by jboullion | Sep 5, 2012 | Uncategorized
From an article in BizTimes by Molly Newman:
“Milwaukee area food waste will be used to generate power in an anaerobic digester that will be built at Potawatomi Bingo Casino in Milwaukee.
The facility will be able to break down organic materials into methane gas, powering engines that will produce up to 2 megawatts of power. That adds up to about 16 million kilowatt hours per year, enough to power 1,500 homes, which will be sold back to Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Energy Corp.
“We will be producing the energy and selling it back to We Energies under a tariff agreement, which will then count toward their renewable energy portfolio standard requirements in Wisconsin,” said Jeff Crawford, tribal attorney general for the Forest County Potawatomi Community. The energy production will offset most of the Potawatomi Community’s energy costs throughout the state, and also renew its commitment to the environment, he said. The tribe has about 17,000 acres of land throughout Wisconsin”
Read the full article here.
by jboullion | Aug 31, 2012 | Uncategorized
From an article in the Journal Sentinel, read the whole article here.
Study seeks data on mid-water winds
The notion is intoxicating: Capture the wind that has buffeted boaters on the Great Lakes for centuries and convert it into clean, renewable energy. But one important piece of data has been missing: We don’t know exactly how windy it is out there.
Soon, we will.
A floating research platform launched to collect data on wind speeds high above the water in the middle of Lake Michigan has begun feeding the information to researchers involved in a $3 million project.
“We’re capturing some of the very first data,” said Arnold “Arn” Boezaart, director of the Michigan Alternative & Renewable Energy Center at Grand Valley State University in Muskegon, which is leading the research. “The wind data that we’re bringing on shore – when I brought the first data cards on shore, I felt like I was bringing gold bullion.”
The WindSentinel research platform, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the State of Michigan, We Energies and the Sierra Club, uses laser-pulse radar technology to gather information about wind speeds at heights in excess of 500 feet above water.
A partnership of Axys Technologies in Vancouver, British Columbia, and a Virginia company called Catch the Wind incorporated the laser and radar technology into a wind-measuring platform that is powered with renewable energy sources – primarily wind and solar, but also biodiesel. The platform was the first one deployed in North America and the only one on the Great Lakes. Another was deployed recently in the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey.
Previous Great Lakes studies have indicated there are strong winds midlake, but wind monitors in the lake today measure wind speeds at only 10 to 12 feet off the water, well below the height that would be used to generate electricity from wind. There has been no hard data documenting wind speeds at the height where a turbine’s blades would turn.
Preliminary results from the new project look promising: Data from June showed an average wind speed of 22 mph 410 feet above the water.
“Based on our early assessments of the average data that we’re gathering, there clearly is a very robust wind resource out over Lake Michigan,” Boezaart said. Wind speeds over 15 to 20 mph are considered commercially viable for wind generation, he said.
Read more…
by jboullion | Aug 15, 2012 | Uncategorized
August 10, 2012
A commentary by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin, Director, Policy and Programs:
After skidding below $2.00/MMBtu this winter, wholesale natural gas prices are now creeping toward the $3.00 mark. This upward movement is the result of below-normal volumes of natural gas going into storage for the winter heating season. The latest report, released August 16th, marks the 16th straight week where injection volumes lagged significantly behind the five-year average.
Notwithstanding this mild rebound, everyone in the energy industry, including the traders themselves, knows that $3.00/MMBtu is well below the cost of producing natural gas, and cannot deliver a return that can support future drilling efforts. This is particularly true with shale gas, the so-called “game-changer” that industry flacks contended would topple King Coal’s reign over the electricity sector.
High-profile shale gas producers like Chesapeake Energy are now running out of ways of concealing their financial distress. Consider the following developments that occurred over the last fortnight.
- Chesapeake Energy announced plans to reduce domestic gas production in 2013 by 8%;
- BHP Billiton wrote down $2.84 billion on the value of Fayetteville shale gas assets it had acquired in 2011; and
- The most recent count of rigs drilling for natural gas in the United States is 495, down 70% from the record-setting levels seen in September 2008.
“Write down” is a fairly bloodless way to describe the loss of $3 billion; “carnage” is better at conveying the pain that now grips the natural gas sector. This begs the question: why are wholesale natural gas prices still under the $3.00/MMBtu level?
I believe that there are two reasons for this phenomenon. The first is that energy traders, like virtually everyone else in this country, are truly convinced that the United States is awash in shale gas, thanks to a brilliant industry-led public relations campaign. Lower prices help reinforce the popular belief that cheap gas will be with us for another century. Unfortunately, federal energy agencies and universities have also bought into this view of the supply picture big-time, leaving little room for skeptics and agnostics to influence public perceptions.
This overarching belief has been unintentionally reinforced by local and regional controversies over the practice of hydraulic fracturing solid rock to obtain the shale gas trapped inside. Virtually unheard of four years ago, “fracking” has vaulted into the public consciousness, and in doing so, sustains the society-wide belief that natural gas can be accessed almost anywhere in the United States.
Ironically, the myth of abundance that E&P companies so carefully cultivated–and bankrolled–is now clearly working against their short-term interests.
The other factor that keeps prices so low is the traders’ fear of large demand swings. For example, the phantom winter of 2011-2012, which cut demand for heating fuel by more than 25%, creating a colossal oversupply that sent wholesale prices crashing. The supply pendulum is now swinging the other way, and more than half of the bulge has melted away. Assuming a continuation of smaller-than normal injections, natural gas inventories should be in line with the five-year average by mid-December.
Traders attribute the ongoing reduction in inventories to a hotter than normal summer, prompting utilities to switch on more gas generators to meet system peaks. But weather isn’t the only thing that influences the storage picture; output does as well. But as long as traders and speculators subscribe to the myth of nearly limitless supply, they will discount the possibility that declining output is also responsible for lagging storage volumes.
The paradigm shift ushered in by the fracking phenomenon won’t go away easily. But in the not-very-distant future, the reality of reduced drilling activity and capital spending, along with rapid decline rates in shale gas plays, will bite deeply into natural gas supplies and cause yet another overturning of expectations in this sector. For electric utilities as well as end-users, the results will not be pretty.
Michael Vickerman is program and policy director of RENEW Wisconsin, a sustainable energy advocacy organization. For more information on the global and national petroleum and natural gas supply picture, visit “The End of Cheap Oil” section in RENEW Wisconsin’s web site: www.renewwisconsin.org. These commentaries also posted on RENEW’s blog: http://renewwisconsinblog.org and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com
by jboullion | Aug 10, 2012 | Uncategorized
From a story by Justin Guay, Sierra Club International Program:
Of course they still have to face the problems they have inherited from trying to copy/paste a centralized grid from the West. So what can they do to solve peak problems with the grid they already have in place? Deploy lots and lots of distributed solar and efficiency.
That’s because, unlike coal, solar for the most part is available when you need it – during peak hours. Which is why it’s great to see States like Gujarat taking the lead in roof top solar programs with the support of the IFC. And efficiency makes the peaks smaller so you need less power in the first place.
The irony here of course is that distributed generation has always been ignored as trivial compared to the real need for a large scale ‘modern grid.’ That’s because policymakers and commentators lack the imagination to understand the fact that when aggregated, small can be very, very big.
Take the hidden truth behind India’s modern grid (as my colleague Jigar Shah points out): it is actually already a distributed system that is largely powered by filthy, costly diesel gen sets. That’s because power outages are so frequent that businesses and wealthy individuals have been forced to pay for this backup generation to ensure power. This is a tremendous opportunity for companies seeking targeted diesel replacement strategies to save people and companies tremendous amounts of money, while providing reliable power.
by jboullion | Aug 9, 2012 | Uncategorized
A letter to the editor of the Sheboygan Press written by Maureen Faller, a member of the board of directors of RENEW and co-owner of Kettle View Renewable Energy:
It is not surprising that the proposed Windy Acres Wind Farm project in the Town of Sherman has become a highly emotional debate. However, as a citizen, tax payer and small business owner in the Town of Sherman, I am concerned about the vast amount of misleading information that is being circulated throughout our community.
We’ve been barraged with flyers of burning wind turbines, yet the likelihood of this occurring is less than .001% based on 165,000 wind turbines installed worldwide. By comparison, our local fire department was dispatched to two car fires this month alone.
We’ve heard about the wind turbines affecting our property values, however an independent study conducted by the firm Poletti and Associates recently concluded otherwise. In Kewaunee County, which hosts two of the oldest commercial wind projects in the United States, their report suggests no statistically significant effect on the sale of homes or construction of new homes. Furthermore, there is no credible evidence that existing wind development in Wisconsin has depressed property values statewide. In fact, according to data compiled by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance on property values and levies, in Fond du Lac County, equalized valuation actually increased by 1.2% during that time, while Dodge and Kewaunee counties managed smaller declines than the statewide average during that period.
We’ve been told of the ensuing health effects that will plague our families and animals. However, thorough studies by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Australian Government National Health & Medical Research Council, the Chief Medical Officer of Health of Ontario, Canada and the United Kingdom have each concluded that wind turbines do not pose a health threat. More recently, Kitty Rhoades, the Deputy Secretary of the State of Wisconsin Department of Health Services and Governor Walker appointee, could not have been more clear when she affirmed Wisconsin’s stance that the “levels of noise, flicker and infrasound measured from wind turbines at current setback distances do not reach those that have been associated with objective physical health effects.”
Senator Grothman recently insinuated that a wind farm was not welcome in the Town of Sherman. Considering that the July 24 town meeting was attended by more people from Brown County, Manitowoc County and other areas outside our township, I find the senator’s assessment quite presumptive. He may be interested in knowing that recent polling shows that 85% of his fellow Wisconsinites support an increased use of wind power to meet our energy needs, because wind power provides safe, homegrown energy and creates family-supporting jobs across the state.
It is important that we recognize the benefits of the proposed wind farm in the Town of Sherman and do not allow a vocal minority to control this important debate. This is precisely what the anti-wind groups hope to achieve. Deceptive propaganda is their only weapon, because the benefits of sustainable, clean energy and local job creation are irrefutable. Questioning their allegations, asking them for independent third-party data and educating ourselves is our greatest defense. There is truth in education. As quoted by the Dalai Lama “Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.”
