Investing in More than Just Infrastructure
April 27, 2011
Electricity is important to Canadians. It not only powers Canadian homes and businesses, in 2010 it contributed about $25 billion to the Canadian economy and provided more than 100,000 jobs. However, according to the Conference Board of Canada, approximately $293 billion need to be spent on infrastructure over the next 20 years to keep the current flowing.
Capacity growth was biggest in the 60s and 70s, averaging about six percent per year. In the 80s, this dropped to 2.9 per cent and decreased further in the 90s and 2000s to 0.5 per cent. And while infrastructure investment has been at record levels the past few years, it has gone more toward maintaining capacity and not to increasing it.
Between 2010 and 2030, $195.7 billion will be needed for capacity-building projects to either refurbish existing generating facilities or replace retired ones. About two-thirds of that will be spent in three provinces:
| Province | Requirement | Purpose |
| Ontario | $60 billion | Refurbishment, retirement, Feed-in Tariff program |
| Alberta | $44 billion | Oil sands expansion, replacing coal-fired generation |
| Quebec | $29 billion | New wind projects, hydro refurbishment |
But it’s not just generation projects that are needed. Transmission and distribution projects account for about one third of the budget. Of the $36 million in transmission investment, 72 per cent will be spent in three provinces:
| Province | Requirement | Purpose |
| Alberta | $17 billion |
North-south interconnections |
| Ontario | $5 billion | |
| British Columbia | $4 billion |
Distribution projects account for $62 billion of new investment, with three provinces spending about 87 per cent of the distribution total:
| Province | Requirement | Purpose |
| Quebec | $22 billion | Distributed generation, smart meters, changing electricity requirements. |
| Ontario | $21 billion | |
| Alberta | $11 billion |
It may seem like a high price to pay, but the expenditure is going towards updating or replacing old, inefficient generating facilities, many of which are coal fired, and building more efficient renewable generation. In the long run, it’s a worthwhile investment.
See-through Solar Windows See Promise
April 27, 2011
Researchers at MIT continue to improve the efficiency of a transparent solar cell. Coming to an office tower near you soon?
Miscanthus, Biomass Crops Look to Change Focus of Agriculture
April 26, 2011
Perennial grasses being tested for their potential to produce biomass.
Ford Names 25 Top EV-ready Cities in the U.S.
April 26, 2011
Look to the coast cities for the best infrastructure support.
Energy BOT Squad’s Newest Member
April 26, 2011
This week we’re heading out into the field to find the most rustic member of the Energy BOT Squad: BiofuelBOT. Powered by biofuels that can be produced from sources like corn, cellulosic crops and even waste from the lumber industry, he’s a BOT who can pretty much consume anything.
Energy from biomass is actually not a new concept. In fact, burning wood to produce heat and light is the oldest form of biomass energy. But modern technologies like wood pellets have changed the way we make that fire, compressing the waste from pulp and paper mills into tiny, intensely burning pellets. In British Columbia, where the lumber industry has had to face the scourge of mountain pine beetles, wood pellets are even part of the province’s energy plan. But even a tough BOT like BiofuelBOT has to leave the forest sometimes.
Biomass energy also includes the creation of more complex biofuels, like ethanol and biodiesel. These fuels, in turn, can be mixed into conventional gasoline or used by themselves. They’re created using either primary feedstocks, which can include crops like corn or fibrous, “cellulosic” crops like switchgrass, or secondary feedstocks, like the waste from lumber mills. These feedstocks are then processed in a variety of ways, usually through chemical or biochemical conversion, but the result is the same: fuel that lets BiofuelBOT cruise the open road.
And when it comes to waste, BiofuelBOT is always willing to step in and take a bite, because a tough BOT is a hungry BOT. Landfill gas facilities take the methane produced by decomposing garbage and pipe it into a thermal facility capable of burning the gas to produce electricity. And since secondary feedstocks can include nearly any biological source, from cow manure to shrimp shells, there’s really not much that BiofuelBOT can’t eat.
Around the world, just as in Canada, bioenergy is used for both heat and electricity. Large plants include California’s Altamont Landfill liquefied natural gas facility, which can produce up to 13,000 gallons of liquid natural gas per day, and the recently opened biodiesel plant in Singapore, the world’s largest with a capacity of 800,000 tonnes a year. And expect BiofuelBOT to keep on spreading his rustic charm, because with an appetite as wide-ranging and tough as his, BiofuelBOT’s always got something to chew on.
Proposal Would Count Manitoba Hydro Toward Green Energy Target
April 26, 2011
It’s tricky – balancing legislation to help meet renewable energy goals and keeping energy prices low with creating jobs for voters and supporting regional energy independence. Can everybody win?
Sewers a Sustainable Heat Source
April 25, 2011
Only the heat is recovered, not the smell.
Solar Upstart BrightSource Energy Files to go Public
April 25, 2011
Tower power planned in Southern California.
The Passive Side of Solar
April 25, 2011
Not that solar PV and concentrating solar power are aggressive. They’re active, and passive solar is more easy-going, don’t worry about electronics or mechanical devices; just let the sun do all the work.
Like its more active cousins, passive solar begins with design. Situate a building; let’s say a house, to take advantage of natural sunlight and natural air currents. That way, the house benefits from warmth and ventilation. Put lots of large windows on the south-facing wall (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, north-facing wall if you live in the Southern Hemisphere), and maybe a deciduous tree or two outside the windows. Build the roof with a large overhang. Provide some sort of thermal mass, like a tiled concrete slab floor or a brick wall. And that is basically it. Sit back. Relax.
In the summer, when you really don’t need the heat, the sun is directly overhead and the overhangs and trees prevent direct sunlight from coming through the windows. In the winter, when you do need the heat, the sun is lower in the sky and the trees have shed their leaves, and sunlight comes directly through the windows, warming not only the room, but also the thermal mass. Once the sun sets, the thermal mass releases its absorbed heat to the room, reducing the need for furnace heat.
Let’s say you’ve done all this but when you stand back and look at your house, you think “Gee, the south-sloping roof looks bare, but I don’t want solar PV panels and all the wiring and batteries they entail. What can I do?” Well, you can consider a solar collector. Solar collectors consist of piping that is surrounded by dark, heat-absorbing material overlain by a transparent film or glass to avoid heat loss and backed by insulating material, again to avoid heat loss. The heat-absorbing material transfers its heat to a fluid circulating through the pipes that run into the house. The fluid, in turn, transfers its heat to a heat sink such as a water tank or thermal wall to be used for water or space heating.
With passive solar, the only work you’ll need to do is open the curtains. And close them at night; they make a good thermal barrier.
PVs, Troughs and Towers – Electricity from the Sun
April 21, 2011
When we think of solar powered electricity, the image that usually comes to mind is one of solar panels on the roof of a building. Solar panels consist of many connected photovoltaic (PV) cells which are made mostly of silicon with other compounds. When light energy strikes a PV cell, some of the energy is absorbed, freeing electrons which then form an electric current.
Solar panels are most often used in small applications, such as providing electricity for a house or similar sized building. However, there are now solar parks, similar to wind farms, where large arrays of solar panels provide power to electricity consumers. The largest such solar park is the 80 megawatt Sarnia Solar Project, pictured here, in Sarnia, Ontario.
Image: Enbridge
The overall efficiency, from panel to grid is about 15 per cent.
The other way to produce solar electricity is through a process known as concentrated solar power. Lenses or mirrors are used to focus sunlight on a small area to heat a liquid which flows through a heat exchanger creating steam to run a turbine. The two most common forms of concentrated solar power are parabolic troughs and solar power towers.
Parabolic troughs are, as the name suggests, troughs with reflecting surfaces in the shape of a parabola. The suns rays are focused by the parabola onto a pipe running the length of the trough. A synthetic oil in the pipe heats to 350 °C and is used to make the steam that runs the turbine. Efficiency is similar to that of PV cells.
Solar power towers consist of a field of mirrors which concentrate light on a receiver located atop a tower at one end of the array. The receiver heats a fluid that provides the heat for steam generation. Overall efficiency is slightly better than that for parabolic troughs.
