TagAlternative Energy

Google’s new data center uses nature instead of AC

Google has begun operating a data center in Belgium that has no chillers to support its cooling systems, a strategy that will improve its energy efficiency while making local weather forecasting a larger factor in its data center management. […]

Rather than using chillers part-time, the company has eliminated them entirely in its data center near Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, which began operating in late 2008 and also features an on-site water purification facility that allows it to use water from a nearby industrial canal rather than a municipal water utility.

The climate in Belgium will support free cooling almost year-round, according to Google engineers, with temperatures rising above the acceptable range for free cooling about seven days per year on average. The average temperature in Brussels during summer reaches 66 to 71 degrees, while Google maintains its data centers at temperatures above 80 degrees.

So what happens if the weather gets hot? On those days, Google says it will turn off equipment as needed in Belgium and shift computing load to other data centers. This approach is made possible by the scope of the company’s global network of data centers, which provide the ability to shift an entire data center’s workload to other facilities.

Data Center Knowledge: Google’s Chiller-less Data Center

(via Chris 23)

Jeff Vail: Concluding Thoughts on EROEI and Carbon

All this boils down to some of the most poorly understood aspects of climate science: are we better off raising carbon levels now in order to better reduce them in the future, or is it more important (from the perspective of various feedback loops, etc.) to keep levels from ever going over a certain threshold, even if that means more overall emission down the road? We simply don’t have an answer to this question, but it suggests that the climate/carbon argument for a renewables transition is, at a minimum, built on a shaky and uncertain foundation. The real problem is that–much like broader discussions of the renewables transition–the uncertainty in the carbon-reduction argument for renewable energy flies under the radar because nearly all involved in the discussion use very high EROEI figures for renewables. If these figures, as I have argued, could actually be 10x lower than current estimates, then much of the current debate is off track.

None of this is to suggest that we should use uncertainty to abandon action, to stop efforts to transition to a sustainable society. However, we must accept this uncertainty in deciding HOW to best make that transition. More centralized wind and solar and a better grid might be the answer. It might not. Maybe the answer is decentralization and radical reduction in energy consumption? As I’ll address in the future, structurally self-interested participants tend to argue for the former solution–you don’t hear GE raising the uncertainties and potential socio-political pitfalls of centralized wind or solar. Unfortunately, we’ll only find out if their confidence in our ability to transition was misplaced after such efforts have conclusively failed…

Jeff Vail: The Renewables Hump 8: Concluding Thoughts on EROEI and Carbon

10 Wind Turbines That Push the Limits of Design

quiet revolution wind turbine

The wind turbine has become an instantly recognizable symbol for “green energy” (and for green washing). But here are 10 examples of turbines that are turning the iconic design on its head.

Popular Mechanics:

(via OVO)

Can we transition to renewable fuels?

Jeff Vail concludes his series on the “Renewables Hump”:

It was my plan to conclude this series by answering (with pretty graphs, no less!) several questions like this. However, I fear that such an exercise is largely meaningless: I have been unable to come up with a verifiable proxy for EROEI measurement, and without that I would only be addressing hypotheticals. Worse, questions that will be permanently hypothetical.

Instead, I am left with only a confirmed sense of uncertainty. Perhaps that uncertainty is itself valuable. If I have poked holes in (what I believe to be) the widespread assumption that we can surely transition to a renewables-driven economy if only we make the decision to do so, then perhaps this series has been of value. If I shift the discussion (even only in my own mind) toward what to do in light of this uncertainty, then I will feel that this has been worthwhile. It is in answer to this last question that I am most excited: I plan to focus more in the future on decentralized, networked, open-source, platform-based systems that we can use to simultaneously build resiliency, address this fundamental uncertainty, and address the problem of growth by reducing the hierarchal nature of our civilization.

Jeff Vail: The Renewables Hump 7: Can We Transition?

Energy, Moore’s Law, and Substitution

We will likely adapt, but not in the way anticipated. The most likely adaption will come in the form of a substrate shift. A shift in the underlying model of the global economy to one that is much, much more energy efficient. This shift isn’t seen the small and peripheral gains in efficiency we see in the work of Amory Lovins’ Rocky Mountain Institute.

Instead, it’s a global judo move that flips everything on its back. A core change to our fundamental economic and social model that substitutes physically moving products globally to virtually moving information about products. Where virtual presence is substituted for actual visitation and nothing is made that isn’t bought.

It’s a place where you telecommute to work if you sell goods and services globally. Where all production is increasingly and inexorably local, from food to energy to consumer products.

Global Guerrillas: Energy, Moore’s Law, and Substitution

I like that Robb points out that alternative energy need not meet or exceed our current level of energy use to live comfortable, contemporary lifestyles – we can use energy more efficiently (and if energy prices rise exponentially, we’ll start seeing more and more efficiency).

Robb doesn’t mention coal, though. We still have preposterous amounts of it, and barring policy intervention to curb its use, I don’t see it going anywhere – at least not until alternatives like solar, wind, and geothermal can start to compete on price.

Which leaves oil as the major problem.

Natural capitalism in Costa Rica

Thomas Friedman:

More than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a carbon-absorbing and species-preserving forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature. It is called “payment for environmental services” — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.

The process began in the 1990s when Costa Rica, which sits at the intersection of two continents and two oceans, came to fully appreciate its incredible bounty of biodiversity — and that its economic future lay in protecting it. So it did something no country has ever done: It put energy, environment, mines and water all under one minister.

“In Costa Rica, the minister of environment sets the policy for energy, mines, water and natural resources,” explained Carlos M. Rodríguez, who served in that post from 2002 to 2006. In most countries, he noted, “ministers of environment are marginalized.” They are viewed as people who try to lock things away, not as people who create value. Their job is to fight energy ministers who just want to drill for cheap oil.

But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodríguez, now a regional vice president for Conservation International. “The environment sector was able to influence the energy choices by saying: ‘Look, if you want cheap energy, the cheapest energy in the long-run is renewable energy. So let’s not think just about the next six months; let’s think out 25 years.’ ”

New York Times: (No) Drill, Baby, Drill

(via Appropedia)

See also: The original “Natural Capitalism” article from Mother Jones.

New virus-built battery could power cars, electronic devices

For the first time, MIT researchers have shown they can genetically engineer viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery.

The new virus-produced batteries have the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries being considered to power plug-in hybrid cars, and they could also be used to power a range of personal electronic devices, said Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist who led the research team.

The new batteries, described in the April 2 online edition of Science, could be manufactured with a cheap and environmentally benign process: The synthesis takes place at and below room temperature and requires no harmful organic solvents, and the materials that go into the battery are non-toxic.

MIT News Office: New virus-built battery could power cars, electronic devices

(via Wadester23)

Venice To Get Half Its Electricity From Algae By 2011

The city of Venice hopes to get at least 50 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by the year 2011. It plans to use algae to generate electricity.
Venice, known as the City of Bridges, plans to end its reliance on fossil fuels in the near future by primarily using biofuels.

As a first step the city officials have invested €200 million ($264 million) for a biofuels plant. They will use two types of algae, Sargassum muticum and Undaria pinnafitida. They will cultivate them in laboratories, which will then be used to generate electricity in a new 40 MW power plant. This plant will provide up to 50 per cent of the city’s electricity needs.

Full Story: Venice To Get Half Its Electricity From Algae By 2011

(Thanks Nova)

Cold fusion experimentally confirmed

U.S. Navy researchers claimed to have experimentally confirmed cold fusion in a presentation at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting.

“We have compelling evidence that fusion reactions are occurring” at room temperature, said Pamela Mosier-Boss, a scientist with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (San Diego). The results are “the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons from low-energy nuclear reactions,” she added.

Cold fusion was first reported in 1989 by researchers Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, then with the University of Utah, prompting a global effort to develop the technology. Normal fusion reactions, where hydrogen is fused into helium, occur at millions of degrees inside the Sun. If room temperature fusion reactions could be realized commercially, as Fleishchmann and Pons claimed to have achieved inside an electrolytic cell, it promised to produce abundant nuclear energy from deuterium–heavy hydrogen–extracted from seawater.

Other scientists were unable to duplicate the 1989 results, thereby discrediting the work.

The theoretical underpinnings of cold fusion have yet to be adequately explained. The hypothesis is that when electrolysis is performed on deuteron, molecules are fused into helium, releasing a high-energy neutron. While excess heat has been detected by researchers, no group had yet been able to detect the missing neutrons.

Now, the Naval researchers claim that the problem was instrumentation, which was not up to the task of detecting such small numbers of neutrons. To sense such small quantities, Mosier-Boss used a special plastic detector called CR-39. Using co-deposition with nickel and gold wire electrodes, which were inserted into a mixture of palladium chloride and deutrium, the detector was able to capture and track the high-energy neutrons.

Full Story: EE Times

(via Justin)

Massive solar thermal installation system being built – enough to power San Francisco?

The largest series of solar installations in history, more than 1,300 megawatts, is planned for the desert outside Los Angeles, according to a new deal between the utility Southern California Edison and solar power plant maker, BrightSource.

The momentous deal will deliver more electricity than even the largest nuclear plant, spread out among seven facilities, the first of which will start up in 2013. When fully operational, the companies say the facility will provide enough electricity to power 845,000 homes — more than exist in San Francisco — though estimates like that are notoriously squirrely.

The technology isn’t the familiar photovoltaics — the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity — but solar thermal power, which concentrates the sun’s rays to create steam in a boiler and spin a turbine.

Full Story: Wired

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