Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

by Ray Block

I have never been as excited in alternative energy technologies, such as wind and solar, as I am about fuel cells, now powering hydrogen fuelled vehicles. My interest here is in small stationary fuel cells, a segment of the market, which is starting to take off in a big way, although total revenue numbers are still small (under US$ 1 billion).

 As a reference source puts it modestly: “fuel cells are the perfect melding of benefits from energy sources.” They combine the benefits of easy refuelling and continuous operation potential of internal combustion engines, and the efficient and quiet operation of batteries. So they are the ideal energy alternative.

 They don’t require recharging as batteries do, and they are pollution free, unlike batteries and combustion engines. However, they do require refuelling, although this can be as simple as using low cost biogas.

 “Fuel cells work via an electrochemical reaction that converts the chemical energy stored in a fuel directly into electricity. There are five types of fuel cells, which utilise different electrochemical reactions, but the general process is always the same. Fuel is oxidised at the anode, electrons flow through an external circuit to do electrical work, and then fuel is reduced at the cathode.”

 The different fuel cell technologies are PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane); PA (phosphoric acid); SO (solid oxide); AFC (alkaline); (MC) molten carbonate; DM (direct methanol)

 Fuel cells first came to light back in 1838, when “William Robert Grove arranged two platinum electrodes with one end of each immersed in a container of sulphuric acid and the other ends separately sealed in containers of oxygen and hydrogen, a constant current would flow between the electrodes.”

 Fast forward to the late 1930s, when Frederick Thomas Bacon began researching alkali electrolyte fuel cells. During the second world war, Bacon worked on developing a fuel cell that could be used in Royal Navy submarines. In 1958, he demonstrated an alkali cell using a stack of 10 inch diameter electrodes for UK’s National Research Development Corp. Bacon’s fuel cells proved reliable and attracted the interest of Pratt & Whitney. The US company licensed Bacon’s research work for the Apollo spacecraft fuel cells.

 United Technologies Corp is the parent company of  Pratt & Whitney, and today UTC Power is a world leader in fuel cells using  the phosphoric acid technology.

 UTC Power’s latest 400kW fuel cell system is to be installed in Whole Foods Market 50,000 sq ft store, currently under construction in South San Jose CA). This will be the third Whole Foods fuel cell supermarket installation. “The UTC Power fuel cell system will generate 90 per cent of the store’s electricity needs and its thermal energy waste heat will be used for store heating, cooling and refrigeration for an overall efficiency of approximately 60 per cent, nearly twice the efficiency of the US electricity grid.”

The market research firm Fuel Cells Today says that to date more than 80 per cent of the small stationary market is held by companies producing polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC).

As to the new sensation of Bloom Energy, with the technology of solid oxide fuel cells, which Science Daily (May 29, 2009) says has great potential for stationary and mobile applications. Stationary uses ranges from residential applications to power plants. Mobile applications include power for ships at sea and in space, as well as for autos. In addition to electricity, when SOFCs are operated in reverse mode as solid oxide electrolyzer cells, pure hydrogen can be generated by splitting water.

“The flaw in solid oxide fuel cells, which has delayed commercial production is in the integrity of the seals within and between power producing units. Composed of ceramic materials that can operate at temperatures as high as 1,000C (1,800 degrees F). SOFCs use high temperatures to separate oxygen ions from air. The ions pass through a crystal lattice and oxidize a fuel. The chemical reaction produces electrons, which flow through an external circuit creating electricity.”

“To produce enough energy for a particular application, SOFC modules are stacked together.  Each module’s compartments must be sealed, and there must be seals between the modules in a stack, so that air and fuel do not leak or mix.”

Bloom Energy, unlike other fuel cell systems makes a distributed energy system replacing the electricity grid, with its solid oxide fuel cells. The unveiling of Bloom attracted  around 900 articles in February 2009 in “unprecedented publicity” across major TV, newspaper and internet blogs. According to Google News, Bloom attracted one of the highest ever hit rates for a single product launch.

Commenced in 2002,   with sales of Bloom 100kW systems from 2009, the company will have its initial public offer in 2010, with John Doerr the doyen of venture capitalists of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers, who floated Google so brilliantly, as the pivotal force behind the public float. Judging by the recent overwhelming successful IPO of Telsa Motors, Bloom Energy will be the big US float this year.

KR Sirdah, Bloom’s chief executive headed NASA’s fuel cells systems for use in the Apollo Mars probe, and when that mission was axed on the grounds of high costs, he took his scientific team with him. Bloom Energy located at Sunnyvale, Calif. first started raising venture capital in 2001, and was the first alternative energy company to be funded by Kleiner Perkins.

Four Bloom 100kV SOFCs have already been installed at Google’s Mountain View Californian headquarters. The 100-kilowatt modules are made of small flat 25-watt fuel cell wafers made of zirconium oxide that are stacked together.

This eliminates the problem of leaks, which as stated above, has slowed the development of this technology. The stacks are made of ceramics and metal. The Bloom box sells for US$700,000 to $800,000. Larger Bloom Boxes of 400 kW systems provides electricity to a Google building housing an experimental data centre, and similar systems are installed in Walmart’s stores.

 The company is also partnering with other blue chip companies,such as Bank of America; Coca Cola; Cox Enterprises (diversified media and communications group); eBay is said to have five Bloom Boxes; FedEx; Staples Center, (the Los  Angeles sports and entertainment landmark)  The Bloom box operates at high temperatures (over 600 C).

 by Ray Block

 It’s great to see the substantial growth in wind energy installations in 2009, as the international economy struggles to get out of recession. But what is disturbing is that if the rate of growth in new wind energy capacity continues to grow at its existing pace, China the spoiler and wrecker of the Copenhagen climate change meetings in December will end up as No 1.

 For the fifth year in a row, Chinese wind energy capacity continues to double. The global wind energy association (GWEA) reported (February 3 2010) that China was the world’s biggest market in 2009, increasing capacity from 12.1 GW (that is 12,100 MW) in 2008 to 25.1 GW at the end of last year.

 Along with newly added capacity of 1.27 GW in India, and smaller additions in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, more than 14 GW of new wind energy capacity was added in Asia in 2009.

 Last year also saw a significant increase in Australia’s wind energy installed capacity by 406 MW in 2008 to 1.712 GW at the end of last year. Australia has now legislated for a mandatory 20 per cent renewable energy level by 2020.

 United States continues to shine in new wind energy capacity of 9.922 GW in 2009 to reach a cumulative total of 35.159 GW, with Texas and California still well in the lead. Canada also did well in new wind energy additions of 950 MW to a new total of 3.319 GW installed capacity, while in Latin America total installed capacity doubled over 2009 to a new level of 1.274 GW.

 Europe, the original home of windmills, and where the modern wind energy market commenced in 1976 had a good year in 2009, with new wind energy installations of 10.526 GW, of which more than 95 per cent is in the 27 countries making up the European Union.

 Spain continued to lead over Germany in new wind energy capacity, followed closely by Germany. Then came in close order Italy, France and UK. Total installed wind energy capacity at the end of 2009 rose to 76.152 GW.

 As in wind energy, wind turbine manufacturing has become a very competitive battleground, with intense price competition from Chinese producers, upsetting the old leadership in which traditional world leader Vestas of Denmark was No 1 and Gamesa of Spain No2.

 With the US catching up and then outdistancing Germany, GE Energy came into the industry by acquisition, and then recently consolidated this with the takeover of Norwegian based Scan Wind, a novel producer of gearless turbines for use in the offshore wind market.

 Calendar year 2008 saw GE nearly catching up to the traditional world leader Vestas of Denmark. Gamesa of Spain was far behind in third place. Then followed in close order Enercon (Germany), Suzlon (India) and Siemens(Germany).

 The three largest Chinese producers Sinovel, Dongfang and Goldwind were a little behind, but growing very rapidly, to take advantage both of China’s leap ahead in wind energy, and a preferential tariff favouring local producers. This has enabled Chinese producers to gain a 70 per cent share of the Chinese wind turbine market.

 Even in 2008, one of every eight wind turbines produced were Chinese. But 2009 is another story again, with Vestas facing eroding market share, its share price in February 2010 falling 60 per cent from its peak 2008 value. Gamesa went backward in 2009, losing market share and falling into losses.

 The ever expanding domestic Chinese wind turbine market has enabled the domestic wind turbine producers to both expand aggressively offshore with substantial price competition, and to produce larger capacity wind turbines.

 The average Chinese wind turbine  was  until recently a 1.5 megawatt unit, with Sinovel Wind Group, the largest Chinese producer in 2009 accounting for an output of  2,400 1.5 MW wind turbines and 100 300 MW turbines.

 Sinovel commenced a production line for its 5 MW wind turbine in January, and this is expected to come on line at the end of 2010. The 300 MW and 500 MW turbines are destined for the offshore and near offshore wind power markets.

 Dongfang Turbine Co., a subsidiary of China’s largest provider of power generating equipment has a contract with American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC) to develop a 5 MW wind turbine for the offshore wind market, having already supplied a 2.5 MW prototype to the Chinese.

by Ray Block

Global warming sceptics believe that temperatures have fallen in the last 10 years. The evidence is quite to the contrary.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) says that in terms of global temperature, “2009 was the second warmest year (after 2005) in the modern record.” In the Southern Hemisphere, it was “the warmest year since modern records began in 1880. The largest temperature increases were in the Arctic and Antarctic Peninsular.“

“Except for a levelling off between the 1940s and 1970s, Earth surface temperatures have increased since 1880. The last decade has brought the temperatures to the highest levels ever recorded.” (1880 was the year when modern instrumentation was introduced.)

“Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade, due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to near record temperatures. 2009 was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years -1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007.”

An alternative global temperature analysis used by the World Meteorological Organisation says that 2009 was the fifth warmest year on record. But whether it is the second or fifth warmest year, the temperature trend is definitely up, with the first decade of the new century the hottest on record.

The president of the WMO, Michel Jarraud highlights the extent of weather adversities- the decade’s worst drought on record in Australia, the worst drought in five decades in China, a poor monsoon in India causing severe droughts, the big drought in Kenya leading to massive food shortages.

There are two recognised global temperature analysis techniques.

GISS uses publicly available data from three data sets. One is weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world. The second is satellite observations at sea surface. The third data base is Antarctica research station measurements. Loaded into a computer program, the summaries calculates trends in temperature anomalies, relative to the average temperature for the same month during the period 1951-1980.

The other recognised temperature analysis technique used by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is based on the Hadley Center-Met Office (UK), Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of University of East Anglia (UK), which the sceptics deride, along with two US data sources.

by Ray Block

It’s becoming readily accepted in the community that energy efficiency is important. But it isn’t really understood that the No1 priority on the road to a low carbon economy is achieving energy savings.

Investment in energy savings in buildings, industry and transportation ranks above investment in new energy sources including wind, solar, biomass and biofuels. The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook November 2009, says that end-use efficiency is the biggest contributor to the cutting back of CO2 emissions.

The agency also said that energy efficiency investment has a short payback period in fuel cost savings. Expressed as a fuel source in its own right, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), says in its report on the cost of saved energy September 2009, that energy efficiency would cost the equivalent of 1.6 cents/kilowatt hour (kWh) to 3.3 cents per kilowatt hour kWh, averaging 2.5 cents/kWh.

This compared with pulverised coal at 7 cents/kWh to 14 cents/kWh, combined cycle natural gas 7 cents/ kWh to 10 cents/kWh, and wind energy 4 cents/kWh to 9 cents/kWh.

This led the authors of the ACEEE report to say that “energy efficiency is by far the least cost resource option. They went on: “it appears to be a resource that continues to renew itself- the more energy efficiency opportunities we look for, the more we find.”

The biggest area for energy savings is in buildings, adding together industrial, commercial and residential, which collectively amounts to 38 per cent of energy use.

This is one and half times energy use in transportation. The figures are derived from a four year international survey by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD.

Energy codes and standards are largely ineffective, and safety standards are not much better. So how do you bring about change? A price on carbon, with appropriate tax incentives helps. There is a big role for research and development. But no matter how much is achieved in R & D, both with new technology and incremental change, the biggest problem remaining is the overwhelming tendency of inertia, clinging to traditional ways of doing things.

George David, chairman of the privately funded Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington (September 2009) said that “higher carbon costs and improved efficiency technologies will increase the attractiveness of investments and lessen the economic drag of otherwise lower returns. But we still need the stimulus of regulation to get us started”

Two ways of achieving energy savings provide a transformational way of approach.

The first example comes from George David. He quoted the example of newer elevators, which recapture and make available for re-use the energy on descent that was expended on ascent. Reducing energy consumption by 75 per cent for the same speed and load, compared to older models, with non-regenerative elevators.

The other example comes from Green Inc, the environmental blog of the New York Times. It involves the installation of a stationary fuel cell in a 69,000 sq ft supermarket in upstate New York, which has largely supplanted the electricity grid supply for the store’s lighting, heating and cooling requirements.

As the fuel cell supplier, UTC Power says fuel cells don’t have the energy waste of traditional power generation, where more than half of the energy goes up the stack as greenhouse gas. By contrast, fuel cell systems convert heat exhaust into cooling and heating, turning potential waste into usable energy, with an energy conversion efficiency exceeding 85 per cent.

by Ray Block

by Ray Block

When Arthur J Goldman, the founder of Luz abandoned the parabolic trough for his new start up BrightSource Energy, the dominant feature is a 143-metre central power tower.

On top of the tower, 1600 double tracking heliostats (small mirrors) reflect sunlight on to a boiler to produce high temperature steam.

The company has contracts with the two largest utilities in California- PGE and SCE to deliver 2.6 GW of solar power from 2013 onward. It will start with a 100 MW unit at Ivanpah, with construction commencing in 2010. A new company Ivanpah Solar, bringing in the large specialist construction group Bechtel, as an equity partner will later be expanded to 440 MW, with the addition of three further solar plants.

BrightSource also intends to install 900 MW of solar power at Coyote Springs, Nevada, largely to fulfil contract agreements with the Californian utilities. Other expansion plans are for solar plants in Arizona and New Mexico.

With a much smaller area of land and less water usage, the power tower has cost advantages over the solar trough, and the energy efficiency can be as high as 34 per cent. But there is one major difficulty still to be overcome. The Andasol plants in Spain are fitted with thermal storage capability of 7.5 hours, which allows the operators of the power grid to rely on the solar plant to deliver power for at least two hours, irrespective of the cloud cover. BrightSource doesn’t have thermal storage capability at this stage.

Another company using the power tower concept is eSolar. Little more than two years old, founder Bill Gross, an entrepreneur in computer software has moved very quickly into CSP, with a power tower concept and thousands of small flat mirrors similar to BrightSource. A man in a hurry, Gross’ company already opened a demonstration plant in August 2009 with capacity of 5 MW in Lancaster, CA to prove that the technology produces cost effective electricity, and can be replicated.

The main cost of the plant is the steel and the actuator for controlling the small flat modular mirrors. The steel holds the mirror in shape without distorting, to stay in a perfect parabola. “Because we use a one square meter mirror, we use half the steel of a solar trough,” says Gross.

The eSolar system has computer controlled 24,000 individual mirrors, all pointing in slightly different directions to project on one spot, with each mirror having its own microprocessor to control movement. Software is made up of 50 people in a company of 135 staff. Bill Gross estimates that the build and install cost of a modular 46 MW plant will be between $2.50 and $3 per watt.

eSollar has inked in contracts for 245 MW with SCE in Southern California and one of 92 MW with El Paso Electric in New Mexico. This is quite modest compared to the latest step announced in January 20l0.

A deal with China Shandong Penglai Electric, brings eSolar into the big time. Involved is an almost certain technology transfer involving 2 GW of solar power in a $5 billion deal. The project will start off with 92 MW, with development starting in 2010.The magnitude of the whole contract is exceptional, given that the eSolar basic plant design is for 46 MW of generating capacity.

The Irish renewable energy investment company, NTR, which bought control of SES Systems and its sister company Tessera Solar in 2008 for $100 million has moved forward quickly, with an initial 1.5 MW plant in Peoria Arizona, and a 27 MW plant in San Antonio Texas, involving a 20 year power purchase agreement with CPS Energy.

SES, formerly Stirling Energy Systems, with a then struggling capital base had saddled itself in 2005 with big Californian contracts. These comprise the 900 MW Imperial Valley 1 and 2, and the 850 MW Calico 1 and 2 purchase power agreement in Southern California, with San Diego Gas & Electric and SCE. There have been difficulties with environmental lobby groups holding up regulatory approvals.

It is ironic that the SES technology is the most economic of all CSP systems in the amount of land utilised and in water usage. Yet the Calico project in the Mojave Desert, if it were to gain regulatory approval would still require 34,000 solar dishes, each 40ft high and 38ft wide on 8,230 acres.

The SES CSP system doesn’t have a parabolic trough, or a power tower. But the SunCatcher solar power collection dishes, which has been re-designed with the research of Sandia National Labs’ National Solar Test Facility is now ready for commercial production. Although, there is no capability for thermal storage, it may become a winner in some markets.

The modular SunCatcher uses precision mirrors attached to a parabolic dish to focus the sun’s rays onto a receiver, which transmits the heat to a Stirling engine. The engine is a sealed system filled with hydrogen. As the gas heats and cools, its pressure rises and falls. The change in pressure drives the piston inside the engine, producing mechanical power, which in turn drives a generator to make electricity.

The new SunCatcher is much lighter than the original model, it is round instead of rectangular to allow for more efficient use of steel, has improved optics, there are 60 per cent fewer engine parts, and fewer mirrors- 40 instead of 80. Automobile manufacturing techniques have been used. To reduce costs, the reflective mirrors are formed into a parabolic shape using stamped sheet metal.

Sandia National Labs test measurement of solar to grid conversion efficiency of the SES system made in February 2008 was 31.25 per cent.