The Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC), led by independent transmission company Trans-Elect and backed by investments from Google, Good Energies, Elia and Marubeni Corporation, would stretch nearly 350 miles from New Jersey to Virginia and be able to connect 7,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines, enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households.

The supergrid project would be able to serve all of the areas opened up for leasing on Thursday.

Consisting of two parallel high-voltage DC (HVDC) transmission lines, the project would facilitate the development of offshore wind energy throughout the length of its Atlantic Coast route by eliminating the need for grid tie-in points for each project.

“Compared to each wind farm building its own transmission lines, our project is the most affordable, efficient, and environmentally-sensitive solution for connecting offshore wind,” Markian Melnyk, president of Atlantic Grid Development, AWC’s development company, said in December.

Placing wind farms well offshore, where they would be virtually out of sight from land, would also limit the "NIMBY" problems that plagued the decade-long permitting process for the Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts.

The HVDC backbone could also connect to additional installations even further out at sea where the wind resource is stronger, more consistent — all while reducing line voltage loss that plagues AC transmission.

Timing critical

First proposed in 2010, the multi-billion dollar AWC project is currently in the early stages of review by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The Interior Department announced it had concluded internal review of the project's request for right-of-way on December 20, 2011, opening up a 60-day comment period at the time.

“I think the granting of a right of way for public lands is a huge positive," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said at the outset of the comment period.

But timing will be critical for both AWC project developers and wind farm developers alike as each will be dependent on the approval of the other to move forward:  without offshore wind farms, the transmission project will not go forward, and without the transmission project, wind farms will face substantially higher construction costs — perhaps, prohibitively higher.

If right-of-way for the proposed route is granted to the AWC in the next few weeks or months as expected, the project would still have to undergo environmental assessment, which could take an additional 18 to 24 months.

Project developers are optimistic, however, saying that laying of the transmission cable could begin as early as 2014.

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From devastating outbreaks of white nose syndrome to large numbers of bat deaths caused by collision and  dramatic changes in air pressure, the health of bat populations has emerged as a major issue for wind farm developers and operators. And while a range of solutions including specialized radar systems and purple wind turbines have been proposed and tested, there has been a gap in research and technology that helps predict the movements of migratory bats.

But now, researchers at the US Forest Service have developed a new technology and predictive tool designed to help wind farm operators reduce impacts on migratory bats while maximizing energy production.  The interactive tool, created by ecologist Ted Weller and statistician Jim Baldwin from the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station, allows users to predict the probability of bat presence (See a demonstration of the interactive tool at the Wolfram Demonstrations Project website).

In research conducted at Dillon Wind Energy Facility in the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Resource Area in Southern California (pdf), Weller and his team used devices that detected the bats’ echolocation calls, and then linked the presence of bats to the on-site weather conditions.

"Increasing the wind speed at which turbines begin to spin and produce energy to the grid has proven to be an effective way to reduce bat fatalities; however, bat activity levels depend on more than just wind speed," says ecologist Weller. “Our work demonstrates the use of a decision-making tool that could protect bats when fatality risk is highest while maximizing energy production on nights with a low chance of fatalities.”

The researchers also found that multiple, properly-deployed echolocation detectors better characterize bat activity at the facility.

“These days, pre-construction echolocation monitoring is as common as meteorological monitoring at wind energy facilities," Weller explains, "so the basic building blocks for these models are available at most proposed sites.”

Funded by the California Energy Commission Public Interest Energy Research program, the study was a collaborative effort between the USDA, Iberdrola Renewables, and the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative.

Source: North American Windpower
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Caveman Chuck Coker at flickr

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Looming above a test plot full of mirrors like some kind of Transformer-inspired arachnid, the tower at the center of Masdar City's concentrating solar power plant is almost menacing at first glimpse.

Although still only one year into the R&D phase, the 100 kW Beam-Down Solar Thermal Concentrator at Masdar City, the emerging renewable energy research hub located 15 miles from downtown Abu Dhabi, has the potential to generate 75-85 megawatt-hours of renewable energy annually.

But as Masdar City Director Alan Frost tells a small group of journalists as we approach the plant on a recent January afternoon, "the Beam Down project is a different kind of concentrating solar plant."

Whereas most concentrating solar power (CSP) plants employing tower technology gather sunlight aimed at them from the mirror arrays below, the CSP tower at Masdar City goes one step further and directs the solar rays back downward and onto a receiver at the base of the tower, thereby eliminating the need for energy to pump the fluid up the tower.

Masdar City's Frost says the pilot project is "quite experimental," but he is also quick to point out that it is "the kind of thing we should certainly do."

The Beam Down at Masdar City is only a pilot project, but Dr. Matteo Chiesa, the head of the Laboratory of Energy and Nano Sciences (LENS) at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, says that substantially greater efficiencies could be found if the project was scaled up.

"The possibility of employing a multi-towers concept we have proposed (due to the fact of a simpler tower structure) can provide a way to optimize the overall energy outcome of the solar field," Chiesa said in an email.

By directing certain heliostats to different towers during the day, says Chiesa, "We have shown that one can reduce the energy losses due to cosine effect."

Solar-assisted carbon capture

But an even more important discovery made by Dr. Chiesa and his team of graduate students, though "not directly and exclusively related to the beam down," is the viability of a hybrid carbon capture process that uses solar thermal energy to assist the capture of carbon dioxide from power plant flue gases.

"Solvent-based Post-combustion Carbon Capture (PCC) is one of the promising technologies for reducing CO2 emissions from existing fossil-fuel power plants due to ease of retrofitting," writes one of Dr. Chiesa's students, Masdar Institute's Marwan Mokhtar, the lead author in a forthcoming paper published in the journal Applied Energy (available online Sept., 2011).

While experts agree that the most promising PCC processes in development around the world use absorption (pdf), these technologies are still incredibly expensive because of the energy intensive CO2 separation process.

According to the research team at Masdar, however, solvent regeneration requires thermal energy of lower quality, which can be provided cost-effectively by a solar thermal plant, leaving the higher quality for use in electricity generation at the plant.
To test their hypothesis, Mokhtar, et al modeled the performance of the process on a 300MWe pulverized coal power plant in New South Wales, Australia, using actual weather and wholesale electricity price data from the area. The New South Wales location was chosen because sunny regions with long summers, substantial air-conditioning demand and a reliance on coal-fired power plants would be the most promising candidates for the implementation of this solar-assisted carbon capture technology. Given those conditions, the results of the test were favorable.

"It is shown that the proposed technology can be economically viable for solar collector costs of US$100/m2 at current retail electricity prices and optimal Solar load-Fraction of 22%," the authors write (Solar load-Fraction is the portion of solvent regeneration energy provided by solar energy).

Furthermore, the authors write, reducing the need for heat energy during the daytime coincides with peaks in wholesale electricity prices "thus increasing the revenue stream for a solar-assisted PCC plant."

And though a solar-assisted PCC plant has yet to be built, the economics are likely to become even more favorable as electricity prices continue to climb and solar collector prices decrease.

(Check out this short video of how the Beam Down's heliostats can move to track the movements of the sun and optimize efficiency.)

Disclosure: Tim Hurst's travel to Abu Dhabi was covered by Masdar.
All photos: CC licensed by Tim Hurst

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And now for something a bit lighter. At this week's Interior Design Show, Palette Industries is showing a design they are calling, "an homage to the transmission tower," the Nanton Coat Rack. "From city to city these queues of tapered giants tower above us with outstretched arms, carrying the lifeblood of our modern cityscapes."

"Regarded as an eyesore by some," Palette Industries says, "transmission towers have now become a staple of cascading highway horizons. These steel modern day obelisks scattered amongst our natural landscape have become symbols of transmission and connection."

According to Palette: "The steel lattice design is the contrast of strength and visual airiness. With each strut carefully laced to collectively bear the force of its own weight it becomes a marvel of robustness without the oppression of mass."

The Nanton Rack is currently available for pre-order via the Palette Industries online shop. Starting at $782, the transmission tower-inspired coat rack is not cheap, but isn't that always the case for transmission infrastructure?

(Hat tip: MoCo Loco on Facebook)

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Masdar Carbon, one of the five business units of Masdar, the Abu Dhabi national clean energy conglomerate, announced yesterday in Abu Dhabi that it is moving ahead with a carbon capture and sequestration facility that will capture nearly 1 million tons of CO2 annually at the Emirates Steel complex at Mussafah.

The CO₂ feed stream from the Emirates Steel plant will be compressed, dehydrated and then pumped through 50km of pipeline and injected in an onshore field, operated by Abu Dhabi Company for onshore oil operations.

A product of the collaboration between Masdar and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the carbon capture facility is part of a program to explore joint projects between the two firms to reduce the carbon footprint of the emirate. The UAE has the second-highest per capita carbon emissions in the world, mostly because of it's energy-intensive industrial base and extreme climatic conditions.

"Climate change is not a mirage," Masdar Carbon Director Bader Al Lamki told me at the World Future Energy Conference in Abu Dhabi as we sat down to talk on Thursday.

"The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has recognized CCS as a means to reduce carbon emissions," and "the International Energy Agency clearly states that CCS is part of the answer for climate change mitigation."

“The close collaboration between Masdar Carbon and ADNOC will ensure steady progress and the project will take us another step closer to implementing measures for the reduction of carbon emissions and contributing to Abu Dhabi’s clean energy initiatives," said Al Lamki said.

Bader Al Lamki explained that successful carbon capture projects are anticipated to have a positive long-term economic impact on Abu Dhabi including economic growth, job creation and the development and export of CCS-related technology know-how.

"It will also decisively affirm our global status as a major developer of carbon abatement projects and technologies,” Al Lamki said.

Mandated by the Abu Dhabi government to drive cleaner fossil fuel energy and energy efficiency at an industrial level, monetizing emission reductions along the way, Masdar Carbon provides technical assistance, project management, carbon finance and emissions trading expertise to asset owners primarily in the oil and gas and power sectors in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

And as was announced earlier in the week by Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond in Abu Dhabi, Masdar will be partnering with Scotland, another small, oil-producing nation gunning to ramp up its renewable energy portfolio, to develop advancements in CCS technology, value chain applications, policy and deployment strategies for clean energy and CCS.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Disclosure: Tim Hurst's travel expenses were covered by summit host, Masdar

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US physicist Dr. Ashok Gadgil was recognized with the Lifetime Achievement award last night at the Zayed Future Energy Prize in Abu Dhabi for his humanitarian work in Darfur and pioneering efforts to develop a safer and more efficient cooking stove. Gadgil has also made strides in developing a technology to inexpensively disinfect drinking water in developing countries.

Dr. Gadgil, who received $500,000 for the prize heads up the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

"We have never been in this place before," Dr. Gadgil said in a post-awards interview with Earth & Industry, referring to the climbing global population of over 5 billion people and its associated energy demand,

"We are on a collision course and we cannot continue in the old way otherwise we are toast," Gadgil said.

Gadgil's comment during the ceremony that "We are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment," was particularly striking considering the broader business context of the World Future Energy Summit going on this week in Abu Dhabi, an event also sponsored by the Abu Dhabi government, the backers of the Zayed Future Energy Prize.

Gadgil, who didn't even know he had been nominated for the prize until he was contacted by the selection committee in 2011.

"Just to be part of the finalists group is such a distinction," Dr. Gadgil said, "but I am overwhelmed to be selected as the winner."

When asked if he had any plans for the prize money, Gadgil did not even pause to blink, saying that the money would go directly to two projects.

Citing the one million annual deaths attributed to unsafe indoor cookstoves, Gadgil said the money would be invested back into the clean cookstoves project. Traditional cookstoves, he explained, which burn biomass and animal dung not only pose a major health threat, particularly to the women and children closest to the stoves as they burn indoors, in the case of wood, they also pose a major threat to the health of global forests. In Ethiopia, for example, forest cover has gone from 50 percent to 5 percent in the last half century and 80 percent of the population is still burning wood for cooking heat.

The second project Gadgil will use the prize money for addresses the problem of arsenic in drinking water. In what the physicist called "the largest mass poisoning in the history of mankind," huge numbers of people in Bangladesh are drinking arsenic-laced water "because they have no other choice."

Gadgil's lab has developed a process which removes arsenic from drinking water at a cost of roughly 4 cents per liter.

Other winners on Tuesday included the French energy management technology firm, Schneider Electric, in the corporate category. The UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project, which works with business and communities to reduce water and energy use, won in the NGO category.

“These are people that had the foresight to recognize that investing in the future is based on long term vision and the ability to innovate the technologies that the world so urgently needs,” added Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Director General of the Zayed Future Energy Prize.

The $3.5 million Zayed Future Energy Prize recognizes and rewards innovation, leadership and longterm vision in renewable energy and sustainability.

You can learn more about Dr. Gadgil's projects at www.darfurstoves.org and www.arsenic.lbl.gov
Disclosure: Tim Hurst's travel expenses to Abu Dhabi were covered by summit host, Masdar.

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Announced at the outset of the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week, Toyota said it will use the $1.5 million prize fund to establish a scholarship program for 10 students at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, located at the heart of the home-grown research and development community at Masdar City in Abu Dhabi.

Students chosen to receive the Masdar Institute-Toyota Scholarship will write their final Master’s degree thesis on a sustainable mobility topic.

"Masdar Institute is one of the leading research-oriented academic institutions that constantly engage with the youth to develop and implement clean energy technologies," said Nobuyuki Negishi of the Toyota Middle East & North Africa.

The Zayed Future Energy Prize, managed by the Abu Dhabi clean energy company, Masdar, seeks to identify, recognize and reward innovation, leadership, long-term vision and impact on renewable energy and sustainability.

The winners of the 2012 Zayed Future Energy prize will be announced tonight at an award ceremony in Abu Dhabi, at which point we will learn whether Vestas indeed set a new standard for corporate philanthropy at the event, now in its fifth year.

Photo credits: 1. Masdar Institute campus by Tim Hurst; 2. World Future Energy Summit
Note: Tim Hurst's travel expenses to the WFES were covered by Masdar

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