The whole gamut - food subsidies, genetic engineering, oil prices and wind turbines
Here’s a few Friday links. The US Congress has just approved a US$290 billion Farm Bill that gives lucrative subsidies to farmers and cuts international aid programmes.
By diverting subsidies and benefits to powerful agricultural industries such as sugar, dairy, timber and salmon, authors of the bill ensured support from both Republicans and Democrats.
Paul Kredosky argues that OPEC does not like high oil prices (which might change consumer behaviour towards alternative energies) so much as it likes unpredictable prices which restrict consumers ability to change.
Food Democracy tracks Monsanto’s take over of another seed business, Netherlands-based De Ruiter Seeds Group BV, which produces seeds for the greenhouse market, for US$862.7 million.
Henry Kissinger is quoted as saying, “If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.”
So, why not do both? Monsanto is also getting into biofuels.
Food Democracy also has a story on how USA’s Bush administration using the food price crisis as an opportunity to promote genetic engineering.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested at a Peace Corps conference that “we need to look again at some of the issues concerning technology and food production. I know that GMOs are not popular around the world, but there are places that drought-resistant crops should be a part of the answer.”
Celsias examines the price of food from farmers’ markets versus supermarkets. Although a US study, this is relevant given yesterday’s Federated Farmers Report.
Device Daily has a report on Doug Selsam, who designed tiny high-power wind turbines that can generate enough energy to power a home.
The wind turbines measure about 14-18 inches in diameter and they can generate an impressive amount of 200 watts for a 20 mph wind, but the wind turbines could do better if the winds are stronger.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
The toy turbines look cool, although you can’t beat the laws of physics- the output of a wind turbine is dependent on swept area, and these are tiny. I would imagine 200W would be the absolute peak- i.e. at best case it would almost be able to run a few lightbulbs during a strong gust. Considering an average household might have a peak demand of 10,000W you would need 50 of them at full power, per house!
For those of us in Wellington, the toy turbine in Waitangi Park has been instructive on how pointless small scale wind is- day after day it sits there not generating any electricity, and when it is windy the turbine spends most of it’s time ‘hunting’ for the wind. I doubt it will ever recover its costs- not that it matters. I like the aesthetics of the thing, but they are nothing more than a toy for wealthy lifestyle block owners and not part of a serious energy plan.
Electricity projects NEED to be big scale heavy engineering. There is just no getting around this fact.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
>>high power wind turbines
Bird blender
May 16th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Just like computing, eh uk_kiwi
May 16th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Kevyn - huh??? No, nothing like computing. Computing has got many thousands of times more powerful and compact in a few decades, there is no scope for that kind of improvement in toy windmills.
There is no ‘moore’s law’ equivalent for electricity generation, or any energy extraction process.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
uk_kiwi
Well it can be argued that Moore’s Law was a self-fulfilling prophecy and spurred the industry towards meeting his goal rather than an observation of what was taking place so arguably it is entirely plausible to believe that we’ll see a Moore’s law equivalent in renewable technology whether its nanosolar, biofuels, etc. if enough investment in money effort is put into it.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I disagree. The physical limits of the silicon substrate of a semiconductor are related to heat dissipation, quantum effects and electrical leakage. These limits are only now, after 30 years, starting to become noticeable, this is why you are getting multi-core chips now instead of just ‘faster with more transistors’.
The limiting factor for power generation is the energy input. There is no way you can make a turbine or solar panel or hydro dam a thousand times more powerful- there is simply not the available energy input. You might be able to double it if you can dramatically reduce losses or get economies of scale, but even that is optimistic.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
uk_kiwi
Well you obviously have more knowledge in the area than me, but if increases in energy efficiency are combined with development in renewable energy it obviates the need for the large scale of energy generation facilities that you’re advocating.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000609.html
May 16th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
That worldchanging article was discussing the energy cost of a given amount of GDP, which is a measure of effectiveness rather than efficiency, and covering the whole chain, not just certain steps. I doubt that we will see a big increase in efficiency, but an increase from 1% to 1.5% annual improvement may not be unrealistic and would certainly be welcome.
There may be opportunities for distributed generation, but there are definitely economies of scale in some areas of electricity generation, such as pumped storage, wind turbines, tidal flow and probably some forms of wave powered generation. Even thermal solar systems work better when they are not too small, and we may need some of these other systems to provide power during demand peaks and windless periods.
Trevor.
May 17th, 2008 at 1:58 am
uk_kiwi, Your original statement “Electricity projects NEED to be big scale heavy engineering. There is just no getting around this fact.” reminded me of the infamous quotes from the CEOs of IBM and DEC to the effect that their is no reason for any individual (or small business) to own a computer.
I started with a 286 running DR-DOS2.2 from 5.25 inch floppy and a 400 baud modem. I bet it would you wouldn’t know if I’m typing this on that machine or a pentium laptop running vista and broadband. Either machine can do the job. Of course if you want to publish documents or do number crunching then you need a bigger chip faster chip. But you really only need the biggest fastest chips to play computer games. Technology for technology’s sake. What you’re overlooking is the role of creative genius in seeing the need to develop PCs and GUIs and web browsers for completely different purposes from business use.
If computers had stayed with big scale heavy engineering Moore’s Law probably would not have eventuated. Sticking with big scale hydro runs the same risk. The tailrace water from a big hydro generator contains a huga amount of energy that the big scale heavy engineering can’t capture but innovative lateral thinking for small scale generation has the potential to capture that energy. Doubling the output available from current hydro storage is only difficult if you are stuck in Think Big mode.
Here is a good example. Designed for poor Caribean economies it ignores conventional ways of generating electricity from wind. But think of the potential for a submersible version in the Benmore tailrace or a free flowing Mokihinui River or an irrigation waterrace or even the city sewer pipes.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4224763.html
Take that as the royal you, not you personally.
May 17th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Kevyn- I am sure that increased efficiency is possible in most power stations, the Manapouri second tailrace is a great example. However even this kind of radical upgrade only adds ~20% to the output.
No doubt some microhydro is also possible- however the best and brightest engineers have rejected this approach as being piecemeal and not compatible with a modern economy with electricity as the lifeblood.
There is no comparison with computing where the speed and # of transistors has increased by thousands of times. It is disingenuous to draw such parallels IMHO- you end up with entrenched wishful thinking while adequate solutions pass you by.
May 17th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
The best and brightest engineers need to spend some time in Formula One and learn about state of the art data telemetry systems. Then they will know how to integrate micro generation into the grid seamlessly. Then just wait for Moore’s Law to bring prices down via the adoption of this technology in cars and trucks. I fear that the best and brightest electrical engineers are locked into the same evolutionary tunnel vision that afflicts train designers to the extent that cars have been able to almost eliminate the environmental chasm the used to exist between public and private transport.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:12 am
The thin film Photovoltaics such as
http://www.nanosolar.com/technology.htm
Are a classic case of where we all may soon be able to make our small contribution to the grid.
What’s needed is rules to make the lines companies allow me to run my meter backwards at a fair price. End lines co monopolies perhaps?
May 18th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Why isn’t their more focus on tidal as a means to produce power both solar and wind suffer from predictablity tidal doesn’t. By installing tidal we can also help with the slowing down of the earths rotation which is a boon for business since we can have a 30 hour day and longer working hours.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Hi samiam
I’ve been interested in solar (particularly nanosolar) for awhile now and stumbled across this message board where they claimed that you can arrange for power companies to buy back excess energy that your PV systems generate.
http://www.ecobob.co.nz/Forum/ForumPosts/453/electricity.aspx?ShowForu mPostId=453
May 18th, 2008 at 11:15 am
There needs to be more than just small scale renewable energy projects.
If you are going to dump excess energy back into an electricity grid, you’ll need to upgrade that grid to handle periods when a lot more electricity is being generated. I saw some graphs from South Australia which showed there were quite frequent periods when the electricity grid was running at maximum capacity because it was windy, and wind farms were producing a lot of energy. At present when this happens, the wind farms have to shut down (at least partially), which is wasteful. Would it not be better to upgrade the transmission network, and use these spikes in electricity generation to heat people’s hot water (using a ripple control system which remotely turns hot water heaters on and off, for example)?
May 18th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
samiuela you are right NZ needs to invest in the transmission grid and make it able to handle the extra load from all these renewables. We need to be able to use these spikes for heating hot water or have pump stored hydroelectric to pick up these spikes.
No way any of that is going to happen with the NZ electricty market the way it is. We also need to solve the hooking up of small scale generation to the network.
May 19th, 2008 at 3:01 am
The sickness with us congress is being nobodies especially after the fall of the british parliment .nither can parlaay vous on any real affairs and are lost in the glamourous hieght of bbc and cnn. the dopeys are biggest idiots.last time the farm subsidiaries were thwarted after i told them that your blocking other countriers from selling to UAE and other expensive buyers by troubling farmers allover the world with lies that Grids heat up with all the computers and railway engines cannot reeneregise turbines once they are rolling… the farmers want electriciity but affair after affair the congress is keeping its face good with rthe sliding hair style the typical potrait while one country is loaded on anothers expense……………
talk is over with the super fellen ………………………
now just party friends like democracy says …..our boys…………………..get manufacture-ing licences and stelling technologies and buying check suits and broad tied from friends nation and ladies coats ……..and vburkas you can throw the top and order lin choicest coilors and wear northing below!
Like Nixon says………. Get going and Get Doing!
May 19th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Just stealing again… The UAE Gulf profits will take more opf these Collefge Cut to bundle one country on another………..
May 19th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
By my recconning, New Zealand needs to increase its renewable power generation by around 6% per annum if we are to move to >90% renewables by 2025 or so. This comes from around 1-2% per annum growth, plus around 30% of non-renewable power to replace over 15 years or so, plus about 1% per annum for various forms of electric vehicle (trains, buses, PHEV or all electric cars, etc) plus a bit more for substitution of fossil fuels for home, commercial and industrial use.
There are two parts to this problem. One is meeting peak demand even if intermittand sources of power (wind, solar, tidal, wave) aren’t available. Peak demand is around 7200MW so we need to add about 400MW per annum of firm generation, such as hydro, geothermal or various forms of energy storage systems.
The other part of the problem is average power consumption, which is around 40GWHrs per annum. We need to add around 2.4GWHrs per annum of renewable generation, or about 300MW of average generation. If we use wind with a capacity factor of 40%, we need to add 750MW of new generation to meet the 300MW average requirement.
New hydro or geothermal generation can meet both parts of this problem. However there are limited opportunities for actual new generation for either. What we can do is to increase the peak outputs of some of our hydro or geothermal stations which probably won’t help the average power gneration much but which gives us more firm (despatchable) generation for when the wind isn’t blowing.
Storage systems can only meet the first and have a small negative impact on the second - there are additional losses - but they can use surplus intermittant generation. Intermittant generation can only meet the second part, but as we add intermittant generation, we run into increasing periods of surplus generation when demand is low. An alternative to adding storage systems is to increase the demand during such periods and use electricity when the price is really low for applications which are uneconomic at other times when the electricity price is higher.
What concerns me is that we simply don’t appear to be building anything like the required amount of new renewable generation of any sort. That and Genesis expecting to find gas for their proposed Rodney power station at an affordable price.
Trevor.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:53 am
One thing to add to that good post Trevor is that Tidal isn’t really an unknown power generation system like wind. We can calculate the amount of power a tidal generator will generate on any given day. Yes the Tidal power system doesn’t generate the same amount of power each day but you can know how much power it will generate on the first monday of next month and plan for that. Wind, wave solar don’t offer that.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Yes, tidal is not only predictable, but it is also relatively consistent. We know that the output of a tidal station will peak every 6 1/4 hours. Some weeks it will generate more than others, but it will always generate a reasonable amount of power each day. This means we can add small storage systems to smooth over those troughs every 6 1/4 hours and larger systems for the daily variation in demand, knowing that they will be recharged. We still need larger storage systems for the monthly variations and annual demand variations. Wind, wave and solar don’t have the same guarantees and we can have a week of low output from all of them - probably at the same time!
Trevor
May 20th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Oops - missed a multiplier. Average demand is around 40,000 GWhrs per annum, so we need about 2,400 GWHrs of extra generation per annum.
One option I didn’t mention was switching to renewable fuels in our thermal power stations, i.e. biomass. This might help with dry year demand.
Trevor.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Wind power might be one of the two flavours of the month (geothermal being the other) but it does have problems - apart from that of being a good bird blender
The major problem is fast, unpredictable changes in output, possibly as much as going from zero to full rated output in 15 minutes.
Wave power like wind is intermittant and unpredictable long term, but varies much more slowly - over days - and can be predicted to some extend using remote bouys. This makes it much easier to integrate with other forms of power generation, particularly thermal generation.
Tidal flow generation also varies slowly, but very predictably, and is therefore also easier to integrate than wind (or solar).
Unfortunately the Labour government is only offering a token contribution to marine power generation research, despite New Zealand having world class wave resources and world class tidal flow resources.
Trevor.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:00 am
One thing you may be overlooking is that micro wind turbines can take advantage of microclimates to smooth out the fluctuations in wind strength by having a large number of small windfarmlets instead of a small number of large wind farms. The trick to making that approach work seamlessly is to combine modern remote data telemetry systems and digital switching technology with appropriate processing software, perhaps modelled on traction control or engine management software.
Add to that the intriguing possibility of using this type of wind turbine in the CBD’s concrete canyons or possibly even as a hydro turbine in rivers or existing hydro tailraces or even suspended from the New Brighton Pier.
http://www.magenn.com/media/video/player.html?v=JDJhhGJwSuA&hl=en
May 21st, 2008 at 9:54 am
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4553829a11.html
May 21st, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Interesting idea Kevyn, but I doubt that micro wind turbines will be economical once the costs of control equipment, grid connection, maintenance and documentation are included. There are economies of scale that apply when you compare 1 x MW wind turbine versus 15000 x 200 Watt micro wind turbines.
Trevor.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Only 1 kilometer up?
Some engineers are looking a lot higher than that:
http://www.skywindpower.com/ww/index.htm
Still it is good to see signs of progress.
Trevor.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
An alternative to micro wind turbines just took another step closer to production:
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/press/seagen-installation-comp leted/
This is a 1.2MW tidal flow system in Ireland.
Trevor.