Earth and Industry » Matt Embrey

Large Hadron Collider Spurs Use of New Superconductive Cables

Matt Embrey — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:38:14 +0000

This picture shows two cables with vastly different efficiencies. Both rated for 12,500 amps, the top one is a conventional copper based cable and the bottom a superconductive cable used in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

According to physicists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the Superconductive cables:

"...house 36 strands of superconducting wire, each strand being exactly 0.825 mm in diameter. Each strand houses 6300 superconducting filaments of Niobium-titanium (NbTi). Each filament is about 0.006 mm thick, i.e. 10 times thinner than a normal human hair."

They used over 7600 km of this superconductive cable in the LHC, weighing only about 1200 tons. The total length of the filaments used if laid end to end would stretch "5 times to the sun and back with enough left over for a few trips to the moon."

Not only do the superconductive cables pave the way for a massive amount of material conservation in the LHC, these highly advanced super-conductive cables offer tremendous gains in energy efficiency, which will play a critical role in the greening of our energy grid.

American Superconductor Corporation and the Long Island Power Authority were the first to implement a high-temperature superconductor power-transmission cable system in the commercial grid in April of 2008. There are currently a number of other companies and research groups continuing to work on integrating this technology into into a "Smart Grid," most notably:

Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) of Palo Alto, California estimates that the use of super-conductive DC transmission lines could reduce transmission losses around 150% as compared to AC or high-voltage DC.
Scientists at Los Alamos National Labratory (LANL) have developed a super-conducting cable that can carry 100x more electricity with zero loss.
Researchers at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have developed superconducting electric cable that they estimate could reduce energy loss by 50-70% in parts of the Spanish Energy Grid.

Image via Wikipedia

Northeast Carbon Prices Hit New Low

Matt Embrey — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:00:02 +0000

Low energy demand and uncertainty about the Federal Cap & Trade program contributed to an all time low for CO2 emissions permits in the Eastern US Regional Cap & Trade market. CO2 "permits" or "allowances" sold for $1.88 a ton in the most recent Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative's quarterly auction. This price reflects a $0.19 decline from March 2010's auction, and $1.63 decline from March 2009.

The RGGI is the first mandatory, market-based CO₂ emissions reduction program in the United States. Ten Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states* joined the RGGI with the goal of reducing their power sector carbon emissions 10% by 2018. It is basically a regional "Cap & Trade" program. Since the start of their pre-compliance period starting in September of 2008, they have sold 244,771,306 allowances for a total of $662,844,619.72 . As you can see in the chart above, prices hit their high point in March of 2009. That was also the first auction after the official start of the program in January of '09. Prices have consistently trended downward since then, hitting an all-time low last week.

Experts cite the reduction in energy consumption caused by the recession as the primary cause of the declining prices. As the economy slowed down, so did energy consumption and consequently emissions. Their targeted cap of 188 million short tons of CO2 per year, set in 2005 about 4% above the national average, reflected the expectation that CO2 emissions would naturally continue to rise. What ended up happening instead was a decline caused by the slowing economy. This resulted in a surplus of CO2 Allowances combined and declining demand.

Experts also cite the uncertainty around how the potential federal Cap & Trade legislation will affect the regional market. Originally the prospect of a federal Cap & Trade program brought investors to the carbon market, including Banks and hedge funds that were anticipating that the regional credits would be converted into federal allowances once climate legislation passed. This could possibly account for the relatively high prices the allowances were fetching in late 2008 and early 2009.

The narrow passage in the house and stall in the Senate brought real uncertainty to the market. This was compounded by the concern is that the current energy bill iteration that proposes weaker targets than the RGGI, will either force RGGI to water down their standards, further diluting the value of current allowances or not recognize the regional allowances at all.

It is important to note that the declining prices do not represent a failure of the program. Instead they demonstrate the affects of speculation on the market and a new market seeking it's natural price points.

* The ten states participating in RGGI -- Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont

Turning Waste Into Windfall

Matt Embrey — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:26:58 +0000

Image via CNN.com Click to enlarge.

Shawn Saylor of Hillcrest Saylor Farm in Rockwood, Pennsylvania has saved $200,000 by taking what most Dairy Farmers regard as waste and turning it into energy. With the use of a Methane Digester, Saylor takes his dairy cows manure, cultivates it and harvests the methane. The methane is then used to power a generator that provides electricity for his farm and enough to sell back to the energy grid.

Digesters have been in use in the US since the 1970's but they never really caught on in US agro industry because of the high cost of implementation and the low cost of fuel. Since energy prices have been on the move in the last couple years, more farmers are turning to the process. Traditionally the digester equipment costs around $1.7 million dollars, but Saylor was not happy with the current digester designs and implementations so he set out to build his own.

Funded by a $600,000 grant from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection and Native-Energy, a carbon offset company that purchased the off-sets that the digester would produce over the next 20 years, Saylor was able to begin construction in early 2006 and complete the system later that year. After being in service for over 2 1/2 years, Saylor claims that between the energy savings and selling the excess energy, this process is worth $200,000 a year in savings and revenue.

On top of the financial savings, Saylor is preventing most of the greenhouse gas Methane from entering the atmosphere. The process is also better for his soil. The digester produces an almost pathogen free, pH neutral fertilizer that doesn't require any processing or lye treatments to fertilize his feed crops. Furthermore, Saylor reports that the process removes almost all of the smell usually associated with a cow farm.

Saylor isn't stopping there. By using the excess heat from the digester to process his excess feed stock and feed stock waste into biofuels he will completely close the loop on his operations, becoming completely energy independent and realizing even greater cost reductions.

Cattle and dairy farms have come under a lot of heat lately because of the amount of waste they create, greenhouse gasses they emit and energy they use. Hillcrest Saylor Farm has become a model of innovation for the industry demonstrating how profitable being environmentally sound can be. There are currently 135 digesters used in the US (mostly on Dairy Farms) and now that Saylor has shown that they can not only reduce costs but generate revenue I suspect we'll be seeing more and more of them.

Sources: CNN, Boston Globe, Popular Mechanics, ReGeneration, greenUPGRADER

Pickens' Pullout Highlights Alternative Energy Uncertainty

Matt Embrey — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:33:53 +0000

At the height of oil prices and in the middle of the presidential election a little over a year ago, T. Boone Pickens, a Texas Oilman, unveiled his plan to ween America off of foreign oil by transitioning to natural gas and wind energy. One year later in the midst of a global recession that has the whole alternative energy industry struggling to get off the ground, Pickens has shelved his plan to build the U.S.' largest wind energy farm in Pampa, TX, but he hasn't given up the cause.

Citing the ongoing credit crunch and falling natural gas prices, Pickens and his alternative energy company, Mesa Power, were unable to get the funding to build the transmission lines needed to connect the wind farm to the electricity grid. Despite this Picken's is still bullish on wind as Mesa is looking for other project to use the $2 billion lot of wind turbines that were already on order for the Pampa project. In an interview with ABC's Chris Cuomo, Pickens acknowledges that the recession has hurt the transition but claims his $60 million media campaign has helped advance alternative energy a great deal citing the legislation before congress.

The question remains, in this recession, where is the money going to come from? In an article in the Washington Post on Saturday, they reported that Bluewater Wind has had great success winning offshore wind leases and forging agreements to sell their energy, yet their funding fell through as...

"[I]ts parent company, Australian investment firm Babcock & Brown, has buckled under the weight of the global economic downturn and is selling off its assets to reduce debt."

Bluewater, President Peter Mandelstam isn't giving up either.

"I've been in business long enough to understand that sometimes companies fail," Mandelstam said. "I'm not disappointed, it's simply business. One meets a new challenge, and one overcomes it. I've raised capital before, and I'm raising capital again."

Many in the industry are waiting anxiously for legislation to come down from capital hill. While the debate is contentious there's still a lot of optimism among clean energy advocates inside the beltway. One thing is certain, however, there's a lot of uncertainty in the alternative energy market at the moment.