turbine efficiency, wind shear – which is a difference in wind speed and direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere also plays an important role when assessing how much power a turbine generates over certain time scales.
The study offers up a challenge to improve performance. Wharton and Lundquist show that wind farm operators could better estimate how much power is generated if the wind forecasts included atmospheric stability impact measurements.
The research follows on earlier research that looked at atmospheric stability effects on power output. But few studies have analyzed power output from modern turbines with hub heights of more than 60 meters, a small unit by today’s standards.
For the new research, Wharton and Lundquist gathered a year of power data from upwind modern turbines (80 meters high) at a multi-megawatt wind farm on the West Coast. They considered turbine power information as well as meteorological data from an 80-meter tall tower and a Sonic Detection and Ranging (SODAR), which provided wind profiles up to 200 meters above the surface, to look at turbulence and wind shear. Looking at upwind turbines removed any influence that turbine wakes may have on power performance.
Mean Seasonal Normalized Power and 80m Nacelle Wind Speed
They also found that wind speed and power production varied by season as well as from night to day. Wind speeds were higher at night (more power) than during the day (less power) and higher during the warm season (more power) than in the cool season (less power). For example, average power production was 43 percent of maximum generation capacity on summer days and peaked at 67 percent on summer nights.
The research at the West Coast location also offered new operational data. Wharton said, “We found that wind turbines experienced stable, near-neutral and unstable conditions during the spring and summer. But daytime hours were almost always unstable or neutral while nights were strongly stable.”
Lundquist winds up the press release saying, “This work highlights the benefit of observing complete profiles of wind speed and turbulence across the turbine rotor disk, often available only with remote sensing technology like SODAR or LIDAR (Laser Detection and Ranging,). Wind energy resource assessment and power forecasting would profit from this increased accuracy.”
The ladies have made an important point. While wind might seem free, leaving 15% of the efficiency out of the performance is a major opportunity for production and profit. Without a fuel cost the operation expenses and amortization cost can always use reductions and speeding up. Income per operating hour would be an operator’s watchword so adding 15% to income by increasing output could add market share and a chance to drop rates to consumers.
Thanks to Wharton and Lundquist for a more, better and cheaper potential from wind power.
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