A World Trade Organization (WTO) disputes panel held recently that India was wrong to include domestic content requirements (DCRs) as part of the bidding criteria for certain components of its procurement programme under the National Solar Mission (NSM).
This was expected. The panel held that these provisions were inconsistent with WTO requirements mandating equal legal treatment for domestically manufactured products with products imported from another WTO signatory, in this case the United States, which brought the case to the WTO.
What were these DCRs? In Phase I of the NSM, the Government of India requires that all modules for projects using crystalline silicon technology be sourced from India, while allowing solar project developers using thin-film technology to source modules from anywhere in the world.
India’s loss in this case was imminently predictable as a WTO disputes panel took exactly the same view in a case brought by Japan and the European Union (EU) against similar DCRs in the Ontario Power Authority’s feed-in tariff programme. Ontario lost that case, including on appeal, in May 2013.
The Geneva-based WTO is the world’s free trade policeperson, and rules on anything from vegetables to intellectual property to chocolates and mangoes. Unlike the United Nations (UN), which is largely a policy setting body, the WTO can impose far-reaching and biting trade sanctions on errant countries.
The recent ruling has met with predictable echoes in the media and the green community. To quote just two examples; “WTO Rains On India’s Solar Power Plan, Sets Back Climate Action” said the Huffington Post, rather dramatically. “WTO swats down India’s massive solar initiative” was the over the top response in The Grist.
I’m afraid this is just analysis-free rubbish. Almost three years ago, when the United States(US) formally initiated this dispute against India, I had suggested it wouldn’t be a bad thing for India to lose this case..
As suggested in that article, India failed to win the case arguing the “government procurement” exception, which allows government agencies have DCRs to procure products purchased for “government purposes” and not for commercial resale. The WTO held that the products subject to the DCRs – solar panels and modules – were not what the government-owned NTPC or SECI werepurchasing and that they were actually purchasing electricity generated using those panels. Further, the solar power purchased by NTPC or Solar Energy Corporation of India(SECI) under the NSM is sold on to electricity distribution companies and finally private consumers, which arguably is commercial resale.
The main reason why it is good for India to have lost the case is to do with the fact that Indian panels and modules are significantly more expensive than many imported ones, particularly those from China. This means that the power produced using this equipment is more expensive as well.
Under the NSM, judging in part from governmental glee at the rapidly declining tariffs quoted in successive bidding rounds, the Government of India is keen not just to add solar capacity as soon as possible, but also to do so at the lowest possible price.This will not happen using Indian equipment unless Indian manufacturers become more competitive. Also, imported panels often come bundled with cheaper project finance loans from national export credit agencies keen to support sales by their own domestic manufacturers.
Phase II Batch I of the NSM provided an excellent control experiment to illustrate the uncompetitive nature of Indian equipment and the price that India pays for it. Here, instead of earmarking domestic and open categories on the basis of the technology used, the Government of India simply allocated 375 MW each to the open and domestic categories. In this round of bidding, potential solar project developers were required to bid on the basis of the extent of Viability Gap Funding (VGF), which is essentially a subsidy,that they were seeking over and above the tariff set by SECI in the bid. As this table shows, the VGF sought by bidders under the DCR category was significantly higher than under the open category. In the former, the lowest winning bid came in at Rs.13,500,000 per MW and the highest at Rs.24,560,000 per MW. The equivalent numbers under the open category were Rs.1,750,000 and Rs.13,500,000!
Could those lamenting this WTO decision please explain why it is a good thing for the Indian taxpayer to over-subsidize inefficient and expensive Indian manufacturers? Or, in the case of tariff-based bids, for Indian power purchasers and consumers to pay higher tariffs for power generated using Indian manufactured equipment?
When the NSM was conceived, it contained a bit of a mishmash of policy objectives, straying somewhat from the primary goal of building out massive solar capacity. Encouraging domestic manufacturing is a great idea but there are other tools available to support India-based solar panel and module production. That, for example, is what Make in India is about. Even without that specific scheme, more traditional tools such as tax exemptions, deemed export benefits and low cost finance from bodies like IREDA are and have been available to the Government of India. Using these instead of DCRs allow it to support domestic manufacturing without breaching its international treaty obligations such as those under the WTO.
In any event, absolutely nothing has “rained on” or “swatted down” India’s solar programme under the NSM. The Government of India is free to continue adding capacity as rapidly as it would like to, it just can’t have DCRs in its procurement programmes. And if I was a betting man, I would wager that this ruling will do absolutely nothing to slow down the projected trajectory of growth of solar power in India.
It was widely believed that many in the UPA government were not in favour of DCRs, being unconvinced both of the merits of India’s case at the WTO as well as the perceived benefits DCRs would bring to the Indian solar power sector. The current NDA government would do well to adopt this view and not bother with a challenge to the ruling, which they are likely to lose and not benefit from in the least.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. The information, facts or opinions appearing in this article do not reflect the views of The News Minute and The News Minute does not assume any liability for the same.
Officials with Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners say construction could begin in 2017 on a planned 700-mile transmission line to carry wind-generated electricity across Oklahoma and Arkansas into Tennessee.
The planned Plains & Eastern Clean Line would carry the wind power from as-yet undeveloped wind farms in the Oklahoma Panhandle to Memphis, Tennessee, where it would connect to the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Mario Hurtado, Clean Line vice president for development, told The Journal Record that he expects the project, announced in 2010, to be operating by 2020.
“It takes a lot of time to put together an infrastructure project like this,” Hurtado said.
However, opposition has surfaced in Arkansas, where the state’s six-member congressional delegation has objected to the federal government possibly using eminent domain to take land for the project. The federal lawmakers say eminent domain should be decided at the state and local level.
“We continue to have serious concerns that this project erodes the rights of local communities and the state of Arkansas to have a seat at the table in the decision-making process,” according to a statement from Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton and Reps. Steve Womack, French Hill, Rick Crawford and Bruce Westerman following a Dec. 10 meeting with U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
All of the six lawmakers are Republicans.
Clean Line officials say about $7 billion will be invested in the project, boosting economies in both Oklahoma and Arkansas.
“Several hundred permanent, quality wind tech and support jobs will be created to operate and maintain the line and wind farms,” said Vicki Ayres-Portman, Clean Line outreach manager based in Guymon.
“Millions of dollars annually will go to counties, schools and landowners,” Ayres-Portman said. “It is a great way for our farmers and ranchers to diversify their income as well.”
In November, researchers from the center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas published a study that estimated the construction of operation of the transmission project will add more than $660 million to the economy in Arkansas.
November 16, 2015 – By Lorena Anderson, University Communications – Two overlapping research projects involving UC Merced professors could have big implications for the region’s economy and effects on renewable energy, water and wildfires. Professor Gerardo Diaz, with the School of Engineering, received nearly $900,000 through two grants: one from the California Energy Commission for the analysis and optimization of a 1-megawatt biomass gasification plant in North Fork, and the other from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study a gasification byproduct for use in agriculture and air and water filtration. (From left to right) Professor YangQuan Chen, Professor Gerardo Diaz, Phoenix Energy CEO and UC Merced Trustee Gregory Stangl and Phoenix Energy plant Manager Todd Machado are working on biochar projects together.
Diaz and a group of industry experts are working on a new gasification plant in North Fork, a little town in the foothills between Merced and Fresno. It’s a $5 million project that aims to take biomass from nearby Sierra forests and, using a gasifier, turn the dead material into energy.
Diaz, who has years of experience with gasification, is helping make sure the plant runs as efficiently as possible and, using an array of diagnostic equipment and tools, will evaluate the plant’s performance and the gas that’s produced.
Gasification is a thermo-chemical conversion process that essentially “cooks” biomass in an oxygen-starved environment. Without sufficient oxygen, the material does not burn, but gives off a hydrogen-rich gas, while the biomass converted into solid carbon. The “syngas” given off in the process is cooled and cleaned, and can be used as a substitute natural gas to create electricity or liquid fuels.
“There’s a lot of biomass out there now, especially because of the drought and climate change,” Diaz said. “This gasification plant will cut down on the financial and environmental costs of transporting material that is removed, help with forest management and restoration plans, reduce the amount of fuel for wildfires, and create jobs and ancillary services in the region.
“Part of what is so exciting about the project is the collaborative effort,” he said. “No single entity could do this alone, but we have a group with people from the industry, from academia, biomass managers — all experts in different areas.”
Gasifying biomass achieves several goals:
It is a cleaner way of producing renewable energy — gasification plants are considered carbon-negative because they produce solid carbon instead of CO2.
It rids forests and fields of materials that would otherwise rot and produce methane or help fuel wildfires. Wildfires regularly threaten lives and property, cost untold millions to control and clean up, and greatly contribute to poor air quality and climate change.
It produces biochar, a soil amendment that helps increase crop yield, refreshes worn out soils, retains soil moisture, reduces the need for fertilizers and sequesters carbon that would otherwise be emitted as greenhouse gases.
The biochar is where the two UC Merced projects overlap. Diaz and his co-principal investigator, Professor YangQuan Chen, are working with partner Phoenix Energy on yet another use for the byproduct — as activated carbon for water and air filtration systems.
“Our biochar co-product is almost as valuable as the energy we produce,” said Greg Stangl, CEO of Phoenix, a Merced-based renewable-energy company and longtime UC Merced partner.
Most of his company’s demands for biochar as an agricultural product come from outside the state, but Stangl, Diaz and Chen aim to change that. Diaz and Chen said the demand will grow when incentives for water-efficient agriculture are implemented in California.
Right now, though, they want to take the gasification leftovers and make activated carbon. Nationally, public utilities and industry spend about $2 billion a year on activated carbon, mostly from Asian coconut shells or coal-based carbon.
Diaz, Chen and Phoenix received more than $300,000 from the USDA to find the right way to activate the carbon.
“Carbon activation is almost as much an art as a science,” Stangl said. “You have to engineer the microscopic pores in the carbon so they trap the particular molecules you want them to filter out.”
In homes, activated carbon is used in water filters such as pitchers or sink-enhancements, and also in fish tank filters, air purifiers, home air filters and many other applications. Industrially, it’s used by local water treatment districts for water cleanup and for removing foul odors from the air.
Phoenix has the gasification plants, and Diaz has the expertise. Chen is an expert in precision controls, and will help optimize the reactor that performs the biochar activation process using steam and heat.
“We have a research enterprise based around biochar, but it’s not just the research,” Chen said. “This has a potentially huge benefit for California. This could be critical to the sustainability of the Central Valley.”
Stangl said this project has many layers, including reducing dependence on imported activated carbon, creating jobs to boost the area’s economy and helping the environment, including the creation of renewable energy.
“That’s why this partnership with UC Merced makes so much sense,” he said. Source: UC Merced
Wind turbines kill between 650,000 to 1.3 million bats every year, according to a 2013 study cited by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If Ingram’s research holds up to scrutiny, policies promoting wind energy are hacking out at millions of dollars in potential benefits for farmers.
For years, critics of wind power have pointed out that turbines, with their giant whirling blades, pose a threat to federally-protected birds and bats. Bats, like the Hoary bat, seek for tall trees to look for mates. Sometimes the tallest “trees” turn out to be wind turbines, which can kill bats through blunt force trauma or through barotrauma (severe lung trauma from the change in pressure the turbines cause).
The Obama administration was initially loathe to prosecute companies for killing birds or bats with wind turbines, but in 2013 the government fined Duke Energy $1 million for killing 160 birds at two wind farms in Wyoming. Since then, the administration has passed a rule permitting wind turbines to kill birds for 30 years.
Bird enthusiasts sued the Obama administration last year over its 30-year take rule, saying it wasn’t justified by the science.
The wind industry has also been much more conscious about how its operations impact wildlife. The Guardian reports the wind industry agreed “to begin idling turbines during the spring and fall bat migration peaks” to protect bats.
“To minimise any impact on power generation, the wind companies have agreed to keep turbine blades still on calm nights, when they wouldn’t likely be producing power anyway,” The Guardian reports. “Scientists estimate the move could reduce turbine-related bat fatalities by at least a third.”
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A new breakthrough in solar energy has the potential to make it cheaper and more viable as a source of renewable energy, according to researchers at Lund University and Uppsala University in Sweden.
Historically, developing solar energy cells was a fairly expensive process because they needed to use an expensive metal called ruthenium in order to adequately capture sunlight and convert it into usable energy. Unfortunately, attempting to replace this expensive material with a more usable one proved to be a challenge.
“Many researchers have tried to replace ruthenium with iron, but without success. All previous attempts have resulted in molecules that convert light energy into heat instead of electrons, which is required for solar cells to generate electricity,” said Villy Sundström, Professor of Chemical Physics at Lund University.
Luckily, researchers have found a way around using ruthenium. The technique behind the breakthrough involves using nanostructured titanium dioxide and a dye that can be applied to solar energy cells to capture and convert energy without losing it through heat.
These new materials will finally allow scientists to use iron and lower the cost of making the power cells. This will undoubtedly lower the cost of production, which is a huge step towards making solar energy more marketable.
“The advantage of using iron is that it is a common element in nature. It can provide inexpensive and environmentally friendly applications of solar energy in the future,” said Kenneth Wärnmark, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Lund University.
In addition to furthering research on solar energy, the breakthrough also holds promise for solar fuels – an area of development wherein the sun is used to turn water and carbon dioxide into energy-rich molecules. The full study has been published in Nature Chemistry.
Government subsidies have been an important lifeline for renewable energy, helping to make different technologies viable even when costs are not in their favor.
But at what point will the industry be competitive enough with fossil fuels that subsidies will no longer be necessary?
It’s possible that will happen sooner, rather than later.
The head of the U.S. Department of Energy now believes renewable energy is doing well enough that subsidies could end.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz now believes renewable energy can be cost-competitive with fossil fuels, even without subsidies, reports the Washington Examiner.
On a call with reporters earlier this week, Moniz said the Obama Administration supports an extension of tax credits for solar, but that he believes the industry could continue to grow without them.
Photovoltaic solar power field at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee
He said recent cost reductions in the solar industry have “been incredible.”
Moniz expects the cost of a rooftop solar panel to quickly fall by 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, which he claims would make solar “extremely competitive” with natural gas and grid-based electricity sources.
A report released by the Department of Energy earlier this month also claims that the cost of wind power is falling, and that wind-generated electricity could soon become cost-competitive with more traditional sources as well.
The American Wind Energy Association trade group says that the success of wind energy varies in different parts of the country, and that steady incentives are still needed to make it viable everywhere.
The industry needs “stable, predictable policy” to continue at its current rate of growth, Tom Kiernan–American Wind Energy Association CEO–said earlier this month.
Congress allowed wind tax credits to expire at the end of 2014, but this summer the Senate Finance Committee passed a measure that would temporarily reinstate some form of wind-energy tax credits.
However, it did not address solar tax credits, which are set to phase out at the end of next year.
LAS VEGAS — There’s a solar battle brewing between lawmakers in Carson City over whether solar customers are getting too much of a good deal when it comes to selling electricity back to the grid.
Senate Bill 374 could dictate which agency will be in charge of deciding if there will or won’t be a cap on the solar energy generation. NV Energy and solar companies have been lobbying the legislature for months trying to get lawmakers to swing the vote their way.
At times, the two groups have even targeted each other through radio and TV ads.
One ad released by the solar industry said, “People like having the choice to go solar, no matter what NV Energy says. Politicians in Carson City are caving to pressure, and will force this industry to shut down at the end of the month.”
The war of words between NV Energy and the Alliance for Solar Choice stems from the debate about what the state should do with it’s net metering policy for electric customers with solar panels.
“Net metering says if there’s excess and you want to push it back to the grid. You will get a credit for that on your electric bill,” said Paul Thomson, Director for the Governor’s Office of Energy.
Thomson says solar customers may hit the net metering limit of 3 percent by this summer. When that happens, there won’t be any more credits for new solar installations on rooftops.
A spokesperson for NV Energy said the actual cost of electricity is about five cents per kilowatt-hour. The retail cost to customers is 12 cents per kilowatt-hour. The remaining seven cents pays for infrastructure and distribution.
“Raising the net metering cap increases costs to all customers, and we oppose putting upward pressure on rates,” said Jennifer Schurict, NV Energy Spokesperson. “We continue to work with all stakeholders to advance solar development in our state while creating long-term rate stability for all customers.”
The credit for solar customers means they’re getting a pass on paying for costs associated with delivering electricity which means millions of dollars could be shifted to non-solar customers, according to the utility companies.
However, Bryan Miller with the Alliance for Solar Choice said that’s not true.
“The only problem with that statement is that the commission extensively studied those claims for a year, and completely debunked them,” Miller said.
If SB 374 passes, the Public Utilities Commission will get to decide what to do with the solar cap, but the commission hasn’t released any details about what it will do.
Credit the ice ages for making Indiana a good place to turn wind into electricity. All that glacial action scoured flat the northern half of the state and sculpted the perfect terrain for wind turbines.
A few million years later, the Environmental Protection Agency is about to use regulatory fiat to make the state even more attractive to industrial windmills.
New EPA rules coming down the pike will cut carbon emissions from coal and gas power plants for the first time and boost demand for clean power such as wind. One result: Indiana could see two or three times as many wind farms as it has now.
In its latest projection of U.S. wind energy needs, the federal Department of Energy says only five other states are in line to boost their wind power sectors as much as or more than Indiana.
Indiana has a good shot at tripling its wind power capacity in the next decade or so, from the current 1,744 megawatts to 5,000 or more, says Sean Brady, Midwest policy manager for the wind power advocacy group Wind on the Wires.
That would require erecting 2,000 wind turbines to join the 1,031 that now dot the state’s landscape north of Indianapolis. “Indiana has quite a large upside. It has a great opportunity for wind development,” Brady said.
If growth of that magnitude occurs, investment in the state’s wind farms would have to soar from $3.7 billion to more than $10 billion, making wind farms one of the most expensive industrial installations in state history.
Whether wind power actually has that kind of upside, however, depends on a few cards being played just so.
For one thing, not everyone in the public policy arena thinks that wind is the way to go. It is, after all, a variable power source that you can’t rely on to generate the juice when needed. (Indiana’s four-season winds are especially fickle, with a fivefold difference in breeziness between the least windy month, August, and the windiest, November. Regional power grid operator MISO tracks wind power use by the hour and posts it online.)
Wind power, in addition, is expensive to install ($2 million or more per turbine) and controlled to a great extent by foreign companies, which doesn’t bode well for winning a lot of public support.
Also, demand for wind energy depends on Congress renewing the federal tax credit that wind developers rely on to be price-competitive with other forms of energy. The credit expired at the end of last year and renewal isn’t a given.
And one last thing: The proposed EPA CO2 rules are fraught with sticky issues, gray areas and unknowns that could tip in favor of wind or against it, depending on how they’re finally written.
“So much is up in the air,” said Joan Soller, director of resource planning at Indianapolis Power & Light Co.
One particularly sticky issue: EPA’s proposed “clean power plan” rules don’t give a utility any credit, under the CO2-lowering mandates, for using green energy in its generation portfolio if it buys wind power from outside its home state.
If that proviso stands, Indiana’s wind industry could be hurt because it currently sells the bulk of its power to non-Indiana utilities. They would be newly motivated to drop their Indiana contracts and buy their green energy from wind farms in their own states.
Utilities and other interests are lobbying the EPA to drop the rule giving credit only to home-state-bought green energy. The final EPA rules are expected out this summer. States also will have a say in the matter, so they’ll have to be lobbied, too. (Some states also are fighting the CO2 rules in court.)
Whatever happens, Indiana likely won’t lose its standing as a big player in wind energy. It’s just too good a place to site wind farms.
The northern reaches of the state not only are prairie-flat, but they’re close to Chicago, Indianapolis and other big population centers that gobble megawatts of electricity. The state also overlaps the territories of two electrical system operators that distribute power from Canada to Louisiana and points east and west.
And, of course, it’s windy.
Wind farm developers in Indiana are already scouting out locations for new farms as the new EPA mandates march closer.
“We’re actively marketing sites to … gauge interest” from power users, said Ryan Brown, an executive vice president at EDP Renewables. “Expansion is definitely possible.”
Spanish-owned EDP already controls about 40 percent of the state’s wind turbines through its Meadow Lake wind farm in White County and its newly opened Headwaters farm in Randolph County.
Most of Indiana’s turbines were erected from 2008 to 2012. Growth has since slowed. Last year, Headwaters was the only major wind farm to open.
A proposed project in Benton County and another in and around Rush County are seen as leading contenders to be built next. Those projects would have about 70 turbines each.
In Indiana, “the easiest-to-develop projects have been developed,” and much of the best available ground for catching steady wind is taken, said Tristan Vance, director of the Indiana Office of Energy Development. “But I think we will see future projects here. We’ve been fairly open for wind development.”
Though the best sites for wind farms might indeed be snapped up, technological improvements have given the industry taller turbines with larger and lighter blades that capture more wind at higher altitudes than older, smaller turbines.
That should allow wind developers to continue to profit from Indiana’s wind at new sites with new turbines, said Brown of EDP.
At its Headwaters farm, EDP installed new turbines 312 feet tall from ground to gearhouse, with blades 180 feet long. Turbines at EDP’s older farm in White County along I-65 are 262 feet tall with blade lengths of 134 to 144 feet.
Because the bigger machines can catch more wind, they generate electricity about 40 percent of time, compared with about 33 percent of the time for the shorter turbines, Brown said.
(Turbines likely won’t get any taller. The Federal Aviation Administration requires special, harder-to-get approvals for turbines that exceed 500 feet from their base to the tip of an upright blade. The new turbines at Headwaters are just about at that 500-foot limit.)
With the bigger turbines, “Indiana is looking very attractive” for wind farm development down the road, said Michael Goggin, senior director of research for the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group for the wind industry. “At that height, (wind) is a very attractive resource in Indiana. It’s like being in the plains at that altitude.”
Any growth in wind farms also would put more money in the hands of farmland owners, who rent the land needed for the turbines. Average rents in Indiana now run about $5,000 a year per turbine, which amounts to about $5 million a year in statewide turbine rent payments.
For those who can get it, wind turbine rent “is pretty significant, especially if you have multiple turbines on a farm,” said Justin Schneider, senior policy adviser and counsel at Indiana Farm Bureau. “It can take off some of the risk of crop production if you have a bad year.”
Schneider said he thinks most Indiana farmland owners would be eager to rent their land for any new wind farm proposals that pop up.
Still, pushback to wind persists at policymaking levels. And that opposition could harden as wind energy use spreads and utilities are forced to spend billions of dollars nationally building transmission lines to handle the increased flow of power from new wind farms, said Tom Tanton, director of science and technology assessment at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute in Washington, D.C. The group has done studies suggesting federal subsidies to wind energy don’t make economic sense.
Tanton said wind farm developers are able to push “hidden costs” of wind energy onto utilities and ratepayers. Those costs include gas turbine plants required to back up wind power and balance its fluctuating energy flows caused by intermittent wind, he said.
Existing backup power sources can handle the fluctuations of wind energy now, since it supplies only about 4.5 percent of U.S. electrical use, Tanton said. But if wind energy boosts its share of the market much beyond that, a fleet of costly new backup gas turbine plants that can turn on and off with short notice will be required, he said.
IPL’s director of project development, Richard Benedict, said it’s tough for a utility to even calculate the true cost of electricity from wind energy because of the need for backup capacity.
Wind-generated electricity is so variable it almost doesn’t count as power in a conventional sense. IPL, for instance, has long-term contracts to buy 300 megawatts of electricity from wind farms in Indiana and out-of-state. But the Indianapolis utility can’t count those megawatts when calculating its official electrical capacity because they’re not reliably available, Benedict said.
“We (only) get it when the wind blows,” he said.
Still, the coming of the CO2 rules might force IPL to buy much more wind-generated electricity in the future. Under its pending rules, the EPA won’t allow IPL to claim CO2-lowering credits for the 66 percent of wind energy it now buys out-of-state, or for converting its coal-fired Martinsville plant to natural gas (because the conversion won’t happen by the deadline set in the rules).
If IPL can’t get credit for those green energy moves, it might have to turn to buying in-state wind energy in a big way.
IPL officials are trying to get their minds around the fact that they might have to buy as much as 1,000 megawatts of wind energy to meet the coming carbon-lowering standards. That move alone would create the demand for a 60 percent build-out, of about 600 turbines, in Indiana’s wind farms.
Call Star reporter Jeff Swiatek at (317) 444-6483. Follow him on Twitter: @JeffSwiatek.
Wind power in Indiana
(2014 data)
Turbines: 1,031 on six wind farms.
Electrical capacity: 1,744 megawatts.
Electrical output: 3,495 thousand MWh (0.4% increase from 2013).
Share of U.S. wind energy produced: 3% (enough to power 321,000 houses).
Largest month for production: November (507 thousand MWh).
Smallest month for production: August (101 thousand MWh).
Largest Indiana wind farm: Fowler Ridge (355 turbines in Benton County, operated by BP Wind).
Annual land rent paid by wind farms: More than $5 million (typical rent is $5,000 per turbine).
Wind energy employment: About 1,500 jobs.
Investment in wind farms: $3.7 billion.
Proposed new wind farms: 200 megawatts (Wayne, Henry counties by EDP Renewables); 150 MW (Benton County) by Amazon and partners; 140 MW (Fayette, Rush, Henry counties) by NextEnergy Resources. If built, they would increase Indiana’s wind farm generating capacity by 28 percent.
A proof-of-concept power plant using excess energy from renewable resources to produce methane from biomass will be tested in Sweden.
Developed by engineers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the system could help efficiently balance electrical grids strained due to the fluctuation of power production by renewable resources such as wind and solar.
The pilot system, called the DemoSNG unit, is mobile and about the size of a conventional shipping container.
“DemoSNG shows the way to store green power and transport it in our gas grids in the form of methane,” said Thomas Kolb, Head of the Engler-Bunte Institute of KIT, who worked on the project.
The researchers believe producing methane from the excess energy has tangible advantages as the infrastructure for methane and gas distribution already exists.
In addition to producing methane from biomass-based carbon dioxide, the surplus energy could also be used to power electrolysis to produce hydrogen.
“The variable operation modes were the biggest challenge during development,” explained Siegfried Bajohr of the Engler-Bunte Institute (EBI) of KIT, the project’s leader.
The DemoSNG unit achieves better results than previous concepts thanks to the use of a nickel-based catalyst contained in metallic honeycomb-like structures, similar to those used in cars to neutralise exhaust gases.
The system produces hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide by gasification of biomass and turns those directly into methane and water.
If further green power excess is left after the completion of the methanation, it can be employed to power electrolysis of the resulting water to produce hydrogen.
“As conventional methanation processes reach their limits at this point, we have developed a new reactor concept,” Bajohr said. ”The DemoSNG plant shows that our concept also works in a large-scale pilot plant.”
The team has completed first tests and is about to ship the unit to Köping in Sweden for integration into gas flows of a biomass gasification plant utilising wooden residues.
The team said the system’s innovative honeycomb catalyst makes the technology suitable for operations of plants of various sizes including smaller and medium facilities.
It is widely known that among all the sources of alternative energy, the one with the greatest potential is solar. How could it be otherwise? Staggering amounts of solar radiation strike the Earth each day; the only trick is capturing more of it.
In a new report, the Environment America Research and Policy Center seeks to visualize and quantify this potential as it pertains to the United States. The report argues that the U.S. “has the potential to produce more than 100 times as much electricity from solar PV and concentrating solar power (CSP) installations as the nation consumes each year.” It adds that every single state could generate more solar electricity than its residents currently consume.
Here’s a visualization, showing states that can get 1 to 5 times their current energy needs from solar, states that can get 5 to 25 times their energy, states that can get 25 to 100 times what they’re using, and states that can get over 100 times their current needs:
Here again, the map is based on data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which laid out the percentage of potential rooftops that could host solar panels in various climates.
Granted, it is not that all of this solar potential will necessarily ever be exploited. But then again, we only need to exploit some of it. “It’s technically achievable, and we only have to capture a fraction of it, one hundredth of it to get all of our current electricity needs,” says Environment America’s energy program director Rob Sargent.
Chris Mooney reports on science and the environment.
A Dutch company cased The Archimedes has developed a small, highly efficient, and silent rooftop wind energy generator called the Liam1, which it claims could generate half the power a typical house would need, and which they say would be ideal for combining with solar rooftop PV panels.
The company states that the Liam F1 turbine could generate 1,500 kWh of energy at wind speeds of 5m/s, enough to cover half of an average household’s energy use. … When used in combination with rooftop solar panels, a house could run off grid. “When there is wind you use the energy produced by the wind turbine; when the sun is shining you use the solar cells to produce the energy,” The Archimedes CEO Richard Ruijtenbeek said.
The Liam’s blades are shaped like a Nautilus shell. The design allows it to point into the wind to capture the most amount of energy, while also producing very little sound. The inventor of the turbine Marinus Mieremet says that the power output is 80 percent of the theoretical maximum energy that could be harnessed from the wind.
“Generally speaking, there is a difference in pressure in front and behind of the rotor blades of a windmill. However, this is not the case with the Liam F1. The difference in pressure is created by the spatial figure in the spiral blade. This results in a much better performance. Even when the wind is blowing at an angle of 60 degrees into the rotor, it will start to spin. We do not require expensive software: because of its conical shape, the wind turbine yaws itself automatically into the optimal wind direction. Just like a wind vane. And because the wind turbine encounters minimal resistance, he is virtually silent,” said Mieremet.
The Archimedes is now working on an even smaller turbine that could fit on top of lamposts, boats, and smaller applications.
With the announcement today of the EPA’s proposed new standards for reducing carbon emissions, we have all the more reason to look to renewable energy options to supply our energy needs.
