Category — energy

“Current State is a real-time energy use monitoring system and timer for powered devices combined into one. The Current State system is made up of two parts, a mobile application for you cell phone, which allows you to control and monitor electricity use from anywhere, and a series of Plug-Ends that give you control over the products around your house.”

[The Greener Grass | via Kitsune Noir]

The following was written by STEVE LOHR for the New York Times.

Giving people the means to closely monitor and adjust their electricity use lowers their monthly bills and could significantly reduce the need to build new power plants, according to a yearlong government study.

The results of the research project by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the Energy Department, released Wednesday, suggest that if households have digital tools to set temperature and price preferences, the peak loads on utility grids could be trimmed by up to 15 percent a year.

Over a 20-year period, this could save $70 billion on spending for power plants and infrastructure, and avoid the need to build the equivalent of 30 large coal-fired plants, say scientists at the federal laboratory.

The demonstration project was as much a test of consumer behavior as it was of new technology. Scientists wanted to find out if the ability to monitor consumption constantly would cause people to save energy — just as studies have shown that people walk more if they wear pedometers to count their steps.

In the Olympic Peninsula, west of Seattle, 112 homes were equipped with digital thermostats, and computer controllers were attached to water heaters and clothes dryers. These controls were connected to the Internet.

The homeowners could go to a Web site to set their ideal home temperature and how many degrees they were willing to have that temperature move above or below the target. They also indicated their level of tolerance for fluctuating electricity prices. In effect, the homeowners were asked to decide the trade-off they wanted to make between cost savings and comfort.

The households, it turned out, soon became active participants in managing the load on the utility grid and their own bills.

“I was astounded at times at the response we got from customers,” said Robert Pratt, a staff scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the program director for the demonstration project. “It shows that if you give people simple tools and an incentive, they will do this.”

“And each household,” Mr. Pratt added, “doesn’t have to do a lot, but if something like this can be scaled up, the savings in investments you don’t have to make will be huge, and consumers and the environment will benefit.”

After some testing with households, the scientists decided not to put a lot of numbers and constant pricing information in front of consumers. On the Web site, the consumers were presented with graphic icons to set and adjust.

“We gave them a knob,” Mr. Pratt said. “If you don’t like it, change the knob.”

Behind the fairly simple consumer settings was a sophisticated live marketplace, whose software and analytics were designed by I.B.M. Research. Every five minutes, the households and local utilities were buying and selling electricity, with prices constantly fluctuating by tiny amounts as supply and demand on the grid changed.

“Your thermostat and your water heater are day-trading for you,” said Ron Ambrosio, a senior researcher at the Watson Research Center of I.B.M.

The households in the demonstration project on average saved 10 percent on their monthly utility bills. Jerry Brous, a retiree who owns a three-bedroom house in Sequim, Wash., did a bit better, saving about 15 percent, which added up to $135 over a year.

Mr. Brous, 67, said that at first he was a real price hawk, allowing the household temperature to go 10 degrees above or below the target as the outside temperature changed. In the winter, he and his wife, Pat, decided the house was too cold at times, so they changed the range to five degrees.

The monetary savings were nice, but Mr. Brous said his main motivation for joining the project was to participate in research that might accelerate the spread of energy efficiency programs.

Shortly after the demonstration project ended last March, the digital thermostat and other equipment supplied by Invensys Controls were removed from Mr. Brous’s home. “I miss it a lot,” he said. “It was cool.”

The research project was done with an eye toward guiding policy on energy-saving programs. Efficiency programs promise to curb the nation’s fuel bill and reduce damage to the environment, if consumers can be persuaded to use energy more intelligently. Still, a big question among economists and energy experts is how to tailor incentives to prompt changes in energy consumption.

The market signals from household utility bills are not clear to people, some experts say. Conservation steps, they note, may bring savings of only a few percentage points, and even those may be obscured by seasonal swings in electricity use and pricing. Thus, they say, the only way to make real progress in household energy efficiency is with sizable subsidies and mandated product standards.

The federal laboratory’s project was instead a test of market incentives and up-to-the-minute information. But how quickly the kind of technology used in the project might be deployed across the country is uncertain. Many utilities are experimenting with this so-called smart-grid technology, but most are using it to upgrade their own networks, not to let households manage consumption.

One big hurdle is that in most states, utilities are still granted rates of return that depend mainly on the power plants and equipment they own and operate instead of how much energy they save.

“What they did in Washington is a great proof of concept, but you’re not likely to see this kind of technology widely used anytime soon,” said Rick Nicholson, an energy technology analyst at IDC, a research firm.

[New York Times]

David Houle writes:

“Of course the great news in the rise in the price of oil is that incredible amounts of investment capital are now flowing into the alternative, renewable energy field. Now that people in the U.S. and around the world have accepted the fact that oil will most likely never be cheap again, the rush toward alternative energy will accelerate as there will be a perception that large financial investments can be recouped. ”

[Evolution Shift]

“In Madrid, Spain, a unique, hulking structure is currently being built. An “Air Tree,” it’s designed to both affect the surrounding environment and act as a social center. It’s loaded up with solar panels that create electricity that’s sold to the local electric company. It’s completely self-sufficient, powering itself and using the money it makes from selling excess energy for upkeep. It also produces oxygen like a tree, hence the name. And as for it being a social center, it’s designed to be a public gathering place. It’s really pretty cool, a completely unique idea and one that, unlike most out-of-the-box ideas like this, is actually being made a reality.”

[Gizmodo]

“Britain unveiled plans Monday to generate enough electricity through offshore wind farms to power every home in the country by 2020, increasing production more than 60-fold and changing the look of its coastlines.”

[Full Story]

Illustration by Bryan Christie Design

The following article was written by David Gelles
(original story on The New York Times)

“Traditional wind turbines can be unreliable sources of energy because, well, the wind blows where it will. Not the case 1,000 feet up. “At a thousand feet, there is steady wind anywhere in the world,” says Mac Brown, chief operating officer of Ottawa-based Magenn Power.

To take advantage of this constant breeze, Brown has developed a lighter-than-air wind turbine capable of powering a rural village. “Picture a spinning Goodyear blimp,” Brown says. Filled with helium, outfitted with electrical generators and tethered to the ground by a conductive copper cable, the 100-foot-wide Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS) will produce 10 kilowatts of energy anywhere on earth. As the turbine spins around a horizontal axis, the generators convert the mechanical energy of the wind into electrical energy, then send it down for immediate use or battery storage.

Planning for the MARS has been under way for a few years, but this fall Magenn got the $5 million it needed to build prototypes from a California investor. In October, the MARS received its U.S. patent. Already, larger models — ones that might light a skyscraper — are in the works. Brown says he hopes his floating wind turbines will power off-the-grid villages in the developing world. He says the governments of India and Pakistan have expressed interest.

At least one argument against wind turbines — that they slice up birds and bats — isn’t valid, according to Brown. “This thing is bigger than a house,” he says. “A bird can see it and a bat can sense it.”

[via New York Times]

Designer: Delroy Dennisur

Designer: Delroy Dennisur

[via Yanko Design]

A massive genomic study of the microbes living within the termite gut has identified close to 1,000 possible enzymes that break down wood. The plethora of cellulose-digesting proteins could shed light on the insects’ renowned wood-eating capacity and suggest cheaper, more efficient methods for generating cellulosic ethanol.

[Technology Review]

[Full Story]