Archive for February, 2010
The world smallest solar powered car!Solar and Wind Power – Renewable Energy Systems
Solar Thermal Energy and Photovoltaic Solar Panel and Wind Turbine systems. Complete Grid-Tie and Off-Grid Battery Backup Systems. Integrating Renewable Energy Systems since 1985 in Ontario Canada. Worldwide Sales of complete package Wind/Solar and Battery Systems.
Duration : 0:6:24
Better Living with Laura Klein – Green Living, Organic Food
“Better Living with Laura Klein” show promo. The show is about green living, creating a healthy home and cooking with organic food. Laura Klein is a Green Living Expert and publishes http://www.organicauthority.com .
Duration : 0:1:22
How does wind power for homes work, and do you have to rewire your home to use it?
In the context of the home, you usually cannot generate power at stable enough voltage and frequency for reliable use.
So what they do is to generate DC (Direct Current) power, and then this is fed into an inverter, which converts it to AC at your supply voltage and frequency. The inverter is an electronic unit. Sometimes, there can be a battery banka as well, so that when everyone else is blanked out, you stll have power.
You will have to have some connection made to the house wiring, so this needs to be done by a registered electrician.
By the way, in principle, the same applies to solar energy panels.
What mass-energy storage systems are available to store energy from wind-power??
By way of example, if a two-tier reservoir system was constructed and during times of excess wind energy the surplus was used to pump water from the lower to the higher reservoir, and the water was then used to run hydro-turbines during times of lower wind energy production.
Would some type of ‘green energy battery’ like this, be one answer to the drawbacks with wind-power?
Yes
It’s so tempting to write an essay on this in here… must resist…. resiiiiist….
(1) Wind Is Not The Only Fruit
Pumped storage already exists – the UK has four stations. But they were built to balance off conventional power generation. Sizewell B nuclear PS is UK’s biggest indigenous balancing problem – if one of the two units flicks off, that takes 1320MW off the system instantly. The cross channel interconnector can take 2000MW off. Wind doesn’t do that – each turbine is autonomous, and even the largest offshore machines are never bigger than 5MW each. They don’t all flick off at once.
(2) Time Matters
Electricity balances at all instants. http://www.dynamicdemand.co.uk for more. System Operators must cater for imbalances on all timescales. They do this by:
- "instantaneous": large consumers able to switch off if frequency drops too low.
- sub-second: spinning intertia
- seconds: head of steam
- a few more seconds to a couple of minutes: pumped storage
- minutes: reserve (standing) generation
- hours: warming instructions to large generators
- days->years: "The Market Shall Provide"…
(2) Pumped Storage
Pumped storage is the cleanest, greenest of batteries, and you get 70-80% of the energy back that you put in. It costs a kings’ ransom to build one.
(3) Compressed Air Energy Storage
USA and Germany have one plant each; think there are more in the post. Basically they divert the hot compressed air halfway through its travels through a gas turbine into a disused salt mine. It is part of a fossil power station though so it’s tricky to say how much you get back for what you put in. I’m not sure of the numbers.
(4) Deferred consumption
Industrials can stop consuming during peaks or say in the first hour after a storm-driven wind turbine shutdown to allow other plant to get going. This type of energy storage is very efficient. http://www.flexitricity.com/
(5) District heating with hot water storage
Lots of examples, mostly in Denmark. District heating takes waste heat from generators to heat hot water. If there’s a nice big hot water reservoir, then the generator can generate mostly when the wind is low while still allowing people to consume heat when they want to. http://www.emd.dk/
(6) Hydrogen and associated uses.
http://www.pure.shetland.co.uk/ – this is a really nice project involving a wind turbine, an electrolyser, some hydrogen bottles, a fuel cell, and a vehicle. The energy just nips from one to the other depending on where it’s needed.
There are other uses for hydrogen, and if you make it opportunistically when the wind is up, you’re storing energy. http://www.anglesey-wind.co.uk/ is an enterprising outfit with lots of ideas on that score.
Transport is the very obvious alternative use scenario for renewables – you just fill up the stock of H2 bottles at filling stations when your wind farms are at full tilt, and then swap them for the empty ones of passing motorists bottle by bottle. Renewable cars, howzat?
(7) Batteries
Don’t knock ‘em! Off grid power at a Youth Hostel up in the highlands of Scotland relies on hot water, lead acid batteries, and a single wind turbine. Bliss (trust me I know, I arrived there very wet and cold one day). Plus there are other batteries – http://www.pacificorp.com/Press_Release/Press_Release36434.html is a Canadian system built in Utah
(8) Fossil fuel
And this is what we actually do rely on as an energy store, and would continue to rely on if wind had never been thought of. Unconverted fuel is energy storage. Don’t blame wind for needing storage to back it up – it all needs that!
Does an efficient alternative to gasoline really exist?
Actually, an alternative to gasoline, diesel, or oil.Will humans ever really find a form of energy fuel that is not polluting, and that could be developed by humans efficiently without having to exploit nature? Solar energy cars don’t pollute, but are much slower. Electric cars are also slower, and if the electricity is gotten from coal, there goes the clean, nonpolluting source. Planes need too much power to fly, so forget about solar or electric. ( i can’t think of solar or electric for an 18-wheeler either). Hydrogen did sound good at first, but then came the issue of turning cars into bombs or how costly it is to mass-produce hydrogen. Will speed and power have to be sacrificed some day in order to stop pollution and natural resource exploitation? Can the Earth’s magnetism ever be used to move ourselves arround?
Vegetable oil only works for diesels. Hydrogen nowadays is made from natural gas -a non-renewable resource. Hydrogen via electrolysis requires huge amounts of electricity -which will come courtesy of your local smoke-belching coal power plant. Plus, it has to be shipped and put into the car at very high pressure…do you trust Joe Schmoe to handle filling up his own car with high-pressure, explosive hydrogen? There are ways to supplement our oil comsumption with alternatives like ethanol and such, but most cars on the road today will not run on anything more than 15% ethanol. Also, the infrastructure for delivering alternative fuels to stations, and then to the car, will be very expensive to establish. As of yet, we have no real plan to put these things in place. Most politicians like to trumpet alternative fuels because it gets votes from people fed up with high gas prices, but they can’t seem to agree on a good plan of action to actually make it happen.
BTW, the Earth’s magnetic field is not strong enough to move anything around much bigger than a compass needle.
How do I go about getting my house solar powered?
I live in South Texas and am ready to build a house. I’m very interested in making my home solar powered. Where do I start?
corpus christi?
check online from google about buying some solar panels.
you would do well to check out wind power instead though. corpus is rated an 8 on a scale of 1-10 as most windiest (sp?) areas in the US.
on average, a wind generator, tower and all is about 15k, provides enough power for 2 homes. so you can split it with a neighbor, in 3 years you pay off the wind power generator and never pay elect. again, plus CPL or whoever it is now, has to buy the surplus energy from you.
profits.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why aret any car companies making solor powered cars?
With the gas prices getting out of control, why havent they made a solar powered car yet? We should be able to utilize the suns power for vehicles, they do it for houses.
Well you bring up an interesting point, I think the best answer to that is….it is too expensive. Phototronic cells (what solar panels use) are very expensive and do not have a long life. However, if you are interested in alternative fuels for motor vehicles consider biodiesel or ethanol. They are the two up and coming green fuels. E85, an ethanol is widely used in Brazil, in fact, they are oil indepent. It is derived from sugar cane and put through a fermenting process. Many of New York State transportation vehicles in the Highway Department use this. Also being considered for use to create ethanol is corn and a praire-grass called switchgrass. (For information in the scientific advances google URI and switch-grass) Switchgrass is great because it has a high density of organic matter per acre (more tons per acre = more fuel per acre) as compared to many other sources. The greatest benefit to ethanol is it can be used in gasoline-vehicles. No conversion! Yeah! Another alternative fuel is bio-diesel (see Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow’s buses!) which uses oil wastes in diesel engines. From my understanding converting a diesel car or truck to bio-diesel is very simple and inexpensive. The oil does need to go through a refining process and it is difficult to find a fueling station. (I suggest a establish a Co-op and ordering in large quanities with members all contributing). Another aspect of bio-diesel to consider is that you do still need gasoline to initially start the vehicle and heat the oil before switching to the oil and you have to switch back to gas before turning the engine off otherwise the oil will ruin your engine. Both of these fuels are comparatively inexpensive to gasoline and diminish emissions.
What majors to pursue for energy/solar power job?
I’m looking for different majors to pursue for college and, for fun, I decided to stray away from the ordinary boring ones.
I figured solar/energy-saving power is probably going to become a big business, but what majors are there to pursue?
I’d just like some ideas, but if I may ask try to keep it less general. (For example, please don’t simply say "the sciences" unless you may be able to briefly explain a branch of science in particular!)
Many universities offer solar engineering classes for mechanical engineers. The design of hot water and wind power systems deal with the sciences that they have studied.
Photovoltaic systems lean more towards the electrical engineering side of engineering.
What are some good informative websites about saving the environment and "Green Living"?
I’m looking for easy-to-use, detailed and informative sites on how to save the environment and how to go green.
I’ve seen a good bit, but I’m looking for better ones.
Any suggestions?
Here are a few I visit:
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/
http://www.worldwildlife.org/
http://www.kvue.com/projectgreen/greenarticles/stories/032608kvueaustingreenlivingtips-eh.14b7699.html