Storing Energy in the Sea-A New Design for Marine Energy Storage-

Storage, and on-demand delivery of powers, are the keys to running 100% on renewables. Adding those elements makes clean sources of energy friendly to grids.

Let it to Germany to engineer possible storage at sea.  Amazing.  Be a great combination with their mighty turbines pushing their wind production.  Remember, the migration away from fossil fuel to power our global economy is estimated to be a 7 trillion dollar investment opportunity.  The largest in our history.  Who is going to win this battle?  The winner will take the financial spoils.

Storing Energy in the Sea — A New Design for Marine Energy Storage

 

By William Steel

Engineers in Germany are gearing up for pilot-scale testing of a promising new design for marine energy storage.

The Stored Energy in the Sea (StEnSEA) project represents a novel pumped storage concept aiming to facilitate large-scale storage of electrical energy that’s cost-competitive with existing solutions.
Since early 2013, the three-year, consortium-backed project led by the Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology (F-IWES) and supported by Germany-based Hochtief Solutions, has delivered promising results: from concept design and analysis, through to developing a road map for market implementation.

The technology leverages water pressure to drive electromechanical pump components housed within a central tube of submerged spherical storage units. These spheres, constructed of concrete, operate in a manner akin to pumped-hydro storage, as Jochen Bard, Head of Energy Process Engineering at F-IWES, told Renewable Energy World: “It’s a straightforward principal — physically speaking, it’s the same as a conventional pumped-hydro scheme featuring upper and lower reservoirs. Naturally, technical realization of these principals is different, however.”

Detailing the concept, Bard said: “What we have is a pressure tank that maintains a lower pressure than ambient pressure of the water head above the device, the water column. Assuming the tank is empty, it has a very low pressure.”
He added that, “when you release water into the tank, the pressure of the water column is driving water through a turbine. This process generates energy, and represents the discharge part of the cycle — similar to water flowing through turbines, down into a lower reservoir, in a pumped-hydro system.”

Conversely, Bard said, pumping water out of the system requires energy as the pump is working against the pressure head of the water column.

“This is analogous to pumping water from a lower reservoir up to a higher one,” he said.
For this system, water depth is crucial.

“It’s clear that the deeper you install the system, the higher the pressure, so the more energy you can store within the tank,” Bard said. “But there’s a limit to that — at extreme depths, the system is infeasible. So the highest head we’re using is around 800m. In the end, to remain competitive with existing storage solutions, we’re targeting installment within the 600 to 800m range.”
At commercial scale, StEnSEA envisions arrays featuring 30m-diameter spheres, each with a storage capacity of around 20 MWh at 700m depths. This size, Bard said, “was found to be a reasonable compromise between all design, economic, and manufacturing parameters we needed to take into account.”

StEnSea’s geographical site requirements may appear at first to reduce applicability of the technology to several regions; but the consortium has undertaken comprehensive analysis that serves to relieve such concerns.

“As part of the project we undertook a detailed analysis of eligible sites for the technology, using geographic information systems featuring a list of criteria — distance to shore, distance to ports, sea depth, slope of seabed, exclusions zones etc. — we see there’s great potential for the application of the technology,” Bard said.

Of relevance for European stakeholders, one site in particular is highlighted: the Norwegian Trench off the southern coast of Norway holds technical potential of 8 TWh. Ideal site conditions were also identified in the Mediterranean Sea, the Pacific and Atlantic coast of the U.S., and Japan.

A Cost-effective Solution
Early project work focused on design, cost-efficiency and feasibility of the concept and produced several important outcomes, not least confidence in the physical and financial viability of the system even under conservative assumptions.

“We’ve looked at economic variations of the system ranging in scale, from arrays of five to 10 spheres, to up to more than 100. At that latter scale, we’re looking at several hundred MWs, so about comparable with typical pumped-hydro systems,” Bard said.

He added that, “the economics have turned out nicely — all things considered, CAPEX would be very similar to pumped storage; 1,500 euros to 2,000 euros (US $1,675-$2,231) per kW (location dependent). It’s very encouraging for a storage system. Projected efficiency is also very comparable to pumped storage, somewhere in the region of 75 percent cycle efficiency is what we’re expecting.”
Commenting on estimated lifetime costs of storage, he said, “[at] 1000 cycles/year (3 cycles/day), 20 MWh storage per sphere, 5 MW pump turbine, four-hour charge/discharge cycle – [we expect] a levelized cost of storage of about 2 euro cent per KWh. That’s a very competitive price.”

Pilot Testing
The project is currently preparing for its second phase: a small-scale test at Lake Constance, on the Swiss-German border, featuring a fully functional 1:10 scale model of the storage unit installed at water depth of around 100m.

Looking forward to the test — scheduled to begin in the second half of October — Bard says there were several motivations for the pilot, not least the opportunity to gain experience relating to construction and installment of the system. Additionally, he said, “[the test will also] generate field test data to prove our concept and validate our assumptions.” This test is being held prior to a full-scale, open sea pilot of 30-m diameter sphere, a date for which is yet to be confirmed.

Costa Rica hasn't burned any fossil fuels for electricity in two months

We first spotted this story a few months ago.  Since then we've been working on bringing them on our radio show.  In the meantime they've continued to run on clean energy.

The article rightly points out that they have some unique advantages--small size, little demand for power.  But we break it down by community and state.  When you do that we all have the same advantages.  We can cut use.  Then produce much of our own.  When we do we push energy production local.  Which keeps jobs and money close by.

What is stopping us from mimicing their success. Will.  And lack of definitive plan.  Not that hard to summon up both.

Costa Rica hasn't burned any fossil fuels for electricity in two months

Maria Gallucci

Costa Rica's electric grid ran exclusively on renewable energy for 150 days so far this year, the country's power operator said late last week.

Half of those days were achieved in only the last few months.

The Central American nation was powered for 76 straight days on carbon-free electricity from June 16 to Sept. 2, according to the Costa Rica Electricity Institute (ICE).


It's easy to point to Costa Rica's clean energy success as a model for fossil fuel-dependent nations to follow.

However, it's not an example that the big polluters of the world can easily emulate anytime soon.

First, there's Costa Rica's physical size. At just 19,730 square miles, Costa Rica is about twice the size of the state of Vermont, meaning it only needs a handful of large power plants to light up substantial swaths of the country.

Second, there's the matter of the country's rather paltry electricity appetite. This nation of 4.9 million people generated about 10,713 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2015, according to a July report from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The United States, by contrast, generated about 373 times more electricity, with roughly 4 million gigawatt-hours of total generation in 2015, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

And third, Costa Rica is rich in hydroelectric resources. The majority of the nation's clean power comes from its four main hydropower facilities, which are fed by multiple rivers and abundant seasonal rainfall.

Hydropower alone accounted for about 80 percent of Costa Rica's total electricity generation in August, according to National Energy Control Center data cited by ICE.
While dams provide a cleaner source of electricity, they can have large environmental and social consequences, from displacing indigenous communities, disrupting wildlife habitats and turning healthy rivers into stagnant, algae-filled pools.

Geothermal plants provided about 12.6 percent of electricity generation in August. Wind turbines supplied 7.1 percent, while solar power accounted for just 0.01 percent.
Costa Rica's stretch of fossil fuel-free days this year follows its even cleaner results from 2015. Last year, Costa Rica logged 299 total days without burning oil, coal or natural gas for a single megawatt of electricity.

Hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass accounted for over 98 percent of its total electricity output in 2015, according to the regional economic commission report. Natural gas-fired cogeneration and thermal power plants supplied the remaining 1.8 percent.

View of the hydroelectric dam on the Reventazón River in Siquirres, Costa Rica, June 8, 2016. The Reventazón River hydropower dam is the largest public infrastructure project in Central America after the Panama Canal, and the largest hydroelectric dam in Central America.

Carlos Manuel Obregón, the executive president of ICE, said Costa Rica could enjoy even more months of carbon-free power once ICE's massive Reventazón hydroelectric project comes online this month after six years of construction.

Revantazón is the largest public infrastructure project in Central America after the Panama Canal. The dam's five turbines will have a generating capacity of 305.5 megawatts, enough to power around 525,000 homes.

The project will bring "stable and renewable energy for the benefit of all sectors in the country," Obregón said in the ICE press release.

World Bank: Emissions trading could cut carbon mitigation costs by a third

Great story from Business Green.  We've been major proponents of expanding carbon credits.  As the story concludes, a robust market would provide  a steady flow of capital into projects that would cut carbon emissions.

This will be an exciting part of the growth of our domestic green economy, and a good example of government not just punishing companies, but providing the means of giving them real incentives for transformation as well:





New analysis finds more international carbon trading could drastically reduce costs of delivering deep emissions cuts

The cost of mitigating climate change could be reduced by almost a third by 2030 through greater cooperation via carbon trading, according to a new report released this week by World Bank.


The analysis, prepared with technical support from consultancies Ecofys and Vivid Economics, found an expanded international carbon market could enable large-scale emissions reductions at a far lower cost than is currently the case.

By 2050, the international market has the potential to reduce global mitigation costs by over a half, the report calculated.

It also argued it would be difficult for the world to hit a 2C or lower target cost-efficiently without a significant expansion of carbon trading schemes.

Over 100 countries considered carbon pricing schemes as part of their national climate pledges submitted ahead of the Paris summit, including emissions trading schemes that operate inside or across borders and direct carbon taxation policies.

The Paris deal also set up a framework for global carbon market cooperation, through which countries can pay to benefit from emission reductions in another country in order to fulfil its own carbon pledges.

The report found momentum on carbon pricing has continued to grow post-Paris, with 40 national jurisdictions - including seven of the world's 10 largest economies - now putting a price on carbon, alongside over 20 cities, states, and regions.

In addition, governments raised around $26bn in revenues from carbon pricing initiatives around the world in 2015, a 60 per cent increase on the revenues raised in 2014, the report found, potentially providing an additional source pf capital for investment in low carbon infrastructure.

"The more we co-operate through carbon trading, the larger the savings and the greater the potential to increase ambition by countries in the short term," said John Roome, senior director for climate change at the World Bank, in a statement. "To be effective, carbon pricing policies must be coordinated with other energy and environmental policies - this will require collaboration within and between countries."

The report added that id the Chinese national Emissions Trading System is implemented next year as planned, 2017 would see the largest ever annual increase in the amount of global emissions covered by carbon pricing initatives.

The Chinese scheme is set to surpass the EU ETS to become the largest carbon pricing initiative in the world, with initial estimates showing it would result in the portion of global emissions covered by carbon pricing almost doubling from 13 per cent to between 20 and 25 per cent.

The World Bank report was launched at the international carbon conference held in Vietnam this week.

Advocates of carbon trading argue that it provides firms with an incentive to switch to clean technologies and ensures emissions reductions are delivered in the most cost effective way possible. 


However, critics have long argued that many carbon trading schemes fail to set sufficiently high carbon prices and do not always deliver promised emissions reductions.

Six Key Megatrends That Will Shape How We Live/Part 2

The world is changing, and so are the opportunities and challenges that everyone must now face. Increasing life expectancy, mass-scale technological advances and shifting demographics have profound implications for how we will live.

Bloomberg

4) How does technology lead to income inequality?  

Many of the drivers of transformation affecting global industries are expected to have a significant impact on jobs. New roles and requirements are being created on a regular basis by governments and companies alike.   

In many industries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist 10 or even five years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate. In such a rapidly evolving employment landscape, the ability to anticipate and prepare for future skills requirements will be increasingly critical for businesses, governments and individuals in order to fully seize the opportunities—and to mitigate undesirable outcomes.

The reskilling and upskilling of today’s workers will be critical. But it need not become a race between humans and machines, but rather an opportunity for work to truly enable people to recognize their full potential.

5) Urbanization

Growing populations also mean growing waste, and the management of our domestic waste must become a major priority. Efficiently managed recycling can dramatically decrease the volume of waste sent to landfills and incinerators. Rather than being disposed of, most waste materials can be turned into something more useful, and bring environmental and economic benefits.

Policy makers will have to introduce new measures and systems governance without wrecking structures developed over the years. Getting cities right is more than a local and national question—it’s one that will increasingly concern us all in the years ahead

6) Impact investing and medical advances 

There has been a dramatic increase in average life expectancy throughout the 20th century, and this trend has continued into the 21st century. The majority of babies born in 1900 did not live past the age of 50, whereas babies born today are expected to live well into their 90s.

Such previously unthinkable longevity is a sure sign of progress as lifestyles improve, but it is having a significant impact on societies around the world. One of the most notable areas currently being transformed is healthcare.

A shakeup of the world’s healthcare systems is being helped by funding from social-impact investors. One area that has received significant investment in the last year has been oncology, where early-stage research continues to uncover exciting new avenues of investigation.

Six Key Megatrends That Will Shape How We Live

This is a great article from Bloomberg.  We impact megatrends, and megatrends impact us.  Perhaps the most telling key identified here is artificial intelligence.  A road that leads to....fill in the blank.  Who knows.

"The world is changing" says the writer.  Is there any doubt this is true?  How you fit in, how you prosper or lose in transition, do you contribute to solutions is very much up to you.  Opportunities and challenges.  Does not get any more basic than that.

We will split this into two posts:

The world is changing, and so are the opportunities and challenges that everyone must now face. Increasing life expectancy, mass-scale technological advances and shifting demographics have profound implications for how we will live. 

How do we build a sustainable world for generations to come? How can we ensure that our burgeoning cities remain fit for purpose? How do we build stronger economies that can provide equal opportunities for all? How we address such fundamental questions today will come to define the societies we live in tomorrow.

In this series of video interviews, Simon Smiles, Chief Investment Officer for Ultra High Net Worth at UBS Wealth Management, identifies six megatrends in sustainable development driven by broad underlying economic, social, technological and environmental shifts.

1) Gender inequality

Significant progress has been made when it comes to gender parity in education and health, but women continue to lag behind men in economic equality. Globally, only about half of working-age women are employed, and they earn about three-quarters as much as men with the same level of education, even in the same occupation. The pay gap is further exacerbated by women being overrepresented in lower-paying and temporary jobs, with limited opportunities for advancement.

In September 2015, 193 U.N. member states unanimously adopted a bold new agenda to end poverty by 2030, with women and girls at the center of 17 sustainable development goals, including Goal 5: “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.”

The social benefits of achieving gender equality are matched by financial benefits, too. If women were to participate in the economy in equal measure as men, they could add as much as $28 trillion, or 26 percent, to the world’s annual global GDP in 2025, according to projections by the McKinsey Global Institute.

2) Energy sustainability                          

Change is coming to the energy landscape, driven by the increasing use of sustainable electricity resources, primarily solar, wind, hydro and biomass. Meanwhile, ongoing developments in the automotive sector—away from the combustion engine and reliance on fossil fuels—could significantly reduce the world’s carbon emissions.   

One change in the energy sector that could bring its own challenges is the prospect of the U.S. achieving energy independence. This elusive goal has excited American leaders for the past four decades, with the promise of significant benefits, including lowering the cost of energy and reducing the threat of supply disruptions.

However, a shift towards U.S. energy independence is set to bring its own challenges, including a reduction in the amount of dollars circulating in the global economy and possible cut backs on its defense budget, which UBS's 2015 World Economic Forum white paper on The New Global Context equated to 19 percent of the US federal  budget and 3.8 percent of GDP.

3) The rise of the machines

The global economy is on the cusp of disruption that will be comparable in magnitude to the advent of the first Industrial Revolution, the development of assembly line production or the invention of the microchip, according to the UBS white paper for this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by two key traits: increased automation and increased connectivity. Technological advances are introducing ever-greater levels of automation. Meanwhile, the near-universal ownership of smart devices in many parts of the world is leading to a degree of interconnectedness that was previously unimaginable.

The Dutch Revolution in smart charging of electric vehicle

Great, international story from our main site:  Here's a link to watch the video:  http://www.renewablenow.biz/energizing-transit.html



By turning itself into one huge Living Lab for Smart Charging of electric vehicles, the Netherlands is fast becoming the international front runner for smart charging EV's, using them to store peak power production of solar and wind. Already 325 municipalities (including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague) have joined the Dutch Living Lab Smart Charging representing 80 percent of all public charging stations. It's also supported by the Dutch government.  

Adding to this some large players on private and semi-private charging stations such as The New Motion and EV-Box have joined. Very soon all Dutch charging stations will be open for tests and research projects.

The Living Lab Smart Charging is an open platform where companies (from multinationals to small tech start-ups, both national and international), universities, local and regional governments and grid operators cooperate. They operate an ambitious three step program.

Step 1. Make as many charging stations ready for Smart Charging. A huge upgrade operation is now taking place across the country making sure the existing charging stations will be able to technically facilitate Smart Charging. All new stations already are Smart Charging Ready, such as the 2.500 new charging points being rolled out by the Southern provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg.

Step 2. Use those innovative stations for research and testing of Smart Charging. Eg. there's an App (by Jedlix) that allows it's users to earn money by using technology to charge the car in the middle of the night when the wind is still producing power but there is little demand for it. In Utrecht 'vehicle to grid' is being tested together with Renault: charging the electric car with solar panels and using it as storage to put power back into the grid when the sun is no longer shining.

Step 3. Putting all innovation, tests and research findings into international standards so everyone can benefit from the Dutch experience with Smart Charging.

The ultimate goal of the Dutch Living Lab Smart Charging: all electric cars driving on the power of the sun and the wind. The idea of the Living Lab Smart Charging is explained in this premiering short animation.

Does Air Pollution Reduce

Most of us work hard to stay healthy.  We moderate diet, reduce stress and try to exercise daily.  Ironic that our outdoor running, biking, hiking could be more detrimental than beneficial.  Here's an example.

That is why we don't focus so much on the  science around "climate change", but believe any reduction in emissions, pollutants, air, ground is great and worthy.

Does Air Pollution Reduce Cycling’s Health Benefits?

Columbia University scientists use innovative tools to investigate how vehicle exhaust impacts cyclists.

by Aaron Sidder

Most cyclists have been there: peacefully pedaling one minute and sucking bus exhaust the next. In the moment, all you can do is keep riding and shrug off the blast of smoke. But now a growing body of research suggests breathing this pollution can have both short-term and long-term health consequences.

A team of researchers from Columbia University has started using a suite of state-of-the-art personal monitoring devices to gather more details about how air pollution affects cyclists’ health.

The new study—a joint undertaking by scientists in the Mailman School of Public Health and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory—aims to show minute-by-minute health and pollution data.

The researchers have equipped volunteer bike commuters with a skintight biometric shirt, a mesh vest stocked with air pollution monitors, a location tracking system that liaises with smartphone GPS software, and a blood pressure monitor. Combined, the instruments will characterize exactly where a rider inhales pollution and how his or her lungs and heart respond.

“We’re really trying to quantify the health impacts of commuting by bicycle in a dense urban setting,” says Darby Jack, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University and part of the study’s brain trust.

A Pollution Problem

In New York City alone, health officials estimate that fine particulate matter (known as PM_2.5) contributes to nearly 2,000 premature deaths and more than 6,000 hospital visits per year. The young and old are particularly susceptible, as are people who suffer from asthma and other respiratory disorders or heart disease.

“We have internal combustion engines that emit particles, we put them out a tailpipe, and then we drive along our sidewalks. And we sort of emit this stuff right into our breathing zones,” says Arden Pope, a professor of economics and an epidemiologist at Brigham Young University who is not involved in the Columbia study.

As these particles—particularly the fine ones—spew from tailpipes, they are inhaled and accumulate in lungs. Most of these particles are black carbon, but vehicles also discharge nitrogen oxides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).

Research has shown that long-term exposure to these pollutants increases the risk of heart and lung disease, and short-term exposure can trigger heart attacks.

The problem is amplified by exercise. During workouts, respiration increases and more air enters the lungs. Jogging, for example, can increase the volume of air by three to four times, and strenuous exercise can push the volume even higher. All this extra air also brings more pollutants into the body.

This creates a conundrum for bike commuters in the city: At what point does exercise hurt your health more than help it?

It is generally thought that the benefits of exercise outweigh the hazard of air pollutants, and a recent study suggests this is true in "the vast majority of settings.” In a city like New York, with background PM_2.5 concentrations below the global average, a healthy person without heart or lung problems would need to cycle for hours and hours a day before the adverse impacts of pollution outweigh the health benefits of exercise. At that point, the only health effect you’re likely to suffer is a sore bum from riding all day.

However, Jack says looking at background concentrations alone may not tell the full story. “You can really underestimate the exposure for folks exercising in urban settings,” he says. Pollution varies by location—it is not static or evenly distributed. And as we move through a city, exposure differs depending on the setting.

“Using a single number for PM_2.5 to represent an entire city isn’t really true exposure,” explains Patrick Ryan, an epidemiologist at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center who is not involved in the research. “We know that you interact with air pollution over the course of the day … and it really changes your exposure.”

Furthermore, exposure fluctuates based on our level of physical activity. Cranking up a hill behind a belching garbage truck is much different than a casual cruise on the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway.

Gearing Up

As cycling grows in popularity—over a million New Yorkers ride a bike every month—health and safety are growing concerns for bike advocates.

Advocacy groups are mostly focused on preventing crash hazards and vehicle collisions, but pollution data would dovetail nicely with their cause, according to Paul Steely White, the executive director of New York’s Transportation Alternatives. Safety and pollution trends are mutually reinforcing, he explains, and the group is watching the research carefully.

The research is in its pilot phase, and Jack and his colleagues are focused on convincing themselves—and their funders—that both health and pollution data can be collected simultaneously, in real time.

The team is working with about 30 cyclists—men and women commuters from all corners of the city—but they hope to expand the research to hundreds of cyclists within a few years. Eventually Jack hopes the data can be incorporated into a smartphone app to help cyclists optimize their bike routes based on pollution data.

For now, however, the team is focused on perfecting their measurements and tinkering with the equipment to best capture life on a bike in New York City.