It Is Time to Consider Transitioning to Autonomous Distributed Energy

Storm leaves more than 275,000 people without power in Southern Quebec

Hundreds of thousands of people are still without power in southern Quebec after the region was hit freezing rain and strong winds.

Quebec-Hydro says the storm Monday caused branches and trees to come in contact with their network, leaving 275,000 people without power by early Tuesday morning.

The Crown corporation says the hardest hit areas were Laval, Lanaudiere and the Laurentians.
Meanwhile, the city of Laval opened two community centres for the night to help people without electricity.
By Tuesday morning, more than 80,000 people in the city were without power, while more than 90,000 were still left in the dark in Lanaudiere.

Hydro-Quebec spokesman Louis-Olivier Batty said Monday evening that teams from regions less affected by the power outages had been called in as reinforcements.
From The Canadian Press.

Few weeks ago it was a cyclone Idai which was of course much more catastrophic disaster in Africa. Now it is a storm, blackout, people without heat in Canada. Isn't it time to consider transitioning to distributed autonomous energy generation? Consider AMES module developed by Ascent Systems Technologies. Multiple modules can be deployed throughout the areas affected by the disaster. In the case of one or even several modules going out of service, it will not affect other modules, so the impact will be minimized and localized. Individual modules can be quickly brought back to service without disrupting large areas. Moreover, the modules can be deployed in the "at risk" areas in advance. They would "hibernate" in the transport configuration and can be automatically and remotely activated when needed. Imagine how many lives can be saved and large economic loss can be avoided?

Climate change, natural and other disasters are not going to go away - on the contrary they will become more frequent and more severe. We need strategic thinking. 

Energy Mini-Video Series

Today I am launching a series of mini video-lectures about energy - the role it plays in our life, the challenges we face accessing it, and about technologies which are going to change the way we generate, deliver and use energy.
This is the first - introductory - installment of the series. Enjoy!

Also available on YouTube: Energy - Introduction

Back to Earth: Rebuilding Puerto Rico

I like talking about space and the future but real life and present day immediate problems beg to lower my gaze back to sinful Earth.

From the special IEEE Spectrum report.
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On September 19 2017 as Hurricane Maria started churning through Puerto Rico, engineers of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) helplessly stared at the computer monitors that displayed real-time conditions on the grid. One after another, transmission lines were failing, and the team hastily debated their course of action. In this fragile state, the network wouldn’t be able to absorb an oversupply of power, excess voltages, or swings in frequency. They could inject test currents into the downed lines, to see which ones could be restored, or else reduce the level of electricity being put on the grid, to protect the remaining transmission system. Hour after hour, the urgency was rising.
By nightfall on the 19th, the crew knew their efforts were futile. Winds topping 280 kilometers per hour had begun toppling transmission towers, snapping concrete power poles, entangling lines, and battering power plants. The PREPA engineers at their workstations watched in dismay as small outages spread and bloomed like a virus. Finally, at 2 a.m. on 20 September, all went into total blackout. All of Puerto Rico was now in the dark.
Four hours later, Maria barreled into the island as a Category 4 hurricane. The storm tore a diagonal 160-km-long path from the island’s southeast to its northwest, demolishing tens of thousands of homes, washing away roads and bridges, stripping the limbs from lush green palms, and leaving in its wake a littered and jarringly lifeless landscape. Unofficial tallies after the storm suggest that about 1,000 people lost their lives.
In the months to come, Puerto Ricans—who are, after all, citizens of the United States, a country of unquestioned technological preeminence—would discover how breakable their modern society actually was.

Water treatment facilities couldn’t provide drinking water, markets and restaurants couldn’t refrigerate food, banks couldn’t operate ATMs or conduct transactions. Cellular and Internet access was gone. Street lights and traffic lights stopped working. Schools, hospitals, and stores closed indefinitely, factories and businesses shut down.

After the storm cleared step one was to figure out the exact scale of what had happened, all over the island. The control center was running on a diesel generator, but island-wide communications were down. That meant the usual way of gauging conditions on the grid—using automated remote terminal units at substations to collect and send data to the central supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system—didn’t work. PREPA’s grid reaches nearly every home, business, school, and hospital on the main island, as well as on the smaller islands. For months, the utility was unable to say just which customers were still in the dark. At first they relied on outage reports coming in via satellite phone and from amateur radio operators. 

Under normal conditions, Puerto Rico’s generating capacity exceeds 5,800 megawatts, but peak demand is only around 3,000 MW. About half of the electricity comes from PREPA’s 10 oil-fired power plants. Much of the rest is produced by a pair of natural-gas power plants and a coal plant. Renewables—including seven solar farms, two wind farms, and seven hydropower sites—supply just 2.4 percent of generation.
Puerto Rico's grid is lopsided: seventy percent of its power generation is in the south, while 70 percent of power demand is in the north. This is the biggest problem for PREPA. Hurricane Maria sliced straight through the middle of the vital connections between North and South. 
The transmission system consists of 4,000 km of line divided among three voltages. The backbone is a 230-kilovolt ring around the island, with two South-North corridors dividing the island into western, central, and eastern loops. This feeds an extensive 115-kV network that delivers power to population centers. Finally, a 38-kilovolt “subtransmission” network serves remote areas, as well as islands via underwater cable; it also supplies power to PREPA’s 51,000 km of distribution line.
Even four months since the hurricane the scenes of destruction were still evident. Steel lattice transmission towers lied in broken piles. High-voltage wires wraped around treetops. Where there was a wind farm, only the masts of turbines are sticking out, their blades shorn off, stuck up like fat white flagpoles. Near the beach town of Humacao, a large solar farm has been reduced to fields of broken glass and twisted metal.

Blue square tarps dot the landscape; these temporary roofs are all that shield the buildings’ occupants from the elements. After the storm, 200,000 Puerto Ricans decamped for the mainland United States in search of jobs, medical care, simply for normal life.

As of late February, the US Army Corps had brought in nearly 1,000 emergency generators. Truck-size 1-MW units went to hospitals and other critical facilities, while 25-MW units went to damaged power plants. The unit also received nearly 4,500 km of wire and more than 37,000 wood, concrete, and galvanized steel poles; another 13,000 poles were slated to arrive this spring. At first, supplies barely trickled onto the island, in part because inventories across the United States had been depleted by the disastrous 2017 hurricane season and wildfires in California.

Back in January PREPA announced a milestone: One million customers—roughly two-thirds of its residential, commercial, and industrial users—had their lights back on. The utility continues to boost generation. Most of that power however is coming from oil-fired units and a natural-gas fired plant. Other sites, though, sit idle.

If  Puerto Rico's grid recovery has been slow and contentious, modernizing the island’s electric system will likely take many years, billions of dollars, and a lot of creative thinking.

The restoration of Puerto Rico’s power grid is a timely object lesson on the vulnerabilities of modern electrical networks and on the emerging technological options for minimizing those vulnerabilities. Power experts are now not just repairing Puerto Rico’s grid but doing so with an eye toward a future that portends storms of increasing intensity and frequency. Grid operators around the world are considering the merits of microgrids, utility-scale energy storage, and distributed and renewable generation. But for Puerto Rican officials trying to rebuild their shattered electrical infrastructure, these possibilities are of much more than abstract interest.

There are a number of new ideas, and most share a common theme: a shift away from traditional centralized power plants and toward more distributed systems. For that to happen, government agencies have to agree on the plan. Microgrids, for example, still can’t connect to the main grid. The Puerto Rico Energy Commission is only now finalizing the rules to allow that to happen. But even the micro-grids are prone to disasters, although damage would be limited.

Here is the solution which could limit the scale of any disaster virtually to a point. Autonomous Mobile Energy System (AMES) can be delivered to any place which urgently needs energy, rapidly deployed and provide an uninterrupted source of clean energy regardless of external conditions 24/7.  

In case of disaster the module can be folded back into the transport configuration and withstand hurricane of category 4 and maintain its power ready to start generation again the moment the storm subsides. Ten thousand modules deployed each at the place of energy consumption would not require transmission lines therefore would not be affected by the grid being out. Moreover failure of any one module would not affect any others therefore the damage is minimized to negligible amount.

Such approach is also practically hacker- and terrorist attack-proof - a single module is not an attractive target comparing to the centralized grid or a pipeline.

And additional bonus - it does not require huge investment to start incrementally generate energy and contribute to the global problem.

Sustainable future is in distributed on-site clean energy generation.

The Small and the Many

The title for this post was borrowed from the article in one of the recent issues of The Economist.  The timing of the article about satellites was fitting in few days before the anniversary of the first satellite, Sputnik, on October 4. But the concept discussed in it is also relevant to a number of other areas including energy and energy policies.
The concept is using a large number of small satellites instead of one or few large ones. The reasons for doing it this way are many. The article gives an example of two companies, both in business of making satellites, both not too surprisingly located in California. One called Space Systems Loral (SSL) from Palo Alto, currently owned by MacDonald Dettwiller (MDA), a Canadian aerospace company, is a veteran of the industry. It manufactures communication satellites intended to transmit radio and television signals over the high-altitude orbit. The first satellites (and most scientific spacecraft still, such as Hubble telescope or Juno interplanetary probe) were one of a kind, large and expensive. The SSL designed 1300 series platform based on modular architecture. Each satellite uses the same structure: a cylinder 1.2 meters across enclosed in a square box.

The more more the satellite has to do, the taller the box it is built on, the longer its solar PV panels and the larger and more complex the array of antennae and reflectors through which it sends data to its earthbound clients. Few days ago SSL has delivered one of the biggest, Sky Muster II, designed to provide broadband communications to remote areas of Australia. It stands nine meters tall, with a complex array of reflectors attached to it. Despite the modular design, intended to bring the cost down, these satellites are very expensive. The smallest of them may sell for $100 million, while the biggest can approach half a billion. Add on another $100M for the launch, and the satellite may not start showing a profit for a decade.
There is another consideration. The industry which is supposed to be innovative, must be very risk-averse. Because of the need for a long lifetime in a hostile environment and already a high sticker price, a new advanced technology will not be flown.
      
The example of a totally different company and a different approach is Planet Labs from San Francisco. While the SSL's clean room for the satellite assembly could be compared in size with a cathedral, the Planet's assembly is of the size of Starbucks. The satellites it manufactures are 30-cm long and weigh about 5 kg. Their design is based on the so called "1U" standard. Making one of them utilizing many of the smartphone components takes about a week. "This is the new face of space: small objects, large numbers".
What makes this approach extremely attractive is several reasons. One is pretty obvious - cost. Small satellites are much-much cheaper than the large ones (an additional advantage, they do not require a dedicated launcher but are flown - often in batches - as a secondary payload utilizing the room left after a primary payload). Second, as noted above it does not take much time to make them which is a very important consideration in a highly competitive market. Now, because of the large number of the satellites, they are not indispensable - the reliability of the service they provide does not depend on any one of them. Related to that, because of the short time, low cost and relatively high frequency of the launches, the company can afford consistent improvement of their products!

Let's look at another area, energy generation and transmission. Be it electricity used for lighting and numerous other needs, or some fuel such as natural gas, delivered to homes and businesses for heating, energy structure is based on large facilities such as power plants, oil refineries etc. These facilities are expensive, take long time to build and often have a large environmental impact - such as area flooded by the hydro power plants. They are also vulnerable to all sorts of risks - from technical glitches to natural disasters and targeted attacks (more often recently, cyber-attacks which are easier to perform than physical attacks). The examples of such events are well known, from Chernobyl to Fukushima, and from BP oil spill in Mexico Gulf to disruption in Ukrainian energy network. These risks may lead not only to significant costs to restore the operation of the large facility but typically affect a large number of end-users. Also, because energy has to be delivered from generation facility to end-users, additional expenses, more environmental impact and more risks are involved. Large number of users can cut off the energy by a disruption in transmission lines or pipelines.         
        
By analogy, an alternative "the small and the many" approach can be successfully applied to the energy infrastructure. Instead of large centralized power plants, small-scale integrated on-site energy generation offers numerous advantages. Yes, I am talking of course about solar and other clean energy technologies. Firstly, energy conservation/efficiency measures should be implemented. Then solar thermal or geoexchange system can provide entire heating, cooling and hot water needs. Then the remaining electrical load for lighting, electronic equipment etc. can be addressed by a small solar photo-voltaic array and/or small wind turbine (where appropriate) with an on-site energy storage.    
Such a system would be much cheaper (per installation), quicker to implement, less expensive to maintain and repair, plus have smaller to none environmental impact comparing to large centralized energy generation. This would also eliminate the need for expensive and unreliable means of energy transmission. Such distributed energy generation will be much more reliable as a whole because the problem in one location will not affect anyone else. Every system can be attended and serviced and even its generation optimized on an individual basis. Finally, every subsequent deployment can be improved based on the performance monitoring of the previous installations and due to the constant technology evolution. 

So, should we continue building gigantic power plants, refineries and pipelines or move to an agile and intelligent distributed energy network? The choice is ours.
 

    

Transportable Solar Power Station

Sorry for not appearing online more often. I keep reminding myself of the need to write about the new connecting technologies. This time I can't ignore it.

 Transportable clean energy plant is the bridge between the current centralized grid - someone called it "the biggest machine ever built by humankind" - to a decentralized distributed efficient energy generation. More often than anything else the subject is electrical power.

However, where thermal energy is needed - from heating to cooling and hot water for domestic or commercial needs - it can be produced much more efficiently bypassing the conversion to and from electricity. Modern solar thermal systems combined with state-of the art thermal storage and/or auxiliary source (small heat pump or other) cam provide 4-5 times more thermal energy than PV -based system of the similar size could. Connecting them in the Integrated Energy Module would result in the best of both worlds and could be made in a size of a small trailer.    

Time to invest in solar disruptive off-grid technologies

Guess who is in the disruptive solar off-grid business? Caterpillar - a synonym of everything slow - invests in the technology of the future.

Caterpillar Inc. has run its Tucson proving ground near Green Valley since 1990, putting mining trucks and other massive machines through their paces in the shadow of Freeport-McMoRan's Sierrita mine.

All the while the relatively remote, off-grid facility has been powered solely by Cat's own diesel generators - but now the sun will do part of the work.

The construction machinery giant last week launched a new product line with the christening of a hybrid solar-generator 'microgrid' system at the proving ground.

The proving ground's system consisting of 500 kilowatts' worth of photovoltaic arrays and an equal amount of battery storage linked to the facility's generator system will cut the proving ground's reliance on diesel generation by about one-third, the company said.

It will also serve as a demonstrator for the company's new line of Cat Microgrid products, which range from mobile trailer-mounted rigs to scalable custom, on-site installations, said Rick Rathe, managing director of microgram and energy storage for Caterpillar's electric-power division.

'We're taking that same value proposition out to our customers right now,' said Rathe, who announced the company's new Cat Microgrid branded product offering as the company flipped the switch on the proving ground's microgrid on Wednesday.

Long a leader in large diesel generators, Cat has been looking at integrating renewable energy with combustion generation for some time as prices for photovoltaic panels tumbled and battery technology improved, Rathe said.

'Today, solar energy is a very cost-efficient form of energy more efficient than running diesel generators all the time,' he said.

Cat Microgrid systems combine solar panels, state-of-the-art energy storage and advanced monitoring and control systems with Caterpillar's traditional line of power generation equipment,including Cat generator sets, switchgear, uninterruptible power supplies and automatic transfer switches.

Caterpillar says the systems are ideal for off-grid applications such as telecommunications towers, industrial facilities, mining installations, remote villages and islands and rural communities.

The company also has partnered with two Arizona companies to create its Cat-branded hybrid micro product. Tempe-based First Solar is supplying the thin film photovoltaic panels.

Caterpillar also invested in Scottsdale-based Fluidic Energy for advanced metal-air energy storage technology.

Source: ARIZONA DAILY STAR

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I am convinced solar and other hybrid technologies will at least win a off-grid market niche. But I also think that connected in an intelligent network autonomous energy modules and micro-grids are a better alternative to the centralized grid: www.ascentsystems.ca

Tesla Powerwall and the Future of Energy

Here is a very good analysis of the batteries market from Clean Technica.

Interestingly, I just came across of the residential installation using  Powersonic 2V AGM sealed batteries - 1300 Ah (20 hr rate). Twelve batteries deliver 31 kWH and provide complete off-grid service combined with the array of 24 Conergy PV modules. These batteries appear to be much better deal than offered by Musk: $206/kWh (CAD) vs. $350/kWh (US) for Tesla Powerwall or even $250/kWh (US) for the commercial pack.

One important aspect is not usually highlighted in most analyses. Creating on-site energy can not only reduce the load on the grid, but eventually lead to the grid become unnecessary. Autonomous systems will not require power lines, thus avoid losses associated with transmission. They will be protected from disruptions in the centralized grid (either caused by natural disasters, technical glitches or terrorism) and will not impact other individual systems, therefore safer.

Integrated solar thermal system supported by off-grid electrical generation is one of the best options for future clean reliable and safe energy.
      

Wake up Canada, part 4

Lac-Megantic, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Canadian economy dependency on oil, etc, etc.

And now another wake-up call: Toxic fuel spill in English Bay. How many more we need?

Will we finally open our eyes and see that we are committing a collective suicide?

Dear Government, did industry lobbyists bought the future of your children?

At least Provinces appear to be listening - now it is time for actions!

Ukraine's Best Defense

Ukraine's economy as the rest of Europe's is heavily relies on the natural gas supplied from Russia. In addition to that Ukraine is also dependent on the Donbass coal mines. But it doesn't have to be. Ukraine has the higher solar irradiation potential than Germany - the country with the highest density of the solar generated power in the world.

Ukraine could have much bigger energy potential with solar and other alternative technologies properly configured and installed. They could have completely replace the need for natural gas and coal in the country. 

The best defense for Ukraine and the best "weapons" to be sent there would be renewable technology - to make it energy independent of fossil fuels and of Russia's economic pressure. Same is true for the rest of Europe.

#giveukrainepower

Wake up Canada - part 3

At the recent QUEST 2014 Conference in Vancouver one of the speakers defending the need for developing Canadian oil and gas resources used this argument in a supposedly ironical question: "Whom would you rather buy [oil and gas] from - Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela - or Canada, which is a democracy, country with a stable economy and banking system, and a reliable ally [of the US] ... ?"

Firstly, I want to ask: do we (Canada) really want to put ourselves in the company with Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria??  
 
Secondly, do we need to convince ourselves in what we want to believe? We should not kid ourselves - whoever wants to buy, will buy where they can find it cheaper. There are reports that ISIS is the wealthiest terrorist organization in the world. The major source of its funds comes from sales of oil on black market reaching a quarter of billion US dollars a year. Do they sell at world market prices, or do their buyers care about their vendor being a democracy? I think these are rather rhetorical questions ...    

If it weren't bad enough, there is the global oil and commodities crisis bringing Russia's oil-dependent economy to the brink of recession and hurting Latin American and other oil producers. But wait, what is it - Canadian stock market is also down as well as Canadian dollar, Alberta and other Canadian provinces relying on oil revenues are making significant cuts to their budgets. Why do we find ourselves in the same hole? Can it get worse? Yes, and it probably will. Could it be avoided? Yes - see my previous posts on the subject: Wake up call for Canada and Wake up Canada - part 2

I am actually convinced that the current "oil trough" (the opposite of the "oil peak" anticipated in 80s and 90s) is good for renewable energy. Why? Because it will squeeze out more expensive and more harmful fracking and shale oil extraction. By the time of the next rise of oil prices which will not take too long to wait for, may be a year or two, the world will become a little "greener" and hopefully we will not want to turn back to "dirt fuels". The ascent of clean alternative energy is near.

Wake up Canada - part 2

Ban Ki-moon, in an exclusive interview with CBC News, says Canada needs to stop stalling on setting climate change goals, and instead become "ambitious and visionary."
The UN Secretary General, while acknowledging the Stephen Harper government pledged $300 million dollars to the UN's Green Climate Fund that helps developing countries fight climate change, said there's more to be done by Canada at home.

• Canada's climate inaction leaves it 'increasingly isolated' ahead of COP 20

"It's only natural that Canada as one of the G7 countries should take a leadership role," he said in an interview with CBC News chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge on The National.
Part of that change would involve moving away from a reliance on fossil fuels.
"There are ways to make a transformative change from a fossil fuel-based economy to a climate-resilient economy by investing wisely in renewable energy choices," he said.
According to the recent 2014 Climate Change Performance Index, a report from European groups Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch, only Australia rivals Canada in terms of its poor climate change record, among 34 countries analyzed.
Ban said there's additional pressure for Canada to act in the wake of the recent deal between the U.S. and China to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

UN Climate Change Conference talks are ongoing in Lima.

Wake up Canada

Canada under pressure after U.D., China agree to curb greenhouse gases

I keep saying that nobody will need Canadian gas and oil by the time they build those pipelines...

There is a better alternative.

Wake up call for Canada

Dear Gerald,

I read with interest your article in the SPIN. May I offer my two cents of opinion on the subject?   

First I must admit I agree with many points you made. For example, there is no need in 21st century to fly over the world to demonstrate support for climate change action. I totally agree that televised video-conference would be not only more efficient but also more effective. A great example of this approach I witnessed at the Green Buildings Council Conference in Vancouver last year where Cisco technology (which was one of the sponsors of the Conference) allowed to connect live audiences from Portland Oregon, Germany (forgot the city) and Shanghai China with Vancouver over the gigantic wall screens. 
  

I would leave the discussion of the level of urgency on the climate change aside for time being – but I hope we agree that both so called “green” side and its opponents (should we call it “black” for oil?) have their agenda and political lobbies. Either side is supported and promoted by various sectors of industry and because of that they have more in common than different. They all want to build mega-gigantic projects – economy of scale of course – be it a wind farm, a solar power plant the kind you mention in your article, a hydroelectric dam nuclear power plant or any other. 
   

Any technology has its hurdles. And any large-scale projects create large-scale problems. Wind turbines kill birds and bats (by the way, encasing them in the “housing” will significantly reduce turbine's efficiency so this is not a good option). Solar plants expropriate large areas of land and contribute to the grid instability. Hydro dams flood huge areas and disturb regional ecosystems (Site C comes to mind). Fukushima disaster reminded again of potential dangers of nuclear meltdown. 
   

But keep being reliant on fossil fuels – be it oil or natural gas - is not an alternative. “Business as usual” is an equivalent of stagnation at best, and in a world moving forward with a fast pace it is a guarantee to be left behind. The statement that fossil fuels are “wonderfully efficient, abundant throughout the world’s crust and will not go away” is extremely misleading. If a definition of efficiency is simply "being cheap” in a short run, then I want to know a long-term cost. "Abundance" is a very relative notion. Distribution of fossil fuels around the planet is very uneven – this is why some parts of it have to bring them from the other side of the globe spending lots of the same fossil fuel on the way. “Will not go away” doesn’t even fit common sense. All natural resources are finite, and in the case of fossil fuels the rate of their extraction exceeds the rate of their natural generation by thousands times - this is the fact which will not go away. Don’t forget oil is used not only for fuel – all plastics, paints, a lot of cosmetics and number of other products are derived from oil. While we may change our estimates of when the so called “oil peak” occurs, new methods of the natural resources extraction can only accelerate the rate of their depletion. They are also becoming more costly, which eats into the so called “efficiency” of fossil fuels. Alternative technologies, particularly solar PV and solar thermal, at the same time are becoming less expensive and more efficient in terms of their performance. 
  

Cost of one alternative versus another deserves more discussion. Even if one would wave away an indirect cost of a long-term consequences of a greenhouse effect and global warming - which although would be not wise but it is in the human nature to think what would happen later - he or she can hardly do the same about the health affecting air, ground and water pollution. And what about after-cost of unavoidable equipment failures and human errors? Shall we recount events like oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, derailment in Lac-Megantic, an explosion at pump station in Saskatchewan and barely avoided another disaster with the Russian cargo ship which lost power near the British Columbia coast? 

Risking of falling victim of the overused (and may be over-politicized) term “sustainability” I need to say few words about it. Any system – technical, economical, biological or social – consists of a number of components. In very general terms, sustainability is a system’s ability to remain in balance over extended period of time without need for external resources or energy. In other word’s it is a measure of a system’s stability. It is a lesson of generations of engineers that the more complex system is – i.e. consisting of a larger number of components – the less stable it is.

One of the most familiar and relevant examples of a complex system is a power grid, consisting of a large number of energy producers (typically power plants), even a bigger number of all sorts and sizes energy consumers (from residential homes to institutions and industry) and an extremely tight and interconnected energy transmission and distribution network including under and above ground power lines, substations and many other. In a centralized grid all components are highly inter-dependent, which on numerous occasions was demonstrated by big blackouts, recently in Calgary. Residents of Sun Peaks are very well familiar with the consequences of a drunk driver hitting a power pole. Several hours in darkness, and often in cold during the winter is not fun to say the least!

Take another example, from a subject which became touchy recently – distribution of oil and natural gas over pipelines. Complex, expensive, subject of environmental concerns and political disagreements, their short-term benefits are unstable. As with any resources, demand for Canadian oil is highly dependent on an unpredictable international business and political environment. Pipeline like the Northern Gateway is an easy target for terrorists’ attacks and political manipulation. Take example of Russia using its natural gas supply as a tool for political pressure on Ukraine and not too subtly - on Western Europe. Bet on China is a very risky gamble. For one, Russia will easily and happily overflow it with much cheaper oil and gas than Canada can ever afford to offer. US is already resisting Canadian oil – not only they have enough of its own but they are steadily moving away from oil dependency. 
     

I hear you asking - what is the alternative? Glad to oblige. I am not a supporter of government mandated or subsidized technologies, but I strongly think we need a long-term sustainable national energy strategy based on the System Approach and Real Options methodology.

Decentralized energy system should be very seriously considered. Continuous progress in solar, particularly solar thermal technologies in combination with air and ground source active heat exchange, as well as in in energy storage technologies including fuel cells and phase-change thermal accumulators, makes a self-sufficient house or a building a real possibility. We are talking about more than “net-zero” building where more energy produced than consumed at some periods of time but it needs to draw energy from the grid at other times averaging to about zero over the year. We are talking about a building as a self-sufficient system. Passive design, energy conservation measures and new highly thermoresistant materials in combination with ultra-efficient lights, appliances and electronic equipment significantly lower energy demand. Equipped with on-site renewable energy generation, heat recovery, water recycling. No more blackouts or freezing while waiting for a power to be restored. Individual houses are connected in an “intelligent network”. A further evolution of a “smart grid”, it is a sort of an “energy cloud” in which all nodes are independent from each other but can combine the power when needed.  
     

The projects like Northern Gateway and alike take an enormous amount of financial and intellectual resources which could not be used elsewhere. The more we invested in these the more difficult it will be to change the course later. It is more than likely that much higher return on investment in 30 to 50 years of projected lifetime would be achieved if invested in the research of new technologies. This would have more than economical and environmental benefits but also decide on which way Canada would be moving in the future – slide to a backward resource dependent state or move toward the advanced technological society. And if the government still wants to build something large across the country I have a proposal - high-speed train connecting Canadian West and East Coast. It works for Japan, Taiwan and Korea - why it shouldn't in Canada? 
  

Calgary - Lessons To Learn

In one of the previous posts I made a point which I have been trying to emphasize for quite some time already. We do not need gigantic power grids with all their complexity and stability problems. Another confirmation of it was the latest incident in Calgary where underground fire left thousands of people struggling without a power for several days, disrupting traffic and businesses and will be certainly costing many millions for the city.

What if each building had its own power generated in sufficient volume on-site? This would give each individual unit (building, facility, business operation etc.) an independence from the grid preventing such blackout incidents. It would also remove a problem of power fluctuations in the grid which is a subject of such a many problems. There is technology which makes it possible today. Note that examples of the so-called "net-zero" or even "net-positive" buildings although a move in the right direction are not totally autonomous self-sufficient systems. They are still dependent on the grid in that they draw from it when there is not enough energy produced on-site to satisfy the building's demand, while sending energy to the grid when they have excess of it (e.g. solar PV in the middle of the day during summer).

Fully autonomous building would not depend on the grid at any time! It however does not have to be completely "off-grid". On the contrary, all independent on-site generation systems should be connected in the "intelligent network" which would utilize its resources most efficiently, while never leaving any of the nodes starving without energy. Intelligent energy network built on the Systems Architecture principles of modularity, re-usability and scalability, is actually much more than what is usually known as a "smart grid" although it can certainly be considered its evolution.   

Is there a future for Biofuels? Part 2

It appears there is after all ... and for the power generated with biofuel.

Green Energy Project in Merritt, British Columbia
- State of the art biomass facility to generate 40 MW of clean electricity
- Will help support local forest industry and mills and create new jobs
- Merritt is the second BC biomass plant project by Dalkia and Fengate, bringing their investment in the province to $470 million.

While not the "greenest" of all still a much better alternative to fracking and mega-pipelines...

Choices We Make - Part 3

In one of my recent posts I mentioned an idea of the common energy policy for North America and promised to continue on it. I want to make clear - my view is quite different, if not opposite - to what is often promoted as the  North American Energy Strategy.

Here is my two cents on it:

1. You cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing oil and gas production - it is like eating a cake and having it too.

You cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing oil and gas production – it is like eating a cake and having it too. - See more at: http://common-resources.org/2014/resources-magazine-toward-a-north-american-energy-strategy/#sthash.R5EzSLUo.dpuf

You cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing oil and gas production – it is like eating a cake and having it too. - See more at: http://common-resources.org/2014/resources-magazine-toward-a-north-american-energy-strategy/#sthash.R5EzSLUo.dpuf

2. While coordinated policy is desirable and important, it should be directed not to tying all North America energy resources in one gigantic web with a monster "spider" in the middle pulling the strings, but to creating a distributed array of loosely connected intelligent mini- and micro-systems allowing more flexibility, reliability (preventing massive blackouts and large-scale consequences of natural or human-induced disasters), extensibility and ability of non-disruptive evolution to new technologies.

While coordinated policy is important and desirable, - See more at: http://common-resources.org/2014/resources-magazine-toward-a-north-american-energy-strategy/#sthash.R5EzSLUo.dpuf