Solar sells - anything

I was watching something on the Discovery Channel (which used to be about 70% watchable and 30% "I'll pass" and is now about 90% unwatchable) when I saw an ad for the "Bell & Howell Solar Charger." While "Bell & Howell" apparently still exists as going concern, they also license their trademark "to makers of various electronic consumer products." The Solar Charger is the product of one such maker. Should you have chosen to click on the link, you'll have had the opportunity to see the charger allegedly in action "instantly" charging iPhones, iPads, a handheld GPS, and all manner of  devices. Besides the sun, the charger is also capable of charging from a computer USB port, but the advertising touts a scantily clad woman at the beach, apparently using the sun to charge her iPad.

Let's take a look. The specifications are scant at best and hard to find. I've been able to determine that the battery is a 410 mAH (milliamp hour) Li ion battery. I'm going to assume that this is at 5 volts (the required charging voltage for an i-Device). I'd really like to have specifications for its capacity in watt hours. But, assuming as stated, it's 2.05 watt hours. Now, an iPhone battery has a capacity of 5.4 watt hours, so a full charge, neglecting efficiency, on the solar charger would charge a dead iPhone to about 38% of capacity. An iPad has a 42.5 watt hour battery and thus the charger will provide just under 5% of a full charge. Mine shuts down at that percentage. The "instantly" claim isn't supported by current battery technology in the devices, so the devices must simply operate off of the charger (to the extent that it works at all).

But what about the sun? The Amazon page for the charger lists its dimensions as 5" L X 1.5" W. Using the free and terrific Tracker Video Analysis software (which works just fine on jpegs) I determined that the "high efficiency solar cell" is about 1.46" X 0.85". This is ~8.00*10^{-4}{m}^{2}~. I'll also assume the cell to be 20% efficient. I'll use ~350\,{\frac {w}{{m}^{2}}}~ as a good average for available insolation in my area. That yields a charging rate of about ~8*10^{-4}*350*0.2 = 0.056~ watts and a time to charge to capacity of ~2.05/0.056=36.6~ hours. Others at various review sites cite (sites cite? I like it) two days, which doesn't seem unreasonable. On the web site video, they show the unit being charged under a table lamp. Umm... good luck with that.

I actually have several solar chargers for my various devices, all of them are quite bulky as you'd expect. Solar power density is just not that high. It's amazing that a profit can be made by slapping a trivially small solar panel on what is otherwise an extremely poor quality auxiliary charger for your portable device. And, don't forget, for an extra $10 you can get it with a three bulb LED flashlight. Finally, they'll send a second charger free (just pay separate processing and handling). My rating for this product:

Low hanging fruit revisited

Photo credit: Lincolnloop.com

About three years ago, I posted an article on the "low hanging fruit" in fuel savings. In that article, I demonstrated that for a given increase in m.p.g., the lower the starting m.p.g. (before the increase) the more fuel will be saved by that increase. Thus, a driver who drives 12,000 miles per year and increases from 15 m.p.g. to 18 m.p.g., either by purchasing a new vehicle or changing driving habits, will save about 133 gallons of gasoline per year. Another 12,000 miles per year driver who increases from 25 m.p.g. to 28 m.p.g. will save only about 51 gallons per year. The best way to understand this is to think of gallons per mile or, more transparently, gallons per 100 miles, the inverse of m.p.g. This number is 100*1/(m.p.g.) Thus, the first driver uses 6.67 gallons per 100 miles before the change and 5.56 gallons per 100 miles after. This driver saves 1.11 gallons every 100 miles. The second uses 4 gallons per 100 miles before and 3.57 after. This driver saves 0.43 gallons every 100 miles.

I was reminded of that post by this article in Energy Trends Insider. The article discusses a construct from the Department of Energy (DOE) at a new website that discusses the so-called "eGallon." This number purports to give the quantity (or cost) of the electricity that it would take to move a "typical" electric vehicle (EV) as far as a gallon of gasoline takes an "average" conventional car. This is where the "low hanging fruit" concept comes in. Replacing a 20 m.p.g. vehicle with an EV saves MUCH more than replacing a 30 m.p.g. vehicle. The 30 m.p.g. vehicle goes half again as far on a gallon and thus the eGallon costs more for that driver.

I applaud the DOE for attempting to clarify the possible savings in fuel expenditure vs. electricity expenditure but, in some cases, it may be very misleading. The calculation is further complicated by the wide variance in how electricity is priced in various localities.

As to the "low hanging fruit," the plot below shows, for a driver who drives 12,000 miles per year, how many gallons of fuel are saved per year by moving from one m.p.g. driving regime to a higher one. It plots initial m.p.g. from 10 to 40 and final m.p.g. from whatever was the initial m.p.g. to 120 m.p.g.  The "front" axis is initial m.p.g., the axis that extends back and right is final m.p.g., and the vertical axis is gallons saved. As can be seen in the rightmost portion, the savings from a high starting point are not nearly as large. It's also easy to see, especially at the left end, that the big gains are in the initial improvements - the slope is dramatically steeper than at the higher final numbers.

India burning coal at fastest pace in 31 years, will eclipse China as world’s coal power

India burning coal at fastest pace in 31 years, will eclipse China as world’s coal power:

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 Yes, well, it's hard to imagine that a country or society that lets these things happen is going to care much about CO2 emissions from a coal fired power plant (not that we in the U.S. don't have our own slums and our own group of people who don't care about CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants).

Misallocation

A couple of things will come as no surprise to my regular readers. The first is that I consider myself to be a true conservative and that the foolishness, hypocrisy, obstructionism, and fact-free opining that passes for conservative commentary today is a source of deep embarrassment to me. The second is that I consider the ability to ensure a reliable and sustainable supply of primary energy to be one of, if not the, greatest and most important challenges we face not only in our nation but in the world (the other possibilities include "peak everything" and self-poisoning of our species, the latter including pollution of all types, CO2 emissions, etc.).

Thus, it is deeply disappointing, though not particularly surprising, that the full House Appropriations Committee approved along party lines, a bill with deep cuts to renewable energy projects and, particularly, to arpa-e, an organization whose annual "Energy Innovation Summit" I've attended the last three years. The $30.4B bill is $2.9B below the 2013 level and $700M below the sequestration level. arpa-e, in particular, received a cut from $252M to $50M, a reduction of 80.8%. This is tantamount to the committee saying "we don't want arpa-e." President Obama (of whom I'm certainly no fan) requested $379M. You can read the committee's press release here.

arpa-e is engaged in funding of high risk, high reward projects in the energy field and funds technologies from fuels and generation to storage to distribution to control, as well as carbon capture, efficiency in buildings, transportation technologies, and many others. Can anyone deny that these technologies constitute the way forward in a coming (if not here already) time of energy limits?

Energy Subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinguysen (R-N.J.) was quoted as saying "It is our job to make do with what we have, not with what we hope to have." I wonder where the money could possibly be found?

Down the rabbit hole...

Image Credit: Dr. Dave Goldberg at io9.com

There sure are a lot of people out there that are much smarter than Einstein, Dirac, Boltzmann, Maxwell, etc.

In my post on the MIST Engine, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of unrecognized brilliance.

Amuse yourself with these geniuses at your leisure. If only mainstream science weren't so closed-minded, physicists and cosmologists could be open to such brilliance.

Update: Woah! This one is simply too good to leave out!

"Free" energy

Image Credit: Sweet Samoa

In my feeds from the soon to be late, lamented Google Reader (the company whose motto should change to "Evil R Us") I've included the aggregator "Alternative Energy News." Many of the articles are interesting and discuss important ideas and developments. Others... not so much. For example, articles from "Pure Energy Systems Network" (PESN)" are aggregated. This is a site that delves into the world of such exotica as gaining useful energy from  zero point energy, magnet motors, motors that are alleged to run on the energy in cavitation, energy from "low energy nuclear reactions (LENR - the new name for what used to be called 'cold fusion')," and others. The sense of the site is, unsurprisingly, that any or all of these could change the world but for the oppression of the powers that be (our government and corporate overseers).

The subject of this post is the "Molecular Impact Steam Technology (MIST)" engine. This technology claims to utilize hypersonic water jets to "explode hydrogen bonds" in water, thereby releasing enormous energy, thus producing dry steam without heat input. MIST claims a "10:1 overunity factor," meaning that the energy available in the steam is 10 times greater than the energy used by the pump utilized for the water jets.

The claim is that one pound of water, using 127 btu of input energy results in dry steam with an energy content of 1,100 btu. First, let's convert to SI units using Cloudy. Rephrasing, 134*10^5 joules converts 0.454 kilograms (or 25.2 moles) of water into steam with an energy content of 1.16*10^6 joules.

Now, typically energy is released upon the FORMATION of bonds, not on the breaking of bonds (nuclear fission of atoms larger than iron is, of course, an exception). Therefore, the "exploding of hydrogen bonds" does not pass the initial "sniff test." Enthalpy of formation of hydrogen bonds in water is subject to significant variation, but a reasonable number is about -23.3 kJ/mol. This means that the formation of hydrogen bonds RELEASES about 23.3 kJ (kilojoules) for each mole of water. These 23.3 kJ must be SUPPLIED to each mole to break these bonds. In other words, energy must be supplied to break the bonds, breaking them does not release energy.

On their web site, there are many pages with calculations and data and a couple of papers on tangentially related topics. I'll dissect one such page.

The claim is that the increase in specific kinetic energy (J/g or J/kg) in moving from a jet velocity of 810 m/s (where there was no dissociation from liquid water to steam when the jet impacted the chamber wall) to 3000 m/s (when steam was created) is from 320,000 J/kg to 4,500,000 J/kg. This is correct. But they claim this proportionality to v^2 as a kind of "mechanical advantage." Of course, the energy to accelerate the water must be supplied to the pump.

They then meander into a paragraph that mentions a 10 h.p. pump providing the pressure to process 120 pounds of water per hour. They state that 10 h.p. is 7.46 kW. So far, so good. They then divide by 60 and state that this is 124.3 watts per minute. Say what? Watts is already a "per unit time" unit. That is, the watt is a rate, not a quantity. Watts per minute is an acceleration of power, surely not what they mean. Heaven knows what they DO mean.

They then say that they pump 2 pounds of water per minute at 30,000 p.s.i. and 3,000 m/s. They next state that this is "1139 watts using only 124.3 watts of energy." Oh, brother! The watt is not an energy unit, it's a rate of supplying energy or doing work. The 124.3 came from  dividing the pump power of 7.46 kW by 60 for reasons unknown. So they believe that they're getting 1139 watts of output for 124.3 watts of input and that "the rest of the energy comes from the energy contained within the bonding of the molecules of water." Of course, breaking these bonds ABSORBS energy (specifically, around 20 kJ/mol or 1,120 kJ/kg).

It's hard to know whether they're aware that they're selling snake oil or just misguided. Perhaps they create steam more efficiently than a flame fire-tube or water-tube boiler (I'm no expert on the efficiency of boilers) but they certainly aren't achieving overunity by the freeing of hydrogen bond energy in water.

Wasted energy

Nope, I'm not talking about the 75% of the energy in the gasoline in your car going out the exhaust pipe as waste heat, or the cooled/heated air escaping your house because it's not as "tight" as it could be. I'm not talking about anything to do with the inefficiency of the use of primary energy. I'm (against my usual nature) using a more colloquial meaning of "energy" here. I'm talking about foolish expenditures of "mental energy" on schemes that either will produce no useful energetic results or such a trivial amount of energy that it's a waste of time to bother.

I've previously written of the foolishness of humans as generators via walking and revolving doors, the silliness of one of the Discovery Channel's "Project Earth" programs (they were all fairly silly but I focused on a specific one). I've got two more examples.

The first is something akin to the "human powered generator," that is, it would probably work from a technical point of view but be useless in any practical way. I was pointed to it by a post in Tom Sanwson's Swans on Tea blog entitled "This Claim Won't Fly." The post referred to an article on CNN's site about Airbus working with UNESCO to challenge engineering students in a "Fly Your Ideas" competition.

Of the ideas described in the article, one sounds far out (shape shifting engines to reduce noise footprint), one marginally practical (powering jets with a supercooled mixture of biomethane and LNG), and one ... let's just say silly. That last one is to use seats upholstered in a thermoelectric fabric to use passengers' body heat to generate electricity. University Putra Malaysia team leader Tan Kai Jun envisions generating "100 nanowatts of voltage." Like Tom Swanson, I'll ignore the fact that watts is not a unit of voltage, but rather a unit of power.

"It's a small amount, but imagine this collected from 550 seats throughout 10 hours of flight. A plane has a lifespan of a few hundred flights -- over time that's a big reduction," Mr. Jun Tan says."

Tom ran some numbers, but I'll do the same. The "age" of an airliner is measured in pressurization cycles, and a "typical" airliner may have 51,000 flight hours and 75,000 pressurization cycles in its useful life. Let's consider an airliner with 400 seats (say, a B777) and 51,000 hours. We'll assume the plane flies with an average load capacity of 95%. So we have 400*51000*.95 = 19,380,000 seat hours. Using the the Google Chrome extension "Cloudy Calculator" and multiplying hours times 100 nanowatts (the calculator does all conversions) we find that we've generated 1.9 watt hours over the life of the aircraft. I pay about $0.12 (12 cents) per kilowatt hour at my house, so this almost two watt hours is worth a smidgen (one of my favorite units - slightly smaller than a skosh) over a fiftieth of a penny.

Looked at another way, Jet A fuel (used in airliners) has an energy density of 35.3 megajoules per liter. 1.9 watt hours is about 7,000 joules, or 0.007 megajoules. So, over the lifetime of the airplane, the passengers would generate electrical energy equal to the chemical potential energy in 0.2 milliliters of jet fuel. Of course, a heat engine such as a turbofan might operate at, say, 45% efficiency so we'd actually need to burn a bit under half a milliliter to generate those 1.9 watt hours. I suspect that this development will not revolutionize flying.

The next post will cover a different type of silliness - one that's either a fraud or pie in the sky.

Embarrassed to be conservative one more time (but likely not the last)

As I've stated repeatedly, I'm conservative by nature. I'd like to conserve resources (financial, natural) and our civil liberties. This is what conservatism means to me and what it used to mean to others who so self-label. Now, though, it seems to have come to mean "conserving my opinion on the way things are regardless of factual evidence that I'm wrong." An entire media universe has sprung up around this false conservatism, nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in Fox News' coverage of science.

Below is an embedded clip from "Media Matters" with some of sillier utterances of false conservative talking heads. Please don't construe my embedding of this video as an endorsement of the politics of Media Matters, I'm in deep disagreement with their viewpoint on many matters as well. But watching Bill Nye the Science Guy when he's asked if volcanoes on the moon are related to global warming on Earth is priceless. He clearly is struggling to retain his composure when asked a question that any sixth grader should understand is ludicrous. And birds will redo their chromosomes in a generation or two???

I'm going to have to come up with a new name for my point of view - identification with such as these is repugnant.

Privacy

Certainly, this post will stray from my topic space as I've done in the past. I feel compelled to opine on the NSA leaks saga (purposely not calling it the Edward Snowden saga for reasons that will be apparent).

In my life I've been a tin foil hat arch right wing reactionary, a socialist, a strident atheist, a Christian (as I believe today), a doctrinaire libertarian, and many others. But one thing in my belief system and philosophy that has never wavered is my staunch belief in a right to privacy. The Fourth Amendment ostensibly assures us of our right to be "secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...."


This right has been continuously eroded by Congress, by the Courts, and by the Executive branch. In my opinion, far and away the most egregious violation is the odious "USA Patriot Act of 2001." In causing the Congress to pass, the President to sign, and the people to accept this blatant violation of the founding principles of our Country, Al Queda and Bin Laden in fact have won. The nation we were no longer exists.

Now, of course, the ability to infiltrate into every private area of all of our lives should the mood strike has been the heartfelt desire of anyone involved in law enforcement, no matter how tangentially, from time immemorial. But it wasn't to have happened here.

Now, along comes Edward Snowden. I'm completely disinterested in who he is, what his motivation was, where he went to school (or didn't), or anything else about him personally. My forlorn hope is that his revelations will cause a backlash against the encroaching "security at any cost" rationale behind the actual "we need the power because we want it" motivation of our security nation overseers and the actions they've undertaken to accomplish this goal.

Sadly, the propaganda machine, from right to left, has succeeded in making the debate (such as it is) about Snowden. Is he a traitor? A whistleblower? A Chinese spy? A frustrated loser? A narcissist with a martyr complex?

I don't care. The fact is that those who have promulgated and supported the activities revealed by Snowden are the real traitors here, and that will be lost in the debate about Snowden.

Rates vs. quantities - more unit confusion

It's widely accepted (though not universally) in the renewable energy/clean tech/green community that one of THE major problems in the widespread adoption of such renewable sources of electricity as solar and wind is their intermittent character. It's further believed that the ability to store the energy from these sources will enable their intermittency to be smoothed out, thus making them a reliable source of energy and enabling them to become much more easily integrated into the grid, possibly even a source of baseload power.

I read today that my state, California, has, through our Public Utilities Commission, set a goal of "1.3 gigawatts of energy storage by 2020." My state is certainly at the leading edge of sustainability with AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, the Cap and Trade Program, and many others. But I worry about people who make laws write regulations and yet aren't able to distinguish between rates and quantities.

Here's a link to the Assigned Commissioner's Ruling on this. Throughout the document, Carla Peterman discusses storage in megawatts. But a "watt" is a rate of energy utilization, or rate of performing work. A megawatt is a million joules per second. Certainly, the rate at which a storage system can deliver energy is important, but the key is the quantity that can be stored. This would be measured in watt hours, kilowatt hours, megawatt hours, gigawatt hours, terawatt hours, etc. Or, equivalently, in joules, megajoules, etc. Saying "we need 1.3 gigawatts of storage" is analogous to saying San Francisco is 80 miles per hour away from Los Angeles.

A typical gasoline pump will pump, conservatively, around five gallons per minute. Each gallon of gasoline has a chemical potential energy through oxidation of about 132 megajoules. Thus, when you fill your tank, you're delivering energy at the rate of 132*10^6 joules/gallon * 5 gallons per minute/60 seconds per minute or 11 megawatts. About 120 people filling their tanks are delivering energy at about the 1.3 gigawatts mentioned by the PUC. But this doesn't tell you a thing about how many miles these 120 drivers can travel. To know that, you need to know the capacity of the 120 tanks in gallons (along with the rate of fuel consumption of the vehicles).

To provide a bit of orientation as to the rates being discussed, in 2011, California generated or imported a total of about 292,454 gigawatt hours of electricity. This is a rate of about 33.36 gigawatts so the storage being discussed could deliver a bit under 4% of the average California rate of electricity usage.  Of course, the planned storage is divided between different utilities and geographical locations and would be deployed locally. But key to the discussion is FOR HOW LONG? A second? A minute? An hour? A day? Nothing in the document tells us.

Addendum, June 15, 2013: It's bad blog form to edit a posted blog without saying so. In reviewing the above, I realize that, while it's quite true that capacity is a fundamental metric of the viability and practicality of storage, rate is also important. I alluded to that above but I want to make it clear that I realize that vast capacity is not relevant if the rate at which it can be delivered isn't matched to the demand present in the area served.

This merits a bit of analysis of what sort of capacity might "match" a delivery rate of 1.3 gigawatts. For a starting point, let's take a look at the 4% calculated above. And I'll arbitrarily assume that we'd like to be able to "even out" the output from intermittent sources over a 24 hour period with a reserve capacity (no wind, cloud covered sky, whatever) for three days. In three days, on average, California might use (3/365)*29,2454 or about 2,400 gigawatt hours of electrical energy. 4% of this is 96 gigawatt hours.

Arguably, the storage method with the best combination of capacity, dispatchability, delivery rate, and efficiency is pumped hydro storage. If we assume a round trip efficiency of 75%, we'll need to store 128 gigawatt hours of energy. Hoover Dam delivered, at its 1984 peak, 10.348 terawatt hours so, in an average three day period in 1984, it delivered 10348*(3/365) = 85 gigawatt hours. So we're talking about something like one and a half Lake Mead/Hoover Dam storage schemes.

By the way, this goes to show just what an amazing resource gasoline is. 3032 gasoline pumps can deliver the energy equivalent to the entirety of California's average electrical consumption.

Update: The Blenheim-Gilboa Power Station in New York can deliver electricity at the rate of 1.6 gigawatts and, per a comment in a post on pumped hyrdo storage at one of my favorite sites, Do the Math, can deliver this for 16 hours for a total of 25.6 gigawatt hours. Another site says 1,000 megawatts for eight hours, or 8 gigawatt hours. In any case, storage of the magnitude specified is certainly achievable.

Also, as seen here, it's clear that pumped hydro plants are typically rated in rate in watts rather than capacity and, in fact, it's difficult to find the energy capacity in megawatt hours or gigawatt hours. In a comment in the article linked above, Ben K. say that this is because generating plants are rated in this way. But I don't see that this is a valid reason. A generating plant generates continuously as long as coal, natural gas, uranium, etc. is delivered - the amount of source material is not the issue. In a storage facility, the amount of source material (compressed air, battery chemical potential energy, water, flywheel rotational energy, capacitor electrical charge energy, whatever) is THE issue. After all, we look at battery storage capacity in terms of amp-hours which, at a fixed voltage, is a measure of quantity of energy.

Reaching Energy Limits in a Finite World | The Energy Collective

Ignoring the slight tendency toward self-promotion at the end, here's a very insightful essay on the converging limits of energy and financial resources by Gail Tverberg. I look forward to her further fleshing out of the self-reinforcing feedback loop of the decreasing availability of high grade, high EROEI energy resources with their consequent increasing costs and the decreasing availability of financial resources to overcome these problems.

Reaching Energy Limits in a Finite World | The Energy Collective:

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arpa-e 2013

I've just finished attending the arpe-e Energy Summit for 2013. It was certainly the most star-studded of the three I've attended (Elon Musk, Dr. Steven Chu, T. Boone Pickens, Michael Bloomberg, a handful of Senators and Congresspersons spoke, presented, or participated in panel discussions).

There seemed to be, even for Dr. Chu, the strong sentiment that "the era of energy scarcity is over" based on recent increases in U.S. fossil fuel production, primarily due to tight oil (Bakken Shale, Barnett Shale, Eagle Ford Shale, etc.) and shale gas (Marcellus Formation, etc.). This led to a certain "yeah but..." sentiment in that the existence of arpa-e (advanced research projects agency - energy - a funding mechanism for bringing early stage energy technologies ultimately to market and modeled after "DARPA") is based on the need for the U.S. to develop clean, renewable energy sources not dependent on fossil fuels. The "yeah but..." seemed to be along the lines of "yeah, but even though we have all these new fossil fuel resources, we need to develop clean, renewable alternatives to fossil fuels because:

• U.S. fossil fuel users are still subject to world pricing pressures
• Climate effects of burning all of this fossil fuel may be catastrophic
• We still have a huge trade imbalance due to the need to import oil
• We are spending billions in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere to defend our ability to import oil

All of these things are true and are certainly good reasons to develop the capabilities represented by the many firms and institutions participating in the Summit. But the underlying concept that the tight oil and shale gas will free us from concerns about fossil fuel shortages is very flawed.

Kurt Kobb of the blog Resource Insights seems to me to have the most insightful information with respect to the real prospects for a fossil fuels energy revival in the U.S. I'd suggest starting with this post and reading all of Kobb's information on unconventional fossil fuel prospects. There is also a huge amount of pertinent information from experts at The Oil Drum site. The most comprehensive and authoritative document I've located on this topic is here, a free downloadable pdf.

The cliff notes version is that these unconventional sources have characteristics that make it extremely unlikely that we'll not have to worry about fossil fuel shortages and high prices for decades to come:

• They are much more expensive to drill than conventional sources
• Their depletion rate is dramatically higher than conventional sources

Thus, both economics and geology argue strongly against our entry into a new world of energy abundance. Does that mean that the alternative reasons for funding research into clean, renewable energy sources should be ignored? It does not, but the primary reason - our society's need for reliable energy to turn the wheels of civilization - has not disappeared in the midst an unconventional fossil fuel cocktail.

Dr. Chu, in his keynote address today, had some figures and charts for which his summary was "are we in danger of running short of fossil fuels? I don't think so." Unfortunately, he blew by these slides with little commentary beyond that and no time for me to find the source or even photograph the slide. Hopefully, the materials to come post-Summit will enable me to determine what gives Dr. Chu (a man for whom I have huge respect) such confidence.

Cassandra's legacy: The Twilight of Petroleum

A cold hard look at the future of petroleum production adjusted for actual energy availability. It's well worth absorbing in detail in light of the celebratory articles on US energy independence, International Energy Agency production estimates, etc. that paint a view of the world of energy through rose colored glasses.

Cassandra's legacy: The Twilight of Petroleum:

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Atmospheric Vortex Engine

Credit: Atmospheric Vortex Engine

Below is a link to a fascinating and promising concept for generation of electricity called the "Atmospheric Vortex Engine." The FAQs even include a pretty extensive and (on my relatively cursory review) accurate primer on thermodynamics. When I first read of this concept I pooh poohed it but I saw it linked in several sites that I respect and went back for a closer reading. I've come to think that it has significant potential.

I'd divide the possibilities into two "bins." The first is as an auxiliary generator at existing thermal power plants, where the site claims that power output of the plant can be increased by 20% (read the site to see how this would work). In this application, the generator could operate on the same duty cycle as the thermal plant.

The second bin would be a stand alone installation operating between solar heated ground or water (without dedicated collectors) and the much cooler temperatures clear up to the tropopause (!). In this application, I presume that the duty cycle would be less than 24/7 (though it should be much longer than a photovoltaic or concentrating solar thermal plant) and thus would provide less than continuous power and suffer from a reduced but similar intermittency issue as solar or wind generators. For all such installations, grid-scale storage would be a huge advantage.

In any case, this concept is one to keep sight of.

Atmospheric Vortex Engine:

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The Archdruid Report: Into an Unknown Country

The link below is to John Michael Greer's (the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America) first post of 2013. In it, he describes his 2012 predictions and how they played out against the actual events of the year. He then makes predictions for 2013, followed by a "to do" list to prepare for the events that he foresees.

Don't let the Druid slant throw you off. This is a deep, creative, accurate thinker with much of value to add to any discussion of energy, economics, history, and culture. Don't mistake him for a doomer in the James Kunstler (for my take on Kunstler, see here) mode either.

The Archdruid Report: Into an Unknown Country:

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Energy - what can be done (Part 2)

In my first post in this series, I discussed possible primary energy savings in the area of commuting to work. In the second post in the series, I want to address what might be saved in terms of personal/passenger transportation other than commuting. Such things include vacations, shopping, miscellaneous non-commuting trips, etc. Such transportation can utilize light vehicles (cars, light trucks, SUVs), airlines, etc. I will include work-related travel other than commuting in this category (e.g., my trips to Houston or Washington D.C. for conferences). Again, I'll be relying on the Transportation Energy Data Book. For light vehicles, I'll use data from Chapter 8, for air travel, it will be Chapter 9.

In the previous post in this series, I had five bullet points for possible methods to reduce energy use in commuting. A similar list would apply here:

• "Trip combining"
•  Use of public transportation
• Utilizing more fuel efficient vehicles
• Driving more slowly (and other efficient driving techniques)

For household vehicle use, the latest data that can be used for these calculations is 2009. From Table 8.1 we find that ~2.957*10^{12}~ (almost 3 trillion) miles were travelled. From Table 8.9 we determine that 71.3% of these miles, or ~2.108*10^{12}~ (about 2.1 trillion) of those miles were NOT commuting to and from work. I'll need to engage in a bit of interpretation to determine the average fuel economy of the household vehicles travelling these miles. I'm using the Transportation Energy Data Book Quick Facts to infer that the average light vehicle fuel economy is 20.45 (calculated from the weighted average of cars and light trucks). I'm also working on the assumption that the figures represent EPA estimates. So we can estimate that ~2.108*10^{12}/20.45=1.031*10^{11}~ (103.1 billion) gallons that come from ~5.425*10^{9}~ (5.425 billion) barrels of oil.

Trip combining saves fuel in a couple of ways. First, a warm engine uses less fuel than a cold one. Second, multiple out and backs from home can be minimized. So going to the store, then from there to the cleaners, to the nail shop, to the mall, etc. rather than out and back to each saves a significant amount of fuel. It's hard to get a quantitative handle on this since it will be different for each household, each driver, and each day so I'll arbitrarily speculate that this type of trip planning will affect the 33.3% of vehicle miles travelled for "shopping" and "other family/personal business" in Table 8.9 (link is above). Further, I'll speculate that 10% of this fuel consumption can be saved. So the potential fuel and oil savings are ~0.333*0.1*1.031*10^{11}=3.433*10^{9}~ (3.433 billion) gallons from ~1.810*10^{8}~ (181 million) barrels of oil. This is enough oil for a bit under 10 days of consumption in the U.S.

As I mentioned in part 1 of this series, use of public transportation may or may not save fuel and I'll dedicate a post to my thoughts on this at a later time.

The calculations I used in the part 1 for utilizing more fuel efficient vehicles and changing driving methods can be used here as well. First, we'll use an increase from 20.45 to 30 (in this case) m.p.g. (noting that there is a large number of vehicles that do much better than this). This would reduce the 103.1 billion gallons used in non-commuting personal transportation to ~2.108*10^{12}/30=7.027*10^{10}~ (70.27 billion) gallons, a savings of 32.8 billion gallons that come from 1.73 billion barrels of oil. In the U.S., we consume this amount of oil in about 92 days. We are now officially getting someplace!

As to more efficient driving, so as to be conservative, I'll assume these more efficient drivers are driving the more efficient vehicles from the previous paragraph. I'll then assume that we can convince/incentivize/coerce 25% of them to drive in such a way as to exceed the EPA estimates (on which the previous calculations in this post have been based) be 10%, i.e., to achieve 33 m.p.g. (noting that I exceed the EPA estimate by 22% without using the more extreme hypermiling techniques such as pulse and glide, extreme drafting, etc.). In that case, the 70.27 billion gallons would be reduced to ~2.108*10^{12}/33=6.388*10^{10}~ (63.88 billion) gallons, a further savings of 6.39 billion gallons of gasoline that come from 336 million barrels of oil - 18 days worth.

As previously, let's arbitrarily reduce the savings by 25%. We can then estimate that about 1.7 billion (dropping a bunch of significant figures) barrels of oil per year. This represents about 25% of our consumption.

And not burning these 1.7 billion barrels would result in not emitting 605 billion pounds or 303 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Combined with the 9% from commuting, it's reasonably possible, without massive technology boosts, lifestyle changes, etc. to save over a third of the oil we consume just by adjusting the way our households utilize personal vehicles.

Next up: Freight

Why hybrids?

In my first post of a planned series on what we can do to reduce our nation's utilization of primary energy, I mentioned what might be done by replacing some of the current light vehicle fleet  with more efficient vehicles. And, as I've mentioned on multiple occasions, my personal vehicle is the hybrid Lexus CT200h. The CT200h has an EPA combined city and highway estimate of 42 m.p.g., comprised of a highway estimate of 40 m.p.g. and a city estimate of 43 m.p.g.

Does the hybrid configuration confer an advantage? A comparison with a high-mileage non-hybrid vehicle will be enlightening. For this, I'll select the Chevy Cruze Eco. This vehicle achieves an EPA combined city and highway estimate of 33 m.p.g., comprised of a highway estimate of 42 m.p.g. and a city estimate of 28 m.p.g.

The first thing to note is that the Cruze's highway estimate is very slightly higher than the CT200h. This is because, on the highway, the CT200h's propulsion is provided by its internal combustion engine, with the electric motor only providing power for hill climbing and passing. And the CT200h is a significantly heavier vehicle, primarily due to the additional equipment required for the hybrid drive train (hybrid battery, auxiliary 12 volt battery, electric motor and generator, and other associated equipment). These Cruze advantages are slightly offset by the fact that in most hybrids (though not the CT200h) utilize a smaller internal combustion engine, which is sufficient due to being able to rely on supplemental torque and power from the electric motor when needed. This smaller engine can operate at a better point in its engine map and will suffer lower pumping losses. The vehicles have very similar drag coefficients and drag areas  and so drag forces are roughly equivalent.

The second thing to note is that the city mileage for the CT200h is significantly higher. This is because city driving often consists of starts and stops, acceleration, etc. The hybrid vehicle  utilizes regenerative braking (more later) to store some of the kinetic energy added in acceleration from stop to speed rather than dissipating all of it as heat. It also utilizes the very efficient electric motor to start from a dead stop. And, of course, plug in hybrids (the CT200h is not such a vehicle) store significant energy that doesn't come from burning gasoline at all. It must be noted that ALL of the energy used in my CT200h comes from burning gasoline, regardless of whether the battery pack is charged by coasting down a hill, the regenerative braking system, etc.

So it's pretty clear that hybrids have the potential to achieve superior fuel economy compared to similar non-hybrid models. The extent to which fuel can be saved by a specific driver will depend on a couple of things - particularly driving habits and the division between city and highway driving.

What are the particular aspects of the hybrid drive train that enable such a vehicle to achieve better fuel economy than an equivalent non-hybrid vehicle? As mentioned above, one of the major items is the hybrid's ability to utilize some of the energy added to the vehicle by the internal combustion engine that the non-hybrid wastes.

First among these is regenerative braking. This is a system wherein part of the braking action effected by pressing the brake pedal is provided by having the wheels turn a generator against the torque of the generator action (think of the exercise bicycle at a gym - as you turn up the resistance, the energy you input through the pedals powers a generator that may power a display, etc.). The generator charges the battery, whose energy can then be used for acceleration, or even as the sole motive force at low speed.

Second is recapture of energy during coasting. As I let off the accelerator to slow down, go down a hill, etc., again, the turning of the wheels is used to run the generator and charge the battery. In the CT200h, both of these actions can be monitored in a display in the dash and in more detail on the monitor that also displays the GPS map, and other information I may select.

Next and again as mentioned above, the non-hybrid must have a sufficiently large engine to provide power for all required driving regimes (plus some to spare). This is much more than is required for constant speed driving. For any internal combustion engine, specific fuel consumption is lowest (i.e., the engine is more efficient) when operating near its maximum torque specification. Thus, the non-hybrid vehicle operates at a relatively inefficient portion of its engine map during a large portion of miles driven.

Further, the larger engine has significantly larger pumping losses as low pressure in the cylinders during the intake stroke draws in the air/fuel mixture, and while pumping the burned air/fuel mixture out of the cylinder and into the exhaust system.

The internal combustion engine in the hybrid can typically be sized significantly smaller than the engine in a non-hybrid vehicle (though such is not the case in the CT200h vs. Cruze Eco comparison - the CT200h utilizes a 1.8 liter engine as compared to the base model Cruze Eco's 1.4 liter engine). This is because, in those regimes where high power is required (acceleration from a stop, hill climbing, passing, acceleration onto freeway, etc.) the internal combustion engine can be supplemented by the electric motor.

There are other "nickel and dime" enhancers of fuel economy. For example, when I stop at a light (and assuming the hybrid battery pack is sufficiently charged) the internal combustion engine turns off. This also occurs gliding down a hill, gliding to stop, etc.) and, of course, the stopped engine doesn't burn any fuel.

In summary, the main fuel savers are recovery rather than dissipation of kinetic energy, lower engine size, and operation at more efficient points on the internal combustion engine's map.

When talk show hosts explain science to students

Through a series of links, I wound up watching a youtube segment in which one Brian Sussman was a guest lecturer at a Political Science Colloquium at UC Berkeley (Political Science 179). I'd never heard of Brian Sussman. He's a talk show host out of San Francisco and either is or used to be a weathercaster (or, maybe, a meteorologist - his bio says that he went to the University of Missouri but doesn't say he graduated or list his field of study). His web site's tag line is "Right Thinking from the Left Coast." Readers should not misunderstand - I'm generally sympathetic to conservative (truly conservative) ideas and no one would accuse me of being a leftist or liberal. And I don't disagree with all that he said in this excerpted video.

But two things stood out to me. First, at about the 0:10 mark, Sussman starts talking about an atmospheric scientist at UC Berkeley, one "Dr. Robert Muller." He's clearly referring to Dr. Richard Muller. This is simply lazy but likely not malicious. But note the comparison that Sussman makes. He discusses Muller's "conversion" from skeptic to believer (Sussman's words) based on completion of a study and, with great hyperbole, states that "the media went wild." He then contrasts that with UC Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor Harold Lewis, who resigned from the American Physical Society over his allegation that money has corrupted the society, resulting in their endorsing the consensus view of climate change. Do you note the difference? Lewis expresses an opinion, Muller cites the results of a study he and his associates and students performed.

The second was rather shocking. Check out around 2:15. Sussman is telling the attendees that the Earth will enter another ice age in about 10,000 years. Why? Because "the Earth's orbit is not circular, it's elliptical. We're gonna get farther and farther away from the Sun, and pretty soon it's going to be parka time..." OK, it's true that one component of one theory of the Earth's quasi-periodic entry into ice ages is the Milankovitch Cycle which is related, in part, to the varying eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. And further, it's true that a deep explanation of this phenomenon would be lost on most of the attendees of Political Science 179, but Sussman's statement doesn't convince me that he understands what he's talking about and, even if he does, this narrative is much more likely to obscure than to clarify.

The video is embedded below.

Energy - what can be done?

I want to spend a few posts looking into what can be done. Unlike many of the excellent blogs to which I try to direct attention in my "blog roll," I'm not going to analyze what resources are available, what technological breakthroughs may be on the horizon, etc. I'm going to look at the amount of energy we (in the United States) can save using currently available technology and by changing currently ingrained habits. I'll first look at ground transportation, then shipping, then air transportation, then savings in the built environment. This last will include insulating, windows, lighting, motors (in industrial facilities), and HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning).

As I wander through this, please bear in mind that I'm assuming evolutionary progress in technology, not revolutionary breakthroughs (fusion, methane clathrates, etc.). In fact, in this series of posts I won't be addressing harvesting and generation at all. In other words, these benchmarks can be achieved in the near to intermediate future without dramatic scientific or societal changes (albeit using my personal definition of what would not constitute a dramatic societal change - yours may be very different).

For transportation, one of the main sources of information will be the "RITA" (Research and Innovative Technology Administration - Bureau of Transportation Statistics) site. Chapter 4 of the linked site is entitled "Transportation, Energy, and the Envionment" and it contains a cornucopia of statistics on the use of transportation fuels in the U.S. I'll start here.

For personal, non-commercial transportation (including work commutes), there are several strategies:

1. Carpooling
2. Telecommuting
3. Using more public transportation (arguably and conditionally  - see here for example)
4. Driving more efficient vehicles
5. Driving more slowly

Let's start with commuting to work. Of the listed possibilities, telecommuting offers, basically, a one for one reduction in energy expenditure. If I work from home for a day, that's 62 miles not driven and 1.2 gallons of fuel not burned. Carpooling may come close or even do better. If two people who drive, say, 25 m.p.g. vehicles carpool, the total fuel burn is halved. However, suppose I carpool with someone whose vehicle gets 25 m.p.g. (and who lives next door to me or a close approximation thereof). When each of us drives, 3.7 gallons are burned. If I drive, 1.2 gallons are burned, reducing the fuel burn by 2.5 gallons or about 68%. However, when he or she drives, 2.5 gallons are burned and the reduction is only 1.2 gallons or a bit more than 32%. That's still pretty significant.

Here we find statistics on annual commuting miles, the most recent my google-fu could uncover. The document is based on data derived from the National Household Travel Survey. According to the survey, in 2009 we (in the U.S.) commuted to work for a total distance of ~6.235*10^{11}~ (623.5 billion) miles. And according to this table, the average light vehicle fleet fuel economy that year was 22.4 m.p.g. Thus, we can estimate that we burned ~2.783*10^{10}~ (27.83 billion) gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel in this endeavor. Based on the economy in 2009, I'd expect that figures determined from that year would be conservative with respect to potential fuel savings in absolute terms, but that the percentages would be representative.

For telecommuting, let's hypothesize that 5% of the workforce could move from commuting to telecommuting and could do so for 25% of their workdays (one day per week for three weeks, two days on the fourth). That would be an annual reduction of 1.25% in the commuter miles driven and a reduction of ~3.479*10^{8}~ (347.9 million) gallons of fuel. Since a barrel of oil produces about 19 gallons of gasoline, the resulting savings would be ~1.831*10^{7}~ (18.31 million) barrels - about one days worth at current U.S. rate of consumption. Clearly, this isn't THE answer!

As to carpooling, I'd be surprised if we could coax 20% of the single occupant vehicle commuters into carpools or vanpools. On the other hand, coaxing six people into a vanpool will save something like 75% of the fuel that would otherwise be burned. I'll compromise and estimate using the following assumptions: 20% of the workforce can be incentivized, cajoled, coerced, etc. into carpooling with one other commuter; each drives a vehicle with the average fuel economy of 22.4 m.p.g.; they carpool 60% of the time because, for one reason or another, schedules won't allow it two of the five typical weekly workdays. This would mean that we'd take 10% of the commuting work force out of their own vehicles 60% of the time, thus reducing commuting miles by 6% and saving (using the numbers from the previous paragraph) ~1.670*10^{9}~ (1.67 billion) gallons of fuel distilled from ~8.790*10^{7}~ (87.9 million) barrels of oil annually.

Succeeding in accomplishing both of these (difficult but not impossible, in my opinion) measures would yield an annual savings of ~1.062*10^{8}~ (106.2 million) barrels. Here we find that, in 2009, the U.S. consumed 18.69 million barrels of oil per day, so had we accomplished the steps above that year, we'd have saved sufficient oil for 5 days and 16 hours. Let's call it 1.6%.

Okay, neither of these will get us to the promised land. Let's skip strategy 3 for the time being since the ambiguities surrounding this deserve a post all their own. Strategy 4 holds significant promise. My Lexus CT200h, driven as I drive it, achieves better than 51 m.p.g. Its EPA estimate is 42 m.p.g. combined city and highway. There are several vehicles with EPA estimates in excess of 40 m.p.g., and a few in excess of 50. At their present market penetration, I won't include the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, Honda Fit, Coda, etc.

Let's assume that, in a period of a very few years, we can raise (again, through incentives as mentioned above) the average commuter m.p.g. from 22.4 m.p.g. to 35 m.p.g. In such a case, the ~2.783*10^{10}~ gallons of fuel burned would annually would be reduced to ~1.781*10^{10}~ gallons, saving ~1.002*10^{10}~ (call it 10 billion) gallons of fuel, that would otherwise have come from ~5.271*10^{8}~ (527.1 million) barrels of oil. That's enough oil for 28 days and 5 hours at the daily consumption rate from 2009. Let's call it 7.7%.

Finally, what about driving more slowly (and other non-extreme fuel efficient driving methods)? I do about 21% better than the EPA estimate, but let's assume that traffic laws, incentives, etc. can cause the average commuter to exceed EPA estimates by 10%. Calculating as above, I determine that, annually, we'd save ~2.526*10^{9 }~ (2.526 billion) gallons that came from ~1.329*10^{8}~ (132.9 million) barrels of oil. This represents about 1.9% of our consumption.

We can't simply sum these numbers since that would double count some undetermined amount of people who, for example, carpooled, got more efficient vehicles, and drove more efficiently. Cars that aren't on the road due to carpooling can't be driven more efficiently!

So let's arbitrarily take 25% off of the total. We can thus conclude (very roughly indeed) that these (relatively) painless steps could save us something like 590 million barrels of oil per year. This amounts to a bit under 9% of our annual consumption. This is really not so bad, considering that it's only one component of the efficiency possibilities at our disposal.

Update: The 590 million barrels of oil saved by not burning 11.2 billion gallons of gasoline and kerosene would result in NOT emitting about 210 billion pounds or 105 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Hess (née Discovery) Tower

I'm in Houston, TX again, this time for the Total Energy USA conference. I've posted previously regarding the Hess Tower (formerly the Discovery Tower but renamed when Hess Corporation (formerly Amerada Hess - yes, I know...)) leased the entire structure.

In my previous post, I expressed great skepticism regarding the ability of the vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) installed atop the tower to achieve the energy delivery claimed by the media and by the designers. As is my wont, I backed my opinion with some rough calculations. I concluded that they're basically a decorative greenwashing feature.

I don't know what, if any, energy production (really conversion, i.e., kinetic energy of wind to electrical energy - energy is never produced or consumed, it's only converted) has ever been achieved but when I looked at the tower on this visit, the VAWTs were conspicuous by their absence, as can be seen in the photo.

I wondered if they'd been too noisy, had broken down and been removed for repair, or what. Even if they produced no useful quantity of energy, they still looked cool (in my opinion) and removing them would not be particularly cheap or easy. But, as best I can determine from googling, a piece of one of the turbines apparently fell to the street (and possibly damaged a vehicle). Hess Corporation spokesperson Mari Pat Sexton states that the turbines have been "locked down" though, judging by the photo (taken by me two days ago) she must mean "locked down in the basement" or something because it's quite clear that they've been removed from their designed location. There are also, apparently no plans underway to replace the turbines.

I don't think that the loss of energy production will be of significance (I estimated that Hess would avoid a cost of something on the order of $1,500 per year). I'll estimate the amount of money wasted on purchasing the turbines and constructing the supporting structure.

It's been a struggle to find a price for the V3.5 turbines, but I managed to find a number here. Assuming the "rooftop" figure of $30,000, this works out to $8.57/watt of rated capacity. This is actually pretty low for such a small unit and I'd suspect that it's really higher, particularly given the estimates I made in my post about the VAWT in London. But I'll go with it, what the heck. Since 10 were in place, that makes the purchase price (excluding shipping and erection) $300,000.

I don't know if they used cranes or helicopters, but I'll assume the former and that they could erect lift and mount them in two days with four people. The total cost for crane rental and labor might be something like $10,000. Shipping might have been something like $12,000. This is pretty rough as I don't know the weight of the units.

As to the structure, using a cost per square foot of $40 (no tenant improvements, etc.) and an estimated 9,600 ft^2 of "structure" (it's the length of the building but quite thin and I've assumed two "floors" worth of structural construction) my estimate is that the structure cost was about $384,000. Thus, my estimate for the total installed cost is $706,000.

I actually suspect this to be low, particularly with respect to the structure, but it's probably in the "order of magnitude" ballpark. Add another $30,000 for removal, haul away, and disposal and we're pushing hard at three quarters of a million dollars. Pretty expensive for an exercise in greenwashing.