The Power Generation Blog

Iowa and Texas Face Off Over Wind Supremecy

There's a little friendly rivalry between Iowa and Texas (and as we know, competition spurs innovation). The Dallas News reports that Iowa Governor Chet Culver announced, "I just want Texas to know that we're coming after you." The governor said this remark at the Windpower 2010 convention in Dallas. Iowa presently generates 3,670 megawatts of wind power whereas Texas generates approximately 10,000 megawatts of wind power. Iowa is the second-largest producer of wind power in America.

It is clear why Iowa wants to move into wind power. Beside the technology offering a more sustainable, environmentally-friendly source of energy, it also offers new avenues for job creation. Texas presently has about 10,000 jobs linked to the wind power industry, and it projects about 41,000 jobs by the end of the decade. The state has plans to spend upwards of $5 billion in order to double its wind power generation infrastructure and offer the energy from as far away as Northwestern Texas down to the metropolitan centers in the east.

Texas is really an exemplary state for wind power growth: Back in 1999, the state only generating about 116 megawatts of wind power. It's thought that Texas' largely deregulated power market has been responsible for its enormous growth. The state has also enjoyed relatively unbroken economic prosperity as the rest of the country has endured more ups and downs. One area in which Texas still suffers is in transmitting its power across state lines. The state does not share much of its power grid with other states. However, it seems that that may just be a function of state's unique personal identity.

European Union Pushes For Smart Grid Funding

Europe is getting hammered pretty hard by the declining global economy. But this hasn't hindered European Union from trying to secure funding for a supergrid. Recently, the EU's Minister for Communication, Energy, and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan reached out to business leaders in Dublin. Ryan had a lot to say to the Business & Leadership Green Economy conference. Ryan exhorted business leaders to reduce carbon emissions and create a "revolution" in the green economy. He noted that there are many viable green energy technologies, including wind energy, but in order for green technology to take off, Europe will need a better energy grid. He said,

"To give us the modern electrical economy we need a modern grid, at home, and to connect north-western Europe.

“European energy ministers are working on this; it’s not pie in the sky. When I go to energy council ministers, we talk about how we could connect Britain to Norway, how we fund these, the timelines.

“We are setting out the plans and we’ll be going to Europe for a review of funding for 2014. The opportunity is to match funding arrangements for future smart grids with climate-change objectives and I think we’ll succeed. Airtricity’s Eddie O’Connor has been talking about this for years, everyone is taking this serious as one of main projects in Europe."

As we've noted before, an efficient energy revolution will fail to take place unless a smart grid gets implemented. It's great to see the European Union look to the long term, past these present economic woes, and at a future composed of smart grid and green energy.

Solar Thermal Is Heating Up in Texas

It looks like Texas is going to get its first solar thermal power generation plant. Austin-based ThermalSoul has plans to construct a facility that can generate up to 10 megawatts of electricity, which can power up to 9,000 homes. Solar technology is a growing energy industry, but ThermalSoul's facility will be slightly different than what most people think of when they think of solar power. Rather than harnessing power directly from the sun using solar panels, the Austin plant will convert solar power to thermal energy, which it can store in thermal liquids. Thermal solar power, therefore, works even when the weather is overcast or raining. Thermal solar power is up to ten times as efficient as direct solar or wind power, as well.

Even though thermal solar power is an emerging industry, it's also a growing one. Some major players are entering the arena, including Duke Energy's spinoff, Solargenix Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric, and Google. For right now, ThermalSoul is leading the charge in Austin. It hopes to generate power for the same cost as coal.

We've been covering hydrogen fuel cell technology a lot, lately. Well, here's another story. A company called eHydrogen Solutions, Inc. has created some exciting-sounding hydrogen fuel cell technology. The company's new H2-Reactor Development Project looks to pull of something fairly audacious: It wants to use only water and reactive metal alloys to produce energy. According to the company,

The reactive metals cause water molecules to release hydrogen and oxygen, which immediately reacts with aluminum to produce aluminum oxide (alumina) which can be recycled back into aluminum. Recycling aluminum from nearly pure alumina is less expensive than mining the aluminum-containing ore bauxite, thereby creating a reusable, sustainable, and zero-emission power source.

This sounds like bare magic. It's actually just a slight refinement of the idea underlying the Bloom Box technology, which also produces nominal waste. The company that eventually dominates the hydrogen fuel cell energy market will be the one that wins the race to the bottom on cost, still. The industrial power generation game is still ruled by cash.

The Unsung Hero of Industrial Power Generation?

We've been getting into the broader aspects of industrial power generation. So it seemed like a good time to get back to some specific basics. Industrial power generation calls for the working in concert of a fairly large amount of parts. In industrial power generators, one of the most important parts is the rotor. A rotor is a solid steel drum formed with axially extending channels that carry electrically-conductive windings. These windings are electrically insulated from the rotor body by slot armor, which is sometimes called slot insulation.

Selecting the right slot armor is one of the most important things an industrial power generation company can do, since slot armor is more or less what prevents an industrial power generator from failing in a very bad way. Most leading slot armor products come in U-shaped, Z-shaped, and L-shaped configurations, and have a Class H temperature rating (meaning they withstand temperatures up to 180°C). Slot armor should also be constructed from materials that have high levels of electrical insulation properties, low coefficients of friction, and a good amount of flexibility to fit into tight spots.

Many leading manufacturers of slot armor generally use their own trademarked engineered laminates. These laminates are made from materials like epoxy glass, aramids, and dielectric films. Because of the amount of electricity and heat present in industrial power generators, the custom composite materials going into your slot armor are going to be extremely important. Make sure you know the exact specifications and operating conditions of your industrial power generators while you're speccing out slot insulation.

On the Bloom Box

By now, you must have heard about the magical-seeming Bloom Box. It's been all over the Internet, and 60 Minutes ran a segment on the idea, last month. On their site, Bloom has a neat flash video that outlines how the Bloom Box words, roughly speaking.

The Bloom Box is a fuel cell, and a fuel cell is basically a little power plant. By combining heat, fuel, and air, it generates electricity, which is then stored in a battery. One thing that separates the Bloom Box from other fuel cells is that some of its parts that would normally be made from toxic materials are actually made from an ink coating. That is, the anode and cathode portions of the Bloom Box are made from a mysterious, proprietary ink material. The electrolyte is made from a ceramic material.

Basically, the Bloom Box generates a massive amount of heat--about 1800ºF--but the amount of heat it generates is nearly the amount of heat it needs to generate power. Its rated efficiency is greater than 50%. To put that in perspective, most solar power is rated at 10% to 15%.

Presently, a 100 kilowatt-hour Bloom Box energy server contains thousands of solid oxide fuel cells. (Incidentally, each of those fuel cells has enough energy to power a light bulb.) They are pretty large units. Each one costs around $800,000. However, eBay has claimed it's saved over $100,000 since adopting Bloom Box technology. They cost about $0.09 per kW hour versus $0.14 for typical power costs in California. Another benefit of the Bloom Box is that it boasts (in Google's case) 98% uptime.

It remains to be seen if the Bloom Box technology is scalable. It may never become applicable for domestic applications. But it is a good first step, and its nice to see such a unique power generation product get mainstream attention.

What Happened to Cap and Trade?

We have been covering cap and trade for a little while. Let's check in and see what's going on with its latest developments. With the so-called cap and trade bill may be dead, as Lindsay Graham has said, but it now looks like the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to save the measure, after being left for dead in the Senate. The EPA's website has a page dedicated to cap and trade:

Cap and trade is an environmental policy tool that delivers results with a mandatory cap on emissions while providing sources flexibility in how they comply. Successful cap and trade programs reward innovation, efficiency, and early action and provide strict environmental accountability without inhibiting economic growth.

Examples of successful cap and trade programs include the nationwide Acid Rain Program and the regional NOx Budget Trading Program in the Northeast. Additionally, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) on March 10, 2005, to build on the success of these programs and achieve significant additional emission reductions.

It is now thought that the EPA will use the existing Clean Air Act, which was set up in the 1990s to combat acid rain, in order to institute a cap and trade regulation. Indeed, the EPA has made a 2011 budget request for a $7.5 million initiative to look into a "market-oriented" greenhouse gas reduction, which sounds a lot like cap and trade. Such a plan on the EPA would be audacious, and surely face many challenges. The US Chamber of Commerce, the world's largest not-for-profit lobbying firm, has already filed a petition asking the EPA to reconsider its course of action.

It remains to be seen how the presence or absence of a cap and trade bill would influence the power generation industry. While it's thought that power generation costs would rise, it also seems likely that the power generation companies will be able to pass onto consumers rising costs of energy production. Whether the country's quality of life, health, and safety would improve is certainly uncertain, but a move to sustainable, clean energy--even at an increased cost upfront--seems to be the only way for America to sustain its still-growing population.

The Power Generation Blog

Iowa and Texas Face Off Over Wind Supremecy

European Union Pushes For Smart Grid Funding

Solar Thermal Is Heating Up in Texas

The Unsung Hero of Industrial Power Generation?

On the Bloom Box

What Happened to Cap and Trade?

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