OGPSS - Thoughts on the Precautionary Principle

As Michael Brander tells it, in his book on the Scottish Highland Regiments, the Scottish Highlands produced, between 1740 and 1815 men for some 86 Highland Regiments who travelled around the world to strengthen the British Empire. But, towards the end of that period sheep were introduced into Scotland and the great land clearances began that replaced the crofters on the estates with the occasional lone shepherd and his flocks. Thus, by the time of the Crimean War when the Duke of Sutherland tried to raise a regiment he got no volunteers. As an old man explained to him:

I am sorry for the response your Grace’s proposals are meeting here today, so near the spot where your maternal grand-mother, by giving some forty-eight hours notice, marshaled 1,500 men to pick out the 800 she required. But there is a cause for it, and a genuine cause, and, as your Grace demands to know it, I must tell you, as I see that none else is inclined in the assembly to do so. These lands are now devoted to rear dumb animals which your parents considered of far more value than men . . . . your parents, yourself and your Commissioners have desolated the glens and the straths of Sutherland where you should find hundreds, yea thousands of men to meet and respond to your call cheerfully had your parents kept faith with them. How could your Grace expect to find men where they are not?

The anecdote illustrates that are long-term consequences to policy decisions, often not fully recognized when the original decisions are made. I was reminded of the Scottish situation as I contemplate the great race to renewable energy and natural gas, and the rapid replacement being urged for coal-fired power stations and nuclear power plants. And there are some grounds for seeing an analogy to that earlier situation.

Coal and uranium are found underground and while there is a large surface mining component to mining, as these reserves are exhausted, or embargoed for environmental or other political reasons, the need, over time will move increasingly to the development of the deeper reserves. Mines, however do not spring up overnight. Just as you cannot get a baby in a month by making nine women pregnant, so the process of discovery, raising capital, permitting and development can mean that over a decade can pass before coal is produced in commercial quantitites. And that assumes that the Administration is somewhat favorable to the idea. As a candidate, now President Obama said "If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that's being emitted."

As President he appointed Dr. Stephen Chu to head the Department of Energy, an individual who has said “Coal is my worst nightmare.”. And to follow on his statement as a candidate, the President appointed Lisa Jackson to the EPA who issued a finding that greenhouse gases constitute a threat to public health and welfare, with a series of actions to reduce carbon pollution. In such a political climate it is unlikely that applications for new mines and plants will receive an accelerated resolution. (Just consider the case of decision on the Keystone Pipeline, which continues to drag on.) If there is a sudden discovered need for new coal and nuclear power plants they will not (as with the Highlanders) be there to answer that call, and nor can they be for over a decade after the call is made.

Now it is not my intention here to argue the logic of a current change to natural gas, as the large reserve within the United States becomes available and, at low cost, provides a source of energy that helps keep the nation’s industry competitive. But what I would like to do is to invoke the same Precautionary Principle that has been used as an initial basis for action on control of power plant emissions and other factors with environmental impact. (see for example principle fifteen).

The precautionary principle can be briefly stated as:

the theory that an action should be taken when a problem or threat occurs, not after harm has bee inflicted; an approach to decision-making in risk management which justifies preventive measures or policies despite scientific uncertainty about whether whether detrimental effects will occur.

There is a significant scientific question as to the long-term reliability of the production levels for oil and natural gas that is being produced from the shales of the United States, and it has been articulated well both by Art and Rune, among others at the Oil Drum.

And as China draws an increasing amount of fuel out of Turkmenistan, Iran and the Middle East, with the potential for an additional increase in the draw from Russia, there is some concern that as China buys for the long-term, that tightening supplies will begin to limit the availability of fuel for Western Europe and the United States.

With the occasional collapse of the odd wind turbine, and the difficulty in seeing how solar power can help in the blizzards and snow storms I have gone through in the last week, there is some concern over the size of the contribution that these technologies can make into the energy mix of the next decade.

In those circumstances, a wise application of the Precautionary Principle to future energy supplies, in both Europe and the United States, might suggest that sufficient legacy power systems be left in place to ensure that neither community is left short of energy in the years ahead. This is to guard against the proposed replacements being either inadequate or insufficient to meet the future need.

And yet, unfortunately this is not likely to occur. As with many arguments and tools used in political debate, once a position or an argument has been adopted it is extremely rare for it to be renounced. The consequences of current decision making rarely come back to haunt those politicians who make them, since they often occur past the current elective term and are thus of less interest to those who are more focused on the next election.

Yet longer-term events do eventually arrive, and time having passed, the day of reckoning is becoming visible. It is likely that the Bakken will peak before the end of the current Administration. Ofgem has already raised concerns over an over-reliance on imported natural gas into the UK, and warned of possible shortages by the end of 2015, and urged a diversification of supply types. The IEA recently issued a chart that shows their projections for the energy future to 2035.


Figure 1. Past and future distribution of energy demand for the different sectors of the world (IEA )

The writing is beginning to appear on the wall. And while the Precautionary Principle is aimed more at less obvious, high risk scenarios – the risks to the world of a failure in the global supply chain, or even a national one is of such a high impact that even with a lower probability of occurrence than is becoming evident, it would be wise to start looking for answers. It is likely already far too late, and the world remains replete with folk denying the existence of a problem (even as gas prices continue to rise) but it will be interesting to see how the new Secretary of Energy addresses the situation.

OGPSS - The ARPA-E 2012 Awards

The Department of Energy has just announced the projects that have been selected for funding in the next round of the ARPA-E program. (This is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, first funded in 2009, to, inter alia, "focus on creative “out-of-the-box” transformational energy research that industry by itself cannot or will not support due to its high risk but where success would provide dramatic benefits for the nation".) There are some 66 projects on the list, which is broken down into eleven different focus areas. These are the technologies that the ARPA-E program is betting some $130 million on, as sources of future energy supply or savings. It is worth taking a quick glance through the topics to see what is considered important and likely of success.

The two largest areas of funding are Advanced Fuels and Grid Modernization, both of which get around $24 million or 18% of the pie. This is split among 13 fuel projects, and 9 grid-related projects. With the growing supply of natural gas that is coming from the developing shale gas reserves in the country, it is perhaps no surprise to see that methane conversion to liquid fuel captures the largest part of the fuel funding this year, being the theme of nine of the awards.

The largest of the fuel awards goes to Allylix a company that specializes in terpenes, and who is tasked with turning these into a viable aviation fuel. Specific genes needed for terpene production are extracted from a biosource, and then optimized for use in a yeast host. The optimization is an engineered change that can increase product yield several hundred fold (according to their website). From that point there is a fermentation process, and then a recovery and purification of the liquid fuel, which is stated to be already commercially viable.

There is only one algae award this year, to Cornell for $910 k, and they will look at using light fibers in a small reactor as a means of improving economics. After having looked into this process I am prone to disagree that smaller is better (if you are going to generate hundreds of thousands of barrels a day you need large systems, and anything on a smaller scale is hardly worthwhile). Further there are issues with engineered light paths, but they will no doubt find those out as they carry on with their work.

The “different” program in this effort is for $1.8 million which is being given to Plant Sensory Systems to develop a high-output, low-input beet plant for sugar production.

There are just two awards for Advanced Vehicles, one to Electron Energy Corp to produce better permanent magnets that don’t rely on rare-earths, and one to United Technologies to improve efficiency by using laser deposition of alternate layers of copper and insulation in a new electric motor design. This will also reduce rare-earth dependence. They roughly split $5.6 million.

The $5.3 million for improving building efficiency goes to California, and is split with two awards to Lawrence Berkeley and one to Stanford. Each has a project on using coatings to alter the thermal transfer to the buildings and cars, while Lawrence Berkeley also gets almost $2 million for modeling studies of building heat losses.

The $10 million for carbon capture is split four ways, with two awards (to Arizona State and Dioxide Materials) for electrochemical systems that will generate new fuels from the carbon dioxide output of power plants, while the University of Massachusetts at Lowell is developing (for $3 million) a catalyst that will also combine sunlight, CO2 and water into a fuel precursor.

The fourth award is to the University of Pittsburg (at $2.4 million) for a way to thicken liquid CO2 either as a way of improving EOR, or as a substitute for water in hydrofracking. I can’t quite see the advantage of a thicker fluid for use in EOR, since the hope, surely, is to have a very low viscocity fluid that can more easily penetrate into the formation and mix with the oil, but the application in fracking is intriguing.

The emphasis with the investments in Grid Modernization (the co-largest topic) is on improving switchgear (five awards). In addition there are two awards for modeling, one on improved instrumentation and one to Grid Logic ($3.8 million) for developing a new super-conducting wire for power transmission.

There are two awards, both for $2 million, in the “Other” category. One is to MIT for a water purification system, wile the other is to Harvard. This latter is for a “self-repairing” coating that can be applied to water and oil pipes to reduce friction and thus lower pumping costs. The old fall-back on this was Teflon, which could be very effective, but any particulate matter in the fluid will erode this over time, so the “self-healing” aspect could be worthwhile, since it might allow a much thinner liner.

The $18.76 million for Renewable Energy projects is distributed to wind, sun and water energies, with two projects in waves where Brown University will be building a new underwater wing to capture flowing water energy, and Sea Engineering, who will be developing a better buoy for acquiring data for tidal energy potential assessment. Wind is down to a two projects, one, which seems a bit regressive, is to GE who will develop fabric blades for wind turbines for $3.7 million. A similar amount is going to Georgia Tech to develop a vertical axis turbine. The remaining six projects deal with solar power of which the most interesting, perhaps, is that at Cal Tech which is going to look into splitting light into its different color bands (think prism) before using them to improve device efficiency. We have seen that converting white light electronically to the narrow optimal color band can have dramatic effects on improving algae growth rates, for example, but it requires a bit more refinement to achieve the narrow division than, I suspect, will be possible optically.

The section that will invest $12 million in Stationary Energy Storage is funding 8 projects looking at different battery technologies. The largest investment ($4 million) is going to Alveo Energy, which has an intriguing entry in Find the Company. It was apparently only founded this year. The technology that it is chasing involves using Prussian Blue dye as the active ingredient in the battery.

The other “out of the ordinary” award is to Tai Yang which is affiliated with Florida State University. Superconductivity Center. The $2.15 million award is to develop a method for storing energy in a high-power superconducting cable.

Pratt and Whitney get two of the three Stationary Generation awards, the first for $650k is to develop a continuous detonation gas turbine, while the second, for $600 k is for work on an ultra-high temperature gas turbine. The University of North Dakota gets the third award to look at developing air cooling for power plants.

The $9.5 million for Thermal Energy Storage is split five ways, with three awards for the development of power from the waste heat in existing systems, one to the NREL for a solar thermal electric generator, and one to Georgia Tech for a solar fuels reactor using liquid metals.

When it comes to finding answers to Transportation Energy Storage the Agency is committing $15.3 million to seven projects. Six of these deal with battery development. (A123 Systems who previously received a $249 million federal grant to develop electric car batteries recently went bankrupt.) Two of the awards, to Georgia Tech and to UC Santa Barbara will seek to combine super-capacitor design with battery capabilities, while the Palo Alto Research Center will use a printing process to construct batteries.

Ceramatec is being funded, at $2.1 million, to develop a solid-state fuel cell using low-cost materials.

There is a clear change in emphasis from earlier years reflecting, no doubt, the results from ongoing research, as well as the obvious change that the current natural gas availability is allowing in developing technical advances for the future. It should, however, be born in mind that while some of these will likely prove to be quite successful, it will still take perhaps a decade before any of them can be anticipated to have any significant impact on the market.

OGPSS - Considerations of Chinese demand growth

Three years ago I took my third trip to China, flying this time to Qinghai Province and then taking the train back down from Xining City through Xian to Shanghai. One of the more striking parts of the trip was the first day of the train travel, where the tracks cut down from the Tibetan Plateau to the plains of the East. The valleys are narrow, so that it is often difficult for the train tracks and road to find an easy route, and this led to many tunnels, and, in places, one or the other running on piers up the valley.

Figure 1. Railway causeway set across a valley carrying a second line (photo taken from the first, about to go into a tunnel) the river crosses under the line and runs along the left hillside.

The countryside was redolent with new construction of highways, and the necessary tunnels to bring additional communications into a hinterland that had, in the past, few good roads or methods of reaching into the more remote communities.


Figure 2. Further down the valley it is much narrower and the road and rails run in tunnels (on each side of the river). The current narrow road is being widened but whenever there was a hold-up, the line of trucks waiting grew by miles. (Very few cars).

A historian once commented on the major impact to the American economy and social infrastructure created with the development of the road network and the addition of the Interstate system. When I first went to China in 1987 poverty was rampant, the main method of transportation was by bicycle though I travelled by train and minibus. By the time of the second visit in 2002 the economy was undergoing rapid changes. Their interstate network was being developed, although I remember noting that the train passed many miles of freeway with very little traffic. They are now seeing this gain, but it is a work still in progress, and it, in turn is driving the growth in their oil demand.

Figure 3. Changes in Chinese oil consumption and imports over the past decades (Energy Export Databrowser )

It is important to recognize that there are many parts of the country where these interconnections and improvements to the infrastructure are still going on, and as those changes occur so the increasing use of power-driven vehicles continues to rise, and with it the need for increased supply. The risk of exacerbating popular unrest if that change were to stop is just one reason why it is bound to continue, and with it China’s continued need for additional supplies of all forms of fossil fuels, as well as the rest of those supplies that we all need that come from the earth. And that includes water, a vital resource, but one whose limit restricts some of the options that the Chinese government can adopt.

In the July Monthly Oil Market Report, OPEC note that automobile sales in China were up for May by 22% y-o-y , though this is not expected to change the rate of growth in overall oil demand for the country. In total they expect, as they noted in August, China’s economic growth forecast remains at 8.1%, with an 8% projection for 2013.

Figure 4. Changes in apparent oil demand for China (OPEC August MOMR)

Within that overall demand the relative proportions of the mix change, over time., though it must be remembered, in this regard that China is still building a Strategic Petroleum Reserve of its own, and up to 1 mbd can be fed into this when judged appropriate.

Figure 5. Change in apparent oil consumption in China (OPEC August MOMR)

The problems of traffic congestion, exemplified by the 11-day Beijing traffic blockage in 2010 is leading to some restrictions within the cities. Four cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guiyang and Guangzhou are now said to restrict car sales (OPEC August MOMR) and electrical vehicles and taxis are being introduced, with a target of half-a-million vehicles by 2015. This is now seen as an area of growth, especially in battery development, and a target of 5 million cars has been set for 2020. And while this might seem to be a market opportunity for the Volt, domestic tax protection has made it a difficult sale to the present.

And a recent report by the Economist indicates that sales of these vehicles have not taken off as hoped, with only 8,000 being sold, largely to government agencies. As in the United States there is an element of “chicken and egg” to the story, in that without a network of charging stations there is a certain amount of caution in committing a higher than normal investment without the assurance of benefit in the very near future. The suggestion is that China may backtrack to a greater emphasis on hybrids before returning to push for the purely electrical car.

This is not to say that there is not a recognition of the need for alternate sources of energy. But in China the general populace has a much better understanding of the limited nature of energy supplies, a lesson that the rest of us will likely have to learn another way. Thus one finds a much wider use of solar power, including for the more mundane use in making tea. It was instructive to see, as we drove down a street in one of the tourist resort towns near a lake, that each house along the street had a large kettle sitting outside, on a solar collecting dish.

Figure 5. Solar heating of a kettle (30 min to boiling)

Many had solar water heaters on the roof also, and while somewhat more unsightly than many systems (mine for example is black plastic solar pipes that blend into the roof) they take up less space and serve their purpose.

Figure 6. Solar water heater (cost around $1,000 installed)

I came away convinced that China is nowhere near the point where it can meet the growing demands that a developing society will have for energy, and that their government will be driven to find creative ways of meeting that increasing demand.

Political will amidst climate uncertainty

I don’t expect that there will be many tsunamis in Germany over the next century, nor, apart from the occasional man-made earthquakes that can come from potash mining, do I expect the country to suffer any major damage from an earthquake. Seriously, I rather suspect that the German government has the same view of the future. But that has not stopped them from deciding to close all nuclear power stations within the next eleven years, using the recent events in Japan as one of the justifying reasons.

Germany gets about 25% of its current energy supply from nuclear power, and about 17% comes from the sustainable sources such as solar and wind. But the problem, in part, is that these become unreliable sources in winter, with lower wind speeds and shorter, darker days. Yet, without a balance sheet having been presented that will show where the lost power will come from, the decision has been made, on apparently political grounds, that nuclear must go.

There comes a time in the affairs of Government when a commitment is made to a policy that makes it virtually impossible for those in charge to later reverse the decision. This decision by the German government is one such probably irrevocable decision, and it seems that the step that the British Government recently made in their commitment to a “green” anti-carbon future for the UK, is another.

A limit on the total amount of greenhouse gases to be emitted by the UK between 2023 to 2027 has been proposed to cut Britain’s emissions by 50% from 1990 levels.

The ultimate goal is to get the emissions down 80% by 2050. The evidence that these “green” technologies will support existing levels of power and production is becoming more debatable. Thus the powers-that-be anticipate that there should also be a cut in energy demand from the general populace. In the case of Germany this target is about 10% of their current consumption.

The commitments to turn away from existing technologies with the capacity to supply energy at an acceptable financial price, and instead to rely on wind and solar, technologies that are not as consistent in providing power when needed, comes at a time when there has been enough experience with sustainable power that the advantages and disadvantages are becoming more evident. Though, before discussing that I should explain that, writing as I do about coming shortages of oil, the reality is that the world is going to need whatever energy supplies it can find in the coming years and that includes energy from wind, solar, geothermal and hydro.

But there is a growing question as to the real practicality of some of the “green” solutions being proposed, and also questions on their cost. One such, for example is the book “The False Promise of Green Energy”. This epitomizes a growing body of criticism that takes a hard look at the costs and energy actually produced by the “green revolution” and concludes that they not nearly as beneficial in reality as they have been made out to be. I don’t agree with a lot of the philosophy that drives the Foundation that published the study, leaving the energy future to the marketplace to find answers to me indicates a failure to understand the size of the problem that is developing. Nevertheless the book does raise some legitimate concerns over the drive to commit to the “energy solution of the day.” For a while at the end of the last Administration in the United States, cellulosic ethanol was going to be that White Knight. Mandates were to provide a market to justify the investment in large plants required to have any increment on national supply. Well it turns out that those getting the money were more optimistic than realistic, and those targets have been scaled back.

Today the solution of choice still remains wind power. The cost has come down, and particularly on-shore, the reliability of the plant has gone up. Unfortunately the other partner in the success of the technology is a natural one, and the consistency and strength of the wind to drive the wind turbines has not been as good. The John Muir Trust examined the record,, and reported last January,

The research found over 395 days, the wind farms could have produced 17,586,000 MW hours of energy running at full capacity. In reality, 3,881,900MW hours was generated, equivalent to 22.07 per cent.

And over the past two years, wind generation across the sites fell below 20MW on 123 separate days for a combined duration of 25 days. For a total of nine days, output dipped below 10MW, barely enough power to boil 3,300 household kettles.

More recently the Telegraph has noted

The Coalition has drawn up plans to open more wind farms in an effort to meet Britain’s European Union target of providing 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.More than 3,600 turbines are expected to be installed in offshore wind farms over the next nine years.

But statistics suggest that the winds that sweep across the British Isles may be weakening. Last year, wind speeds over the UK averaged 7.8 knots (8.9mph), a fall of 20 per cent on 2008, and well below the mean for this century, which stands at 9.1 knots (10.5mph).

If the current power systems (often nuclear and coal) are to be done away with, as the current European Governments seem set on achieving, then they should, were they morally responsible, also indicate the sources, costs, power and true likelihood of being able to replace existing power plants with a viable alternative. Those answers are often given in general terms and rely on projections (such as, for example, that wind will produce 30% of nameplate capacity) that are now being shown to be wrong. This seems a more certain way of destroying the future of our children than the threat of carbon dioxide level rise, though one would have to look hard to find many that recognize this reality. Politicians have grasped an approach and now use the threat of climate change to justify policies that cannot be easily undone.

The same is equally true about the opinions of the validity of the models that are used to justify these decisions. Changes in the reliability of the models, as data is acquired and time passes are often largely not to be admitted. For example, one of the more prevalent aspects of the global warming argument is that the accelerating rise in sea level is going to lead to the swamping of land around the globe well within this century. That later prediction has largely been based on models, but a series of buoys was placed around the world to give a more accurate assessment of the rise in sea-level. As this data has become more widely available and over a longer time, so it has been possible to discern the trend.

Sea level change over the past eighteen years (U of Colorado )

If one looks at the second half of the plot (green and orange) it is possible to conclude that, if anything , the rate of sea level rise is slowing down. This despite the increased quantities of carbon dioxide that have been added to the atmosphere.

That view of this data by Dr James Hansen, the “guru” of the AGW world, has now been announced through the Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS) in the form of a paper “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications” . And while it lays the blame on the slow-down on volcanic activity and a solar minimum, nevertheless it recognizes the phenomenon

Although the accuracy of ocean heat uptake in the pre-Argo era is inherently limited, it is clear that heat uptake in the Argo era is smaller than it was during the 5-10 years preceding full Argo deployment, as discussed by Trenberth (2009, 2010) and Trenberth and Fasullo (2010).

Yet with this evidence of a stability in the ocean temperature, the IEA has just announced a major increase in CO2 emissions, which leads them to predict that the temperatures will rise, around the globe, by 4 deg C by 2010, and that many of us will drown.

It would seem that even as the science becomes less certain, so the politicians who cling to it, become more determined to implement an answer that may no longer be correct.

Incidentally I was down in Florida last week, and one of those I met with was bemoaning that the oranges that used to be grown in Northern Florida (Jacksonville) can now only be grown economically further south in the state due to the colder climates of recent years, ah!

Looking back at 2009

This has been an interesting year to look back on. The change in the Administration and the difference in outlook that they bring to many of the concerns that I write about have altered the way in which the future will evolve. That evolution is still continuing, but there can be no doubt that the key committees in the Congress are now led by folk that do not look particularly kindly on the historic producers of fossil fuels. Yet the path forward for the alternatives, power from renewable energy, is not necessarily going to be that certain either. That was brought home just recently with the move by Senator Feinstein to protect portions of the Mohave Desert from future construction. This limits some of the areas in which solar farms had been planned, though clearing some of the legislative hurdles for others. But the legislation (which would apparently affect some 19 applications) is a sign of the debates to come, as the land needed for renewable energy is discovered to have other potential uses or benefits, that will make the search for available space that much more difficult.

And it is not just in California, there are debates in other states, including Wyoming.

As a result, 23 percent of Wyoming's winds that are class 4 or higher -- and about half or more of developable class 6 and 7 winds -- are in core areas. And in July, the state put those winds off-limits by essentially banning big wind farms in core areas. Many in the wind industry see it as devastating. The Interwest Energy Alliance -- a trade group -- said the ban could have "a deleterious effect on renewable energy development" across the West, and that it could kill the development of 10,000 megawatts of wind in Wyoming.

Though there are some sites that appear less controversial than others.

He takes me on a tour in a big white truck, making me wear a hardhat because turbine blades can throw chunks of ice. From the top of a hill, as a bunch of antelope amble nearby, Anderson points southward through the forest of windmills to a huge plume of steam that marks the Dave Johnston power plant. Then he motions to the earth all around where we stand. The wind farm sits on the reclaimed remnants of an old, giant coal mine; all this land was once torn up, gouged by draglines, its carboniferous bounty burned in the plant down below. "We wanted to take a coal mine," says Anderson. "And make it useful."

Yet as these debates continue, there seems to be little recognition of the needs that the future will bring, that are not being prepared for. Nor is there much recognition of the problems in getting power from where wind can generate electricity to the places where it is needed (particularly those states that have mandated high levels of renewable energy into their mix in the nearer future). For while wind turbines can generate money for the landowner, there is much less for the farmer who lets a transmission line across his land, who only gets a single payment.

The cap-and-trade legislation may not, in the end, make it through the Senate, and thus may die for this Congress, but it has made it difficult to justify investment in coal-fired power stations, when the rules that will govern their use are not clear. And while the EPA has adjudged carbon dioxide to be a pollutant , it has yet to write the rules under which plants that produce carbon dioxide will operate. (Remembering of course that each of us is also a generator). As a consequence some 100 or more power plants have been put on hold until the situation becomes clearer. But given the challenges that will likely come to the legislation (there is some question, for example as to whether they can limit the application of legislation to plants that produce more than 25,000 tons for example), the delays in planning for construction of future power plants are likely to continue, and perhaps grow worse.

The new Administration does not see much in the short-term that will cause energy supply, whether crude oil or electricity, to be a problem. The Secretary of Energy, through the research and funding that they have produced over the past year, is looking at more distant options for generating power than meeting any proximate needs. Unfortunately, coming from California, where it was easy to mandate a reduction in coal-burning in the state when the power could be generated alternately from coal-burning plants in Utah, does not work as well when the entire country becomes subject to the legislation, and such an alternative no longer exists.

Among other news of the past year that make my list of major stories I would count two more. They don’t seem to have caught as much attention of folks such as Robert Rapier who has a different list, but one of them is listed in the page that Platts had for their survey. The first (and that listed by Platts) is the continued collapse of the oil production in Mexico. While this has significant impact to the United States (which is now going to have to find alternate sources for the Mexican oil it was importing from fields that are now running dry, particularly Cantarell) the impact on Mexico’s deficit has been to drop the deficit off a cliff. For the USA it is going to be increasingly difficult to find that alternate supplier. China has increased their purchases from Saudi Arabia by more than 12% this year (to 800,000bd) and has signed agreements to take this over 1 mbd next year. With non-OPEC production having peaked, it is only the surplus production in the OPEC countries that keeps the world in balance, and the size of that “cushion” is something that we debate. (I am less optimistic than some others).

The other event was the opening of the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China. Again it is feeding fuels that were, at one stage, available to the West, to a new customer, itself growing in demand, and with a considerable scope to increase market purchases in the years to come. The glut in natural gas that we currently see will not I suspect, last as long as it is currently projected, and that will open a different can of worms.

But all these stories from the past aside, I do wish you all a Successful and Prosperous Year, that brings you Happiness and Joy, and not too many snow storms.

A 30-year old opinion on Space Power Systems

Just over 30 years ago there was a young science magazine called Omni. It ran from October 1978 through the fall of 1995. In the first April edition (1979) it ran three stories – one, by Mr. Stine, on the Satellite Power System (SPS), one on solar energy in general by Mr. Pohl, and one on an invention by a Mr. Ovshinsky.

I was sufficiently moved by these articles to write a response to the magazine, and I just uncovered that letter. For an amusing perspective on that time I, and since the first two are still around, I thought I would post the thoughts of a rather younger Heading Out (who wasn’t at the time). I will break it into two parts, one of which deals with my thoughts on solar power and the second, which is more of a general comment at the time on energy in general will be posted on Monday.

I am deeply concerned by the tenor of these article since their net promise is that, by implication the same sort of promise is now being made for solar power as was made, less than 20-years ago, by the nuclear industry: “Just give us our heads and you’ll have free energy for life.”

With your indulgence I would like to review the energy scene as I see it, starting with solar energy and working the opposite direction to Mr. Pohl.

Let us begin with the SPS system. If I may quote the article “ . . .the SPS system is generally feasible from the point of view of both technology and economics . . .it is technically feasible to convert that energy to microwaves and to transmit it to the Earth with no negative effects on the environment . . .this would lead to a small (5-Gigawatt or 5-million kW) SPS pilot plant operating in low earth orbit by 1987, giving us the technical and economic answers that we would need to begin construction of a full SPS system with 50 10-GW SPS units in geosynchronous orbit by the year 2000, supplying most of the projected electrical needs of the entire North American continent.”

Let’s do a little arithmetic on this prediction to understand what this means. (My facts, unless stated otherwise, are from the DOE/NASA SPS documentation.)

Firstly a 5 GW satellite would weigh up to 50,000 tons and have an area of 100 km2. Assuming that the shuttle can carry 32 tons means 1,500 plus trips by weight. Assuming an average thickness of 0.1 cm for the structure would give a volume of 100,000 cu. m. The shuttle hold is 91 cu. m. in size, so that, on a volume basis – with no voids –we’d still need about 1,100 trips. Accepting bulking and some larger components, I hope that you will agree that 1,600 trips would not be an out-of-line assumption.

To put the first SPS system in orbit by 1987 would therefore require 200 trips/year starting (in 1979). To then create an additional 50 10-GW stations would require, in the following 13 years, 160,000 trips or 11,500 trips a year.

In regard to the cost for the solar cells Heliotronics have predicted (Electronics, Oct 26, 1978) a cost of $0.25/watt in 8 years, at a 10% level of efficiency – about that considered by the DOE/NASA paper. That level of cost is included in the DOE/NASA reference design which predicts a capital cost of $2,500/kW installed, it also would require an initial R&D phase of $45 billion. (My quibble with these figures are that they are 1977-78 dollars admit no inflation and assume an interest rate of 6%).

The study also considers two other pertinent factors. The first is land for the rectennas. This has been evaluated at an average of 80 sq miles/site; land which could become permanently barred to people and hazardous to the health of all wildlife therein. To quote the report in regard to a full SPS system “Only a small number of sites, relative to population, could be located in either the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic states. Those sites that could be identified were in fairly mountainous areas.” Which means that our scenic wilderness will become hazardous to our health.

The second point which, in its way is more worrisome is the critical materials report. Two systems were evaluated – the silicon system and the gallium arsenide system. The report lists 25 commodities required to provide 2 5-GW satellites a year. It highlights those for which problems might arise. For the silicon option two items – mercury and tungsten are considered critical. The mercury need for 168 tons is a problem since it would require a 10% increase in domestic production. Tungsten at 1,220 tons would require a 25% increase in domestic production. Although gallium requirements are 7 tons, against a current annual production of 8 tons, this is not considered a problem in the silicon option.

The gallium arsenide option, however, has 6 critical items. The most severe of these is the Gallium of which 2,186 tons is required. This is still set against 8 tons of domestic and 7 tons of foreign production per year. It should also consider, as the report does, that the total domestic reserve is only 2,000 tons, with a world reserve of 112,000 tons. A similar requirement for 2,356 tons of arsenic per year meets a similar problem with an annual production of around 23 tons being predicated by the 2000.

The net result of the data to date, I believe, is to show that any realistic use of the SPS system is at least 30-50 years away, as the DOE/NASA study predicts, and will probably only become economic when the material is supplied either from a lunar or asteroidal source? (Incidentally won’t a 100 sq. km. surface act as a solar sail?)

Coming rather rapidly therefore down to Earth where we unfortunately lose a lot of the sun’s power, let us examine the current status of the solar industry. Unfortunately, the arguments about gallium and arsenic still hold, so as foar as the gallium arsenide cell is concerned (with 25% efficiency) the material is unavailable, and so we must, pro forma, accept a 10-15% cell efficiency.

Living in the mid-West I will use Missouri as my initial location for analysis. St. Louis receives about 1,000 Btu/sq ft on a horizontal surface on an average day in March. With a peak demand of about 15 GW this would require, at a 10% efficiency level, an area of 441 sq. miles of collectors or adding 30% for walkways, roads etc about 600 sq. miles.

I could take the analogy further and show that the 76 Quad energy demand of the United States could be satisfied by a collector area of 69,700 sq miles – the area of the state of Missouri – but I’d rather reduce the scale and talk about my back yard.

In January my energy consumption was 5,530 kWh, or an average of 7 kW/hour. Oman and Gelzer, in the Energy Technology Handbook tell me that I need a peak supply of 5 times average demand to get me through the bad spells. My solar cell requirement therefore should be about a 35 kW system. At $0.25/watt (which I would remind you is about 1/30th of current cost) the cells would cost some $8,750. Accepting Oman and Gelzer’s figures for the costs of installation (but multiplying by the necessary factors) I get:

Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$2,000
Fuel Cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $7,500 ( 35kW peak at $400/kW)
Electrolyzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$2,450 (35 kW peak at $70/kW)
Metal hydride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$4,000 (4,000 lb FeTi at $0.50 a lb and structure)
Hydrogen and Oxygen storage tanks $2,500 ($300/1,000 scf and controls)
Electric power conditioning/controls$500
Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$1,000
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$28,200

I have accepted the arguments that I should use metal hydride rather than batteries on the basis of their projected cost effectiveness. The area of collector that I would require is about 5,000 sq. ft. – which is where I came in because it’s bigger than my house and backyard, and since 8% interest on $28,000 is $2,240 and my total electricity bill last year was $903, I don’t think I, or probably anyone living North of me, can really afford solar electricity just yet, even at $0.25 a watt.

Incidentally in regard to solar heating, Forbes quotes the house built for Mark Hyman in Waltham, Mass where it cost $24,000 for heating only. I don’t think I can afford that option, even with the current tax credits.

If then solar power cannot be used North of me, what are the situations in the South? The general consensus would appear to be that solar systems are best developed in the desert. To which I would like to draw the following points:
Firstly for a 5-MW system we are still talking of somewhere in the region of a 100 sq. mile unit. The equipment for that installation would be installed by heavy construction would be installed by heavy construction equipment that would destroy the surface integrity of the desert lands. We know, from experience, for, example from the Badlands of the Dakotas, that when this occurs the underlying surface can e readily eroded by rain and winds.

The solar collectors will be set up at an angle to the surface and this will act as a wind trap, bringing the wind down across the exposed sand. The result will be to lift the sand into the air, and one can readily anticipate that it will fall across the surface of the collectors.

In a recent paper Hawthorne has shown that such grit, falling from a height of 1 m. will cut the reflectance of a surface by 25% within 10 seconds. One can therefore predict two things; firstly that the collector surfaces will gather considerable amounts of dust which will have to be cleaned off. Secondly that the surfaces will become rapidly scratched loosing their ability to transmit energy because of the impact of the sand particles. Since we are talking about somewhere around 8 million collectors, keeping these clean, and the energy efficient levels up and keeping them protected, will in itself e a major undertaking.

One other consideration is that we have, already, discounted the use of gallium arsenide as a collector. It has the advantage that it can be operated at high temperatures, and since the location of these collectors in the desert, where they get hot, as Mr. Pohl has pointed out this will mean that they need to be cooled, and thus we come back to the ubiquitous mater cooling towers. These symbols of current power station design will thus again be required in the desert.

So that was my opinion, and some data (the real reason for putting up the post) from some 30-years ago – I’ll have a comment on reality and how some of this turned out, after Monday’s post. There is a lot that I got wrong, but I'll come back to that.

Sun Power from Space, an old idea returns

There is a new company called Solaren, that has just signed an agreement with the California-based utility Pacific Gas and Electric in which the utility will buy 200 MW of power that will come from solar panels located in space.

And this is mildly frustrating, because somewhere in the files of my last 40-years, there is a whole set of reports from NASA reporting on, and looking into the economics of doing this very thing. Now that was back about 30-years ago, and at the time I remember writing a fairly long report explaining why it would not work. Part of it was based on the overall economic figures that NASA had used, and part more specifically on the relative cost of the panels to make significant power levels. (At the time they were to be made of gallium arsenide, and the entire arsenic production of the United States was less than 25 tons if my memory serves, and I made some disparaging remarks about those who might like to have an arsenic mine next door).

Well move ahead those 30 years and things have changed a bit. Not only do we now have solar panels in space, delivering power to the space station, but they can be made smaller, lighter and of other materials.

At the time of the NASA work, the intent was to send the energy back to Earth in the form of microwaves, with large areas being cordoned off to receive the energy (since it would likely cook anyone or any animal or bird that entered the receiving zone). That particular form of transmission also raised some ribald remarks, and the odd cartoon as I recall, and the current method proposed is to convert it into radio frequency energy for transmission.


Because the satellites can be mounted out in space beyond the Earth’s shadow they can receive energy from the sun all the time, and thus not be affected by either clouds or the day/night shift, so that they could provide baseload power to the utility (as is the intent). This will require that the panels be some 22,000 miles from the Earth - a range now achievable by rocket.

A second company, called Space Energy, is also advancing the idea. NASA checked out the transmission idea back in 2008, but what is not part of the story is that apparently the test was a failure, not a success

Unfortunately for Space Energy, Inc and the entire concept of space based solar power, the actual test results conducted for a Discovery channel documentary proved a total failure. The former NASA executive and physicist who organized the experiment, John Mankins, admitted in a press conference that the $1 Million budget spent of the experiment resulted in less than 1/1000th of 1% of the power transmitted being received on the other island.

The most successful test of wireless power transmission over any distance at high efficiency was conducted by Bill Brown in 1975. Using a NASA deep space tracking dish they transmitted 30kw over 1.6 km (1 mile) at 82.5% efficiency at the Goldstone Deep Space Communication Complex. A Since Geostationary orbit is 36,000 km (22,500 miles) away from earth the space based power station needs to efficiently transmit power over twenty thousand times further than has ever been achieved to date.

Apparently the idea was one of the early ideas submitted to the “Change.Gov” website, where it can be commented on by the public. However, having just dropped by to find the reference I see that after 699 comments, the site has been closed for further comment.

Given that the plan is now to for the utility to get approval from state regulators it should be interesting to see how this project unfolds over the summer. There is some talk of seeing the first return of power in the 2016 time frame. The ground receiving station being located somewhere in Fresno County.

In the meanwhile I am going to go and start digging through some of those old boxes in the back of the office. There is a video of the possible project here (you might note the size of the field array on Earth to receive the signal.)