cleantechventures-blog

[cleantechventures-blog]

“Honey, Our Power Station is Home!”

Buildings will be their own power stations in the future. The Active Classroom, now operating for 6 months in Swansea (England), is the United Kingdom’s first energy positive classroom that might model future homes. Housing units would feature solar roofs, shared battery storage and electrical vehicle charging. Water is heated through a solar heat collector and waste heat is captured and recycled in the building.

Homes that are designed to generate, store and release their own solar energy would cut energy bills by more than 60%, saving the average household over $800/year. If 1 million of these homes are built, peak generating capacity falls by 3 gigawatts - the size of a large central power station - and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 80 million tones over 40 years.

And there could not be a better time to start with solar panels. New solar PV capacity grew by 50 percent in 2016, with China accounting for about half of the global expansion. By 2022, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that total global solar PV capacity will exceed the current combined total power capacities of India and Japan. The expect renewables to grow by 1,000 GW by 2022, which equals about half of the current global capacity in coal power, which took 80 years to build. While coal remains the largest source of electricity generation in 2022, renewables are expected to close the generation gap with coal by half by then.

However, cleantech innovations only become practical, intelligent solutions when they are combined and integrated. Tesla, for instance, has already made steps towards this all in one solution for homes. After acquiring Solar City, Telsa customers can now generate energy from their roofs, charge their cars, and store what remains in a home battery pack. Saving the planet becomes a lot more popular when it’s cheaper and easier than an existing alternative. For further information or strategy consultation regarding raising seed round, advisory partnership and creation of business plan including extended pitch deck, you may contact Cleantech Ventures.

[cleantechventures-blog]

The African Leapfrog

Africa never built a telephone cable network that satisfied demand. In fact, it did not even come close. Only 12 million fixed telephones lines exist for a continent of 1.2 billion people. Fortunately, Africa will never have to. With the advent of cellphones, Africans have a decentralized, cheaper way to communicate, leaving traditional telephone lines obsolete. Today there are over 500 million mobile connections, and Africa has leapfrogged the outdated telephone infrastructure that other more developed continents used.

The solution to Africa’s communication problem might be instructive for solving its energy crisis. Currently, 600 million people do not have access to an electricity grid. With the highest population growth rate, a continent 10 times larger than India, and families living on $4-5 a day, Africa might struggle implementing a traditional energy grid model. Accordingly, the returns on grid energy likely will not justify the large investment.

As with telephone lines, decentralizing through new technology might once more be the answer. Solar panels require a tiny fraction of the infrastructure and investment that nuclear plants and coal factories do. They also provide significant savings for consumers: the 7 million Africans that have exchanged kerosene lamps for solar LED lights in Tanzania have saved a dollar a week. This matters for Sub-Saharans who live on roughly a dollar a week.

While solar panels are criticized for low energy efficiency and output, they meet the demand of communities that do not consume large volumes of energy. Solar power is also easily expanded and connected to meet a higher demand: simply install another panel and connect it to an electronic device.

Other decentralized renewables seem similar effective and scalable. Rwanda is implementing a plan for 100% renewable energy by 2020, and half of this plan consists of micro-hydro-generation. Cost per Kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity from renewable energy sources has fallen 70% in South Africa in the last 4 years with 10% of the country’s total energy coming from renewables. Larger economies are also saving with localized renewables, not just remote African villages.

Africa might be behind in the energy race but, with some smart cleantech solutions, it just might be able to hop over both the grid and its energy troubles.

For further information or strategy consultation regarding raising seed round, advisory partnership and creation of business plan including extended pitch deck, you may contact Cleantech Ventures.

[cleantechventures-blog]

Explained: The Intermittency Issue

A common complaint about renewable energy is that technologies like wind and solar only produce energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Some argue that renewable energy cannot effectively be utilized until appropriate energy storage technology is developed. Perhaps more importantly, power grids were designed based on the idea of large, controllable electric generators, making integration more difficult. With a low storage capacity, the grid constantly needs to balance supply and demand to avoid blackouts.

Intermittent renewables disrupt the conventional methods for planning the daily operation of the electric grid. The power fluctuations over multiple time horizons forces the grid operator to adjust its operating procedures. For instance, solar energy is inherently only available during daylight hours, so the grid operator must adjust the day-ahead plan to include generators that can quickly adjust their power output to compensate for the rise and fall in solar generation.

Sunrise and sunset aside, clouds can cause sudden changes in solar panel output. Variability caused by clouds can make it more difficult for the grid operator to predict how much additional electric generation will be required during the next hour of the day, so it becomes difficult to calculate exactly what the output of each generator should be to accomplish the load-following phase shown in the graphic below. These fluctuations also affect second-to second balance: did you know that grid operators send a signal to power plants every four seconds to insure grid supply equal power demand? Wind and solar increase the reserve power requirement for the grid operator to readily and swiftly respond an maintain gird balance.

Fortunately, renewable energy becomes more predictable as the number of renewable generators connected to the grid increases thanks to the effect of geographic diversity and the Law of Large Numbers. The Law of Large Numbers is a probability theorem, which states that the aggregate result of a large number of uncertain processes becomes more predictable as the total number of processes increases. Applied to renewable energy, the Law of Large Numbers dictates that the combined output of every wind turbine and solar panel connected to the grid is far less volatile than the output of an individual generator. Experience has shown that aggregate renewable power available can effectively be modeled and predicted, and both wind and solar depend on natural systems that can similarly be modeled and forecasted with reasonable accuracy.

However, predicting how much renewable energy will be available a day ahead of time is significantly more difficult. Mixing sources helps balance this out: continental wind energy tends to peak at night, coastal wind energy tends to peak during the day, and solar can peak at various times over the day, depending on its orientation. The electricity market will have to incentivize this mix: prices should vary over the day and over a region depending on the local level of electricity supply and demand. Tying renewable energy to these prices should help develop a mix of renewable sources that produces just the right amount of energy when we need it, and reduces the need for costly energy storage.

While integrating intermittent renewable energy sources into the grid is undoubtedly challenging, it hardly compares to the difficulty of initially constructing the current grid (imagine the effort of stringing all those wires to connect freshly built power plants and grids!). Cost-based incentives have an will undoubtedly be a crucial part of achieving this objective. That is, until we do away with centralized energy-distribution models all together.

For further information or strategy consultation regarding raising seed round, advisory partnership and creation of business plan including extended pitch deck, you may contact Cleantech Ventures.

[cleantechventures-blog]

Top 5 New Cleantech Coming in 2020

Despite the progress in solar, wind and energy storage in 2019, more radical breakthroughs will be needed to solve longer-term grid decarbonization challenges, such as how to deal with intermittency and seasonal weather variations in regions with very high penetrations of renewables. Here are some picks for upcoming tech that is poised for a strong year ahead.

1.  Marine Solar

Many sea-based PV projects were announced in 2019 (see here and here). Availability of land for ground-mounted arrays is dwindling and land costs are rising, along with cities’ emission reduction targets.  

Proponents also suggest that a marine environment could help boost production by keeping solar panels cool. Oceans of Energy expects offshore power yields to be roughly 15% higher than comparable onshore projects, and Swimsol 5-10% uplift in production compared to rooftop-mounted panels.  

However, an inland floating array costs 10-15% more than a ground-mounted system. Only time will tell if these more pain, more gain solar arrays will sink or swim.

2.  Static Compensators

Definitely a sleeper pick, static compensators could be key in grid integration of  growing amounts of renewable energy.  

Static compensators mimic the action of rotating masses previously provided by thermal turbines, thereby helping maintain a constant frequency across the electricity network. Renewable-heavy grids could lack this natural frequency-response mechanism, necessitating compensators.

GE has been an early, successful developer.  

3. Dynamic Export Cables

Floating wind poses a challenge: how do you connect a floating platform to a static cable on the seabed? The answer is to use “dynamic export cables” that both carry high voltages and move with the platform.  

These are key for floating offshore wind, which could soon trump the traditional bottom-fixed status quo (see Equinor’s 88MW Hywind Tampen project).

4.  Molten Salt Reactors

The molten salt reactor could provide carbon-free electricity with fewer radiation risks than traditional nuclear. They are nuclear reactors that use a fluid fuel in the form of very hot fluoride or chloride salt rather than the solid fuel used in most reactors. Since the fuel salt is liquid, it can be both the fuel (producing the heat) and the coolant (transporting the heat to the power plant). Learn more about them here.

Other upcoming branches of nuclear include fusion and small modular reactors.

5. Green Hydrogen

Hydrogen has historically been manufactured either through electrolysis (expensive), or through various fossil-fuel intensive methods (environmentally harmful). Fortunately, better alternatives are starting to surface, as sustainable production methods move from “emerging” to “established”. Read about what the top 10 countries in the space are working on here.  

The industry could reach the scale of oil and gas without the emissions, while providing a value-add for grids by integrating variable renewable energy. Hydrogen can be used for grid energy, decarbonization of industrial processes, gas heating and heavy transport.

For further information or strategy consultation regarding raising seed round, advisory partnership and creation of business plan including extended pitch deck, you may contact Cleantech Ventures.

[cleantechventures-blog]

Catching Wind of Europe’s Turbines

Almost a year ago on October 28th, wind power sources provided 24.6% of total electricity generated in the EU, powering nearly 200 million households. While the number was undoubtedly boosted by a storm that weekend, it marks the progress of the European Council’s climate goals, planing to reduce EU-wide emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, part of which involves filling at least 20% of energy needs with renewables by 2020.

Consequently, offshore wind energy is now cheaper than nuclear energy in the UK. Wind often provides Denmark with more than 100% of its energy (109% that weekend), and Germany more than half. Scotland, inline with its 2020 carbon neutrality goals, made news opening the first floating wind farm (video here). And this is really just the start; Danish wind giant Ørsted Energy has plans to build a 1200 Megawatt (MW) farm in the UK by 2020 and 1368 MW - to be the next largest offshore wind farm - by 2022.

Germany has championed wind energy more than any other nation in Europe, ranking third worldwide behind China and the US. On October 28th, German citizens received free energy. Prices turned negative for the entire day when output reached 39,409 MW. Germany broke another record by building the world’s tallest wind turbine, stretching 809 feet from base to blade-tip. Height has functional value here; higher altitudes mean stronger, more stable and more consistent wind speeds, producing more energy and fewer generation gaps.

A few other, shorter turbines were built around it, all of which harness a new power storage technology. They have water tanks built into their base, such that when excess power is generated, water can be pumped from a reservoir uphill into tanks. In low supply/high demand instances, this water can be released to spin even more turbines for extra power, marking an innovative approach to the intermittency problem.

European wind energy proponents had a lot to celebrate in October. And with these new water-storage turbines, Germany is cementing itself as wind capital of Europe. While it is still far from challenging the US or China for wind dominance, Germany’s unflinching innovation and focus might make it a contender soon enough.

For further information or strategy consultation regarding raising seed round, advisory partnership and creation of business plan including extended pitch deck, you may contact Cleantech Ventures.

[cleantechventures-blog]

Explained: Energy Storage

Batteries play two key roles in the energy sector: maintaining consistent grid voltage, a function called frequency regulation, and multi-hour storage for intermittent electricity harvested from wind and solar sources (read more here).

One battery dominates the current marketplace: lithium ion. The high-energy density (storage capacity per volume) of lithium ion cells makes them a great match for portable electronics, substantiating their widespread use in mobile phones, laptops, and electric vehicles. Though developed for these smaller applications, lithium ion accounts for more than 80% of utility-scale battery storage.

These cells, however, have two major issues. Firstly, operating them in high temperatures severely reduces their battery cycle life, thus temperature controls are needed to keep them cool. Those controls, in turn, create a “parasitic” drain on electricity that reduces overall cell efficiency. The flammability of lithium ion electrolytes is the second, even more serious concern. In addition to highly-publicized Tesla vehicle and Samsung smartphone battery fires, a number of utility-scale battery installations have burst into flames, most recently at Arizona Public Service’s McKicken storage facility in April 2019.

Researchers are developing materials and designs to produce cells that are safer, cheaper, have a longer battery life, and perform better in hot climates than existing lithium ion batteries. Some notable possibilities include lithium-metal, lithium-sulfur, solid-state batteries incorporating ceramics or solid polymers, and “flow batteries” with external tanks that allow for easy expansion of storage capacity.

PRICES DROP, DEMAND SURGES

The shortcomings of lithium ion batteries haven’t hindered their exponential growth in the US battery storage market. From just a few megawatts a decade ago, utility-scale battery installations reached 866 megawatts of power capacity by February 2019, and total battery storage is expected to approach 4.5 gigawatts of cumulative capacity by 2024 – a significant leap, but still just a fraction of a percent of overall U.S. generating capacity. To safeguard grid stability against increased consumption and demand uncertainty, deeper investments in energy storage will be needed, for longer-duration, inter-day storage equaling roughly 3-7% of renewable energy-based electricity production.

Though lithium ion prices continue to plummet, as production ramps up. Between 2010 and 2018, the average price of a lithium ion battery pack dropped from $1,160 per kilowatt-hour to $176 per kilowatt-hour – an 85% reduction in just eight years. Within the next few years, Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts a further drop in price to $94 per kilowatt-hour in 2024 and $62 per kilowatt-hour in 2030.

This huge decline in battery prices has economically enabled solar plants to be paired with storage, particularly in states where high electricity rates coincide with strong policy (like high renewable portfolio standards). A Hawaiian solar-plus-storage plant on the island of Kauai is expected to save 2.8 million gallons of diesel oil annually while supplying 65% of the island’s peak nighttime electric load. It is part of a cohort of new and planned solar-plus-storage facilities that will help Hawaii meet a regulatory mandate requiring 70% renewable energy-based electricity by 2030 and 100% renewable electricity by 2045.

In California, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has also committed to making battery storage an integral part of its infrastructure. In September 2019, it approved a power purchase agreement that will provide 400 megawatts of solar power and 1,200 megawatt-hours of battery-stored energy for an astonishingly low price of 3.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, making it a cheaper source of electricity than natural gas. Along with the advantage of favorable economics, this deal was driven by the city’s commitment to deliver customers 100% renewable electricity by 2045.

MICROGRIDS

Along with their utility-scale functions, batteries are emerging as key elements in microgrids – small-scale power systems that can supplement or substitute for grid-supplied electricity. The recent spate of hurricanes and wildfires knocking out grid-supplied electricity has brought significant awareness to microgrids, especially for emergency shelters, hospitals, and similar applications. Creating “energy islands” by pairing battery storage with solar arrays creates a degree of local energy autonomy if grid power is lost (now being planned for Puerto Rico). This architecture is valuable for responding to cyber-threats as well as extreme weather events.

THE NEXT GENERATION

What technologies are out there to meet our growing demand (25-62% increase by 2050, according to NREL), and replace the hazardous, inefficient lithium ion cell?

Pumped-Storage Hydropower: Pumped-storage hydro (PSH) facilities are large-scale energy storage plants that use gravitational force to generate electricity. Water is pumped to a higher elevation for storage during low-cost energy periods and high renewable energy generation periods. When electricity is needed, water is released back to the lower pool, generating power through turbines. Recent innovations have allowed PSH facilities to have adjustable speeds, in order to be more responsive to the needs of the energy grid, and also to operate in closed-loop systems. A closed loop PSH operates without being connected to a continuously flowing water source, unlike traditional pumped-storage hydropower, making pumped-storage hydropower an option for more locations.

In comparison to other forms of energy storage, pumped-storage hydropower can be cheaper, especially for very large capacity storage (which other technologies struggle to match). According to the Electric Power Research Institute, the installed cost for pumped-storage hydropower varies between $1,700 and $5,100/kW, compared to $2,500/kW to 3,900/kW for lithium-ion batteries. Pumped-storage hydropower is more than 80 percent energy efficient through a full cycle, and PSH facilities can typically provide 10 hours of electricity, compared to about 6 hours for lithium-ion batteries. Despite these advantages, the challenge of PSH projects is that they are long-term investments: permitting and construction can take 3-5 years each. This can scare off investors who would prefer shorter-term investments, especially in a fast-changing market.

Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES): With compressed air storage, air is pumped into an underground hole, most likely a salt cavern, during off-peak hours when electricity is cheaper. When energy is needed, the air from the underground cave is released back up into the facility, where it is heated and the resulting expansion turns an electricity generator. This heating process usually uses natural gas, which releases carbon; however, CAES triples the energy output of facilities using natural gas alone. CAES can achieve up to 70% energy efficiency when the heat from the air pressure is retained, otherwise efficiency is between 42-55%.

Thermal (including Molten Salt): Thermal energy storage facilities use temperature to store energy. When energy needs to be stored, rocks, salts, water, or other materials are heated and kept in insulated environments. When energy needs to be generated, the thermal energy is released by pumping cold water onto the hot rocks, salts, or hot water in order to produce steam, which spins turbines. Thermal energy storage can also be used to heat and cool buildings instead of generating electricity. For example, thermal storage can be used to make ice overnight to cool a building during the day. Thermal efficiency can range from 50 percent to 90 percent depending on the type of thermal energy used.

Flow Batteries: Flow batteries are an alternative to lithium-ion batteries. While less popular than lithium-ion batteries—flow batteries make up less than 5& of the battery market—flow batteries have been used in multiple energy storage projects that require longer energy storage durations. Flow batteries have relatively low energy densities and have long life cycles, which makes them well-suited for supplying continuous power.

Solid State Batteries: Solid state batteries have multiple advantages over lithium-ion batteries in large-scale grid storage. Solid-state batteries contain solid electrolytes which have higher energy densities and are much less prone to fires than liquid electrolytes, such as those found in lithium-ion batteries. Their smaller volumes and higher safety make solid-state batteries well suited for large-scale grid applications.

However, solid state battery technology is currently more expensive than lithium-ion battery technology because it is less developed. Fast-growing lithium-ion production has led to economies of scale, which solid-state batteries will find hard to match in the coming years.

Hydrogen: Hydrogen fuel cells, which generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, have appealing characteristics: they are reliable and quiet (with no moving parts), have a small footprint and high energy density, and release no emissions (when running on pure hydrogen, their only byproduct is water). The process can also be reversed, making it useful for energy storage: electrolysis of water produces oxygen and hydrogen. Fuel cell facilities can, therefore, produce hydrogen when electricity is cheap, and later use that hydrogen to generate electricity when it is needed (in most cases, the hydrogen is produced in one location, and used in another). Hydrogen can also be produced by reforming biogas, ethanol, or hydrocarbons, a cheaper method that emits carbon pollution. Though hydrogen fuel cells remain expensive (primarily because of their need for platinum, an expensive metal), they are being used as primary and backup power for many critical facilities (telecom relays, data centers, and credit card processing).

Flywheels: Flywheels are not suitable for long-term energy storage, but are very effective for load-leveling and load-shifting applications. Flywheels are known for their long-life cycle, high-energy density, low maintenance costs, and quick response speeds. Motors store energy into flywheels by accelerating their spins to very high rates (up to 50,000 rpm). The motor can later use that stored kinetic energy to generate electricity by going into reverse. Flywheels are commonly left in a vacuum so as to minimize air friction, which would slow the wheel.

For further information or strategy consultation regarding raising seed round, advisory partnership and creation of business plan including extended pitch deck, you may contact Cleantech Ventures.