Green Electricity

Green Electricity
25 Green Technologies That Will Electrify Your Future

Kendall Haven

Copyright 2011 by Kendall Haven All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, or reproducibles, which may be copied for classroom and educational programs only, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haven, Kendall F. Green electricity : 25 green technologies that will electrify your future / Kendall Haven. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59884-579-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-59884-580-8 (ebook) 1. Electric power plants. 2. Electric power production--Environmental aspects. 3. Renewable energy sources. 4. Sustainable engineering. I. Title. TK1005.H35 2011 621.3121--dc22 2010053652 ISBN: 978-1-59884-579-2 EISBN: 978-1-59884-580-8 15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Libraries Unlimited An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Using This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii

Part 1 Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today

The Amazing U.S. Electric Grid: Delivering Electricity to Your Doorstep . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What Does Green Mean? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 A Closer Look at Why Our Grid Isnt Green . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Part 2 Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Free Electricity for Everyone!: Fusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Let the Sun Sizzle!: Solar Thermal Electricity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Beaming Megawatts: Solar Energy from Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Up on the Roof: Solar Photovoltaic Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Blowin in the Wind: Wind Turbines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Go Fly a Kite!: Wind Kites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Mighty Minnies: Micro-Nukes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The Genies Magic Energy Lamp: Fuel Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Borrowing the Planets Energy: Geothermal Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 River Hum: Hydroelectric Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 A Swim in the Balmy, Briny Sea: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). . . . 73 Catch a Wave, Dude!: Ocean Wave Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Rollin, Rollin with the Tide: Ocean Tidal Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 The Mightiest River: Ocean Current Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 The Sweet Smell of Garbage: Municipal Solid Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Taking the Power Plant to the Farm: Bio Crop Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

vi \ Contents Growing Electricity: Energy Crops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 A BIG Future for the Smallest Atom: Hydrogen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Natural Gas: Methane Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 A Tidy Lump of Coal: Clean Coal Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Teaming Up: Electrical Cogeneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Second Time Around: Energy Recapture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Electricity in a Box: Batteries and Energy Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Micro-Might: Nanotechnology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 The Power Plant That Never Was: Energy Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 The Future Grid: The Horse Race to Your Greener Energy Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Introduction
Tuesday, May 15, 2030: The sun has just crept into the morning sky as the alarm clock in your electric CD player clicks on. Music fills your bedroom. Electric circuits automatically click on to warm your floor, heat water for your shower, and power the toaster for your morning waffle. It sounds just like today, right? Wrong! It may seem the same inside your house. But outside its a new and wondrous science fictionlike world of electric green energy technologies. Your roof is now an electric power plant supplying advanced photovoltaic energy not only to your house, but also to sell back to the local utility company. No longer do the utility wires (called the grid) snake out from smoke-belching power plants surrounded by giant mounds of coal. A nonpolluting microwave receiver dish that catches energy beamed down from orbiting space collectors and converts it into electricity has replaced them. Or maybe your utility company will create its own fist-sized sun, using fusion energy that can convert a cup of water into enough electricity to power a city. As you stretch and rise from bed, you find that the electricity meter outside your house (part of the new Smart Grid) has sent you a text message that your clothes dryer is using more energy than it used to and likely needs repair. It also suggests that the electric rates for your water heater would be lower if you were to get up a bit earlier and shower before 7:00 AM. Electricity may still look the same and work the same. (Plug something into a wall socket and you get electricityas much as you want, any time you want. Flip a switch and electricity obediently goes to workexactly where you want it to go and to do exactly what you want it to. Shove in a new battery, and the electricity hiding inside dutifully makes your portable music play all day.) But the way that electricity is created and delivered to your wall sockets does not. That part of the electricity story will look very different. Will this fascinating future electrical world really be here by 2030? Depends on where you live. But it will definitely be here during your lifetime. We technologically advanced humans are ravenously hungry for electricity. We use it to create our light; cook our food; heat our rooms; and power our phones, CD players, hearing aids, and computers. We rely on electricity to tell us the time, power our elevators and escalators, run the signal lights that control traffic at each city intersection, and start and control our cars. Beginning with Benjamin Franklins famous 1750 kite experiment, we have learned that electricity is just a gushing river of electrons, those infinitesimally small particles that whiz around inside atoms. Collect trillions of electrons and send them stampeding down a wire, and you have electricity. You flip a light switch, and its electrons that surge at your command through the wires that link switch to bulb. You push a button to fire up your computer, and it is electrons that faithfully race into the computers maze of circuitry innards to bring your e-mails and Internet searches to vivid life. Electricity is simply a flow of electrons.

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viii \ Introduction Electricity is measured in watts (named to honor Scotsman James Watt for his invention of the steam engine). One thousand watts equals one kilowatt (written 1 kw). One thousand kw (one million watts) equals one megawatt (written 1 Mw). Watts measure power, the ability of electricity to do some amount of work. A 100-watt lightbulb needs that much electricity (100 watts) every moment in order to glow brightly. If you leave the light on for one hour, you have used 100 watts for one hour. We call that 100 watt-hours. If you leave the light on for ten hours, you have used ten times as much energy, or 1,000 watt-hourscalled one kilowatt-hour (written 1 kwhr). Kilowatt-hours are the basic unit used by electric utilities to measure how much electricity your household uses each month. Your electric utility bill arrives telling you how many kwhrs you used (and charging you accordingly). Right now electricity costs an average of 8 to 11 cents for each kwhr. The average American house (in 2008), with the average number of children, dogs, computers, rooms, and appliances, used 938 kwhr in an average month. You dont get penalized if you use an electron that came from a smoke- and pollutionbelching, coal-fired power plant, and you dont get even a quick thank-you when you use an electron produced at an environmentally friendly wind or solar power plant. Your electric utility company has no way of knowing where the specific millions (or trillions) of electrons you used came from. Once an electron leaves a generator and enters the maze of wires criss-crossing your neighborhood, city, nation, and planet, it is impossible to track. A utility company could announce what percentage of the total electricity it generates comes from each fuel source or generating process in company ads (and a few utilities that are particularly proud of how they produce electricity already do). But the company cant know which specific electrons flowed into and through your house, your neighbors house, or the school down the street. If you cant tell where your electrons came from, why should you care how those endless torrents of electrons were produced? Though that hoard of electrons that masses together to serve as electricity may all be the same, the effects on your health, life, and environment from the various processes that produce them are definitely not the same. Thats why you need to know something about how electricity is, and how it is going to be, produced. Here are three giant reasons for becoming an electron-savvy consumer: 1. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) are going to run out. Since the first commercial electric power plants went online in the 1880s, we have always used fossil fuels to power the machinery that generates our electricity. However, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They will run out. We are already feeling the effects that accompany the coming end of the era of cheap oil. (There is still lots of oil in the world. But what is left is increasingly difficult and expensive to collect and turn into gasoline, kerosene, and the other petroleum products we depend on.) The price of a barrel of oil keeps creeping higher and higher. The United States does possess one of the worlds greatest known coal reserves. We already export coal to China and other countries. But our readily minable coal will only last for another 125 years or so. The United States also possesses a wealth of the other hydrocarbon fossil fuel, natural gas. New engineering technologies have made it possible to tap into vast new reserves of natural gas in the United States. We have historically been an importer of natural gas, but now

Introduction / ix produce so much that we will soon become a natural gas exporter. Still, even this abundant reserve of natural gas will also be depleted by an energy-hungry world in 150 years or so. To ensure our long-term energy supplies, we need to turn away from these hydrocarbon fossil fuels that will run out, and shift to energy sources that will not run out but will renew themselves, year after year, for millions of years. These renewable technologies are described and evaluated in part 2 of this book. Why worry about it now? Because the process of shifting our massive electrical system to new kinds of fuel sources is painfully slow. If we dont actively start now, we may not make the transition in time to guarantee an uninterrupted electrical supply. 2. Our current energy industry is our greatest polluter. Every day the power plants that generate electricity produce more pollution than any other single industry in the United States. This pollution is changing our climate and our ecosystem in ways that will harm human life for generations to come. We generate electricity to serve our needs and make human life in this country better. Yet the process of generating electricity produces soot, ash, sulfur, greenhouse gasses, and other pollutants that make us sick. The European Union has recently pledged to produce 20 percent of its energy from renewable energy sources (wind, solar, hydroelectric, ocean wave, etc.) by 2020 in order to reduce those countries production of greenhouse gases. Our federal government has pledged millionseven billionsof research dollars for new energy technologies because Americans now care as much about the health of our environment as we do about the dollar price of electricity. New green electric energy technologies that are less damaging to the environment may actually cost far less (overall) than technologies that produce cheaper electricity but harm the environment. Every state in our nation is now offering incentives for companies to go green. As of mid-2009, 24 states required electric utilities to supply power from renewables. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that jobs in energy and environment occupations will grow by 52 percent from 2000 to 2016 because of the national interest in finding new, environmentally friendly ways to generate our electricity. This book examines each of those green technologies. 3. The demand for electricity is growingand at an ever-faster rate. Every year we devour more electricity than we did the year before. Why? There are three reasons. First, every year there are more of us. More people means more demand for electricity, even if each one of us uses exactly the same amount of electricity that we did last year. However (second reason), we dont. Each year, each one of us (on average) uses a little bit more electricity. We steadily buy and use more electrically powered stuff. From garage door openers to can openers, from microwave ovens to electric cars, from electric pencil sharpeners to robotic vacuum cleaners, from electric heaters to computers, the average American family adds new demands on the electricity supply each year. How much? First, consider that the average American house has almost two more rooms than it did just 30 years ago. Each of those extra rooms needs lights, radios, heat, clocks, and its share of electric gadgets. How much electricity does this extra stuff consume? Consider just your computer. A single supercomputer devours $100,000 to $1,000,000 of electricity each year. A common desktop computer snacks on hundreds of dollars worth of electricity

x \ Introduction each year (4,000 to 6,000 kwhr of electricity), and the number of personal computers has almost tripled over the past two decades, rising from 138 million in 1990 to over 370 million today. Collectively, they gobble up a hugeand growingamount of electricity! Finally (third reason), more areas of the world connect to electric service each year. As of 2008, 1.6 billion people (25 percent of the worlds population) still lived without access to electricity. Over the next 20 years, one-third to one-half of them will be connected to the everexpanding worldwide electrical grid. Thats 750 million new, electricity-hungry customers! You might think that this wont directly affect us in the United States, because virtually every American house, store, and office is already connected to the grid. However, increased worldwide demand for electricity means steadily increasing worldwide demand for the fuels and technologies that power electric generators. How much does our electrical demand grow each year? At present, it grows at just under 3 percent per year. That may seem like a smallalmost insignificantamount. But that kind of growth adds up fast. Even if the growth rate doesnt continue to increase, demand will mushroom by 33 percent in just ten yearsa one-third increase in just a single decade! For every 100 Mw of generating electricity we have now, we will need 133 Mw in just ten years. Put another way, for every three average-sized power plants in the country today, electric utilities will need to add one new power plant in the next decade just to keep from slipping behind. We now have more than 1,300 utility company power plants in this country. That means that collectively, someone must build 430 power plants over the next decade. Thats 43 new average-sized power plants each and every year just to keep up with this new demand. But thats not all. We have made a national commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by closing down dirty fossil fuel plants and to replace them with cleaner, green technology plants that use renewable, nonpolluting energy sources. There are 537 coal-fired plants (the most polluting plants we have) working round the clock in this countryand they produce a majority of the electricity we use. To replace them all within the next twenty years we need to replace 27 of those polluting power plants each and every yearstarting now. Add the two together (meet-new-demand and replace-dirty-plants), and we find that we need to build at least 70 new average-sized power plants each year in this country. Its a huge challenge! In 2000 U.S. utility power companies relied on nine fuel sources to generate all of the electricity we gobbled up. Ranked from most electrical energy supplied to least, they are coal (55 percent), nuclear (20 percent), natural gas (11 percent), hydroelectric (810 percent), oil (2.7 percent), biomass (burning wood residue and urban wastes) (1.5 percent), geothermal (0.2 percent), wind (0.2 percent), and solar (0.02 percent).

Introduction / xi Only 11 percent of the electricity supplied by the grid in 2000 came from what we call environmentally friendly and renewable energy technologies. Will we be able to reverse those percentages in twenty or thirty years? Will we rise to the challenge and have 40 or even 60 percent of our electricity delivered to us courtesy of green technologies? What electric green technologies are out there that we can use right now? In ten years? In twenty? Which can be used everywhere, and which are practical only for certain regions of the country? How can we use these new, green energy technologies to meet two seemingly incompatible goals: provide all of the electricity U.S. residents demand and at the same time reduce pollution, clean up our environment, and fight climate change? Thats where this book comes in. Part 2 describes how each promising green technology works, lists its pluses and minuses, and summarizes how much it can contribute to our national electric grid. Its a fascinating journey into the almost science fiction world of advanced energy production. Before focusing on a greener future, we need to glance at what we have now. Part 1 describes the amazing electrical grid that delivers electricity to youwherever you go, as much as you want, whenever you want it. It also includes a summary of what the term green has come to mean and why the major energy sources for our electric power plants cant be called electric green. Put on your hard hats, safety goggles, and thick rubber shoes. Were going deep inside the power plants, where furnaces roar and high-voltage lines crackle, and well slither down the wires of the national grid. What well find scattered along the waylike Hansel and Gretels breadcrumb trailare the seeds of our amazing green electric future.

Using This Book

This is a book to shine light onto the emerging (and greener) electric energy technologiesthe ways we will produce and deliver electricity. In it I describe and compare the 25 concepts that hold the greatest promise to provide the massive diet of electricity we gobble by the bushel full and that our society and way of life depend on more and more each year. Our national electrical future is really a peoples issue, because it is our environment, our communal well-being, and our energy supply that are at stake. Use the book to introduce (or as part of) units on energy, electrical science, electricity, or invention and industry. You will find ideas for science projects and fun class research activities and will find out about current advanced research programs and activities in the field of energy development. Use it as a reference on specific new electrical energy technologies. But please remember that you can also dive into these pages just for fun or to satisfy your curiosity. Green Electricity is divided into two parts. The goal of part 1 is to help students understand and visualize the electrical system we have and to create context and relevance for an exploration of new, greener energy technologies. In part 1 I describe that amazing electrical delivery system (the grid) that we currently enjoythe safest, most reliable, and most complex electrical system in the world (and also the most antiquated). Well look at the major elements of the current grid and peek at the grid of the future. I also include a section to make sure we all agree on what the term green means when applied to electrical energy. Finally, I assess the green-ness of the Big 4 fuel sources that currently account for 90 percent of all American electricity. Part 2 is the heart of the book, in which I describe, assess, and compare the alternative emerging technologies, each vying to dethrone the Big 4 and become our energy technology of choice. I discuss what the technologies are, how they produce electricity, their potential, their problems, and their likely development pathways and timelines. Part 2 concludes with a look into the makeup of our future electrical grid. Each entry features the following six sections: 1. What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity? A description of the technology, how it works, and how it produces and delivers electricity. This section includes a brief description of the history and development of each technology as well as who currently uses it and how it currently contributes to the worldwide electrical grid. 2. Whats Happening Now? Here we turn to ongoing research and development. Whats happening right now in laboratories, universities, and research centers that will translate into new and improved designs in 5, 10, or 20 years? Which companies are bringing new innovations into the marketplace? What current testing programs are most likely to bear fruit in the future?

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xiv \ Using This Book 3. How Does It Measure Up? Here I summarize the major pluses and minuses of each technology. Whats good about it, and whats bad? What problems and limitations mar each technologys emergence as the darling of the industry? Which problems are likely to be solved, and which are likely to linger and plague the technology through the foreseeable future?

4. Whats the Bottom Line? I present a quick technology-by-technology glimpse into the future. Will this technology make major contributions to our electric grid? When? How much? Will it be significant nationally or regionally? What has to happen before this technology is attractive to major utilities? How likely is that to happen? 5. Classroom Activities. In this section I have included a series of physical activities (experiments), research topics, and discussion guides to make the technology real, interesting, and significant to students. They are all physically safe and easy to adapt for any specific grade or group of students, and none requires any sophisticated (read that as expensive) equipment or supplies. 6. For Further Reading. Literally hundreds of reference books and Web sites exist for each of these renewable energy technologies. I list a few of the available and valuable references for more in-depth reading about this technology and its current state of development. Remember to occasionally take a moment in the midst of your serious research and analysis to gaze in wonder at our inventiveness and ingenuity in creating and delivering electricity. It surrounds every aspect of our lives. It makes modern life possible. Far more than gasoline, electricity sets us apart from our ancient and limited past. Peering at the electrical energy future is, in part, gazing at our own future and into the world todays students will inherit and manage. Grab your hard hat and rubber gloves. Suit up, and lets dive inside the wonders of our electrical machine!

Part 1
Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today
Part 1Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today

The Amazing U.S. Electric Grid: Delivering Electricity to Your Doorstep

The labyrinth of wires, power poles, power plants, transformers, and substations that delivers electricity to your house and school is called the electric grid, or just the grid. The U.S. electrical grid is one of the most amazing achievements of the twentieth century. This remarkable maze of equipment, stations, and wires includes approximately 1 million megawatts of generating capacity, 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, thousands of control stations and substations, and 5.5 million miles of distribution lines (held up by tens of millions of power poles) that deliver to every intersection and building the power essential for modern living. No one has yet figured out how to store large quantities of electricity as part of the daily ebb and flow of the grid. So the system must continuously balance the supply of electricity it produces to exactly match our collective demandsecond by second throughout each day, day in and day out. At each moment the combined efforts of power producers must create whatever power we useand no more. Its no wonder that many consider the electricity grid the most complex machine ever builtand it still uses 100-year-old technology! Lets take a quick peak at the two major pieces that make up this amazing and complicated system and at what the grid is likely to look like in the future as utilities replace and update parts of the grid that were in use not only before computers, but even before television was invented!

4 \ Part 1Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today

The American Electrical Grid

Our electrical grid is a patchwork of individual, local generating and transmission systems that sprawl out like crabgrass from major cities, steamrollering outward in every direction as our population has expanded. The grid now stretches as an immense blanket of wire that covers the country. However, grid managers cant move precious electricity from coast to coast because too much of the energy is lost during long-distance transmission. Even the most efficient high-voltage lines cant carry electricity much more than 800 to 1,000 miles before the energy loss makes the remaining energy too expensive to be worth the bother. Thus, each small region of the grid must contain its own power plants and transmission lines.

Power Plants
Power plants convert fuel into electricity. Fuel in; electricity out. At one end of a power plant sits a pile of coal (or a giant tank of natural gas, a pile of wood waste, the blades of a wind turbine, or containers of radioactive uranium). On the other end are electric power lines that carry electricity out to the world. Inside a power plant, four core pieces of equipment are needed to convert the energy in fuel into electricity. The fourth and final piece of that machinery is always an electric generator. In 1820 Hans Oersted discovered that a spinning coil of iron or copper wire in a magnetic field (that is, in the grips of a strong magnet) created an electric current. Every power plant ever built has used this discovery. An electric generator has a giant magnet that surrounds a massive coil of wire on a central shaft. When something spins that shaft, electricity magically flows out. The question is, what makes the generators shaft spin? Thats where the fuel and the other three major pieces of power plant equipment come in. To understand a power plants inner workings, picture a giant tube filled with some fluid (called the plants working fluid) think of the coolant in your cars radiator. This working fluid flows in an endless loop through the plants remaining three key pieces of equipment and does the real work of driving the production of electricity. At one end of the plant, coal, natural gas, wood, or other fuel feeds into giant boilers (piece of equipment number 1). Tubes carrying the working fluid snake back and forth above blast-furnace-hot flames. (Picture a fire being lit under a kettle of water on the stoveonly much bigger and hotter.) Heat boils the working fluid to produce steam. But instead of blowing through the whistle of a teakettle and out into your kitchen, the high-pressure steam that jets out of a power plants boiler is still trapped inside that giant tube. Our working fluid (now high-pressure steam) blasts with tremendous force across a set of turbine blades (equipment piece number 2). (Picture closely spaced fan blades, the blades of a windmill, or the intake turbine blades you see inside the front of a commercial jets engines.) This jet of steam makes the turbine blades spin in a blinding whirl. The central shaft of the turbine connects to the shaft of the plants electric generator. When the turbine blades and shaft spin, the generator shaft spins, and electricity pours out. But our poor, exhausted working fluid is still steam (now low-pressure steam) and has to be condensed back into liquid before it can be pumped back around to enter the boiler again. The tube carrying our working fluid enters a heat exchanger (equipment piece number 3),

The Amazing U.S. Electric Grid: Delivering Electricity to Your Doorstep / 5 where cooling water (sucked in from a nearby lake, river, or ocean) swirls around the tube to cool our working fluid and return it to a liquid state, ready for its next lap around the plant. The radiator in your car is an example of a heat exchanger, one in which cool air blows past the thin tubes carrying your cars working fluid to cool it down and keep it from boiling over. The cooling water (now much hotter than it was when it entered the plant because of all the heat it has pulled out of our working fluid) returns to its original river, lake, or ocean to mix with the other water and, hopefully, not do much damage with its burden of excess heat. Some plants use giant, curved cooling towers to disperse the waste heat into the atmosphere instead of pumping it into some nearby body of water. What, then, is a power plant? It is a place where a utility company burns fuel in a boiler to create heat. Heat boils a liquid (working fluid) to produce steam. The steam turns turbine blades. Spinning turbine blades spin the shaft of an electrical generator. Voila! Electricity! Different power plants use different fuels to produce heat in their boilers: coal, wood, garbage, crop waste, natural gas, radioactive uranium, solar energy, etc. Still, the basic components of the plant are the same. There are exceptions to this general power plant design. In wind-generating plants, blowing wind replaces steam as the thing that spins the turbine blades. No heat is needed, so nothing is burned or boiled. The same is true in a hydroelectric plant or in a wave-powered plant in the ocean. The pressure of flowing water does the same job as blowing wind. The other exception is photovoltaic systems, which directly convert solar energy (light) into electricity with no boiler, turbine, or generator. Thats why you can put photovoltaic panels on your house roof and get electricity. You dont need any of the major pieces that make up a power plant.

Transmission Systems
The job of utility companies doesnt end with the production of electricity. They have to get that electricity from a power plant to you. This is the job of the maze of overhead (and underground) transmission lines. However, there is a problem. Utilities cannot shove electricity down a wire for free. They lose a tiny bit of electric power over each mile of wire they force the electricity to travel. This is called line loss. Utilities go to great lengths to minimize line loss. How? By using high-voltage lines whenever they can. Line loss is much lower in high-voltage lines. The electric power lines that leave a power plant are not the same as the lines that loop down your street from pole to pole and arrive at your house. The lines traipsing away from a power plant are high-voltage lines. High-voltage lines fan out from power plants, carrying the electricity into large neighborhoods. There the lines enter substations. In substations, devices called transformers and giant ceramic insulators (looking like a combination of Dr. Seuss pictures and Dr. Frankensteins castle) hold snaking wires as thick as your thumb and convert the electricity from high voltage to low voltage. Its still electricity, but now its ready for you to use. Touch a low-voltage electricity wire (110 to 120 volt), and you get shot across the room. Touch a high-voltage electric wire, and you die. The lines that finally reach your house are low-voltage lines. However, line loss is much higher in low-voltage lines, so utilities try to wait as long as possible to mount the final transformers on telephone poles that drop the electricity down to 120 volts.

6 \ Part 1Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today After you use the electrical power to toast your bagel, light your lights, or power your TV, the electrons that make up the flow of electricity dont disappear or shrivel and die. Each electrical circuit must form a complete loop from source (power plant) to end user (you) and back. Thats why there are at least two wires connecting to each lightbulb and switch: one to carry the electrons in, and one to carry them back out. Thats the electrical grid. But not all of our electricity comes from the grid. Some of our electrical energy comes from off the grid. We use billions of batteries every yearfor everything from hearing aids, to cell phones, to flashlights, to music systems. Batteries work without being connected to the grid. Thats the whole idea of batteries. They give you electrical power wherever you goup in the mountains or out in a boat on the oceanwithout being connected to the national electricity grid. The same is true for household photovoltaic (PV) systems. Your photovoltaic panels produce electricity all on their own to create your private stash of electrons. Some of the green technologies we explore in part 2 are designed to work off the grid. In effect, they serve to reduce the demand for new power plants by supplying part of our electrical demand without our having to turn to the grid.

The Dawn of a Smarter Grid

Our current grid is designed for local delivery of electricity from local (or at least regional) power plants and relies on century-old technologies. But not for long. We find ourselves at the dawn of a revolution in the grid. Enter the new Smart Grid. What will change? Over the next few decades, the grid will change in four ways.

1. Plant Location and Technology

Currently plants must be located close to users to minimize line loss. That requires many plants to use coal and natural gas, since those fuels can easily be moved from a mine or well to the power plant. Not so with most renewables. We cant transport wind, waves, or sunlight to a city power plant. If we are to expand the use of renewables, electricity production will have to be viewed like food crops. We grow food not where the consumers are, but where the growing conditions are best, and then transport the food. In a Smart Grid, we will do the same with electricity put the power plant where conditions are best for producing electricity and transport the final product (electrical energy) to the user. Power plants will be located at the sites of the strongest and most reliable winds, the most intense and reliable sunlight, the strongest water flows, the hottest geothermal resources, and the strongest ocean tides and waveseven if those locations are thousands of miles away from major population centers. This is a whole new way of thinking about power plants. But it will only work if changes 2 and 3 are also part of the plan.

The Amazing U.S. Electric Grid: Delivering Electricity to Your Doorstep / 7

2. Long-Range Transmission System

A Smart Grid will have to be smart enough to move electrical power from wherever it can be most efficiently and economically produced to wherever it is needed. That means that we must rethink how we move electricity. We will need thousands of miles of new, more efficient, high-voltage, cross-country power lines to create a true national grid. Research to develop these new lines is well under way. But new lines will never be efficient enough to serve the needs of a Smart Grid on their own. Research groups are now studying ways to move electricity without wires. Utilities could replace high-voltage lines with microwave beams that carry the energy from place to place with very little loss. The other option is to convert electricity into some other form of energy that is easier to transport. Virtually all of the research in this area focuses on hydrogen. Hydrogen is a gas and can be piped across the countryjust as we now pipe natural gas (see A BIG Future for the Smallest Atom: Hydrogen in part 2). In the fuel cells that will be available over the next ten to twenty years (see The Genies Magic Energy Lamp: Fuel Cells in part 2), hydrogen can easily, efficiently, and economically be turned back into electricity.

3. Energy Storage
Wind comes and goes. Tides ebb and flow. Waves sometimes pound like thunder and sometimes barely whisper against the shore. The sun only shines on sunny days. Virtually all renewable energy resources are intermittentthey are available only part of the time. However, utility companies need to depend on their power plants to produce energy all of the timeday in and day out. We dont stop using electricity just because its cloudy and calm. Utility companies can only rely on renewables if they can produce as much electricity as possible when conditions are good and then efficiently hold some of that energy to meet the demand for electricity when conditions are bad hours or even days later. They need to be able to store electrical energy. Its a lot like cooking twice as much as you really need for dinner because you are planning to use the leftovers for dinner the next day without having to cook again. In the same way, electricity producers need to make extra (think leftovers) electricity while the tide runs, the sun shines, or the wind howls. But that only works if they have the energy equivalent of plastic refrigerator containers in which to safely store the leftovers until they are needed. While many energy storage schemes are being dreamed of, five are nearing the point of being ready to use: Compressed Air: Excess electricity can power pumps that pump compressed air into large, underground sealed spaces. That air can later be released to blow across turbine blades and create electricity when it is needed. Some planners think that this system would be an ideal way to take advantage of Midwest nighttime winds. (Those winds could produce a lot of electrical energy at night. But thats not when the electricity is needed. It is needed 12 hours later, during the day.) There are two compressed air test plants now operating in Alabama. Massive use of this technology depends on finding enough suitable sealed underground spaces.

8 \ Part 1Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today Molten Salt Heat Exchanger: Excess electricity (or excess heat from a boiler) can heat nitrate salts above 700F and turn the salts into a liquid. That liquid will retain its heat for weeks. When the liquid is resolidified back into salts, it releases its stored heat, which can drive a power plant to create electricity. This system seems to be ideal for solar thermal plants, where excess hot oil from the solar collectors could feed into salt heaters. Flywheels: Flywheels are centuries old. They date to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. But new, more efficient designs are making them attractive for energy storage. Excess energy makes a giant metal wheel spin. If that wheel weighs many tons and is twenty or thirty feet in diameter, and if it spins at many thousands of revolutions per minute, then it can hold a lot of energy. Later, connect the shaft of that flywheel to the shaft of a generator, and we get electricity. Sodium-Sulfur Batteries: These are like ordinary lead-acid (car) batteries but have molten sulfur inside. They are rechargeable, so any excess electricity produced by a power plant can be stored in one of these batteries and later drained back into the grid. Best, these batteries can store 40 percent more energy than a lead-acid battery and last four or five times as long. (See Electricity in a Box: Batteries and Energy Storage in part 2.) Hydrogen: Excess electricity can be used to tear apart water molecules to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen later powers fuel cells to produce electricity when it is needed. (See A BIG Future for the Smallest Atom: Hydrogen in part 2.)

4. Smart Meters
The grid will become much more efficient once it takes advantage of modern computer and communications electronics. This effort centers on the Smart Meter, a replacement for the bulky, century-old technology in the electric meter attached to your house. A Smart Meter is like setting up an instant messaging link among you, your meter, and the utility company control center. Consumers learnmoment to momenthow they really use (and waste) electricity and how they could use it much more efficiently. The utility gets detailed information that will let them plan and manage more efficiently. When will this wondrous Smart Grid arrive at your electrical doorstep? A test Smart Grid is currently being constructed in Boulder, Colorado. Smart Meters are being installed in many communities in California. Based on results there, Smart Grids will expand to other sites by 2015. The Smart Grid is due to go national in 2020. In 2009 the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that instituting the Smart Grid technologies could reduce annual greenhouse emissions by 60 to 200 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2030. Also in 2009, the federal government appropriated $3.4 billion (plus $5 billion of private funds) to support 100 projects to demonstrate the potential of a Smart Gridfrom Smart Meters in homes to new two-way power lines and better grid management. Thats the system we haveplus a peek at the grid to come. Now we can examine those new green technologiesas soon as we agree on what green really means and see why the current energy technologies that electrical utilities in this country use are definitely not so green.

What Does Green Mean?

Every day we hear about green this or green that. We decide to buy something, but pause to ask, Is it green? (even though that particular thing is obviously red or blue or, as a company, has no real color at all). Newspapers and TV news shows boast about some new program or company being green, or greener than some other program, company, place, or thing. But what is green? What does it really mean? In truth, green is just a color. But green is the color of plants, leaves, and grassof nature. Green is the dominant color of the vegetation in a natural environment that supports human life. We equate an environment loaded with this lushgreen plant material with a healthy and good environment because it is the environment that is healthy and good for humans. We say that we want our products, communities, and companies to be green because we want to protect those parts of nature that help sustain us. Ebola, hepatitis, and polio viruses (even H1N1 flu virus) are also part of natureas are mosquitoes, earwigs, weevils, Brussels sprouts, tyrannosaurus rex, and the invasive kudzu plant that is choking much of the U.S. Southeast. The sulfur-filled cauldron of a steaming volcanic crater that withers all living tissue is also naturalpart of nature. But we dont care so much about protecting those parts of nature.

10 \ Part 1Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today In this sense, being green means supporting a healthy, stable, human-friendly environment. But there is another sense that has been tacked onto the term green. Being green also means not changing the environment. Do no harm. Leave it exactly as you found it. If we modern humans found a lush, pristinegreenforest ecosystem, then we should strive to leave the same environment in our wakeor to restore it to that environment as best we can. Thats a relatively new concept. Humans used to think that it was a good thingeven part of human destinyto change the environment to suit our needs and desires (as a beaver does when it gnaws down trees and builds a new dam across a meandering creek). No longer. Now we see greater benefit from preserving the ecosystem as it naturally evolved on its own before we humans arrived. When specifically used to describe energy production, green has also come to mean renewable. Wood is a renewable energy fuel because we can plant more trees to make more wood as fast as we use it. Solar energy, wind, and waves are all renewable because, no matter how much we use today, tomorrow the supply will be replenished and as vast as it was when we started using it. Carbon-based fossil fuels are not renewable. Earths natural processes created them millions of years ago and over millions of years. Earth cant replenish the supply for millions more years. Each time we pump oil or dig coal out of the ground, the total supply shrinks and will not be renewed by nature until long after humans have ceased to walk the earth. When we use it up, its gone. Finally, the term green has come to measure whether some industry, program, or activity enhances human health or tends to make humans sicker and less healthy. The air pollutants (soot, smoke, greenhouse gases, sulfur, etc.), water pollutants, and land disruptions created by the electrical energy industry definitely harm human health. They arent green. But a desert solar thermal power plant does not harm human health, so we call it green. It is easy to understand the concept of green as a desirable goal, and it seems obvious which electrical energy technologies are and arent green. Green technologies dont change the climate or harm the natural environment; they are renewable and dont harm human health. Simple, right? Actually, it is not. Many technologies are green in some ways and the opposite of green in others. Should hydroelectric power plants located in river dams be counted as green because they emit no pollutants and the power of running river water is renewableor as not green because they harm fish, disrupt sediment flows, and flood hundreds of acres of land? Should wind turbines be called green only if scientists can find a way to minimize (or eliminate) the many bird deaths each year from collisions with the turbine blades? Should power plants that burn municipal waste (the stuff collected each week by garbage trucks) be considered green because they put wastes to productive use and keep them out of landfills, or as not green because burning waste biomass releases greenhouse gases? Should geothermal power plants be called green even though geothermal heat and steam pumped up from underground is not a renewable energy source?

What Does Green Mean? / 11 Should nuclear energy plants be called green because an operating nuclear plant is the least polluting of all power plants, or should nuclear technology as a whole be abandoned as definitely not green because the radioactive wastes from a nuclear plant are deadly to humans for tens of thousands of years? Should natural gas be called green or not? It is by far the cleanest burning of all fossil fuels and even compares favorably with some of the renewable green technologies. But it is a hydrocarbon, nonrenewable fuel, and burning natural gas does produce carbon dioxide (a primary greenhouse gas). Ultimately, nothing is completely green, and nothing is completely not green. Each and every electric energy technology has some negative impact. Some release toxins and other pollutants into the air. Some release pollutants into the water. Some release no pollutants at all, but affect natural energy and sediment flows. Some permanently alter the land. Some cause fish kills. Some cause bird kills. The impacts of some technologies come during their operation. For some, the pollution all comes during their manufacturing. For others, it comes from final disposal of the plants wastes and residue. The issue boils down to comparisons, to deciding which technologies are as green as we can get and are still able to produce the electrical energy we need. The ultimate question is, what is the best that we can do? That is what this book is about. Which technologies will be available to produce the electricity we will need and be the best possible mix for our environment and human wellbeing? Our electricity in 20, 30, and 60 years will come from somewhere. But from where? That is the question. We are in the midst of an exciting race to develop these various greener energy technologies. Along the way, each has to prove that it can reliably produce the massive amounts of electricity we need and really does deserve the label green.

A Closer Look at Why Our Grid Isnt Green

Before we go hunting for new and different energy technologies, whats wrong with what we already have? Virtually all of our electricity comes from two fossil fuels (coal and natural gas), with a strong splash of nuclear and a generous dash of the other prominent fossil fuel, oil. These Big 4 technologies account for almost 90 percent of our electricity. (Hydroelectric makes up most of the rest.) In case you are not yet convinced, lets push a little deeper into whats wrong with the electrical energy technologies we have used for the past 130 years and still rely on today. We have the most reliable electrical system in the world. Why not just keep on marching down the same road with the same power plants: coal, nuclear, oil, and natural gas?

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14 \ Part 1Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today

Coal
Just over half of all electric power in this country comes from coal. In 2008 the 500 plus coal-fired power plants in the United States accounted for 363,000 Mw of generating capacity. Only China burns more coal than the United States and emits more carbon dioxide from coal burning. (Carbon dioxide is a molecule with one atom of carbonCand two atoms of oxygenOand is commonly written as CO2.) Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas of greatest concern and a major contributor to the current spike in global warming. Even though they produce only half of our electricity, U.S. coal-burning power plants annually emit 2.1 billion tons of CO2 (almost three-quarters of all CO2 released by the U.S. electric utility industry). Coal plants also belch into our atmosphere 93 percent of the sulfur dioxide and 80 percent of the nitrous oxides (primary sources of acid rain and contributors to urban smog) produced by all U.S. electric utilities. Coal plants are the biggest source of mercury and other toxic heavy metals released into the atmosphere. The emissions from a coal-fired power plant contain more pollutants and greenhouse gases per unit of energy produced than those from any other kind of power plant. In addition to the effects of the power plants, coal mining creates massive environmental problems. Some 87 percent of coal is now mined through strip mining. Strip mines literally rip off dozenseven hundredsof feet of earth over many hundreds of square miles of land to lay bare the precious layers of coal below. Strip mining destroys natural habitat, alters landforms and natural drainage, contaminates the soil, and destroys underground aquifers that flow near the surface. In some Eastern U.S. coal strip mines, whole mountains are removed to expose coal deposits underneath. As of 2008, more than 100 new coal-fired power plants were on the drawing boards and ready for the permitting process. Why would utilities still ask to build new plants using this polluting technology? Because coal is cheap, its proven, and its reliable. And it will be readily available for decades to come. Utilities dont want to pollute. But they would rather deal with the pollution than gamble their future on unproven technologies and fuel sources that they dont know they can absolutely depend on. The challenge for green electrical technologies is to prove to the world that they are as reliable as coal.

Nuclear
Lights flickered on in 1951 in Arco, Idaho, as the worlds first nuclear-powered electricity came online. Everyone thought nuclear fission was the future, a pollution-free answer to providing endless supplies of cheap electricity. (There are nothats right, absolutely no polluting emissions from a nuclear power plant, only waste heat.) Ripping apart an atom of uranium (nuclear fission) is 10 million times more potent than burning an atom of petroleum or coal. One ounce of uranium can produce the same amount of energy as burning 300 tons of coal! Surely nuclear power plants were the ultimate answer to our electrical energy needs. Many predicted that nuclear energy would make electricity so cheap that it wouldnt be worth measuring how much people used.

A Closer Look at Why Our Grid Isnt Green / 15 Alas, it was not to be. During the 1960s and 1970s many nuclear power plants were built, with great fanfare and expectation. Then nuclear construction abruptly stopped. The plants produced far less electricity than anticipated because safety alarms too often triggered plant shutdowns. The plants were too expensive to build for the amount of electricity they produced. Nuclear plants use 2.5 times as much water as similar fossil fuel plants for cooling. In addition, accidents happened too often. (The 1979 Three Mile Island plant accident in Pennsylvania was the biggest in this country.) Waste fuel bristling with deadly radioactivity (which stays deadly for tens of thousands of years) became a major problem because no good waste storage sites could be found, and these toxic wastes piled up (and leaked) in temporary storage locations dotted around the country. Finally, creating uranium fuel for a nuclear power plant (a process called uranium enrichment) requires enormous amounts of electrical energymost of which is supplied by the very fossil fuel power plants nuclear power was supposed to replace. Enrichment also creates pollution of its own. Public opposition mounted. Congress withdrew support. Nuclear energy plummeted overnight from everyones dream to everyones nightmare. At present more than 100 nuclear plants still operate in 33 states. However, not a single application for a new commercial nuclear power plant was filed for 25 yearsuntil 2007, when five new applications were filed with the federal government for nuclear plants. Eleven applications were filed in 2008. Still, it will be 12 to 15 years before any of this 12,000 Mw of nuclear power comes onlineeven if they are all approved. These new applications mark renewed interest in nuclear technology and show that nuclear is now beginning a comeback. Quietly over the past 20 years, the U.S. Navy has converted almost its entire fleet of ships to run on nuclear energywith no accidents or radioactive spills. Twenty-five years of research have improved all aspects of nuclear operation. Nuclear isnt a new, futuristic, science fiction technology anymore. New plant designs drastically reduce the likelihood of a release of radioactivity from the plant. New research has found ways to reduce the radioactivity in the wastes from the plant. (Yes, they are still deadly, but not nearly as deadly and for not nearly as long.) The enrichment process is also now faster, cheaper, and safer. Look for more nuclear plants to spring into the grids power production beginning in 2022 to 2025. Green or not, nuclear is here to stay.

Oil
Before the 1973 oil embargo, the United States generated 25 percent of our electricity from oil. Fifteen years later (1988) that percentage was down to 10 percent. By 2007 it was down to 2 percent. Why? There are two reasons. First, the price of oil has fluctuated too much (and mostly fluctuated up) over the past thirty years. Utilities shy away from fuels whose costs they cant depend on. Second, natural gas has become more availableand therefore much cheaper. Oil is still used extensively for electrical production in other parts of the world, but will likely fade completely from the U.S. electrical grid within the next decade. Oil will continue to be important for our transportation sector for the foreseeable future. But oil will never again be a significant contributor to our electrical grid.

16 \ Part 1Not So Green: The Grid We Have Today Another looming danger hangs like an albatross around the neck of oil. Oil spills are environmental catastrophes just waiting to happen. It took decades for the ecosystem of Prince Edward Sound to even begin to recover after the 1989 oil spill from the Exxon Valdez. The negative impacts of the 2010 Gulf oil disaster will reverberate in the regional environment and human communities for decades to come.

Natural Gas
Natural gas, in itself, would seem to be a colorless, shapeless, and odorlessand, yes, uninterestinggas. Quite uninterestingexcept that natural gas burns easily. It is a nonrenewable hydrocarbon fossil fuel found in underground reservoirs and is a far cleanerburning fuel than either coal or oil. For the past decade it has also been the cheapest of the hydrocarbon fuels. Many houses, restaurants, and factories use natural gas for cooking and heating. Utilities are increasingly using natural gas to produce electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy forecasts that 900 of the next 1,000 power plants built in the United States will use natural gas as their fuel. Natural gas is the odd, slippery technology that refuses to fit neatly into our boxes labeled green and not green. Yes, it is nonrenewable. Yes, is it is hydrocarbon fuel. And yes, burning natural gas does produce CO2 emissions. So its not green. Right? But wait. Burning natural gas to create electricity produces only half the pollution and greenhouse gases of a coal-fired plant. Many renewable, green energy technologies (burning wood waste, crop waste, biofuels, or landfill garbage, for example) produce as muchand often far morepollution and CO2. Even if we cant label natural gas as green, neither can we honestly label it not green. New drilling and processing techniques allow natural gas producers to tap into gas trapped in rock formations they were never able to reach before. New drilling equipment now allows drillers to reach gas trapped as much as 20,000 feet underground, six times as deep as they could previously reach. New methods for extracting the gas have allowed them to extract gas trapped in shale deposits, a type of formation they were not previously able to use. Drillers are now able to drill under the deep oceans and reach gas locked in hydrates (lattices of frozen waterlike a cagethat surround methane gas molecules). These and other advances in gas drilling technology have greatly multiplied the ready store of U.S. natural gas. The United States has a greater supply of natural gas than we need and will likely become a natural gas exporter instead of the natural gas importer it has always been. Use of this resource for electrical production will surely increase over the next 50 years. Natural gas has become, and for the next decade will continue to be, the darling of the electric utility industry. One dark cloud looms on the horizon of new natural gas drilling efforts. The process of fracturing (injecting some liquid or gas to fracture rock formations deep under ground and thus increase the flow of natural gas toward the surface) is beginning to raise environmental opposition. In some areas fracturing has contaminated water supplies with natural gas and produced burnable water. In a few areas, people report a variety of low-grade illnesses from exposure to the chemicals used in fracturing operations. If these environmental red flags

A Closer Look at Why Our Grid Isnt Green / 17 prove to be true, it could significantly curtail the production of American natural gas. Studies should be available and conclusive by 2015. No, natural gas is not renewable and sustainable. But it is abundant and far more environmentally friendly than coal, and the U.S. supply will last well into the twenty-second century. Whether we think natural gas should be called green or not, the reality is that U.S. electric producers will increase their use of natural gas over the foreseeable future.

Part 2
Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future
Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Introduction

Its time to examine the 25 green electrical technologies clamoring to be part of our electric energy future. But first, a quick recap.

What Utilities Need

If green energy technologies are to succeed, if they are to fulfill their promise, they must be enthusiastically adopted by the public and private utility companies that control the grid. Before those companies will invest in a new technology to supply large portions of the electrical energy they provide to their customers, they need to be assured that the technology comes from a reliable, abundant, and dependable supply of fuel; the technology is and will be available at a cheap enough price; the technology can supply electricity 24/7 to their customers; the technology will be available to them for many decades to come. the technology wont face sudden environmental or regulatory disruptions; and the company will be able to build and operate many plants using the same technology and process.

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22 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

What We Want
We, the American public, also have a list of demands and wants that must be met by our future electrical energy technologies and grid. We want to shift to renewable, nonpolluting sources of electrical energy; a dependable supply of as much electricity as we need and want; to slow (or reverse) climate change; a robust and healthy environment; to do no further damage to the environment; and to promote human health and wellness. Can both of these ambitious lists be metat the same time? With the same energy technologies? Which renewable, greener energy technologies are realistic candidates to support the future grid? Which can make a large contribution? Which are just wishful dreams for the distant future? Lets look at the 25 top candidates to meet these complex and potentially contradictory sets of needs and wants. Here is a peek into your green electrical future.

Free Electricity for Everyone!: Fusion

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
You want energy? Go to the sun. Thats the main source of energy for our solar system. If you cant reach the sun with your extension cord, create your own sun here on Earth. How? Fusion. Fusion is the process of fusing together two or more atoms of a light element to make one atom of a heavier element. Thats how every star in the universe creates energy. Our sun fuses hydrogen atoms together to produce heliumand a whole lot of heat energy. Our suns fusion creates enough heat to warm and light our Earthand we receive only one onehundred-millionth of 1 percent of the energy the sun radiates out into space. How much heat does our sun produce with fusion?: 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 megawatts. Yes, thats a BIG number. How big? A very large U.S. power plant produces 2,000 Mw of electrical power. The sun produces as much energy as 200 million billion of those large power plants. The sun emits 80 trillion times as much energy as the entire U.S. electrical grid. Thats the potential of fusion. Create even a tiny fist-sized sun, and we create a virtually endless supply of energy. Existing nuclear power plants use a process called fission to produce heat energy. In fission, we tear apart a big atomlike uraniumto produce two smaller atoms and extra heat. Fusion is the opposite processfusing small atoms together to create one bigger one. Once we create a fusion reaction, we have opened the door to monstrous amounts of heat energy. Fusion produces many times more energy than fission does. A thermonuclear (fusion) bomb yields about 1,000 times the explosive power of an atomic (fission) bomb. Utilities will realize a similar gain in energy production by shifting from fission to fusion. One pound of hydrogen fuel in a fusion reaction could produce 8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. It would take many thousands of tons of coal to produce that same energy. If fusion is so wonderful, why dont any utility companies have fusion power plants? To create a fusion reaction in a power plant, we need three things: a small amount of matter (such as hydrogen), heat, and pressurelots of heat and lots of pressureand those last two needs are the BIG problems with fusion. Problem number 1: We have to heat the hydrogen fuel to at least 100 millionC to make the reaction happen, and we cant get those kinds of temperatures in any ordinary oven. (Once hydrogen is heated to those extreme temperatures, it is called plasma. Most stars are actually big balls of plasma.) In specially designed laboratories using high-energy lasers, scientists can heat plasma as hot as 510 millionC. Heating a small amount of hydrogen to a temperature of 100 millionC is certainly doable. But the lasers that do it use lots of energy. This also introduces problem number 2. When particles get that hot, they become very energetic and zip off in random directions at nearly the speed of light. We quickly lose all of

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24 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future the hydrogen fuelunless we create magnetic force fields to keep the plasma particles bottled up in the tiny area of the reaction chamber. Scientists must surround a fusion reaction with amazingly powerful magnetic fields. These also have been built. However, between the energy needed to heat the hydrogen fuel and the energy needed to maintain the magnetic fields, the reaction uses more energy than it produces.

Whats Happening Now?

Fusion was the great hope and excitement of the 1970s and early 1980s. Everyone thought that fusion power and virtually free electricity for everybody lay just around the corner. But the research stalled and has only crept forward at a painfully slow rate since then. Fusion reactions have been produced in university laboratories. However, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to build a special lab that can both create, and withstand, the temperatures and pressures needed for fusion. The leading U.S. fusion lab is the Princeton High Energy Plasma Lab, which has experimented with plasma fusion for almost 20 years. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has built giant plasma reactors and is conducting ongoing research. Even though there is lots of basic research on plasma and fusion under way around the world, no one has created a practical fusion reaction. The process still uses up as much energy to run the lasers and magnetic field as the fusion reaction produces. The promise of fusion seems tantalizingly close. Yet years and decades roll by without anyone being able to reach out and capture it.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for fusion: It has the greatest potential of all energy sources. Working fusion can produce limitless, virtually free electricity. Fusion plants produce no pollutants and no radioactive wastes. On the negative side for fusion: After 40 years of intensive work, we are no closer to working fusion than we were 20 years ago. Humans have found it frustratingly difficult to duplicate nature and create a star.

Free Electricity for Everyone!: Fusion / 25

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Fusion has greater potential than all other energy sources combined. Key Factors: No one has been able to create a sustained, energy-producing fusion reaction. Timeline: Look for a scientific breakthrough between 2020 and 2030. The first working power plant should follow a decade later.

Classroom Activities
Fusion reactions are extremely dangerous, expensive, and technical events. You will not build one or see one up close. But you do see a fusion reaction every day. The sun is a fusion reaction. The light you see and the heat you feel coming from the sun are the physical results of a fusion reaction. Lets take a minute to look more closely at, and to appreciate, the sun and its radiation, our model fusion reaction. First, an important caution. Do not look directly at the sun, even through dark glasses. It can permanently damage your eyes. 1. First, what is in the sun? What is it made of? Why does it appear yellow to us? Second, how do we know? No human has ever been to the sun. How do we really know what goes on there? Discuss these questions as a class and then research them. Which government agency do you rely on most for this information? Now lets test the suns radiation. Place an ordinary thermometer in direct sunlight and record its reading. Next move the thermometer into the shade, let it settle to a new reading, and also record that. Why are they different? What is in the suns radiation that affected the thermometer? Is there part of the suns radiation that doesnt affect a thermometer? What is it? How much of the suns radiation is visible? How much isnt? Face the sun and close your eyes so that you dont get any visual information. Can you still detect the sun? How? What is in sunlight that isnt visible? Research the full makeup of sunlight and see if you can make a list of every component in the suns radiation. If utility companies created a fusion reaction in a power plant (and assuming that their fusion reaction was similar to the suns), which parts of the radiation created by their fusion reaction would they use to power their electricity-making process?

2.

3.

26 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

For Further Reading

ABDO Publishing. Future Energy. 6 vols. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Coble, Charles. Nuclear Energy. New York: Steck-Vaughn, 2000. Hand, Carol. The Great Hope for an Energy Alternative: Laser-Powered Fusion Energy. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Ollhoff, Jim. Nuclear Energy. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Royston, Angela. The Day the Sun Went Out: The Suns Energy. Milwaukee, WI: Raintree, 2005. Seife, Charles. Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking. New York, Viking, 2008.

Web Sites
www.pppl.gov/fusion_basics/pages/fusion_energy.html Site of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. fusionforenergy.europa.eu/ A site describing CERNs fusion activity. www.er.doe.gov/ and www.energy.gov Two Department of Energy sites describing U.S. fusion activity. news.nationalgeographic.com A National Geographic segment on fusion. www.popularmechanics.com/science/4251982 Good description of MITs research on fusion power. www.universetoday.com/.../nuclear-fusion-power-closer-to-reality-say-twoseparate-teams/ Good description of the current state of fusion research.

Let the Sun Sizzle!: Solar Thermal Electricity

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
The sun floods the earth each day with radiant energy that far exceeds the worlds total need for electrical energy. If we need electrical energy to feed the grid, why not get it directly from what the sun so graciously dumps on our doorstep for free each day? The summer sun heats exposed metal surfaces till theyre almost too hot to touch. Still, that isnt hot enough to power an electric power plantunless we concentrate that solar heat. Concentrated solar heat will provide enough heat to replace a power plants boilers. This idea is very much like using a magnifying glass to concentrate the suns rays on one point to create enough heat at that point to set leaves or paper on fire. Now imagine concentrating all of the incoming solar energy that falls on acres and acres of land. That would certainly provide enough heat to boil a power plants working fluid and create the steam that spins the plants turbine blades. That is the idea behind solar thermal power plants. Why turn to the sun? Because it is by far our greatest source of renewable energy. Burning all of the known coal reserves in the world is equivalent to the solar energy that strikes our planet every six days! All the natural gas reserves equal four and a half days of solar energy. All known oil reserves equal less than one days solar radiation onto Earth. Use all recoverable fissionable uranium that naturally exists on Earth, and we would produce less than two and a half days of solar energy. Burn all fossil fuel and use up all uranium, and wed get the equivalent of two weeks worth of the solar radiation we receivefor free! Thats how abundant solar energy is. Currently, however, we produce less than 0.1 percent of the U.S. grids electricity from solar-thermal systems. Americas first large solar electric plant was built in Californias Mojave desert in the late 1980s. Long sections of curved mirror, shaped as parabolic troughs, are kept pointed toward the sun. All of the suns energy that reaches the mirror is reflected and concentrated on a thin tube stretched in front of the length of the mirror. The special oil inside that tube is heated to many hundreds of degrees. That hot oil can either be stored for later use or pumped directly through heat exchangers, where its heat boils the plants working fluid. Individual parabolic mirror panels vary widely in size, up to a current maximum of around 40 feet in length and 10 feet in height. A single power plant may have a field of mirrors that covers hundreds of acres. Each mirror panel acts more or less independently (as do individual photovoltaic plates in a large array) to heat its oil and send that hot oil to a central heat exchanger. There is a second type of solar thermal plant. In this design, every mirror in the plants mirror field reflects light to the same point, a specially built housing atop a tall, central tower. The inside of that receiver, seeming as bright as a sun, reaches temperatures of several

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28 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future thousand degrees. That heat is stored in molten salts or in special oils until it is needed to generate electricity. A giant advantage of solar thermal plants is that the suns energy is first converted into heat. Electricity cannot be efficiently stored. But heat can be stored in either molten salts or special oils. A solar-thermal plant collects heat while the sun shines, but can produce electricity 24/7 by using the stored heat to make steam and spin turbine blades. Several problems have slowed solar thermal development. Even the newest solar plants deliver electricity at a cost of around 16 cents per kwhr (roughly twice the cost of coalgenerated electricity). Even though solar thermal plants can produce electricity 24 hours a day, they are limited by the amount of solar energy that reaches the array of mirrors. Less sunlight strikes each square foot of ground as we go travel farther north or south away from the equator. Less light strikes the ground in winter than in summer (in the Northern Hemisphere). Cloudy days severely limit the amount of solar heat that reaches the array. To minimize the impact of these factors, every solar thermal plant build in the United States has been located in the desert Southwest. It is hard to envision a profitable solar thermal power plant anywhere along the Canadian border states.

Whats Happening Now?

Solar thermal energy hasnt garnered the attention, interest, and enthusiasm it could have. Still, much work on improved materials and designs inches steadily forward. A new mirror and material design recently created at Sandia National Lab has increased the efficiency of solar thermal plants to 31.25 percentthe highest ever and an indication that the cost of solar thermal electricity may be able to drop to competitive levels. Using this design, developers hope to build a 1,600 Mw plant in the Southern California desert by 2014. The West Coast utility Pacific Gas & Electric signed contracts in 2007 and 2008 to build several solar thermal plants (550 Mw and 180 Mw) to come online in 2011. These will also use new, still-experimental designs. If they prove to be as efficient as hoped, they will likely lead to additional, larger plants by 2020. In September 2009 a U.S. company, First Solar, signed a contract with China to build the worlds largest solar farmroughly the size of Manhattan! No timetable for the plants operation is yet available. The Ausra company recently built a 5 Mw solar tower demonstration plant in Bakersfield, California. Because of its success, Ausra plans to build a 177 Mw plant at San Luis Obispo, California, beginning in 2011. Finally, in late 2009 a team of MIT engineering students designed and built a small, inexpensive, 3 kw solar thermal power plant to be used as an off-grid independent unit. They have contracts to place demonstration units in Africa. As mentioned previously, efficiently storing solar thermal energy is a major key to the success of any solar thermal plant design. The Solar Two Power Tower (built in the desert near Barstow, California, for the Southern California Edison Company) is now testing new designs of insulated storage vats for hot molten salt solution that can store the molten salt at 1050F. Sweden is experimenting with underground seasonal storage systems for solar heat collected during the long summer days. The current demonstration plants store the solar energy for winter heating, not direct electrical production. However, future expansions will include winter electrical production from the stored summer heat.

Let the Sun Sizzle!: Solar Thermal Electricity / 29 Finally, Israel (the current world leader in this technology) is testing the use of solar ponds for storing solar energy. The ponds feature layers of different salinity water that trap heat in the bottom layers and insulate that hot water with the top, lower-salinity layers. Israel has installed more than 200 kw in each of several ponds. Plans are under way for similar ponds to be built in Mexico, Japan, Italy, Argentina, Qatar, and Kuwait.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for solar thermal: It is a renewable, free resource. There are no polluting emissions, and no wildlife is harmed. It has an almost perfect green scorecard. On the negative side for solar thermal: It requires excess land use (8 square miles of mirrors for a 1,000 Mw plant). The electricity produced is still too expensive. It only generates energy while the sun shines.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: It has virtually limitless national potential and could supply 90+ percent of U.S. electrical needs. Key Factors: It wont reach its potential until science and engineering breakthroughs bring costs down. Timeline: Look for solar thermal to be a major regional contributor to the U.S. Southwest electrical grid by 2025. Whether or not it grows beyond that will depend on the success of the research.

Classroom Activities
The giant curved reflectors that make up most of what you see in a picture of a solar thermal power plant dont actually collect the suns rays. They reflect and concentrate solar radiation on a central point, where that concentrated energy is absorbed by special oils. You can conduct a small experiment to see how effective this technique is.

30 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future 1. All you will need for this experiment is a simple, handheld magnifying glass and a thermometerpreferably a bulb thermometer that can register temperatures up to 350F. A candy thermometer is ideal. Place the thermometer on the ground (dirt or cement), preferably on a spot that is in the shade. Let the thermometer sit for a minute and then record its temperature. Use the magnifying glass to focus the sunlight so that it strikes the bulb of your thermometer. Watch the temperature rise. How much hotter does that spot get? Why? Would the thermometer get even hotter if your magnifying glass were bigger? Why? 2. Get three (or more) magnifying glasses, each of a different size. Measure the diameter of each glass. Then repeat the above experiment with each of the magnifying glasses. Now create a graph, with the diameter of the magnifying glass on one axis and the resulting temperature of the thermometer on the other. Place a dot on your graph to represent your measurements for each magnifying glass. Do you see a trend? What can you say about the relationship between the size of the magnifying glass and the resulting temperature at the focal point? Now imagine how hot the focal point of a curved solar collector gets when the collector is 10 feet tall and 30 feet long!

3. The curved shape of the solar reflectors of a thermal power plant is an example of a specific kind of curve. What is the name of that specific curved shape? What are the unique properties of that curve? What other pieces of equipment use that same kind of curved surface? Find examples of this shape in your neighborhood.

For Further Reading

Bearce, Stephanie. How to Harness Solar Power for Your Home. Hockessin, DE: Mitchell Lane Publishers, 2009. Bowden, Rob. Energy Sources: The Impact of Science and Technology. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009. Foster, Robert, ed. Solar Energy: Renewable Energy and the Environment. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2009. Gutnik, Martin. Electricity: From Faraday to Solar Generators. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing, 1998. Hansen, Amy. Running on Sunshine. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Hautala, Richard. Solar Energy. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2009. Kaplan, Sheila. Solar Energy. New York: Steck-Vaughn, 2002. Muschal, Frank. Energy from Wind, Sun, and Tides. Ann Arbor, MI: Cherry Lake Publishing, 2007.

Let the Sun Sizzle!: Solar Thermal Electricity / 31 Oxlade, Chris. Solar Energy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008. Parker, Steve. Solar Power. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2005. Richards, Julie. Solar Energy. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Spetgang, Tilly. The Kids Solar Energy Book Even Grown-Ups Can Understand. Dorset, England: Imagine Publishing, 2009. Tabak, John. Solar and Geothermal Energy. New York: Facts on File, 2009.

Web Sites
www.eia.doe.gov, Renewables and Alternate Fuels The Energy Information Administration site on alternate and renewable technologies. www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/csp.html Department of Energy description of the U.S. solar thermal program. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34793107/.../us_news-environment/ Description of the Chinese solar thermal program. www.solardev.com/SEIA-makingelec.php Description of the commercial solar thermal program in the United States. Good description of existing plants.

Beaming Megawatts: Solar Energy from Space

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Sunrise, sunset. Day, night. Every spot on Earth suffers from daily periods of dark. During those dark periods that we call night, solar electric generators dont produce any energy. Averaged over the year, solar systems can produce electricity less than half of the timeonly during those periods when the sun is up and shining. Worse, even when the sun is up, its strength is dimmed considerably by clouds and by particles in the atmosphere that absorb or scatter solar radiation. Averaged over the surface of the planet, Earth receives only a few hundred watts of solar energy per square meter each day. The maximum at the equator is still only about 1,000 watts per square meter. However, just above the atmosphere, the sun delivers a nearly constant daily dose of 1,368 watts per square meter, with no dips or interruptions. Instead of parking solar collectors on the planets surface, where they suffer from all manner of disruptions, why not park huge arrays of solar panelsthat would be measured in square milesabove the atmosphere in space and beam the steady flow of energy they produce back down to Earth from there? In 1968 American NASA engineer Peter Glaser first proposed space solar panels. Even though every satellite and every space probe ever launched has used solar panels to generate needed on-board electrical energy, the technology to generate electricity and beam it down to Earth has never been adequate to make the idea cost effective. The International Space Station is surrounded by solar panels the size of soccer fields. Literally hundreds of communications and research satellites circle the globeeach with its own stretches of unfurled solar panels. However, it has always cost too much to launch massive solar arrays into space to make it worthwhile to beam that energy back to Earth. Now, however, several competing ideas that could make space solar practical are being taken seriously around the world. In general, each of these systems would place giant fields of solar panels in stationary (geosynchronous) orbit around Earth and transmit the collected electricity to the surface as a microwave (or as a laser) beam of energy. This may sound a bit like Star Trek science fiction, but the technology exists. The question is whether the system can deliver electricity to the grid at competitive prices.

Whats Happening Now?

Two options are being studied for where to place space solar collectors. One is in synchronous orbit. Any satellite that always stays directly above the same spot on Earth as it speeds around the planet is said to be in a synchronous orbit. From Earth, such a satellite

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Beaming Megawatts: Solar Energy from Space / 33 always appears to be in the exact same spot in the sky. That makes it easy to maintain a direct link between the solar array and the Earth-bound receiving station. The other option is to place the collectors on the moon. The same side of the moon always faces Earth. So it would be easy to beam energy from collectors on the moon to a receiving station on Earth. However, that side of the moon does not always face the sun. Moon collectors, like Earth-bound collectors, would suffer from down time at night. In late 2009 the West Coast utility Pacific Gas & Electric signed a contract with Solaren Corp. for enough energy from a space array to power 250,000 homes by 2016. The orbiting array will transmit a microwave beam down to a receiving station in Fresno, California, where the electrical energy will enter the grid just as it would from any conventional power plant. In mid-2010 the Japanese Space agency announced plans to launch a massive solar array into space in the 2020s. Once completed, this array will cover more than a square mile! If either system works and produces cost-competitive electricity, many other utilities will follow suit in the next decade.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for space solar: Its a free, inexhaustible, renewable resource. It produces electricity 24/7. There are no polluting emissions of any kind. It requires almost no land use. On the negative side for space solar: It is an untested, unproven technology. It beams some waste heat to the surface. Space platforms are impossible to maintain and repair. It requires dedicated use of large chunks of geosynchronous orbits.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: It has unlimited potential and could supply all national electrical needs. Key Factors: This technology is untested and unproved. Timeline: First system tests are due by 2016. Look for expanded use by 2025 if the tests are successful. Then look for widespread national use by 2040.

34 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Classroom Activities
Space collectors will collect solar energy as do any other solar panels. But these satellites are way out in space. There are no electric wires to connect satellites to the grid. They will have to beam the collected energy back to Earth as a microwave beam of energy. 1. Lets look at how that energy is shipped down to Earth. What is a microwave? Where do microwaves fall on the electromagnetic spectrum? What companies/ activities/processes use microwave beams? What do they use them for? Find some local microwave beam users. (Hint: Look for microwave dish antennas and look to communication companies.) Schedule a time to interview the operators. Are the beams dangerous? How do they make microwave beams? What kinds of information do they put on them? Do you use microwaves? What for? What creates those microwave beams? What happens to them? Research how microwaves cook food. In order to reach a receiving station on the ground, a satellites microwave beam will have to pass through the earths atmosphere. Research the atmosphere, itself. What makes up the atmosphere? How tall is the atmosphere in feet? In miles? Is the atmosphere thin compared to the size of the earth? What is in the atmosphere that might interfere with a microwave beam coming down from space? (Hint: Look for the major gasesnitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.for forms of water and for particulate mattersoot, ash, etc.). Are these elements evenly spread throughout the atmosphere, or are some closer to the surface and some higher up?

2.

3. When a satellite circles the earth and remains directly over one fixed spot on the ground, we say that it is in a geostationarygeo (earth) stationary (remaining in the same place)orbit. Why do you think that energy-collecting satellites have to be placed in geostationary orbits? (Remember, the microwave energy beam has to flow continuously down to the surface and always hit the ground stations receiving antenna.) What is unique about geostationary orbits? How are they different from other satellite orbits? (Here are the key attributes of a geostationary orbit: Satellites in a geostationary orbit travel in a circularnot ellipticalorbit, directly above the equator, at an altitude of exactly 22,236 miles, and travel in the same direction that Earth rotates at exactly 6,873 mph.) Why at that exact altitude and speed? (Hint: The centrifugal force of the satellites speed has to exactly counteract, but not overpower, gravity while it stays exactly above one fixed spot on the surface.) What kinds of satellites travel in geostationary orbits? What kinds do not? What is a polar orbit? What will a polar orbit allow us to do that a geostationary orbit wont?

Beaming Megawatts: Solar Energy from Space / 35

For Further Reading

Bowden, Rob. Energy Sources: The Impact of Science and Technology. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009. Gutnik, Martin. Electricity: From Faraday to Solar Generators. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing, 1998. Hansen, Amy. Running on Sunshine. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Nansen, Ralph. Energy Crisis: Solution from Space. Toronto: Collectors Guide Publishing, 2009. Tabak, John. Solar and Geothermal Energy. New York: Facts on File, 2009.

Web Sites
dvice.com/archives/2009/11/solar-collector.php Good description of the technology and process. www.weatherquestions.com/Solar-power.htm Good description of the technology and process. www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301479,00.html Video of the military effort to create space-based solar collectors. www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm Scientific American article on space-based solar collectors. www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/ National Space Society site. www.guardian.co.uk/environment/.../solar-energy-farms-space Article on the PG&E test plant for solar collection.

Up on the Roof: Solar Photovoltaic Energy

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Photo (light) plus voltaic (producing an electric current): Photovoltaic cells convert sunlight directly into electricity. That seemingly simple idea has been a driving interest for generations of scientists ever since the phenomenon was first observed in 1839 by the French physicist Alexandre Becquerel. Sunlight affects some materials and increases (or creates) a flow of electricity through them. However, modern photovoltaics suffered through a slow and rocky start. Early designs and material never lived up to expectations. The solar panels installed on the White House roof with great fanfare in the early 1980s were ripped off just a few years later at President Reagans order in 1986. Photovoltaic systems are plagued by several kinds of natural limits that have kept them from living up to their hype and promise. First, a photovoltaic cell can never produce more energy than that contained in the suns rays that strike the cell. The stronger the sunlight, the larger the electrical flow it generates. Cloudy days, winter days, nighttime darknesseven atmospheric water vapor, smoke, and smogall reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches a cell. So does latitude. Less and less light strikes each square foot of ground (or roof) as we travel farther away from the latitude directly under the sun. (During the course of a year, that latitude will vary from 23 Nat the summer solsticeto 23 Sat the winter solstice.) In winter, a square foot of roof surface in Minneapolis, Minnesota, receives only about twothirds as much sunlight as one in Houston, Texas, 1,171 miles farther south and closer to the latitude directly under the sun. Systems that make sense in the desert Southwest might not produce enough electricity over the course of a year to make sense in the far North or Northeast. Second, much of the sunlight that strikes a cell reflects off it and is lost. When a solar panel points directly at the sun, it absorbs most of the suns energy. However, without a solar tracking motor and movable frame (way too expensive for commercial and residential units), a panel hardly ever points directly at the sun. As the angle at which the suns light strikes the panel increases, so does the amount of the suns energy that is reflected (bounces off the panel instead of being absorbed) and is lost. Third, even the best photovoltaic systems are inefficient. The amount of electrical energy that trickles out is always much less than even the reduced amount of sunlight that radiates into the cell. Fourth, current photovoltaic materials and cells dont like heat. The hotter they get, the more inefficiently they run. Thats a problem. We want lots of sunlight to strike each

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Up on the Roof: Solar Photovoltaic Energy / 37 photovoltaic cell in order to produce electricity. But that same sunlight heats the cells and makes them more inefficient. Still, photovoltaic cells and panels do work. They produce electricity and can provide electrical powerfrom the tiny amounts needed by a solar wristwatch to the few massive arrays that serve as commercial power plants. Photovoltaic panels covering the south-facing side of a houses roof can often provide most (if not all) of the electricity needed to run the house. Photovoltaic materials and cells are steadily improving. In 1997 global photovoltaic production totaled 126 Mw. By 2007 it was up to just over 3,800 Mw. Photovoltaic installations are growing as fast now (35 percent annual growth rate) as personal computers and cell phones were during their greatest growth periods. In some neighborhoods more roofs sprout photovoltaic panels than chimney stacks. The basic unit of a photovoltaic array is the individual photovoltaic cell. Cells are made from layers of semiconductor material (all current designs use crystalline silicone) that chemically converts sunlight into electricity. Cells are assembled and connected into modules (panels) that are linked together to form an array. The bigger the array, the more electricity it produces. For all practical purposes, photovoltaics is not currently thought of as a technology to feed electricity directly into the national grid. Photovoltaic electricity is too expensive. Solar thermal systems offer more attractive alternatives for large-scale power plants. Photovoltaic systems are best for individual residential and commercial installations. In these off-grid systems (so called because they provide electricity without connecting to the electrical grid), the installed photovoltaic panels deliver electricity directly to a single end user (a household, a company, or a store). Such systems do not provide a new source of electricity for the grid. Rather, they reduce the demand on the grid and thus reduce the need to build new power plants.

Whats Happening Now?

In 2007 Google installed a 1.6 Mw system on its corporate headquarters. The same year, Walmart announced that it would install 2 Mw photovoltaic arrays at 22 of its stores in California and Hawaii. China installed more than 150 Mw of solar photovoltaic capacity in 2008 (more than any other country that year). States are beginning to allow net metering on homes with photovoltaic systems. If the house produces more electricity in a day than the family needs, they can, in effect, sell the excess back to the local utility company. It is hoped that this will make home photovoltaic systems much more attractive to homeownerseven though early evidence has not shown that net metering has had a significant effect on sales of solar electric systems. Scientists at many universities are struggling to make photovoltaic electricity as cheap as that from coal. Preliminary results from a dozen facilities show great promise. Researchers at Boston College have developed what they call a quantum dot that absorbs excess heat inside a solar cell and converts it into electricity. Scientists at Wake Forest have developed a new surface design for photovoltaic cells so that the angle to the sun wont reduce cell efficiency (as it does now).

38 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Scientists at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley and at Caltech have created wire enhanced cells. These are normal cells enhanced with tiny hairlike wires a few micros high that stick up from the cell and increase solar absorption by 10 to 20 percent. Most scientists dont think that silicon-based systems will ever become cost-competitive with coal. Many research laboratories are now searching for new photovoltaic materials. One early result of this research has been thin film technology. Instead of thick, rigid cells and panels, manufacturers can now produce thin, flexible photovoltaic panels. Other research may allow cell manufactures to avoid costly indium and gallium in photovoltaic cell design and replace them with more common elements. Finally, University of CaliforniaBerkeley scientists have found that shifting from silicone-based to bismuth ferritebased cells will both drastically reduce the cost of each cell and allow the cells to produce a higher voltage output. Once these (and other) developments are commercially availableand combinedthe resulting new generation of photovoltaic cells will be so inexpensive and efficient that the price of the electricity they produce may well be as cheap as that from coalor even cheaper! Then, for the first time, photovoltaic systems might become an attractive alternative for large utility power plants.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for photovoltaics: It is a free, renewable resource. It is a proven, reliable, effective technology. There is virtually no pollution once its installed and operating. There is minimal (or no) land use requirement. On the negative side for photovoltaics: It operates only while the sun shines. Its still too expensive. It cant yet serve as a reliable baseline power plant.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: It is virtually unlimited, especially in the South and Southwest regions. Key Factors: Scientific and engineering breakthroughs are needed to bring the cost of producing photovoltaic energy down dramatically. Storage systems must be developed to allow 24/7 energy production.

Up on the Roof: Solar Photovoltaic Energy / 39 Timeline: Look for major breakthroughs between 2015 and 2020. Look for widespread regional expansion in the Southwest by 2025. Look for steady off-grid expansion nationwide.

Classroom Activities
1. There are already solar photovoltaic panels on houses, office buildings, and stores. What other devices (besides buildings) use solar photovoltaic panels to generate needed electricity? (Hint: Look around your school and house. Dont forget satellites in space, watches, calculators, cell phones, etc.) Make as complete a list as you can. 2. As a class, select five or six houses that have installed solar panels. In what direction does each set of panels point? Why? List the direction of each system in degrees from 0 (due north), around to 180 (due south), and around to 360 (due north again). How much electricity does each set of panels produce each day? Ask the owners to record their total power production each day for a week so that you can compare these systems. How did the amount of energy produced by each set relate to the exact direction it points? To the size of the set of panels? Can you create a graph or chart that compares system power output to size and direction? 3. Try to find solar photovoltaic panels mounted on tracking rails so that the panels can turn to always point directly toward the sun. How much more energy do these panels produce each day? Why? 4. Lets do an experiment to see if you can duplicate the results you just discovered. Youll need to borrow some electronic metering equipment from a high school or local college. Connect a small panel of solar cells (or even a few individual solar cells) to a meter that measures power output. Face the cells directly toward the sun and measure their power output. Now shade the cells with your hand or a piece of cardboard. Watch the output instantly drop. Thats what happens to solar cells on a cloudy day. Stop blocking the sunlight and watch the output meter as you slowly turn the cells/panel at a greater and greater angle to the sun. This is what happens to solar panels on the roof each day as the sun travels across the sky. Can you see the advantage of having panels mounted on automatic tracking systems? Why dont most homeowners and businesses have tracking systems? Now lets look at sunlight itself. This is a library or Internet research project. You will prepare a map of the United States that shows the daily solar energy that strikes different regions on a typical (average) day in the midpoint of each of the four seasons. (Record your findings as so many watts per square meter.) Now prepare a similar map that shows the number of cloudy days during the average year for each region. Looking at these two maps, can you see why the desert Southwest is the best place for solar systems?

5.

40 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future 6. Finally, research what makes up a photovoltaic cell. How thick is a single cell? How many cells typically make up a panel? Whats inside a photovoltaic cell? Draw a side view of a typical cell. What inside the cell actually generates a flow of electricity?

For Further Reading

Bearce, Stephanie. How to Harness Solar Power for Your Home. Hockessin, DE: Mitchell Lane Publishers, 2009. Boxwell, Michael. Solar Electric Handbook. Warwickshire, England: Greenstream Publishing, 2010. Byers, T. J. Twenty Selected Solar Projects: Making Photovoltaics Work for You. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. Hansen, Amy. Running on Sunshine. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Miller, Adam, and Sally Morgan. Alternative Energy Sources. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Raintree, 2009. Parker, Steve. Solar Power. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2005. Perlin, John. From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Tabak, John. Solar and Geothermal Energy. New York: Facts on File, 2009.

Web Sites
www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/photovoltaics.html Government site on photovoltaic technology. www.eia.doe.gov, Renewables and Alternate Fuels The Energy Information Administration site on alternate and renewable technologies. www.self.org/shs_tech.asp Good page on the solar technologies. www.energy.ca.gov/reports/2003-03-11_500-03-014F.PDF California government site describing types of photovoltaic systems. www.thesolarguide.com/solar...systems/solar-photovoltaic-systems.aspx Good description of solar photovoltaic systems.

Blowin in the Wind: Wind Turbines

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Humans have always used the wind. For thousands of years, wind has powered sailing ships, ground grain, and pumped water. Windmills were a mainstay of society many centuries before motors and electricity were developed. There was a time when windmills dotted the American landscape, marking every town and homestead. Modern windmillsnow called wind turbinesgenerate electricity. This use of wind power is newonly 40 years old. Since the first wind turbines began to dot rural landscapes in the mid-1960s, wind has become the worlds fastest growing renewable electrical generating technology. Wind pushes on propeller blades (picture the old-time propeller blades on a bi-wing airplane) and turns themjust as hissing steam spins turbine blades in a conventional power plant. The shaft of a wind turbines blades connects to an electric generator and spins its metal core. Wind blows on the blades, and out comes electricity. Forget the rickety wooden windmill tower with spinning fan-shaped blades that you see in movies about the Old West. Wind turbines are sleek and modern looking. A single, towering metal pole supports (usually) two giant propeller blades that spin slowly, looking like an airplane propeller just beginning to start up. The pole is often over 250 feet tall (like a 25- to 30-story building). Each new wind turbine blade is often 50 meters (164 feet) long. These towers are huge! But bigger is truly better when it comes to wind turbines. A new wind turbine with 50-meter blades can generate 55 times as much energy as an older model from the 1980s with only 10-meter (33-foot) blades. One modern tower can furnish electricity to 600 homes. By 2000 Californias wind turbines were producing as much power as Californias oilfired power plants. The wind farm in the Altamont Pass (just east of San Francisco) is the nations first wind energy farm and has 5,400 working wind turbines spread over hundreds of acres. California remains by far the largest wind energy producer in the United States, even though Nebraska has recently installed several sprawling wind turbine power farms. By 2002 more than 20,000 individual turbines (averaging 100 kw each) were connected to the grid worldwide. Worldwide wind electrical energy capacity is boomingup 27 percent in 2006 and up another 27 percent in 2007. Europe has over 28,000 megawatts of wind power installed. Much of the European total comes from offshore wind farms in the coastal waters of Germany, Britain, Denmark, and Ireland. Denmark is aiming to generate 35 percent of its electricity from wind by 2015. Only 1 percent of total U.S. electrical production currently comes from wind. The industry has set an ambitious goal for itself: generate 20 percent of the nations electricity

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42 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future from wind by 2030. To do that, power companies will have to wring every kilowatt of energy out of every windy spot in the country. What makes a good wind power site? Having wind that blows steadily at a speed of over 12 mph for a large percentage of the time. Where are such spots? The strongest wind resources in the United States lie in the belt between North Dakota and west Texas (especially in western Kansas). But to meet winds lofty goal, wind farms will also have to sprout up along the Texas gulf, the Atlantic coast, and the Pacific coast region from Northern California through Oregon. Many of the most attractive sites lie a few miles offshore, where the ocean winds blow stronger and more steadily than do winds over land. However, the path toward expanded wind energy has major hurdles to overcome. First, wind turbines kill birdslots of birdsespecially migratory and predatory birds. Each year, the wind turbine blades in Californias Altamont Pass kill 10,000 protected and migratory birds, especially raptors (burrowing owls, red-tailed hawks, even golden eagles). Thats 30 birds every day! In September 2009 USA Today reported that bird kills were, in fact, getting worse, not better. Scientists fear that expansion of wind farms across migratory routes will lead to massive bird losses and even extinctions. Second, wind energy plants (like solar collectors) require massive amounts of land. It takes 20 times as much land to produce each kilowatt of electricity on a wind farm as it does for a conventional natural gas or coal-fired power plant. Because wind farms typically arent located near major cities, we must add in the right-of-way lanes required for highvoltage transmission lines that are hundreds of feet wide and hundreds of miles long. A 2009 Nature Conservancy report created the term energy sprawl to describe how wind and solar collectors were gobbling up land across America.

Whats Happening Now?

Wind development is abuzz with activity. New ideas emerge almost faster than they can be reported. The alarming rate of bird kills has prompted massive studies on tower and blade design, studying the specific placement of turbines, height of towers, space between towers, even the use of radar to shut down a turbine as raptors approach. The resulting new designs are getting better, but bird kills are still a huge problem. Much of the ongoing research focuses on increasing the efficiency of wind turbines. One new project is studying the shape (and amazingly high efficiency) of the fins of humpback whales. Their scalloped pectoral flippers gain extra lift in the water, making it easier for the giant whales to make tight, fast turns and accelerations. Using the same scalloped shape increases wind turbine blade efficiency (as well as the range of wind over which the turbines can operate) by as much as 40 percent. The other area of great current interest is offshore wind farms. The biggest of these new proposals is the Cape Wind offshore wind farm at Horseshoe Shoal, five miles offshore in Nantucket Sound, Massachusetts. The new turbine and blade design proposed for these 130 huge turbines on steel towers will spread across 25 square miles of ocean and are said to be quieteven up close. Final approval by the federal government was granted in early May 2010. Construction was due to begin a few months later. However, the project is still on hold

Blowin in the Wind: Wind Turbines / 43 and back in court as homeowner and preservation groups fight to block it, objecting to its visual impact and threat to shipping. Another offshore plant, which has stirred less controversy, is the Long Island Offshore Wind Initiative, a 140 Mw wind farm to be located off Jones Beach on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. However, it too is awaiting final approval. Offshore wind is also being developed in other countries. The new Arklow Bank offshore wind park, a series of 250-foot-tall towers with propeller-style blades, will be located 6.2 miles off the coast of Ireland. China, starting with no wind generation just five years ago, climbed to 12,200 Mw installed in 2008the worlds greatest installation that year. China is committed to being the worlds leader in wind power (surpassing the United States) by 2013. Finally, wind turbines produce electricity when the wind blowsnot when energy is needed. Because of that, utility companies must have other power plants standing ready to fire up and produce the needed electricity when the wind doesnt blow. This means that the utilities must build and maintain more power plants than they would otherwise need. Worse as proved in several European studiesbecause these backup plants are typically coal-fired plants, increased wind use doesnt automatically mean decreased pollution. When Denmark more than doubled its wind turbine capacity (between 1999 and 2007), total emissions of CO2 were not reduced at all! To be truly successful, wind turbines need a way to store energy that can be released into the grid when the wind isnt blowing. An example of how wind turbines and energy storage go together comes from the town of Presido, Texas, which sits at the end of a long, thin transmission line. Frequent storms mean frequent power outages. The town installed a 6 Mw battery at its substation as backup for outages. Now the town buys cheap nighttime electricity from a nearby wind farm to charge its batteries and then trickles that energy back into the grid during the day. Because of the storage batteries, demand for the wind farms electricity has skyrocketed. In addition to these monster-sized utility wind turbines, many companies are now promoting the value of small wind turbines for individual houses or office buildings. These small wind turbine designs first caught on in 2004. Research investment in them grew 62 percent in 2005 and has increased steadily ever since. These small wind energy systems were given a tremendous boost when most utilities agreed to allow reverse metering. (When a homeowners residential system produces more energy than the owner uses, the rest can feed into the grid, giving the owner credit for selling electricity to the utility company.)

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for wind turbines: Wind is a free, renewable resource. Wind electricity is the lowest cost of all renewable technologies, already competitive with the cost of coal energy.

44 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Wind farms release no air or water pollutants. Wind is a proven, reliable energy technology. On the negative side for wind turbines: Wind energy is intermittent and unpredictable, producing energy only when the wind blows. Wind farms require massive amounts of dedicated land. Wind farms still kill far too many birdsespecially migratory and predatory birds. Wind farms are extremely noisy and can be a visual blight.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Wind energy could supply as much as 20 percent of the nations electrical demand. Its potential is greatest in the West and Midwest, where strong, steady winds blow year-round. Key Factors: Reliable, inexpensive energy storage is a must for future wind development. So is a way to reduce bird kills. Timeline: Wind is already being used, and wind farms are already steadily expanding. Look for winds contribution to steadily and gradually increase through 2025, when other emerging technologies may well push wind into the background.

Classroom Activities
1. Begin by building some basic information about winds in your town or city. Do you have enough wind to make wind turbines practical? To learn that you will have to create what is called a wind rosea chart that shows how often (over the course of an average year) and at what strength the wind blows from each direction. Local weather stations or local airports typically have one. Look for small windmills or wind socks in your town (most often at a local airport or weather station). How do they measure wind? Use the wind rose for your locale to add up how many days each yearon averagethe wind blows at 12 miles an hour or more. This will tell you if you live in a good site for wind turbines.

Blowin in the Wind: Wind Turbines / 45 2. Lets do a quick experiment to see how increasing wind affects a wind turbine. (Remember, the power in wind is proportional to the cube of velocity, so if the wind speed doubles, the power increases by a factor of eight!) Here is what youll need: An electric multispeed (low, medium, high) house fan A handheld plastic spinning toy windmill (the simple plastic ones found at fairs are perfect) A strong flashlight A videorecording camera A watch with a second hand Set Up: Place the fan on a table and turn it on low. Hold the flashlight right next to the fan and point it in the same direction. Have one person hold the windmill about one foot away from the fan and directly in front of it. Make sure that the windmill freely turns in the breeze of the fan. Also make sure that the flashlight shines directly onto the windmill and that light from the flashlight shines through between the windmill blades. Place the video camera about two feet beyond the windmill so that it is aimed through the windmill and straight back toward the flashlight. Procedure: Turn on the camcorder. Place a piece of cardboard (or paper) in front of the flashlight. With the fan on low, lift the cardboard out of the way and time exactly ten seconds, then drop the cardboard back in front of the flashlight. You now have a way to measure how fast the windmill turned with the fan on low. You can replay the video on slow motion speed and count the pulses of light that reached the camcorder as the blades of the windmill spin in front of it (and momentarily block the beam of light from the flashlight). Repeat the experiment with the fan on medium and then with the fan on high. How much did the windmill speed increase as the fan shifted from low to medium to high? Can you see how stronger winds create faster spins in the blades and thus more electrical flow from the attached electrical generators? 3. Organize a class debate about the question: How many bird kills are acceptable at a wind farm in order to provide humans with the electrical energy we need? Does your opinion depend on what species of birds are killed? First hold an open discussion as a class. Then divide into teams to argue different positions. Each team must research the topic and build up their case as if they were lawyers at a trial. Now hold a class debate. Does the class favor wind turbine development or not? What do you think about having the visual and noise impacts of a wind farm in your community? Set up a wind station at your school. It must be able to measure and record both wind direction and speed. Over the course of a school year, create your own wind rose. Does it match the ones you got from other sources?

4.

46 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

For Further Reading

Bowden, Rob. Energy Sources: The Impact of Science and Technology. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009. Chiras, Dan. Power from the Wind: Achieving Energy Independence. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2009. Frost, Robert, ed. Wind Energy: Renewable Energy and the Environment. New York: CRC Press, 2009. Gipe, Paul. Wind Energy Basics. New York: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009. Hansen, Amy. Wind Energy: Blown Away! New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Melnyk, Markian. Offshore Power: Building Renewable Energy Projects in U.S. Waters. Tulsa, OK: Pennwell Corp., 2009. Muschal, Frank. Energy from Wind, Sun, and Tides. Ann Arbor, MI: Cherry Lake Publishing, 2007. Sherman, Joseph. Energy at Work: Wind Energy. Mankato, MN: Coughlan Group, 2004. Winkler, Michael. Wind Power . . . It Blows! New York: Mile Winkler Publishers, 2007.

Web Sites
www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/wind_how.html Government site describing wind turbines. zfacts.com/p/416.html Advocacy site for wind turbines. www.solarnavigator.net/wind_turbines.htm Good description of the mechanics of wind turbines. www.greenlivingtips.com Good description of the mechanics of wind turbines. www.powerscorecard.org/tech_detail.cfm?resource_id=11 Description of worldwide wind power development.

Go Fly a Kite!: Wind Kites

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Winds whisper, blow, traipse, swirl, and howl across the surface of our planet. But sometimes there is no wind, the air becalmed for days, every flag hanging limp against its flagpole, every windmill sitting idle waiting patiently for a breath of breeze to nudge it back to life with a satisfying creek of gears and timbers. Not so five miles up. The great air currents aloft (the famed jet stream, for example) rage ferociously and nonstop. Even on a calm day, the jet stream roars with hurricane force winds. Across our planet, average wind speed always increases at higher and higher altitudes. When we think of windmills, we automatically picture towers rising 30 or 40 feet up from the ground with spinning blades attached at the top. But why would we humans want to pin our energy future on the puny, inconsistent surface winds when the real winds that could meet our energy needs blow just a few miles up where jets fly and clouds race by? The power in wind increases dramatically as the speed of the wind increases. Doubling wind speed from 5 mph to 10 mph increases the power in the wind by a factor of eight. Increased wind speed from 10 to 100 mph carries not 10 times as much power, but 1,000 times as much power! While average surface winds over Europe are less than 3 meters per second, at 1,000 meters they average 9 meters per second (a twenty-seven-fold increase in the power they contain). The challenge, of course, is to park a power plant way up in the sky to use those strong and steady winds. Power plants are heavy thingsand heavy things dont happily hover in the sky. They tend to crash back to earth. Luckily, we dont have to put the power plant itself in the sky in order to use those high-altitude winds. How do we do it? Go fly a kite. Literally. Utility companies can tether specially designed, giant kites that soar up to the altitude where high winds constantly blow (two to five miles up). Just as a soaring kite pulls on your arm, these giant kites pull with great force on their tether cords. The force of that constant pull can spin the shaft of an electric generator that sits on the ground next to the anchor point of the tether cord. As with groundbased wind turbines, this system has no boiler and no working fluid. Wind supplies the energy that directly turns the generator shaft. For safety reasons, airplanes are not allowed to fly above nuclear power plants. (Its called a no-fly zone.) The high-altitude wind energy contained in the no-fly zone above a nuclear power plant is roughly equal to the electric power that the nuclear plant produces! If we tethered wind kites in the no-fly zones above all 100 U.S. nuclear power plants, we could instantly double their electrical production! Thats how much power rides untapped in the wind.

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48 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Whats Happening Now?

No one has yet built a working wind kite power plant. But many companies are getting close. As of early 2010, Makani Power, a California company, has tested a 10 kw mini-version of its prototype wind kite on the island of Maui, Hawaii. In 2011 Makani plans to scale up to a 1 Mw version. Scientists at Delft University in Holland are also experimenting with kite generators. They have tested concepts from giant billowy kites, to helium-filled balloons that spin in the wind, to high-tech avionics-controlled drones that hover high above the surface. As soon as a power company expresses interest, they are ready to launch a demonstration model. In late 2009 the Iraqi national government proposed using a kite energy system for Iraqs electrical grid and has started research and design competitions. Robertss Flying Electric Generator (a rotocraft) has been demonstrated at low altitudes. That company is now looking for a customer (utility company) to work with the necessary government agencies to gain permission to install high-altitude generators. Rotokite, another commercial design, spins in the wind so that it puts pulses of tugging pull on its tether line that are easy to translate into rotational motion in a generator shaft. The next big hurdle for wind kite energy systems is not technical. Models have been designed and tested. The next step is to actually fly the kites and demonstrate that they can safely and consistently generate electrical power. This will require governments to set aside areas as no-fly zones where utilities can park their kites without fear of having planes smash into them. No government has yet taken this important step.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for wind kites: Wind is a free, renewable resource. Wind kites provide reliable 24/7 power production. There are no bird kills or pollutants of any kind. Wind kites produce low-cost electricity. On the negative side for wind kites: There is substantial physical danger from airplane collisions or falling kites. Governments must designate no-fly zones to protect wind kites. Kites and tethers will be visual pollution. Large-scale use of wind kites can disrupt air traffic. Wind kites are still an unproven technology.

Go Fly a Kite!: Wind Kites / 49

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: There is plenty of power in the high-altitude winds to supply our energy needs. Wind kites alone could supply 20 percent of U.S. electrical demand. Key Factors: Wind kites require strong government support to designate large no-fly zones. Timeline: Look for the first demonstration power plant in Hawaii by 2014. Look for first commercial operations by 2020. Any further development will depend on whether these succeed.

Classroom Activities
1. After the previous entry on wind turbines you created a wind rose to chart local surface winds. Can you now find enough information to chart local highaltitude winds? Do the winds at 1,000 feet, at 5,000 feet, and at 10,000 feet differ dramatically from the surface winds above your community? Does any local agency record high-altitude winds? 2. Now its time to experiment with the wind where you live. How? Its time to fly a kite. There are two ways to conduct this experiment: qualitatively (by feel) or quantitatively (taking scientific measurements). First, the qualitative version. What youll need: At least three kites, each of a different size (Dont use box kites or kites with multiple panels.) A ball of string, at least 100 feet long, with which to fly the kites A tape measure First, record the larger of the two diagonal lengths of each kite. Next measure 100 feet of string, starting at the end that attaches to your kite, and mark this spot with a thick, bright, colored marker. (This mark will allow you to fly each kite at exactly the same height.) Now fly each kite, one at a time, using this same ball of string. Once the string has played out to your 100-foot mark, feel the pull of the kite on your arm. How hard does it pull? Do the larger kites pull harder (create more force)? Why use the same ball of string for each flight? (Hint: Does the weight of the string pull on the kite and thereby affect how hard the kite pulls on your arm?) Repeat the entire experiment on a day with stronger winds. How does increasing wind speed affect each kites pull on your arm? Now the quantitative version. In this version you wont settle for just feeling the pull of each kite on your arm. You will accurately measure that pull as pounds of pressure.

50 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future What youll need: The same three (or more) kites and ball of marked string that you used for the qualitative version A hanging weight scale (Any spring-driven scale that is designed to measure a weight that hangs from it will do.) Tie your string at its 100-foot mark to the hook on your scale where the object to be weighed would normally attach. The kite will pull on this end of the scale, and youll hold the other end. Now fly the kite. Once the kite has risen high enough to play out the full length of string, hold your end of the scale. As the kite flies and pulls on the string, the strength (magnitude) of its pull will be measured as pounds of force on the scale. While you hold the scale, have someone else watch the scales needle and determine the best average reading over a 10- to 15-second period. Record that readingor pull for that kitein pounds. Repeat this process for each kite and then repeat on other days with different wind strengths. How do your quantitative readings compare with your qualitative feel for the pull of each kite? If you increased the wind speed to 80 (or to 100) mph and increased the size (larger diagonal) of your kite to 100 feet, can you estimate how much force the kite would exert on its tether rope? Enough to power an electrical generating plant?

For Further Reading

ABDO Publishing. Future Energy. 6 vols. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. DeGunther, Rik. Alternative Energy for Dummies. San Francisco, CA: For Dummies Press, 2009. Hansen, Amy. Wind Energy: Blown Away! New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Miller, Adam, and Sally Morgan. Alternative Energy Sources. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Raintree, 2009. Peterson, Christine. Alternative Energy. Chicago: Childrens Press. 2004. Rau, Dana. Alternative Energy: Beyond Fossil Fuels. Mankato, MN: Coughlan Publishing, 2009.

Go Fly a Kite!: Wind Kites / 51

Web Sites
www.WillYouJoinUs.com An advocacy site that describes wind (and other renewable) systems. www.ted.com/.../saul_griffith_on_kites_as_the_future_of_renewable_energy. html and peswiki.com/index.../Directory:High_Altitude_Wind_Power Two commercial sites on wind energy kites. www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/10/71908 A good article in Wired magazine on wind kites. www.greenoptimistic.com/.../wind-energy-using-kites-produces-10kw-offree-electricity/ An environmental site describing wind kite systems. www.windenergyplanning.com/new-wind-energy-kites/ This site describes the kite system now being tested on Maui, Hawaii. www.alternative-energy-news.info/kite-wind-generator/ A good environmental advocacy site that examines kite energy potential.

Mighty Minnies: Micro-Nukes

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Every nuclear power plant is individually custom designed. Each site for a massive nuclear plant is carefully studied and every possible impact analyzed. Each nuclear power plant requires hundreds of acres of land and many more dedicated acres for the high voltage lines that fan out from it. The planning and permitting process takes yearsoften decades to complete. It makes nuclear plants hugely expensive. New advances in engineering and technology have made it possible for nuclear engineers to pose a new question: Why not shift to small, prefabricated, one-size-fits-all, off-the-shelf nukes? After studies and governmental reviews, the answer is: There is no reason at all not to. Enter micro-nukes. Picture a sealed, reinforced box the size of a VW van that produces up to several megawatts of electrical power. Place that micro-nuke box on a site and let it churn out electricity for its 30-year life span with no care or maintenanceeven with no need for an operator! Build it, bury it; 30 years later, dig it up and simply replace it. No fuss, no muss. Suddenly nuclear energy becomes as simple and disposable as a battery for your flashlight. Micro-nukes make nuclear energy affordable and flexible (a factory can bring one unit on-site to meet its own needs; a utility power plant can bring in a hundred to form a new power plant that feeds into the grid). Using premade, always-the-same, off-the-shelf units brings the cost of construction down to a tiny fraction of its current level. Safety is dramatically improved because each unit is a permanently sealed box. There is no way for the innards to leak out. The idea of small nuclear power plants is not new. Navy ships have used them for decadeswith sailors living safely in close proximity to the unit (especially on submarines). So have university nuclear research facilities. What is new is the idea to use standard sized, standard designed, prefabricated, and sealed units that are treated as a disposable, throw-away piece of equipment. The 2009 Clean Air Task Force reported that air pollution cuts short the lives of 24,000 Americans each year. They concluded that the increased use of nuclear energy would significantly reduce that number. Large nuclear power plants are still outrageously expensive and slow to build and bring online. Micro-nukes appear to be an excellent alternative and an ideal choice for remote communities, large industrial facilities, commercial centers, etc. So, whats the problem with micro-nukes? Theyre still nuclear. They still use standard nuclear technology. Their fuel is made up of the more common form of uranium (U238), mixed with U235 (a particularly deadly isotope of uranium that requires extensive enrichmentsee page 15 for a description of the enrichment process and its environmental problems.) At the end of the units 30-year lifespan, you still have to deal with the spent radioactive fuel.

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Mighty Minnies: Micro-Nukes / 53

Whats Happening Now?

Oregon State University scientists have designed, and are currently running, micro-nuke units that emit less radiation (measured at a distance of 20 feet) than you get from standing on the beach or flying in a commercial airliner. A spinoff company started from this work (NuScale) is designing commercial micro-nuke units to go on the market in late 2012. U.S. Department of Energy analysts who studied the potential and cost savings of micro-nukes have concluded that this technology may well replace wind and solar as the green energy technology of choice within a decade. The Toshiba Corporation recently announced plans to team with Hyperion Power of Santa Fe, New Mexico, to design micro-nuke units using a new molten metal as the units internal working fluid. They hope to have a working 10 Mw version available by 2016. In late 2009 the U.S. secretary of energy endorsed having the government back the development of micro-nukes. However, the government hasnt yet translated that endorsement into specific funding or research activities.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for micro-nuke technology: It provides 30 years of maintenance-free, reliable power production. There are virtually no land requirements; micro-nukes can be located wherever needed. It is fast to build and install. No pollutants are released during operation. On the negative side for micro-nuke technology: Its still nuclear technology and produces radioactive wastes. Uranium enrichment produces massive amounts of air and water pollution and requires large amounts of energy. The electricity produced is still too expensive.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: It has vast potential. Most likely micro-nukes will be used first as off-grid, on-site power supplies and later as on-grid power plants.

54 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Key Factors: Micro-nukes must prove that they are both safe to be around as well as reliable and maintenance free. Timeline: Look for off-grid use to begin by 2015 and for micro-nuke power plants by 2025.

Classroom Activities
You cant build or look at a nuclear reaction chamber. The radiation from nuclear fission is deadly. You also wont be able to directly study a micro-nuke. First, there arent any installed yet for you to find and observe. Second, a micro-nuke is a sealed steel box, so there isnt really anything to study or observe from the outside. A micro-nuke uses the same traditional nuclear technology that has been used by every nuclear power plant since scientist Enrico Fermi conducted the first nuclear reaction demonstration on December 2, 1942. If you study how a nuclear power plant works, you will also be studying how a micro-nuke will work. 1. There are about 100 nuclear plants in this country. Where are they? Research their locations and mark them on a map. By each mark, list two bits of information: the number of units (individual reactors) at the plant and the overall capacity of the plant in Mw. Do you see a pattern in plant and unit capacity? What is the average capacity of a commercial nuclear reactor unit? Which is the closest nuclear plant to you? If it is close enough, try to schedule a tour. 2. What happens inside a nuclear power plant? Use the library and Internet to research this question. How different is a nuclear plant from a coal-fired or natural gasfired power plant? What parts are different? What parts are the same? 3. Other valuable questions to research and discuss: How do operators control the nuclear reaction and keep it from exploding as a nuclear bomb? How can they shut down the plant when they need to? What is in the fuel rods for a nuclear power plant? What is in the control rods? What do the control rods do? In a conventional power plant, some fuel burns to create the necessary heat to boil the plants working fluid. What creates the heat in a nuclear plant? Now try to research micro-nukes and see in what ways their design and operation are the same as nuclear plants and in what ways micro-nukes are different.

For Further Reading

Adams, Troon Harrison. Nuclear Energy: Power from the Atom. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2010. Ball, Jackie, and Stephen Currie. Nuclear Energy. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2006.

Mighty Minnies: Micro-Nukes / 55 Bowden, Rob. Energy Sources: The Impact of Science and Technology. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009. Hansen, Amy. Nuclear Energy: Amazing Atoms. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Manatt, Kathleen. Nuclear Energy. Ann Arbor, MI: Cherry Lake Publishing, 2008. Ollhoff, Jim. Nuclear Energy. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010.

Web Sites
www.greentechmedia.com/.../will-micro-nukes-come-to-the-northwest/ A regional view on the pros and cons of micro-nukes. www.off-grid.net/.../micro-nuclear-plants-for-local-power/ An analysis of micro-nukes as off-grid power sources. www.nextenergynews.com/.../next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear12.17b.html A description of Toshibas micro-nuke program. discover.coverleaf.com/discovermagazine/201006/?pg=43 Good Discover magazine article on micro-nuke technology. www.masterresource.org/2009/07/micro-nuclear-no-panacea/ A critical analysis of micro-nukes. www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=948 A description of the NuScale micro-nuke development.

The Genies Magic Energy Lamp: Fuel Cells

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Fuel cells could represent as gigantic a change for our way of life as the changes created by the automobile and the computer. Many think that our future economy will run on hydrogen fuel cells instead of on fossil fuels. Fuel cells could fundamentally change the way we store, transmit, and use energy. They could. The question, of course, is, will they? Will they live up to their tremendous promise and hype? A fuel cell is equivalent to an electric generator. It chemically converts the energy in a fuel (hydrogen or natural gas, for example) plus oxygen from the air directly into electricity, water, and a small amount of waste heat. Using natural gas (or other carbon-containing fuel) also means that some waste CO2 is produced and released by the chemical reaction. There are two parts to a fuel cell: a fuel delivery system (usually a high-pressure gas canister) and the electro-chemical cell that converts fuel into electricity. Fuel cells offer the best parts of both conventional electric generating plants and batteries. They are quiet and clean like batteries, but dont run dry and need to be replaced. (They can be recharged with a new canister of fuel.) Like batteries, fuel cells produce few (if any) harmful emissions while being used. Like conventional power plants, they run for long periods between maintenance stoppages. Fuel cells were invented in 1839 by English lawyer Sir William Grove but found no practical use until the late 1960s, when researchers at General Electric were able to make a big jump in fuel cell efficiency that allowed fuel cells to power NASAs Gemini and Apollo space capsules. Scientists now view fuel cells as the primary electrical source for the future, as an ideal electrical energy system for an individual factory, hospital, office building, or hoteleven a single homeor even smaller systems as long-running power sources for laptops and cell phones! Fuel cells could cause planners to rethink the very concept of a national electrical grid. If fuel cells live up to their tantalizing promise, it might be possible to eliminate massive central power plants and the grids millions of miles of fragile distribution lines. Instead, builders would place a stack of fuel cells at each spot where electricity is demandedfrom house to industrial complexto supply the needs of just that one location. Each house, office building, mall, PC, and factory would, like a ship cruising across the ocean, be a self-sufficient system and supply its own electricity with a stack of on-board fuel cells. Thats how much fuel cells could change our thinking about electricity! Whats preventing fuel cells from realizing this incredible revamping of our electrical system? There are two problems:

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The Genies Magic Energy Lamp: Fuel Cells / 57 1. Cost. Fuel cells are still too expensive. Fuel cell systems using natural gas as a fuel currently cost around $4,500 per kw of generating capacity to manufacture and install. Compare that to a small natural gas turbine at only $450 per kw. This exorbitant cost means that they are still a specialty item, a high-tech novelty. The cost of all new technologies starts high and gradually drops. That will surely happen with fuel cells. When the cost for a residential fuel cell unit drops to under $3,000, they will become cost competitive. Hydrogen. Hydrogen is the real intended fuel for fuel cells. Yet there exists no national supply system for hydrogen (as there is for natural gas). Hydrogen isnt particularly hard to produce. Any facility can add equipment to produce hydrogen on-site, on-demand, by adding catalysts and a fuel processor to the system to use some carbon-based gas such as natural gas or methane. However, that significantly increases both the cost and the complexity of the system and means that the system will produce some waste CO2something that takes much of the green luster off fuel cells.

2.

Neither of these nagging problems is discouraging researchers and developers. The marketplace is already abuzz over fuel cells high efficiency and potential to quickly become cost competitive. Research and progress are both racing ahead. Already, big commercial units are being used by the CIA, Walmart, FedEx, Google, and eBay. A single fuel cell stack the size of a loaf of bread can power a 5,000-square-foott houseif the homeowner can afford the sky-high sticker price.

Whats Happening Now?

A major focus of current work is reducing the initial construction/production cost of fuel cells. (A common quip in the industry is, Buy a micro fuel cell, get a laptop free!) Current technology relies on expensive platinum catalysts. The search is on for cheaper alternatives. Researchers in Quebec, Canada, are studying how the human body extracts energy from food and just announced the development of a new iron-based (cheap) fuel cell catalyst. Wheeled onto the market with great fanfare in February 2010, the Bloom Box (developed by K. R. Sridar) is a natural gasfueled cell that is billed as the first affordable fuel cell design. Many more designs will surely follow. SECA (the alliance of government and industry to develop solid oxide fuel cells) has announced a demonstration project with Peterbilt trucks. The U.S. Navy is testing fuel cells to power unmanned underwater vehicles, and the U.S. Army is turning to fuel cells for soldiers. (Special ops teams now carry 80 pounds of batteries to power radio and video equipment. Fuel cells would chop that by more than half.) The army is also beginning to use fuel cells to power military robots, because fuel cells last longer than batteries. Finally, Jadoo Power Systems (of India) has developed small (100 to 500 watt) fuel cells, first sold to the entertainment industry to power TV and movie cameras in the field. Jadoo is expanding to designing systems for other small power needs.

58 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Work is also racing forward to improve hydrogen fuel delivery systems. Hydrogen gas now requires either bulky, extremely heavy metal pressure tanks to contain the gas at over 5,000 psi or super-cooling systems to keep it in a liquid state at near absolute zero. Some progress has been made toward carrying hydrogen by bonding it with suitable carriers (metal hydrides, borohydrides, etc.). To increase efficiency, fuel cell designers are beginning to specialize for different types of end uses. Five different types of fuel cells are currently being tested (defined primarily by the type of material used as the electrolyte). Each has advantages and disadvantages (efficiency, cost, use of precious metals, temperature range for operation, waste heat emissions, size and weight of the system, and maintenance needs).The greatest focus so far has been on designing fuel cells for use in transportation.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for fuel cells: Hydrogen (the fuel source) is abundant and readily obtainable This technology is virtually pollution free. Fuel cells are portable and can be placed at the point of use; there is no need for transmission systems and losses. It is a dependable, proven technology. Fuel cells produce low-cost electricity. On the negative side for fuel cells: No system yet exists to supply and distribute hydrogen. Fuel cells are still too expensive.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Fuel cells will be aif not themajor source of energy within 40 years. They may well dominate how we make and use electricity. Key Factors: Fuel cell dominance depends on the development of a national hydrogen fuel production and distribution system that matches the current systems for gasoline and natural gas. Timeline: Look for national discussions of a hydrogen delivery system to begin in earnest by 2015 and for hydrogen to begin to flow into the marketplace by 2025. Fuel cells will dominate the marketplace shortly thereafter.

The Genies Magic Energy Lamp: Fuel Cells / 59

Classroom Activities
1. Many people confuse fuel cells and batteries. They are not equivalent devices. A fuel cell creates electricity. A battery only stores electricity. Research batteries and fuel cells and find other differences (and similarities). Create a class chart or mural showing the information you find.

2. A fuel cell is a highly specialized, exacting piece of equipment. It is difficult to duplicate in a simple experiment what a fuel cell does (combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and water). However, you can easily demonstrate the reverse process and create free hydrogen and oxygen from water. What youll need: A glass mixing bowl to hold water A nine-volt battery A six-foot (or eight-foot) two-wire extension cord that you will destroy A pair of wire strippers Two new number 2 pencils Salt A piece of cardboard that is at least as big as your mixing bowl A small juice glass (four-ounce is ideal) Preparation: 1. The tub: Fill the mixing bowl with warm water and add a tablespoon or two of salt. (The salt will help an electric current flow through the water.) 2. The pencils: Cut off the eraser on both pencils and sharpen both ends of each pencil. Poke two small holes in the cardboard. These holes must be small enough so that they will grip and hold the pencils. Place the cardboard on top of the mixing bowl and slide one pencil into each hole so that the bottom end of the pencil is well submerged in water and, preferably, near the bottom of the bowl. 3. The wire: Cut off both end plugs on the extension cord and rip the cord in half lengthwise so that you now have two individual rubbercoated wires. Use wire strippers to strip the insulation from several inches of each end of each wire. Wrap the end of one wire onto one of the posts (positive or negative) of your battery. Wrap one end of the other wire onto the other battery post. Wrap the other end of one wire around the exposed graphite at the top of one of the two pencils. Wrap the loose end of the other wire around the graphite top of the other pencil.

60 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Now watch the bottom end of your two pencils. Within a minute, tiny bubbles should form around each graphite tip. What happens: Electric current travels down the lead-graphite core of one pencil, through the water, and up the other pencil to get to the opposite terminal on the battery. That electric current also rips water molecules apart to form hydrogen and oxygen gas. After a few seconds, tiny gas bubbles should begin to form on the exposed wire. Hydrogen bubbles form at the bottom of the pencil attached to the batterys negative terminal. You can collect a bit of hydrogen gas. Angle the pencil attached to the negative terminal so that hydrogen bubbles rise through the water instead of right along the wood shaft of the pencil. Fill the juice glass with water and position it underwater and upside-down above the point of the hydrogen-producing pencil. As hydrogen bubbles up into the glass, it will collect at the top and form a pocket of hydrogen. Caution: The hydrogen gas you collect is dangerous and flammable. The experiments process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen uses energy. The opposite (what happens in a fuel cell) creates electrical energy.

For Further Reading

ABDO Publishing. Future Energy. 6 vols. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Bowden, Rob. Energy Sources: The Impact of Science and Technology. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009. Hoogers, Gregor, ed. Fuel Cell Technology Handbook. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005. Kerrod, Robin. Transportation: Present KnowledgeFuture Trends. Mankato, MN: Black Rabbit Books, 2004. Strachan, James. Future Sources. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing, 1999. Twist, Clint. Future Sources. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing, 2001.

Web Sites
www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/fuelcells/ Department of Energy site on fuel cells. www.si.edu/basics.htm A good overview of fuel cell technology.

The Genies Magic Energy Lamp: Fuel Cells / 61 www.fctec.com/fctec_basics.asp and auto.howstuffworks.com > ... > Fuel Efficiency > Alternative Two good overviews of fuel cell technology. pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es050986i A technical analysis of one type of fuel cell. www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/tech/hydrogen Good description of fuel cell operation. inventors.about.com/od/fstartinventions/a/Fuel_Cells.htm A good description of the history of fuel cells.

Borrowing the Planets Energy: Geothermal Energy

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Geo means earth. Thermal is another word for heat. Earth heat. Thats geothermal energy. Earths core and mantle are molten rock, many hundreds of degrees hot. That heat is always seeping outward toward the crust. There are places (volcanoes, geysers, hot springs) where it actually bubbles to the surface. In these spots, geothermal heat has been used since the dawn of humankind for cooking, heating, and bathing. In many areas the heat doesnt quite reach the surface, but lies as layers of heated rock hundreds to a few thousand of feet below the surface. Depending on the temperature of these geothermal resources (and on their water content), many are perfect for geothermal power production. To build a geothermal power plant, we first dig a well down to where the rock layers are many hundreds of degrees hot and use that hot rock to serve the same function that a boiler does in a conventional power plantto boil water and turn it into steam. If the rock layers reached are already saturated with high-pressure steam (the best and easiest for electrical production), we simply allow that steam to roar up the well pipe and across turbine blades to drive electric generators. If the rock layers are loaded with high-pressure hot water, we let the hot water flow up the well pipe and reduce its pressure in a flash chamber so that it flashes from liquid to steam that can drive the turbines. If we find hot dry rock at the bottom of the well, we must inject water into the hot rock layers, where it will boil. This steam then blasts back up the well pipe to drive turbines. So far, no one has built a geothermal plant that uses dry hot rock layers. However, utilities will have to eventually turn to dry hot-rock if geothermal energy is to be a major contributor to the electrical grid. Over 70 percent of the total geothermal resources in the United States are of this deep, dry hot rock typespread mostly across the western United States. The worlds first geothermal power plant was a 205 kw plant in Larderello, Italy, built in 1913 on a location where steam literally hissed up from the ground. In the early 1960s France heated 200,000 homes with geothermal energy. (Space heating with geothermal energy has traditionally been more common than electrical generation.) Most of Icelands hot water and space heating come from geothermal wells. The first U.S. geothermal power plant was a 1 Mw plant built in the early 1960s at the Geysers in Sonoma County, California. That plant is now the worlds largest geothermal plant, with a peak capacity of 1,224 Mw. However, by 2000 the Geysers steam field was partly

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Borrowing the Planets Energy: Geothermal Energy / 63 played out. Steam flow up the well pipes decreased from a deafening roar to a mere shout. Production began to droop, falling to 660 Mw by 2005. A problem with most geothermal fields is that the earth replenishes their heat and steam far more slowly than hungry electrical plants gobble them up. In a practical sense, geothermal energy should not be counted as a renewable resource. As natural steam flow at the Geysers began to wane, the Pacific Gas & Electric Company started injecting municipal wastewater down into the hot rock layers to boost steam production. The United States now has a total of over 3,000 Mw of geothermal electrical capacity mostly in California and Nevadathat produce the equivalent of two large coal-fired plants (0.4 percent of the nations total electrical production). Though U.S. companies have not yet produced large amounts of energy from geothermal energy, its potential is huge. Researchers estimate that the geothermal energy resources (mostly as hot, dry rock or as magmapockets of molten rock) lying under U.S. soil and coastal waters have the energy equivalent of 90,000 Prudhoe Bay oil fields. These geothermal resources could supply more than 20 times the entire countrys electrical demand. Most of this vast U.S. geothermal resource sizzles in the West (Oregon, California, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana), where sufficient hot rocks and superheated water lie near the surface. Worldwide, the United States, Philippines, Mexico, New Zealand, and Italy (in that order) have the greatest known geothermal resources at this time. World total geothermal electrical production has risen from 3,888 Mw in 1980 to 5,827 in 1990, to 10,348 Mw in 2000. However, stiff competition exists for the use of many of the best geothermal fields. Many lie in national parks (e.g., Yellowstone and Lassen National Parks) and are tourist destinations. No one, for example, wants the steam from Old Faithful geyser lost to sight and piped into a power plant! In other areas (e.g., Elko, Nevada, and Klamath Falls, Oregon) geothermal steam and hot water are used for direct heating in many downtown buildings. This competition will limit the potential of development of geothermal energy for electrical production.

Whats Happening Now?

Production of electricity from geothermal energy is already on the rise worldwide. The world total capacity grew by 40 percent during the 1990s and by another 30 percent during the first decade of the twenty-first century. There are over 100 geothermal lease requests for new geothermal plants currently awaiting approval by the U.S. government. Still, geothermal represents less than 0.5 percent of the worlds electrical production. Three areas of ongoing research and testing hold the future success (or failure) of geothermal energy: Hot Dry Rock. No one has successfully drilled down to hot dry rock layers, injected water, and created a steady flow of steam returning up the well pipe. These layers are often too deep to reach economically. Injection and recovery systems havent worked well; they tend to crust over with corrosion. However, new tests are under way in New Mexico. Many companies (and governments) are watching to see if these new designs and materials will withstand the pressures, temperatures, and stresses of the deep wells.

64 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Magma. Underground lava chambers of 2,000+F molten rock (giant underground lakes of melted rock called magma) store massive amounts of heat. However, drilling into (or even near to) these heat pools is both difficult and extremely dangerous. Drilling could easily trigger a volcanic eruption or an earthquake. Besides, virtually all drill pipe will soften and melt at temperatures far below the temperature of most magma deposits. Still, a magma well is being tested in California, and one is being planned on the island of Hawaii. If these wells succeed in extracting heat from the magma without triggering volcanic eruptions or earthquakes, the door will be opened to another vast geothermal resource. Low-Temperature Research. Finally, new research at the Pacific Northwest Lab may let utility companies use low-temperature geothermal fields that are overlooked today because they arent hot enough to drive electrical production efficiently. (Current systems require high-temperature fields.) The techniques being developed could improve plant efficiency by 20 to 30 percent, and that could drastically expand the attractiveness of many areas in the West for geothermal development.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for geothermal: Geothermal resources are free and produce reliable energy 24/7. Electricity production is not affected by weather, season, or time of day. It needs only 1.5 percent of the cooling water and produces less than 1/1,000th of the carbon emissions of a similar-sized coal-fired plant. It is a proven, established, working technology. On the negative side for geothermal: Geothermal pools are too slow to naturally recharge and cannot be counted as renewable. Geothermal plants vent many corrosive salts and some toxic metals (arsenic, boron, lead, and mercury, ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulfiderotten egg smell). Geothermal plants are extremely noisy, like the never-ending rumble of nearby jet engines. The technology to use dry rock geothermal resources (the majority of the total resource) is neither tested nor proven. There is stiff competition from other uses of geothermal heat.

Borrowing the Planets Energy: Geothermal Energy / 65

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) estimates that, by 2050, geothermal could supply 100,000 Mw of electrical generating capacity, or 10 percent of the nations total demand. Whether that dream is realized depends on two things. Key Factors: First is price. Even now, when only the best and least costly geothermal resources are being used for electrical production, electricity from a geothermal plant still costs 3 to 5 cents more per kwhr than electricity from a coal-fired plant. Geothermal energy wont be widely used unless the cost of coal goes up and the cost of geothermal energy goes down. The second is new technology development. Geothermal energy will make only a small, regional contribution to the U.S. electrical grid unless new technologies are developed and proven. Timeline: If one or more tests succeed, geothermal energy is poised to be a major contributor to the grid by 2030. If not, geothermal will remain a minor source of regional electrical capacity. The best current guess is that we can expect slow, steady expansion of geothermal power over the next 15 to 20 years. Then, around 2030, either magma or hot dry rock technologies will come online and geothermal energys contribution to the grid will rise sharplyperhaps to a max of 7 to 10 percent of the national total. But that is just a forecast, and only time will tell for certain. Other technologies that seemed poised for quick success still languish in university laboratories decades later.

Classroom Activities
1. The core of the earth is molten rock thousands of degrees hot. The surface (where we live) is cool. Lets look at Earths heat. What keeps the heat in the core from reaching the surface grass, dirt, and rock that we walk on? What prevents heat from reaching the surface everywhere? How does heat from the core and mantle of the earth reach its surface? Make a list of the kinds of places where geothermal heat actually reaches the surface (hot springs, geysers, steam vents, volcanoes, etc.) Now find as many specific locations of each type of heat vent as you can. Locate these places on a world map. Do you see any patterns? Do the locations of volcanoes correlate well with any other physical phenomenon of the earths curst? (Hint: Trace tectonic plates and plate boundaries onto your map.) Now mark the sites of working geothermal plants on your map. Can you draw any conclusions? How close to the surface are the pockets of Earths heat that these geothermal plants use? Pick the location of five geothermal power plants and research how deep utilities have had to drill at those specific spots to reach the temperature they needed to operate a geothermal plant. What is keeping that heat from rising the rest of the way to the surface? (Hint: Are dirt and rock good conductors of heat, or are they insulators?)

66 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future 2. Research the geothermal brine that rises up the well pipes at Americas largest geothermal power plant, the Geysers plant in Sonoma County, California. Whats in the steam that roars up these geothermal wells? How many of those trace constituents are environmentally damaging? How can they be controlled? Are they being controlled at the Geysers, and if not, why not? Do you think that this holds any significance for other (future) geothermal plants?

3. We naturally think of glowing pools of melted rock several thousands of degrees hot when we think of geothermal heat. However, the earth (wherever we live) can be a source of summer cooling as well as mild winter heating. First, two questions to ponder, discuss, and research: Why are basements cooler than upper floors in summer? Why is the temperature of the earths surface different from the temperature of the ground 20 or 40 feet below the surface? Lets do a quick experiment. What youll need: A stiff metal rod or pole (at least four feet long, pointed on one end and less than one inch in diameter) A large hammer or mallet or small sledge hammer An oral thermometer At least four feet of string or thread Procedure: Record the air temperature at the surface either with the oral thermometer or (better) a faster air thermometer. Lay the thermometer against surface dirt and take the temperature of the surface dirt. Is that temperature the same as the air temperature? What might make the grounds temperature a little different? Use the pole to drill (or pound) a hole as deep as possible into the ground (at least two feet deep). Tie your string onto the oral thermometer with the bulb end (the end that would go under your tongue) dangling down. Lower the thermometer to the bottom of your hole. Loosely fill in the hole with dirt to minimize the circulation of air down to the thermometer. Wait four minutes and then raise the thermometer. How does its reading compare to the surface temperature? You measured the temperature just 2 feet down. Imagine what the temperature is 10 or 20 feet down. Use the library or Internet to find out how much the temperature of the earth 20 feet below the surface varies over the course of a year (while the air just above the surface varies wildly in temperature).

Borrowing the Planets Energy: Geothermal Energy / 67

For Further Reading

Gleason, Carrie. Geothermal Energy: Using Earths Furnace. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2008. Hansen, Amy. Geothermal Energy: Hot Stuff! New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Ollhoff, Jim. Geothermal, Biomass, and Hydrogen. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Orr, Tamra. Geothermal Energy. Ann Arbor, MI: Cherry Lake Publishing, 2007. Reynoldson, Fiona. Understanding Geothermal Energy and Bioenergy. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2010. Sherman, Joseph. Energy at Work: Geothermal Power. Mankato, MN: Coughlan Publishing Group, 2004. Tabak, John. Solar and Geothermal Energy. New York: Facts on File, 2009. Wachtel, Alan, and Debra Voege. Geothermal Energy. New York: Facts on File, 2010. White, Nancy. Using Earths Underground Heat. New York: Bearport Publishing, 2009.

Web Sites
www.powerscorecard.org/tech_detail.cfm?resource_id=3 Good assessment of the geothermal power industry. www.rnp.org/renewtech/tech_geo.html A good description of the geothermal activity in the Pacific Northwest region. www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/powerplants.html A government site describing the technical process of geothermal energy conversion. www.nrel.gov/learning/re_geo_elec_production.html A reference site on geothermal power production. www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=geothermal_home-basics Energy Information Administration site on geothermal energy. geoheat.oit.edu/directuse/power.htm A site that lists and compares energy production, with geothermal direct use locations.

River Hum: Hydroelectric Energy

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
For the past several hundred years humans have put beavers to shame. We have built more than 845,000 dams around the world to block the natural flow of rivers. And these are not the meandering creeks that beavers dare attack. No. We humans have corralled many of the worlds greatest rivers behind giant dams with miles of concrete. Some 65 percent of all fresh water flowing on Earth hits at least one dam before it reaches the ocean. The United States has 80,000 of those dams. Most dams do not have electric generators installed in them. Fewer than 3 percent of U.S. dams (2,400) produce electricity. However, those 2,400 U.S. dams produced 250 billion kwhr of electricity in 2007. Hydroelectric dams in the United States now contribute 8 to 10 percent of the U.S. electric supply each year (depending on rainfall and river flow level)the equivalent of 500 million barrels of oil. Brazil gets 92 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric. Norway and the Republic of the Congo get 99 percent each from it. Dams became commonplace at the dawn of the industrial age. The power of water falling over a dam directly drove mill and factory machinery. In the twentieth century, the turbines of an electric generator more and more commonly became the machinery that falling water drove. The first U.S. hydroelectric plant was built in 1882 on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin. It produced 12.5 kw of power to run a paper mill and some nearby residences. Washington, Oregon, and California are the three states that produce the most hydroelectric power. The largest U.S. hydroelectric plant is the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington. Built in 1942, it has a capacity of 13,320 Mw. The recently completed Three Gorges dam in China (one of eight giant hydroelectric dams China is currently building) has taken over as the worlds largest hydroelectric project. It stands over 60 stories tall, and its 26 working generators produce 18,200 Mw of power. By 2011 that total will increase to 22,500 Mw. Three factors make a good hydroelectric site: a large flow of water; a steep slope to the riverbed to increase the speed of the rivers flow; and a narrow canyon with high, steep walls through which the river has cut a channel. Build a dam across the narrow part of the canyon, and we can collect water hundreds of feet deep behind it. The depth of water behind a dam is critical, because the higher that column of water, the greater the pressure it exerts on the water at the bottom of the damwhere the power plant is located. Water from the very bottom of the reservoir rockets across the turbine blades with the tremendous force created by the weight of the water above it. The higher the dam and the deeper the reservoir, the more power there is in that jet of water spinning the turbine blades.

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River Hum: Hydroelectric Energy / 69 The greater the river flow, the more water we can afford to send into the power plant each minute and hour. There are a few exceptions to this design. There are dams that dont block the river flow and dont dam it up into a sprawling reservoir. These dams simply channel and direct the river flow so that most of it squirts across the power plant turbines. These are called run of the river power plants. They are far less efficient than high-pressure dam turbines, but are good for big rivers that dont flow through confined canyons where they can easily be dammed. Run of the river dams also create far fewer environmental problems and disruptions than do conventional dams.

Whats Happening Now?

There are three areas of ongoing research that hope to mitigate some of the major negatives of dams. First, scientists and engineers at many universities are experimenting with new turbine designs that will have less deadly effects on fish. Some have achieved minor success. But no major breakthroughs have yet been made. Second, several groups are testing in-flow turbines, which dont need a dam. The turbine is set in the river at the channel bottom and the natural current turns the blades. Inflow turbines avoid the expense of a dam, but they are much less efficient and require more maintenanceand are harder to reach and repair. If success is achieved with in-flow turbines, it will probably come from the massive and similar efforts to design turbines to operate in ocean currents. Finally, new engineering designs for extremely small turbines and generators have made homestead hydro (also called micro-hydro) possible. Micro-hydro systems are small enough to work in many backyard streams and still produce a steady flow of electricity. In a fast, steep stream, micro-hydro will work with a stream flow smaller than the flow from a garden hose. Slower moving streams require larger flows (up to 500 gallons per minute). These systems produce a slow, steady flow of electricity 24/7 and use rechargeable batteries to meet daily periods of peak demand. Their only problem is high initial cost$8,000 to $10,000 to power a new home. But then there is no electric bill each month.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for hydroelectric: Flowing river water is a free and renewable fuel. Hydroelectric dams release no pollution. Hydroelectric is a proven, reliable technology. Electricity from hydroelectric dams is very inexpensive.

70 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future On the negative side for hydroelectric: Dams disrupt the natural flow of river water, nutrients, and sediments and alter water quality (temperature, oxygen level). Dams and turbine blades kill fish; 91 percent of all endangered fish species are currently harmed by dams. Hydroelectric dams consume immense amounts of land, burying whole valleys deep underwater.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Most of the U.S. hydroelectric potential is already developed. Little future expansion is likely. Key Factors: Non-hydroelectric dams can be retrofitted to produce electricity if other new technologies do not develop. Timeline: Look for an increase in the use of micro-hydro by 2025. Look for some (limited) retrofit activity by 2030.

Classroom Activities
The turbines in a hydroelectric power plant are driven by water pressure. That water pressure is created by the height (depth) of the water just behind the reservoirs dam. Lets explore how powerful pressure from a column of water is. 1. There are over 3,400 power-generating dams in the United States. Using the library and Internet, find all that are located in your state. Mark these locations on a map. Also write down how deep the reservoirs water is just behind the dam and the capacity of the hydroelectric power plant. Do you see any correlation between depth of the water in the reservoir and plant capacity? 2. Lets do a simple experiment to see if a greater depth of water really does create more force. What youll need: A soft rubber balloon (The long, skinny balloons used to make balloon animals work well if not too stiff.) A tape measure At least 10 feet of rubber garden hose (but preferably not more than 15 feet) A large funnel

River Hum: Hydroelectric Energy / 71 As you blow harder while blowing up a balloon, the balloon fills up and puffs out more. Thats the idea of this experiment. We will see if a higher column of water puts more pressure on a balloon and therefore blows it up bigger. Stuff the narrow end of your funnel into one end of the hose and jam it down until it seals tight. Hook your test balloon onto the other end of the hose. There are two measurements you will make at each step of this experiment: how far the top of the funnel is from the floor, and how long the balloon is (how much water pressure has blown up the balloon). Youll make this measurement by measuring the length of the balloon from the end of your hose as the balloon lies on the floor. This measurement should increase slightly each time you raise the funnel and increase the height of your water column. On a wall, measure one foot from the floor and make a small pencil mark. (You can easily erase these marks later.) Then make marks above this mark at two feet, three feet, and so on up to the ceiling. Place the balloon on the floor and hold the top of the funnel next to the onefoot mark on the wall. Slowly pour water into the funnel, letting it fill up the hose and flow into your test balloon. Stop pouring when the hose is full and the water in the funnel is just below the top lip. Hold the funnel still while someone measures the length of the balloon. Now raise the funnel to the two-foot mark and add more water to bring the water level back up to just below the rim of the funnel. Again measure the length of the balloon. The balloon wont grow very much at each step of this test, so these will have to be very precise measurements. Now raise the funnel to the three-foot mark. Continue in this way until the funnel is at the ceiling, raising it one foot at a time and always refilling the funnel to keep the water filled to just below the rim. How much did your balloon grow as the height of the water column increased? Notice that the amount of water pressing on the balloon barely changed at all. But the height of the water column radically increased, which increased the pressure of the water pushing into your test balloon. Now can you see why utilities want to find deep, narrow gorges to build their dams? It lets them create a deeper reservoir with more water pressure blasting water across their turbine blades.

For Further Reading

Aloian, Molly. The Yangtze: Chinas Majestic River. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2010. Benduhn, Tea. Water Power. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2008. Burgan, Michael. Water Power. New York: Facts on File, 2010. Gibson, Diane. Hydroelectricity. Mankato, MN: Black Rabbit Books, 2004. Graf, Mike. How Does a Waterfall Become Electricity? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Raintree, 2009.

72 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Miller, Adam, and Sally Morgan. Alternative Energy Sources. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Raintree, 2009.

Web Sites
ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/hyhowworks.html Government site describing the process. www.howstuffworks.com > ... > Energy Production A good overview of hydroelectric power production. www.waterencyclopedia.com > Ge-Hy The history and development of hydroelectric power. www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=hydropower_home-basics Energy Information Administration page on hydroelectric development in the United States. www.usbr.gov/power/data/faclname.html Factual listing of nonprivate hydroelectric facilities in the United States.

A Swim in the Balmy, Briny Sea: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)
What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
The oceans of our planetnot the landare the great storage shed for the suns radiant energy. Each day the oceans absorb solar energy (heat) that is the equivalent of 250 billion barrels of oil. If we could convert only 0.1 percent of this energy into electricity each day, it would supply 20 times the amount of electricity consumed that day in the United States. That sounds like it should be fairly easy to doand it sounds like a perfect answer to our energy dilemma. Right? Unfortunately, no. There is a problem. That vast storehouse of heat energy is spread out over the 23 million square miles of ocean surface like soft butter oozing out to cover the entire surface of a steaming pancake. There isnt very much heat energy at any one spot. Worse, what heat energy there is at any one spot doesnt conveniently sit right at the oceans surface where it could be efficiently scooped up. Like butter seeping down into a pancake, the suns heat seeps down through the top thousand (or so) feet of the ocean. Worse yet, those spots in the ocean that might be attractive for energy production are often hundredsor more often, thousandsof miles from the nearest land where the electricity could be used. It would seem that there is no way to realistically recapture the oceans bounty of solar energy. But this inflow of massive amounts of heat means that the surface waters in the oceans are always warmer than the cold bottom currents. In many parts of the tropical oceans (20 N to 20 S), that temperature difference is 35F or more between the surface and water at a depth of 2,000 to 3,000 feet. And that small temperature difference is just enough to drive an ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) power plant. In a normal power plant, roaring fires in a boiler boil the plants working fluid, turning it into high-pressure steam. That steam blasts across turbine blades, spinning them to also spin the generator. The used steam is turned back into a liquid in a heat exchanger (like the radiator in your car), where cool water flows past the steam to cool it down and reliquefy it. An OTEC plant has all of these same pieces. But an OTEC plant doesnt burn fuel to create heat and steam. It uses the warmth of the tropical ocean surface waters themselves. Giant pumps pull in warm ocean surface water. The heat in that water heats the plants special working fluid just enough to make it boil, producing steam to drive the turbines. Admittedly, it isnt high-pressure steam. But it is steam nonetheless. A pipe extends several thousand feet down below the plant to suck up cold, deep-ocean water to cool and reliquefy the working fluid.

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74 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Thats how an OTEC plant works. Surface ocean water at 80F boils the working fluid to create steam. Deep, cold ocean water at 45F cools it back down. In between, the steam blows across turbine blades to spin the shaft of an electric generator. But there is a big problem with OTEC. Ocean water can only heat the working fluid a couple of tens of degrees. The steam is low-pressure steam that doesnt carry very much energy. While the high-pressure steam in a coal-fired plant would vaporize the plastic in your tea kettles lid, the steam in an OTEC plant would be barely strong enough to make it whistle. We get very little energy out of an OTEC plant because the temperature difference between warm water and cold water is so small. Massive amounts of both warm surface water and deep, cold water have to be continuously pumped through the plant. Most of the electricity that the plant produces is gobbled up pumping water to make the plant run. An OTEC plant is very inefficient. A coal-fired plant, for example, is 40 or 50 times more efficient than an OTEC plant at converting energy in the fuel into electrical energy. Still, OTEC does work, and OTEC plants do produce some electricity. Since the fuel (warm ocean water) is free, OTEC plants can get away with being grossly inefficient and can still produce a profit. But not much, and so far not enough to make large-scale investment in OTEC worthwhile. The worlds first OTEC plant was built off the southern coast of Cuba in the 1930s. It produced enough electricity to power its own water pumps, but little more. It was abandoned in less than a decade.

Whats Happening Now?

Several small demonstration OTEC plants are up and running around the world. The only one in U.S. waters is anchored several miles off the Kona coast in Hawaii. That small test plant has floated there in full operation since the late 1970s. Although the plant has worked, it hasnt worked well enough to create any enthusiasm for scaling up to a commercial-sized plant that could pump electricity into the islands grid. Current thinking is that the best use of OTEC will be to locate plants in favorable spots out in the deep oceans and use the electricity they produce to power some on-site industrial operation (like hydrogen production or water desalinization) that could be shipped to shore. Planners also envision coupling an OTEC plant with aquatic farming. The deep ocean cooling water an OTEC plant pumps up to the surface will be rich in nutrients and would be an ideal source of fertilizer to support aquaculture farms such as oysters, clams, kelp, or biomedical algae. Some think we could use the sites to grow lobsters or even salmon.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for OTEC: Ocean heat is a free, renewable resource. Because of global warming, oceans are overheated. Anything that removes heat from oceans is good.

A Swim in the Balmy, Briny Sea: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) / 75 OTEC plants produce electricity 24/7. OTEC plants produce minimal pollutants and brings valuable, nutrient-rich waters to the surface. On the negative side for OTEC: OTEC plants have the lowest efficiency of any power plant. The cost to build OTEC plants is two to four times that for conventional plants. OTEC plants can be damaged by severe ocean storms.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: OTEC will never be a significant contributor to the national grid. Its use will be limited to isolated tropical islands and remote coastal sites. Key Factors: Good OTEC sites are in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles from land. Timeline: If commercial OTEC plants develop at all, it wont be until after 2020, and in the United States, only in Hawaii.

Classroom Activities
1. OTEC plants rely on a natural temperature difference between warmer ocean surface water and colder deep ocean water. Pick an ocean and prepare a map showing ocean surface temperatures for that ocean. How much do these temperatures vary over the course of a typical year? How does anyone know what the water temperatures are way out in the middle of the ocean? How did you find the information? Surely ships cant be continuously spread out across the entire ocean to take those readings. What scientific instruments create these readings? Before the 1970s, there were no scientific satellites measuring conditions on Earth. How did ocean scientists gather any data on the oceans surface conditions back then? Here are some research and discussion questions that relate to OTEC operation: Why is the surface of the ocean warmer than deep ocean water? Is that as true for the Arctic and Antarctic waters as it is for the equatorial tropics? Why or why not? Can you find any temperature measurements for the ocean waters at a depth of 2,000 feet? At 5,000 feet? On the bottom? How do scientists establish these temperatures without having ever actually been there?

2.

3.

4.

76 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future One concept is to use the deep ocean water brought up (upwelled) by OTEC plants to support aquaculture farming. Why are deep ocean waters typically richer in the nutrients that ocean plants (phytoplankton) need than are surface waters? (Hint: Are there any plants in the completely dark waters of the deep ocean?) If the deep ocean waters hold the nutrients (like fertilizer for grass) that ocean plants (phytoplankton) need, what does the surface water have that deep ocean water lacks? (Hint: Besides water and nutrients, what does grass need to grow?) If OTEC power plants are located in the middle of the ocean, what would you recommend that the plants do with the electrical energy they produce? Why? What options can you find? What are the advantages of each?

For Further Reading

Avery, William, et al. Renewable Energy from the Ocean: A Guide to OTEC. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Goldin, Augusta. Oceans of Energy: Reservoir of Power for the Future. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1990. Khaligh, Alizera. Energy Harvesting: Ocean Energy Conversion Systems. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2009. Melnyk, Markian. Offshore Power: Building Renewable Energy Projects in U.S. Waters. Tulsa, OK: Pennwell Corp., 2009. Peppas, Lynn. Ocean, Tidal, and Wave Energy: Power from the Sea. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2008. Strachan, James. Future Sources. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing, 1995.

Web Sites
www.nrel.gov/otec/what.html A good description of the technology. www.otecnews.org/ A good update on recent OTEC activity. hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/energy/renewable/otec Government site for the Hawaii OTEC demonstration plant, the only OTEC plant in U.S. waters.

A Swim in the Balmy, Briny Sea: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) / 77 www.lockheedmartin.com Commercial site describing new technical developments to improve OTEC efficiency. www.makai.com/p-otec.htm Commercial site describing a new OTEC design. www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=hydropower_home-basics A good overview of the technology. www.consumerenergyreport.com/.../answering-questions-on-otec-part-i/ A good discussion of the history and development of OTEC power.

Catch a Wave, Dude!: Ocean Wave Energy

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Wind skims across the surface of the ocean and transfers some of its energy into the water, pushing up waves. The longer the wind blows, and the harder it blows, the bigger the waves grow. The bigger the waves become, the more energy they absorb from the wind. Soon, seemingly endless trains of waves march across the oceans to crash against the shore. Breaking waves release an estimated 2 to 3 million megawatts of power (the equivalent of 3,000 large power plants) as they break along the 100,000 miles of shoreline on this planet. And all of that wonderful wave energy is wasted, smashing against coastal rocks, sand, and bluffs. Waves flow across the ocean not as moving water (each water particle actually moves in a small circle and after the wave passes ends up exactly where it started) but as moving waves of energy. The energynot the wateris what flows across the ocean. Some coastlines are typically pounded by large waves. Some typically arent. In those favorable locations around the world, wave energy at the coast averages around 65 Mw per mile of shoreline. Where are these places? Here are two ways to pinpoint the best sites: First, the best sites for wave energy power plants typically lie along the eastern edge of a large ocean, where the winds have been blowing and powering the waves all across the ocean (since the major wind flows travel from west to east in the Northern Hemisphere). Second, the most consistent and strongest winds (and hence the largest and most consistent waves) lie between 35 and 60 N or S latitudes. In the United States, that means that the best wave energy locations lie along the Pacific Coast from central California north into Alaska. Wade into the ocean at your favorite beach, and you will feel how water particles move as a wave passes and thus how wave energy machines work. As a wave approaches, the water around you drops lower. You dip into a trough ahead of the wave. As that happens, you are pulled out into the incoming wave. Then, as the wave reaches you, you are lifted up to the wave crest, then finally shoved back in toward shore as the wave passes. The water particles (and you with them) move in a circle as a wave rumbles through: first down, then back out to sea, then up, and finally back toward shore. The idea of wave energy machines is to turn that circular motion of the passing waves into mechanical motion that turns the shaft of an electric generator. Some designs bob up and down; some twist and rotate as the wave passes. In others, rising water in the waves passing peak pours into a vertical column, compressing air, which is forced through a turbine to spin the generator. In every wave energy design, each passing wave keeps the process going, like pedaling a bike. Most current designs for wave energy plants float in the sea near the shore rather than sitting on shore. Only a few designs use the turbulent energy of a breaking wave. Most use

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Catch a Wave, Dude!: Ocean Wave Energy / 79 the regular up-and-down and back-and-forth motion that a passing wave induces in the water column hundreds of yards offshore. There is one mechanical problem that plagues every existing wave energy design: Wave height is unpredictable. Even at the best spots, wave height varies radically from day to day and even hour to hour. If a wave energy plant is designed to work with four- or five-foot incoming waves (average for the good latitudes on fair weather days), the plant must also be safe, and be able to function, when wave heights exceed forty or even fifty feet during major storms. The system must also be able to produce some electricity when waves calm to twofoot midgets.

Whats Happening Now?

Actually, lots. Many navigational buoys around the world have, for many years, used wave energy to generate the electricity to run their lights and fog horns. In the North Sea (a very stormy area of the worldwith lots of wind and typically large waves), a 350 kilowatt grid of wave-powered electric generators has been operating since 1986. Worldwide, a total of 685 kw of power is generated by wave energy. That may not represent a significant portion of the worlds total energy production, but it is certainly enough to prove that the concept works. The new Pelamis Wave Power project in Portugal is the worlds largest wave power farm. It is currently producing 2.5 Mw of electric power (enough for 450 average U.S. homes). By 2020 it will be up to 20 Mw (enough for 4,000 average U.S. homes). The plant is made up of many segmentseach about the size of a train carthat float on the surface and bend and flex as each wave passes. That bending motion drives electric generators. Finavera AquaBuoy has planned a small demonstration project along the coast of Washington. Another demonstration project, launched in 2009 off Newport, Oregon, is a floating buoy 15 feet in diameter at the top, with a 70-meter-tall shaft. The shaft converts the vertical motion of a passing wave into pump action that drives a turbine and generator. Wavegen recently installed a shoreline system in Scotland. Guide jetties concentrate incoming waves so that they break into an onshore container. The weight of this water compresses air in a closed cylinder and drives it through the blades of a turbine to turn the generator shaft. The most efficient wave energy design created to date is the Salter Ducka cam system that looks a bit like a bobbing duck. It absorbs 90 percent of the energy from a passing wave, leaving a calm sea in its wake. Bobbing ducks pump up pressure in an enclosed oil drum. Once that pressure is high enough, the oil squirts through a hydraulic motor to generate electricity. A 600 Mw plant requires ten ducks (each 45 meters wide with a 60-meter gap between ducks) and spreads across three-quarters of a mile of ocean. Small Salter Duck plants have been demonstrated several times. The manufacturer is now waiting for political approval in Scotland to install a commercial-sized plant. Wave energy doesnt just ride along the oceans surface, but extends down through a long vertical column. The energy in that column decreases with depth. This means that it is possible to place propeller-like devices underwater to capture some of the energy in passing waves. Underwater generators dont get as much energy from a wave as do surface devices, but they are subject to far less storm damage. One such device is the new Seamill windmill

80 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future style blades, which sit just under the surface and spin as a wave passes. Seamill devices are currently in the testing phase. Other test and demonstration plants are in place in Japan and Norway (both are small, 1 Mw plants). The Pacific Gas & Electric Company along the U.S. West Coast is currently evaluating the feasibility of using wave generators for remote communities scattered along the California and Oregon coasts.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for wave energy: Wave energy is a free, renewable energy source. Wave energy plants release no pollutants other than minor leaks of lubricating oils. Many wave generator designs have been successfully tested and proven. The technology is ready. On the negative side for wave energy: Ocean waves are unpredictable and intermittent. Wave energy is widely dispersed, so plants will have to stretch across miles of ocean. Wave energy plants will be very expensive to build and maintain. The best wave energy sites are far from population centers, requiring long transmission lines and losses. Wave energy plants will be subject to severe storm damage. Large wave energy plants alter coastal sediment (sand) transport patterns and affect coastal erosion patterns (with potentially disastrous on-shore effects). Devoting coastal areas to wave generators denies them to other important uses such as recreation, fishing, and shipping.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Wave energy could supply 6.5 percent of U.S. total electrical demand by 2050. But that is unlikely. It has yet to generate any real enthusiasm. Key Factors: Cost and maintenance demands are too high. Wave generators look good on paper, but they just havent performed well enough. Timeline: Look for small coastal wave generators along isolated sections of the Pacific Coast by 2025. Other significant development is unlikely.

Catch a Wave, Dude!: Ocean Wave Energy / 81

Classroom Activities
1. Anyone who has waded into the water along an ocean shore has felt the power of waves. How powerful are the waves that break on our shores and beaches? Let class members relate their personal experiences with shore waves. Did the waves pull them out to sea or push them in toward shore? Did they knock them down and tumble them head over heels? Look for commonalities in their stories. In particular, try to determine how the particles of water moved as the wave approached. Did everyone agree that an approaching wave first pulls them out into the wave, and that the water level around their bodies and legs drops as the wave approaches? This means that, as the wave approaches, water particles begin their circular motion by moving down and out, into the approaching wave. As the wave reached them (if it hadnt already broken), did it always lift them up and then push them back toward shore as it passed? Water particles complete their circular motion as an energy wave passes by circling up and finally back toward shore to where they first began. Once a wave breaks, the circular motion is lost and becomes a simple in-andout motion as the wave tumbles up onto shore and then washes back out to sea. If anyone in the class is going to the beach in the near future, have that person study this motion while there and report back to the class. 2. Waves are created when blowing wind transfers some of its energy into the water. Lets do an experiment to see how that happens. What youll need: A large tub or tank to hold water (A rectangular fish tank is ideal. An inflatable wading pool will do.) Cotton or cloth rags (six to eight old T-shirts are ideal) Tape (duct tape works best) You will conduct this experiment indoors. If you did it outside, even a whisper of wind would alter your results. Tape the T-shirts along the inside of one end of your tankmostly at or near the top of the tank (around the level of the water surface once your tank is filled). These will absorb the energy of the small waves you create and prevent them from reflecting back into the tank. Fill the tub with water nearbut not quite up tothe top. Make sure that your cotton baffle rises a little above water level. Wait for the water to be calm and still. (This may take an hour or more.) Stand (or sitor lie) at the end of the tank that is opposite to the rag baffle. Now blow gently across the tub of still water. It is important to blow as the wind does. Dont blow down at the water. Get your mouth as close to water level as possible and blow steadily across the water so that your breath blows parallel to, and just above, the waters surface. It is important not to hit or jar the tank as you get your mouth into position to blow. Such jarring will create its own set of waves and mask the wind waves you are trying to create.

82 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Blow gently for five seconds (one breath), then stop and look for a train (series) of tiny waves to spread across the tank. These are wind waves that your breath has created. Energy has transferred from your breath into the water to create these waves. You have just created waves in the same way that wind creates waves on the ocean. Wait for the water to calm and blow again, a little harder this time. Were the waves you created bigger than the first set? Get a second person to help you blow. You blow and then quickly lift your head so that the other person can replace you and make the wind last twice as long. How did a longer blowing time for the wind affect the waves? Were they higher or not? Did you create more of them, or the same number of waves? In general, the longer the wind blows, the more energy the water absorbs, the larger the waves grow, and the longer the wave train will be. Imagine what happens in the ocean, where the wind can blow across the water for days at a time and for thousands of miles. Now imagine what happens when that wind howls with hurricane force at 80 mph or more!

For Further Reading

Benduhn, Tea. Water Power. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2008. Gibilisco, Stan. Alternative Energy Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. McCormick, Michael. Ocean Wave Energy Conversion. Mineola, NY: Dover Publishing, 2007. Melnyk, Markian. Offshore Power: Building Renewable Energy Projects in U.S. Waters. Tulsa, OK: Pennwell Corp., 2009. Peppas, Lynn. Ocean, Tidal, and Wave Energy: Power from the Sea. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2008. Ross, Daivd. Power from the Waves. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Web Sites
www.wecandothis.com A utility (PG & E) site describing plans to use ocean wave energy. www.alternative-energy-news.info/.../wave-power/ A description of alternate designs for wave energy conversion. www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=hydropower_home-basics A good overview of the technology.

Catch a Wave, Dude!: Ocean Wave Energy / 83 www.wavegen.co.uk/ A commercial site describing several ocean wave energy systems. www.leonardo-energy.org/worlds-largest-offshore-wave-power-plant This site describes the worlds largest wave energy power plant. www.howstuffworks.com/salters-duck.htm A description of the Salter Duck, currently the most efficient wave energy conversion system.

Rollin, Rollin with the Tide: Ocean Tidal Energy

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
The tide rolls in; the tide rolls outjust like clockwork, every day of every year. That regular rise and fall of the oceans surface that we call the tide is created by gravitational tugs from the moon and the sun. You dont notice the effect of rising and falling tides in the open ocean. But they are a powerful force along the shore and especially in mid-latitude coastal bays and inlets. Great volumes of water flow into those bays as the tide rises and rush back out as the tide falls. That rushing water holds the potential to generate electricityjust as flowing river water does. There are two challenges to using tidal flows to generate electricity. First, unlike a river, tidal current is intermittent. It only flows part of the time. At high tide and at low tide there are periods of slack tideperiods of 60 minutes or more with little or no tidal current. Then the water reverses direction, first flowing in, then turning around and flowing back out. For engineers trying to use tidal flow to produce a nice, steady stream of electricity, tidal currents can be a nightmare challenge compared to simple, steady, river currents. The second challenge is the steady stream of boat traffic (pleasure boats, fishing boats, cargo boats, etc.) that needs free access to sail into and out of virtually every American bay. Engineers cant capture the tidal water flow and direct it through turbines unless they block (dam) the bay entrance. But if they do that, they block the shipping. To turn tidal currents into electricity, its necessary to build a dam across the mouth of a bay. This dam will be open part of the time for ship traffic, but will close part of the time to block the tidal flow and build up an elevation difference between the water inside and outside that dam. When that elevation difference is big enough, or when the tidal current runs fast enough, a utility company will direct the flow through turbines to spin the blades and turn the shaft of a generator. The giant questions are: How big does the tide have to be (the difference in height between high tide and low tide), and how fast do the tidal currents have to be, to make a tidal power plant worthwhile? The answer is that we need a tidal height of 10 to 15 feet (or more). And that is a problem. Few places have tides that run that high. We also need to have tidal currents that run as strong as six or seven knots at the mouth of a bay to make a tidal power plant feasible. On Earth, that only happens in mid-latitude bays (40 to 60 N or S latitude). Promising sites exist in Canada, Scotland, England, Alaska, Norway, and Russia. Worldwide, there are about 40 sites where conditions are ideal. They represent a total of over 60,000 Mw of capacity. Why put up with those limits and challenges? Because when we find a good spot for a tidal power plant, we can get lots of energy from itlots of energy.

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Rollin, Rollin with the Tide: Ocean Tidal Energy / 85

Whats Happening Now?

Tidal power was used in England to drive mills as early as the twelfth century and in colonial America to power lumber and flour mills as early as the 1620s. However, as a modern energy technology, tidal power is still in its infancyabout where wind energy was in 1980. The worlds only existing commercial tidal energy power plant is a 240 Mw plant in the La Rance estuary in northern France. It generates enough power to supply the needs of 200,000 people. Pentland Firth, in the channel between Scotland and Orkney Island, is estimated to hold half of Europes tidal power resource. If Scottish development plans become reality, a tide-powered plant in this channel could supply up to 20 Gigawatts (20,000 Mw) of electrical energy. The United Kingdom has plans to produce up to 5,000 Mw of tidal power by 2020 and is already conducting tests on the Severn River that could build into a 7,200 Mw facility and supply 10 percent of the nations electrical demand. However, the worlds single most promising site is in North Americathe Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada. The Bay of Fundy has the words highest and strongest tides. They rise over 50 feet from low to high tidetwice every day! If the entire tidal power of the Bay of Fundy were captured, it would produce as much electricity as 250 large nuclear plants. The OpenHydro Groups proposed project in the Bay of Fundy was due to start a small test plant late in 2010 to see how well its equipment withstands the ice- and sand-laden water crashing into the turbine blades at speeds of well over eight knots. They plan to expand to a 170 Mw plant once the test plant proves their design. Canada has plans for another 800 Mw of tidal power plants distributed along the coast of British Columbia, to power small, remote coastal communities. No plants or test facilities currently exist in the United States. However, Ocean Renewable Power Company has developed a design that should work along the coasts of both Maine and Alaska. It has proposed starting a 40 Mw plant in Maine in 2011.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for ocean tides: Tides are a free, predictable, renewable energy resource. Tidal energy plants produce no greenhouse gases and no emissions, and release no waste heat. On the negative side for ocean tides: Tidal power plant dams are potentially a hazard to shipping. The dams will alter estuarine flow patterns, could lead to a buildup of pollutants in bays and estuaries, and can block fish migrations.

86 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future The plants turbines will be subject to rapid corrosion and marine fouling, increasing maintenance costs. Government regulations will discourage or prevent most tidal dams across U.S. estuary and bay mouths.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Maximum potential for tide energy plants is about 3 percent of total U.S. demand. But little if any tidal energy will be developed. Key Factors: High construction costs, regulatory hurdles, and limited energy production potential will prevent this technology from developing. Timeline: If tidal energy develops at all in U.S. waters, look for small plants in rural coastal communities above 40 N to develop after 2020.

Classroom Activities
What causes us to have ocean tides on this planet? What creates the tides? Why are there generally two high tides and two low tides each day? Why do the tides cycle through higherhigh tides and lower-low tides every two weeks? These are questions youll have to be able to answer to understand how the tides will drive tidal power plants. Here are topics and questions to research and discuss: 1. The force that creates the tides is gravity. Research the relationship between gravity and the tides. Gravity is a force that attracts (pulls) one thing toward another. It is far too weak a force for you to feel it pull you toward other people or a nearby treeeven though it does. But the gravitational force between big things (like planets and stars) is tremendously large. 2. What gravitational pulls create the tides? What happens when the moons gravitational force pulls on the ocean directly underneath it? (Hint: Gravitational pull bulges things toward each other. Would a bulge in the ocean look like a slightly raised bump? What would happen as that bump approaches shore? Would it look like a very slowly moving wave?) Does the same gravitational pull that creates the tides in the ocean also pull on the land? Why do we see that bulge on the oceans, but not on the land? Research these questions as best you can and share your findings with other students. 3. Pick three cities scattered along each coast of the United States. Use the library and Internet to fill in a one-month, day-by-day chart of the height and the time of the high tides and low tides at each city. Include the latitude of each city on your chart. How did the tidal height vary over the course of a day? Were the highs and lows the same each day throughout the month at each location? Do you see a

Rollin, Rollin with the Tide: Ocean Tidal Energy / 87 pattern in the highs and lows? See if you can find out why the cycle from high tide to low and back to high isnt exactly 12 hours (half of a day). If you were to place a tidal power plant at those locations, it would only generate power when tidal water surges past the plant. That occurs halfway between the two tidal extremes. (Both high and low tides are called slack tides because the water is generally calm. The strongest tidal flows happen between these two as water either rushes into the bay or out of it.) Have you ever heard the terms neap tide and spring tide? Research those terms and see if that information helps you understand why tidal height varies in a very predictable way over the course of each two-week period. 4. Lets add one more factor into your study of tides. Did you notice that average tidal height (height between high and low tides) varied from latitude to latitude? Which latitudes do you associate with higher tidal heights? Which with lower tidal heights? See if you can research information to generalize from your six specific sites to latitudes everywhere on our planet. Which latitudes have the greatest tidal height? Tidal power plants require tidal heights in the range of 10 to 15 feet (or more). Use a red marker to highlight coastal areas in North America with tidal ranges that are this great. Finally, you want large quantities of water to flow through your tidal power plant each tidal cycle. You also have to build a dam across the mouth of the bay. That means that youll want to place your power plant on bays with narrow mouths in the latitude zone that has the greatest tidal height. Find four bays along the coast of North America you think would be good candidates for a tidal energy power plant. Create a table showing the tidal height and width of the bay entrance for each of your chosen bays. But remember, ship traffic also has to pass in and out of the bay. Add another column to your table showing the total number of pleasure and commercial ships that pass in and out of each of your four harbors during an average month. Coast Guard and Port Authority Web sites can help you gather this information.

5. You have now looked at all of the factors youd need to consider to understand the placement of tidal power plants. As a final research project, lets look at the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is considered to be the best site on the planet for a tidal power plant. See what you can find out about the Bay of Fundy and plans for a tidal energy plant there. What problems do engineers foresee working with a 50-foot tidal height? Do you think its a good idea to put a power plant there?

For Further Reading

Benduhn, Tea. Water Power. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2008. Khaligh, Alizera. Energy Harvesting: Ocean Energy Conversion Systems. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2009.

88 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Melnyk, Markian. Offshore Power: Building Renewable Energy Projects in U.S. Waters. Tulsa, OK: Pennwell Corp., 2009. Muschal, Frank. Energy from Wind, Sun, and Tides. Ann Arbor, MI: Cherry Lake Publishing, 2007. Peppas, Lynn. Ocean, Tidal, and Wave Energy: Power from the Sea. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2008. Rau, Dana. Alternative Energy: Beyond Fossil Fuels. Mankato, MN: Coughlan Publishing, 2009.

Web Sites
www.brighthub.com/engineering/mechanical/articles/3233.aspx An assessment of the technology and its potential. www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=hydropower_home-basics A good overview of the technology. www.oceanenergycouncil.com/.../Tidal-Energy/Tidal-Energy.html A good discussion of the pros and cons of using tidal power. inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/tidal_power.htm A good overview of how tidal plants look and work. www.alternative-energy-news.info/.../tidal-power/ A good overview of how tidal plants look and work.

The Mightiest River: Ocean Current Energy

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
For centuries humans have used the flowing currents in rivers and streams to power mills and industry. We have 2,400 dams in U.S. rivers that produce electricity from the power of these channeled floods. But even the biggest of rivers is tiny compared to the giant currents that flow forever through the oceans. Think of flowing water as a concentrated current of steady 24/7 wind. True, ocean currents are slower than the winds we use to generate electricity. But because water is far denser than air, a water current carries 800 times more power than a wind blowing at the same speed. The Gulf Stream and Florida current (flowing north along Americas East Coast), the Humboldt current (flowing south along the West Coast), the Japan current, the English Channel currentsthese and a dozen other major currents create a never-ending flow of water along the surface of Earths oceans. Some 95 percent of Earths water flows through the oceans in currents that dwarf every river on the planet. Why not tap these mighty currents to generate our electrical power? That is the idea of ocean current power plants. Designers want to place giant windmill-like devices underwater in the major currents of the world. The ocean current will steadily turn these turbine blades to turn the shaft of electric generators. Most ocean currents flow at less than 3 knots (3.5 mph)too slow for efficient electrical production by traditional turbine technologies. But there are a few that flow at over 5 knots. In U.S. waters the fastest and most attractive current is the Florida currentthe southern end of the Gulf Stream that races north along the Florida coast. The Florida current races north at speeds as high as 3.5 mph even as close as three miles offshore. The currents velocity increases to speeds of well over 5 mph 10 to 12 miles offshore (and reaches a peak velocity of nearly 8 mph around 20 miles offshore). The energy flowing in the Florida current could power the nation if it were all converted to electricity. The total energy in Earths ocean currents is greater than 6 million Mw. Convert even 0.1 percent of the oceans total current energy, and we could supply the electrical needs of 15 billion people (twice Earths current population). Using existing designs, each submersed turbine produces 1.2 Mw of electricity, and there is plenty of room just off Florida for 10,000 underwater turbines with minimal impact on the overall Gulf Stream flow. Thats 12,000 Mw of electric generating powerthe equivalent of a half-dozen large coal-fired power plants. Each 1.2 Mw operating ocean current power plant saves us from burning 13,000 tons of coal each year in a coal-fired plant!

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90 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Whats Happening Now?

The first successful test of an undersea windmill-like system took place in 1985 off Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, along the edge of the Florida current. Several tested designs are now seeking utility and governmental support for commercial installations in the Florida current. The first commercial undersea ocean current power plant went online in 2010 in Northern Irelands Strangford Lough, using SeaGen turbines to produce 1.2 Mw of electrical power. New turbine designs jointly developed by NASA scientists can tap into the ocean currents that flow along the deep ocean floor. The system has been tested on the bottom of the Detroit River. The next stop is a yet-to-be-chosen spot on the ocean floor to support other marine development. In late 2009 NASAs Jet Propulsion Lab invented a new system for turning moving water into electricity to power undersea unmanned vehicles. It is unlikely that this system will be useful for large-scale production to power the national electrical grid. Another recently designed system uses ocean currents to spin turbine blades that create enough pressure to drive a high-pressure fluid pump. This high-pressure fluid can be piped to a central electric generator planteven one on shore. This eliminates most underwater electronics and the associated maintenance, corrosion, and bio-fouling problems. A demonstration of this system is now installed in New Yorks East River between Manhattan and Long Island. But it has submerged generators that are proving to be both expensive and difficult to maintain. Piping high-pressure liquid to shore (or to a floating surface generator) now appears to be far more efficient. Two similar test systems installed in South Korea and England have experienced similar problems. As a side benefit, high-pressure hydraulic fluid can be stored until the electricity is needed, so ocean current plants can produce even amounts of power all day long and have that power stored as high-pressure fluid until peak electrical loads occur each afternoon. Finally, some very recent research by the University of Michigan has shown that rotating blades of a traditional turbine arent nearly as efficient as ones based on how fish move and swim. Turbine blades that mimic swimming fish will undulate side to side with small pressure vortices in the current (like a fish). This motion pushes a 25-foot-high cylinder up and down, which in turn drives an electric generator. This systemsafer for fish and with no bio-fouling worriesis currently in testing. If those tests succeed, a 1-by-1.5-km field of such cylinders in a 3-knot ocean current could produce 25 Mwand use only 1/50 the ocean area that a similar-sized wave generator plant would require.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for ocean current energy: Ocean currents are a massive, steady, always available, renewable, predictably nonvarying power source. Turbines and generators have been successfully tested and proven. Submerged plants dont face storm stresses and damage.

The Mightiest River: Ocean Current Energy / 91 Submerged, ocean bottom plants dont create visual impacts or disrupt shipping, recreation, or fishing lanes. The plants create and release no pollutants. Newer turbine designs minimizeor eliminatefish kills. On the negative side for ocean current energy: Like all marine systems, ocean current energy plants are subject to corrosion, maintenance, and bio-fouling problems. Large-scale use of ocean currents for power generation could affect the currents themselveslowering average current speed, shifting the flow patterns, and affecting weather and climate patterns.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: The potential of ocean currents to produce electric energy is huge. It is almost limitless. The Florida current and Gulf Stream could provide a significant portion of the Eastern U.S. electrical needs using proven technology. Key Factors: Economics and politics. The projected cost of electricity from ocean current systems is still too high. Political and governmental support will be required to permit offshore placement of the thousands of turbines required to make ocean energy systems cost competitive. Timeline: Look for the first development along the Florida coast before 2020. If successful there, plants will spread north over the following decade. Pacific Coast and deep ocean plants are unlikely before 2040.

Classroom Activities
1. Ocean currents are like giant rivers. Power plants can take advantage of the force of that current, just as they can with land-based rivers. Lets do a quick experiment to get a better feel for the power of flowing water. What youll need: A small block of wood (six to eight inches of a 2 by 4 is ideal) A stopwatch (or other stoppable timing device) 25-foot (or longer) tape measure A bright cloth or flag A velocity meter for measuring river flow (optional) One or two safety ropes (at least 25 feet long)

92 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Procedure: This experiment will let you associate the force of moving water with various speeds of water flow. Pick several streams (three or more is best) near your house or school as test streams. It is best to pick some that flow at significantly different speeds. One person will also need to wear clothes suitable for wading into each of the streams. At each test stream, first measure the stream velocity. (Record river speed in feet per second.) If you have an electronic velocity meter, first use that. But even if you do, also measure velocity the old-fashioned way. Measure out a distance of 100 feet along the shore of the stream. (Fifty feet will do if the shore isnt very accessible.) One person will stand at each end of this test strip of shoreline. These people must be able to see each other. The person at the downstream end holds the stopwatch. The person at the upstream end carries the cloth or flag. A third person will carry the block of wood a little way upstream above the test section and toss it into the water. It is important to make sure that this block lands well out in the heart of the current. As the block of wood floats downstream and passes directly in front of the person at the upper end of the test section, that person waves the flag like the starter at a Grand Prix car race. That is the signal for the person at the lower end to start the stopwatch. As the wood floats past the person at the downstream end, he or she stops the watch. You now have a measure of how many seconds it took for the block (and the river current) to flow 100 feet. Now you can calculate average stream speed measured in feet per second. How did your measured speed compare to the speed measured by your electronic velocity meter? What factors could make these two readings different? Discuss this as a class and list as many factors as you can. Now its time to see what that force of water feels like. Tie the safety rope securely around the chest of a volunteer and have several people onshore grip the other end of this rope. The volunteer will now wade out into the stream far enough to get into the heart of the streams flow. The volunteer should wade out slowly and cautiously and make sure not to step into water so deep that he or she cant stand in place against the current. Once in the heart of the current, the volunteer just stands still. His or her job is to feel and to describe to those on shore how hard the water is pushing against his or her legs and body. How hard is it to lift a leg and put it back down without having the current try to shove it downstream? How hard is it to stand against the streams force? That is the test to perform at each test stream. Then compare streams by comparing the volunteers descriptions to measured stream velocity. Was it easy to stand against a stream flowing at two feet per second, but almost impossible to stand against water flowing at five feet per second? At what speed did it become difficult to stand? If one of your test streams flowed at 5 fps (feet per second) or more, the volunteer probably found it difficult to stand and walkeven if the water was only knee deep. Would a person also have difficulty standing and walking in a wind that blew at 5 fps? (Five fps equals 3.4 mph.) Why not? Why does water carry so much more force than air does when both travel at the same speed? Use the library and

The Mightiest River: Ocean Current Energy / 93 the Internet to research this important question. (The answer is a big part of why ocean current power plants could work.) Then discuss as a class. The Florida current flows at about 5 mph (7.4 fps). Were any of your test streams nearly that swift? Do you think a current flowing at that speed could spin the turbine blades of an electric generator? If a nearby high school has a quartermile track, walk one lap around that track in three minutes. That is an example of moving at 5 mph. Thats how fast the Florida current flows. 2. Now lets expand our focus with some research to look at global ocean currents. Map the major surface ocean currents of the world and label each with its average speed. Which currents are the strongest? Can you see a pattern of where those strongest currents flow relative to the major land masses of Earth? Which of those strongest currents flow within 20 miles of land? Which of those flow near major population centers that could use the electricity ocean current power plants can provide? Finally, focus on the Gulf Stream, the most famous of all the major ocean currents. How big is it? How long? How wide? How deep? How much water does the Gulf Stream carry as it flows north along the U.S. East Coast and across the North Atlantic Ocean? Compare the amount of water carried in the Gulf Stream to that carried in the worlds ten largest rivers. Were you surprised by this comparison? Do you now understand why some planners want to place thousands of turbines and electric generators in this mighty current?

For Further Reading

Benduhn, Tea. Water Power. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2008. Bowden, Rob. Energy Sources: The Impact of Science and Technology. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009. Khaligh, Alizera. Energy Harvesting: Ocean Energy Conversion Systems. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2009. Peppas, Lynn. Ocean, Tidal, and Wave Energy: Power from the Sea. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2008. Strachan, James. Future Sources. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing, 1995. Twist, Clint. Future Sources. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing, 2001.

Web Sites
www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=hydropower_home-basics A good overview of the technology.

94 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future www.oceanenergycouncil.com/...Ocean.../Korea-to-Establish-OceanCurrent- Power-Plant.html A good description of the new Korean demonstration plant. ocsenergy.anl.gov/documents/.../OCS_EIS_WhitePaper_Current.pdf Excellent description of ocean current technology potential and process. peswiki.com/index.../Directory:Marine_Current_Turbines_Ltd A commercial site describing one of the new underwater turbines for use in ocean current power plants. www.coaps.fsu.edu/ Florida Atlantic University site describing ocean current systems for the Florida current. linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1364032109000616 A description of alternate systems for use in the Florida current.

The Sweet Smell of Garbage: Municipal Solid Waste

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
We are a throwaway society. The United States currently produces over 200 million tons of garbage each year. We have always viewed our mountains of garbage and sewer sludge as a problem, seeking hiding places to bury them and secret them away. New York City ships 10,500 tons of waste each day to landfills as far away as South Carolina and Ohio! Oh, how wrong we have been! The truckloads of trash, mountains of refuse, and tons of sludge from sewer treatment plants that we call municipal solid waste (MSW) turn out to be a valuable energy resource. Most of these previously unwanted mountains of trash can either be directly burned in power plants or be processed to form syngas (synthetic gasa methane-rich gas mixture much like natural gas). Because of its high water content, sewer sludge (along with kelp and animal waste) is typically processed into syngas that can directly replace natural gas as fuel for a power plant. Solid wastes off-loaded from garbage trucks can be sorted, shredded, and directly burned in power plant boilers. Either way, garbage becomes a free fuel source to drive a power plant. A 400 Mw power plant converted to run off municipal waste can handle the waste from over 500 garbage truck loads a day (over 450,000 cubic feet of garbage). This demand for fuel can be met either by daily pickups or by slowly emptying existing (and often stuffed-full) landfills. On the downside, the trash has to be sorted, dried, and shredded before it can feed into power plant burners. On the upside, burning garbage in a power plant avoids the cost of dumping it in increasingly scarce landfill sites within driving distance of large cities. Who converts the most municipal solid waste into electricity? World leaders are Switzerland (80 percent), Denmark (60 percent), and France (40 percent). Denmark, with a population of only 5.5 million, is expanding to 40 MSW power plants. Thats one MSW plant per 140,000 people. By contrast, the United States has only one MSW plant per 3.5 million people. In Denmark, MSW power is considered a clean energy technology, and these plants are thought of as an asseteven in wealthy suburban communities! The United States ranks way down on the list of countries using MSW as an energy resource, converting only 16 percent of our MSW into electricity. California, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania (in that order) are the leading states for electrical production from MSW. The United States started using MSW later than other countries (we still had no MSW power plants in 1980), but our use of MSW is now steadily rising. By 2000 U.S. MSW capacity was up to over 5,000 Mw.

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96 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Whats Happening Now?

The biggest impediment to expanded use of MSW is the fear of not knowing exactly what arrives in the stream of garbage that we burn. Someone might have thrown out toxic wastes that the utility doesnt catch before feeding that waste into the boilers. When those toxic pollutants belch out of the plants smoke stack, the utility could be held responsible for the resulting dangerous pollution. Since refuse companies cant control what people throw into their garbage cans, the utility company can never be sure if harmful trace chemicals will be released during burning. New techniques for sorting and analyzing the incoming flow of garbage, and new techniques for scrubbing (filtering and cleaning) the smoke that billows up the smokestack from the boiler fires, are slowly reducing that fear. As more plants are able to successfully use MSW in more states, it encourages other utilities to do the samenow that theyre reasonably sure that they wont be fined for polluting the air. Some 300 million rubber tires are tossed away in the United States each year. Engineers began using old tires as raw material for construction in 1992. Thirty percent of discarded tires are now recycledmostly ground up and used in new roadbeds. However, research has shown that the ultimate best use of old rubber tires is as fuel for power plant boilers. EPA figures show that a rubber tire delivers 25 percent more energy than the same weight of coal. A new burning technique now allows power companies to burn old tires in their boilers without creating the thick black smoke and stink that were so much a part of older burning processes. Currently, most of the tires that are burned are burned in cementmaking kilns. But utilities are beginning to eagerly eye the acres of old tires as a possible fuel for electric generating plants.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for MSW: MSW reduces the volume of garbage pouring into landfills by as much as 90 percent. MSW is a proven, reliable, existing technology. If this waste is not used as a fuel stock, someone must pay to dump it, cover it, and secure it, as well as for the land used to dump it. MSW is predictable and always available, with no disruptions. On the negative side for MSW: MSW is typically high in CO2 and other global-warming gas emissions. MSW emissions can contain many toxins: cadmium, mercury, dioxins, etc. Competition exists with recycling programs, conservation efforts, and conversion into other fuels (ammonia, methanol, charcoal, methane, diesel fuel, and gasoline).

The Sweet Smell of Garbage: Municipal Solid Waste / 97

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: The potential is huge. MSW could provide one-third of all U.S. electrical demand ififall MSW were used to produce electricity. Key Factors: Competition will limit the dedication of MSW to electrical production. Uncertainly about toxic pollutants in the waste stream will curtail utilities willingness to invest in MSW power plants. Timeline: Many MSW plants already exist. Look for total MSW capacity to steadily and slowly grow, but never to become a major contributor to the national electrical grid.

Classroom Activities
Municipal solid waste is an engineering term for garbage. Its the stuff you throw away in your garbage can and that the smelly garbage truck picks up during its weekly rounds. Here are three questions to research and answer: 1. How much do you throw away? This is a fun and revealing research activity for the whole class. Each participating student needs to have a weight scale (a bathroom weight scale is ideal). For one month, each student will volunteer to carry out the trashall of it. To begin the process, weigh each empty trash basket or trash can in the house. Create a chart with one column for each trash basket. List the room it is in and its empty weight at the top of each column. If your community has you separate lawn clippings and recyclables from garbage, measure only the garbage (whatever will be thrown into the outside garbage container). That is the only waste stream that would be fed into an MSW power plant. Before the students carry any of the baskets out to dump into the outside garbage can, they should weigh each filled basket and write that weight in the appropriate column of their charts (using a different line for each day that they actually carry out any trash). You can find the weight of the trash itself by subtracting the weight of the empty basket (listed at the top of the column) from the measured weight of the basket when full. At the end of the month students not only can add up the total amount of stuff their family tossed into the garbage can, they also know how much of that total came from each room in the house. Compare results for different students. Discuss what differences and similarities mean.

98 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future 2. Collectively, how much MSW does your community (city or county) toss out each week? You know how much each individual family in the class tossed out. But what about the whole communityincluding stores, restaurants, schools, and factories? Youll have to contact your local waste disposal company to gather these total figures. Use the Internet to compare your community to those in other areas and to the nation as a whole.

3. What is done with it? If you were thinking of building an MSW power plant, this would be the key question. Find out from your local trash company what it does with the stuff collected by the garbage trucks. Is it dumped in a landfill and buried? Does the company separate the recyclables and then bury the rest? Is it burned in an incinerator? Does the company separate out any part of that waste stream to be reused? How many tons of garbage per month could the trash company feed into an MSW power plant? Use the library and the Internet to research existing MSW power plants around the country. How many tons of garbage do they get each month? What is the capacity of each MSW plant? Can you create a graph or a chart that shows how much garbage flows into each plant and how much electricity flows out? From this graph, what size MSW power plant could your community support?

For Further Reading

de la Garza, Amanda. Biomass: Energy from Plants and Animals. Chicago: Cengage Gale, 2006. Fix, Alexandra. Energy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Library, 2007. Ollhoff, Jim. Geothermal, Biomass, and Hydrogen. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Povey, Karen. Biofuels. Chicago: Cengage Gale, 2006. Thomas, Isabel. The Pros and Cons of Biomass Power. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2007. Walker, Niki. Biomass: Fueling Change. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2006.

The Sweet Smell of Garbage: Municipal Solid Waste / 99

Web Sites
www.adb.org/Clean.../INO-PFS-Municipal-Waste.pdf A description of the technology. www.energy.ca.gov/biomass/msw.html A state government site describing Californias MSW programs. www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/.../municipal-sw.html EPAs site on MSW power plants. www.eia.doe.gov Renewables and Alternate Fuels The Energy Information Administration site on MSW power conversion. ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4272346/4272347/04272398.pdf A good technical paper on the engineering aspects of MSW power plants.

Taking the Power Plant to the Farm: Bio Crop Waste

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
What is bio waste? It is the residue left from processing and harvesting any plant crop. In the United States, bio waste primarily includes wood and wood waste (tree, shrub, leaves, small branches, saw dust, wood chips, bark), crop waste (cane tops, straw, husks, hulls, citrus peels, cornstalks, cotton gin trash, wheat, barley, etc.), kelp and algae residue from chemical processing, and lawn clippings and yard trimmings. Bio waste provides 12 to 13 percent of the worlds total energy use, mostly for heat and cooking and most prominently in developing nations. Bio wastes feed into electric utility boilers only in more developed countries. Some 5 to 8 percent of total U.S. energy use comes from biomassagain, mostly for heat and steam and mostly from burning wood waste at lumber mills. American electricity production from bio waste is up from a scant 200 Mw in 1980, to more than 5,000 Mw in 2000, to 6,700 Mw in 2008 (about the same as electric production from MSW). An additional 310 Mw of electricity from bio waste was added in 2009. How does a bio waste plant work? Every time trees are cut for lumber, every time a field crop is harvested, there is a massive amount of residue left in the field. With the primary crop already out of the way, this residue is readily accessible. It can be gathered, but not transported any great distance. It is too expensive to transport bulky bio waste. Typically the power plant has to be located right at the lumber mill or right next to the crop fields. Most bio waste cannot be directly fed into a power plants boilers. Some waste (such as wood waste, rice hulls, or wheat straw) requires only grinding to a uniform consistency before burning. Some (such as corn stover) must be partially dried before being ground and burned. However, other options exist. Waste can be heated (up to 800C) in chambers containing either low oxygen or no oxygen to produce methane, hydrogen, or syngas. The remaining solid residue can be compacted into a charcoal-like fuel. The remaining liquid is called biocrude, a liquid fuel that can be either directly burned in power plant boilers (just like oil or natural gas) or further processed into diesel fuel, heating oil, or gasoline. Finally, bio wastes can be mixed with bacteria in the absence of oxygenbut without the need for heat to produce methane. (This is what naturally happens in swamps.) In the United States, less than 1 percent of our electricity comes from bio waste. However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that each year 590 million tons of biomass waste are available. Of that, 20 million tons (enough to supply 3, 000 Mw) are available at a cost equal to coal (the current lowest-cost fuel) at $1.23 per million BTU. Florida has installed 700 Mw of electrical generating capacity fueled by agricultural

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Taking the Power Plant to the Farm: Bio Crop Waste / 101 wastes. Maine meets 23 percent of its residential electrical demand with bio waste power plants. California has the greatest generating capacity, using wood waste (800 Mw), followed by Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina.

Whats Happening Now?

The current trend is to build small power plants right at lumber mills and to position processing plants to convert field waste into easily transportable fuel forms (hydrogen or methane) next to the fields of crops that produce readily usable wastes. Current research aims to increase the efficiency of these plants. Much of that research now focuses on the process of gasification (turning waste into burnable gassyngas or methane). A Norwegian company has opened a gasification plant on the Isle of Wight. Over 150 companies around the world now market basic gasification technology. The U.S. Department of Energy has funded seven demonstration plants to test gasification of different bio wastes. One, the McNeil Generating Station in Burlington, Vermont, is a 50 Mw plant burning wood waste from nearby forest operations. It converts 200 tons of wood chips each day into gas to burn to generate electricity. Only one wood-fired power plant opened in the United States in 2007. However, seven new plants opened in 2008, twelve in 2009, and thirty were in the permitting process as of the beginning of 2010. Interest is also turning to the use of animal wastes for electrical generation. Feedlots, dairy farms, and chicken and pig farms all produce shockingly large amounts of animal waste. Controlling it and disposing of it has always been a major problem for farmers and ranchers. Researchers have recently developed techniques to allow farmers to process those wastes into methane that is burned on-site to generate electricity to run the entire farming operation. California leads the nation with over 40 farms currently producing electricity from animal wastes. This activity is described in more detail in Natural Gas: Methane Energy.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for biomass waste: Generating electricity from bio waste helps farmers and ranchers safely dispose of the waste. Bio waste is free and, compared to fossil fuels, low in sulfur emissions. The technology exists and is proven and the fuel source is predictable and dependable. On the negative side for biomass waste: Bio wastes suffer from extreme seasonal variation. Bio waste power plants must be located near (or on-site with) the source of the wastes. This mandates long power lines and line losses.

102 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Burning bio wastes releases CO2. If bio wastes are removed for electrical production, soil quality will deteriorate and farmers will have to replenish it with fertilizers.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Bio waste will never significantly contribute to the national grid. It is and will continue to be a valuable off-grid resource for farms and ranches. Key Factors: Bio wastes cost too much to gather and transport to appeal to utility companies. Timeline: Look for bio waste to remain a minor, regional contributor to the electrical supply for those regions where the right kinds of agriculture are practiced.

Classroom Activities
We all produce some bio waste. We trim plants. We cut grass. We rake leaves. In most communities, waste companies provide a separate bin for lawn waste. In suburban and rural communities, these clippings and trimmings can add up to a sizeable flow of bio waste. This is usually not the case in urban areas. Lets explore your local bio wastes and see if they would be appropriate for a bio waste power plant. 1. First, lets focus on the bio waste generated by individual families and households. This waste includes lawn trimmings, leaves, garden waste, bush and hedge trimmings, and tree trimmings. If your community has separate pickup bins for lawn waste, have students estimate whether the bins at their houses go out full, half full, etc., each week. As a class, measure the volume of one of the cans and create a rough idea of the total volume of bio waste created by the families of the class.

2. What does your waste disposal company do with this flow of bio waste? Contact your local waste disposal company and ask. Is yard waste mulched resold? Does the company compost it to sell as fill dirt? Is it thrown into landfills along with collected garbage? Also ask how much bio waste the company collects each month (on average). Would that be enough to support a bio waste power plant? Do you think generating electricity would be a better use for this waste than composting or other recycling efforts? Hold a class debate. Argue your beliefs against those of your classmates. 3. Power plants typically need a bigger flow of fuel than most communities can provide with yard trimmings. What crops grow in your area? After harvest, how much waste is left in the field (or on the ground)? How often is it harvested? What

Taking the Power Plant to the Farm: Bio Crop Waste / 103 do the farmers or loggers currently do with that waste? Is there any good reason not to use that waste to fuel a power plant? What other uses exist for this bio waste? Research these questions and discuss them as a class. Write up your class conclusions as recommendations to the county board of supervisors. 4. Lets conduct a simple experiment to see how easy it is to use bio waste as the fuel for a power plant. Power plant fuels have to burn hot and fast to create the superheated steam that blasts across the turbine blades. In this experiment you will burn a small amount of yard waste (household bio waste) and qualitatively decide if it is an appropriate fuel for use in a power plant. Have several class families volunteer to bring in their yard waste one week. Youll need an initial stock of more than a dozen shovelfuls. Randomly select a typical sample of three to four shovelfuls. Place it in a fire pit and light it. Was it easy to light? Did it burn hot and fast? Was it smoky? Did it tend to smolder instead of fiercely burn? Was there too much moisture in this sample to make a good fuel? Let the rest of your sample dry out for a week and then repeat the burning experiment. Dont cover this sample with a tarp, but do protect it from the rain so that it will dry over the course of the week. Let whatever is left of your sample dry for a second week. Again conduct the burning experiment. As the bio waste dries, do you get better results? If you were a utility company, what sort of biofuels would you want to have given to you? Why?

For Further Reading

de la Garza, Amanda. Biomass: Energy from Plants and Animals. Chicago: Cengage Gale, 2006. Johanson, Paula. Biofuels: Sustainable Energy in the 21st Century. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Ollhoff, Jim. Geothermal, Biomass, and Hydrogen. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Povey, Karen. Biofuels. Chicago: Cengage Gale, 2006. Reynoldson, Fiona. Understanding Geothermal Energy and Bioenergy. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2010. Thomas, Isabel. The Pros and Cons of Biomass Power. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2007. Walker, Niki. Biomass: Fueling Change. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2006.

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Web Sites
bioenergy.ornl.gov/reports/fuelwood/toc.html Good description of the process, with special emphasis on wood waste. www.eia.doe.gov > ... > Electricity Analysis Reports The Energy Information Administration site on biofuels. www.mpoweruk.com/biofuels.htm A good description of the process. www.powerscorecard.org/tech_detail.cfm?resource_id=1 Good summary of the pros and cons of using crop (and other) waste for power production. www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/.../BiomassHome.shtml Oregon State analysis of the potential of, and techniques for, biofuel energy conversion in that state. bioenergy.ornl.gov/reports/fuelwood/toc.html A focus on woody crop waste conversion into electricity.

Growing Electricity: Energy Crops

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Rather than wait for a field crop to grow and be harvested to take whatever residue is left for electric generation, why not plant and harvest crops specifically for electrical production? Food and timber crops arent necessarily the best source of biomass for feeding into a power plant. Power plants need crops that grow fast and produce lots of bulk with minimal water content. Three crops are considered prime fuel for electrical generation: switchgrass, hybrid poplars, and hybrid willows. Corn is not an energy crop used for electrical generation. It is used to produce liquid ethanol (a substitute for gasoline). In addition, several saltwater and aquatic plants (kelp, rushes, and reeds) have been tested and used for energy production. Kelp, especially, is attractive as an energy fuel because several of its chemical components are routinely used by the cosmetic and food industries. However, because of their high water content, these aquatic plants are better suited for conversion to methane (see page 114) than for direct burning. The concept of planting vast fields of energy crops will certainly work. But it comes with a caution. In early 2000s the United States experienced a well-publicized move to grow corn as a fuel crop. Thousands of acres were converted to fuel-corn production to produce ethanol. When oil prices spiked above $100 a barrel, corn as a fuel crop had its moment of fame. However, shifting acres of corn to fuel production tightened the supply of corn for food. Corn prices spiked. When oil dropped back below $70 a barrel, ethanol from corn ceased to look like the golden future of gasoline. Planners must make sure that the same thing doesnt happen when crops are grown specifically for electrical production. Another option exists: Bypass nature all together. Crops grow because photosynthesis in the plants creates energy molecules that the plants use to create mass. We then burn the plant mass to get the energy. Why not skip the plant and go straight from photosynthesis to energy molecule to electricity? Leaves suck in CO2 and sunlight to produce energy (in the form of sugar molecules) and oxygen. Why not create an artificial leaf that will produce energy molecules (ethanola substitute for gasoline or for pure hydrogen) while it cleans CO2 out of the air and replaces it with pure oxygen? That is the idea of much worldwide research. No one has built a working plant yet, but many groups have build prototypes in the lab.

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Whats Happening Now?

Until 2000, no power plants in the United States used biomass fuel that had been specifically grown as an energy crop. However, there has been a flurry of testing and experimenting during the past decade. Native switchgrass used to cover the vast American prairie. By the early 1900s it had been almost completely wiped out. Beginning in the 1990s, government and university groups began a program to return switchgrass to the region to stabilize the soil and stop erosion. Native switchgrass species are drought and disease resistant, have low rain requirements, grow well in arid land, and rapidly grow thick tangles of biomass. By the early 2000s it was clear that switchgrass was an ideal energy crop. The Ottumwa Station power plant in Iowa produces 200,000 tons of switchgrass on over 40,000 acres. The plant runs 100 percent on this fuel seasonally (late spring through fall) while the grass grows and can be regularly mowed. Test groves of hybrid poplars (545 trees per acre) have been planted in the Pacific Northwest and in several Southern states. Wood from these trees will be harvested after six, eight, and ten years growth. Test groves of hybrid willows have been planted in two Northeastern states (6,200 trees per acre). They will first be harvested after only four years of growing and can be regularly recut thereafter, until they must be replanted after twenty-two years. Although switchgrass has generated the most excitement, all three crops are being carefully watched to see if they have the potential to significantly contribute to the national electrical grid. The Helios project at the University of California, Berkeley, is the current leader in artificial photosynthesis research. Their primary goal is to find a substitute for gasoline. They have successfully built thin, black Helios leaves that soak up sunlight and drip ethanol into metal trays that collect the liquid energy.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for energy crops: Energy crops are renewable and low in sulfur. These plants dont add to the atmospheres CO2 burden, because growing them removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Thus, when it is re-released during burning, no new CO2 is addedjust the same CO2 that was originally in the air. On the negative side for energy crops: Energy crops require vast amounts of land for the amount of energy they produce. The Ottumwa Station plant, for example, takes more than 40,000 acres of prime agricultural land out of production for food. And that is just one plant. If biomass power plants using switchgrass were to become a significant contributor to the national grid, and various utilities built hundreds of plants, easily 4.5 million acres of

Growing Electricity: Energy Crops / 107 land could be dedicated to that one energy crop. The society would have to decide if that is the best and most appropriate use for scarce agricultural land.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Use of energy crops is limited by land use requirements. This is a regional, not a national, energy technology. Key Factors: Bio crops require massive amounts of prime agricultural land. Even a modest-sized plant can use 40,000 acres of land and produce only enough bio crop for seasonal energy production. Timeline: Look for demonstration bio crop plants to go online by 2012. However, expect only limited, regional development thereafter.

Classroom Activities
1. Growing crops specifically to feed them into utility boilers is a specialty activity, not something that we can easily duplicate in our own community. Research the three energy crops discussed above (switchgrass, hybrid willow, and hybrid poplar). What makes them good crops to use as boiler fuel? Are there other crops that could be used as energy crops? See if you can find one or more as you research this topic at the library and online. Do you think it is a good idea to use agricultural land (along with related resources, like water and fertilizer) to grow crops just to be fuel for electric power plants? When would it be a good idea? When wouldnt it? What about growing kelp in coastal ocean waters to convert into an energy fuel? Let each student develop his or her own opinion and then hold a class debate to compare points of view.

2.

For Further Reading

de la Garza, Amanda. Biomass: Energy from Plants and Animals. Chicago: Cengage Gale, 2006. Johanson, Paula. Biofuels: Sustainable Energy in the 21st Century. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2010. Ollhoff, Jim. Geothermal, Biomass, and Hydrogen. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Povey, Karen. Biofuels. Chicago: Cengage Gale, 2006.

108 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Reynoldson, Fiona. Understanding Geothermal Energy and Bioenergy. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2010. Thomas, Isabel. The Pros and Cons of Biomass Power. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2007. Walker, Niki. Biomass: Fueling Change. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2006.

Web Sites
www.eia.doe.gov > ... > Electricity Analysis Reports The Energy Information Administration site on biofuels. www.mpoweruk.com/biofuels.htm A good description of the process. bioenergy.ornl.gov/reports/fuelwood/toc.html A site that focuses on producing trees as an energy crop. www.treepower.org/ An advocacy site for growing trees as an energy crop. www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/consortium.pdf A site describing related activity in the Northeast. bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html A good paper on using switchgrass as an energy fuel. www.switchgrass.nl/ An advocacy site for using switchgrass as an energy fuel.

A BIG Future for the Smallest Atom: Hydrogen

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Hydrogen is a gasa burnable gas, just like natural gas or methane. In fact, hydrogen has the highest heat value (produces the most heat energy), gram for gram, of any fuel. Many rockets are fired into space burning tanks of liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen is also the most abundant element in the universe. Our sun is a giant ball of hydrogen plasma that fuses into helium to produce heat. Living matter is made of long chains (called hydrocarbons) of carbon and hydrogen atoms bonded with atoms of other elements. Water has two hydrogen atoms for every one atom of oxygen. Hydrocarbon fuels (oil, natural gas, coal) need their hydrogen to burn. Unfortunately, hydrocarbons are also loaded with pesky carbon atoms that combine with oxygen during burning to form CO2, the nasty greenhouse gas. If we could get rid of the carbon before we burn the fuel, wed get rid of any greenhouse gas emissions. Thats the idea behind isolating hydrogen as a fuel. Using hydrogen gets rid of the smokestack problems that come with burning fossil fuels or biomass. Unfortunately, there is a minor problem with hydrogen. It does not exist as a pure (unattached) element in significant quantities on Earth. It always binds with other chemical elements to form compounds (water, living tissue, petroleum, etc.). Engineers and scientists must use special processes to rip the hydrogen out of those compounds in order to collect it as pure hydrogen. Virtually every scientist currently believes both that the effort is well worthwhile and that hydrogen is the key to our energy future. Hydrogen is clean (the only waste product when we burn it is water vapor), efficient, and easily transportable. Hydrogen is really a clean energy carrier (like electricity itself), except that hydrogen can be easily and efficiently stored, whereas electricity cannot. The idea is to convert other materials (forest or agricultural waste, saltwater, coal, etc.) or other sources of energy (wind, waves, solar heat, etc.) into hydrogen at the site where the original material is found and to then transport the hydrogen to where it is needed for final conversion to electricity (or to power a car or a giant factory). For electrical production, we can directly substitute hydrogen for natural gas in a power plant boiler. However, most envision using the hydrogen to power fuel cells instead of central power plants. (See page 56.) The industrial process for producing hydrogen is not a new technology. Fertilizer plants have done it for years as a step in the production of ammonia. The question is not can we do it?, but rather can we do it so efficiently that the hydrogen becomes a cheap energy source for electrical production? This means that the material used as a source for the hydrogen must be

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110 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future very inexpensive and that the process used to extract pure hydrogen from that material must also be inexpensive. Alas, hydrogen production technology is (at present) very expensiveeven when the source material (water) is free. Electrolysis is the name of the process commonly used in factories that need to produce hydrogen. However, electrolysis uses electricity to make hydrogen. It makes no sense to turn around and use the hydrogen to make electricity if we first have to use electricity to make the hydrogen. There is no real net gain. However, other processes (both chemical reactions and, as nature does it, photosynthesis) are being studied and tested to produce hydrogen. The first U.S. hydrogen demonstration power plant (a 2 Mw plant) went online in 1996 in Santa Clara, California, using water as the source of hydrogen. The next hydrogen power plant was a smaller, 250 kw plant at Miramar Naval Air Station, also in California. Though progress toward developing hydrogen production plants seems to be painfully slow at present, many predict that by 2050 we will have converted to a hydrogen-based (as opposed to a petroleum-based) economy.

Whats Happening Now?

As of 2009, 90 percent of hydrogen production came from processing hydrocarbons (natural gas, oil, coal, bio waste, etc.) in high-pressure chemical reactors to produce syngas from which pure hydrogen can be isolated. The other 10 percent comes from electrolysis of water. Neither process is currently cost effective. Still, in 2008 the Presidential Commission of Advisors on Science and Technology said that by the middle of the twenty-first century, hydrogen will become an energy carrier of importance comparable to electricity, itself. A flurry of research projects is aimed at reducing the cost of producing hydrogen. MIT chemists have experimented with adding cobalt and potassium phosphate to water and then using indium-tin-oxide electrodes (instead of the standardand very expensive platinum). They have found that this combination produces hydrogen ions much more cheaply and efficiently. Research is under way at several university centers to duplicate a leafs natural photosynthesis using solar power to split water into oxygen (released by the plant) and hydrogen that the leaf would bind into hydrocarbons. Scientists are trying to produce synthetic photosynthesis as a source for hydrogen to power fuel cells. In late 2009 one research group at MIT announced that they had invented a process that splits water and performs artificial photosynthesis cheaply. They can use any water source (fresh or salt) to fuel the process. A side benefit is that the process produces a waste stream of oxygen, just as plants do. The Helios project at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley uses nanotechnology to create artificial leaves that perform artificial photosynthesis. These wafer-shaped leaves suck up CO2 and solar energy and then drip ethanol and breathe out pure oxygen. These thin, black leaves (like photovoltaic cells) could cover the land to produce liquid energy. So far the Helios project has designed the nano-leaves to produce ethanol, a substitute for gasoline. But the technology could easily be adapted to produce hydrogen as a fuel for electricity.

A BIG Future for the Smallest Atom: Hydrogen / 111 Japan has recently launched a multidecade program to develop a world energy network (the WE-NET) based on hydrogen as the energy source. The plans are drawing worldwide attention to the production both of hydrogen facilities and the infrastructure to transport hydrogen across the globe.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for hydrogen: Hydrogen is plentiful and uniquely efficient at converting its energy into electricity. Hydrogen produces no pollutants or adverse emissions at the point of use. Once produced, hydrogen can be easily and cheaply stored. Even the industrial processes for producing hydrogen dont create harmful waste streams. On the negative side for hydrogen: Hydrogen is still too expensive. There is no national infrastructure to supply hydrogen to the nation. Hydrogen has competing important uses besides producing electricity (especially transportation and industrial power).

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Hydrogens potential as a future resource is virtually limitless. Most analysts think that hydrogen is the future. We will have a hydrogen-based economy by 2050. Key Factors: We need to create a national infrastructure to produce and deliver hydrogen, as we now have for gasoline, natural gas, and even electricity itself. Timeline: Look for hydrogen fuel cells to be a prime way to generate off-grid electricity by 2030 to 2040. But it is unlikely that hydrogen will be a major source of electricity that utility companies generate for the national grid. It is more likely that hydrogen fuel cells will drastically reduceeven possibly eliminatethe need for a national electrical grid.

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Classroom Activities
1. If you did the experiment in the fuel cell entry (page 59), you produced a small amount of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas. And yet it is a mighty fuel. Why dont we use hydrogen as a cooking and heating fuel in our houses? Why dont utilities use hydrogen as a fuel to produce electricity? Why hasnt our economy developed around hydrogen as it has around other gaseous fuels? (Hint: Does pure hydrogen gas exist on Earth? How do scientists collect or create pure hydrogen?)

2. You dont now burn hydrogen gas in your house. Neither your stove, oven, barbecue, nor water heater burns hydrogen. What gases do they burn? Where and how do you get them? That is, how do these gases get to you, and where do they come from? Research this topic before you continue. Do you use these fuel gases because they are the best fuels to use, or because they are readily available? What do we mean by infrastructure? How does that term apply to delivering energy gases to your house? Propane and natural gas are good examples. What infrastructure exists so that you can get these gases when you want them? Track back from your house to the origin point where the gas was either manufactured or brought up to the surface in a well. Include each step in the production, transportation, storage, and distribution processes. Make a list of each step and as much of the manufactured equipment and machinery that step requires as you can. Youll find that you have created an enormously long and complicated list. Each of these items on your list is part of the infrastructure that brings us energy gases. 3. Now lets look at hydrogen. Who uses hydrogen? For what? Who manufactures the hydrogen those organizations use? How do they transport hydrogen from manufacturing plant to end use point? Search these topics and find as many examples as you can. If hydrogen is such an efficient fuel, why dont more companies and households use hydrogen? Why dont you and your family? In order for you to be willing to have your house powered by fuel cells that use hydrogen gas as a fuel and to have your car run on hydrogen fuel cells, what would have to be available to you? How does hydrogen availability in your community compare to that of gasoline? Of propane? Of natural gas? Would you be willing to switch to hydrogen if similar infrastructure werent already in place? One important advantage of hydrogen is that burning it doesnt release any carbon (greenhouse gas) or other pollutants. Do you think that is a good enough reason to force people to switch to hydrogen? When does it make sense to change a fuel source from one form (coal, biomass, etc.) to another (e.g., hydrogen)? Does it make sense even if most people dont want to change? Even if it inconveniences many people? Even if it costs them lots of money? Discuss and research these questions and then hold a class debate.

4.

A BIG Future for the Smallest Atom: Hydrogen / 113

For Further Reading

ABDO Publishing. Future Energy. 6 vols. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Ballard, Carol. From Steam Engines to Nuclear Fusion: Discovering Energy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007. Davis, Barbara. Hydrogen Fuel. New York: Facts on File, 2010. Haugen, David. Hydrogen. Chicago: Cengage Gale, 2006. Johnstone, Hugh. Facts on Future Energy Possibilities. New York: Scholastic Library, 1999. Lippman, David. Energy from Hydrogen. Ann Arbor, MI: Cherry Lake Publishers, 2008. Ollhoff, Jim. Geothermal, Biomass, and Hydrogen. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Orme, Helen. Energy for the Future. New York: Bearport Publishing, 2008.

Web Sites
ocsenergy.anl.gov/guide/hydrogen/index.cfm A site describing hydrogen production from offshore facilities. www.hydrogen.energy.gov/production.htm Department of Energy site describing its hydrogen program. peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Hydrogen A site describing the range of techniques for producing hydrogen as an energy fuel. www.renewables.ca/h.html Looks at the potential future sources of hydrogen as an energy fuel. www.elsevier.com/locate/he A comprehensive assessment of all aspects of the hydrogen energy process. www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/ Looks at the use of hydrogen in fuel cells and at the problems of creating a hydrogen infrastructure. inventors.about.com/od/fstartinventions/a/Fuel_Cells.htm A look at the history and potential future of hydrogen fuel cells.

Natural Gas: Methane Energy

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Methane has been mentioned in several other sections of this bookbio waste, MSW, bio crops, etc. Methane is the biggest single component of the mixes of gas we call natural gas and synthetic gas (syngas). Like natural gas and hydrogen, methane is an efficient, easyto-transport, and easy-to-store fuel. It would seem that methane is a good thing, right? Wrong! Methane is a giant problem. Methane traps heat in the atmosphere far better than does CO2. In fact, methane is 23 times more damaging to the environment than is CO2. Natural and artificial releases of methane could easily swamp any human efforts to limit global warming by limiting CO2. Methane is a resource we need to use. It naturally seeps to the arctic surface and billows up from livestock facilities to create a dangerous atmospheric pollutant. If we dont capture it and burn it, it will accelerate global warming. Where do these releases of methane come from? Methane is naturally produced and released by farm animals, garbage landfills, and the vast stretches of Arctic tundra. One ton of municipal waste in the landfill, for example, can produce 125 cubic meters of methane (the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil). A new concept is to stop treating these methane-rich dumps as a problem, as environmental ticking time bombs, and look on them as valuable energy resources. Researchers have recently discovered that more than a trillion tons of methane lie trapped in permafrost and under frozen lakes in the Arctic. As the world (especially the Arctic) warms, and the Arctic tundra thaws, that gas is bubbling out. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that hydrates (methane locked in ice) could contain more organic carbon than all the worlds coal, oil, and nonhydrate natural gas combined! Scientists at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks have spent several years mapping and measuring the hot spots for methane release in rapidly melting regions of Alaska and Siberia. The problems with capturing and using this immense storehouse of energy (before it escapes and accelerates climate change and global warming) are that these hydrates are fairly evenly spread across hundreds of thousands of square miles of the forbidding Arctic landscapes, and that this energy resource lies very far from any population centers that could use the energy. It has to be collected and then transported (either as methane gas or as electricity) to major urban centers, often thousands of miles away. Two other ready sources of methane exist. The first is landfills. The garbage in landfills decomposes over time. That decomposition produces gas. Landfill gas is typically 60 percent methane and 40 percent CO2. Capturing the landfill gas from all landfills in this country could easily supply 1 to 2 percent of the nations electrical energy (while saving the atmosphere from receiving many thousands of tons of greenhouse gases). Utility companies can drill

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Natural Gas: Methane Energy / 115 perforated pipes into and throughout a landfill. Pumps create a partial vacuum that lets gas percolate into the pipe and be sucked to a processing plant, where the methane is burned to produce electricity and the CO2 is captured to be pumped deep underground. The final ready source of methane is livestock operations. A typical dairy cow burps ten cubic feet of methane each day. Cow manure is also rich in methane. It is relatively easy to capture much of this methane and use it to power a farm. No one envisions using these tiny power plants to supply electricity to the national electric grid. But they will supply all of a farms on-site electrical needs and, like any conservation measure, eliminate the farms need to draw power from the grid. Thus, they will significantly reduce the total demand for electricity.

Whats Happening Now?

In late 2007 Sudbury, Ontario, utilities launched a 1.2 Mw methane plant using methane mined from the local municipal landfill and increased its capacity to 1.6 Mw in 2009. The BMW car assembly plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, just expanded its methane cogeneration plant using methane from a nearby landfill. This 11 Mw plant produces 30 percent of the facilitys electricity and 60 percent of its hot water. As of 2005, the United States had 399 landfill methane recovery plants. The number increased to 519 in 2008. (With 73 such plants, California has the most of any state. Alaska, Nevada, and Wyoming are the only states without any.) Most of these facilities produce methane as a fuel for transportation. However, 61 of them produced electricity as of 2008, and more electric landfill plants are planned and being built. California has 1,950 dairies and 1.85 million dairy cows. Each cow produces an average of 120 pounds of manure each day. These cows have the potential to provide electricity to 400,000 homes (in addition to milk, cheese, ice cream, and yogurt)! Fourteen dairies have created covered manure ponds where they collect the methane to run electric generators. A typical dairy methane system produces 75 to 100 kw of electricity (with the generators waste heat used to warm the manure pond to increase methane production). Two pig farms in San Diego County (each with over 1,000 hogs) have installed similar systems, and each produces 50 kw of electricity.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for methane: Methane is now a free energy resource. Burning methane to produce electricity prevents it from getting into the atmosphere, where it would be a dangerous greenhouse gas. Methane from landfills and livestock operations is renewable. Methane can be directly used in any power plant now using natural gas.

116 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future On the negative side for methane: Methane is still a hydrocarbon. Burning methane does release some carbon (CO2).

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Methane will never be a major contributing fuel source to the national electric grid. It is most unlikely that methane will ever contribute more than 1 percent to the national grid. But it could supply a significant amount of regional electric energy for Alaska, and using it does double good for the environment. Key Factors: The Arctic tundra is too far from demand centers. Livestock operations rarely produce enough methane to meet more than their own electrical demand. Timeline: Over the next 20 years, look for methane plants at landfills to continue to rapidly increase and for more farming and ranching operations to use their methane to meet on-site electrical needs.

Classroom Activities
Methane is another in the long line of burnable hydrocarbon gases. Lets start with a quick look at hydrocarbon gases in general. 1. First, what is a gas? Look up the definition and be sure to include how a gas differs from a liquid and a solid. Hydrogen, propane, natural gas, and methane are all gases. Can they also be liquids and solids? Under what conditions does methane become a liquid? A solid? Do we ever liquefy gasses for transport? How and why? Methane is not only a gas, it is a hydrocarbon gas. What is a hydrocarbon, and why are they called hydrocarbons? We use many of the simple hydrocarbons every day. Look up the names of the simple hydrocarbon chains (those with oneeight carbon atoms in each molecule). How many of these names do you recognize? Which is used in most cigarette lighters? Which is used to measure the quality of gasoline? Notice that natural gas is not on this list. Natural gas is not a single gas. It is a mixture of other simple hydrocarbons, primarily methane, ethane, and propane. Research the heat and burning properties of these simple hydrocarbons. Where does methane fit into this group? Is there any difference between burning pure methane and burning natural gas, propane, or butane? Now the big questions: Why do we commonly use natural gas and propane as fuels and not the other simple hydrocarbons (including methane)? Who uses methane gas, and for what specific processes? Would it make sense to use methane more if it were readily available? Research these questions at the library and online. Then try to interview local high school or college chemistry teachers to get their answers.

Natural Gas: Methane Energy / 117 2. Here are three additional methane topics for research, discussion, and debate: Is it good or bad to rely on natural gas for electrical production? Increasingly, utility companies are building new natural-gas-fired power plants to replace older coal-fired plants for electric production. They are both fossil fuels. Natural gas, like coal and oil, is a nonrenewable resource. Arent they all going to run out? Why should we build power plants that use any nonrenewable fuel? The biggest current sources of methane for electrical production are landfills and dairy/cattle operations. Contact and survey local dairy or other livestock farming operators. Do they try to capture the methane their livestock produce? How much methane do they collect? If they use it for electrical generation, how much electricity do they create? Arctic hydrates are a worrisome future source of methane. What is methane hydrate? Research methane hydrates. Where are they? How and when was methane trapped in ice crystals locked in the Arctic permafrost? Why are scientists worried about these methane hydrates melting? What will happen to the methane if we cant collect and use it? How big is this energy resource, and what plans exist to collect and use it?

For Further Reading

DeGunther, Rik. Alternative Energy for Dummies. San Francisco: For Dummies Press, 2009. Fry, John. Practical Building of Methane Power Plants for Rural Energy Independence. Mechanicsville, PA: Fry Publishing, 1999. Gibilisco, Stan. Alternative Energy Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Johnstone, Hugh. Facts on Future Energy Possibilities. New York: Scholastic Library, 1999. National Research Council. Charting the Future of Methane Hydrate Research in the United States. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004. Royston, Angela. Sustainable Energy. London: Arcturus Publishers, 2010. Sechrist, Darren. Powerful Planet: Can Earths Renewable Energy Save Our Future? New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009.

Web Sites
www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/.../24farmers.html A good article on use of animal wastes to generate on-site electricity.

118 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future www.anaerobic-digestion.com/.../electricity_from_methane_diges.ph A description of a process for creating methane and converting it into electricity. marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html Government site assessing the magnitude of and potential problems with Arctic methane hydrates. www.powerscorecard.org/tech_detail.cfm?resource_id=5 A good assessment of the pros and cons of using methane from landfills for power generation. www.ornl.gov/reporter/no16/methane.htm A good site on methane hydrates. https://www.llnl.gov/str/Durham.htm Another description of the sources and uses of methane hydrates.

A Tidy Lump of Coal: Clean Coal Technology

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Coal is dirty. Coal is the problem fuel. Both mining and burning coal pollute land, water, and air. Coal is a major contributor to global warming and climate change. But we have plenty of coal, and coal has plenty of energy in it. And we need energy. The question is, can we find a way to use our coal but avoid its severe pollution problems? Enter clean coal. Clean coal is the name that has been given to a process whereby coal is chemically washed of minerals and impurities and before being burned, either gasified (turned into a cleaner burnable gas such syngas as hydrogen) or liquefied (turned into a cleaner-burning liquid fuelthe process is called liquifaction). This processing captures the two worst coal-related pollutants (sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide). The waste gases from burning this improved coal (which would normally blow up the smokestack) are considerably less environmentally damaging than if we simply burned the original coal. The captured sulfur dioxide can be turned into sulfuric acid, a commercially valuable product. The big question is how to keep the captured CO2 out of the atmosphere. Clean coals answer is carbon sequestration. What is that? Sequestration is a process in which the captured CO2 gas is pumped, under high pressure, deep underground into rock formations where it cant escape back to the surface. If utility companies process coal in this way, it really is a clean, green fuel! Why go to all this trouble (and great expense) to make coal cleaner when other energy technologies lurk just over the horizon? There are two simple reasons: 1. Coal is cheap and abundant. The United States has an estimated 268 billion tons of recoverable coalthree times the total energy that Saudi Arabia has in oil enough to last well over a century. Coal represents much of Americas energy riches. Electrical energy demand in the United States has increased almost 30 percent in the past decade and will increase by about 2 to 3 percent each year through 2020. Renewable energy technologies may hold great promise, but none are available right now in sufficient quantities and proven reliability to meet this increased demand.

2.

Utilities must add new capacity every year, and coal is a proven, available, economical technology. Over 100 new coal plants are currently in the planning stages. Some will likely be shifted to other technologies. But most will be built as plannedas new American coal-fired power plants. China and India are turning to new coal power plants in even greater numbers than is the United States. If we want electricity without shortages and blackouts over the next 30 years, we must consider coal. Cleaning coal is one key to our near-term energy survival.

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120 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Thats the plan. To datewhile each of the necessary individual technologies works reasonably wellthe combination of all of these measures to control the negative impacts of coal has pushed the cost of the electricity produced by these plants unacceptably high. We can clean coal. But no utility can currently afford to do it. Worse, clean coal does not address the impacts of coal mining. Picture a Western coal strip mining operation: A dragline (a giant steam shovel) with an arm longer than a football field gulps 100 cubic yards (2,700 cubic feet) of dirt at a time, ripping away the overburden (dirt, grass, rocks, trees, etc.) of an 80-foot-thick seam of coal that lies a hundred feet beneath. Snaking lines of massive trucks with 12-foot-tall tires and each carrying 400 tons of coal form long, curving lines from pit to train loaders. Mile-long trains creep through, loading continuously, never fully stopping. Eighteen trains a day, every day. 250,000 tons of coal each day. And thats just from a single mine! Square miles of earth ripped off and carried away each day. Wyoming mining has torn up 110,580 acres of prairie. Only 41,000 of those acres have been backfilled, regraded, and seeded. Nothing in the clean coal program addresses the impacts of this earth-altering process.

Whats Happening Now?

Research, backed by billions of federal dollars, races forward on two fronts. The first is new, economical ways to store captured carbon. British researchers have found that they can inject CO2 into certain undersea sandstone deposits where the carbon will mix with seawater to form clays and carbonate rocks. They are designing a zero emissions coal plant to go online in 2014. With U.S. Department of Energy support, FutureGen is designing the first American near-zero-emissions coal gasification plant in Mattoon, Illinois. Plant operators will capture 60 percent of its CO2 production, compress it to a near-liquid state, and pipe it a mile down into porous sandstone capped by impermeable shale. (A plant in Spremberg, Germany, is already successfully using this sequestration process.) The PurGen company has proposed building a clean coal plant in Linden, New Jersey, using coal gasification technology. The company plans to liquefy the captured CO2 and pump it 140 miles out into the ocean, then bury it 8,000 feet below the seafloor in a massive layer of sandstone capped by impermeable shale rock. Plant designs are complete. But the plant is still five years away from production. Other researchers are experimenting with more exotic schemes. Oceanic plankton absorb carbon from the atmosphere to build their shells. Why not use the sequestered CO2 as a fertilizer for vast fields of plankton? Several prototypes for this scheme are now being tested. Others want to turn CO2 into rock by injecting it under high pressure into types of limestone formations where the CO2 will dissolve to form carbonate rock. This is now being tested in Oman. Finally, some researchers want to build artificial forestsstands of treelike towers that absorb carbon along major roads. If these towers absorb enough carbon, they will offset anything that is emitted by a coal-fired power plant. The second area of current research is finding new (cheaper) ways to perform coal gasification and liquifaction. Although progress is being made, it is much slower than originally forecast, and that is delaying several planned gasification projects. GE & Chevron

A Tidy Lump of Coal: Clean Coal Technology / 121 have formed a coal gasification partnership and plan a 600 Mw gasification plant in Indiana. It was originally due to go online in 2011 but has been delayed because of the nagging high cost of gasification.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for clean coal: Coal is cheap, abundant, and a U.S. resource. No importing is required. New technology can drastically reduce both sulfur and carbon emissions from coal plants. Carbon sequestration can almost eliminate the release of CO2. This new technology makes coal as clean to burn as any available source of electricity. On the negative side for clean coal: Coal mining is both dangerous and polluting. Taken in concert, the technologies that make coal clean also make the electricity it produces too expensive to be competitive. The individual technologies for clean coal have been tested, but no one has put them all online at a plant that had to produce electricity 24/7 to see if they really work.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: The pluses and minuses almost dont count when it comes to coal. Coal is going to be used. Coal could provide all of the electricity we will need for the next 100+ years. Key Factors: Proving the technology. Liquefaction and gasification systems are developing slowly and are still too expensive. Carbon sequestration is still just theory and hasnt been tested in the United States in a working power plant. Finally, these technologies are collectively still too expensive. Timeline: Look for the first clean coal demonstration plants to go online by 2015. Best guess is that their efficiency will increase and their cost will come down so that new coal plants will be mostly shifted to clean coal by 2025. By 2050 other technologies (fusion, hydrogen, solar) will begin to take over electrical production, and coal will fade, as oil has already done.

122 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Classroom Activities
1. When we say coal is dirty, what does that mean? Dirty how? Does that mean dirty to hold? Dirty to be around? Smoky when we burn it? Or does it refer to what is released when we burn coal? What pollutants are released when coal is burned that make it dirty? What pollution comes from the mining and processing of coal? Research and make as complete a list as you can of the factors that have given coal the label dirty. Do the environmental hazards on your list come from all coal, or just from some types of coal? Is there a difference between types of coal? Between coal mined in different regions? 2. More generally, where are the major coal deposits in the United States? In the world? Outline and shade major coal deposits on a map of North America. Now research the characteristics and properties of coal from each major coal mining region. Are any of the differences significant to a utility that is going to burn the coal to produce electricity? If so, how?

3. Are different processes and techniques used to mine coal in different regions of the United States? Research each major technique. What does it look like? What kind of equipment is used? How big is that equipment? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? What are the dangers and hazards of each? 4. Now lets look at burning coal. It has been many decades since coal has been used for home heating in this country (though a century ago it was common). Most Americans alive today have never seen coal burn. What does a lump of coal look like? Feel like? How much heat does a single lump of coal contain? How long will it burn? Does it glow, or does it burst into brilliant flames? Does it billow smoke into the air as it burns? How close could you put your hands to a burning lump of coal before they became uncomfortably hot? These are questions best answered by an experiment. What youll need: Several fist-sized lumps of coal An outdoor fire pit A long-handled propane lighter A hammer A section of newspaper Lots of hand wipes Procedure: Buy a few of lumps of coal. Youll have to use the phonebook or Internet to seek out a coal supplier in your area. Pass a lump of coal around and let every student feel it and visually examine it. (This is when the wipes come in handy.) Place one lump in the fire pit and light it with the propane lighter. Was it easy to light? What did it look like as it burned? Could you feel the heat as it burned? What did it smell like? Did it produce lots of smoke? Lots of ash? How

A Tidy Lump of Coal: Clean Coal Technology / 123 long did it burn? Did the burning coal release lots of CO2? Did it release other pollutants? Could you actually tell, or are you just reporting what research has established? Let each student write up his or her impressions and images of burning coal. In their essays, have students also compare burning this lump of coal to burning a similar-sized piece of wood. Repeat the burning experiment. But first place a lump of coal inside a folded section of newspaper. Use a hammer to crush and pulverize the lump. Now pour the granules into a pile in your fire pit and light those. Was it easier to light and burn the granules? Why? Did they burn faster? Hotter? Research how utility companies process their coal in preparation for feeding it into their power plant boilers.

For Further Reading

ABDO Publishing. Future Energy. 6 vols. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Douwe, Klaes. Clean Coal. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publications, 2009. Fix, Alexandra. Energy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Library, 2007. Miller, Bruce. Clean Coal Engineering Technology. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2010. Miller, Bruce. Coal Energy Systems. New York: Academic Press, 2004. Parker, Steve. Coal. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2004. Sechrist, Darren. Powerful Planet: Can Earths Renewable Energy Save Our Future? New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009. Termuehlen, Heinz. Clean and Efficient Coal-Fired Power Plants: Development Toward Advanced Technologies. New York: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2003.

Web Sites
www.AmericasPower.org An industry site advocating clean coal and describing the clean coal technological process. www.howstuffworks.com/clean-coal.htm A good basic description of the process of creating clean coal. www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/cleancoal/ Department of Energy site on its clean coal program.

124 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future www.washingtonpost.com A good article that looks critically at the process of clean coal. www.greenpeace.org/.../clean-coal.../clean-coal-myths-and-facts An environmental associations assessment of the pros and cons of clean coal. www.americaspower.org/The-Facts/Clean-Coal-Technology An industry assessment of the pros and cons of clean coal.

Teaming Up: Electrical Cogeneration

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Most industrial processes require massive amounts of heat as well as electricity. Typically, these two energy sources are planned for and supplied separately. Coke furnaces, giant boilers, glass furnaces, refinery furnaces, etc., billow rolling blasts of shimmering heat. Much of that heat, after it performs some chemical or physical process, becomes an unwanted stream of waste that the plant must dispose of. Power plants provide electricity by using heat to create steam. And then they, too, must deal with a constant searing flood of waste heat. Why not use this waste heat instead of treating it like contaminated garbage to be thrown out with the trash? That is the idea of cogeneration. Like energy recapture schemes, cogeneration systems focus on using waste streams of industrial heat to create a second product. If the plants first job is to create electricity, then it can find some nearby facility that can use the heat to heat buildings or conduct some industrial process. If the plants first job is to create industrial heat, then it can use the waste heat to generate electricity. By definition, cogeneration is the production of two useful forms of energy in a single energy conversion process. Cogeneration plants are often called combined heat and power (CHP) systems. How does it work? A conventional power plant sucks in 130 units of energy from its fuel source to produce 35 units of electrical energy The other 95 units of energy are vented as waste heat. A CHP plant would use that 95 units of waste heat to produce 66 units of useful heat for some industrial process, actually venting only 29 units of energy as waste heat. (To produce that same 66 units of heat energy, an industrial boiler would consume 78 units of energy from a fuel and vent 12 units of energy as waste heat.) Now add up the total energy required (and wasted) by the conventional and CHP systems. If what you need is 35 units of electricity and 66 units of heat, a CHP plant requires only 130 units of initial energy from a fuel and vents only 29 energy units as waste heat. The conventional system (separate electrical and heat production facilities) requires 208 units of fuel and vents 107 units as waste heat. CHP systems require much less fuel and produce far less waste heat and other pollutants associated with burning fuel. CHP plants are excellent choices for industrial plants, some commercial malls, and even large residential complexesand certainly for urban power plants located near other industrial facilities. However, only 9 percent of all U.S. electricity was produced by cogeneration plants in 2000. (Much of that was in privately owned industrial facilities and not connected to the grid.) The number of cogeneration plants hasnt risen since then. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) wanted to double U.S. cogeneration capacity between 1998 and 2010. It didnt come close to meeting that goal. Why? There are two general reasons. The first is finding a steady market for both the heat and the electricity a

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126 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future CHP plant produces. Utilities say that they have no immediate market for heat in the vicinity of most power plants. The second reason is the red tape of governmental regulations. Most industrial plants say that the red tape is too daunting to make it worthwhile to set up their own electrical production.

Whats Happening Now?

Cogeneration systems are used more heavily in Europe than in the United States. Forty percent of Denmarks total electrical capacity is cogeneration. So is 30 percent of Finlands, 15 percent of Germanys, 30 percent of the Netherlands, and 20 percent of the Czech Republics. The recently completed Conoco 730 MW CHP plant in Immingham, UK, supplies electricity and heat to several refineries and is currently the largest CHP plant in the world. The United States had no cogeneration plants in 1980. The rise from there has been much slower than the DOE hoped. The DOE is working to smooth regulations to make it easier for companies to set up cogeneration plants and re-energize the growth of cogeneration systems. The greatest innovation in cogeneration is the in-home residential cogeneration unit (currently available only in Europe). The size of a small dishwasher, the unit fits under the kitchen counter, runs on either natural gas or propane, produces electricity with a Sterling engine, and supplies the house with hot water. Models wont be available in the United States until regulations for in-home electrical generators are revised.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for cogeneration: Cogeneration systems increase overall efficiency. Cogeneration systems release less waste heat into the atmosphere. Cogeneration systems reduce pollution. Less fuel burned means less pollution out. On the negative side for cogeneration: Cogeneration requires a demand for electricity and a demand for heat to exist at the same place and on the same cycle. Cogeneration systems are both small and privately owned. Owners often cant afford to install the most modern pollution control equipment. Cogeneration systems face many regulatory and permitting hurdles. The initial cost is high for cogeneration systems. Too high for many potential users.

Teaming Up: Electrical Cogeneration / 127

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Cogeneration is an off-grid technology, which can significantly reduce the industrial and commercial demand for electricity from the grid. Key Factors: Cogeneration is being held back in the United States by regulation, not by the technology. Timeline: Look for industrial cogenerations systems to steadily increase, but to never become major contributors to the electrical grid.

Classroom Activities
Cogeneration is the process of using the burning of one fuel for multiple purposes. Utilities and large factories burn fuel to produce electricity and then use the stream of waste heat either as space heat, as heat for some industrial process, or to heat water. Cogeneration is all about more completely and efficiently using the heat released by some fuel-burning process. You probably dont have the equipment at your home or school to produce electricity, but you can still explore the concept of cogeneration. 1. Start with a simple incandescent lightbulb. (A 60 watt bulb or higher will work best. Do not use a florescent tube.) You turn the light on to create lightlight to read by, light to see by. That is product number one. What else does your lightbulb produce? If you are unsure, hold your hand above the bulb. What do you feel? Heat. This is waste heat. It has nothing to do with your primary product, light. What could you do with this waste stream of heat? What about baking something with the waste heat? Place a greased, cast iron skillet on a support frame an inch or two above the lightbulb. Prepare a cake or cornbread mix according to the package directions and pour it into the skillet. Monitor the baking closely while you read a book by the bulbs light. Bake until done. Then slap a marker into your book and enjoy some fresh-baked cake! That is cogeneration. You used one lightbulb for reading light and for cooking heat. (You could just as easily have used the waste heat to heat water for tea or hot chocolate instead of baking.) But dont stop with one useful application of your waste heat. Keep going. Plenty of heat escaped from your baking skillet and rose to the ceiling. Build a large, funnel-shaped hood out of sheet metal, plastic, or even cardboard and support it above the baking skillet. Collect this rising heat and use it to dry slices of your favorite fruit that you place on a drying rack above. Notice that at every step you turn waste energy into productive energy and thereby reduce your total demand for energy. You would have had to use electricity or natural gas to bake cornbread and to dry fruit if you hadnt done it with waste heat from your lightbulb. The energy you didnt use is energy you saved.

128 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future 2. Start with a candle and see how many uses you can make of the light and heat it produces. What other classroom cogeneration schemes can you find or create? What about at your school? Is there a central boiler? What is it designed to do? What happens to its waste heat? Is there anything useful you could do with that waste heat? Research local cogeneration plants. Local utilities and city/county planners may be able to help you find some companies that have built cogeneration units. What do their cogeneration facilities look like? What do they produce besides electricity (hot water, space heat, etc.)? How much money do these companies save each month through their use of cogeneration?

3.

For Further Reading

ABDO Publishing. Future Energy. 6 vols. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing, 2010. Ballard, Carol. From Steam Engines to Nuclear Fusion: Discovering Energy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007. Bowden, Rob. Energy Sources: The Impact of Science and Technology. New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009. Claybourne, Anna. Blackout!: Electricity and Circuits. Milwaukee, WI: Raintree, 2005. Gibilisco, Stan. Alternative Energy Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Royston, Angela. Sustainable Energy. London: Arcturus Publishers, 2010. Sechrist, Darren. Powerful Planet: Can Earths Renewable Energy Save Our Future? New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009.

Web Sites
www.cogeneration.net/ An overview of cogeneration technologies and applications. www.cogeneurope.eu/wp.../04/david-marriott-pp-presentation.pdf Describes the European effort to expand the use of cogeneration. www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mecs/.../cogeneration_technology.htm The Energy Information Administration site on cogeneration technologies. www.energytech.at/kwk/portrait.html A good overview of cogeneration systems.

Teaming Up: Electrical Cogeneration / 129 www.powergenworldwide.com/index/cospphome.html Describes worldwide efforts to advance cogeneration systems. www.explainthatstuff.com > AZ index Describes how cogeneration works and the pros and cons of cogeneration.

Second Time Around: Energy Recapture

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
America has been called a throwaway society. Research has shown that we throw away most of our energy. Over 50 percent of all the energy we consume is wastedthrown awaymostly as waste heat up a smokestack or out a tailpipe instead of performing useful work. But we throw away unused electricity as well. Why not recapture and save that wasted electricity for future use? Electric utilities have always been a zero-inventory operation. They produce electricity each moment to meet the exact demand of that moment. Each time someone turns on (or off) a light, some power plant has to wiggle its output up or down a tiny bit. Any extra electricity produced is literally thrown away at the plant. It is a very inefficient system. The Smart Grid is supposed to help improve that efficiency. But what we really need is a way to recapture lost electric energy and recycle it back into the grid. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the utility industry could save $100 billion over the next 20 years by increasing and developing energy storage capacity to recycle producedbut not used electricity. Efficient storage systems will allow utilities to produce electricity when it is most economical to do so and then save it to meet the daily (or seasonal) peaks in demand and to even out the peaks and valleys of daily demand. Several innovative and developing storage systems were mentioned in part 1 of this book, including compressed air, molten salt heat exchanger, sodium-sulfur batteries, and hydrogen. Any of them could be used to recapture the electricity wasted as excess at power plants.. But several other recapture systems are worthy of mention: Pumped Storage. Pumped storage systems are not a new idea. They have been around for over 50 years but are now being studied for greatly expanded use. To use a pumped storage system, a utility keeps its most efficient plants and generators working 24 hours a dayeven at night when demand is low. During off-peak hours, the utility uses the excess electricity to power giant electrical pumps that pump water from one reservoir up to a higher elevation reservoir. During peak demand periods, that same water is allowed to surge back down pipes to spin turbines at the lower reservoir, creating extra electricity. The idea is for a utility to run only its most efficient and cleanest units, to run them 24/7, and to never (or at least rarely) have to fire up the less efficient (and more polluting) units and generators it typically fires up for a few hours each day to meet afternoon peak demand. The pumped storage power would satisfy this peak demand instead.

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Second Time Around: Energy Recapture / 131 Pumped storage systems are being used in California (Pacific Gas & Electrics Helms Pumped Storage, for example) and in other mountainous Western states. Also, the Robert Moses Plant near the base of Niagara Falls is a pumped storage system. The concept could be expanded and used wherever suitable reservoir systems exist. Flywheel. Small flywheels were used by ancient potters at least 6,000 years ago, who cranked them up with a foot pedal. Modern flywheels are drawing renewed interest as an energy recapture and storage technology. Modern industrial flywheels are huge, heavy spinning wheelspicture a giant metal wheel 10 to 20 feet in diameter that weighs many tons and spins with almost no friction. Once it is cranked up to 50,000 to 60,000 rpm, there is a lot of energy stored in that flywheels motion. During low demand times, a power plant shunts excess energy (which it would otherwise waste) into making a flywheel spin faster. During peak demand periods, the flywheel connects to a turbine, spinning it to produce electricity. Footfalls. Every time you walk up (or down) a flight of stairs, you waste energy. In addition to lifting you up, a part of your energy goes to pushing the stair down. The excess downward pressure of your foot on the stair can be converted into flexing pressure on the stair, which in turn can be converted into mechanical motion. That mechanical motion can be used to generate electricity. Footfall recapture systems are ideal for schools and other commercial buildings where large numbers of people climb up and down stairs each day. Initial experiments have shown that such systems can produce about 6 watts per person per stair. That is enough energy for a footfall recapture system to power the entire building served by that staircase.

Whats Happening Now?

If flywheels spin fast enough, even solid metal flywheels begin to physically distort. Then, like an automobile tire that is out of balance, they vibrate and spin much less efficiently. Several research laboratories are studying new high-strength carbon-fiber materials and new lower-friction ball bearings so that utility flywheels can spin ever faster and hold even more energy. So far, only minor improvements have been achieved. An international research team just discovered that crystals of indium selenide (a chemical compound) efficiently convert heat into electricity. No direct sunlight required! Just heat. Such thermoelectric materials could recover waste heat from power plant smokestacks, industrial processeseven the exhaust of cars! The potential is enormous. But it is still too early to tell if this process, which works in a laboratory, will work well when scaled up to mass production. Hull University in London installed a test footfall recovery system in two heavily used stairways in the University Commons building. The generator is coupled with a flywheel to even out the release of energy back to the building. The test has shown that footfall recovery systems could power the entire building. A similar system has been installed in a high school

132 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future in Norwich, Connecticut. After the first summer of testing, the system has been pronounced a definite success.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for energy recapture systems: They use free energy that is otherwise being wasted. They help slow the demand growth on the grid and give other supply technologies more time to develop. They reduce total pollution from the electrical industry. On the negative side for energy recapture systems: These systems are still untested. No other negatives have yet been detected.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Large but still undetermined. Recapture technologies are off-grid systems that reduce demand on the electrical grid. Key Factors: Energy recapture systems are expensive to retrofit into existing buildings. They are better as part of the design of new buildings. Timeline: Look for more pumped storage systems to develop in mountainous states and for other energy recapture technologies to begin to be built into building and plant designs by 2020.

Classroom Activities
The idea of recapturing the excess energy in a stepthat energy we use with each step not to lift us up, but to depress the surface we step on downis intriguing. Think of how many steps you take each day. What if you could recapture a little bit of energy from each one of them? 1. Lets do some tests to see how much potential exists at your school for footfall energy recapture. Are there any stairs at your school? That seems to be the best place for this type of energy recaptureanywhere where people have to exert pressure to lift themselves up a step or to slow themselves as gravity pulls them down the stairs.

Second Time Around: Energy Recapture / 133 Can you calculate how much total energy your school could save if it had energy recapture systems installed on all the stairs? To do that, you will need to calculate how many times each day a person walks up or down each of the schools stairs. How many times each day do you climb up or down? How many students are there at your school who regularly use the stairs? How often (on average) do they climb either up or down in a day? How many stairs do you step on each time you climb either up or down? (That is, how many stairs are there in each flight of stairs, and how many flights do you have to climb each time you use the stairs?) Discuss the problems you might face in making such a measurement. Use the Internet to research how government agencies measure how many people or cars pass a given spotsomething they regularly have to do. As a class, plan how to measure the total number of stair footfalls in a typical day at your school. Run your count each day for a week. That will give you five totals to average to decide on the number of stair footfalls in a typical day. Use the average figure of 6 watts per person per stair step. Multiply that number by the typical number of total stair steps you have calculated for your school. How does that potential energy recapture compare to your schools daily electricity use? Could footfall recovery technology supply your school with all of the electricity it needs? 2. Research the few facilities that have installed footfall recovery systems in the United States and England. How much energy did they recover and turn into useful electricity? How do their savings compare to what you calculated for your school? Have each student pick one of the energy recapture schemes mentioned in this section or in part 1 and research that technology. Is it being used anywhere? How successfully? What research and development is ongoing to prove or improve that technology? Where could it be used in your community?

3.

For Further Reading

Orme, Helen. Energy for the Future. New York: Bearport Publishing, 2008. Rau, Dana. Alternative Energy: Beyond Fossil Fuels. Mankato, MN: Coughlan Publishing, 2009. Reilly, Kathleen. Energy : 25 Projects Investigate Why We Need Power & How We Get It. White River Junction, VT: Nomad Press, 2009. Royston, Angela. Sustainable Energy. London: Arcturus Publishers, 2010. Sechrist, Darren. Powerful Planet: Can Earths Renewable Energy Save Our Future? New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2009.

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Web Sites
www.ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/8455/28364/01267762.pdf?arnumber=1267762 Explores several energy recapture concepts. www.greentechmedia.com/.../Grid-Scale-Energy-Storage-CAES-BlackVeatch/ Describes several pumped storage systems. www.er.doe.gov/bes/reports/abstracts.html Department of Energy site on energy storage and recovery. www.renewableenergyworld.com/.../pumped-hydro-and-new-energy Another site describing pumped storage systems. www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=3171 Description of innovative schemes for recapturing footfall energy and flywheel energy recapture systems. www.elp.com/index/display/article...2/.../energy-storage_solving.html Overview of flywheel systems.

Electricity in a Box: Batteries and Energy Storage

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Batteries are devices that store energy. They dont create energy. They just hold it for future use. We use batteries to power electrical equipment when it is impossible or inconvenient to plug into the grid. The problem is that electricity from a battery is much more expensive than the same amount of electricity taken directly from the grid. If you are lounging on the beach and want to listen to the radio, you dont care if the electricity from its batteries costs more. You have no other choice. But if you are a utility company always struggling to reduce costs and provide electricity to the grid as inexpensively as possible, then you do carea lot. As an example, the current generation of batteries provides about 1/40 the energy production (per unit weight) that petroleum does. Batteries are a very inefficient source of energy. They are bulky, heavy, and expensive. However, each year we turn to those heavy, inefficient batteries more, not less. Laptops, cell phones, flashlights, portable music and Internet devices, hearing aids, boom boxes, smoke alarms, garage and car door openers, even car engines all rely more and more on battery power. While the energy output of an average rechargeable battery doubled over the two decades between 1970 and 1990, the number of electricity-hungry transistors on a chip doubles every two years. Batteries for these devices havent kept up. Every year, American households throw away more than 15 billion single-use and rechargeable dry cell batteries. That equals 125,000 tons of batteries discarded every year. No, batteries dont release any pollution or greenhouse gases while being used. However, it requires great amounts of energy to manufacture batteries, and that process is both highly polluting and dangerous. Worse, discarded batteries slowly disintegrate and pollute the world with the corrosive metals and chemicals inside. There is a growing clamor to make batteries smaller, cheaper, safer, and far more efficient (longer lasting and easier to recharge). For the future, however, we need to expand our notion of electrical energy storage away from just batteries to any device or process that can hold electrical energy for future use. Most renewables produce abundant electricity only when the natural resource (wind, sunlight, tidal current, waves, etc.) is available. However, the ebb and flow of when the sun shines, the wind blows, and the waves pound rarely match the daily and seasonal ebb and flow of electricity demand on the grid. The key to the success of most renewables is to create efficient storage to bridge between these two. The most promising of the emerging energy storage technologies were described in part 1. Continued improvements in batteries are important. But successful development of these storage technologies is critical to the success of the future Smart Grid and to many of the most promising green energy technologies.

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136 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Whats Happening Now?

Dramatic improvements in basic battery technology have emerged in recent years improvements that may make batteries attractive to utilities as well as to end users. Newly invented sodium sulfur batteries look like ordinary lead acid (car) batteries but use molten sulfur inside. They are fully rechargeable. Any excess electricity produced by a power plant can be stored in one of these batteries and later drained back into the grid. Even better, these batteries can store 40 percent more energy than a lead acid battery, last four or five times as long, and are significantly cheaper than lead acid batteries. In mid-2009 the ZPower company released a new silver zinc battery that also stores up to 40 percent more power per charge and costs about the same as conventional batteries. The core technology used in this battery was originally developed by NASA for Apollo spacecraft. At least 20 new battery designs for electric cars are in the research and testing phase at laboratories around the country. The goals for each program are to develop a battery that recharges faster, carries more energy, weighs less, is smaller, lasts longer, and is cheaper. MIT researchers recently announced their design for a car battery that recharges in five minutesinstead of the current eight hours. Penn State University researchers are using biology to design new batteries. They have discovered that microorganisms called methogens reduce (in effect eat) CO2 to produce methane. They propose to combine methogens with new intermittent technologies (wind, solar, etc.). The utility will use any excess electrical production (during times of peak production) to shock methogens into absorbing CO2 to create methane. That methane is then stored and used to create a steady flow of electricity when the original source is not working Other MIT scientists are engineering a genetically modified virus that cloaks itself in iron phosphate (a metal salt) that can then form a metal framework of microscopic conductive wires. This technique creates a high-powered battery that is amazingly cheap and pollution free! Currently 99 percent of the batteries for U.S. hybrid cars are lithium ion batteries made in Japan. They are longer lived and lighter, but are ten times more expensive than lead acid batteries. In late summer 2009, IBM announced a new kind of lithium battery using surrounding air as a cathode. It is both much lighter and significantly cheaper than existing lithium batteries.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for batteries: Batteries (and energy storage systems in general) make intermittent green technologies (wind, solar [except space], tidal, wave, etc.) economically feasible and are thus keys to their expanded use. Green technologies desperately need energy storage systems. Batteries are one of these systems.

Electricity in a Box: Batteries and Energy Storage / 137 On the negative side for batteries: The process of manufacturing batteries is energy intensive and produces considerable air and water pollution. Discarded batteries are a ticking time bomb poised to saturate nearby ground with dangerous heavy metals. New high-capacity batteries all depend on several rare earth metalsespecially lanthanum, neodymium, and dysprosium. At present, these elements come almost exclusively from China.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Efficient and effective electrical energy storage is essential for many budding green electrical energy technologies. Period. Key Factors: Cost and material. Battery systems need to be inexpensive and made from commonly available materials. Neither is currently the case for new designs. Timeline: Look for improved battery designs to be available by 2015 and to be economical and commonplace by 2020. Then look for improved storage to spur rapid growth in green energy technologies.

Classroom Activities
Our batteries may be bulky, expensive, and inefficient (for the amount of electricity they produce), but we love them anyway. We gobble them up and willingly buy more and more machines that require batteries. We never think of having to supply some electronic device with batteries as a negative. Its just what we do. 1. Lets do a test to see how deeply batteries have wormed their way into our lives. How many devices do you own that use batteries? Have each student make as complete a list as possible for his or her family and house. (Hint: Dont forget things like cameras, smoke detectors, laser pointers, hearing aids, and things that use batteries in addition to other power sourceslike your car, as well as the obvious ones like flashlights, toys, and clock radios.) Compile a classwide master list. Is the list longer than most class members thought it would be? Translate this list of battery-using devices into a list of batteries. Have each student inventory the batteries actually installed in his or her familys battery powered devices. Students should keep running totals of the type of battery as well as of the number of batteries. Again, compile a classwide total and calculate the average number per family for each of the types and sizes of batteries.

138 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Now add in the backup batteries each family has in stock. Count the number of each size and type of battery sitting on shelves, in cupboards, in drawers, or on work benches in each household, waiting their turn to power our electronic world. Finally, add in a measure of the flow of batteries through each household. To do that, each student should track all family purchases of batteries of any kind for one month. This running count must include batteries that come with newly purchased devices as well as batteries purchased separately. Again, merge these individual household lists into a classwide total and average figure. Does this flow of batteries through our lives surprise anyone in the class? Is it higher than you thought it would be? 2. Here is a final research topic to complete your look at batteries. There are many types, sizes, ratings, and shapes of batteries available at the store. Use these two research questions: (1) What are the differences between the various designations of batteries (A, AA, AAA, 9 volt, etc.)? (2) Why have so many different kinds, sizes, shapes, and power outputs of batteries? That is, why havent manufactures been able to standardize all battery-powered devices to run on just one or two standard sizes of batteries?

For Further Reading

Baxter, Richard. Energy Storage: A Nontechnical Guide. Tulsa, OK: PennWell Corp., 2005 Brunet, Yves. Energy Storage. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010. DeGunther, Rik. Alternative Energy for Dummies. San Francisco: For Dummies Press, 2009. Huggins, Robert. Energy Storage. New York: Springer, 2010. McBrewster, John. Grid Energy Storage: Pumped-Storage Hydroelectricity, Battery (Electricity), Compressed-Air Energy Storage, Thermal Energy Storage, Flywheel Energy Storage, Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage. Beau Basin, Mauritius: Alphascript Publishing, 2009. Orme, Helen. Energy for the Future. New York: Bearport Publishing, 2008. Plante, Gaston. The Storage of Electrical Energy. New York: Nabu Press, 2010.

Electricity in a Box: Batteries and Energy Storage / 139

Web Sites
www.sandia.gov/ess/Technology/technology.htm Government research lab report on advanced energy storage systems. www.mrs.org/s_mrs/bin.asp?CID=12527&DID=206342 Innovative designs for energy storage. www.mpoweruk.com/alternatives.htm Describes several innovative energy storage systems. www.berr.gov.uk/files/file15189.pdf British report on the status of energy storage research. www.grants.gov/search/search.do?oppId=50712&mode=VIEW Overview of the status of battery development for energy storage. www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Energy-Storage-Fact-Sheet.pdf Excellent review of the current status of various energy storage systems and of future developments. www.er.doe.gov/bes/reports/abstracts.html Department of Energy site on energy storage and recovery.

Micro-Might: Nanotechnology
What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
Nanotechnology is poised to usher in a revolution that could change our lives and social structure far more radically than computers, the Internet, automobiles, or even electricity itself have. Almost like a towering tsunami, nanotechnology is poised to crash over all aspects of modern life and wash everything old away. That includes how we think about and use energy. Nano means one part in a billion. Technology refers to the practical study of, or to the applied science of. Put them together, and we get nanotechnology, the study of controlling matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials or devices sized between 1 and 100 nanometers in size. (The width of an average human hair is around 20,000 nanometers.) What happens when our devices get smaller and smaller? Look at what has happened to computers over the past 50 years. In 1973 the first Texas Instrument handheld calculator came on the market and cost $278. By 2000 calculators had gained hundreds of times more calculating power and were so cheap that they could be given away by the thousands. The calculating and memory capacities of computers have increased by factors of millions, while the price of each new generation of personal computers has remained about the samemostly because of miniaturization. A computer that costs $1,000 today can outperform a $1,000 computer built in 1980 by several hundred millions of timesall while using a tiny fraction of the electric energy the 1980 computer required. Nanotechnology can do the same thingand morefor every device from cars, to airplanes, to factories, to motors, to offices, to kitchen equipment, and even to the fabrics in our clothesfor the most fundamental elements of living. Nanotechnology could (many researchers say will) change everything beyond our wildest present dreams and imaginings! Nano researchers claim, for example, that by using nano swarming concepts, you could reasonably carry in your pocket something (like a house) that would today weigh ten tons (the swarm carries only the DNA-like blue prints and self-activating building instructions for the house), or something (like a factory) that today would cost a billion dollars. Nanotechnology will change the way we view the very fabric of life. Based on current projections, your private air car of 2030using nano technologywill carry you on a 500-mile trip (with your luggage) at 500 mph and will only require two gallons of gasoline. Just two! In less than 15 years (according to nanotechnology scientists), nano fabrics will be as common as nylon or rayon are today and will be able to sense and control the flow of heat to automatically either warm or cool us (depending on the surroundings). They will be so thin and light that we wont be able to feel the clothes while we wear them. But they will keep our body temperature constant in any weather, as do the best animal skins and furs. These smart

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Micro-Might: Nanotechnology / 141 clothes could almost eliminate the need for space heating and cooling and drastically reduce residential and commercial electrical demand. Researchers forecast that by 2030, molecular synthesizers (robots) will be able to synthetically construct foods (molecule by molecule) that are considerably closer to natural ones than are current processed foods. We will be able to eat meats no animal was killed to produce and crops no habitat was destroyed to grow. Since the foods will be synthesized just before cooking or eating, there will be no need for refrigerators. Indeed, they could simply be synthesized cooked, with no need for a stove or microwave. Plates and forks could also be synthesized just before each meal and then tossed dirty into the recycler, with no need for washing. All energy-intensive appliances and processes of our modern kitchens could be reduced to a synthesizer and a recycler. The first working steam engine (built by Englishman Thomas Newcomen in 1712) was three stories tall and produced about as much power as a modern lawn mower. Nano engines will make our best current power plants look as weak and bulky as Newcomens engine looks to us. The engine that runs your car could, as a nano engine, be smaller and lighter than a pocketknife. Your pocket knife could hold the power of 50 chainsaws! Nano engines are so smallthousands fit onto the head of a pinthat motors will become too small to see. Your electric toothbrush wont have one, single motor in the handle. Each bristle will have many individual motors imbedded in it. Instead of a single motor, your car could have legs and hundreds of small motors that give you a smooth ride over any surface. We may outgrow our need for paved roads by 2050. Nano engines are so much more efficient than current engines, it is likely that total electrical power demand will radically drop. Once nanotechnology matures, we may find that we dont need any new power plants and, in fact, that we have to decommission most of the ones we still have. In these and hundreds of other ways, nanotechnology has the potential to change how we use electricity, how we make it, and how much of it we need. It will redefine the very fundamental nature of the electric grid. Current projections call for the existence of molecular power plantselectricity-generating plants the size of moleculesby 2030. We can combine them, stack them, locate them, configure them any way we want and anywhere we want. Nanotechnology will create a radical change in our concept of creating and delivering electricity. It could make the very notion of a grid obsolete.

Whats Happening Now?

Nanotechnology research is just beginning to explode into public view. Several universities (led by the Helios Project at the University of California, Berkeley) have created nano leaves to duplicate natural photosynthesis. The nano-leaf machines work well in the lab, but havent yet been scaled up for commercial production. Laboratory-based research on molecular power plants predict that several commercial designs will be on the market by 2030. Several of these biotech research projects on nano power plants are trying to duplicate how the mitochondria in human cells digest sugar to produce power. Such nano engines can deliver up to 1 million horsepower per pound of enginethousands of times more efficient than todays engines.

142 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Other research on nano-scale batteries is finding ways to increase the contact surface area a thousand times within the same physical battery space, thereby producing a thousand times the output power of current batteries. One biotech company has developed nano grass. It looks and feels like grass but can act as a giant battery with virtually no leakage when not being used (it will never go bad) and can also act as a lawn-sized photovoltaic collector. Your lawn will be able to power your house and store energy for nights and cloudy daysand it will never need mowing! Research with carbon nanotubes has the potential to vastly increase the efficiency (and thereby decrease the unit cost) of a fuel cell. Fuel cells are already expected to be major players in our future energy supply. This advance could easily make them a thousand times more attractive. Continued computer miniaturization and early nanotechnology are steadily decreasing the cost per unit power. (That is, power output is steadily increasing and the unit cost is steadily decreasing.) It has happened to computers. It is happening to batteries. In the nanotechnology world, it looks as if the same will be true for power generation.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for nanotechnology: Nanotechnologies are revolutionary game-changers. Nanotechnologies will drastically reduce total energy demand. Nanotechnologies will reduce dependence on the central gridand may completely eliminate it. On the negative side for nanotechnology: Nanotechnology is a newly emerging field. Energy-related nanotechnology has not been proven or even tested. Some negatives may emerge.

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: We cant currently envision life in the age of mature nanotechnology any more than anyone in 1970 could envision life with modern computers, the associated personal digital devices, and the Internet. Key Factors: Will nanotechnology deliver on its unlimited promise? Timeline: Look for nanotechnologies to begin to impact energy usage by 2020 and to dominateif not definethe way we create and use energy by 2040.

Micro-Might: Nanotechnology / 143

Classroom Activities
Nanotechnology is all about making things smallalmost unimaginably small. The word nano means one-billionth. It means dealing with things that are a billion times smaller than some base reference size. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.) It means motors the size of individual molecules and electric generators so small that it takes immense electron microscopes to see them. 1. First, lets try to get a better grasp on the unfathomably small size that nano refers to. Mark out 10 feet on the floor or concrete play yard. You can easily visualize that length of line. Lets slowly step down from there down to nano-scale. Divide your 10-foot length into ten even pieces. Mark these divisions on the original 10-foot line. Each segment is 1 foot long. Thats still easy to visualize and easy to understand. Divide one of the feet into ten even pieces. Mark these divisions on the line. Each piece is now 1.2 inches long. Still easy to see, to visualize, and to work with. Each 1.2-inch piece is exactly 1/100 of the original 10-foot length. Divide one of the 1.2-inch segments into ten even pieces. Its getting hard to draw the dividing lines and to keep them apart, isnt it? We are approaching the limit of what you can see and work with without using scientific equipment. Each of these new segments is now 0.12 inch long. You can still easily see a tenth of an inch (if you get close enough) and can imagine tiny devices that are that size. Each of these tiny pieces is 1/1,000 of the original 10-foot line. Pick one of these tiny segments and divide it into ten equal lengths. You cant draw the lines, can you? We have gotten too small for you to work with, for your eyes to be able to see (without a magnifying glass or microscope). Each new segment is 0.012 inch long (just over 1/100 of an inch). Each is also 1/10,000 of the original 10-foot line. We have just slid below human scale, the scale of things we can see on our own. We have entered the microscopic world. This is the universe of tiny bugs, minute dust particles, and viruses. But you are still less than halfway through the divisions you need to make to reach nano-scale. You have divided your original line into tenths four times. You still have five such divisions to make to reach the nano-version of your original line. Each of the undrawably small segments from the last division you made is still 100,000 times bigger than the nano-version of your original line. You would have to slice each of those unseeably small segments into 100,000 equal pieces to finally have the size of the nano-line! Pull one of the hairs from your own head. Cut it in half to get nice, clean ends and look closely at the cut end. Use a microscope to look at it if you have access to one. The width of that hair (if it is average) is 20,000 nanometers. To qualify as a nano-machine, a device has to be smaller than 100 nanometers. Two hundred such nano machines (and remember, these would be big nano machines) could easily fit side by side in a line across the end of your one hair! Thats small!

144 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future 2. Of course, it is possible to try to grasp a billion by going in the other direction. Start with a small measurement and try to imagine what would be 1 billion times bigger. A billion inches is 15,783 milesa distance equal to hopping from Sydney, Australia, to New York City and then flying back to Honolulu, Hawaii, with enough miles left over for a leisurely cruise around the Hawaiian Islands. Get a globe from the school library, and it will be easy to mark out and see this 15,783-mile trip. Now try to mark (in the scale of the globe) 1 inch of that journey. It would have to be a large globe for you to be able to distinguish a distance of 10 miles. And 10 miles is over 63,000 times longer than an inch! The Empire State Building is 1,250 feet tall. Going in a smaller direction, the nano-Empire version would be 0.000015 inch tall1/100 of 1/1000 of a single inch! If we went in the larger direction from the Empire State Building and made the building a billion times taller, it would be almost 237 million miles tall and would stand 2.5 times taller than the distance from the earth to the sun. Yes, the jump in scale by a factor of 1 billion is more than human minds can comprehend. And yet we humans are already building nano-sized machines! Survey all of the electrical motors you can find in your school and all of the kinds of electrical motors you can find in your community. Try to measure the physical size of each. Build a classwide list. Now try to imagine the nano-version of each. Try to imagine what your school, your house, and your community would look like if powered by nano-machines. How would the buildings, rooms, appliances, and cars you use change if their motors were unseeably small?

3.

For Further Reading

Allen, John, and Dianne Maddox. Nanotechnology. Chicago: Cengage Gale, 2005. Fritz, Sandy. Nanotechnology: Invisible Machines. Mankato, MN: Black Rabbit Books, 2004. Heinrichs, Ann. Nanotechnologist. Ann Arbor, MN: Cherry Lake Publishers, Johnson, Rebecca. Nanotechnology. New York: Lerner Classroom, 2006. Orme, Helen. Energy for the Future. New York: Bearport Publishing, 2008. Piddock, Charles. Future Tech : From Personal Robots to Motorized Monocycles. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2009. Rau, Dana. Alternative Energy: Beyond Fossil Fuels. Mankato, MN: Coughlan Publishing, 2009.

Micro-Might: Nanotechnology / 145

Web Sites
www.nano.gov/ The National Nanotechnology Initiative basic site on nano research, technology, and development. www.nanotech-now.com > ... > Articles > Ineke Malsch A look at how nanotechnology will likely affect the energy industry. www.rice.edu/energy/.../energyprogram/nanotechnology.html A description of the findings of the Rice University program to use nanotechnology for improved energy efficiency and production. w w w. n a n o t e c h n o l og y d eve l o p m e n t . c o m / e n e r g y / a p p l i c a t i o n - o f nanotechnology-in-environment-and-energy.html A site looking at the application of nanotechnology to the energy industry. www.nanoscience.ucf.edu/ A site on advanced nanotechnology research for energy applications. www.universityofcalifornia.edu/research/nanotech.html University of Californias nanotechnology research program page. www.understandingnano.com/nanotechnology-research.html A good list of nanotechnology research labs with links to their individual pages.

The Power Plant That Never Was: Energy Conservation

What Is It, and How Does It Produce Electricity?
No discussion of green energy strategies would be complete without mention of conservationthe not using of energy. We can even see it on bumper stickers: Conservation is the new energy supply. The only truly green power plant is the one that is never built. Conservation is the greenest of the green technologies. According to the Energy Information Administration, we waste 57 percent of all energy used in this country. Over half of all the energy in the fuels we burn is wasted. That is, it does no productive work. Most of it becomes unwanted waste heat. If we consciously seek ways to reduce that waste, the energy we already use will go farther and do more. Waste less, and we use less. Use less, and the energy industry produces less pollution, less greenhouse gas, and less waste heat. Thats conservation. But how does conservation apply to our use of electricity? How can conservation curb the need for utilities to build new power plants? Look where we use the most electricity. Residential and commercial customers account for 72 percent of all U.S. electrical use, and American buildings tend to be grossly inefficient. Natural daylight can easily replace 30 to 60 percent of our indoor lighting (often without any structural modification to the building). Natural ventilation can replace 20 to 40 percent of our air conditioning energy use (again, often at no cost or required building modification). Natural shading could cut another 10 percent. (This requires planting and growing shade trees on the south and southwest sides of houses and buildings.) Passive solar heating could eliminate 20 to 40 percent of the energy we use for heating. If all new construction adopted current best passive solar designs, we could reduce each new buildings electrical energy demand by 95 percent. That and a few PV panels could make every new office, house, apartment, and commercial building electrically independent! Electrical conservation measures range from easy and free (turn off lights, open windows on summer nights to reduce daytime air conditioning, etc.), to quick and inexpensive (buy more efficient lightbulbs, install ceiling fans, etc.), to major reconstruction projects. From knowing which kind of lightbulbs will be the most efficient to buy, to tightening walls, to sealing cracks around windows and under doors, to improving insulation, to using energy efficient equipment and appliances, to updating civic policies, to building and community design and planning, to energy efficiency labeling for all products (like nutritional labeling), to designing better building airflow (natural ventilation), to planting shade trees, it is relatively easy for each individual, family, neighborhood, and community to treat energy efficiency (conservation) like a scarce fuel and make it the cornerstone of planning.

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The Power Plant That Never Was: Energy Conservation / 147

Whats Happening Now?

Most conservation efforts happen at the level of individual families and communities. Individuals act to improve the energy efficiency of a single building. Communities change building and zoning codes to enhance future energy conservation. It is difficultat bestto track and add up these efforts at a national level. However, new scientific developments will make future building energy efficiency easier and more affordable. Researchers have developed wall and ceiling panels that contain a layer of paraffin-based wax. As the temperature in a building rises, the wax melts and absorbs some of the heat to keep the buildings interior cooler. At night, as the building cools, the wax resolidifies, releasing the heat back into the building to avoid the need for nighttime heating. The wax keeps the temperature even and reduces electrical demand for heating and cooling. Such panels can reduce peak inside temperatures by 6 to 7C. Other new research has taken a fresh look at an old concept: geothermal space heating and cooling. Even in areas without geothermal heat resources, the earth can be used to both heat and cool a building. Drill down 20 to 30 feet, and well find that the ground stays at a reasonably constant temperature of 45 to 50F. Circulate room air through a network of pipes at that depth, and we efficiently cool it during hot summer afternoons or warm it during freezing winter nights. We can drastically reduce (in some cases eliminate) the need for electric or gas heating and cooling.

How Does It Measure Up? (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
On the plus side for conservation: Conservation measures produce no new pollutants and reduce total pollution by reducing the demand for electricity. Conservation offers its greatest value while the electrical industry is still at its dirtiest. On the negative side for conservation: Our houses, offices, cities, and transportation systems havent been designed and built to conserve energy. It is slow and expensive to retrofit conservation measures on our existing stock of buildings and community plans and zoning rules. Reducing our demand for oil, propane, and natural gas (also worthy conservation goals) tends to increase our reliance on electricity as a substitute for those fossil fuels.

148 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future

Whats the Bottom Line? (How Much Can It Help?)

Potential: Simple conservation measures can contribute immediately by reducing the growth of our total demand for electricity. Dont count on conservation to make a big difference in electrical use. At best, it will slow the growth rate of our electrical appetite. Key Factors: Retrofitting existing houses, offices, malls, factories, and communities to maximize conservation measures is very expensive and time consuming. Timeline: Look for more conservation measures to weave their way into new building codes by 2015. But the effect of these efforts on electrical demand will be both small and stretched over a long time.

Classroom Activities
Conservation is not something that is primarily the responsibility of major utility companies to undertake. It is something each individual person has to do. Lets do an experiment to see what conserving just electrical energy feels like and what it might entail. To make it easier, we will exclude electricity provided by batteries and focus exclusively on electricity we use from the grid. First you need to estimate how much electricity each student in the class uses. This estimate wont be easy to develop and will require some careful and diligent note taking on the part of participating students. However, without knowing how much energy you use, youll never know how much you save. Each student will develop this estimate in four steps: 1. Make a list of electric devices in your home. (Remember to include appliances toaster oven, washing machine and dryer, microwave oven, electric baseboard heaters, air conditioners, electric water heaters, etc.and electric toolsfrom pencil sharpeners to power sawsin addition to obvious things like lights, TV, clock radios, etc.). Use the library and Internet to find how much electricity a typical model of each device uses. Write this average energy use figure next to each device included on your list. If you have some electrical devices, machines, or appliances for which you cannot find an energy use estimate, call your local electric utility company for help. Most utilities can provide at least a general electrical use figure. Carefully track your use of each device for one week. For most devices (from lights to microwave ovens, from the vacuum cleaner to your computer or TV), you will have to write down how long you use them each time you turn them on. For some (such as the washing machine) that have a standard cycle, you only need to write down that you used them (e.g., that you washed and dried one load of laundry).

2.

3.

The Power Plant That Never Was: Energy Conservation / 149 4. Do the math. Add up your total use for this one week for each device and multiply that amount of time by the electrical energy use number you found in the second step. Then add up these electrical energy use figures to arrive at a grand total for your weekly electrical consumption.

Discuss and compare these lists as a class. What problems did students encounter in tracking their electrical use? Do you use electricity from the grid more often and in more ways than you thought? Do electrical use patterns vary from person to person and from family to family? Are some aspects of electrical energy use the same for everyone? Now each student can see what a dash of self-imposed conservation would feel like. First, research conservation tips and make a long list of things you might try. This list will range from the obvious (turn out the lights when you arent in a room) to the less obvious (open the refrigerator once and get everything you need rather than opening and closing it to grab each item). Narrow the list to between eight and twelve conservation ideas that others have successfully used to reduce their electrical energy usage and that the class wants to explore. Each student now has two lists: one that shows how much electricity that student uses each week for each electrical device, and one that lists up to twelve things to do to conserve electricity. Each student should pick three ideas from the second list to try for a week. For this second week of the test, track only your use of the devices that relate to your three chosen conservation ideas. Your goal will be to cut your electrical use by at least 10 percent with each conservation idea you have chosen. If, for example, you have chosen to reduce your use of electric light by 10 percent, you will search for ways to live your life normally, but use less lighting. Maybe youll only turn on one light in a room instead of two. Maybe youll replace 100 watt bulbs with 60 watt bulbs. Perhaps you will sit next to a window and read by ambient light rather than turn on a light at all. Encourage students to be creative and thoughtful in their plans to reduce their electricity consumption by 10 percent in each chosen area. At the end of the second week, have students report their level of success and also their impressions of trying to conserve electricity. Can students design simple ways to permanently reduce electrical energy use in the classroom, school building, and home? Do students feel that their experience has value for the community as a whole? How much work would it be for students to reduce all energy consumption by 10 percent? By 20 percent?

For Further Reading

Bishop, Amanda. Energy Conservation. New York: Cavendish Marshall, 2008. DeGunther, Rik. Alternative Energy for Dummies. San Francisco: For Dummies Press, 2009. Fix, Alexandra. Energy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Library, 2007. Gibilisco, Stan. Alternative Energy Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Patrick, Dale, et al. Energy Conservation Guidebook. Lilburn, GA: Fairmont Press, 2007.

150 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Reilly, Kathleen. Energy: 25 Projects Investigate Why We Need Power & How We Get It. White River Junction, VT: Nomad Press, 2009. Royston, Angela. Sustainable Energy. London: Arcturus Publishers, 2010.

Web Sites
www.epa.gov/reg5rcra/wptdiv/p2pages/energy.pdf EPA general site on energy conservation. www.energyquest.ca.gov/story/chapter19.html Thorough overview of energy conservation programs. zebu.uoregon.edu/1999/ph161/l22.html A University of Oregon assessment of the potential for electrical energy conservation. www.eia.doe.gov > ... > Energy Efficiency The Energy Information Administration site on electrical energy conservation. electricalenergyconservation.com/energy-saving-product-faqs.htm An analysis of various home electrical energy conservation potentials. www.energy.gov/energyefficiency/index.htm A federal government site on energy efficiency.

The Future Grid: The Horse Race to Your Greener Energy Future
Twenty-five energy-producing technologies, each scrambling to become a major part of our electrical energy future. Each on its own development path. Each with its own set of backers and enthusiasts. Each with its own potential. Each with its own problems and limitations. How are we to make sense of this mad, competitive dash for energy development; combine it with possible conservation changes in our ever-growing hunger for electricity; and plot out what it means to the future of our electrical grid over the next 20, 30, and even 50 years? There are far too many still-unknowns for anyone to speak with certainty about our electrical energy future. The specific details of any forecast are almost sure to miss future reality. Energy development over the next decade will look like a giant horse race, with 25 competing horses (plus 3 old championscoal, nuclear, and natural gas) all jockeying to garner political and investment support and research advances in a mad dash to cash in as future champions of our electrical energy grid. Lets start with what we do know for sure: 1. The U.S. energy industry will shift away from the current mix of fossil fuel based power plants and toward cleaner, renewable technologies. Many states have mandated change. The federal government has poured (and will continue to pour) billions of dollars into research to promote it. The grid will change. 2. Utility companies will do whatever they must do to meet our electrical energy demand. When we flip a switch, electrical power will floweven if that means that a utility has to build (or continue to use) polluting (coal) plants.

3. We can identify those technologies with greatest long-term potentialthose that could individually supply most of our electrical energy needsif they actually reach their expected potential. These are the technologies that can replace coal as the backbone of our electrical system. That makes these technologies the ones to watch. They are fusion, hydrogen fuel cells, nanotechnology, solar from space, clean coal, nuclear (either micro-nukes or the new generation of improved traditional nuclear plants), and solar photovoltaic. These are the potential game-changers. Once any of these technologies reaches its full technical potential and becomes widely available, it will change the entire grid. We certainly dont need all of them. Only the first one or two of these technologies to blossom will rewrite our national electrical system. None of these is yet ready to take its place as the center of our national electrical supply system.

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152 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Not yet. Other renewable technologies are vying to contribute to our electrical grid; these technologies are vying to dominate the grid. 4. We can list the technologies that the electric utility industry currently relies on and those it already knows it will be able to depend on over the next 10 to 15 years: coal, natural gas, solar thermal, wind turbines, geothermal, nuclear, and hydroelectric. Nothing new or exciting there. Many utility companies are experimenting with, and will build test plants using, new green technologies over the next 5 to 10 years. But that is very different from making a commitment to depend on the technology for the companys day-in and day-out power delivery operations. Notice that photovoltaicsthough a proven technologyis not on this list. It is an increasingly attractive alternative for end usershomeowners, commercial buildings, etc. Each year more and more houses and office buildings sprout solar photovoltaic panels. But photovoltaics has not yet proven itself to be an economically attractive system for utilities to place in central power plants. There are also a few renewable technologies that utilities can already count on as minor contributors to regional and local grid systems: MSW, biomass (especially wood waste), and methane (mostly from landfills). 5. A few of the renewable, green energy technologies are on the rise and have captured the imagination, current interest, and attention of developers and public officials. These technologies should make significant gains over the next decade and steadily increase their contributions to the grid: wind, solar thermal, micronukes, photovoltaics, and ocean current energy (especially in Florida). 6. Finally, we can list the big question marksthe great unknowns upon which will hang the future directions of our electrical grid. No one has answers to these questions yet. During your lifetime, however, each will be answered, and our world of electrical energy will be fundamentally changed. Any research aimed at resolving these questions deserves to be followed with interest. a. Fusion. Fusion has the greatest potential, and is the greatest question mark, of all. Fusion is the only technology capable of producing so much energy that its backers claim it will provide free electricity for everyone! Will anyone (most probably the CERN research center in Europe at this point) make fusion reactions stable and productive? Will they then be able to make them commercially viable? Dont expect any fusion breakthroughs before 2020. But those breakthroughs will eventually arrive. b. Energy storage and batteries. Efficient, cheap electrical storage is essential for most of the renewable, green technologies. Wind, solar, ocean wave and tidal energy, and energy recapture systems will never be able to expand into grid mainstays until efficient energy storage systems exist. Laboratory research and small test programs have demonstrated that many of the potential storage systems could work. The big questions are which systems will actually develop into productive systems, and (more important) when?

The Future Grid: The Horse Race to Your Greener Energy Future / 153 c. Fuel cells. Everyone agrees that fuel cells hold great potential to fuel our transportation and electrical energy needs. But to date, fuel cells have only been used in specialized situations where other sources of electrical energy were not available. Several recent fuel cell designs claim to be economically competitive sources of electricity. So far, neither the marketplace nor the utility companies have enthusiastically embraced these offerings. The next ten years will be critical. If fuel cells are to rise to dominate transportation energy (replacing battery-powered electrical cars) and our supply of electrical energy, someone will have to successfully demonstrate their potential. d. Hydrogen infrastructure. Hydrogen works wonderfully as a fuel. (NASA proves that with each shuttle launch.) The problems are that hydrogen is not readily available (you cant go to your local hardware store and opt to fill your barbecue gas canister with hydrogen instead of propane) and that its current cost, when available, is too high. The big question is, will the industrial operations and national infrastructure develop to make hydrogen as commonplace, affordable, and available in the future as gasoline, propane, and natural gas are now? Fuel cells will never reach their greatest potential until hydrogen (the best fuel to power fuel cells) is easily and nationally available. e. Nanotechnology. Researchers currently foresee a world radically changed by nanotechnologymore radically changed than by any technological revolution in history. The question is, will nanotechnology live up to this lofty hype? Will nanotechnology create fundamental changes in motors (how we power machines), in how we supply power to motors, in general mechanics, in clothing, in building design and construction, and in material design? How will these changes affect our need for electrical energy and our energy use patterns? Will nanotechnology reach its tentacles into the energy production industry itself and fundamentally alter how we produce electricity? Nanotechnology is still at the dawn of its impact on our lives. During this coming decade, the nanotechnology sun will rise high enough in the sky to give us a much clearer vision of its long-term implications. Many scientists and engineers envision fuel cells, hydrogen, and nanotechnology all merging into a unified and single package that will redefine modern life. Will these three amigos of the emerging technology world actually combine to change the very notions of energy flow and a national electrical grid? Will they make the very idea of a national grid obsolete? What will our electrical supply system look like if they do? f. Clean coal. Coal is our number one energy resource. The industries to mine it, transport it, and process it (along with all of the industries to supply and support those industries) are already in place and working. The question is, will we be able to clean coal well enough (through gasification, liquifaction, scrubbing, and sequestration) and economically enough to make clean coal a competitive reality?

154 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future g. Micro-nukes. These mass-produced small units hold great potential. The U.S. Department of Energy has a grand and expansive vision for micronukes. The question is not will they work? They do. The questions are: Will the reality of micro-nukes over the next 10 to 15 years live up to the vision of maintenance- and repair-free operation with no physical, security, or environmental problems or radioactive leaks? Will individual industrial complexes, commercial buildings, and even residential clusters (complexes, tracts, developments, or even neighborhoods) opt to install their own micro-nukes to provide electricity free of monthly charges? Will the utility companies and the public embrace micro-nukes or rise up in opposition to, and in fear of, the spread of another nuclear technology? h. Solar collectors in space. Will rings of giant, unfurled solar collectors orbiting the planet work? Will they consistently deliver affordable energy back down to our earth-bound grid? Will utility companies risk placing their energy collectors in space where neither operators nor repairmen can go should any problems develop? Will these massive collectors create any currently unforeseen negative impacts? i. Ocean energy. The oceans are our greatest energy bank. They hold more energy than we humans will ever need. The question is, will anyone figure out how to economically tap into this resource and deliver its vast potential to the grid, or will these ocean-based technologies remain minor local systems used only in isolated and remote areas? Now lets see if we can shuffle together these various pieces of information and try to sketch an outline of a most probable timeline for our future electrical energy grid.

2010 to 2020
The electrical utility industry doesnt change quickly. It takes ten years (or more) from start to finish to put a new, large, power plant online. If we look at what is already in the planning and permitting process, we can create a reasonable map of the next ten years. The mix of technologies feeding the grid wont dramatically change during this period. New large power plants will predominantly be fueled by natural gas, coal, and nuclear (in that order). Those are the plants and proposed power plants already in the planning, permitting, and construction process. But small changes in the mix will occur during this decade and could foretell large shifts in the 2020 to 2030 grid. This decade will also see a slow increase in wind farms (and more important, a resolution of the legal challenges to wind energy development). A few new solar thermal plants will be built in the Southwest and along the California coast, and the decade will see a steady increase in off-grid photovoltaic and cogeneration systems. We will also see the first mass introduction of fuel cells. (Again, almost all will be off-grid, either to power cars and trucks or to provide electrical power to individual buildings as an alternative to photovoltaic systems.) This decade should also see a slow, steady increase in the number of MSW plants but little or no increase in hydroelectric or geothermal capacity. We will also see a smattering

The Future Grid: The Horse Race to Your Greener Energy Future / 155 of demonstration plants for new technologieswind kites, micro-nukes, ocean current (in Florida), solar from space (in California), bio crop (in the Midwest and Northeast), and ocean wave power (in the Pacific Northwest). Though none of these systems will have a major impact on either the regional or national grids, successes in these test plants will signal significant expansion of that technology in the following decade. Three other developments deserve close attention during this decade. These will set the direction for the next decade. They are the development of a hydrogen industry and distribution system, the development of working clean coal plants, and the development of effective energy storage systems. If hydrogen becomes more available, the future use of fuel cells will rapidly increase. If clean coal proves to be both technically and economically feasible, many planned power plants will shift to use this technology, since coal is both readily available and cheap. If easy and effective energy storage systems do not become available, it will limit the contribution to the grid of renewable energy technologies (especially wind and ocean energy systems). Without guaranteed available storage, it is unlikely that wind energy will ever contribute more than 10 percent of the nations total electrical supply, since wind plants would still have to be backed up with other types of power plants that could be fired up to provide demanded energy when the wind refuses to blow.

2020 to 2030
Now it gets interesting. Things could easily get wild. This decade should see the beginning of a steep decline in coal-fired power plants (not including clean coal plants). It will also be the decade to watch for the demand for electricity from the grid to level off and possibly even begin to decline! Why? Conservation (including energy recapture and cogeneration) will take a firmer hold; off-grid sources of electricity (especially fuel cells) will be far more prevalent; and nanotechnology will further reduce the amount of energy we waste while coaxing our electricity to perform the useful work we need it to do. If total electrical demand from the grid does begin to decline, watch for a huge and alarmed reverberation to rumble through the electric utilities, which have, from their earliest beginnings, always enjoyed a strong and steady growth in the demand for their services. Many of the renewable emerging technologies will either have to prove themselves during this decade or be dropped from the race. This certainly includes all of the ocean technologies, wind kites, bio crops, landfill methane recovery, and clean coal. Energy storage systems should be abundant and will allow a sudden and rapid expansion of wind, wind kites (if they have proved themselves trustworthy and dependable), and coastal wave energy activity. Natural gas, hydroelectric, and geothermal should hold their relative position throughout this decade. The most likely technologies to be on the rise this decade are conservation (including energy recapture and cogeneration), solar (all forms), nuclear (large central plant and micronukes), methane hydrate recovery (because we will need to recover this Arctic methane or suffer from a rapid acceleration of climate change and global warming), fuel cells, and improved long-distance transmission systems as part of the Smart Grid.

156 \ Part 2Greener Pastures: 25 Electric Technologies of the Future Look for breakthroughs during this decade in fusion technology, hydrogen infrastructure, nanotechnology, and the technology to allow use of dry hot rock geothermal. These breakthroughs may not result in widespread use of these energy technologies until well after 2030. However, progress should be trumpeted during this decade. Finally, we can forecast the technologies that will probably fade in their importance during this decade. These are technologies that will likely be relegated to sporadic, local use because other, more promising technologies will rise to dominate the grid. The four most likely candidates are MSW, wave and tidal energy, bio crop, and crop waste systems.

2030 to 2040
It is a good bet that by 2030 fuel cells will have become as commonplace as internal combustion engines are today and that much of the needed hydrogen delivery infrastructure will be in place. You may not be able to buy hydrogen at every corner gas station, but there will be a number of outlets for buying hydrogen in almost every town. Gas stations will likely be far less commonslowly going the way of corner pay phonesas fuel cells take over the transportation sector. Nanotechnology will, during this decade, dig its microscopic claws into every facet of our lives and energy use. It is probable that fusion will be inching very close to a workable utility technology. Micro-nukes will have becomeif not commonat least no longer a novelty (unless even a single accident happens with one of the early micro-nukes to be installed; then another 20- to 30-year moratorium on new nuclear construction is likely). Much of the new national Smart Grid should come online during this decadeincluding long-distance transmission capability and ample storage capacity. If so, expect greater use of both wind and solar energy. Coal should begin its decline as a fuel for electric production during this decade, as oil did in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, keep on the lookout for new concepts and technologiesones we have only dreamed about in science fiction stories (such as the antimatter warp engines used on Star Trek) to become serious targets of research laboratories during this decade. There are also the first hints that scientists will be able to engineer iron-eating microbes that can produce electricity while munching on rusting iron junk lying in the mud. You wont see any of these technologies become marketplace realities until well beyond 2050. But by 2040, you are almost certain to see exciting progress in a few of them.

2050 and Beyond

Forecasting the look and makeup of our electrical grid in 2050 is like trying to predict the mid-twentieth-century sprawl of modern interstates and suburbs in 1908 as the first Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line. Its like trying to anticipate modern frequent flyer programs and airport delays in that same year (1908), as the earliest barnstormers lifted the first paying passengers for 15-minute loops, swoops, spins, and twirls above county fairs from nearby pastures.

The Future Grid: The Horse Race to Your Greener Energy Future / 157 Still, we can make a few educated guesses. Which will be the big energy suppliers 50 and even 100 years from now? The odds-on favorites are fusion, hydrogen fuel cells, and solar (especially space and photovoltaics). The grid should still receive modest contributions from nuclear, natural gas, wind, clean coal, and hot dry rock geothermal. There will surely be regional smattering of ocean energy technologies, bio crops, and MSW. But it would be almost equally plausible to predict that nanotechnology will have made the very concept of a sprawling electrical grid of wires and power plants obsolete. Fuel cells and other nano-powered devices will be imbedded into any device that needs power. The grid will look more like corner gas stations, where you go to refill your hydrogen canisters and swap out used nano fuel cells. Thats how widely the future reality could vary from any one specific forecast. It is an exciting time for our electrical energy system, which has stumbled along without any major changes for a hundred years. The future of our grid depends on the results of ongoing research programs, and they have a nasty habit of fooling everyone. Expected advances never materialize, and they linger as complex equations on laboratory chalkboards and planners drawing boards for decades, tempting and tantalizing us from just beyond our grasp. Other unsought and totally unexpected discoveries leap out to present radical new opportunities, ones no one had foreseen. It seems that the only thing truly set in stone is that nothing is ever truly set in stone. All of this makes for an exciting future to look forward to. Electrical energy is the fundamental form of power for our modern civilization. It is the foundation of our technological society. Ultimately almost everything runs (at least partially) on electricity. When the electricity goes down, commerce cant happen. Sales cant be made or recorded. Plants cant operate. Traffic snarls. Learning stops. There is no Internet and no computers. How we choose to create that electric power will help to define our future. Two of our most basic goals, energy and environment, currently clash. Creating electrical energy harms the environment. Protecting the environment threatens our electricity supply. We seem to be caught in the middle because we cant make do without either one of them. How we select and manage our electrical energy supply over the next 10, 20, 30, or even 50 years will determine if we can make these two fundamental essentials of life compatible or have to sacrifice one in order to have the other. The future is yours. Its your environment, your electrical energy system, your life. Plug in, power up, and enjoy!

Index
Acid rain, 14 Africa solar thermal power, 28 Alabama bio waste, electricity from, 101 compressed air test plants, 7 Alaska methane release, hot spot for, 114 tidal energy potential site, 84 as wave energy location, 78 Altamont Pass, 41, 42 Animal waste for electrical generation, 101 Arctic tundra methane releases, 114 methane source, 114 Argentina solar ponds for storing solar energy, 29 Arklow Bank offshore wind park, 43 Ausra company solar thermal power, 28 Batteries, 13539, 152 advantages of, 136 bottom line, 137 classroom activities for, 13738 current research and projects on, 136, 142, 152 described, 135 disadvantages of, 137 electric cars, 136 how they measure up, 13637 how they work, 135 inefficiency of, 135 key factors, 137 lead acid, 8, 136 lithium ion, 136 nanotechnology and, 142 potential of, 137, 152 rechargeable, 135, 136 research, focus of, 136, 142, 152 silver zinc, 136 sodium-sulfur, 8, 130, 136 timeline, 137 Web sites about, 139 what they are, 135 Bay of Fundy, 85 Becquerel, Alexandre, 36 Bio crop waste. See Bio waste Bio waste, 100104, 152. See also Energy crops advantages of, 101 bottom line, 102 classroom activities for, 1023 current research and projects on, 101 defined, 100 described, 1001 disadvantages of, 1012 how it measures up, 1012 how it works, 100101 key factors, 102 potential of, 102 research, focus of, 101 timeline, 102, 155, 156, 157 trend, current, 101 Web sites about, 104 what it is, 100101 Biocrude, 100 Biomass. See Bio waste Bloom Box fuel cell, 57 Boilers bio waste in, 100 conventional power plant, 4, 5, 8, 73, 125 hot rock as replacement for, 62 hydrogen in, 109 municipal solid waste, burning of, 95, 96 solar heat as replacement for, 27

159

160 \ Index Boston College photovoltaic technology, research on, 37 Brazil hydroelectric energy, 68 Britain. See Great Britain British Columbia tidal power plant potential site, 85 California animal waste, electricity from, 101 artificial photosynthesis research, 106, 110, 141 bio waste, electricity from, 101 dairy methane system, 115 energy crops, 106 geothermal energy resources, 63 geothermal power plant, 62 hydroelectric energy, 68 hydrogen demonstration power plant, 110 magma well, 64 methane recovery plants, 115 municipal solid waste, electrical production from, 95 photosynthesis (artificial), research on, 106, 110, 141 photovoltaic energy systems, 37 pumped storage systems, 131 solar electric plant, 27, 28 solar thermal plants, timeline for, 154 space-based solar collection, 33, 155 as wave energy location, 78 wind turbines, 41, 42 Caltech photovoltaic technology, scientific work on, 37 Canada fuel cell technology, research on, 57 tidal energy potential site, 84, 85 Cape Wind offshore wind farm, 42 Carbon dioxide capturing of, 119 China, emissions in, 14 greenhouse gas emissions and, 8, 11, 14 natural gas, from burning of, 11 sequestration of carbon, 119 Central Intelligence Agency. See CIA CERN research center, 24, 152 Chevron coal gasification partnership with GE, 12021 China carbon dioxide emissions, 14 coal demand, x, 14, 119 coal power plants, 119 hydroelectric energy, 68 photovoltaic energy systems, 37 solar farm, 28 wind power, 43 CHP systems. See Combined heat and power (CHP) systems CIA fuel cell use by, 57 Classroom activities on batteries, 13738 on clean coal technology, 12223 on cogeneration, 12728 on conservation, 14849 on energy crops, 107 on fuel cells, 5960 on fusion, 25 on geothermal energy, 6566 on hydroelectric energy, 7071 on hydrogen, 112 on methane energy, 11617 on micro-nukes, 54 on municipal solid waste, 9798 on nanotechnology, 14344 on ocean current energy, 9193 on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), 7576 on photovoltaic technology, 3940 on recapture systems, 13233 on solar collectors, spaced based, 34 on solar thermal electricity, 2930 on space-based solar collectors, 34 on storage systems, 13738 on tidal energy, 8687 on wave energy, 8182 on wind kites, 4950 on wind turbines, 4445 Clean Air Task Force, 52

Index / 161 Clean coal technology, 11924. See also Coal; Coal-fired power plants advantages of, 121 bottom line, 121 classroom activities for, 12223 current research and projects on, 12021 described, 11920 disadvantages of, 120, 121 gasification, 119, 120 how it measures up, 121 how it works, 11920 key factors, 121 liquefaction, 119, 120 methods of cleaning coal, 119, 120, 153 potential of, 121, 153 problems of, 120, 121 sequestration, 119, 120 timeline, 121, 155, 157 Web sites about, 12324 what it is, 11920 Climate change, ix, xi, 22, 114, 119, 155 Coal, 13, 14 abundance of, 119 availability of, 14 cleaning of. See Clean coal technology as fossil fuel, viii, 13 problems from, generally, 14. See also Greenhouse gas emissions Coal-fired power plants decline in, timeline, 155 prevalence of, 13, 14 Cogeneration, 12529 advantages of, 126 bottom line, 127 classroom activities for, 12728 current research and projects on, 126 described, 12526 disadvantages of, 126 how it measures up, 126 how it works, 12526 in-home residential cogeneration unit, 126 key factors, 127 potential of, 127 research on, 126 timeline, 127, 155 Web sites about, 12829 what it is, 12526 Combined heat and power (CHP) systems, 125. See also Cogeneration Conoco 730 MW CHP plant, 126 Compressed air, 7, 130 Congo, Republic of hydroelectric energy, 68 Connecticut footfall recovery system, 131. See also Recapture systems Conoco 730 MW CHP plant, 126 Conservation, 14650 advantages of, 147 bottom line, 148 classroom activities for, 14849 current research and projects on, 147 described, 146 disadvantages of, 147 geothermal space heating/cooling, 147 how it measures up, 147 how it works, 146 key factors, 148 measures to take, 146 natural daylight, 146 natural ventilation, 146 potential of, 148 research and projects on, 147 scientific developments, 147 timeline, 148, 155 Web sites about, 150 what it is, 146 Cooling systems geothermal cooling, research on, 147 Cows dairy methane systems, 115 Crops as electrical generation fuel. See Bio waste; Energy crops Cuba OTEC plant, abandonment of, 74 Currents in oceans energy from. See Ocean current energy English Channel current, 89 Florida current, 89, 90 Gulf Stream and, 89

162 \ Index Currents in oceans (Cont.) Humboldt current, 89 Japan current, 89 Czech Republic cogeneration, use of, 126 Dairy methane systems, 115 Dams, 6869 advantages of, 10, 69 disadvantages of, 10, 70 hydroelectric. See Hydroelectric energy numbers of, 68, 89 run of the river dams, 69 tidal power plant dams, 84, 8586 Delft University kite generators, 48 Denmark cogeneration, use of, 126 municipal solid waste, electrical production from, 95 wind farms, 41, 43 DOE. See U.S. Department of Energy Dry hot rock. See Hot dry rock Earth, heat from. See Geothermal energy eBay fuel cell use by, 57 EIA. See U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Electric generator, 4 Electric grid. See Grid Electric Power Research Institute, 8 Electrical cogeneration systems. See Cogeneration Electricity, generally average use of, viii, ixx coal-fired plants, 14 cost of, viii, ix current sources of, xxi defined, vii demand for, ixxi free. See Fusion movement of. See Transmission systems natural gas as source of. See Natural gas nuclear-powered. See Nuclear-powered electricity oil, use of, for production. See Oil transmission systems. See Transmission systems Electrolysis, 110 Electrons, vii Energy conservation. See Conservation Energy crops, 1058 advantages of, 106 artificial leaves, research on, 105, 106, 110, 141 artificial photosynthesis research, 105, 106 bottom line, 107 caution, word of, 105 classroom activities for, 107 current research and projects on, 106 described, 105 disadvantages of, 1067 how they measure up, 1067 how they produce electricity, 105 key factors, 107 leaves (artificial), research on, 105, 106, 110, 141 photosynthesis (artificial) research, 105, 106 potential of, 107 research on, 105, 106, 110, 141 test groves, sites of, 106 timeline, 107 types of plants used, 105, 106 Web sites about, 108 what they are, 105 Energy Information Administration (EIA) wasted energy, information about, 146 Energy recapture. See Recapture systems Energy storage systems. See Batteries; Storage systems England. See also Great Britain footfall recovery system, 131 ocean current energy test system, 90 recapture systems, 131 tidal energy, use of, 84, 85 English Channel currents, 89 Europe. See also names of individual countries cogeneration systems, use of, 126

Index / 163 fusion, research on, 152 wind speed, 47 wind turbines, 41 European Organization for Nuclear Research, 24 Exxon Valdez, oil spill from, 16 FedEx fuel cell use by, 57 Fermi, Enrico, 54 Finavera AquaBuoy, 79 Finland cogeneration, use of, 126 First Solar solar farm, 28 Fission. See also Nuclear-powered electricity contrasted with fusion, 23 described, 14, 23 Florida bio waste, electricity from, 100 currents in ocean, 89, 90, 152, 155 municipal solid waste, electrical production from, 95 ocean current energy, 89, 90, 152, 155 Flying Electric Generator, 48 Flywheels, 8, 131 Footfall recapture systems, 131 Forests, artificial, 120 Fossil fuels nonrenewability of, viiiix, 10 types of, viii, 13 Fracturing defined, 16 process of, 16 France geothermal energy, use of, 62 municipal solid waste, electrical production from, 95 tidal energy power plant, 85 Franklin, Benjamin, vii Fuel cells, 5661 advantages of, 56, 57, 58 affordability of, 57 bottom line, 58 classroom activities for, 5960 cost of, 57 current research and projects on, 5758 described, 5657 disadvantages of, 5657, 58 end uses, designing for, 58 how they measure up, 58 how they produce electricity, 5657 hydrogen as fuel for, 7, 8, 57, 109, 111 hydrogen supply system problem, 57 key factors, 58 parts of, 56 potential of, 58, 153 problems with, 5657, 58 research and projects on, 5657 timeline, 58, 154, 155, 156, 157 transportation, use in, 58 Web sites about, 6061 what they are, 5657 Fusion, 2326 advantages of, 24 bottom line, 25 classroom activities for, 25 current research and projects on, 24 defined, 23 described, 2324 disadvantages of, 24 how it measures up, 24 how it works, 2324 key factors, 25 potential of, 25, 152 problems with, 2324 research and projects on, 24, 152 timeline, 25, 152, 156, 157 Web sites about, 26 what it is, 23 FutureGen, 120 Gasification systems, 101, 119, 120, 121, 153 General Electric (GE) coal gasification partnership with Chevron, 12021 fuel cell research, 56 Generator, electric, 4 Georgia bio waste, electricity from, 101

164 \ Index Geothermal energy, 6267 advantages of, 64 bottom line, 65 classroom activities for, 6566 cooling systems, 147 costs, 65 current research and projects on, 6364 described, 6263 disadvantages of, 63, 64 hot dry rock, 62, 63, 64, 65, 156, 157 how it measures up, 64 how it works, 6263 key factors, 65 low temperature research, 64 magma, 64 potential of, 65 problems with geothermal fields, 63, 64 research, areas of, 6364 timeline, 65, 155, 156, 157 Web sites about, 67 what it is, 6263 Germany cogeneration, use of, 126 sequestration process, use of, 120 wind farms, 41 Geysers (Sonoma County, California), 6263 Glaser, Peter, 32 Global warming, 14, 155. See also Climate change; Greenhouse gas emissions carbon dioxide and, 14 coal as major contributor, 14, 119 methane and, 114 Google fuel cell use by, 57 photovoltaic system at, 37 Great Britain wind farms, 41 zero-emissions coal plant, designing of, 120 Green electricity technologies animal waste. See Animal waste batteries. See Batteries benefit of, generally, viiixi bio crop waste. See Bio waste clean coal. See Clean coal technology cogeneration. See Cogeneration conservation of energy. See Conservation cost of, ix energy crops. See Energy crops footfall recovery systems, 131. See also Recapture systems fuel cells. See Fuel cells fusion. See Fusion game-changers, 15152 geothermal energy. See Geothermal energy hydroelectric energy. See Hydroelectric energy hydrogen production. See Hydrogen methane energy. See Methane energy micro-nukes. See Micro-nukes municipal solid waste. See Municipal solid waste nanotechnology. See Nanotechnology ocean thermal energy conversion. See Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) ones to watch, 15152 photovoltaic energy. See Photovoltaic technology public, needs and wants of, 22 recapture of energy. See Recapture systems rivers, energy from. See Hydroelectric energy solar collectors in space. See Spacebased solar collectors solar photovoltaic energy. See Photovoltaic technology solar thermal electricity. See Solar thermal electricity space-based solar collectors. See Spacebased solar collectors storage of energy. See Storage systems tides, energy from. See Tidal energy utilities, needs of, 21 waves, energy from. See Wave energy wind kites. See Wind kites wind turbines. See Wind turbines Green, meaning of, 911 technologies that are green in some ways, not in others, 1011

Index / 165 Greenhouse gas emissions, ix, 10, 11, 14, 109 carbon dioxide, 14, 109, 112, 114 landfill gas, 11415 methane in landfill gas, 114 natural gas, burning of, 16 reduction of, ix, x, 8, 109, 136, 146 Smart Grid technologies, effect of, 8 Grid, vii, 38 American grid, 48 off the grid, energy from, 6 power plants, 45. See also Power plants Smart Grid. See Smart Grid transmission systems, 56, 7 Grove, Sir William, 56 Gulf oil disaster, 16 Gulf Stream Florida current and, 89, 91 Hawaii magma well, 64 OTEC plant, 74 photovoltaic energy systems, 37 wind kite, 48 Heat exchanger, 4, 5 molten salt heat exchanger, 8, 130 OTEC plant, 73 recapture systems, 130 solar thermal electricity, 27 Heating systems geothermal. See Geothermal energy passive solar, 146 Helios project, 106, 110, 141 Helms Pumped Storage, 131 High-voltage lines, 5 Holland kite generators, 48 Hot dry rock, 62, 63, 64, 65. See also Geothermal energy timeline, 156, 157 Hot-rock. See Hot dry rock Hull University footfall recovery system, 131 Humboldt current, 89 Hybrid poplars as energy crop, 105, 106. See also Energy crops Hybrid willows as energy crop, 105, 106. See also Energy crops Hydrates, defined, 16, 114. See also Methane hydrate recovery Hydrocarbons, viii, ix, 11, 16, 109, 110, 116 Hydroelectric energy, 5, 10, 13, 6872 advantages of, 69 bottom line, 70 classroom activities for, 7071 current research and projects on, 69 design of site, 6869 described, 6869 disadvantages of, 70 good sites, factors for, 6869 homestead hydro, 69 how it measures up, 6970 how it works, 6869 in-flow turbines, 69 key factors, 70 location, factors for, 6869 micro-hydro systems, 69 potential of, 70 research, areas of, 69 timeline, 70, 155 Web sites about, 72 what it is, 6869 Hydrogen, 8, 10913, 130 advantages of, 109, 111 bottom line, 111 classroom activities for, 112 cost of production technology, 110, 111, 153 current research and projects on, 11011 delivery systems, 58 described, 10910 disadvantages of, 109, 111, 153 as fuel for fuel cells, 7, 8, 57 how it measures up, 111 how it works, 10910 industry and distribution system development, 155 key factors, 111 potential of, 111, 153 problems with, 109, 111, 153

166 \ Index Hydrogen (Cont.) production of, 10910 research and projects on, 11011 supply system problem, 57 timeline, 111, 155, 156, 157 transmission of, 7 Web sites about, 113 what it is, 10910 Hyperion Power micro-nuke unit, designing of, 53 IBM batteries, lithium, 136 Iceland geothermal wells, 62 Idaho geothermal resources, 63 Illinois zero-emissions coal gasification plant, 120 India coal power plants, 119 fuel cell development, 57 Indiana coal gasification plant planned, 121 International Space Station, 32 Iowa crops as power plant fuel, 106 Iraq kite energy system, 48 Ireland ocean current power plant, 90 offshore wind farm, 43 wind farms, 41 Isle of Wight, 101 Israel solar ponds for storing solar energy, 29 Italy geothermal power plant, 62 geothermal resources, 63 solar ponds for storing solar energy, 29 Jadoo Power Systems, 57 Japan batteries, lithium ion, 136 hydrogen as energy source, 111 ocean current, 89 solar ponds for storing solar energy, 29 space-based solar collection, 33 wave energy plant, 80 Jet stream wind, force of, 47 Kilowatt, viii Kilowatt-hours, viii Kites Benjamin Franklins kite experiment, vii electricity from. See Wind kites Kuwait solar ponds for storing solar energy, 29 Landfills methane recovery from, 11415, 152, 155. See also Methane energy timeline, 155 Lassen National Park geothermal fields, 63 Line loss, 5 Liquifaction systems for cleaning coal, 119, 120, 121, 153 Livestock operations as methane source, 115 Long Island Offshore Wind Initiative, 43 Louisiana bio waste, electricity from, 101 Magma geothermal resources, 64 Maine bio waste, electricity from, 101 Makani power wind kite, 48 Manure as methane source, 115 Massachusetts offshore wind farm, 42 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) artificial photosynthesis, research on, 110 battery technology, research on, 136 geothermal energy, estimates on, 65

Index / 167 photosynthesis (artificial), research on, 110 solar thermal power plant, students designing and building of, 28 McNeil Generating Station bio waste, gasification of, 101 Megawatt, viii Mercury, source of, 14 Meters net metering, photovoltaic technology and, 37 reverse metering, wind turbine use and, 43 Smart Meters, 8 Methane energy, 11418, 152 advantages of, 115 bottom line, 116 classroom activities for, 11617 current research and projects on, 115 described, 11415 disadvantages of, 11415, 116 global warming and, 114 how it measures up, 11516 how it works, 11415 key factors, 116 locations of releases, 11415 potential of, 116 problems with, 11415, 116 releases of methane, locations of, 114 15 research and projects on, 115 sources of, 11415 timeline, 116, 155 transportation, fuel for, 115 waste, gasification of, 101 Web sites about, 11718 what it is, 11415 Methane hydrate recovery, 16, 114, 11718 timeline, 155 Methogens, 136 Mexico geothermal resources, 63 solar ponds for storing solar energy, 29 Micro-nukes, 5255, 152 advantages of, 52, 53 bottom line, 5354 classroom activities for, 54 current research and projects on, 53 described, 52 disadvantages of, 52, 53 how they measure up, 53 how they produce electricity, 52 key factors, 54 potential of, 53, 154 problems with, 52, 53 questions about, 154 research and projects on, 53 timeline, 54, 155, 156 Web sites about, 55 what they are, 52 Military robots fuel cell power for, 57 Mississippi bio waste, electricity from, 101 MIT. See Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Molecular synthesizers, 141 Molten salt heat exchanger, 8, 130. See also Heat exchanger Montana geothermal resources, 63 Moon collectors of solar energy, 33 MSW programs. See Municipal solid waste Municipal solid waste, 9599, 152 advantages of, 96 bottom line, 97 classroom activities for, 9798 current research and projects on, 96 disadvantages of, 96 how it measures up, 96 how it works, 95 impediment to expanded use of, 96 key factors, 97 potential of, 97 research and projects on, 96 timeline, 97, 154, 156, 157 toxic wastes, 96 Web sites about, 99 what it is, 95

168 \ Index Nanotechnology, 14045 advantages of, 142 artificial photosynthesis, 110 batteries, research on, 142 carbon nanotubes, 142 classroom activities for, 14344 current research and projects on, 14142 defined, 140 described, 14041 disadvantages of, 142 engines, 141 examples of, 14041 grass, 142 Helios project, 110 how it measures up, 142 how it works, 14041 key factors, 142 molecular synthesizers, 141 nano grass, 142 potential of, 142, 153 questions about, 153 robots, 141 research and projects on, 14142 swarming concepts, 140 synthesizers, 141 timeline, 142, 155, 156, 157 Web sites about, 145 what it is, 14041 NASA batteries (silver zinc), technology for, 136 Jet Propulsion Lab, 90 ocean currents, new turbine designs for, 90 space-based solar panels, 32 Natural daylight, 145 Natural gas, 11, 13, 16 advantages of, 16 availability of, 15, 1617 disadvantages of, 16 as fossil fuel, viii, 16 fracturing, process of, 16 timeline, 155, 157 Natural ventilation, 146 Nature Conservancy, 42 Nebraska wind turbine power farms, 41 Net metering photovoltaic technology, 37 Netherlands cogeneration, use of, 126 Nevada geothermal resources, 63 New Mexico geothermal energy, injection and recovery system for, 63 micro-nuke unit design, plans for, 53 New York municipal solid waste, electrical production from, 95 ocean current demonstration project, 90 offshore wind farm, 43 waste, shipment of, 95 wind farm, 43 New Zealand geothermal resources, 63 Newcomen, Thomas, 141 Niagara Falls, 131 Nitrous oxides, 14 No-fly zone, 47, 48, 49 North Carolina bio waste, electricity from, 101 Norway gasification plant, 101 hydroelectric energy, 68 tidal energy potential site, 84 wave energy plant, 80 Nuclear-powered electricity, 11, 13, 1415 fission, use of, 23 micro-nukes. See Micro-nukes no-fly zones above power plants, 47, 48, 49 off-the-shelf. See Micro-nukes problems from, 15 storage of wastes, 15 timeline, 155, 157 NuScale, 53 Ocean current energy, 8994, 152 advantages of, 9091 bottom line, 91 classroom activities for, 9193

Index / 169 current research and projects on, 90 design of system, 90 described, 89 disadvantages of, 90, 91 how it measures up, 9091 how it works, 89 key factors, 91 potential of, 91 problems with, 90, 91 research and projects on, 90 speed of currents, 89 timeline, 91, 155 Web sites about, 9394 what it is, 89 Ocean energy technologies currents, energy from. See Ocean current energy potential of, 154 questions about, 154 thermal energy conversion. See Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) tides, energy from. See Tidal energy timeline, 155, 157 waves, energy from. See Wave energy Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), 7377 advantages of, 7475 aquatic farming and, 74 best use of, 74 bottom line, 75 classroom activities for, 7576 current research and projects on, 74 described, 7374 disadvantages of, 74, 75 how it measures up, 7475 how it works, 7374 key factors, 75 potential of, 75 problems with, 74, 75 research and projects on, 74 timeline, 75 Web sites about, 7677 what it is, 7374 Oersted, Hans, 4 Off the grid, energy from, 6 Ohio landfill for New York waste, 95 Oil dangers, 16 electricity from, 13, 1516 as fossil fuel, viii, 13 price of, 15 spills of, 16 Oman CO2 turned into rock, 120 Ontario methane plant, 115 OpenHydro Group, 85 Oregon geothermal resources, 63 hydroelectric energy, 68 wave energy demonstration project, 79 Oregon State University micro-nuke science, 53 Orkney Island, 85 OTEC. See Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) Ottumwa Station power plant, 106 Pacific Gas & Electric geothermal fields, steam from, 63 pumped storage system, 131 solar thermal plants, 28 space-based solar collector, 33 Pacific Northwest Lab low-temperature geothermal fields, research on, 64 Passive solar heating, 146 Pelamis Wave Power project, 79 Penn State University batteries, research on using biology in designing of, 136 Pennsylvania municipal solid waste, electrical production from, 95 Pentland Firth, 85 Philippines geothermal resources, 63 Photosynthesis (artificial), 105, 106, 110, 141

170 \ Index Photovoltaic technology, 5, 6, 3640, 152 advantages of, 38 bottom line, 3839 classroom activities for, 3940 current research and projects on, 3738 described, 3637 disadvantages of, 36, 38 how it measures up, 38 how it works, 3637 key factors, 38 limitations of, 3637, 38 net metering, 37 as off-grid systems, 37 potential of, 38 problems with, 3637, 38 research on, 3738 thin film technology, 38 timeline, 39, 154, 157 Web sites about, 40 what it is, 3637 wire enhanced cells, 38 Photovoltaics. See Photovoltaic technology Plant crops energy crops. See Energy crops residue from harvesting of. See Bio waste Plasma, 23 Poplars, hybrid as energy crop, 105, 106. See also Energy crops Portugal wave power farm, 79 Power plants, 45 bio waste plants. See Bio waste coal-fired, 14, 119 cogeneration systems. See Cogeneration; Combined heat and power (CHP) systems defined, 5 equipment in, 45 fuels used in, 5 geothermal, 10, 62 how they work, 45 hydroelectric, 5, 10, 68 hydrogen as fuel. See Hydrogen molecular, 141 nanotechnology and. See Nanotechnology nuclear energy plants, 11. See also Nuclear-powered electricity ocean current power plant. See Ocean current energy ocean thermal energy conversion plant, 7374. See also Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) pollution from, generally, ix, x, 14 run of the river, 69 wave energy power plants, 5, 78. See also Wave energy wind-generated, 5. See also Wind kites; Wind turbines Presidential Commission of Advisors on Science and Technology, 110 Prince Edward Sound oil spill in, 16 Princeton High Energy Plasma Lab, 24 Public, needs and wants of, 22 Pumped storage systems. See Storage systems PurGen company, 120 Qatar solar ponds for storing solar energy, 29 Reasons for becoming savvy consumer, viiixi Recapture systems, 13034 advantages of, 132 bottom line, 132 classroom activities for, 13233 compressed air, 7, 130 current research and projects on, 13132 described, 13031 disadvantages of, 132 flywheels, 8, 131 footfalls, 131 how they measure up, 132 how they work, 13031 hydrogen and, 8, 130 key factors, 132 molten salt heat exchanger, 8, 130 potential of, 132

Index / 171 pumped storage, 13031 research and projects on, 13132 sodium-sulfur batteries, 8, 130 storage systems, 13031 timeline, 132, 155 Web sites about, 134 what they are, 13031 Renewable, meaning of, 10 Reverse metering wind turbine use and, 43 Rivers, energy from. See Hydroelectric energy Robert Moses Plant, 131 Robots, 141 Rotocraft, 48 Rotokite, 48 Rubber tires as fuel for power plant boilers, 96 Run of the river dams, 69 Russia tidal energy potential site, 84 Salter Duck, 79 Sandia National Lab, 28 Scotland tidal energy potential site, 84, 85 wave energy system, 79 Scrubbing coal, cleaning of, 153 SeaGen turbines, 90 Seamill devices, 7980. See also Wave energy Sequestration of carbon, 119, 120, 121 coal, cleaning of, 119, 120, 121, 153 defined, 119 Severn River, 85 Siberia methane release, hot spot for, 114 Smart Grid, 68, 135, 155, 156 efficiency, improvement in, 130 location of plant, 6 long-range transmission system, 7 Smart Meters, 8 storage of energy, 78 technology, 6 Smart Meters, 8 Smog, 14 Sodium-sulfur batteries, 8, 130 Solar energy technologies ocean-based. See Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) passive solar heating, 146 photovoltaic energy. See Photovoltaic technology space-based. See Space-based solar collectors thermal electricity. See Solar thermal electricity timeline, 29, 155, 156 Solar panels in space. See Space-based solar collectors Solar thermal electricity, 8, 10, 2731, 152 abundance of solar energy, 27 advantages of, 28, 29 bottom line, 29 classroom activities for, 2930 current research and projects on, 2829 described, 2728 disadvantages of, 28, 29 how it measures up, 29 how it works, 2728 key factors, 29 parabolic mirror panels, 27 potential of, 29 problems with, 28, 29 research and projects on, 2829 storage of energy, 28 timeline, 29, 154 types of solar thermal plants, 2728 Web sites about, 31 what it is, 2728 Solar Two Power Tower, 28 Solaren Corporation, 33 South Carolina landfill for New York waste, 95 methane cogeneration plant, 115 South Korea ocean current energy test system, 90 Space-based solar collectors, 3235, 154 advantages of, 33 bottom line, 33

172 \ Index Space-based solar collectors (Cont) classroom activities for, 34 current research and projects on, 3233 described, 32 disadvantages of, 33 how they measure up, 33 how they produce electricity, 32 key factors, 33 moon collectors, 33 potential of, 33 questions about, 154 research and projects on, 3233 timeline, 33, 155, 157 Web sites about, 35 what they are, 32 where to place them, 3233 Sridar, K. R., 57 Steam engine, invention of, viii Storage of energy. See Storage systems Storage systems, 78 advantages of, 136 batteries. See Batteries bottom line, 137 classroom activities for, 13738 compressed air, 7, 130 current research and projects on, 136, 152 described, 135 development of, timeline, 155 devices or processes for, 13539 disadvantages of, 137 flywheels, 8 how they measure up, 13637 how they work, 135 hydrogen, 8, 130 key factors, 137 molten salt heat exchanger, 8, 130 potential of, 137, 152 processes for, 13539 pumped storage, 13031 research on, 136, 152 sodium-sulfur batteries, 8, 130 solar thermal energy, 28 timeline, 137, 155 Web sites about, 139 what they are, 135 Strangford Lough (Ireland), 90 Strip mining, 14, 120 Substations, 3, 5, 43 Sulfur dioxide, 14, 119 Swarming concepts, 140. See also Nanotechnology Sweden solar heat, storage of, 28 Switchgrass as energy crop, 105, 106. See also Energy crops Switzerland municipal solid waste, electrical production from, 95 Syngas, 114 production of, 95, 100, 101, 110, 119 waste, gasification of, 101 Synthesizers, 141. See also Nanotechnology Three Mile Island nuclear-powered plant accident, 15 Tidal energy, 8488, 152 advantages of, 85 bottom line, 86 classroom activities for, 8687 current research and projects on, 85 described, 84 disadvantages of, 8586 height of tide needed, 84 how it measures up, 8586 how it works, 84 intermittent nature of tidal current, 84 key factors, 86 potential of, 86 research and projects on, 85 slack tide, 848 timeline, 86, 156 Web sites about, 88 what it is, 84 Timelines batteries, 137 bio waste, 102, 155, 156, 157 clean coal technology, 121, 155, 157 coal-fired power plants, decline in, 155 cogeneration, 127, 155 conservation, 148, 155

Index / 173 energy crops, 107 fuel cells, 58, 154, 155, 156, 157 fusion, 25, 152, 156, 157 geothermal energy, 65, 155, 156, 157 hot dry rock, 156, 157 hydroelectric energy, 70, 155 hydrogen, 111, 155, 156, 157 landfills, methane recovery from, 155 methane energy, 116, 155 methane hydrate recovery, 155 micro-nukes, 54, 155, 156 municipal solid waste, 97, 154, 156, 157 nanotechnology, 142, 155, 156, 157 natural gas, 155, 157 nuclear-powered electricity, 155, 157 ocean current energy, 91, 155 ocean energy technologies, 75, 91, 155 ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), 75 photovoltaic technology, 39, 154, 157 recapture systems, 132, 155 solar energy technologies, 29, 33, 155, 156 solar thermal electricity, 29, 154 space-based solar collectors, 33, 155, 157 storage systems, 137, 155 tidal energy, 86, 156 20102020, 15455 20202030, 15556 20302040, 156 2050 and beyond, 15657 wave energy, 80, 155, 156 wind energy technologies, 4142, 44, 49, 154, 155, 156, 157 wind farms, 154 wind kites, 49, 155 wind turbines, 4142, 44 Tires as fuel for power plant boilers, 96 Toshiba Corporation micro-nuke unit, designing of, 53 Transformers, 3, 5 Transmission systems, 56, 7 long-range, 7 Turbines, 4, 5, 7, 10 flywheel and, 131 geothermal power plant, 62 hydroelectric energy, 68, 69, 70 ocean current energy, 89, 90, 91 ocean tidal energy, 84, 85, 86 ocean wave energy, 78, 79 OTEC plant, 73, 74 pumped storage and, 130 solar thermal energy, 27, 28 tidal energy, 84, 85, 86 wave energy, 78, 79 wind turbines. See Wind turbines United Kingdom. See also Great Britain cogeneration, use of, 126 tidal power, 85 University of Alaska at Fairbanks methane release, science on hot spots for, 114 University of CaliforniaBerkeley photosynthesis (artificial) research, 106, 110, 141 photovoltaic technology, scientific work on, 38 University of Michigan ocean current technology, research on, 90 Uranium energy from. See Nuclear-powered electricity enrichment of, 15 Urban smog, 14 U.S. Army fuel cell use, 57 U.S. Department of Energy, 101 cogeneration capacity, goal for, 125, 126 micro-nuke technology, study of, 53 natural gas, forecast on use of, 16 recycling produced but unused electricity, estimates on savings, 130 zero-emissions coal gasification plant, support for, 120 U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) biomass waste, estimate on availability of, 100 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) methane in ice, estimates about, 114

174 \ Index U.S. Navy fuel cell testing, 57 nuclear energy, use of, 15 USGS. See U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Utilities, needs of, 21 Ventilation, natural, 146 Vermont bio waste, gasification of, 101 Wake Forest photovoltaic technology, research on, 38 Walmart fuel cell use by, 57 photovoltaic system at, 37 Washington geothermal resources, 63 hydroelectric energy, 68 wave energy demonstration project, 79 Watt, James, viii Watts, viii Wave energy, 5, 7883 advantages of, 80 best sites for power plants, 78 bottom line, 80 classroom activities for, 8182 current research and projects on, 7980 designs for power plants, 7879 described, 7879 disadvantages of, 79, 80 how it measures up, 80 how it works, 7879 key factors, 80 potential of, 80 problems with, 79, 80 research and projects on, 7980 timeline, 80, 155, 156 Web sites about, 8283 what it is, 7879 Wavegen, 79 WE-NET (world energy network), 111 Web sites on batteries, 139 on clean coal technology, 12324 on cogeneration, 12829 on conservation, 150 on energy crops, 108 on fuel cells, 6061 on fusion, 26 on geothermal energy, 67 on hydroelectric energy, 72 on hydrogen, 113 on methane energy, 11718 on micro-nukes, 55 on municipal solid waste, 99 on nanotechnology, 145 on ocean current energy, 9394 on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), 7677 on photovoltaic technology, 40 on recapture systems, 134 on solar thermal electricity, 31 on space-based solar collectors, 35 on storage systems, 139 on tidal energy, 88 on wave energy, 8283 on wind kites, 51 on wind turbines, 46 Willows, hybrid as energy crop, 105, 106. See also Energy crops Wind energy technologies, 5, 152 kites. See Wind kites power of wind, 47 timeline, 154, 155, 156, 157 turbines. See Wind turbines Wind farms offshore, 41, 4243 timeline, 154 Wind kites, 4751 advantages of, 48 bottom line, 49 classroom activities for, 4950 current research and projects on, 48 described, 47 disadvantages of, 48 how they measure up, 48 how they produce electricity, 47 hurdles for, 48 key factors, 49 potential, 49 research and projects on, 48

Index / 175 timeline, 49, 155 Web sites about, 51 what they are, 47 Wind turbines, 10, 4146 advantages of, 4344 best locations for, 42 birds, killing of, 42 bottom line, 44 classroom activities for, 4445 current research and projects on, 4243 described, 4142 disadvantages of, 42, 43, 44 goal in United States, 4142 how much they are used, 4142 how they measure up, 4344 how they work, 4142 key factors, 44 offshore farms, 41, 4243 potential of, 44 problems to overcome, 42, 43, 44 research on, 4243 reverse metering, 43 size of, 41 small wind turbine designs, 43 timeline, 4142, 44 Web sites about, 46 what they are, 4142 Windmills. See Wind turbines Wisconsin hydroelectric energy, 68 Wood waste. See Bio waste World energy network (WE-NET), 111 Wyoming geothermal resources, 63 strip mining, 120 Yellowstone National Park geothermal fields, 63 ZPower company, 136

About the Author

The only West Point graduate to turn professional storyteller, KENDALL HAVEN holds a masters degree in science; has performed for over five million people; and has led his breakthrough writing workshops for more than 260,000 students and 60,000 teachers, as well as for numerous government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and major corporations. He has won more than twenty major awards for his story writing and telling. This is his twentysecond book for Libraries Unlimited.