Synergy Module

If BMW are backing the H2 economy then I better look at it again! Air Products PLC are the UK subsidiary of the largest H2 company in the world. I left the following message on their web site. Again I will publish any reply I get.

_________________________________ 

 I am researching the use of H2 as a motor fuel. Can you supply me with the following information:-

1) Capital cost of equipment to produce H2 from electricity at night and store same.
2) Maintenance and depreciation cost of same.
3) Efficiency of the H2 electrolysis production process.
4) Cost and availability of conversion kits for existing vehicles
5) Eqivalent motive output of H2 versus petrol or diesel.

My research is investigating ways to facilitate renewable penetration onto the electrical grid by consuming excess electrical energy at certain times for the production of H2.

The central topic of this blog is demand response. However the two imperative drivers for DR are climate change and the economic fallout of peak oil. I don’t know which is going to affect my children more. What follows are two videos I watched this weekend, one on each topic.

The following TED conference speech, addressing what we need to do to avoid climate change, is unusual in that at the end we see the depth of emotion in the speaker regarding climate change.

If the above video addresses the fear of climate change then the following video, of Congressman Bartlett, speaks to the fear of the economic fallout of peak oil. This is the first in a sequence on YouTube. The entire set takes an hour to watch. It is worth taking the time.

This EU video is an interesting insight into the renewable energy strategy of the EU.

On Thursday and Friday night, 17th and 18th of January, I saw the following advertisement on the main state sponsored television channel in Ireland, RTE 1.

I believe that this advertisement sets out to create a misleading impression regarding the effects of (burning) gas on our planet. Gas is a fossil fuel and, as with every other fossil fuel, if you burn it you release CO2. Gas therefore contributes to global warming.

Obviously, I have no problem with a company selling gas. It will take us a while either to replace fossil fuels or find ways to sequestrate the carbon after we burn the fuel. My problem is that this advetrisment creates the impression that burning gas has no negative effect. I think that in fifty years from now this advertisement will apprear to our grand-children as ridiculous as the advertisements of fifty years ago extolling the health benefits of cigarettes.

I have lodged a formal complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland.

One of the problems with renewable energy is the inflexibility of supply. This inflexibility is the very feature that requires EDM which is the topic of this blog. EDM can only go so far in balancing the supply and demand of electricity. Another technique is to builld supergrids that link broad geographical areas so that meteorological variations can be averaged.

In 2003 the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) was founded by the Club of Rome, the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation and the National Energy Research Center of Jordan (NERC). TREC in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) developed the DESERTEC Concept of linking African, Middle East, and Northern European states electrical grids into one supergrid using high voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnects.

This is a fantastic idea. I recommend you visit http://www.desertec.org to learn more and to register your approval for the project in their ‘Give TREC Your Voice’ campaign.

My good friend, Aidan Lynch, asked an excellent question on my post about energy storage using pumped hydro. He asked, could you use surplus electrical energy from renewable sources to produce hydrogen and then use that as a fuel.

I am not a fan of Hydrogen as a fuel or as a way of energy storage. I am not well disposed to any fuel that burns the way Hydrogen does from a safety perspective. The efficiency of hydrogen production and consumption from power plant to wheel is around 22%. See the following report for an analysis.

http://www.efcf.com/reports/E04.pdf

And, this involves a new infrastructure and a new car technology. Electric cars and plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) cars offer far greater efficiencies. If you want to use electricity to produce fuel, then use it to support biomass derived diesel.

Watch this movie to get a taste for why I feel that the diesel-hybrid car is the car of the future. The speaker shares my distaste for Hydrogen and even makes a case that Ethanol is not the direction to go.

So in the future I see us having small electric cars for short distances and hybrid diesel cars for medium and long distances. Both types of car will be charged using energy demand managed electricity. The diesel will be produced from cellulosic materials (not food) via synth gas using energy demand managed electricity as the heat source.

The author of the above report and the speaker in the presentation share this view of the future.

This is the best video on efficient energy generation and use I have ever seen. I first found it on youtube about a year ago but couldn’t find it again until today when I stumbled across it again.

I am fascinated by the new all electric Tesla Roadster. Electric and hybrid cars offer the opportunity to consume surplus energy from renewables such as wind and wave to replace our current dependance on fossil fuels for motoring.

www.teslamotors.com

Electric Car + Renewable Energy + EDM = Fossil Fuel Displacement

A company based in Cork is developing the technology to generate electricity from wave power.

www.oceanenergy.ie

Up to now I have focused on the need for EDM to solve the problem with wind energy penetration on the national grid. The requirement for EDM exists equally for wind and for wave generated power.

To get a good feeling for the state of the wave power industry watch the video below:

This blog is about how EDM can help the penetration of renewable energy sources into the electricity grid in Ireland. Another facilitator of renewable energy penetration is energy storage. For example, currently, there is significant interest in pumped hydro storage in Ireland. I have added the URL of the Electricity Storage Association http://electricitystorage.org/ to the blogroll of this site. This URL lists the many options for electricity storage and draws comparisons between them.

It would seem from the analysis that compressed air energy storage (CAES) is an option that might also deserve investigation in the Irish context. This technology uses underground mines or natural caverns to store large volumes of compressed air. During times of surplus electrical energy, air is pumped into the cavern. When electricity is required, the compressed air is used to improve the efficiency of a gas fired turbine.

Off the south coast of Cork in Ireland is the Kinsale gas field which is operated by Marathon. For full details read the following PDF.

http://www.cer.ie/cer04108.pdf

The Kinsale field is now nearly spent and is being used as a natural gas storage facility. The Seven Heads gas field which extends further into the Atlantic uses the pipline and infrastructure of the Kinsale field to land the gas on shore. I began to wonder could the Kinsale gas field infrastructure be used to implement a CAES system. I decided to send the following email to Marathon’s press officers.

_________________________________________

Dear Linda, Robert,

I would appreciate it if you could supply an answer to a technical question, please.

Question Background:  Ireland has a major problem with wind energy penetration due to the variable supply nature of wind generated electricity. Energy demand management (EDM) or energy storage, preferably both, are required to solve the problem. As I understand it, Ireland has 2GW of planning permissions for wind turbines for which grid connections are not possible for reasons of grid instability. I am interested in EDM and energy storage. While researching the technologies behind energy storage I grew a particular interest in the viability of compressed air energy storage (CAES). This form of energy storage is used in conjunction with natural gas to increase turbine efficiency. What is required is a large sealed natural cavern that can be used to store compressed air.

Question: I understand that the Marathon south west gas field, in Ireland, is now being used for gas storage. Could it be used for compressed air storage to help solve Ireland’s wind energy penetration problem?

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I look forward to publishing their reply.

19th August 2007

I havn’t heard back from Marathon. I’ll try more local contacts and I will publish whatever reply I get. I think that natural gas wells may not be suitable for CAES because mixing air and natural gas makes an explosive mixture.

In the meantime I found the following two references to the two oldest CAES projects in existance.

Huntorf, Germany

McIntosh, USA