Alstom and SSE Renewables have signed a new joint venture agreement to co-develop the world’s largest wave farm in the Costa Head Wave Project, off the coast of Orkney, Scotland. The farm will deliver up to 200 Megawatts of renewable energy utilizing AWS Ocean Energy Ltd’s (AWS) Archimedes Wave Swing III technology (AWS-III).

AWS is based in Inverness, Scotland, and the company’s stated purpose is to develop and deliver the technology of choice for utility scale generation of offshore wave power.

AWS-III is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0185721, entitled “Energy Conversion Device” (’721 Application) and directed to an array of interconnected compressible cells which convert wave energy into pneumatic energy by moving air between the cells. Turbines within the device convert the moving air into electricity.

Figure 1 of the ’721 Application illustrates the wave energy device. The device has twelve interconnected cells (20) arranged in a ring. The cells are connected to a ring-like air duct (not shown) and have a diaphragm (30) on their outer edge.

The diaphragm moves relative to the cell when wave action (40, 50) presses against the movable diaphragm surface. The movement of the diaphragm causes air within the cells to be pumped into and out of the air duct and between the cells. The moving air then spins a turbine, which produces electricity.

Each multi-cell array can produce up to 2.5 megawatts of electricity. Once in place, the devices are moored to the sea floor in depths ranging from 60 – 150 meters. Each device will be connected to the local utility grid from an offshore substation via a high voltage link.

According to a joint press release, a 1:9 scale model of the AWS-III was deployed in Loch Ness, Scotland in 2010. Full scale component testing will commence in 2012 and a full scale prototype is planned for deployment in 2014.

In the press release, Simon Grey, Chief Executive at AWS stated:

The selection of the AWS-III system for this exciting and ground-breaking project is a significant endorsement of our technology and team. We firmly believe that the AWS-III will become the established choice for utility scale offshore wave power generation. We look forward to working with Alstom and SSE to deliver Costa Head.

AWS and Alstom predict there is a potential worldwide market for renewable wave energy in the 200 to 300 gigawatt range. If successful, this 200 megawatt wave farm will be a large step in making that prediction a reality.

Article by David Gibbs, appearing courtesy Green Patent Blog.

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I attended the American Wind Energy Association’s 2011 Conference & Expo in Anaheim last week where I was able to see a lot of technology for turbines both large and small.

On the small side, at 3.5 and 7.5 kW, was Sonkyo Energy’s WINDSPOT turbine.

The WINDSPOT features a proprietary blade pitch control assembly, and the Spanish company owns International Application Publication No. WO 2010/034861 (’861 Application) directed to this technology.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find a corresponding English language patent application, so I was limited to the Abstract of the ’861 Application and my conversation with the folks at Sonkyo’s booth to explain the technology.

The ’861 Application describes a rotating headpiece including a shaft connected to a cross-piece (14), which is connected via intermediate mechanisms (5, 8-11) to the end supports of (7) of the blades (6).

When the cylinder shaft moves the cross-piece (14) the assembly varies the pitch of the blades (6). Counterweights (15) can also vary the blade pitch of the rotor head.

According to Sonkyo’s web site, its variable pitch technology “is a passive mechanism that uses the centrifugal force produced by the turning of the wind turbine to change the attack angle of the blades, which adjust themselves in a movement synchronized by the strength of the wind.”

At the utility scale, Muenster, Germany-based Kenersys’s 2.0 and 2.5 MW turbines employ the company’s SYNERDRIVE technology, which includes electrically excited synchronous generators.

Kenersys owns several international patent applications, including International Application Publication No. WO 2010/034760 (’760 Application), entitled “Excitation machine for a synchronous generator.” Again, there do not appear to be any English-language counterparts for this application, so we’re limited to the Abstract.

The ’760 Application is directed to an excitation machine for a synchronous generator (13, 14) wherein the synchronous generator comprises at least two excitation modules (10, 9; 8, 9). The first module (10, 9) is self-excited, and the second module (8, 9) is externally-excited.

According to the Abstract of the ’760 Application, the invention makes it possible to generate high outputs and provide cold-starting and operating capabilities at low rotational speeds or without connection to the utility grid.

Eric Lane is a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego and the author of Green Patent Blog. Mr. Lane can be reached at elane@luce.com.

A U.S. startup says it has developed an enhanced geothermal energy system (EGS) that engineers say can tap into heat from the Earth’s interior without any associated risks of triggering earthquakes or polluting underground aquifers.

While typical EGS processes require developers to pump liquids into deep wells at high pressure, a process that has on occasion triggered small earthquakes, GTHerm has developed an approach that doesn’t require fracturing or water cooling.

Instead, the process includes installation of a solid-state heat exchanger, or “heat nest,” at the bottom of the well that can more efficiently draw heat from surrounding rock with the help of a highly conductive grout encasing the heat exchanger.

Fluid is sent down the well in a closed loop that carries the heat back to the surface, where it creates steam that drives electricity-generating turbines. “We’re basically a heat pump on steroids,” said Michael Parrella, CEO and founder of the Connecticut-based company.

The company, which is now testing the commercial feasibility of the technology, hopes to have demonstration plants in place as early as 2012.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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It may seem like wind farms are a relatively new form of green technology, but they have actually been around for years—decades, even.

In fact, the UK’s first commercial wind farm, located at Delabole in Cornwall, celebrated its 20-year anniversary with a multimillion-pound renovation. Delabole originally consisted of 10 turbines standing at 164 feet each, but has now received four new 325-foot turbines as part of the overhaul.

With the newer, more energy efficient turbines up and running, the wind farm is expected to generate 9.2 megawatts of power—a massive feat for any form of renewable energy. This operation now has the ability to power 7,000 homes.

The project cost about 11.8 million pounds to complete, but with the site slated to produce a substantial amount of power in the area for years to come, it seems well worth it.

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A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called a wind generator or wind charger. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or pumping water, the device is called a windmill or wind pump. Large wind farms are being built around the world as a cleaner way to generate electricity, but operators are still searching for the most efficient way to arrange the massive turbines that turn moving air into power. To help steer wind farm owners in the right direction, Charles Meneveau, a Johns Hopkins fluid mechanics and turbulence expert, working with a colleague in Belgium, has devised a new formula through which the optimal spacing for a large array of turbines can be obtained.

Turbines used in wind farms for commercial production of electric power are usually three-bladed and pointed into the wind by computer-controlled motors. These have high tip speeds of over 200 mph, high efficiency, and low torque ripple, which contribute to good reliability. The tubular steel towers range from 200 to 300 feet tall. The blades rotate at 10-22 revolutions per minute. At 22 rotations per minute the tip speed exceeds 300 feet per second. A gear box is commonly used for stepping up the speed of the generator, although designs may also use direct drive of an annular generator.

“I believe our results are quite robust,” said Meneveau, who is the Louis Sardella Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the university’s Whiting School of Engineering. “They indicate that large wind farm operators are going to have to space their turbines farther apart.”

The newest wind farms, which can be located on land or offshore, typically use turbines with rotor diameters of about 300 feet. Currently, turbines on these large wind farms are spaced about seven rotor diameters apart. The new spacing model suggests that placing the wind turbines 15 rotor diameters apart – more than twice as far apart as in the current layouts – results in more cost-efficient power generation.

The research is important because large wind farms — consisting of hundreds or even thousands of turbines — are planned or already operating in the western United States, Europe and China. “The early experience is that they are producing less power than expected,” Meneveau said. “Some of these projects are underperforming.”

Earlier computational models for large wind farm layouts were based on simply adding up what happens in the wakes of single wind turbines, Meneveau said. The new spacing model, he said, takes into account interaction of arrays of turbines with the entire atmospheric wind flow.

Meneveau and Meyers argue that the energy generated in a large wind farm has less to do with horizontal winds and is more dependent on the strong winds that the turbulence created by the tall turbines pulls down from higher up in the atmosphere. Using insights gleaned from high-performance computer simulations as well as from wind tunnel experiments, they determined that in the correct spacing, the turbines alter the landscape in a way that creates turbulence, which stirs the air and helps draw more powerful kinetic energy from higher altitudes.

A wind tunnel is a research tool used in aerodynamic research. It is used to study the effects of air moving past solid objects. Wind tunnels were first proposed as a means of studying vehicles (primarily airplanes) in free flight. The wind tunnel was envisioned as a means of reversing the usual paradigm: instead of the air’s standing still and the aircraft moving at speed through it, the same effect would be obtained if the aircraft stood still and the air moved at speed past it.

Air currents in the tunnel pass through a series of small three-bladed model wind turbines mounted atop posts, mimicking an array of full-size wind turbines. Data concerning the interaction of the air currents and the model turbines is collected by using a measurement procedure called stereo particle-image-velocimetry, which requires a pair of high-resolution digital cameras, smoke and laser pulses.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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The South Korean government will help fund construction of a massive offshore wind farm that proponents say would generate about 2,500 megawatts of electricity and give the Asian nation a foothold in the emerging renewable energy industry.

The 9.2 trillion won project ($8.2 billion), which proponents hope to complete by 2019, would be built in the waters off the southwestern coast.

Major South Korean companies — such as Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering — will reportedly build the 500 turbines. The government will coordinate the project and provide about 29 billion won.

In South Korea, Asia’s fourth-biggest oil importer, officials see the initiative as a step toward reducing the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels. “Considering the small size of our land, offshore wind farms… are far more promising sources of energy than onshore wind farms,” the Knowledge Economy Ministry said in a statement.

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British designers are developing a new type of offshore wind turbine that rotates on its axis, mimicking the spiral of a sycamore seed, and that stretches nearly 900 feet (275 meters) from tip to tip.

The so-called Aerogenerator has two enormous arms that extend from the base of the structure in a V-formation, each equipped with sails along their length that act like aerofoils to generate lift and cause the structure to turn at about three revolutions per minute. Designed by the engineering firm Wind Power, and backed by a consortium of academic and business organizations, the design would generate enough electricity to power 5,000 to 10,000 homes, more than twice as much as the most powerful existing wind turbine designs. The developers hope the design is ready for use by 2013.

The proposal joins others in an international race to build a 10-megawatt offshore wind turbine, including a proposal by U.S.-based Clipper Marine to build turbines rising nearly 600 feet above the North Sea.

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The US wind power industry is facing huge problems that have led analysts to forecast a 60% drop in installations this year. This will be the first year since 2004 that the industry will not grow. The main reason for this set back is that we have nearly run out of high wind areas with easy access to transmission. This combined with extremely low prices for natural gas have led the industry back to the drawing board.

Luckily, several companies, such as Siemens and Vestas are responding with more efficient turbines that can function in lower wind areas. While innovation is certainly coming, it is difficult to say how long it will take before the industry rebounds. It is not out of the question that US wind could continue to struggle for the next few years especially if Washington does not take more assertive measures to support them.

The governments of Great Britain and China, however, have taken bold steps to support wind power with plans to develop 25 and 30 GW of offshore capacity by 2020 respectively. Given this situation, the ideal wind company for an investor today would be a British or Chinese firm that is financially healthy and efficiently managed. If one could be found that was also trading at a discount, all the better.

A-Power Generation Systems, Ltd (APWR), a Chinese firm based in Shenyang, has a market cap of 414 million and 167 million of cash to only 21 million of debt. They are rapidly expanding with 54% year-on-year quarterly revenue growth. All of this amounts to a very healthy company. With a 35% return on invested capital, it is also meets our criterion of being efficiently run. Finally, its price-to-earnings ratio is below 6, which makes it an extremely good bargain. It is my belief that the market overreacted to the possibility of this company going under during the global financial meltdown of 2008 (the stock dropped from over $30 in June ‘08 to under $4 by Nov). The stock has not fully recovered and still has a lot of room to grow.

Article by Ambrose Desmond, a green investment advisor who also runs sustainablog’s green investment subdomain, and specializes in holistic financial counseling.

photo: Chris Lim at Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license

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(Reuters) – General Electric Co said on Monday it was tapped to sell wind turbines for what is expected to be the first freshwater wind farm in the United States, planned for Lake Erie in the American Midwest.

The largest U.S. conglomerate will initially provide five four-megawatt turbines to the planned wind farm, which is expected to begin operation in late 2012 and would be capable of producing enough electricity to meet the needs of 16,000 typical American homes.

The wind farm is scheduled to be built off the shores of Cleveland, Ohio, and its developers — the nonprofit Lake Erie Energy Development Corp — have a long-term goal of building it out to have a capacity of producing 1,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020.

Offshore turbines represent just a sliver of installed worldwide wind capacity, but the growth of that new industry could help to offset what GE expects to be softening demand for land-based turbines, Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said.

“I do see that smoothing some of the cyclicality in the whole wind space,” Immelt told reporters in Boston after addressing the graduating class of Boston College.

GE did not disclose the value of the order.

GE has estimated that offshore wind turbines could grow to become a $3 billion to $5 billion business for the company, rivaling its land-based turbine business in revenue.

Reporting by Scott Malone, editing by Matthew Lewis; article appearing courtesy Reuters

photo: Extra Ketchup

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Ken Salazar's solar array and cowboy hat combo should be more common under the plan announced yesterday for the Southwest

Yesterday’s big announcement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar heralded what may be a new era for solar power, as thousands of acres of federal land in six Southwestern states were set aside to become a special federal solar energy zone designed to facilitate siting, construction and deployment of as much as 70,000 MW of new solar capacity.

Today, it is wind’s turn in the sun. The front page of the Boston Globe and local broadcast reports are abuzz with the news that Governor Deval Patrick’s administration has released a new plan to re-zone state coastal waters to better balance the need for marine ecological protections with the hope that Massachusetts can harvest more of its offshore wind as useful electricity.

In the absence of all of the plan’s details (a full presser was scheduled for the afternoon of July 1 at the New England Aquarium in Boston), the media has already shifted to score-keeping. There is at least one clear loser, as the plan deals a death blow to a particular Buzzards Bay proposal for 300 MW of offshore wind. The wind farm would sit in what is now a restricted area.

The plan does set aside two specific areas for large-scale wind, and Jim O’Sullivan of the State House News Service quotes Ian Bowles, the state’s energy secretary, as telling reporters that “the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts] will want to put those areas out to bid and they would be, relatively speaking, on the fast track for development.” (sorry, SHNS is a subscription site – no link). Bowles allowed that the proponents of the Buzzards Bay project could bid to shift their 90+ turbines to one of the newly-designated areas, but added that he had no idea whether they intended to do so.

Bowles’ “fast-tracking” comment is direct, but not surprising. His own March Op-Ed in the NYT made reference to the administration’s perception of major offshore wind potential; and, those comments were strengthened considerably by the testimony Paul Hibbard, a state regulatory commissioner, gave before Congress in mid-June.

All the international investment, Washington clout and technological innovation in the world is for naught in a climate where a neighbor and ten friends can still get together and tie a project into a Gordian knot of appeals and reviews.

Until the full rule-making process is complete on both of these new policies, it is unclear what the real impact on siting will be. But, it seems obvious that neither policy will address all of the potential delays in getting turbines spinning. For example, the Massachusetts plan still grants local towns and regional planning agencies the authority to approve smaller wind projects in state coastal waters.

Taken together, yesterday’s federal announcement of a new plan for Southwestern solar zones and the Massachusetts offshore wind farm rezoning plan, demonstrate some interesting trends: first, a shift that brings policy more in line with rhetoric and second, a clear bias for executive action as against legislative enactment.

The two announcements are tangible steps toward aligning policy with the increasing rhetoric about the desire for greater renewable deployment. The major problem remains siting. Even in a fantasy scenario where there is no additional public opposition (which does NOT happen), the environmental and administrative processes at the local, regional, state and federal level are cumbersome.

Streamlined siting of generation assets is less meaningful without equivalent relief for building the transmission interconnections that are required to get wind off the high seas and solar rays out of the desert, and deliver usable energy to load centers.

The siting problem is a drag on development even as aggressive renewable portfolio standards have sent utilities out on the market for new renewable capacity (in spite of a year where they saw overall demand drop). It remains true even as huge sums of public money have been made available to subsidize renewable power and to spur development of new generation capacity.

Both of these announcements should – ostensibly – make siting, permitting and constructing a project easier. Both are still subject to public comment periods and possible amendment, but however the details emerge, it seems clear that what we will be left with is a more favorable climate for developers.

Both plans face at least one big additional question: even if they allow for streamlined siting of the generation asset, do they offer equivalent relief for building the transmission interconnections that will be required to get the wind off the high seas and the sun’s rays out of the desert, and deliver usable energy to load centers? Just ask Cape Wind, who was able to site their entire proposed farm in federal waters, whether relief from zoning and local/state court appeals for transmission infrastructure is needed.

The second trend is perhaps a little more wonkish and nuanced, but what does this spate of executive action mean for the future of energy infrastructure siting? Based on the blood bath that emerged in the House trying to get Waxman-Markey through, the measured bill that emerged, and the dim hopes of getting even that kind of bill through the Senate, it seems clear that if we are going to see swift, aggressive action on game-changing energy policy matters, it is likely to come from the executive corner of the government. While we can’t say how that trend might be greeted by the legislative bodies off in the other corner, we do have some indication of how the third member of the troika – the courts – will respond.

Swift, aggressive action on game-changing energy policy matters is likely to come from the executive corner of the government.

This spring, the Fourth Circuit rejected FERC’s attempts to grab a greater share of power under Federal Power Act amendments that were a part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Piedmont decision interpreted FERC’s backstop authority as a sort of riding crop that allowed the executive agency to help spur movement in state siting decisions and prevent undue or bad faith delay. The court expressly rejected FERC’s claim that the EPAct 2005 amendments allowed it to overturn the decisions of state siting agencies.

We may soon have a similar indication of the expansiveness of executive agency authority in Massachusetts. After receiving a consolidated “super-permit” from the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board, Cape Wind faces a new SJC appeal that is sure to allege that local zoning approvals should not have been preempted. Cape Wind already prevailed in a 2006 SJC decision that focused more on the question of administrative authority and practice than on the substantive issues around siting.

It will be interesting to see if the Massachusetts court follows the 4th Circuit in some sense by limiting executive authority over energy infrastructure. Either way, the fact remains that project developers will remain subject to a full panoply of potential legal remedies that opponents can use to delay construction. These policies themselves – in whatever form they ultimately take – will inevitably be tested and interpreted by the courts.

In spite of the new policies, a fundamental conflict in renewable energy generation siting remains: the resources are most often not collocated with load. In other words, the locals who are experiencing the hardships presented by the development are probably not the ones who need the increased capacity. Even if a developer can site a project in one of the Commonwealth’s new zones (say on the beaches south of Boston headed toward Cape Cod), they still face the fundamental question from locals: why should I allow 10 turbines on my beach so that you can generate more power for skyscrapers downtown? And that is to say nothing of the permits required to construct transmission lines, transformation facilities and other ancillary infrastructure needs.

It is a positive sign for developers when the leaders of our nation and our states decide to put some of their political capital where their rhetoric has been. But, none of these policies are a panacea. Developers need to focus on the whole project picture, but they must keep a wary eye at ground level. All the international investment, Washington clout and technological innovation in the world is for naught in a climate where a neighbor and ten friends can still get together and tie a project into a Gordian knot of appeals and reviews.

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