China Needs A 'Game Changing' Renewable Energy Technology

By Louis Schwartz, China Strategies
January 23, 2013 

 

Despite all the evident progress in China in fostering renewable energy, energy conservation and other sustainability initiatives, there still is a 60-70% chance that the smart phones or tablets we use were manufactured in China using electricity generated from a coal-fired power plant.

Six years ago, we first began writing about the Chinese renewable energy sector forRenewable Energy World.  In the interim, China Strategies has chronicled the growth of sustainability in China and commented extensively on the inevitable ups and downs of what has become a herculean effort by the Chinese. 

We have reported on the policies, international politics, industries, foreign trade and investment opportunities, triumphs and failures and other developments that have propelled China into the vanguard of renewable energy deployment worldwide. China watchers should not be surprised by the speed with which China has embraced renewable energy development; this impatient “making-up-for-lost-time” pattern has been repeated in countless industries throughout China since Deng Xiaoping first launched “Reform and Opening Up” in the late 1970s.  To take wind power as an example, from a negligible base in 2007 (about 4 GW), China’s capacity to generate power from wind is now the world’s second largest (about 60 GW, though some isn’t grid connected).  At the current pace of installations (about 15-20 GW/year) China likely will have more than 200 GW of installed wind capacity by 2020.

It is tempting to compare the alacrity with which the Chinese leadership has put in place public policy and capital to steer China’s economy onto a path of increasing sustainability, with the sluggishness of other nations in this regard.  Ironically, the United States’ economy is much better positioned to implement the aggressive renewable energy policies that China has pursued over the past six years and would have shown very impressive results and even greater restraint in carbon dioxide emissions had similar policies been put in place.

Breakthrough could carry solar, wind power long distances

By Laura Shin | December 12, 2012

We know we have a problem with carbon emissions mucking up the climate.

But switching over to renewable energy isn’t that easy. For one, many places that are good for making renewable energy — windy plains or sunny deserts — aren’t necessarily near big cities, where the energy is needed.

And what happens when you try to transport energy hundreds of miles from the energy source to the big city? It loses some of its power. At least today’s dominant form of power, alternating current (AC), does.

But Thomas Edison championed direct current (DC), and it looks like he might be vindicated.

Up till now, DC was not used on large power grids because of the energy it loses when carried over long distances and for fear it would be prone to catastrophic breakdowns. (More on that below.)

But a new type of power, high-voltage DC, or HVDC, could carry power long distances with minimal loss — and a new device called a hybrid HVDC breaker would help prevent those huge breakdowns.

Developed by Swiss power technology company ABB, the breaker has only been tested in the lab, but ABB claims the hybrid HVDC breaker will make possible “the grid of the future,” which National Geographic News describes as “a massive, super-efficient network for distributing electricity that would interconnect not just nations but multiple continents.”

What the hybrid HVDC breaker is and why it’s important

The thing about HVDC, or any direct current for that matter, is that, unlike AC, it’s always on.

That makes it much trickier to regulate.

“When you have a large grid and you have a lightning strike at one location, you need to be able to disconnect that section quickly and isolate the problem, or else bad things can happen to the rest of the grid,” such as a catastrophic blackout, ABB chief technology officer Prith Banerjee told Nat Geo News. “But if you can disconnect quickly, the rest of the grid can go on working while you fix the problem.”

Solution to Renewable Energy's Intermittency Problem: More Renewable Energy

A mix of offshore and onshore wind, along with contributions from solar power, could provide reliable and cost-effective power flow during all but a handful of days in a hypothetical four-year period under study

By Nathanael Massey and ClimateWire

 

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Middelgrunden Offshore Wind Farm, Copenhagen, DenmarkImage: Flickr/PEBondestad

By 2030, scaled-up green power could meet the demands of a large grid 99.9 percent of the time, according to new research from the University of Delaware.

A mix of offshore and onshore wind, along with contributions from solar power, could provide reliable power flow during all but a handful of days in the hypothetical four-year period under study.

Moreover, researchers found that scaling up renewable generation capacity to seemingly excessive levels -- more than three times the needed load, in some instances -- proved more cost-effective than scaling up storage capacity, due to the high systems costs associated with storage technology.

"That's a lot of overbuilding," said Willett Kempton, a professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware and a co-author of the study. Much of that excess capacity would be underused during all but a few days a year, he said.

At the same time, thermal power plants face a similar problem today through inefficiency, he added.

"If you think about it, power plants burn three times the amount of fuel energy needed to produce their energy output," he said. "You burn three units of coal to get one unit of electricity."

Overgeneration would be cost effective even if all excess energy were simply dumped, according to the study. If that excess energy were harnessed -- to offset the costs of heating fuels, for example -- costs could be lowered even further.

Diversity of supply
Reliability has long been the Achilles' heel of renewable energy, which depends on intermittent weather conditions like wind and sun to generate power. However, by extending enough wind turbines and solar panels over a wide enough area, it is possible to achieve approximate reliability by shifting power from active to passive regions.

The study did not assume the introduction of new, more efficient technologies, although it did form its calculations based on 2030 technology costs and energy prices. Its models incorporated four years of energy use and weather data from within PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization covering about one-fifth of the United States' total electrical system.

First-of-a-kind hybrid plant operating | RenewablesBiz

A solar-geothermal hybrid plant in Nevada is now operating with a combined maximum capacity of 59 MW.

Enel Green Power North America, a subsidiary of Italian renewable energy developer and owner Enel Green Power (EGP), dedicated the plant on May 2. The Stillwater solar photovoltaic (PV) plant will generate up to 26 MW. The solar array was added to a geothermal plant that was commissioned in 2009.

The solar farm will provide an energy supply for peak hours when the 47 MW Stillwater geothermal plant is dealing with maximum demand.

Isolated hybrid solar-wind-hydro renewable energy systems

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Solar Paint SPRAY-ON ELECTRICITY

Solar Paint

SPRAY-ON ELECTRICITY

Published In: EnergyBiz Magazine November / December 2011

Salvatore Salamone

   

IF SEVERAL NEW technology developments prove out, one day utilities, commercial building owners and homeowners may be able to spray a solar paint onto a surface such as a building's roof or glass windows to convert the sun's rays into electricity.

Long envisioned as a way to cut the cost of solar cells, researchers have looked for materials that could be sprayed onto different surfaces to produce electricity. The general idea is to have a material that, once applied to a surface, would dry to form interconnected, microscopic solar cells.