PetroChina Takes Full Control of Alberta Oil Sands Project

By triggering the sale of the remaining 40 per cent of its joint venture agreement with Athabasca Oil Sands Corp., PetroChina will now own and operate the MacKay River Project.

Full Story [Globe and Mail]

BP Says Goodbye, Google and Buffet Say Hello

While BP steps away from the solar business, Google and Warren Buffet continue to invest.

Full Story [Energy Efficiency News]

A Myth Dispelled (Sort Of)

The problem with wind and solar power, so we’re led to believe, is that because both are dependent on weather conditions, neither is a “reliable” source of electricity. The big question has always been “What if there isn’t enough wind?”

But, do we ever ask “What if there is too much wind?”

High winds will cause wind turbines to automatically shut down, but what happens if wind speed is within operable parameters over a very large region for an extended period of time?

According to a recent Calgary Herald article, that’s what happened in Germany on July 24 this year. The country’s wind turbines generated so much electricity that some utilities paid consumers to use it.

And that’s happened more than 30 times this year. And not just in Germany.

With calls for increased renewable power, and more and more wind farms and solar parks being constructed, one can almost foresee a time when coal and gas-fired electricity form the peaking load and not the base load.

So what if the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine? With widespread distribution, that may be rare.

Home energy is heating up

When Flow talks about energy, we’re almost always talking about some variety of electricity or transportation fuel: the flashiest lights in Canadian energy. But heat is just as important (especially to citizens of a country with an international reputation for igloos and dog sleds), and, in fact, tends to be a byproduct of any kind of energy production. Tungsten resistors in non-CFL light bulbs produce heat, as do the most industrial processes and every fossil-fuelled vehicle on the planet. In fact, over 60 per cent of all energy produced is lost as so-called “waste heat.” But what if we could harness all that excess heat energy and turn it back into energy we can put to better use?

Making use of waste heat is exactly the problem chemists at Oregon State University (OSU) have been tackling, and it appears that a group of compounds called “skutterudites” might be the answer. Capable of absorbing huge amounts of heat in a very short amount of time (up to 1,800 degrees in just a few minutes), skutterudites could allow the widepsread use of thermoelectric power generation. And because the problem of waste heat is so common, the applications for thermoelectric power generation are nearly unlimited.

Still better is the news that the production cycle for creating skutterudites has been cut to a fraction of its former time — down to a two minutes from over three days. OSU researchers have created their particular variety of skutterudites using  microwave technology with an indium cobalt antimonite compound.

So even if heat energy isn’t currently very flashy, its future around the world is definitely getting brighter.

Via [oregonstate.edu]

You Think Canadian Gasoline Prices Are High?

Well, actually they are compared to what we’re used to paying, but compared to the rest of the world our gasoline is a bargain. And the reason isn’t that gasoline by itself is so expensive, it’s the taxes other countries put on gasoline. In fact throughout Europe, gasoline prices including tax are more than double the prices excluding tax.

On May 2, prices for gasoline excluding taxes ranged from a low of $0.95 per litre in the U.S. to a high of $1.02 in Italy. Taxes in the U.S. and Canada were $0.10 per litre and $0.39 per litre respectively, while taxes in Europe ranges from $0.88 in the U.K. to $1.40 in the Netherlands.

A Good Year for Oil, Not So Good for Gas

Oil and gas producers in Western Canada are more confident than in 2009, according to PwC’s Canadian Energy Annual Survey, released May 17, 2011.

The growing optimism is the result of a 26 per cent increase in revenue, a 15 per cent increase in cash flow, and a 113 per cent increase in profits. And most of this is due to increasing oil prices, up 27.9 percent to $79.98 US from $62.55 US in 2009. The rebound in oil prices allowed industry to increase capital spending almost 44 per cent to $56 billion US.

The upturn also attracted foreign companies who invested more than $17 billion in Canadian oil and gas assets during 2010.

Technologies such as horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing also played a role in helping oil producers access resources that a few years ago would have been uneconomical to produce. The same technologies were too successful on the natural gas side, leading to a supply glut and depressed prices for the second consecutive year. Some natural gas producers have reduced gas-directed drilling; some are shutting in gas until the market recovers.

Development of unconventional resources has raised environmental concerns, resulting again in a call for a national energy strategy.

High Temperature Geothermal – Not Just a Flash in the Pan

It’s not a flash in the pan for two reasons. Firstly, geothermally heated water has been used by humanoids since their emergence; hence it’s had a long history. Secondly, the flash isn’t in a pan, it’s in a low-pressure chamber.

It works like this: water reservoired deep in the earth’s crust is heated, and because it is often five to six kilometres deep, the pressure is so high that the water remains liquid well beyond its normal boiling point of 100˚C. When used to generate electricity, the water is brought to the surface where the pressure is suddenly released. The super heated water immediately “flashes” into steam with enough force to turn a turbine which turns a generator and electricity is born. The steam is condensed and returned to the reservoir.

What causes the water to heat up? The temperature at the inner core of the earth is greater than 6,000˚C. Most of this heat is primordial heat, generated from the energy of the accumulating matter that eventually formed the planet earth. As the outer surface of the planet cooled, primordial heat was trapped and remains to this day. Because the earth is cooling from the outside in, a geothermal gradient exists, which averages about 30˚C per kilometre of depth. The geothermal gradient is much steeper near tectonic plate boundaries where molten material is closer to the surface. The other heat source is radioactive decay of unstable elements.

If water isn’t naturally occurring at depth, injection wells are drilled to deliver water. Once heated, the water is brought to the surface through other wells to the generating station, then returned to depth.

Although Canada doesn’t have any commercial geothermal generation at present, about 53.15 terawatt-hours of geothermal electricity were generated world-wide in 2009. The United States led the way with 15.2 TW-h, or about 28.6% of the world total.

Geothermal Energy – What’s in a Name?

Recently, use of the term “geothermal energy” has become somewhat confusing. For the longest time, geothermal energy implied deep-seated, super hot (+180˚C) water, brought to the surface to provide heat for space heating or electricity generation. It is the energy behind geysers and hot springs. Think Old Faithful and Banff Hot Springs.

But with the advent of heat pumps, shallower, much cooler water could be used for space heating. Purists insisted on calling the new technology “earth energy”, or “geo exchange” or “ground-source energy”. The debate intensified to just short of rioting in the streets, but new subdivisions, advertised as economical and environmentally friendly due to “geothermal heating”, sprang up across the country. And people oblivious to the debate began to see geothermal only as a method of home heating that involved heat pumps and a bit of tubing.

So which side is right? Etymologically speaking, they both are. The term geothermal is derived from two Greek words: geo, meaning earth; and thermos, meaning heat. Earth heat. There is no reference to either temperature or depth.

Practically speaking, there is a big difference. In most parts of Canada, deep geothermal requires wells more than five kilometres deep, and that is prohibitively expensive for someone who just wants to heat their home. And shallow geothermal can’t deliver the heat required to create steam to drive turbines, so it won’t be used by utilities.

Regardless of what you consider is the real geothermal, both are among the cleanest sources of energy, and, over the long term, economical.

Energy BOT Squad’s Newest Member

Energy doesn’t get much more underground than geothermal power, which unlocks the heat trapped below the surface of the earth. But when it comes to Canada, geothermal energy is still “underground” in more than a few ways — just ask GeothermalBOT.

At the moment, GeothermalBOT mainly has to keep himself warm using the heat pumps that use the differences in temperature between the ground and the air to cool or heat homes. They’re small and localized, and the only game in town for a BOT that wants to keep nice and toasty. In fact, there aren’t currently any large geothermal power plants in Canada. But that doesn’t mean that GeothermalBOT will be stuck in Canada’s energy underground for the rest of his days.

In fact, Canada has considerable geothermal potential, with near-surface resources found across the country in areas as far apart as British Columbia and Saskatchewan. There has even been talk of developing these resources — just look to the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CanGEA) — though so far Canada still has no geothermal plants. Around the world, though, it’s a slightly different story.

To find areas where geothermal power has already heated up, GeothermalBOT would need to take a look at Iceland, where geothermal plants produce almost a quarter of the country’s total electricity. Because of the area’s high concentration of volcanoes and other heat sources near to the surface of the earth, the country has a natural wealth of geothermal energy that it’s used since 1908, when a farmer piped in water to heat his home. Other countries that use geothermal energy include the US, the Philippines and Indonesia.

But GeothermalBOT’s not likely to be heading to Reykjavik any time soon. For now, he’s fine being part of Canada’s energy underground, because a nice hot water tank is still a fine place to spend your time.

Turning Yucky Stuff into Energy – It’s a Gas

Two things we try to avoid stepping in are garbage and manure. Yet, disgusting as they may be, these two members of the biomass clan are sources of renewable energy. Just not in their usual forms.

Take garbage. Day after day it is trucked out to huge landfills where it gets buried by more garbage. As the trash piles up, the lower layers become starved of oxygen and the conditions near the bottom of the heap become anaerobic, allowing anaerobic bacteria and other microorganisms to feast on the garbage, creating landfill gas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide.

Once a landfill is full, it is usually capped by thick layers of dirt and often a sealing membrane, and left to sit, while more landfill gas accumulates. Finally, collection wells are drilled and cased to the base of the landfill. The section of the casing penetrating the waste layers is perforated so the landfill gas can enter the pipe. Unlike natural gas wells, landfill gas must be pumped out of its reservoir.

Agricultural wastes such as manure, crop residue, and silage are collected in a digester, a large, domed tank, often built underground. Again, as the waste accumulates, the lower section becomes oxygen-starved and anaerobic microbes acting on the waste produce methane and carbon dioxide. Because the material in the digester is a thick liquid slurry, the biogas rises to the top of the digester where it can be siphoned off. Once the slurry has been digested, the residue can be used as fertilizer.

With both processes, the carbon dioxide must be removed before the biogas can be used as fuel. Biogas can be used as a substitute for natural gas in fuelling electricity generation, space heating, and natural gas powered cars and buses.

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