Author: pfairley

Peter Fairley has been reporting and commenting on energy and the environment for 25 years.

Supergrid Technology Beats Expectations

HVDC breaker Source AlstomAn industrial research consortium that is a who’s-who of the European power industry says development of technologies to produce high-voltage DC (HVDC) supergrids accelerated in 2012 — “surpassing expectations.” The assessment comes in the supergrids technology roadmap updated earlier this month by Friends of the Supergrid, whose members include power equipment suppliers such as Siemens, ABB and Alstom, as well as transmission system operators and renewable energy developers.

Summarizing the conclusions of an expert group within the International Council on Large Electric Systems — better known as CIGRE, its French acroynm — the Friends of the Supergrid says there is now no doubt as to the feasibility of HVDC networks ferrying renewable energy resources from wherever they are in surplus to wherever they are needed: “CIGRE Working Group B4–52 considered this question, specifically whether it was technically and economically feasible to build a DC Grid, and the answer was yes.” Continue reading “Supergrid Technology Beats Expectations”

by pfairley

Ohio State Gets a Bead on Cleaner Coal

OSU cleaner coalOhio State University claims to have reached a milestone towards proving a radical new take on oxyfuel power generation that could push down the cost of zeroing out coal’s large and growing carbon footprint. Project director Liang-Shih Fan, director of OSU’s Clean Coal Research Laboratory, revealed recently that their reactor had operated for 203 continuous hours last fall and captured 99 percent of the resulting CO2.

Their run is the longest to date for a “chemical looping” reactor consuming coal, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and in Fan’s view it means the technology is ready for testing at pilot scale.

OSU’s chemical looping reactor (the centerpiece for a $7.1 million ARPA-E project that began in 2010) is so named because it circulates its components in a continuous loop in a manner that controls the interaction of pulverized coal and oxygen to prevent ignition of the coal. “We carefully control the chemical reaction so that the coal never burns—it is consumed chemically, and the carbon dioxide is entirely contained inside the reactor,” says Fan. Continue reading “Ohio State Gets a Bead on Cleaner Coal”

by pfairley

AC/DC 101

Much of your editor’s reporting in 2012 focused on the re-emergence of direct current or DC power — through pieces in IEEE Spectrum, Technology Review, and Power & Energy Magazine — and there is more in the works. Some of you, however, may still be wondering what DC power is and how it differs from the alternating current or AC power flowing from most electrical sockets. So here are some answers.

The questions were posed by Andrew Huang, a 9th grader at High Technology High School in Lincroft, NJ, who recently interviewed me for a history project on Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison’s late-19th Century War of Currents. (Check out The Oatmeal’s Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived for a rather tilted yet entertaining take on a key combattant in this epic tech tussle.)

What are some differences between the physics of AC and DC? Continue reading “AC/DC 101”

by pfairley

The Debate: Fracking and the Future of Energy

France 24 Energy in 2013 DebateThe Arctic is melting faster than predicted. Is now the time to shut down the low-carbon nuclear power plants in France — the 20th Century’s staunchest proponent of nuclear energy? Is natural gas produced via hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ a gift that is buying time for a transition to renewable energy or a curse that reinforces fossil fuel dependence? Will carbon belching heavyweights such as the U.S. and China ever get serious about cleaning up their energy systems?

Such questions are top order in France, whose President kicked off a Grand Débat on energy this month Continue reading “The Debate: Fracking and the Future of Energy”

by pfairley

Rendering Greenhouse Gases Visible

Natural gas has no odor, but you can smell a leak thanks to the addition of an odorific mercaptam compound. Do carbon dioxide and other similarly odorless greenhouse gases (GHGs) require some analogous device to make their presence known and thus prompt evasive action? Yes, and for these ubiquitous gases, it will be a visual cue indicating the source and quantity of GHGs Continue reading “Rendering Greenhouse Gases Visible”

by pfairley

Applying ‘Trust, but verify’ to Climate Change Policy

Last year Swiss researchers demonstrated that European countries release more of the potent greenhouse gas trifluoromethane than they report. It was just the latest in a growing number of case studies showing that polluters and governments might be under-estimating their climate change impact, but it served to highlight the science and technology that can reveal such cheating Continue reading “Applying ‘Trust, but verify’ to Climate Change Policy”

by pfairley

The Inconvenient Science of Biomass Power

New science confirms that burning trees to produce power instead of coal may be a losing strategy for combatting climate change.

In my April 2012 Spectrum news article on the questionable carbon benefits of largescale biomass power generation, I identified a boom in exports of wood pellets from the U.S. Southeast to Europe, where they are fast becoming a crucial energy supply for power firms seeking to meet the European Union’s renewable energy and carbon reduction mandates.

Forbes Magazine greentech columnist (and friend) Erica Gies noted my analysis in a May 22 blog post, Massachusetts Addresses “Biomass Loophole” and Limits Subsidies, about recently-issued regulations that set higher standards for biomass power plants seeking state-issued renewable energy certificates. Continue reading “The Inconvenient Science of Biomass Power”

by pfairley