Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Demand response set to grow

Demand response, or demand side management, one of the biggest potential solutions to manage surging power needs across the grid, is set to double worldwide by 2020.

According to a recent report “Market Data: Demand Response”, demand response (DR) sites will grow from 10.3 million today to 21.9 million in 2020, representing 155,479 megawatts (MW) of potential electrical load curtailment. 

It also predicts automated demand response (ADR) programs where utilities can curtail demand without customer action to grow faster than the market average. Europe’s need to integrate a larger number of renewables will fuel its ADR growth, while Asia-Pacific markets may effectively “leapfrog” over the basic DR programs directly into ADR adoption.

DR is already helping US grid operators keep the lights on during this summer’s heat waves, and it could not only help balance growing demand in developing economies, but also help integrate more renewables onto the grid in North America and the European Union.

Generally speaking, DR is any kind of agreement between an electrical utility and its customer where the customer agrees to reduce power consumption by a pre-determined amount when peak demand hits the grid and power supplies are tightest. The US Energy Information Administration recently projected energy use will increase 56% worldwide by 2040, with most of the growth coming in non-developed countries, and most of the electricity demand being met by fossil fuel generation. As energy needs grow, DR will help global grids get smarter, better able to integrate renewables, and be less dependent upon fossil fuel.

Utilities view these “reserves” as a way to shave electrical demand when they need it most, helping to not only keep the grid stable, but prevent having to dispatch the most expensive power plant options. In return, customers are compensated for their participation, either in the form of bill credits or direct payments.

95% of the more than 1,300 DR programs currently underway across the globe are located in North America, with a potential peak power reduction capacity of 66.4 MW, roughly 9% of US peak demand.

Now the benefits of DR are set to spread rapidly in most other regions of the world, and that could have a major impact on energy access and fuel mix in fast-growing economies. The aforesaid report expects global load curtailment to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.5%, mainly fueled by the European and Asia-Pacific regions, with smaller but notable growth in the Middle East and Africa.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Going clean can be tough

As India’s Kudankulam nuclear plant gets set for producing power, doubts still remain on both sides of the nuclear argument. The World Health Organization estimates that preventable deaths from air pollution, meaning soot and smog from burning wood, coal, oil and gasoline, total more than two million per year worldwide. James Hansen, a prominent climate scientist, calculates the positive benefit of nuclear power as having saved about 1.84 million lives by reducing such pollution. Natural gas — methane — which anti-nuclear environmentalists lately seem to be embracing, is a greenhouse gas more than 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide.

Meanwhile, Germany's push to radically remake its energy system by abandoning nuclear and embracing clean energy is threatened by delays in grid investments and, paradoxically, the success of its solar industry. After the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, Germany adopted a policy of phasing out nuclear energy by 2022 and ensuring that 80 percent of the country's electricity supply comes from clean energy by 2050, or more than three times the level of 2010.
Even as the government is cutting back on once-generous subsidies for solar technology, the country is expected to reach a total solar installed capacity of 52,000 MW by 2017 or 2018. That is up from 6,000 MW in 2008, almost a ninefold increase.

The 17 nuclear reactors that were operated in Germany at the time used to produce about a fifth of the country's electricity. One piece of the new system to take their place will be 5,000 wind turbines installed nearly 100 miles out at sea, in water as deep as 130 feet. Another piece will be thousands of megawatts of gleaming rooftop solar panels.
Wind parks, for now mainly located onshore, already represent 17 percent of the country's installed generating capacity. But the expansion of offshore wind has been slowed by grid problems.
Meanwhile, Germany's solar boom is depressing energy prices and hurting the bottom line at the nation's big utilities such as RWE AG and E.ON SE. Germany needs nearly 1,000 miles of new high-voltage power lines in the coming years, according to plans approved by the federal government. Yet less than 155 miles has been built so far. In another blow to the government's plans, E.ON and RWE are reducing spending on renewable energy to cut down debt.
If and when wind and solar capacity double their outputs from current levels, base-load plants, which have to run constantly to ensure grid stability, will start to suffer financially as well and risk becoming uneconomical.
Going clean also comes with its handicaps. But if one can make it work, there are lessons for many in that.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Efficiency standards for US computers

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that it wants to establish minimum energy efficiency standards for all computers and servers sold in the United States. A new study shows that large server farms can, in fact, cut electricity use and greenhouse gas emissions sharply with off-the-shelf equipment and proven energy management practices.

Most big data centers could slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 88 percent by switching to efficient, off-the-shelf equipment and improving energy management, according to new research.
The carbon emissions generated by a search on Google or a post on Facebook are related mostly to three things: the computing efficiency of IT (information technology) data center equipment, like servers, storage and network switches; the amount of electricity a data center's building uses for things other than computing, primarily cooling; and how much of the center's electricity comes from renewable or low-carbon sources

"Of these three, improving the efficiency of the IT devices is overwhelmingly the most important," said Jonathan Koomey, a co-author of the study, "Characteristics of Low-Carbon Data Centers," published online June 25 in Nature Climate Change.

The processors in most server farms perform computations at just 3 percent to 5 percent of their maximum capacity. Server virtualization, consolidation and better software can increase utilization to greater than 30 percent, and in some cases to be as high as 80 percent.

Big, outward-facing companies whose business primarily is cloud computing have solved the sustainability problem for data centers. eBay even discloses its data center efficiency publicly at dse.ebay.com.

After IT equipment, the second major way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with data centers is to improve the efficiency of the buildings that support them. A key measurement of efficiency is the ratio of electricity used to perform computations to the amount of power consumed for secondary support, like cooling and monitoring systems. Typically that ratio is about 1 kilowatt-hour for computing to 0.8 kWh for the facility. State-of-the-art data centers have reduced the ratio to about 1 to 0.1 kWh, said study co-author Arman Shehabi of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division. "They locate server farms in cool climates like the U.S. Northwest, Sweden and Iceland. They purchase processors that are less sensitive to heat. And they use efficient cooling equipment and air-flow management."

Of the potential 88 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, though, IT device efficiency accounts for about 80 percent and facility energy management for only about 8 percent. Once those two areas are maximized, sourcing electricity from renewables like wind and solar power, plus green handling of retired equipment, can get a typical data center's emissions down 98 percent.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Produce what you consume!

The Internet of Things is the imagined network of data links that will emerge when everyday objects are fitted with tiny identifying devices. The idea is that every parcel in a post office would transmit its position, origin and destination so that it can be tracked and routed more efficiently, that every product on a supermarket shelf would transmit its contents, price, shelf life and so on, that your smartphone would interrogate the contents of your fridge and cupboards every time you walk into the kitchen to warn you when the milk is running low. And so on.

Each of these things will enhance our businesses and lifestyles in a small way. But there’s a problem: these tiny identifying devices require a power source. Batteries are expensive and impractical so computer scientists are hoping to harvest the necessary energy from the environment, in particular from lights and from human motion.

Maria Gorlatova and pals at Columbia University in New York measured the inertial energy available from the activity of 40 individuals over periods up to 9 days. To do this they attached to each person inertial energy harvesting devices, essentially a mass attached a spring, that recorded their motion.
They also measured the power available from the movement of objects such as doors, drawers and pencils to see how much might be harvested here.

Here’s a list of their main findings: Periodic motion is energy rich. So writing with a pencil generates more power (10-15 microwatts) than the acceleration associated with a 3-hour flight flight including take off! Humans are passive most of the time. About 95 per cent of the total harvestable energy they produce is generated during less than 7 per cent of the day. Most people generate enough power to continuously transmit data at the rate of about 1 Kb/s (more than 5 microwatts). Why not tap all that wasted energy for little applications?

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Air pollution shortens lives: MIT study

A study released earlier this week indicates that airborne pollution in China may have shortened the lives of 500 million Chinese by 2.5 billion years. The paper, published in PNAS on Monday, examined pollution data and death records to see whether coal burning, long a source of air pollution, could have damaged public health across northern China in the 1990s. It does. The findings raise concern for developing countries.
The nose, mucus in the esophagus and cells in the lungs all filter foreign substances to facilitate clean breathing. But some pollutant particles can overwhelm the body’s natural defense systems, however, causing inflammation in the lungs. This inflammation could result in breathing difficulties, exacerbate preexisting conditions and, in extreme cases, cause death.
Michael Greenstone, an economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a primary author of the study, says finding answers has been extremely difficult, because simply comparing pollution levels and health in different locales can be misleading. For one thing, people often move from place to place and experience varying levels of pollution, so it is not safe to assume that all have had the same exposure.
From 1950 to 1980 the Chinese government was in a period of socialist transformation. During this time the “Huai River policy” provided free coal for heating homes and offices north of the Huai River, which runs west to east across eastern China. Meanwhile budget constraints kept free coal from being provided south of the river. At the same time, government rules restricted a family's ability to move, so that many lived in one location for decades.
By examining rates of mortality and respiratory-related illnesses on both sides of the river, Greenstone’s team identified a difference: life expectancies are lower and pollution concentrations are higher north of the Huai, where coal burning was widespread.
To make these connections, Greenstone and his team examined pollution data from sites across the country for the years 1981 to 2000. They then collected mortality data from China's Disease Surveillance Points, 145 sites chosen by the government to accurately represent the wealth and geographic dispersion of the populace.
The results estimate that lifelong exposure to 100 micrograms of “total suspended particulates,” or TSPs, (minuscule solid particles floating in the air, such as pollutants) per meter of air cubed will shorten a person’s life by three years, on average.
As more countries in Asia and Africa power toward industrialization, air pollution becomes an increasing concern. Developing countries are really trying to strike the right balance between economic growth to confront poverty and environmental quality and public health,” Greenstone says. “I think this study will help them—it shows a relationship between pollution and health.”

Monday, July 1, 2013

Renewables catching up with gas: IEA

Wind and solar power keep getting cheaper, and that’s encouraging their adoption even as government subsidies falter, a new report from the International Energy Agency concludes. In just a few years, more power will come from renewables than from natural gas, the report said.
The IEA notes that wind is now competitive with fossil fuels in places such as Brazil and New Zealand. Solar competes with fossil fuels for peak electricity production. But here’s some context: while renewable energy use is growing, so is the use of coal, which means that so far, carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise.
Coal is attractive because it’s cheap, and because it produces electricity on demand—it’s not subject to the time of day or the weather. Can the balance shift? For that utilities need to demonstrate technological solutions to the intermittency of renewable energy. Development of base load sources of renewable power like hydropower and geothermal can also help.
Renewable electricity generation increased strongly worldwide in 2012, and deployment is occurring in a greater number of markets. However, the story of renewable energy development is becoming more complex. Short-term indicators in some regions of the globe have pointed to increased challenges. Despite remaining high, global new investment in renewable energy fell in 2012. Policy uncertainties, economic challenges, incentive reductions and competition from other energy sources clouded the investment outlook for some markets. Some countries and regions have faced difficulties in integrating variable renewables in their power grids. The renewable manufacturing industry, particularly solar and wind, entered a deeper period of restructuring and consolidation. 


Nevertheless, despite economic, policy and industry turbulence, the underlying fundamentals for renewable deployment remain robust. Even with challenges in some countries, more positive developments elsewhere continue to drive global growth. Competitive opportunities for renewables are emerging across traditional and new markets. While OECD countries remain a driver of renewable power development, non-OECD countries are increasingly accounting for overall growth. 

The Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report 2013 assesses market trends for the renewable electricity, biofuels for transport and renewable heat sectors.