Energy

Green Jobs in Spain Reversed Economic Downturn

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

The Republican party in the USA has been trying to defend the drilling of oil despite an ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, nothing new there. They have also been arguing against progressive economic reforms to make the American economy more efficient and powered by renewable sources.

Thanks to the Republican incompetence I have stumbled across good news from Spain. They tried citing a report that they thought was against green reforms, turns out those reforms have turned a region of Spain from a place of economic misery to a haven of productivity.

Sixty-five percent of the electricity used in Navarra comes from renewable sources — primarily wind — built over the last twenty years. Over those years, the region went from having the highest unemployment rate in Spain to having the lowest rate, today.

“Under President Obama’s leadership,” the report concludes, “the United States’ decisive support of renewable energies…will aid in rapidly overcoming the current economic crisis…”

Read more about Spain’s success

These Boots Are Made For Energy Generation

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

A small company has produced a boot that creates energy by walking. The boot has a battery that stores an electric charge from the energy spent by walking.

The ‘Power Wellies’, as Orange is calling them, convert heat from your feet into an electrical current. According to the blurb, twelve hours of stomping through the Glastonbury Festival will give you enough power to charge a mobile phone for one hour – the hotter your feet get, the more energy you produce.

In case you’re wandering what the science behind them is… Inside the power generating sole there are thermoelectric modules constructed of pairs of p-type and n-type semiconductor materials forming a thermocouple. These thermocouples are connected electrically forming an array of multiple thermocouples (thermopile). They are then sandwiched between two thin ceramic wafers. When the heat from the foot is applied on the top side of the ceramic wafer and cold is applied on the opposite side, from the cold of the ground, electricity is generated. Simples.

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How Electricians Can Promote Green Retrofits

- Adam Clare

Houston writes in to let us know about an article he wrote about five green retrofits that electricians should be advocating for. It’s a good way to get new business and help the planet.

Daylight Harvesting
Daylight harvesting is the practice of reducing artificial light in a room when sunlight is available. According to a study performed by the NRC Institute for Research in Construction, it can reduce lighting energy costs by 20 to 60%. Call it “upselling” if you will, but electricians should pitch this retrofit to customers that are already relamping their homes and buildings.

A daylight harvesting system uses photosensors to detect light levels in a room. As sunlight becomes available, the artificial lighting will be reduced. When it’s cloudy or becomes dark outside, the level of artificial lighting will increase.

Three other lighting controls worth mentioning here are dimmers, motion sensors and timers. These energy savers have been around for years, but they are just as relevant today as when they first came out. Homeowners looking for simple ways to reduce energy can install any of the above. For more information, check out the US Department of Energy’s lighting guide.

Keep reading to Software Advice.

These Batteries Rock

- Adam Clare

Wind and solar energy generation is criticized for not being always-on, so people have been looking to batteries to steady the flow of energy. Over at Cambridge, there are some people who think that a new type of battery made out of gravel could help with the full adoption of sustainable energy.

Isentopic claims its gravel-based battery would be able to store equivalent amounts of energy but use less space and be cheaper to set up. Its system consists of two silos filled with a pulverised rock such as gravel. Electricity would be used to heat and pressurise argon gas that is then fed into one of the silos. By the time the gas leaves the chamber, it has cooled to ambient temperature but the gravel itself is heated to 500C.

After leaving the silo, the argon is then fed into the second silo, where it expands back to normal atmospheric pressure. This process acts like a giant refrigerator, causing the gas (and rock) temperature inside the second chamber to drop to -160C. The electrical energy generated originally by the wind turbines originally is stored as a temperature difference between the two rock-filled silos. To release the energy, the cycle is reversed, and as the energy passes from cold to hot it powers a generator that makes electricity.

Isentropic claims a round-trip energy efficiency of up to 80% and, because gravel is cheap, the cost of a system per kilowatt-hour of storage would be between $10 and $55.

Keep reading at The Guardian.

World’s Largest Wind Farm to Exist in Romania

- Adam Clare

Bloomberg is reporting that a Spanish company will be building the world’s largest wind farm in Romania. Romania’s current energy production system is well suited for wind power, hopefully neighbouring countries will follow Romania’s lead.

Iberdrola SA won approval to build the world’s largest onshore wind-energy project in Romania, requiring at least $2 billion in investment through 2017.

The Spanish utility said today it acquired rights from the Romanian government to build 1,500 megawatts of capacity. That’s almost five times the power coming from Europe’s largest wind complex and triple what’s proposed offshore Massachusetts in a project opposed by the late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy.

Iberdrola, which became the world’s biggest wind-farm owner by using government incentives and charging above-market electricity rates for clean energy, now operates in 10 markets including the U.S. and U.K. The Romanian mega-park, near its operations in neighboring Hungary, may extend the Spanish company’s lead over second-ranked wind producer FPL Group Inc. of Florida.

Read the rest at Bloomberg.com

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