My power went out this afternoon unexpectedly for several hours. I know other people in some countries go through this or worse all the time, but it threw off my entire day. I went to a nearby coffee shop to use my smartphone to at least read online, but then discovered my phone was quickly running out of power too. It made me realize how much we depend on our electricity and how easy it is to become completely disrupted when power is turned off for a few hours.
The coffee shop had free wi-fi and was packed with people working on laptops. It got me to thinking that we need more reliable power than we have. If this had been January, people would have been freezing in their homes. The U.S. power grid is overtaxed and meant for an earlier era, not 2010 where so much is demanded of it. It was meant for 50 or 100 million people, not 300 million, who are using it more than ever. And we need uninterrupted power. Anyone who thinks we could transition to living more simply, without electricity, without power, is dreaming. Our brains and work habits are now wired for the internet and the increased use of it will take more power, not less. That means that we will have a difficult time conserving energy in the future. There are more appliances and heating systems in use in the United States by far than 20 years ago and it increases every year. Add a few million electric cars to that and the amount of power needed will grow even more.
We don’t have to have a future of less power. Why conserve solar power or wind power if there is an abundance of it. If we start using renewable power all the time, conservation won’t be an issue. The sun and wind and geothermal power are sources that are free and infinite (at least as far into the future as we can imagine). We need to jump start renewable power and a better more reliable way of transporting power to people. If we don’t, power outages and brownouts will become common everywhere.
We need more power in the world — but not coal. There is good news about the rebellion against the coal industry, from Ted Nace, originator of Coal Swarm. He has a new book out called Climate Hope, and was recently interviewed by Alternet.
Discussing his books Gangs of America and Climate Hope, Coalswarm founder Ted Nace talks about the rise of corporations and Big Coal, the growing network of grassroots movements against coal, and why, despite the non-binding resolution coming out of Copenhagen, we should have hope.
Christine Shearer:Especially since in that 1886 case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, “corporate personhood” came not from the actual judicial decision but from the court reporter’s notes on the case.
Last night 60 Minutes aired a story that was very exciting in its promise for clean energy. It was a story about the Bloom Box, an amazing energy source produced by Bloom Energy. The Bloom Box sounds like one of those magic perpetual motion machines you hear about, that are going to be a great provider of endless energy in the future — except this is real. It’s a stand-alone plug-in power plant that is powerful enough to power businesses and homes, not just a single light bulb.
It’s possible that these fuel cell boxes could change energy usage all around the world. Theoretically they would emit no CO2 unless they are powered in part by natural gas, which for some reason they need in some installations. (They greatly increase the energy output from the amount of natural gas used.) If these boxes work as advertised, they could be the power plant of the future, — personal power plants that everyone has in their neighborhood, if not their homes. The might replace the electrical grid and completely change the way energy is disseminated to regular people. Imagine generating all the electricity you need from a box in your backyard.
The Bloom Box is a set of fuel cells that run on oxygen. It was first developed for NASA, for a project to provide power and breathable air on Mars. When the Mars missions were scrapped, at least for now, the developer and CEO, K.R. Sridhar is taking the idea to the public and American business.
The Bloom Box is already being used by Google, eBay, and other large companies in California as a test power source. It works, according to them. (More videos from 60 Minutes are here.) Since that story ran, the Wall Street Journal, always skeptical, has weighed in, along with other skeptics.
Solar power after the sun goes down is possible and usable if the power can be stored. This is being described as a game-changer for the solar industry.
An artist's rendering by SolarReserve
“The two farms being planned by SolarReserve of Santa Monica, Calif., would store the sun’s energy in molten salt, releasing the heat at night when it could be used to drive a turbine and generate electricity. Two utilities, NV Energy in Nevada and Pacific Gas and Electric, Northern California’s biggest utility, would buy the power.
The sun’s intermittent nature has made large-scale solar farms most useful as so-called peaker plants that supply electricity when demand spikes, typically in the late afternoon on hot days. But the ability of SolarReserve to store the sun’s energy for use at night would be a step forward in technology.”
These plants can hold between 7 and 12 hours of power storage. It works with salt, but I wish they had discussed more in detail how it works. (See the link below.)
“The solar farm features a 538-foot-tall concrete tower topped by a 100-foot receiver that contains millions of gallons of molten salt. The Rocketdyne division of United Technologies developed the molten salt technology and has licensed it to SolarReserve.
Huge fields of mirrors called heliostats focus the sun on the receiver, which heats the salt to 1,050 degrees. The liquefied salt flows through a steam-generating system to drive the turbine and is returned to the receiver to be heated again.”
As the U.S. moves towards a new type of green economy and renewable energy (slowly and painfully) President Obama has announced an extra $3.4 billion for smart meters and the smart grid.
The funding will be for ‘smart grid’ projects aimed at promoting green power and reducing electricity bills and blackouts. Dan Reicher, Director of Climate and Energy Initiatives for Google testified this week on the smart grid during the second day of the EPW hearings. The hearings are worth listening to, especially Tuesday’s panels (find the hearings here).
Friday, there were some early fireworks as Senator Voinavich, a Republican from Ohio, accused Senator Boxer of not wanting a true bipartisan discussion on energy and climate. The EPW’s Republicans are feeling very frustrated right now because they are feeling pressure from their constituents against any climate legislation but they want the jobs and new energy promises from the Kerry-Boxer bill. The issue of energy and climate change has dissolved into heavy partisanship and fearmongering on the part of the Republican politicians, as they favor business over the liveability of the environment, and they attempt to score political points at the expense of our country and our planet. Meanwhile, President Obama is going ahead with funding the smart grid, and that is good news.
A major proposal of the Obama administration’s national energy makeover has been to build a next-generation “smart” power grid that enables integration of more renewable energy and maximizes efficiency. Most stimulus funding has so far gone to fix roads and other infrastructure, but on Tuesday the smart grid began catching up.. . .
Just 100 utilities of more than 400 applicants won federal grants, which officials say will leverage more than $4.7 billion in matching private sector investment. These grants comprise the lion’s share of the $4.5 billion stimulus money set aside for smart grid development, and is expected to create tens of thousands of new jobs.
General Electric Co. splurged on a $3 million Super Bowl ad this year to promote “smart grid” technology in hopes that a singing scarecrow bouncing around a high-voltage transmission tower might get viewers away from the beer and dip to think for just 30 seconds about electricity.
The commercial was the energy industry’s first step down a long Yellow Brick Road toward educating household utility customers who know as much about smart grid as Dorothy and the Scarecrow knew about the Wizard of Oz.
Smart grid’s a hard sell. But sell the industry must.
Smart grid is considered crucial for utilities, environmentalists and government officials embarking on what they hope will be a revolution in energy generation and distribution. With the new federal stimulus law packing $11 billion for smart grid technology, including $4.5 billion for smart-technology matching grants, the revolution is about to begin.
“Consumer education will be critically important for the successful deployment of smart grid,” said Bob Gilligan, vice president of GE Energy’s transmission and distribution business. “It’s hard to imagine they are familiar with the complexity of integrating high percentages of clean, alternative energy.”
by Bracken Hendricks of the Center for American Progress
A truly national clean-energy smart grid must consist of two distinct components: an interstate transmission “sustainable transmission grid” that will transport clean utility-scale renewable energy long distances to market, and a digital “smart distribution grid” to deliver this electricity efficiently to local consumers. The absence of a national grid that seamlessly integrates these two components isone of the biggest impediments to large-scale deployment of low-carbon electricity.
In this paper we outline a plan to develop such a secure, reliable, interoperable, national, and clean electricity grid to power America’s coming clean energy economy. Our particular policy recommendations focus on the principle bottle necks for building grid projects.
These include:
A framework for collaborative multi-state planning to match new grid
investments to our resource base
A stronger proposal for siting new transmission projects tied to this
plan, giving greater power to the federal government but requiring
strong state participation
Broad-based cost allocation to ensure that no single region must bear
the cost of a national undertaking
Smart-grid investments and standards to deploy new information
technology, controls, and advanced metering infrastructure on the
transmission and distribution grid
My power went out this afternoon unexpectedly for several hours. I know other people in some countries go through this or worse all the time, but it threw off my entire day. I went to a nearby coffee shop to use my smartphone to at least read online, but then discovered my phone was quickly running out of power too. It made me realize how much we depend on our electricity and how easy it is to become completely disrupted when power is turned off for a few hours.
A truly national clean-energy smart grid must consist of two distinct components: an interstate transmission “sustainable transmission grid” that will transport clean utility-scale renewable energy long distances to market, and a digital “smart distribution grid” to deliver this electricity efficiently to local consumers. The absence of a national grid that seamlessly integrates these two components isone of the biggest impediments to large-scale deployment of low-carbon electricity.
