Power at the socket may be clean but is it green?

Everybody needs it, most people take it for granted; but.
Where does our power come from, what is ‘energy’, how and why has it become so expensive over the last few years?

First we have to understand the current way power is generated and distributed in most of the developed economies (and to a certain extent how those players are telling the emerging economies how to set up their power utilities).

The first concept is about electricity generation; Centralised Electricity and De-Centralised Electricity?

Centralised Power is characterised by large power stations using Coal, Oil, Gas, Hydro or even Nuclear

• Because they are sited away from population centres they cannot fully utilise “waste” heat from the generation process. Unfortunately this represents around 60% of the energy released on combustion in a Coal, Oil or Gas fired Station for example.
• The other issue is that because they are remote we need a substantial grid network to take the power to the users. This grid will lose power the further electricity has to travel to you the user.
• A further issue is that large projects like the building of big power stations suffer from a condition called the “MegaProject Paradox”. This asserts that ‘mega-projects’ invariably run over budget and over projected time. Furthermore they often do not deliver the promised benefits.

US President Barrack Obama thinks that Nuclear is OK, but building big centralised Nuclear has just got a lot more expensive thanks to 9/11. From the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding the Westinghouse Electric Company's design;
• "The shield building is the outer housing that covers both the plant's core and an inner containment shell. The shield not only has to protect the reactor from severe weather such as earthquakes and hurricanes but also has to support a tank of roughly 2700 tonnes of water used to cool the reactor in the case of an emergency.
• The NRC certified a prior version of the reactor in January 2006 that had a shield made of cement reinforced with steel bars running through it. After the design was approved, however, the NRC added an additional requirement for the shield building to withstand the impact of an airplane crash."
So to make the shield building airplane proof has to be a big cost increase. But cost over-runs are horrific, especially with Nuclear;

• In 2009, NRG purchased Houston-based Reliant Retail Energy, which for years bought nuclear-generated power from the South Texas Project (formerly the South Texas Nuclear Project). Construction cost estimates for two additional reactors in Bay City now exceed $18 billion, three times NRG's original projections. The completion of the first two STNP reactors ran six times over budget, were eight years late coming online and were plagued with mismanagement, construction problems and lawsuits. If NRG completes the new South Texas Project reactors, Houston ratepayers will absorb a significant part of similarly skyrocketing costs".

• "NRG and CPS Energy, San Antonio's city-owned utility, partners in the proposed expansion, are fighting each other in court. When ratepayers in San Antonio learned of a $4 billion nuclear price increase, they rebelled. CPS had hidden the higher cost, in essence lying to the San Antonio City Council and the public for half a year. Facing serious backlash, CPS now seeks to clarify terms for pulling out of the project and wants $32 billion from project partners".

• In South Africa Eskom (the National Power Utility) is continuing with a massive over $15 billion coal fired power station that is currently late and over budget. As it’s coal it will add over 20 million tons per annum of CO2, plus the running costs of burning that coal, and at only 30% fuel efficiency.

All in all large scale centralised power plant building plus the rising costs of burning the fuel to make the electricity has been the biggest contributors to rapidly increasing fuel costs for all users.

Strangely it is this rapidly increasing cost of electricity that is driving the expansion of renewable energy provision and in energy saving technologies. Users of power are now in a much better position to generate their own energy in order to reduce their dependence on the large scale utility providers.
This brings us to Distributed Power or Embedded Power plus Energy Efficiency also known as Demand Management

Demand Management:
If we don’t use so much power, then we don’t have to generate it.

Let’s look at power usage from our own personal stand–point. The built in items that consume electricity in most homes are hot water systems, heating systems and air-conditioning systems. In addition we have all those items which help the developed world feel satisfied: Automatic Washing Machine; Dryer; Dishwasher; Cookers and Ovens; Microwave; even Coffee Makers, automatic garage doors, kettles, TV’s, music centres, home theatre, blenders and juicers.

This equipment has made us “energy” hungry as most use electricity to heat water, air or drive motors for a single function. Few ‘recycle energy’. Cooking can also use many other fuels such as gas, wood, coal, charcoal, etc, but waste heat is often vented away. We also have to look at the structural insulation built into our homes, the more we are able to insulate the more we can easily control the internal environment.

Very few house designers look at the running costs of all these devices in terms of electricity, other fuels or even water consumption. And even less consider a unified energy, water and waste strategy. Because of this our power and other utility bills just keep on rising.

But, why not install renewable energy devices, like wind turbines, ground source energy, solar PV for electricity and solar thermal tubes for hot water and air conditioning? Why not collect rainwater and filter it to flush toilets, and collect water from washing and bathing, extract the heat energy, filter it and then re-use it?

Why is it that designers and ourselves cannot think in terms of efficiency. In most developed nation we wash our cars, flush our toilets and water our gardens with drinking water! And at the same time let rainwater go down the drain. Whilst in developing economies ‘drinking water’ is scarce and often unsuitable.

In hot climates where air conditioning is considered desirable, a great deal of electrical energy is used to cool our properties. At the same time in these hot climates the sun is beating down on the roof. By using solar thermal tube technology we can utilised the sun’s heat to assist [strangely] in the cooling process and as a by-product have a tank of hot water for washing.



The picture above shows how solar collectors integrate into an air conditioning systems and at the same time provide hot water. In this type of system electricity savings of between 50-70% are possible.

Like wise with something simple like the provision of hot water for washing the equipment on the left is inexpensive and a 150-200 litre system can serve a family of 5 for all their hot water needs. It is 100% solar powered, and so completely displaces other forms of energy in providing hot water. The hotter the climate the hotter the water, and so it would need to be mixed with cooler water.

There are many ways in which we as consumers can generate our own energy to run the things that we have. We are not saying go without. From micro wind turbines to solar, and ground source energy, there are many developing ‘domestic’ technologies, as well as many proven commercial scale technologies.

Distributed Generation:
‘Small scale’ local electricity generation plants can use the ‘waste heat’ energy for hot water and cooling to make fuel far more efficient by selling this energy to local end users.

Sun Earth Energy has always favoured local, small scale ‘energy’ generation plant, as it is very efficient (up to 90% fuel efficient). By having lots of smaller human scale plants based on renewable power and by demand reduction techniques (as above) means that each community has more control, big and complex grid networks can be avoided, and power outages become less of an issue.

Of course this makes life a lot more difficult for the existing power companies as they would have to deal with far more complexity in terms of many more smaller plants. Alternatively we could turn back the clocks 60 plus years and have these smaller plants owned and maintained by the local municipalities. With exporting excess power back into the existing grid, the grid administration has far more back up power at its disposal and would run by computers.

More importantly municipalities could also co-ordinate waste collection, sewage and electricity which together are mutually beneficial in respect to the generation of electricity, heat and cooling for the local community. Link this to Tri-generation of power, cooling and hot water you have the self contained city. This is the future of the developed world and the future of the emerging nations.
The only losers are the big engineering firms and the oil industry. However even these can change their market profiles. Engineering firms could focus on smaller engineering solutions to co-generation and tri-generation of energy as some already do. The oil firms need to move into energy production, it’s going to be a ‘survival’ strategy for them and their in-built technology expertise that should not be wasted.

In closing, the evidence shows that the user has far more control over their own energy expenditure when they manage their demand and when they are supplied by local integrated municipally run tri-generation power plants.

These tri-generation plants can use ‘fuel’ from landfill sites or from sewage works, or be supplemented by wind, solar, water, geo-thermal, ground source and other renewable energy technologies. It means we use our ‘World’ resources wisely and efficiently, it means that we cut out waste and co-ordinate our utility needs.
In short we must move away from the “throw away” attitudes of the last 30 years and move towards a resource based economy where commodities are becoming scarce and efficiency and renewable energy are the only options.

Economic Truths?

Thanks to

By Bill Bonner
Mumbai, India

O, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!

– Sir Walter Scott, ‘Marmion’

“The trouble with today’s financial system,” we told a Bloomberg reporter, “is that it is based on fraud.”

“At the bottom of it is paper money – itself a kind of deception. It pretends to be real money. And it is real money – in the sense that you can use it to buy things. But it is prone to lie. All the feds have to do is to turn on the printing press and it will tell you that you are a lot richer than you really are.

“This sort of flimflam has been going on ever since the end of WWII. The feds systematically increased the amount of paper money... leading people to think they had more purchasing power than they really had. Today, a dollar is worth only about 3% as much as it was 100 years ago.

“But that’s just the beginning of the scam. They also systematically under-priced credit – in the belief that the key to prosperity is consumer credit and spending, rather than saving and production.

“The system has its architects and its operators – all quacks and mountebanks. They pretend that they can manage the currency and manage the economy. Yet they misunderstand the most basic elements of how a real economy works. Wealth does not come from consuming... it comes from producing.

“The managers claim to be able to manipulate the economy so well that they can actually improve its performance... that is, they say they can make the economy perform better than it would on its own... better than it has naturally for the past two thousand years. By eliminating the cyclical downturns, the feds told us that they would we all be richer... and free from the volatility that plagued us theretofore.

“So they fiddle and fake it... improvising... and making it up as they go along. The raise interest rates... and then they reduce them. They introducing more paper money when it suits them and change banking rules as their theories suggest.

“When anything ‘bad’ happens, defined as something they don’t like, they rush to fix it. But what can they fix it with? A little duct tape of monetary policy. A little fiscal baler twine too.

“Their fixes are not completely random or haphazard. They have a bias – towards more credit, more spending, more cash, and more speculation. If they tighten rates one month, they loosen them for two months. If they run a surplus in the federal accounts one year, they run deficits for the next five.

“Gradually, more and more debt, mistakes, bad judgments and cockamamie speculations build up. And then, the authorities are under pressure... running from one crisis to another... providing credit to one zombie... and bailout to another... and raw meat to a third.

“And then suddenly, the discipline and self-restraints that held them back gives way like a frayed old rope. Then the central banks and Treasury authorities are running free... abandoning themselves to the trickery and fraud inherent in their profession. The European Central Bank says it will provide “unlimited liquidity” to those who need it, in order to fend off a debt crisis in the Old World. In the New World, the Bank of Ben Bernanke is already bailing out big banks in North America as well as those of Europe. And everywhere, the feds are ready to support one another... and bankroll the IMF... with more paper money and more credit...

“...all of them desperate to hold the system together.”

And now they link arms – the Fed, the ECB, the EU and the US... and don’t forget Japan and the BOJ. And off they march – right off a cliff.