Monthly Archives: Thursday January 28th, 2010

Snow on the solar panels

Posted on by
Sneeuw op de panelen

Snow on the solar panels

When I looked up yesterday morning when I left home for work, I saw that our roof was still covered with snow while our neighbours’ roofs were clear.

I think that’s because the hatch I mounted in the stairwell to the attic, which prevents warm air from rising and being lost through the roof.

The disadvantage is that snow takes longer to melt and thus covers the solar panels for a longer period, but because the panels produce very little energy in this season that’s really no problem. The amount of energy saved in natural gas will almost certainly be more than the amount of energy the solar panels would have generated without the snow.

Local elections 2010

Posted on by
Stemmen

Stemmen

The 2010 local elections will be held on March 3rd, that’s just over a month away. How local politics deal with things like the environment, sustainability and energy is just as important as the nationwide and European politics (flag_NL_small). Local politics have much influence ons issues like traffic but also rules for energy-efficiency of renovated and newly built buildings

I live in Hilversum (flag_UK_small), here are some issues that come to mind:

  • Traffic. Hilversum is known, nationwide, as the city you don’t want to go to by car ‘because it’s a continuous traffic jam’. And yes, it’s true that especially during rush hour it can be very congested on Hilversum’s road-system. The local newspaper spend a considerable amount of page space on these traffix issues. A common opinion is that the traffic problems can be solved by technical means like more and wider roads, one-way traffic on some roads, ramp metering, etc. It’s clear to me that these can be temporary stopgaps at best, the basic problem is simply that too many cars are trying to squirm themselves over a road-system that was never designed to handle that much traffic. For a (very) long time there have been plans for a high-quality public transit connection to neighbouring Huizen, but that just can’t seem to get off the ground.
  • Energy. Hilversum doesn’t have much ‘dirty’ industry with smoking smokestacks, but it’s economy depends nearly completely on the national broadcasting stations and many media companies. Those called be called clean with some justice, but they are extremely dependent on reliable and cheap energy. I wonder how this sector will cope with rapidly rising energy prices. This sector is also directly tied to the traffic problems as many employees live outside Hilversum and so have to commute every day, often by car.
  • Residential energy consumption. Hilversum has a lot of houses from the ’30 (the city’s first growth period when a railway arrived) and the 50′s (fast growth after the Second World War)). Many of these houses have pretty bad insulation, leading to an unnecessarily high energy consumption. New houses are being built here and there which are much better insulated, but I wonder if it isn’t possible to look ahead to the future. A energy-zero house isn’t that difficult to build, and even energy-plus houses are possible if the local regulations would enforce it.
  • Incentives. Hilversum has, at this time, several financial incentives for things like insulation, solar panels, solar hot water systems, energy saving glass, etc. That’s all very well but wonder what all the different parties are planning to do in this respect in the coming period 2010-2014.
  • Landscape/growth. Hilversum would like to grow, and many people and companies are hungrily eying the surrounding green landscape. This has been an issue of much debate for many years.

I am very curious how the different local parties think about these subjects. I will carefully read the party programs of all the participating local parties and publish an overview on this website. If the programs are not specific enough I may very well write to all those parties and ask them specific questions. I wonder, for instance, if they know about Peak Oil and how they are incorporating it in their policy.

Kombikraftwerk

Posted on by
Kombikraftwerk

Kombikraftwerk

Many German words have this powerful sound to them. ‘KOMBIKRAFTWERK’. This word doesn’t only sound powerful, it also has a powerful meaning.

A much-heard argument against the widespread use of electricity generation from renewable source like sun and wind is that the production is unpredictable. This means, so it is often said, that for every MW of renewable capacity that is installed a same number of fossil MW capacity must be built, to ensure reliable electricity at all times, even during cloudy weather/darkness/calm winds. This argument sounds reasonable at first view, and that’s why many people usually accept this argument.

It’s really not a good argument, for two reasons:

  1. Up to about a 20-25% share of renewables in the total electricity production there is no problem at all. The fluctuations in production are no more a problem than the normal fluctuations in consumption. To put it another way: the fossil plants are not troubled at all by the renewable generatin capacity, besides having to throttle back or switch off more often – which is of course exactly the point.Even at higher shares of renewable capacity, I’ve read 40-50%, doesn’t present much problems. The weather can be forecast with quite high level of accuracy a few days ahead and that makes it easy to also predict the amount of available electricity at a given time. If there is a shortage, electricity can bought from neighbouring countries, for instance through the submarine NorNed-cable (flag_UK_small) from Norway. Because Norway has an unusually high share of hydropower this allows something very convenient: if there is an electricity surplus the hydro plants can pump the water uphill into their reservoir, thus storing energy.
  2. But even at much higher shares of renewable capacity – up to 100% – we could manage without fossil power plants. The secret? A smart grid. Kassel university, in Germany,  researched ways to maintain a stable grid which is fed exclusively with renewable sources. The experiment took three wind parks, twee biomass plants, a number of solar plants and a hydropower plant with storage possibility and coupled these with a computer network. The goal was to generate, for a longer time, a fixed percentage of the total German electricity consumption, only from renewable sources. To do this, Germany’s total electricity was constantly monitored and the renewables sources were managed to generate exactly the predetermined percentage of consumption. For instance, if it were to be cloudy in southern Germany, depressing the electricity production there it would very likely be windy in northern Germany, allowing the wind park there to compensate. If all the wind and solar plants couldn’t produce enough electricity to match demand the biomass plants could be switched on, resulting in a very reliable grid. Not only shortages have to be avoided: a surplus can also destabilise the grid. This is where the hydropower plant comes into play. If, at any one time, demand was low and production was high (for instance if it is both sunny and windy at the same time) the hydropower plant could pump water uphill into its reservoir, storing it for later use in electricity generation at a time of shortage. This allows energy to be stored, further stabilising the grid.

This experiment proves that, in theory, the electricity demand of an entire country can be met by renewable source. When the term “in theory” is used it usually means “not really” but I think this experiment shows that it can really be done. Of cource, sufficient renewable generating capacity must be available to really run a complete coutry. In Germany they are working hard towards this goal – while in the Netherlands we are unfortunately getting ever more behind.

Anyway, this is a very interesting experiment which show that if we really wanted to we could switch out entire electricity consumption over to renewable sources. This short movie explains how it works:

Twike succesor (possibly) on the way

Posted on by

TheTwike (flag_NL_small) (which I drove around for an afternoon (flag_NL_small) in 2007) is a fun and light three-wheeled electric vehicle but both its design and its technology are starting to show their age – although ever more powerful batteries became available, eventually pushing the range to over 200km.

TW4XP

TW4XP

A few people who are directly and indirectly involved with Twike are developing a successor, which currently listens to the rather unprosaic name “TW4XP” (flag_UK_small). The name stands for  “ThreeWheeler 4 X Prize” and after some research it becomes clear what’s behind both the car and its name.

The X Prize Foundation (flag_UK_small) was founded to finance large competitions to force breakthroughs in several high-tech areas. For example, the Foundation paid US$10 million to the winner of the 2004 Ansari X Prize (flag_UK_small), the company Scaled Composites (flag_UK_small) which succesfully launched the first non-government-sponsored (albeit suborbital) spaceship.

The Foundation is currently running the Progressive Automotive X Prize (flag_UK_small) in which teams can compete with designs for ultra-efficient vehicles. The vehicles will be judged by efficiency, safety, handling qualities, usability and the ability to be mass-produced. The winning teams in the several classes will receive a certain sum of money to help them to start op mass-production.

The TW4XP (you can win $1000 (flag_UK_small) by coming up with an original name) is, just like the Twike, a three-wheeled electric vehicle with support from pedal power. I am not a big fan of the whole pedal power thing, I thought the Twike without pedals drove easier but according to Twike they sell about 90% pedal-versions so it must appeal to many people. The site is a bit light on the technical details of the vehicle, and it even seems that there is not physical protoype yet, only a few renderings. The specifications (flag_UK_small) state that the top speed will be above 80mph (= ± 130 km/h), which is substantially higher than the Twike current top speed of 55mph (= ± 85 km/h). The energy consumption seems to be considerably higher than that of the Twike: 16 kWh per 100 km vs. 5 kWh per 100 km, but I guess that’s to be expected at higher speeds. I do hope that the designers will keep to the design philosophy of the Twike by keeping the vehicle very light. Light vehicles use less energy (both during construction and while being driven) and are also much safer for truly sustainable road users like pedestrians and cyclists.

I hope we will hear a lot more about this.

TV-show Buitenhof about sustainability

Posted on by

buitenhof-logo-150x150Dutch TV-show Buitenhof (flag_NL_small) had an item today about sustainability in the Netherlands. Four guests sat at the table: Diederik Samson (representative for the Dutch Labout Party), Wubbo Ockels (ex-astronaut and professor renewably energy at Delft University of Technology (flag_UK_small)), Bouwe de Boer (energycoordinator for the city of Leeuwarden) en Marco van Veen (director of SolarNRG (flag_NL_small), which happens to be the company that installed the solar panels on our roof.

The broadcast was not uninteresting, but the discussion starts to resemble a stuck recording. The people who are actually working in the sustainability-business are very dissatisfied with the current rules, laws and incentives surrounding the area of sustainability. The politicians, on the other hand, say that things are going as planned and everything is fine…

The broadcast is repeated on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010, and can also be viewed online (flag_NL_small).

Happy new year!

Posted on by

gelukkig_20102010 has started officially an that means all the best wishes and good intentions :)

I wish everybody lots of health and happiness, and lots of sun on the your solar panels and wind on your windturbines. Let’s hope that we can finally make some progress withe sustainability in the Netherlands, as we are getting more and more behind with each passing year. Maybe that the falling prices of solar panels can achieve what the clumsy SDE-incentive program cannot: much more blue on the Dutch roofs.

About good intentions: I hope I can find the time and rest to write interesting articles for the website, that can start the construction of a rainwater collection system (flag_NL_small) and that we can keep the energy consumption of our household low, or maybe even lower it some more.