Home › Blog › Page 1573

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

PhotobucketWhat a great day I had today in San Francisco, starting with breakfast with Eutricity’s Brent Marsh.  Here’s a company with game-changing technology in intelligent building management.

Those of us who were around the development of IT over the last few decades saw countless struggles to define standards. In reaction to IBM’s dominance as a set of proprietary, “closed” architecture (for a time, a quite successful attempt to force the world to buy computing systems and networks from Big Blue) a set of standards for “open systems” came into being and evolved over time.

Now, predictably, that story is playing itself out in the energy industry as part of Smart Grid. The DoE has defined 77 standards that suggest how devices should talk to one another – all the way from the generator to the load. 12 of these 77 apply to what happens inside the building, i.e., once the power is within the walls that contain the load. Within this space, OBIX, “open building information exchange,” is a complex set of rules that govern the basis flow of information that deal with lighting, heating, air conditioning, etc. – all aimed at reducing the amount of energy we waste, using what we need to rationally, and responding intelligently to peak demands.

I hope readers will check out Eutricity; I’m betting on them in the race to further refine – and become part of – these critically important energy standards.

Tagged with: , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

A reader from Colorado writes in:

I have argued for a number of years that the fundamental problem with the conversion is the large amount of capital that everyone has to invest, and with considerable uncertainty. 　Some examples:

  • For a residential homeowner, insulation and electrification of heating is a major investment — $15-20K for a ground-source heat pump for an existing home, for example.  New windows at >$1K per window.  Such investments are generally NOT reflected in the price one gets when reselling and take a VERY long time, especially relative to the average time that the owner stays in the house, to recover the investment.
  • Building a wind farm can be a very uncertain thing. In most cases, I’ll be trying to negotiate construction of the transmission link to get my power to market. T. Boone Pickens’ grand adventure died when it turned out that the state wasn’t going to build a transmission system for him.　　There’s usually no guarantee that all of the power I can generate will be dispatched — consider the recent events in the Pacific NW where wind generators have been told to idle turbines.
  • Electrifying the freight rail network in the US is a very large undertaking — half of all freight tonnage in the US is coal, and it’s a long haul from Wyoming to the places that much of that coal is burned. Locomotives have to be replaced. Aside from coal, the railroads largely gave up on scheduled freight service years ago. To replace long-haul trucking, the railroads will have to go back to schedules, and that means more rolling stock.

The biggest risk, IMO, as to whether the US can weather the transition storm, is the availability of capital. And it’s not just the total, but the timing, and avoiding bad decisions.  Personally, I think ethanol is a dead-end (opinions vary, of course).  Billions of dollars put into ethanol plants is money that, again IMO, should be going into electrification of transportation.  In Colorado, where I live, fast convenient light rail in the Denver suburbs will almost certainly displace more gasoline usage than the construction of ethanol plants.  Having done that, we could worry about how to replace coal and natural gas.

It’s all about the capital and the uncertainty surrounding it.

You make some excellent points here. Lack of investor certainty is definitely a cause – perhaps the cause — of the slowness to move to renewables. But the question in my mind is: What’s causing investor uncertainty?

It seems to me that it lies in Washington D.C.

As we can all see, the cause of renewables is receiving precious little support from our elected leaders at the federal level. The politicians are hard at work, developing their strategies and sharpening their rhetoric aiming for victory in 2012, and are realizing that it is a piece of cake to sell voters the idea that clean energy is too expensive and too dangerous to the economic recovery. The fact that this is untrue does not come into play. Can you remember the last time that “the truth” vs. “the story” was prominent in political discourse? I can’t.

Thus:

1) Would-be investors in renewables remain nervous, as they simply cannot figure out what will happen here next. Understandably, they’re taking their capital elsewhere, or just keeping it parked safely on the sidelines. And,

2) The politicians’ buddies in oil and coal (note that the oil industry employs 7000 lobbyists) continue with business as usual, unhampered by the pesky competition that renewables represents.

Meanwhile, we have (or at least had) a few brave people in some of the state governments who have passed some significant legislation at that level. Thus, the clean energy industry can at least continue to limp forward.

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

In April 2011 report, a new report was released by NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory).  It takes a look at American awareness, attitudes, knowledge and usage of renewable energy and the study further breaks down these views regionally. Some surprising results came from the study.

The data was taken from the Natural Marketing Institute’s Lifestyle of Health & (more…)

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

A big part of my quest to understand the migration to renewables is wrapping my arms around the issue of costs. I’m headed for San Francisco on Tuesday to conduct two book interviews specifically on this subject; in one, I’ve engaged a true energy techie to walk me through the latest, most detailed reports that compare the costs of various forms of power generation.

Apparently, I’m not the only one struggling to make sense of this. And this subject comes up even more frequently now that nuclear is so prominent in our headlines. I’ve long predicted that, despite the rhetoric, we’d never see another nuclear power plant built in the US, and I based my belief on cost alone. Even if we can magically get a grip on operational safety and waste disposal issues, the costs of nuclear are scary – and unlikely to improve. It strikes me as unlikely that any amount of political and economic power has sufficient strength to sell a solution that – along with all the other things that people find repellant – actually costs more to boot.

Again, it’s not easy to get hard cost estimates, since the bidding for power plants is kept secret, and so most of the figures we have are generated by private institutions – many (all?) of which have their own certain biases.

But here’s an article on the cost of energy generated by various sources that quotes both an agency in the German government and the California Energy Commission, a public agency mandated with the task of periodically examining the costs of various electricity generation technologies that may be used in the state to meet demand.  Both suggest that I may be correct.

Tagged with: ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

I don’t have money burning a hole in my pocket that I can’t wait to get into the stock market, but I do think a well-timed investment in the electric vehicle space makes sense. To that end, I’m always looking for publicly traded companies that are about to enter the EV space in a big, strategic way with products that sound competitive.

Ever hear of Yulon? It’s a huge contract Taiwanese manufacturing company that does a great deal of auto work for the Asian OEMs, especially Nissan. They have their own brand, “Luxgen,” that’s just about to enter the EV space, using a drive train made by my good friends at AC Propulsion.

I was out at the AC Propulsion R&D facility last week, speaking with CEO Tom Gage, and he seemed encouraged about Yulon. Of course, there is a lot that he and his people can’t say, so I try to read between the lines. I ask questions like:

“So you must be working with a large engineering team over there. How’s that going? Are there bugs in integrating your product? I’m sure certain members of the team are brighter than others. Does that concern you? Does management seem engaged, or do they have bigger fish to fry?”

Overall, things sound positive.

And I find it quite credible that terrific EVs will be coming out of Taiwan. Of course, their own market is small, and, given their issues with Mainland China, it’s not easy for them to sell into that market either. But they’re brilliant technologists, as they’ve proven over the past couple of decades, and the whole rest of the world is champing at the bit for high-quality, reasonably priced EVs.

Sounds like a good bet to me.

Tagged with: , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

For years, Portland, Oregon has been maintaining – and heightening – its commitment to leading the migration to clean energy and electric transportation. Here’s what they’re doing in solar chargers for EVs in public parking lots.

Not to quibble over details, but the company’s spokesperson needs to refine his language.  When he says, “The electrons created eight minutes ago in the sun were collected here on the surface of this system and put directly into your car,” he means, “The photons that left the sun eight minutes ago caused electrons to flow in this system that we put directly into your car.”

Whatever.  His heart’s obviously in the right place.  Way to go, Portland!

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

I’m always interested in articles that speculate on the “electric vehicle adoption curve,” i.e., the pace at which EVs will be integrated into our transportation mix. Here’s a piece by Steven Cohen, Executive Director, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, that concludes with roughly my own belief: “I suspect that the transition to electric vehicles will happen suddenly and unpredictably; perhaps sooner than we think.”

The author comes at his conclusion by going in a few directions that I don’t feel have too much relevance: the driving habits of lifestyles of those living around New York City (where public transportation is excellent and the cost of car ownership is off the charts) and the impact of Shai Agassi’s Better Place battery swapping model (which, in the US, I think is negligible).  Having said that, there are some terrific observations:

The issue is how long will it take to overcome the momentum of sunk costs and old habits. Perhaps the cell phone provides a good model. Ask young people if they ever plan to own a landline phone. Look at the declining price per minute of phone time, and the increased use of phones, text messages and e-mail. These changes have been quite rapid and were not predicted by anyone. While an auto is far more expensive than a phone, and represents a major household investment, people seem open to new thinking about cars.

Exactly. Once this migration begins, and the common American starts talking to his neighbor and understanding how “unscary” electric transportation really is, I predict that it will be a matter of just a decade or so until we’ll find it hard to remember what all the shouting was about.

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized
Now, please provide a few sentences — or more if you wish — that express your overall reaction to the idea that population growth and energy resource depletion will have dire consequences over the coming years.

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Energy Storage

I’m happy to report that my hometown of Philadelphia has recently implemented energy efficiency technology on the trains I ride virtually every time I go back.  The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), the nation’s sixth-largest public transportation system and the fifth-largest electricity user in the Philadelphia metro region, has cut a deal with Viridity Energy to install an advanced battery storage system to recapture and deploy power from the trains’ regenerative braking.

I’ve seen a variety of competitive energy storage concepts, designed to accomplish the same task, and I find it interesting that we’ve wound up, at least for now, with batteries. Notably, it appears that flywheels make sense in this environment; the angular momentum that makes them impractical in vehicles with low turning radiuses is not a significant factor on trains.

In any case, go Philadelphia!

Tagged with: , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

A reader points out:

I feel that as long as clean energy has proponents who use words such as “elite, rich, etc”, it will continue to turn off a lot of people. I have gone to zoning meetings in which rabid proponents of clean energy have made comments on my coal to biomass developments and have provided a negative effect to the zoning.

Thanks for writing, and yes, you make a good point.

One factor that makes the migration to renewables so interesting is the many different motivations and political viewpoints one encounters. In fact, the cast of characters involved in renewables runs from business pragmatists who dispassionately want to capitalize on a solid market opportunity – all the way to “children of the 60s,” who don’t care a whit about money, but want to save the planet from the evils wrought by capitalism and the exploitation inherent in it. Most of us lie somewhere in between.

I’m not sure there is anything that you or I can do about this. Speaking for myself, I’m happy to have people onboard regardless of their motivation.

Here’s an extreme case: I met a guy the other day who was about as adamant a Global Warming Denier as one could possibly imagine. Here’s a well-educated, apparently refined businessman who referred to the theory (held by the vast majority of climate scientists) as an “evil lie” and to Al Gore as a “bastard.” Yet he thinks clean tech is important for other reasons and works hard in coaching entrepreneurs in this space (effectively, I might add) in presenting their business plans to investors.

Holy cow, I thought.  Is this guy for real?  I would have bet that such a combination of viewpoints couldn’t exist in the same human being.  In fact, I smiled when I first heard this, as I thought he was kidding.  But no, he was as serious as a heart attack. 

In any case:  Do I understand him? Nope. Do I want him around? Every day of the week.

Tagged with: ,