Soundcentury » New England Alternative Energy

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Gets Local.

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:23:19 +0000

United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu recently announced that more than $20.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be allocated to five major projects.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act supports deployment of community-based renewable energy projects, such as biomass, wind and solar installations. The idea behind these projects is that not only will they create jobs, but will also provide the foundation for long-term renewable energy infrastructure.

Hopefully, other communities will keep a close eye on these projects and begin to look into starting their own local projects. “These projects will help us cut carbon pollution at the local level,” said Secretary Chu.

The clean energy revolution must begin at the local level, with local communities spearheading projects and thinking out of the box. The five selected sites geographically represent the United States well.

According to the United States Department of Energy website the five projects include:

City of Montpelier (Montpelier, Vermont)
This project will further Montpelier’s energy goals by supporting installation of a 41 MMBtu combined heat and power (CHP) district energy system fueled with locally-sourced renewable and sustainably-harvested wood chips. The CHP system will be sized to provide heating to the Vermont Capitol Complex, city owned schools, the City Hall Complex, and up to 156 buildings in the community’s designated downtown district for a total of 176 buildings and 1.8 million square feet served. By providing 1.8 million KWh of power to the grid, the system will maximize its operating efficiency and reduce thermal costs for users in the community. Montpelier will conduct outreach to encourage replication regionally and nationally through its project partners, the Biomass Energy Resource Center, the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, and Veolia Energy North America. DOE share: $8,000,000.

Forest County Potawatomi Tribe (Forest County, Wisconsin)
The Forest County Potawatomi Tribe proposes to implement an integrated renewable energy deployment plan that will provide heating, cooling, and electricity for the Tribe’s governmental buildings, displacing natural gas and propane. The renewable energy installations will include: a 1.25 MW biomass combined heat and power facility that will provide heating, cooling, and electricity; a biogas digester and 150 kW generation facility; three 100 kW wind turbines (788,400 kWh/year); and three dual-axis 2.88 kW solar PV panels (14,000 kWh/yr) located at the Tribe’s Governmental Center. DOE share: $2,500,000.

Phillips County (Holyoke, Colorado)
This project proposes a community-owned 30 MW wind energy project with an ultimate goal to build a 650MW wind farm within Sedgwick, Phillips, and Logan counties in Northeastern Colorado. This project will impact the local economy by sharing the project’s revenues with local landowners and other project participants, by generating local jobs, substantial property taxes, and providing clean renewable energy for the area’s primary communities. Plans for sharing this ownership model are part of the business plan and will be coordinated with DOE to increase national delivery of the message. DOE share: $2,500,000.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) (Sacramento, California)
SMUD will install the state’s first-ever “Solar Highway,” which will feature three PV system installations on 2 miles of highway right-of-ways (300kW of concentrating PV, and 400 and 800 kW of flat plate PV distributed at 2 sites), with total capacity of 1.5 MW. SMUD will also install a full scale co-digestion process of fats, oil, and grease (FOG) and liquid food processing waste with sewage to produce biogas with estimated power recovery of 1-3 MW, and install two low-NOx anaerobic digesters fed by two dairy facilities that will produce 500 kW of combined heat and power and generate 600 kW of electricity through a molten carbonate fuel cell. The projects will demonstrate that solar PV and anaerobic digesters can be readily implemented through collaborative partnerships, and avoid siting issues and transmission constraints that pose barriers to renewable energy capacity additions. SMUD will partner with the State of California (CEC, CalTrans, and CARB) and DOE to promote replication of their approaches, technologies, and implementation strategies statewide and nationally. DOE share: $5,000,000.

University of California at Davis (Davis, California)
UC Davis’ proposed Waste-to-Renewable Energy (WTRE) system is one component of a campus oriented mixed housing and commercial development venture. The system would generate power from a renewable biogas fed fuel cell. The organic waste will enter a receiving station in which it can be collected and prepared for digestion. Once the appropriate mix has been created in buffer tanks, the waste will flow to the reactor where methanogenic bacteria will generate methane and carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, etc. These gases will flow to the Bio-methane Upgrade System for hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide removal, so that cleanup is to a level appropriate for use in a fuel cell system, and the cleaned gas is stored. Housed alongside the WTRE system within the Community Energy Park will be an advanced storage battery and a 300kW fuel cell that will be fueled by the on-site biogas and provides electric power to West Village end-users. DOE share: $2,500,000.

Perhaps Copenhagen was not a failure

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:09:04 +0000

My wife Erin in the Maine Mountains

Throughout the Copenhagen climate conference there remained hope that some type of universal agreement was going to be met in order to help slow down global warming.

It’s been over a month now since the final day’s of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, an event hailed as a turning point in global warming, but an event which ended without any concrete legislation in place to curb global warming. Despite the scientific facts on the table and their consequences if no action were to be taken, Copenhagen was unable to get past arguments over who is to blame the most for adding gasoline to the fire.

In other words, the world’s biggest polluters walked away with big, fat, greedy smiles on their faces knowing that their battle against the success of this summit was won. Their companies could remain doing exactly what they have been doing with no regard for the scientifically proven long-term effects their practices are causing to our planet.

Or did they win? After exploring several sides of the issue, it appears that the very failure of this climate summit could shine a light on the fact that curbing pollution to lesser levels is not the issue. We could fight this battle against big, stubborn polluters for many years to come and end up exactly in the same place we were when we walked out of Copenhagen.

The solution to this mess can be found in alternative energies that will replace the need for the big polluters. Alternative energies will not only curb emissions, they will nearly eliminate emissions. So, the issue, as far as I can see it, is focusing 100% on creating the best possible alternative energies right now that can be affordable and available to the masses.

Once the big polluters see that there is momentum and profit in the alternative energy sector, they will move faster than they have in decades. So perhaps, Copenhagen was just a reminder that our solutions don’t rest under the nose of the media in glorified summits, but rather through decisive action that will really end the problem, and not simply minimize it.

Harvard Digs the Sun

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:02:08 +0000

The future of energy can be found by looking up in the sky and Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass understands this well. On January 12^th, CarbonFree Technology, Integrys Energy Services, Inc., and SunPower Corporation announced the completion of a money-saving rooftop solar power system. The 500-kilowatt Sunpower system is Harvard’s largest and most up-to-date solar power investment.

According to CarbonFree Technology, the solar power system, a SunPower T5 Solar Roof Tile, will generate the equivalent of the amount of power required for 83 average Massachusetts homes each year, potentially offsetting the equivalent of 367 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

The project was kick-started by a $1.1 million rebate provided by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, to promote the installation of grid-tied photovoltaic systems.

Harvard is onto something very good here. Imagine if more Universities and Colleges around the world adopted similar projects. The long-term savings should outweigh the initial start-up costs.

There has never been a better time for Colleges and Universities to invest into wind and solar technology. They can become energy self-sufficient and potentially generate income through the selling of excess energy to surrounding areas.

Could this be the solution to the economic troubles many Colleges and Universities are currently facing?