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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Smart Grid

I concluded the 45-minute talk I gave yesterday at the Santa Barbara Savvy Investors’ Club with a short section on cleantech opportunities, during which I highlighted my belief that smart-grid is going to play a fantastically important role in the very near future.  Proof-points supporting this prediction are all around us, including this recent article, announcing a joint venture between Siemens and Teradata. From the article:

Siemens Smart Grid Division and Teradata today announce a global strategic cooperation in the field of big data. Through this collaboration Siemens Smart Grid further optimizes its portfolio of solutions which will provide energy utilities with a much higher level of transparency on the status and activities in their networks. This will enable the customers of Siemens Smart Grid to improve reliability of their infrastructure and to run their grids more efficiently in an increasingly cost-sensitive environment.

It’s regrettably common for renewable energy advocates to view smart-grid as some sort of futuristic phenomenon that will come along later.  From my perspective, the precise opposite is true; smart-grid is the enabler of clean energy.  In its absence, we will have a very tough time integrating large amounts of solar, wind, etc., into our grid-mix; both the variability of the resources and high levelized cost of energy will remain quite thorny.

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

Insulation. It’s hardly the most glamorous of topics is it? Compared to much more fashionable renewable energy solutions like solar panels and geothermal installations it could even be considered positively boring. After all, how can anybody get excited about the process of stuffing a gap full of material? You can’t even see it working! What possible use could it have when it doesn’t even generate energy for your house to use?

Well, as it turns out, it has plenty of use. In fact, as bold a statement as it may be, a good insulation solution should always be the first step towards making a home as energy efficient as possible, even before solar or any other renewable technology comes into play. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Here’s an article from the Sierra Club that includes a cool animated piece on oil from tar sands, illustrating why this subject, and the Keystone XL pipeline in particular, is such a bad idea.  It’s bad for everyone living on the planet, but, as you’ll see, it’s worst of all for Americans.

Great work, IMO.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

I never know what to make of the frequent references I come across to the International Monetary Fund.  Who exactly are these mysterious and terribly powerful people?  How do they work?  What are their true motivations?

In any case, they most certainly get some points for being on the right side of this “subsidies for fossil fuels” issue.  In fact, if this article is an accurate depiction of their stance on the subject, they’ve nailed it exactly: the world’s attempt to make gasoline artificially cheap is ruining the planet, by encouraging its use, as well as by destroying any viable process for the development of alternative sources of energy.

The IMF calls for “reforms.”  I second that.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s the “teaser” for my talk this afternoon at the Santa Barbara Savvy Investors’ Club.  As implied here, I intend to make a wide-ranging presentation that gets into some philosophic stuff; I know this audience from past meetings, and I believe they’ll respond well.  We’ll see….

Our expanding population sports a growing hunger for energy, which, because it’s fed by fossil fuels, is ruining our planet’s ability to support most forms of life.  Yet, the concept of humankind’s dealing effectively with a challenge of this scale remains dubious at best.

And the situation here in the U.S. is plagued by something even thornier: the fossil fuel industries have a stranglehold on our decision-making.  Note that, after leading the world in the development of IT and communications in the 20th Century, America is committed to doing essentially nothing in terms of “new energy,” an industry that is obviously critically important in today’s world.  Not only are we not leading, we’re not even following very well; we’re trying to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Does this bode well?  Nope.  Not for American competitiveness in the 21st Century, nor for the quality of life facing our civilization.  But can we architect a soft landing?  This month’s speaker believes so.  He’ll explain why – and then he’ll go you one better: he’ll tell you – in the face of all this mess — where the pockets of true business opportunity lie.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s an article that lays out three choices available to electricity rate-payers: deregulation (“customer choice”), municipal aggregation (“city choice”), and municipal utilities (“city ownership”), and goes on to discuss the merits of each.  In the last case, a municipality’s purchasing and operating the assets of what was previously an independent utility, provides the opportunity for the citizenry of an enlightened city like Austin, TX, to make a huge push for renewable energy.

I’m reminded of one of the first blog posts ever to appear here, when I interviewed Jake Stewart,  who directs the ground-breaking Austin Climate Protection Program at Austin Energy, where he is active in integrated distributed generation innovation, smart grid deployment and carbon reduction strategy development. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Longtime 2GreenEnergy supporter Aedan Kernan commented on my piece bemoaning the U.S. government’s failing to respond to the will of the people, and clinging onto a de facto energy policy that is rooted in fossil fuels. Aedan lives in the eastern part of England, Norwich as I recall, and carries with him a deep understanding of the “energy ethos” of that entire region of the world. Here’s an article he wrote on Denmark’s approach to energy, including an explanation of how it’s possible that the country is making such rapid progress in the direction of wind energy (by 2020, 50% of Denmark’s electricity will be supplied by wind, and Denmark’s Parliament has agreed a route to 100% renewable energy by 2050). (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

Frequent commenter and all-around good guy Tim Kingston sent me this video on an ostensible breakthrough in solar PV for my comment.

I see claims like this constantly, and I’m never sure exactly how to evaluate them, since this isn’t my area of expertise.  My own sense suggests that this particular one is not credible, based on the way it’s presented and some of the claims it makes.  Yes, of course the world needs a way to minimize photons from reflecting, as well as from passing straight through.  And yes, the way to deal with this is to get photons bouncing around, i.e., in three dimensions.  My wife and kids know this.  In fact, it’s possible that my dogs know this, since they hang out in my office and hear it so often.

But trapping photons in the way they describe will not produce the outrageous increases in efficiencies they claim.

When I go to solar shows, I run into hundreds of people who have made this subject their life’s work.  Did these Solar 3D people make a breakthrough where others have failed?  They do have a video… and one of their people does have a Russian (Ukranian?)  accent; perhaps he’s one of these super-scientists from that part of the world.  And … (wait for it) … they’re only one measly year away from commercialization.

Tim:  Sorry to be sarcastic.  I guess I would say that it’s possible, but I would have to think this is extremely unlikely.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Solar Thermal

On Sunday afternoons, I like to take a decent hike, say 7 or 8 miles, and wind up at a nice place where I can get a beer, shake a few hands, and discuss what’s going on in the world.  Today was a banner day for this enterprise, as there were several groups at my destination (The Los Olivos Café, pictured here) with whom I had stimulating talks.

One guy was an industrial plastics salesman; this didn’t seem to hold much promise until I learned that one of his key accounts is the FPL (Florida Power and Light) solar thermal project here in California.  He sells the piping, connectors, and a whole bunch of other stuff to one of the most exciting renewable energy projects in the region.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Longtime 2GreenEnergy supporter and EV enthusiast Fritz Maffry just sent me this piece on BMW’s entrance into the electric vehicle space — a process that has been slow and measured, but perhaps, in the end, one that will prove to be the best approach overall – an example of “slow and steady wins the race.”  Certainly their Mini-E (whose drive train was built by my friends at nearby AC Propulsion) was a considerable success – a true delight for their customers, and an experience from which BMW learned a great deal; in fact, it formed the platform on which their current entrant, the i3, would be developed.  I urge readers to take a long look at today’s i3: a blend of art, style, superior auto engineering, and perhaps most prominent of all, an incredibly advanced implementation of IT and communications technology.

But as one would have expected from any respectable German company, there is nothing too radical here; in particular, there is no attempt to redefine transportation as we know it.  Having said that, one could argue that BMW has begun to embrace the splitting of the auto world into “urban commuter vehicles” vs. the larger, heavier, ultra-luxury vehicles that the company hopes will continue to be prominent in country club parking lots for a very long time to come.

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