energy storage

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No Manhattan Project, But Don’t Say No To Breakthrough Innovations

April 10, 2009 in accelerating change, analysis, carbon mitigation, energy efficiency, energy generation, energy storage, opinion, technology by nils | 1 comment

a polar bear and her baby

The polar bears say "keep the innovations coming - it's getting warm out here!" (image by Just Being Myself, CC 2.0 licensed)

While I agree with Joseph Romm on Climate Progress that we can't count on a "Manhattan Project"-style endeavour to engineer our way out of the climate crisis in the short term, nonetheless, I think it's reasonable to have a certain expectation that technology will improve over the right timescale, so we can be ready to take advantage of it.

A few weeks ago Martin Brown had a great post on his Fairsnape blog on Recession Thoughts and Tips. One of his many excellent suggestions was

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DoE Secretary Steven Chu: We Need Nobel-Level Breakthroughs

February 13, 2009 in accelerating change, energy generation, energy storage, growth, policy, solar electricity by nils | Add your comment

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

Yesterday the New York Times published an interview (including some of the original audio) with our new Energy Secretary, Steven Chu. Among other comments, he said that to address the climate emergency, we need "Nobel-level breakthroughs" in several key areas - batteries, biofuels, and solar photovoltaics." As an illustration, he pointed out:

The photovoltaics we have today, ... without subsidy, and without even the additional cost of storage, it's about a factor of five higher than electricity generation by gas or coal. Suppose someone comes along and invents a way of getting ... solar photovoltaics at one fifth the cost, so you don't even think about subsidies anymore. You just slap it everywhere... That, in my opinion, would take something, which I would say, is a bit of a breakthrough."

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Fuel Cell Innovation Update

February 9, 2009 in energy storage, technology by nils | 3 comments

The week I started this blog in August 2008, there were three major fuel-cell related discoveries making the rounds in the science magazines. Since then, there have been new announcements every week of an improved catalyst or membrane or electrolyte. As these discoveries mature into real products and enter the market, the option of using fuel cells for energy storage, both for homes as well as vehicles, will become more and more cost-effective.

Energy storage is potentially a big part of the zero-net energy house picture, and is certainly critical for the hydrogen automobile transition. I thought I'd highlight a few recent discoveries and advances in the world of fuel cells, the "energy storage of the future."

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Avoiding The Cliff Ahead

January 29, 2009 in accelerating change, analysis, consumption, economy, energy efficiency, energy generation, energy storage, green building, opinion, policy, profits by nils | 1 comment

Uluwatu Temple, Bali (HDR)

A cliff in Bali (image by seanmcgrath, CC 2.0 licensed)

My green building and blogging colleague Barry Katz just had a post about James Howard Kunstler on his The Future Is Green Blog. Kunstler is one of the "dystopians" featured in a  New Yorker article last week. Kunstler is not sanguine about what the future is going to look like for us and our descendants. He thinks that not only is global warming likely to cause a disaster, but so is the current, or an upcoming, financial meltdown. Barry writes:

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Zero Net Energy Homes – Part 1

January 6, 2009 in energy efficiency, energy generation, energy storage, green building by nils | 3 comments

This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Zero Net Energy Homes
Beautiful sunset (CC 2.0 license)

Beautiful sunset (photo by Santa Rosa OLD SKOOL, CC 2.0 license)

This is the first post in a series on zero-net energy homes. Over the course of the series I will be covering all aspects of this topic, from the technology and knowledge available today, to the changes needed in technology, building codes, trade skills, design approaches, and will to achieve the goal of all new homes eventually being zero net energy.

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Ten Energy Predictions For The Next Decade

January 5, 2009 in accelerating change, carbon mitigation, economy, energy efficiency, energy generation, energy storage, green building, integrative design, opinion, solar electricity, transportation by nils | Add your comment

Snow on the San Gabriel Mountains (photo by Jerry Thompson1)

Snow on the San Gabriel Mountains (photo by Jerry Thompson1, CC 2.0 license)

On December 30 of last year (six days ago), my wife and I were in Pasadena, CA visiting the Greene and Greene exhibit at the Huntington Library. It was one of those glorious and rare smog-free days in the LA basin. The air sparkled, you could see for miles in every direction, and mountain range after mountain range was visible - all the way out to the snow-covered San Gabriels. Nowadays, the air is only ever this clear around the Christmas holiday, when the freeway traffic is substantially reduced and a lot of factories shut down for the week. It got me thinking about how the future - say ten to twenty years hence - may be unrecognizable in both dramatic and mundane ways. For example, smog-free days may no longer be rare in LA, once the economy has shifted off fossil fuels. (I suspect the traffic will remain, unfortunately!)

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Integrated Design Makes “Smart Garage” Part of Utility’s Infrastructure

December 5, 2008 in energy storage, green building, transportation by nils | Add your comment

Garage of the Future

Garage of the Future (photo by Elsie esq., CC 2.0 Attribution License)

The Rocky Mountain Institute's Andrew Demaria blogged a few weeks ago about "smart garages" that combine smart cars, a smart home network, and much smarter utilities into a synergistic system that optimizes power usage. After describing a "day in the life" of a smart garage:

Given the utility is experiencing a peak load period, it asks my house if it can use the spare power in the car's battery and send that electricity elsewhere in the grid. What's more, it will pay me for that power. Since I like being paid, I have already programmed the system to accept such requests.

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A Note From The Fuel Cell Research Front

October 29, 2008 in biofuels, energy generation, energy storage, materials by nils | Add your comment

Methanol fuel cell.

Methanol fuel cell. Image via Wikipedia

I plan to do an in-depth post or series on fuel cells soon, because there is so much breakthrough work going on in this research area. Fuel cells are interesting on so many fronts - for example, they're probably the best way to use the hydrogen generated by Daniel Nocera's new hydrogen splitting method, announced in mid-August. And just since August, researchers have announced big improvements or cost reductions in every component of the fuel cell - membrane, catalyst, and electrodes.

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Top Green Energy Stories For August 2008

September 10, 2008 in accelerating change, business benefits, energy generation, energy storage, opinion, solar electricity by nils | 1 comment

Top Fivewoodleywonderworks

Top Five Stories

August was a great month for energy storage breakthroughs! In addition, a big talking head talks big, and a business-of-green-energy announcement make my list of top stories.

1. Hydrogen from water
2. Fuel cell breakthrough #1: cheap catalyst
3. Fuel cell breakthrough #2: better cathode
4. Al Gore's call to action: The U.S. should "produce all electricity from carbon-free sources by 2018." (Actually from late July, but my blog didn't start until August!)
5. Green energy investment up 60% YoY in 2007, on target for 60% YoY growth in 2008

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Numbers and Facts About Energy

September 2, 2008 in energy efficiency, energy generation, energy storage by nils | Add your comment

Chocolate Chip cookies have a lot of energy content (image from Wikipedia, licensed under CC Attribution Sharealike 2.5 license

Chocolate Chip cookies have a lot of energy content (image from Wikipedia, licensed under CC Attribution Sharealike 2.5 license

One of my pet peeves is news stories about energy that say something like "Flokistan just added 100 MWs in solar panels to its grid. This is enough to power 150 homes," with no further numbers. I always want to know the context, like how many MWs does Flokistan use? How many homes are there in Flokistan? How does 100 MWs in solar panels compare in cost with putting in 100 MWs of coal-fired powerplants, and how long will it take to pay back?

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