New Ideas and New Products

I read an article today which mentioned that the naturalist Sir David Attenborough has become patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank campaigning for global research and awareness of the issue of population growth and the effect it is having on planet earth.

According to the United Nations the global population is expected to grow from 6.8 billion today to 9.1 billion in 2050. Here are a few of the OPT’s conclusions:

• Water demand exceeds supply in nearly half the world’s countries: by 2025 two-thirds of the Earth’s population will live in water-stressed areas.
• The proportion of cultivated land on the planet has increased from 7% to 40% in 300 years, with almost no room left for expansion.
• Oil and natural gas look set to ‘peak’ within a decade or two and it’s doubtful that either nuclear or renewables can fill the gap. (I agree with the first half of that statement but disagree with the second half. I believe solar power has the potential to be an extremely cheap and abundant form of energy in 10-15 years. Although Nuclear Fusion power has its issues as I discussed here recently, I believe it could be a potential solution in the more distant future.)
• If we believe climate change has anthropogenic origins then population growth is not going to help.
• Population is growing at 1 million people every 5 days.
• Humanity is currently using 120-140% of the resources that the Earth can sustainably provide.
• This topic has become too controversial an issue for politicians and environmental groups to address for fear of causing offence. It can sound anti-people, and pro-poverty.
• This isn’t just an issue for the developing world. People in the developed world consume far more resources and emit more pollution than those from the developing world.
• Ultimately the world needs to reduce its population by about half to around 2-3 billion.

Some rather sobering conclusions but I believe they come from solid academic study. How we start to address this problem I do not know. Maybe Obama should wait for his second term to address this issue!

Last Thursday I wrote about how China was going to give the solar industry a boost by introducing government backed incentives for solar project developers.

Well yesterday Japan announced it was going to extend its already existing Solar incentives by providing around 2 Trillion Japanese Yen to be spent on solar projects over the next three years. This equates to around 1GW of demand per year which is very significant seeing as Japan only installed around 280MW last year.

Japanese manufacturers of solar panels such as Sharp and Kyocera should be the first to benefit but the solar industry as a whole should benefit from this extra demand as it reduces the supply/demand inbalance I talked about last Thursday.

Most of the additional demand in Japan will come from Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) as land values are too high to justify large utility scale “solar farms” as Japan is such as mountainous country.

So two good bits of news for the solar industry in one week. With the G20 meeting on Thursday we could see some further positive news. There is also talk of a green stimulus element to the Chinese stimulus plan which would be further good news for the alternative energy industry as a whole.

Efficient use of energy will have a big part to play in reducing demand on fossil fuels. But efficiency doesn’t just mean making sure you are using lower powered lamps and cars with a high mpg. It also means being aware of how much energy you are using and understanding how that translates into cost to your pocket.

I came across this product called Tweet-a-Watt that monitors the electricity consumption of whatever device you plug it into and then posts to your Twitter account each day how much power you have been using. I thought this was the start of an interesting idea.

Given the fact that it only works on the one device that it is plugged into it is still a bit of a toy. If their was a product that could monitor the electricity consumption of your entire house and could communicate with Twitter then I could see this sparking off lots of conversation and debate. Perhaps people would compete to reduce their energy load. Ultimately it would improve understanding of what are the big energy loads in your house and how can you minimise their use.

Utilities are getting interested in this kind of monitoring by using more advanced technology as it allows them to track all sorts of dynamics and trends such as load peeks by location. Smart grid and Advanced Meter Infrastructure such as this is likely to really take off in the next few years and I think it is important that utilities allow individual households access to the information on their own electricity consumption.

Google is also working on a product that will allow access to this kind of information via the internet. The Google PowerMeter is in a testing phase and will need your property already to be using a smart meter for it to work. Very few properties actually have this already installed so it is going to take some time before we all benefit.

Electric car company Tesla Motors today launched their latest electric car. It’s called the Model S and it looks stunning.

This is the second car from Tesla Motors. They already have the more sporty roadster but the Model S is a saloon.

This car does seem to address a number of the big issues for electric cars:

1. Range. The Model S will have a range of 300 miles after one charge. That should be enough for most people. I know I wouldn’t want to drive more than 300 miles in a day.
2. Time to charge. This car can make do with a quick charge in 45 minutes or a full charge in 4 hours.
3. Acceleration. 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds. That’s quick.
4. Priced for the right market. At $49,900 this should be attractive enough to make people consider it instead of their Mercedes or BMW.
5. Looks. It doesn’t look like a tin can on wheels, it looks beautiful. It also looks safe.

It won’t actually be launched until 2011 so we have got a bit of a wait. But I do like the way that Tesla are producing electric vehicles that are desirable instead of some kind of compromise between satisfying your green conscience and actual performance and style.

Tesla could well be one of the beneficiaries of the Stimulus plan by receiving a federal loan to help them build out manufacturing capacity.

Electric vehicles have still got a lot to prove. I think reliability is a factor that we have no way of analysing right now. We still have to work out the infrastructure to allow these vehicles to be recharged. Not such an issue for someone who will buy this car but for the generation of electric vehicles that are affordable for your average driver and aren’t parked in a private garage but on the street.

Anyway this is great news. I look forward to driving past one of these in the not too distant future.

The solar industry received a boost today when the Chinese government said it was going to step in to provide incentives to encourage the development of solar installations.

This is good news as the solar industry has had a tough time through the credit crunch and consequently there is an oversupply of solar modules which is driving down prices and effecting manufacturers’ margins.

The Chinese government is saying that they will subsidise solar projects to the tune of around $3 per Watt. Given that solar module prices are currently around $3 per Watt that means that all the developers will effectively pay for is the balance of plant and labour which should be considerably less than what is paid in Europe, Japan and the US. Therefore, this effectively makes the cost of installing Solar in China less than half of what it was before today’s announcement.

The focus is going to be on Building Integrated Solar Photovoltaics (BIPV) and systems will have to be over 50kW to qualify. So we aren’t really talking about Chinese families putting solar panels on their houses as for this you would need nearer 10kW. I guess it will focus on factories, schools, hospitals, etc.

The Chinese are also making sure that subsidised installations will use quality panels requiring at least 16% for monocrystalline panels, 14% for multicrystalline and 6% for thin-film.

The big question is what does this do to solar demand. How many MWs will China install this year and going forward? It’s really hard to say but I think this could add 500-1000MW this year. Planning processes are likely to be fast and installation times will be quicker than in Europe and the US .

China is expected to need to double its electricity generating capacity between 2005 and 2015 and so it looks like solar can play a fairly significant part. China has the manufacturing capacity and technical expertise to continue to expand and this is likely to play a big part in helping the solar industry globally to get to grid parity.

Ultimately this subsidy is about supporting the Chinese solar manufacturing industry and developing a home grown source of additional electricity generation capacity. However, perhaps there is an element of China taking its first steps towards helping the world deal with climate change.

However, you look at it we now have great subsidies in place in the two most important economies: the US and China. Hopefully they can now build on the efforts that governments in Europe and Japan have made to develop the solar industry.

A fairly significant amount of money from the recent Stimulus bill has been earmarked to develop the alternative energy industry in the US. The net effect of the legislation could translate to around $150 billion of investment. There are numerous programmes in place from direct federal investment in R&D, putting solar panels on government buildings and making them more efficient, upgrading the electricity grid, support for electric vehicles manufacturers, etc.

The most important in my mind though is the $6 billion of federal loan guarantees for new alternative energy projects such as solar and wind installations. This $6 billion investment will support $60 billion of government guaranteed debt financing which is sorely needed after many financial institutions have simply stopped providing to financing to capital intensive infrastructure projects.

When I first read about this part of the bill I thought to myself, this is really good news for the alternative energy industry, but, it’s going to take them a long time to get this money to the people who need it. The applications for this kind of financing through the Department of Energy have historically taken months or even years. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been revamping the process to apply for DoE grants and he had said he expected to see projects being approved by May which I thought sounded ambitious. Therefore it was great yesterday to see the first company benefit from this programme.

The company Solyndra is a manufacturer of Solar Photovoltaic panels and they have received loan guarantees of $535 million to allow them to build out a new commercial sized production plant.

Although it was positive to see that money was starting to be allocated at this early stage I was somewhat surprised to see this programme being used to support a manufacturer with a relatively unproven early stage technology (they use a relatively inefficient thin-film technique using CIGS instead of the established crystalline silicon technology). It seems to me the DoE should be targeting this money at new alternative energy installations such as large scale solar and wind farm projects. There is currently an excess supply of solar panels in the market and adding to that supply in the near future is not going to help the industry as a whole or the economic viability of a company based around young technology. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for investing in new technology and R&D but I don’t think this is the programme that should be used.

There is an opportunity to take advantage of the worldwide excess supply of solar panels by helping to fund large utility scale installations who can take advantage of depressed solar panel prices based on proven technology. These large projects are far lower risk than providing debt to an early stage company like Solyndra. Solar farm projects have very predictable cash flows, low ongoing costs, and can be installed quickly once approval has been given.

I will keep my eyes peeled for further news of where this money is going and keep you updated.

So what is the situation with nuclear fusion? Are we close to being able to use nuclear fusion as an electricity generating source?

After the invention of the nuclear fission bomb back in the 1940’s scientists were able to find a way of using the energy released from splitting atoms to generate electricity within about 10 years. However, it is now around 50 years since the Hydrogen bomb was invented so why haven’t we been able to convert this into a feasible source of electricity generation?

As an idea electricity generated from nuclear fusion is perfect. It is a clean source of energy (unlike coal, natural gas or crude oil), it uses Hydrogen as fuel (the most abundant element on earth), it requires tiny amounts of the fuel, it produces no radioactive waste (unlike nuclear fission that uses Uranium), it can provide baseload power (unlike wind or solar) and it does not rely on the weather (unlike solar, wind and hydro power).

There a number of problems with nuclear fusion with current technology.

1. We end up putting in more energy than we get out.
2. The length of time between actual fusion events is too long, i.e. in the order of hours rather than minutes or seconds.

However, technology is improving. Whereas say 15-20 years ago experiments were inputting say 30 times more energy than they were extracting, a project in Korea now expects to be about 1 to 1. So why do we have this problem of not being able to extract more energy than we put in?

This really relates to the amount of energy we need in order to force the two atoms together. But first…

A quick explanation of Nuclear Fusion:

Nuclear Fusion is the forcing together of two atoms to create a new heavier atom. When you force two light atoms close enough together they will combine together to make a heavier atom and also release energy.  The fuel that tends to be used is Deuterium which is a special type of naturally occurring Hydrogen which is made up of one proton, one neutron and one electron. These are forced together to eventually produce the inert gas Helium.

So why do we get energy out when we combine two light atoms together to form a larger one? Well this is explained by Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2. What this equation is saying is that energy and mass are essentially the same thing. Or in other words mass can be converted into energy. So what we find is that when we bring two light atoms together the resulting larger atom does not have the same mass as the sum of the two lighter atoms. It actually has less mass and the mass that no longer exists has been converted to energy.

The problem is that in order for us to force these two small atoms together they have to overcome an enormous electrostatic repulsive force which is the same force you experience when you try forcing the north pole of two magnets together. This force is far stronger than the gravitational attraction of the two atoms. If we can get the two atoms close enough together then another force known as the “Strong Force” overcomes the electrostatic force and the two atoms combine and fusion occurs. Therefore we have to put in large amounts of energy to get fusion to occur.

In a huge body like the sun the energy released by the fusion of one set of hydrogen atoms contributes to another set and so on and therefore it is self sustaining. However, on earth we have to use only a small amount of material so that we can initiate fusion and also contain the energy that it gives off, if we failed to contain it we would have an almighty explosion.

This means that the fusion events that have been created in experiments only last a short time. For example the Joint European Torus were able to create an output of 10MW but for only half  a second. The experiment then has to be setup again which can take hours.

One new project called ITER in France which is currently under construction hope to be able to produce a net energy output for a meaningful length of time. However, this is still probably 20 years away and even then it is only an experiment.

It doesn’t look like we are going to see electricity flowing into our grids from nuclear fusion in the near future. However, i think it is really important to continue to explore fusion as a source of electricity because it has the potential to provide cheap, clean baseload power. The IEA expect energy demand to increase 50% by 2030 due largely to a demographic shift towards the middle class in developing countries such as China and India. We clearly can’t rely on coal and natural gas due to depleting reserves and the effect it is having the climate. And as much as I support the use of wind and solar and other forms of alternative energy what we really need is a baseload source of power. At the moment the only other alternative is nuclear fission which I think we will have to rely on until we can find a way of making nuclear fusion work for us.