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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Solar Thermal

I keep an eye out for articles like this that talk about concentrated solar power (CSP –aka solar thermal) and the use of energy storage to make that power dispatchable.  Normally, they contemplate molten salt, as the cost of storing energy as heat is so much lower than other technologies, e.g., batteries. 

Here, however, the conversation, for some strange reason, revolved around compressed air energy storage (CAES).    Yes, as the spokesperson said, “the energy to compress the air could come from a solar thermal turbine. “ 

I’m not saying that it couldn’t, but it strikes me that it wouldn’t, given the horrendous inefficiencies that the project would suffer.  Let me ask frequent commenter Glenn Doty (and anyone else):  Am I wrong here?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

When I had my marketing consultancy, one of the main goals was to get high rates of return on the direct mail campaigns.  My secret weapon: giving away highly valued content.  To that end, I used to write “planning guides” – often 80 – 100 pages long — and give them to anyone who made the request.  Here’s my piece for Penske Logistics: “Supply Chain Logistics – a Planning Guide for Senior Management,” which drove an 18% response rate.

Here’s an opportunity for a planning guide that I saw coming 100 miles away: a free guide to data privacy.  Smart-grid, by definition, means the two-way flow of information regarding the use of electrical power.  But how much information does the average consumer want flowing out to the utilities and other agents external to the customer’s home?  How will that information be used?  This one’s called: A Regulator’s Privacy Guide to Third-Party Data Access for Energy Efficiency.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

The other day I asked my friend Paul Scott, who co-founded the EV advocacy group Plug-In America and currently sells the Leaf at the Nissan dealership in downtown Los Angeles, about environmentally friendly cars, specifically about the real environmental benefits of electric transportation.  This is a trickier subject than may be imagined, given that coal is the least expensive source of baseload electricity, and therefore incremental load on the grid is normally met with coal.

While neither of us is 100% sure what to make of this, Paul has a PV array on his roof, and uses almost no power from the grid – day or night, whether he’s running his refrigerator or charging his Leaf.  He’s been at this for a while, too.  When I interviewed him at the TV studio in Ventura a few years ago, he arrived in his PV-charged Toyota Rav-4 Electric, before the Leaf became available.

It’s also clear that electric transportation enables us to add more energy from wind to the grid, as we currently have a huge amount of wind at night that faces curtailment or negative pricing.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Paul from Australia writes:

I’d be interested in your views on the microwind market in the U.S., as here in Australia uptake has been generally slow apart from a few `demonstration` sites.

To be honest, I believe that the best markets for this product now are not in the U.S. There are places here that have cheap (coal-fired) electricity whose rate-payers have minimal compunction about ruining the planet; trust me, in places like that, you can’t give this product away. 

While I’m hoping that all this changes, I’m not holding my breath.  Meanwhile, there are places that have extremely expensive electricity and huge concerns about sustainability.  These make incredible markets for the WindStream product.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

In the course of the few years that 2GreenEnergy has been doing its thing, I’d estimate that at least two dozen people have asked me what I think about Jared Diamond’s writing — especially his book “Collapse.”  I always reply that I’m a huge fan.  And it looks like I’m going to get a chance to meet him face-to-face; he’s speaking at a local university next Saturday, and I plan to attend.

From the Wikipedia article on the book:

Diamond identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I just had one of those “small world” encounters I thought I’d relay. An old friend from college with whom I just reconnected at our 35th reunion asked me if I knew the start-up company GridMobility and its founder Jim Holbery. Of course, I’ve had numerous conversations with Jim, culminating in our September 2011 webinar: “How Green Is Your Energy?”

GridMobility offers consumer or corporate users the capability of determining the exact real-time grid-mix, and the prediction for the coming hours, enabling them to schedule their power consumption such that it has the lowest possible carbon footprint. Until we retire the last coal-fired power plant some decades hence, this will remain an extremely important capability for people who care about environmental stewardship.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

In this age of ours, where we’re all rightfully fascinated with the paradigm shifts that are occurring far more frequently than they did in antiquity, perhaps it’s not a bad time to celebrate the birthday (yesterday) of Isaac Newton.  According to the Writer’s Almanac:  “At the age of 43, Newton published his Principia, which overturned nearly everything humankind had believed about the universe up to that point.”

That’s a hard accomplishment to overstate, isn’t it?  Can anyone imagine anything like this happening today?

Personally, I’m most impressed that Newton (contemporaneously with the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz) developed the branch of mathematics we now call calculus, for no other reason than, without it, he wouldn’t have been able to solve the problems he faced in developing his Three Laws of Motion. 

Though there are dozens of great British thinkers whose bodies lie under the floors of Westminster Abbey, I remember being most taken by the fact that, on my first visit to London, I stood just a few feet from the bones of Newton, who, just a few hundred years before, had turned the whole world on its head. 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here’s a piece of idiotic reporting on electric vehicles that I thought I’d share.  Apparently, a survey shows that current EV customers are quite happy with their purchase, but a large number of non-EV drivers (the report doesn’t quantify this) don’t like the concept, insofar as it’s expensive and inconvenient.

I’m not sure we need a survey to reveal that people don’t like expense and inconvenience, nor a news article notifying us of the fact.

Every major car company has an EV program in place.  Why?  They see the obvious trends here: falling prices, better range, and more charging stations = improved customer value proposition.  Gradual but steady elimination of coal-fired power plants and more wind power = improved environmental characteristics.  Ever-expanding EV installed base = more word of mouth.

We’ll get there.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

I’d like to think that Avis Rent A Car’s purchase of Zipcar for $500 million is good news for the car-sharing industry and the social phenomenon behind it.  There is no question that car sharing is a terrific idea, in so many ways.  It cuts transportation costs for its customers, it reduces the carbon footprint of manufacturing vehicles and keeping them on the road, it reduces congestion, and, best of all, it cuts VMT (vehicles miles traveled) and thus gasoline consumption.  (more…)

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Here’s a terrific 6-minute-long documentary that Joe Romm’s team at Climate Progress put together, presenting the environmental dangers associated with drilling for oil in the Arctic.  Now that Shell is going to be leading the way, it may be good for us all to understand how much slower and feebler our response to a spill will be should it occur than was our response to BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill.

I interviewed Climate Progress’s Stephen Lacey for my current book project “Renewable Energy – Following the Money” at the organization’s offices last time I was in Washington D.C.   Unfortunately, Joe was out of town at the time; I would have loved to have popped in and shaken his hand; he’s a living legend.

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