The big missing piece to the wind-solar puzzle is….

SolveClimate: A massive energy storage system that can guarantee uninterrupted power delivery. Meaning: clean electricity all the time, even when the winds aren’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. And now there’s a battery unit being produced in Japan that claims it can provide just that. They’re called sodium-sulfur systems. And they offer a way to store power from the sun and wind, and then dispatch it to the grid when demand is greatest.

It’s welcome news if they can pull it off. Because without that missing piece, solar and wind will continue to play second fiddle to fossil fuels. Bloomberg has the full story on the sodium-sulfur batteries — and their Japanese maker too, NGK Insulators Ltd.

In Japan, the NAS storage units — as NGK calls them — have been a hit. They’re used at over 30 sites already, totaling 28 megawatts. But in the US they’re still an anomaly with just two customers. American Electric Company is one of them. The coal giant has been testing a 1.2 megawatt NAS system since mid-2006 but not in connection with renewables at all. And Xcel Energy is the other. It will be the first American utility to use NAS for wind energy storage beginning in October, when it starts testing a one-megawatt system in Minnesota….

With ambitious EU legislation, wind energy can provide huge benefits to Europe

Energy Daily: Manuel Pinho, Portugal’s Minister of Economy and Innovation, warned that if quick steps were not taken towards a better use of renewables, the EU would go from importing 55% of its energy to 66% by 2030, making the economy even more dependent on energy from third countries. He presented Portugal’s renewable energy mix, a combination of hydro and wind power, as a combination ideal for providing flexible, indigenous electricity at competitive energy prices.

“Wind has delivered the most promising results out of all renewable energy technologies so far, with 57 GW of total capacity installed in the EU by the end of 2007. In order to ensure that this trend continues, we need to have a secure and favourable EU legislative framework”, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs told delegates at the opening session of the European Wind Energy Conference (EWEC) today in Brussels. The EU Commissioner – Chairman of the EWEC 2008 Conference also emphasised the need to consider renewable energy solutions beyond 2020 and far into the future.

A swift adoption and implementation of the European Commission’s proposed Renewable Energy Directive is essential to ensure a secure, sustainable and competitive energy future in Europe, delegates heard this morning. Decision-makers at national and European level stressed the importance of a stable, flexible legislative framework. They outlined their vision for the EU legislation and how this will deliver a new generation of energy supply.

Transmission issues — the key to alternative energy?

This Yakima Herald Republic story highlights a major obstacle to the acceptance of renewable energy – transmission lines: … Renewa bles — wind, solar and biomass — make up about 2 percent of the state’s current energy sources. Customer interest also is adding to the push for wind. “On the customer side, we have heard that they want their utility to be moving into the area of clean power,” said Andy Wappler, senior public relations manager for Puget Sound Energy, which has 1 million utility customers in Western Washington and Kittitas County and has the most wind capacity developed. Puget Sound is in the hunt for another 1,000 megawatts of wind energy to meet the 2020 target.

But the biggest reason for the growth of wind lies just out of sight from Wild Horse: the Columbia River with its huge hydroelectric generating capacity and the transmission lines that crisscross the state and region. Because of its intermittent nature, wind energy needs a solid base of other sources to sustain delivery of power to homes and businesses. Hydro dams are that base.

Other states, principally Montana and North Dakota, have better wind than Washington. But the lack of transmission is stunting development . The nonprofit Renewable Northwest Project, a primary proponent of the initiative, estimates Washington, Oregon and Idaho have potential for 20,000 megawatts of wind energy. Montana has as much as six times the potential as the three other Northwest states combined.

“The Northwest, I think, proves to be more attractive than you would think based on the wind potential because wind is very compatible with the hydro system,” said Tim Stearns, a senior energy policy analyst for the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development. While wind development has taken off in the last couple of years, developers have long been looking at the region, said Doug Carter, senior vice president for Chicago-based Invenergy Wind North America LLC.

…Energy planners agree the region has the existing facilities to handle up to 6,000 megawatts of wind energy with minor improvements to the system. But near the 6,000-megawatt barrier, major investments will be needed to keep the energy coming for a growing region.

The federal power-marketing agency, the Bonneville Power Administration, estimates the cost of new transmission lines range from $300,000 to $2 million a mile depending on costs due to terrain, capacity and land acquisition. Bonneville is preparing to take those costs into account when it proposes new rates for 2009.

“What it gets down to is we owe it to our customers to make sure the proper parties are being charged for the cost of running the system,” said Scott Simms, Bonneville spokesman in Portland. “As we look at some of these wind farms, where they are located and where they are going, a large part of the wind is serving customers beyond BPA borders.” The search for new wind sites has brought developers to Yakima County. The county hearing examiner is mulling a request by Northwest Wind Partners, a joint venture between Goldendale’s Ross Management and EnXco, a French company, to place meteorological stations on four parcels, three north of Sunnyside and the other south of Moxee….

Power lines, Tony Boon, Wikimedia Commons 

Striking idea — combining wind and solar in leaf PV shingles

Inhabitat: Our friends at Ecolect, the go-to sustainable design and materials community, have launched a monthly spotlight on sustainable design called Limelight – and the first feature is tough act to follow. Teresita Cochraine’s sustainable design group, SMIT (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology) has a compelling new project called GROW that’s an innovative and aesthetically arresting solar and wind power solution. Combining the best of green tech and ecology, GROW draws inspiration from ivy growing on the side of a building – resulting in a hybrid energy delivery device of leafy, fluttering solar shingles that provide power via both sun and wind.

Xcel Energy launches wind-to-battery project

Energy Daily: Xcel Energy soon will begin testing a cutting-edge technology to store wind energy in batteries. It will be the first use of the technology in the United States for direct wind energy storage.

Integrating variable wind and solar power production with the needs of the power grid is an ongoing issue for the utility industry. Xcel Energy will begin testing a one-megawatt battery-storage technology to demonstrate its ability to store wind energy and move it to the electricity grid when needed. Fully charged, the battery could power 500 homes for over 7 hours.

“Energy storage is key to expanding the use of renewable energy,” said Dick Kelly, Xcel Energy Chairman, President and CEO. “This technology has the potential to reduce the impact caused by the variability and limited predictability of wind energy generation. As the nation’s leader in distributing wind energy, this will be very important to both us and our customers.”

Xcel Energy has signed a contract to purchase a battery from NGK Insulators that will be an integral part of a project. The sodium-sulfur battery is commercially available and versions of this technology are already being used in Japan and in a few US applications, but this is the first U.S. application of the battery as a direct wind energy storage device.

The 20 50-kilowatt battery modules will be roughly the size of two semi trailers and weigh approximately 80 tons. They will be able to store about 7.2 megawatt-hours of electricity, with a charge/discharge capacity of one megawatt. When the wind blows, the batteries are charged. When the wind calms down, the batteries supplement the power flow….

Wind turbine from below, Dirk Ingo Franke, Wikimedia Commons

3Tier signs multiple contracts for FirstLook assessment

North American Windpower: 3TIER, an independent provider of wind, solar and hydro power assessment and power forecasting, has announced that seven companies have signed contracts worth more than $400,000 within the last three months for the company’s FirstLook assessment for wind.

“FirstLook simplifies and shortens a traditionally complex assessment process, but still delivers the thorough, detailed information we need to move quickly on a project,” says Sean Finnerty, senior vice president of Competitive Power Ventures (CPV). CPV, a wind developer with projects in the U.S. and Canada, says it uses the FirstLook tool and reports to identify potential sites and obtain the information they need to acquire land for their projects.

Many of the FirstLook contracts are bundled deals in which the companies are purchasing multiple reports for a discounted price. Individual FirstLook Professional reports cost $2,500.

Harvesting wind far from shore

Ecogeek: …A Norwegian company called Sway is developing a deepwater system that will allow turbines to be situated farther out to sea where winds can be steadier and stronger, and where the turbines are hidden from all save a few passing ships. “The SWAY® system is a floating foundation capable of supporting a 5MW wind turbine in water depths from 80m to more than 300m in some of the world’s roughest offshore locations.” This could allow wind farms to be farther off shore where they would be out of sight.

Off-shore wind turbines have needed to be situated in relatively shallow waters to be able to have sufficient footings to anchor and support them. This new deep-water turbine uses a floating tower to support the turbine, and is anchored to the sea bed with a single tension rod. Because the turbine body floats itself, the rod only needs to help the structure resist the forces of wind and waves, but does not need to support the entire structure.

The SWAY concept, which is covered by several patents, is based on a floating elongated pole extending far below the water surface with ballast at the bottom part. Since the center of gravity in this manner is placed far below the center of buoyancy the tower has sufficient stability to resist the large loads and weight from the wind turbine placed on top of the tower.

The more compelling part of the Sway system is that it keeps the tower upright against the wind forces that would otherwise overturn it. (The wind pressure on the rotor for a 5MW turbine is approximately 60 tons.) The Sway tower maintains a nearly vertical configuration, and only tilts less than 1 degree from its equilibrium position in storm conditions so as not to lose power.

There is some added cost in situating these turbines further from shore and from the end energy users. But the tradeoff with political acceptability and availability of wind may make these turbines more than useful for providing wind power. Sway wind-power towers could also be used near off-shore oil and gas rigs, and provide clean power for their operation, instead of the diesel generators these platforms utilize presently.

Diagram from Sway’s website

Next-generation wind technology, with compressed air

A noteworthy idea in load management for wind power — compressed air. Energy Daily has a story about a company exploring this technology: Massachusetts-based wind energy company General Compression and its compressor technology partner Mechanology are using Ricardo’s automotive engineering and development expertise to develop technology which aims to make wind power as reliable as conventional power.

With energy security and global warming at the very top of the political agenda in all parts of the world, renewable energy resources are increasingly seen as an important contributor to the future of regional and national grid power supplies. Of the potentially large-scale renewable energy resources wind is perhaps the most universally available, as virtually every part of the earth’s surface experiences the natural force of the wind.

However, as the wind is subject to the vagaries of the weather and as such is inherently unpredictable, wind energy has traditionally been seen as an intermittent source of electrical power. General Compression’s proprietary Dispatchable Wind system carries the descriptive tagline ‘wind energy on demand’ because it decouples wind energy capture from electrical power generation by substituting the electric generators in its wind turbines with advanced compressor systems linked to a central high pressure compressed air reservoir at each wind farm.

The reservoir acts as an energy buffer, storing compressed air which can be passed through an expander plant in order to generate electricity whenever it’s needed – not just when the wind is blowing….

The wait for wind power — 612 years!

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has an eye-opening story about the waiting list for wind projects in Minnesota. The story highlights the regulatory bottlenecks that can slow down wind projects in the United States. The author also cites the case of Texas, which has regulations better suited to the numerous small projects that characterize the wind business.

Offshore wind farms to generate £100m windfall for Crown Estate

This story from the Times (UK) also has some comments from readers worth a look: The Crown Estate will earn windfall profits of at least £100million a year from Britain’s booming offshore renewable energy industry. The estate, which owns the foreshore and seabed around the UK, has already signed contracts worth tens of millions of pounds with operators of offshore wind farms.

Rents from the siting of wind turbines are only the beginning of a vast new commercial opportunity for the Crown Estate. In addition to a huge expansion in offshore wind power and the development of tidal power, the estate will profit from the laying of subsea cables and an emerging industry in storing carbon captured from coal-fired power stations.

Rob Hastings, the Crown Estate’s marine director, said that the group, which manages land and assets owned by the Queen but pays most of its revenues to the Treasury, charges offshore wind operators an annual “rent” of just under 1 per cent of the value of the electricity generated. The Crown Estate has full ownership of the seabed for 12 nautical miles around the UK and further rights out to the extent of Britain’s continental shelf, at 200 miles.

Privately, one of Britain’s top six utilities estimates that the Crown Estate stands to earn upwards of £100million a year from offshore wind licences alone if the Government is to achieve its stated aim of generating 33 gigawatts of power from offshore wind energy by 2020. Further revenues could be generated from tidal energy developments, such as the Severn barrage, carbon storage opportunities and subsea cabling – for which the Crown also charges a lease. “[The seabed] is quite a valuable commodity,” said Mr Hastings, who added that the group had signed its first offshore wind lease in 2001. A third round of bidding for new licences is under way and due to close in September. He emphasised that the bulk of the proceeds would go to the Chancellor, while other funds would be set aside to help with long-term management of the seabed.

Nevertheless, the windfall is raising eyebrows in the power industry. “It’s not as if there is an annual maintenance charge for the seabed,” one source said. Britain’s heavily subsidised wind energy industry is expected to form a key part of its efforts to meet targets on tackling climate change announced by the European Union last month. The UK has been set one of the toughest targets, amounting to an increase in electricity generation from renewable sources to 35-40 per cent, from just over 4 per cent at present. There is about 500-600 megawatts of generating capacity in existing offshore windfarms around the UK. This is expected to increase to 7,500 megawatts by 2015, but in December John Hutton, the Business Secretary, set out plans to more than quadruple this to 33,000 megawatts, or 33 gigawatts, by 2020.

Carbon capture and storage could represent an equally valuable source of revenue for the Crown Estate. Captured carbon from coal-fired power stations would be piped out into the North Sea for storage in rock formations in former oil and gasfields.

“The rights to storing it would be vested with the Crown Estate,” Mr Hastings said. However, the legal framework surrounding this emerging industry is unclear and new legislation is being drawn up.