Weekly Clean Energy Roundup:November 17, 2004

News and Events

• Shell Adds Hydrogen Refueling to a Retail Gas Station
• Sandia to Help Build a 150-Kilowatt, Six-Dish Solar Facility
• Idaho PUC Gives Go-Ahead to State’s Largest Wind Power Plant
• German Company Erects Prototype 5-Megawatt Wind Turbine
• China Supports Plan to Build World’s Largest Tidal Power Plant
• Lexus to Launch Hybrid SUV in April 2005

Site News

• Germany’s Agency of Renewable Resources Tackles Biomass Energy

News and Events

Shell Adds Hydrogen Refueling to a Retail Gas Station

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham joined representatives of Shell and General Motors Corporation (GM) last week in the opening of the first hydrogen refueling station in Washington, D.C. The Shell station?the first in North America to offer both gasoline and hydrogen?will be used to refuel GM fuel cell vehicles as part of DOE’s Vehicle and Infrastructure Learning Demonstration and Validation Project. The station is the first in a potential hydrogen corridor running from the capital to New York City. See the DOE and Shell press releases.

Secretary Abraham announced the Vehicle and Infrastructure Learning Demonstration and Validation Project on April 27th as an opportunity to assess important data under real world environments that will refocus research efforts. See the story from the April 28th edition of this newsletter, and for more information, see DOE’s Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies Program Web site.

DOE’s progress in hydrogen technologies was one of the achievements highlighted by Secretary Abraham as he submitted his resignation to President Bush on Monday. “We have launched the most ambitious new energy technology initiatives in the world with our Hydrogen and Future Gen programs,” remarked Secretary Abraham in his resignation letter. The letter is included in a DOE press release.

Sandia to Help Build a 150-Kilowatt, Six-Dish Solar Facility

DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories announced last week that it will work with Stirling Energy Systems, Inc. (SES) to build a 150-kilowatt solar thermal power plant at its National Solar Thermal Test Facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. By January 2005, Sandia and SES staff will construct five prototype dish-Stirling systems at the facility to complement a system installed earlier this year. Each of the systems consists of 82 mirrors mounted on a steel frame in the shape of a dish. The mirrors concentrate the sun’s heat onto a receiver, which transmits the heat to a Stirling engine. This heat-driven engine converts the heat into mechanical energy, which drives a generator to produce power.

Sandia and SES will use the six-dish installation to improve the reliability and performance of the dish-Stirling systems while determining how best they can be integrated to form a large solar power plant. Although each prototype system now costs about $150,000, SES estimates that a production unit would cost less than $50,000, which would make it cost-competitive with conventional power technologies. See the Sandia press release, and visit the Sandia Web site for more information about the National Solar Thermal Test Facility.

Idaho PUC Gives Go-Ahead to State’s Largest Wind Power Plant

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has approved a contract for Idaho Power to buy the power from a 10.5-megawatt wind power project near Hagerman (about 30 miles northwest of Twin Falls in southern Idaho), effectively giving the project a green light. If the developer?Fossil Gulch Wind Park, LLC?obtains all necessary permits and proceeds to build the wind project, it will be the largest in the state. See the Idaho PUC announcement.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the largest wind project in Idaho is currently a two-turbine installation with a capacity of only 216 kilowatts. However, PowerWorks, Inc. has proposed to build a 171-megawatt wind project near Mountain Home, about 75 miles northwest of Twin Falls, and Windland, Inc. has proposed a 200-megawatt wind project near Albion, about 50 miles east of Twin Falls. Both developers plan to complete their projects in 2006. See the AWEA, PowerWorks, and Windland Web sites.

German Company Erects Prototype 5-Megawatt Wind Turbine

The largest wind turbine yet is now operating in northern Germany. Although designed for offshore wind plants, REpower Sys
tems AS installed the 5-megawatt prototype on land for ease of testing. The hub of the massive turbine stands 120 meters off the ground, and the 120-ton rotor, featuring wind blades from LM Glasfiber A/S, has a diameter of 126 meters. REpower began building the “5M” wind turbine in April, completed it in October, and expects to connect it to the electrical grid before year’s end. See the LM Glasfiber press release and the REpower 5M Web site.

Given the massive size of the newest generation of wind turbines, you might wonder if they can affect the circulation of wind on a large scale. Researchers from the University of Calgary and Carnegie Mellon University were wondering the same thing, and decided to plug the drag created by wind turbines into the global circulation programs that are used to model the Earth’s climate. Their study found that wind power at very large scales?two terawatts, or about 125 percent of today’s global electrical capacity?can produce “non-negligible climatic change,” causing slight heating and cooling in specific parts of the globe. The authors concluded: “Although large-scale effects are observed, wind power has a negligible effect on global mean surface temperature, and it would deliver enormous global benefits by reducing emissions of (carbon dioxide) and air pollutants. Our results may enable a comparison between the climate impacts due to (large-scale) wind power and the reduction in climatic impacts achieved by the substitution of wind for fossil fuels.” See the study (PDF 899 KB), published in yesterday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

China Supports Plan to Build World’s Largest Tidal Power Plant

Tidal Electric, a U.K.-based company, announced in late October that the Chinese government has expressed support for its proposed 300-megawatt tidal power plant in a tidal lagoon near the mouth of the Yalu River. The Yalu River forms part of the border between China and North Korea, and the tidal plant would be on the Chinese side of Korea Bay, west of the river. If built, it will be the world’s largest tidal power plant, topping the 240-megawatt plant in LaRance, France. Like existing tidal plants, the proposed Chinese plant would produce power by blocking the tidal flow into and out of the lagoon and forcing the tide to flow through a turbine to produce power. Very few tidal lagoons have the properties necessary for such a power plant.

According to Tidal Energy, Governor Zhang Wenyue of the Liaoning Province traveled to New York City and signed a cooperation agreement with the company, agreeing to provide environmental data, tidal data, and liaison services. The company will use the data to carry out feasibility studies for the project. See the Tidal Energy press release.

While one form of tidal energy is moving ahead, another has been placed on hold: the “Stingray,” a device to draw energy from tidal streams, has been put on the shelf by its developer, The Engineering Business, Ltd. (EB). According to EB, despite technical success with the device, the next logical step would be to design and build a 5-megawatt pre-commercial power station, which would cost more than $37 million (20 million pounds). The company concluded that “EB alone cannot fund such a project and after a thorough review has put a hold on future development of Stingray until there are clear indications that this level of investment is likely to yield a satisfactory return.” The device uses a wing-like hydroplane, mounted on a hydraulic arm, which oscillates up and down in the tidal flow. In recent tests, a prototype rated at 150 kilowatts generated an average hydraulic power output of 117.5 kilowatts, and EB estimated that a 100-megawatt plant could produce power at a cost of about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (6.7 pence per kilowatt-hour). See the EB news (scroll to the bottom) and the report (PDF 495 KB). Download Acrobat Reader.

Lexus to Launch Hybrid SUV in April 2005

Lexus announced last week that its hybrid-electric sport utility vehicle (SUV), the RX 400h, won’t go on sale until April 15th, 2005. The announcement follows a Lexus decision in August to push the sale date back from this fall to “early 2005.” Lexus hopes to begin producing the vehicles early in 2005 in order to build up sufficient inventories to meet the demand when the hybrid vehicle goes on sale. Lexus has more than 9,500 confirmed pre-sold orders for the RX 400h. “We’ve received significantly more pre-launch consumer interest for the 400h than any vehicle in our entire 15-year history,” said Lexus Group Vice President and General Manager, Denny Clements. See the Lexus press release or visit the RX 400h Web site.

Ford Motor Company also reports strong early interest in its hybrid SUV, selling 1,130 Escape Hybrids in October. Meanwhile, sales of the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid continue to top their own records. Toyota Motor Sales sold 6,123 Prius hybrids in October, a 9.6 percent improvement over the previous sales record, set in November 2003. Toyota’s year-to-date sales of the Prius total 41,838 vehicles. American Honda lagged behind Toyota, selling 2,266 Civic Hybrids in October, while selling only 11 Insights. Honda’s year-to-date sales of the Civic Hybrid total 21,506 vehicles, up 12 percent from last year. See the press releases from Ford, Toyota, and Honda.

Site News

Germany’s Agency of Renewable Resources Tackles Biomass Energy

The Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e.V., roughly translated as the Agency of Renewable Resources, bills itself as Germany’s central coordinating agency for renew
able resource activities. Founded in 1993 by the Federal Ministry of Nourishment, Agriculture and Forestry, the agency has both German- and English-language Web sites that focus mainly on biomass energy and biomass-based products. See the Agency of Renewable Resources Web site.

++++