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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Energy Storage

Many times the subject of power storage has come up on this forum. Today it becomes an issue for me personally again and this is an ongoing issue.

Not quite 3.5 years ago I purchased 4 deep cycle 12 volt 125 Amp hour (Ah) batteries for my little system to replace the ones I was using that had gone bad. That amounts to 500Ah of batteries for $400.00. These batteries are once again shot and I am in search of a replacement for flooded lead acid (FLA) batteries. With an expected life of 3-7 years at the very best these batteries are, in my humble opinion, completely unsuitable for the renewable energy industry. Also the recommended depth of discharge for a “long” life is 30% and preferable less meaning a 500Ah pack is really only good for about 166Ah. Add to that temperature considerations, max rate of charge and discharge and various other factors and the suitability goes downhill very fast. I am loath to go for FLA batteries again as they are unsuitable for renewable energy in so many ways, however, the alternatives are far more expensive in the short term. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

The resort and hotel business is extremely competitive and costly. As more and more hotels become increasingly extravagant, they require evermore energy to run. Many are switching to green renewable energies to cut costs and in theory they could eventually become self-sufficient, or even produce an energy surplus. The easiest way to start to do this is with the addition of solar power. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

It’s been several years since I interviewed Michael Scholey, CEO of Emcycle, on the 2GreenEnergy Video Report.  Since that time, I’ve come across an uncountable number of designs for small urban commuter vehicles, like this novel approach.  Personally, I’m still a fan of the Emcycle (see photos in the video linked above), with its fully enclosed compartment.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with the designer of a kind of open-cab superized golf-cart that he proposed to sell in crowded urban environments, and I recall that the fellow was particularly excited about London.

“Not to be rude, but have you ever been to London?” I inquired casually.  “The reason I ask is that they get rain an average of 221 days per year; I mean, it’s the weather forecast for two out of every three days.  You may want to rethink this.”

Here’s the Emcycle website for anyone who may be interested.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

It’s no secret that the U.S. lags most of the rest of the developed world in terms of the adoption of renewable energy.  It would be nice if there were a singular cause for this that we could simply identify and eliminate, but it’s not that simple.  Sure, there’s the bickering on Capitol Hill, where an entire party is calling for a rollback of environmental regulation and the end to governmental support for green energy.  And sure, this type of stupidity is quite damaging to any vision we Americans may have as potential leaders in the clean energy space in the 21st Century.

But a significant portion of the problem here isn’t that obvious (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Those of us old enough to remember can recall the day when cars sold in the U.S. – even new cars — didn’t require seat belts.  And the debate here was fierce; public safety advocates had their reports detailing how many lives would be saved each year, but the auto industry insisted that such legislation would ruin the industry: it would increase the cost of cars to an uncompetitive level, it would irritate customers who could feel “confined” by the devices themselves.  Eventually the industry gave in, lives were saved, and within a few years, it was hard to imagine getting in a car and not fastening our seat belt.  This scenario has played itself out in literally hundreds of places, from new safety devices like air bags and anti-lock braking, to environmental issues like catalytic converters; the industry has a long record of fighting advancements that would protect the health and safety of its customers.

Fast-forward to 2013, though, and the situation is a bit more complicated.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Solar Thermal

When we generate energy from renewable sources, we normally contemplate putting it on the grid.  But then the issue arises: What about intermittency, and the need to back it up with dispatchable sources?  People often forget that distributed generation does not face that challenge – whether it’s used at home, or in the commercial/industrial arena. 

Here’s an article that highlights the use of concentrated solar power (CSP) in enhanced oil recovery.  Obviously, I’d be happier if that oil stayed where it was, but if you’re hell-bent on extracting it, and you need lots of heat to facilitate the process, CSP is sure better than burning more fossil fuels. 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Anyone who discounts what Bill Gates says on any issue has some explaining to do.  Recall that, when he ran Microsoft, Gates would famously make himself available to talk with employees who wished to present their ideas, but was aggressively unforgiving of people who hadn’t done their homework, and were unable to support their positions in reasoned and compelling ways.

But forget about IT, and simply consider Gates’ devotion to philanthropy, in which he uses reason (and his not inconsiderable fortune and influence) to tackle the big challenges that our civilization faces.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I’ve been thinking about my upcoming talk at the monthly meeting of the Santa Barbara Savvy Investors, and I’ve decided to make this multi-varied, taking on a great number of different issues associated with our civilization’s use of energy.  At a minimum, I’ll walk my audience through the most important big issues, which I would summarize as follows:

Our expanding population sports a growing hunger for energy, which, because it’s fed by fossil fuels, is causing a number of different and extremely daunting problems.  In particular, our scientists tell us that we’re in the process of ruining our planet from the perspective of its 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.  Homo sapiens didn’t evolve as a species that comes together and decides to make sweeping changes.  And the situation here in the U.S. is plagued by something even thornier: the fossil fuel industry has 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 soon to dominate the modern world.  Not only are we not leading, we’re not even following very well; in fact, 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?  I believe so.  It’s a function of communicating the fundamental truth in the paragraph above to as many people as possible.

Please — “tell your friends,” as they say.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

In a few days we’ll have a new version of the 2GreenEnergy website live, written to take advantage of some new features of WordPress.  There will be only a few visible changes, one of which is the full use of the “nature” drawings (a few of which are on the home page currently) that we commissioned from a young artist in Vermont, Connor Finnerty.  Thanks, Connor; I thought you did a fabulous job.

I hope readers will notify me if there are any bugs we didn’t see.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

My friend Cameron Atwood sent me this masterpiece on environmental activism by Bill McKibben, and asked me to comment on what he writes about peak oil.

I believe he’s correct; I think money and technology will converge to keep the world in fossil energy for a very long time to come.  We are out of cheap conventional oil, but we’re nowhere near out of unconventional oil, and we (unfortunately) have coal coming out our ears.   (more…)

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