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.

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 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.

I left the following message on www.bmw.com. The message is self explanatory. I will publish any reply I get.

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I am really upset with BMW. I just watched John Doerr’s talk on www.TED.com about climate change to find that BMW sponsored the video and put an advetisement for a V8 motor car at the end.

My last car was a 320D. My current car is a Prius. In our home we want a small electric car for short runs and a plug in hybrid for longer family trips. My family will not buy another car until we can buy what we deem to be eco friendly enough. As time passes people that think like me will become less of an anomaly.

This message and any reply you send me will be shown on my blog, www.synergymodule.com.

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BMW contacted me on Monday, by email, to ask for my postal address. I received the following message from them on Thursday.

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Dear Mr Sweeney

Thank you for making us aware of your thoughts in relation to the current threats to our planet. BMW sponsorship of the talk given by John Doerr is significant in that it confirms BMW’s support of the power of ideas and underwriting the distribution of talks on the TED website.

Please be assured that BMW are very aware of the current need for saving the planet.  The research BMW are developing is along the lines of hydrogen fuel because this is an infinitely renewable resource and, although 100 BMW Hydrogen 7 series have been built and are currently being tested, there are as yet no hydrogen filling stations to provide this fuel. The BMW Group has been committed to hydrogen technology as a means of reducing car emissions, in particular CO2 emissions, for over 20 years.  When running in the hydrogen mode, the BMW Hydrogen 7 emits nothing but water vapour.  Unlike fossil fuels and traditional petrol, hydrogen is available in virtually infinite supply when renewable energies such as solar, wind and wave power are used to produce the liquid hydrogen.  Stored in a hi-tech tank which keeps the fuel at a pressure of 3-5 bar and a consistent temperature of -250C, liquid hydrogen offers significant advantages in energy density compared to other possible alternative fuel sources to enhance the cruising range of the car.
Additionally, there are Company publications confirming the BMW Group’s commitment to sustainability, energy strategy for the future and recycling of end-of-life vehicles at www.bmweducation.co.uk/publications/ which you may find of interest.  The publications reflect the research and development that BMW are devoting to the search for alternatives not only for the future but also for the environmentally focussed disposal of vehicles that are no longer required or fit for purpose.

BMW are committed to improving the consumption of fossil fuels by reducing the level of consumption of petrol and diesel, by improving the mileage range per tank of fuel, by introducing technical developments such as the stop/start function as well as brake regeneration.  If you would like further guidance on any of these aspects, they are more fully described on the EfficientDynamics website which can be accessed via the following link:

http://www.bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/efficient_dynamics/

We very much hope that this guidance reassures you that BMW do take the influences on the earth very seriously and would suggest that on-going research and development by the Company is committed to constantly improving current levels of consumption as well as focussing on future developments which will offer the use of not only cleaner fuels but also those which are finite - such as oil and bio-diesel.

If you wish to discuss any of these aspects further, please do contact me as I would be very glad to have the opportunity to talk to you about any or all of these issues.

Yours sincerely

Elfriede McNeal

Customer Service Executive
BMW Ireland
Tel: +353 1 890719420
Email: customerinformation (at) bmw.ie

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I am impressed by the way BMW responsed. I am sceptical about their comittment to the ‘Hydrogen’ economy but I accept that it is their opinion and I acknowledge that BMW has a lot of clever people.

I did some more research. They have produced 100 units of 7 Series BMWs that are dual fuel, petrol and H2. You can’t buy these 300BHP vehiccles. They are lending them to key decision makers. The problem is of course having H2 stations where you can go to refuel the car. There is a website, www.h2stations.org , that lists H2 stations but it is offline today.

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.

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.

I have been fascinated by a paper published by Phoebe Bright for some time. Everybody has a theory as to how the world (and the Irish) economy will evolve as a result of peak oil and government reaction to global warming. Phoebe is different from every other commentator I have read or listened to in two fundamental ways.

1) She deals with multiple possible scenarios

2) She presents her analysis in a very humorous form

As a result of our shared interest we have started to communicate regularly. I strongly recommend reading her paper, available via the following URL.

http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/54C78A1E-4E96-4E28-A77A-3226220DF2FC/27072/VividlogicRevised.pdf

Last week, Phoebe sent me an email bringing to my attention that ESB, in conjuntion with CER, have launched an RFQ for the purchase of 2,500 smart meters to implement a pilot project. It is clear from the proposed specification that EDM is envisaged as a research objective of this pilot. Below is the URL to the tender documents.

 http://www.e-tenders.gov.ie/search/search_show.aspx?ID=NOV094156

I wanted to compare the cost effectiveness and carbon efficiency of EDM to energy storage using pumped hydro, so I did the following analysis. Pumped hydro storage is about 80% efficient per cycle. First, I was interested to know how big a reservoir do you need for a viable pumped hydro storage facility so I did the following calculation. Then I did some analysis to see what the payback for the investment would need to be.

U = mgh      where

• U is energy measured in Joules
• m is the mass of water in kgs 1m cubed = 1,000 kg
• g is the earths gravitational constant of approximately 10 m/s/s
• h is the height in meters through which the water is cycled

So if we want, say, a 20MW capacity for 10 hours = 200MWh

1 Joule = 1 Watt for one second

therefore 200MWh = 200,000,000 x 3,600 Joules = 720,000,000,000 Joules

therefore 720,000,000,000 = 10 x h x m   or   72,000,000,000 = h x m

So if we had a reservoir at a height of 100m

m = 720,000,000 kg of a water reservoir

1 cubic meter of water is 1000kg so we need 720,000 cubic meters of a reservoir. Incidentally we would need a water source that could supply or sink 20 cubic meters of water per second depending on whether we were pumping or generating.

This would be a reservoir 300m x 300m x 8 m deep. And for those of us familiar with acres as a unit of area this would be just over 20 acres. I estimate that to build such a reservoir from concrete would take about 50,000 cubic meters or 100,000 tons of concrete and would cost about €15,000,000 to build. Adding another €5,000,000 for pipeline, plant and switchgear would bring the project to a total of €20,000,000.

So given annual maintenance and running costs of €300,000, an annual landowner payment of €200,000, and a required ROI of say 10% to bring investors on board, the annual income required for break-even for the facility would be €2,500,000 per annum or €8,500 per day allowing for some downtime.

Assuming 50% utilisation (i.e. 100MWh generated per day) this equates to €0.085 per kWh. Also a cost allowance for the 20% cycle losses needs to be factored into the cost justification so a cost of €0.105 would be required. So in order for pumped hydro storage to be financially effective a mean daily delta of €0.105 per kWh would need to exist between peak demand and peak generation times. To achieve this cost per unit stored we have factored in very high utilisation figures. These might not be justified. In terms of carbon neutrality, pumped hydro storage is very poor because it uses large amounts of concrete and iron in its construction and it loses 20% of its energy in every cycle. 

How does EDM costs stack up by comparison:

If we assume that a capital budget of €10,000 to meter and control 100kW of load. This works out at €100 per kW. Let us assume that each kW of controlled load is used for 1kWh of EDM per day. If we assume a payback period of 5 years, the capital cost is €20 per kW per annum. We therefore have 350kWh of storage for a capital cost of €20 or €0.057 per unit. The consumer (and aggregator) will also require a financial incentive to participate of say €0.05 per unit. This produces a cost of €0.107 per kWh controlled.

On initial costings pumped hydro and EDM seem similar. However EDM has three significant advantages.

1. EDM produces less carbon than pumped hydro storage.
2. EDM requires lower duty cycle factors to be cost effective.
3. EDM reduces the cost of energy to participating consumers.

All in all, I think the case for EDM versus pumped hydro storage is very strong.

In my last blog I gave an outline of how I am putting the infrastructure into my home to turn it into an off peak synergy module laboratory. I am also developing a test site for embedded generation synergy module (EGSM) concepts. To get full details on the overall project please visit www.cix.ie.

The normal electrical load at the CIX data centre will be around 550kW. I am planning to put a 1.1MW multi-fuel grid synchronised generator into the CIX data centre. That generator will be controlled by an EGSM and will in effect turn the data centre into a grid stabilisation device capable of either sourcing or sinking approximately 550kW.

CIX will have a 10kV grid connect and a UPS system that will enable it to ride through any power variations that will occur moving from site power consumption to site power generation.

By running the generator on bio-diesel or PPO it is possible to make CIX a carbon neutral data centre. By using the embedded generation capacity in the data centre, CIX will be facilitating the penetartion of wind energy into the Irish electrical grid by improving grid stability. 

I am planning to turn my home into a little energy test laboratory so I can experiment with Off Peak Synergy Module concepts at the domestic scale. I have installed a 500 litre insulated stainless steel tank to store hot potable water. I will install a further 1000 litre insulated tank to store central heating water. These tanks mean that I can store enough hot water for one day for both washing and central heating.

I will install a large solar panel to heat the water in both tanks. I will supplement this solar heating with a water to water heat exchanger which will be electrically operated using off peak energy. In the winter this heat exchanger will take heat from a glass covered swimming pool. In the summer, after both tanks are full of hot water any surplus heat will be transferred to the swimming pool.

Karen and I bought this house nearly two years ago and it has oil fired heating which I will now replace. Living in the country, I have access to waste timber so I bought a wood burning stove and installed it in our living room. In return for some work this will give about another 5kW of heat for evenings where the heat pump cannot cope with very cold weather.

It takes 1kW to raise 1 litre of water one degree C in one second. Therefore a 3kW output heat pump would require 167 seconds to raise the temperature of the water in the tank by 1 degree C.  This means that a 3kW energy supply would require about 2.5 hours to raise the water in the tank by 50 degrees C. Therefore this potable water tank can be seen as a 7.5kWh energy storage device. Our larger water tank for heating can be seen to store 15kWh of energy.

I drive a Toyota Prius car. I am interested in various articles that talk about plug in hybrids and I plan to purchase a kit to convert my hybrid to a plug in. I then expect my Synergy Module to charge my car each night with low cost electricity.

As Ireland has an abundance of sites for commercial wind energy exploitation, I see no ecological advantage to installing a wind turbine at my home. However if PV solar panels drop in price I am hoping that my Synergy Module may trade some high cost day time electricity for low cost night time electricity and reduce my overall energy bills. 

Ireland has a unique characteristic from an energy perspective.  We have the best wind energy of any location in the world but we are unable to exploit it because of the mismatch between demand and supply. There is no flexibility in wind energy supply and to date there is very little flexibility in electricity demand. This problem is very well described in ‘Pumped Hydro Energy Storage to Support Wind Energy Penetration in Ireland’. Currently this paper is available at :  http://www.ucc.ie/serg/pub/PS-R2.pdf

Recently there has been significant interest in and investigation of pumped hydro energy storage in Ireland. I have not heard mention of the the use of energy demand management (EDM).

There are two organisation in the USA to support professionals and companies involved in energy demand management :-

1. The Peak Load Management Alliance   http://www.peaklma.com/
2. Demand Response and Advanced Metering Coalition   http://www.dramcoalition.org/

The most publicly visible commercial organisations in the US involved in EDM are EnerNOC Inc. (www.enernoc.com) and Comverge Inc. (www.comverge.com). Enernoc currently claim to have 650MW of customer owned diesel generator power under their control for grid stabilisation. Comverge claim to have 4.5 million demand management modules installed.

Although there is a place for both, I believe that EDM is a better solution for grid stabilisation, than pumped hydro, in Ireland for three reasons:

1. It has very low capital cost because it uses existing resources
2. It does not have the losses (typically 20-25%) or capacity limitation of pumped hydro
3. It can contribute to carbon emissions reduction when combined with a bio-diesel / FAME/ PPO project

Hi there. Welcome to Synergy Module.

This blog is intended as a forum for ideas on energy generation, conservation and management.

One day in 1973, during the middle east oil crises, I sat in a field opposite a garage and watched people queue for petrol. I was fourteen years of age and I knew that the world was going to run out of oil during my lifetime. My passion was engineering and I decided to devote my life to energy. So I became an electrical engineer to solve the world’s looming energy crisis!

Surprisingly electrical engineering took me into electronics, computers and software. Also surprisingly, the world didn’t run out of oil as fast as futurologists in the 1970s were predicting.

While in university I worked for a while with a wind energy company but once I graduated I moved into semiconductors and later computers and then into software. Only now, thirty four years after that life defining moment am I returning to energy as a field of study and business. It is like meeting your first love in later life and starting to rebuild your relationship while realising that the intervening years had been barren in some way.

I have formed deep opinions about energy generation, conservation and management. This blog will be my journal to get these ideas into the public domain. One idea I particularly want to focus on is the stabilisation of the electricity grid by demand management. Electricity is going to grow in importance as a method of delivering energy. Traditionally, energy has been produced flexibly to meet inflexible demand. A significant problem exists in energy management if we start adding energy sources such as wind, solar and wave power that produce electricity inflexibly. There is an excellent entry in Wikipedia on energy demand management.