Jim Gardner’s Energy Tech Talk

When my wife and I bought our small farm near Humansville, we never paid any attention to the electrical service to the farm. After a severe thunderstorm one evening, we were sitting in our living room playing a game of cribbage in the candlelight, waiting for the power to be restored. I looked across the creek that separates our property from our neighbors to the east and was surprised to see they still had power. That is when I learned that they were on the Southwest Electric Power grid, and we were on Empire District’s power grid. Our farm was the LAST service on our company’s power grid.

Joel Achenbach begins his informative article in the July 2010, issue of National Geographic with a profound six-word sentence: “We are creatures of the grid.” His article about our nation’s power grids was a real eye opener for me. I have seen photos in various magazines and on the Web of our island Earth from space and the amazing array of light patterns on the continents and islands we humans inhabit. But I have never understood how complex the world’s power grids are to keep all of our homes, business and in some cases our lives going.
Like most of students in public schools, I learned about Thomas Edison and how he discovered the secret to harnessing electricity to do work for humans. I learned the difference between alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) and that energy equals mass times the speed of light (E=MC2) and voltage equals current times resistance (V=iR). I even learned basic power wiring and many years later wired a couple of Habitat for Humanity homes after building and wiring our own new home. I never learned about grids and the complexity of maintain power grids.

Joel’s article helped me understand how smart grids operate. I am finally beginning to understand that our great country’s power grids and distribution lines are in need of significant investment to upgrade the aging power distribution of our country. I remember the “rolling blackouts” that hit the East Coast in 2003 and the frequent storm damage to power grids in different parts of the world. Converting our power grids to reliable smart grids that will allow renewable energy resources to supply and buy power off the grid is currently being installed by many power utility companies. That means you and I can be customers and suppliers if we install our own power generation equipment. Wow!

Want to learn more? Come to the ONE 3 Conference at the MSU Plaster Student Union Oct. 7 & 8 and sit in on the presentation by Matt Wakefield, program manager- smart grid, EPRI, talk about “Smart Grid Technologies & Applications.” This is just one of the informative presentations on renewable energy uses and applications at ONE 3.

Jim Gardner

Last week, I found another perspective on why we should live a “green” life while reading an article in the TRUTH OUT daily e-newsletter.

Chris Hedges writes in the article, “Freedom in the Grace of the World,” ”Nature always extracts justice. Defy nature and it obliterates the human species. The more we divorce ourselves from nature, the more we permit the natural world to be exploited and polluted by corporations for profit, the more estranged we become from the essence of life.”

Chris Hedges has really hit the “Bull’s Eye” in his article on the deviates in our small world…humans. We greedy humans forget we are a part of the natural species on this island earth. We have been raised believing we have the right to manipulate our environment as we see fit for our personal gain and to win the race for who has the right to rule the world. Corporations and governments have become so large that most of us forget the basics of living in harmony with nature.

I remember meeting the first hippie in my life. I met her at a small party of college students near the University of Denver. Her sweet face was framed in long dark hair tied behind her head with a tie-dyed bandana. Her plain dress was made of hand-woven fabric and was hand sown. She believed in peace, love and living in harmony with nature.

This tech nerd was taken by her beauty and lifestyle. When she asked me to go Cancun with her for spring break, I almost dropped my slide rule. (Calculator for those under 60 years of age.) Unfortunately, our spring breaks did not coincide. I didn’t dare tell her I was a student at one of the toughest engineering schools in the country and enrolled in the U.S. Army’s Advanced ROTC program. I as on my way to fighting a war in Vietnam and a long technical career with financial success in my future. She was on her way to personal success and harmony with nature.

Looking back on life, I have wondered which of us has used more energy and natural resources. My educated guess is that I am the guilty party. Working and contributing in renewable energies may have erased some of my debt to nature….but is it enough?

Last weekend, I spent three days at my wife’s family reunion. Our nephew’s girlfriend, Chelsea, is a beautiful vegetarian, and she reminds me of my hippie friend of the late 1960s. While I am trying to save the world by developing renewable energy resources, Chelsea is helping nature by giving body massages to people in pain. She is living in harmony with nature.

Will the Good Mother Earth ever forgive me for my transgressions against nature? Can I ever get back to the essence of life?

One way to start if you’re not working in the renewable energy field as I am is to measure your carbon footprint and then take steps to lower it. There are all sorts of carbon calculators on line, and with the same data you can get different results. Many of the sites now offer ways to mitigate the damage to the environment your lifestyle is responsible for.

Here are some reputable calculators to check out:

American Forests - www.americanforests.org/resources/ccc/

The Conservation Fund – www.conservationfund.org/gozero

EPA – www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator.html

SafeClimate – www.safeclimate.net/calculator/

TerraPass – www.terrapass.com

Have you ever wondered about the human impact on the environment? Obviously, most of the world knows about BP’s leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, thanks to CNN and other broadcast media. The Exxon Valdez made world news when its inebriated captain piloted his ship into the ground, spilling his oil cargo into Prince William Sound. We forget or do not even know about even greater oil spills in North Africa, the Middle East and along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (BP is one of the owners).

Our world’s greed for black gold has made millions of people very wealthy. Energy companies are major players in world governments, spending untold fortunes to get energy legislation to favor their business ventures and to minimize governmental regulation of their business. Screw the world’s environment…energy companies rule! Government regulators around the world can be bought off to look the other way while these companies pollute our environment and forsake our grandchildren’s future for today’s profits.

What is wrong here? Some may say that this tree hugger is stretching the truth to make a point. Perhaps I am, but I believe more carnage has been brought on our island earth since the discovery of black gold than any other world event. We should realize that energy rules, and we humans will do almost anything to have our fair share of it.

But are petroleum companies the ones to blame? In Brazil, thousand of square miles of pristine tropical rain forests are being destroyed to plant more sugar cane for the production of ethanol, a renewable energy. Rare animals, insects, beneficial plants and human habitats are being destroyed for the production of renewable energy.

What is the common factor here? Could it be human greed for wealth? History shows us that our own need for power over others and Mother Nature has led to world instability. We disrupt other people’s lives because we want what they have. The same goes for energy. We can destroy our planet because we want to harvest her energy riches regardless of the cost of environmental damage.

It’s time to control the harmful ways we treat our planet. Humans have the ability to do the right thing because we do know how to do it. It is just harder to do. In the United States, we have the power of our vote to bring honest people into leadership positions. Now is the time to do it, for the sake of our future generations and Mother Earth.

Jim Gardner

Have you ever thought about the value of energy? Yeah, I know that you may have thought about it every time you stop at a gas station and put $$$ in your fuel tank just to drive a few hundred miles before you have to do it again.

I remember having to wait in line to put fuel in my foreign-built, fuel-sipping pickup…thinking that it is NOT FAIR that oil companies have control over my life. I was sitting in a line of gas hogs needing to be fed, when I could have been riding my old bicycle to work and back, which would have been healthier for me.

Thirty-plus years later, while writing this blog, I am reflecting on a conversation I had last week with David, a state-trained energy auditor living in rural Missouri. We were waiting in the food (energy) line at his family’s church, talking about how much energy their small church was using on any given day. He had served in the U.U. Army for several years (our bonding point) and could not find a job when he joined the civilian work force.

Taking advantage of his veteran benefits, he took some available training to become a certified energy auditor. David told me about the tools of his trade and his job with a state-funded agency that helps area residents save energy by better insulating and weather sealing their residence. Just as our food was being served, I realized that my fellow veteran was doing a great service for our state and the Ozarks. I invited him to attend ONE 3 Oct. 7-8 to help in communicating the message, SAVE ENERGY!

Why should we save energy? I know that our nation has enough fossil energy to fuel the world’s population for another century…let my great-grandchildren worry about all the fossil fuels I have burned in the many vehicles and homes I have owned over the decades of my life. It is not my problem. The tree huggers who are crying about too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causing global warming is NOT my problem…I can tread water with the best of them!

Oops, I AM a tree hugger! When my wife and I bought a small farm near Humansville, we decided to build our retirement home. Painful as it was, we cut down several hardwood trees to build our new home. We designed it to be as energy efficient as possible using the current best technology available at that time. The remaining trees shade our home in the summer, and we get passive solar heating in the winter. We heat with the wood we harvested from the trees we sacrificed when building the home. But is this enough?

I am going to invite my new friend to do an energy audit on our 12-year-old home. He will put a fan in one of the entry doors and then check for air leaks using his array of leak detection tools. He will use his infrared detector to check for heat (or cooling) escaping from our home. I expect we will save enough energy to pay for his audit in two months. That is a bargain in my checkbook! Energy has value, and saving energy is $$$ in our pockets and will give my great-grandchildren enough time to keep from treading water during their lifetimes.

Are YOU a tree hugger?

Somewhere back in time, an observant individual discovered a goatskin of grape juice setting in the corner of the hut began to swell. Curious about the contents in the goatskin, the observer opened it and smelled the gas that escaped…and it was…different. The soon-to-be vintner put the stopper back into the neck of the goatskin because this was the last of the grape juice collected that season. A few days later the skin swelled again…and the stopper popped off the bag.

Not wanting to lose any of the grape juice, the observer took swig and WOW, ethanol was discovered to be a mood-changing liquid. Wine became a very sociable drink and a new way to preserve fruit juices, as well as a way forget the problems of a bad day if one were to drink enough.

Modern humans, wanting to get more bang per swallow, learned to distill the ethanol out of the wine and other fermented products. We also found it was very flammable and when added to an internal combustion engine, it was a good fuel.

Randolph Diesel, inventor of the internal combustion engine, chose to use raw peanut oil as his fuel source. German scientists developed a process to produce diesel fuel from animal fats and vegetable oils when the Allied Forces cut off petroleum supplies to Hitler’s armed forces. The Germans began using biodiesel to supplement their dwindling fuel supplies

The use of fossil fuels became the industrialized world’s life blood for transportation. Mobility became our way of life worldwide. World leaders knew that energy was power. The countries with the largest energy resources controlled the world. We began to understand that fossil fuels resources were limited energy resources, and the 1973 “Energy Crisis” was created when OPEC members shut down their oil wells, opening the eyes of world leaders. New sources of safe fuels for transportation were needed. We needed renewable chemical energy sources for transportation and commerce.

Farmers saw the opportunity for increasing their market share and helping the world’s energy supply at the same time. Corn-based ethanol plant and soybean based biodiesel plants began to grow worldwide. Nations with abundant sugar cane and palm oil trees joined in the race to replace fossil base fuels with renewable energy. The United States farm cooperatives led the renewable fuels development by building 189 ethanol and 173 biodiesel plants in the last 15 years. The renewable energy industry created jobs and more demand for agricultural products.

As these renewable energy production facilities came online, producing more than 13.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2009, American consumers saw the cost of foods produced from corn and soybeans increase because these grains were now going into the renewable energy market. Farmers were finally making good profits by supplying food and energy and no longer needing government-funded support. On the negative side, public support for ethanol began to shift as the cost of foods increased as a direct result of the growth in renewable energy supplies.

Energy experts looked at the energy used to produce renewable fuels. Known as “cradle to grave” analysis, these scientists realized the energy used to produce one gallon of ethanol was greater than the energy delivered from the gallon of ethanol. In other words, the energy used to plow the fields, plant the grain, fertilize and protect the plants from pests and disease, harvest the grain, transport the grain to a processing plant, ferment the grain the produce ethanol and finally distill the ethanol so it is a useable fuel is not an “energy positive’ process. Using the same analysis, soy biodiesel is “=energy positive, but there is not a significant enough energy gain to call this fuel a sustainable energy resource.

Now the race is on for smarter sources of renewable liquid fuels that are highly positive in energy yields. Governmental, educational and capital venture research groups are exploring a large pool of biobased materials that can be converted to biofuels. Some exciting research is in the area of genetic modification of bacteria to digest cellulostice-sourced materials such as wood and plant biomass directly into usable biofuels.

Another energy positive area of research is using algae to produce oils that can be extracted and the remaining biomass can be used as food for livestock or fuel. All algae needs for growth is carbon dioxide and water. Studies have shown that one acre of algae biomass will have 400 times the biomass energy as an acre of corn or soybeans and the energy used to harvest this biomass is comparable to harvesting corn or soybeans.

What does this mean to you and me? I believe that human ingenuity will find ways to feed the world’s population and supply the energy we need to live in a sustainable lifestyle. What choice do we have?

Jim Gardner

Here’s some innovative research as reported on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Web site for funded projects in April 2009:

“FastCAP SYSTEMS (Cambridge, MA), in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will develop a game changing new nanotube enhanced ultra capacitor with potential for a 6x improvement in energy density and cost over the current industry state-of-the art. These novel energy storage devices have potential for energy densities approaching those of batteries (33-44 Wh/kg), while providing 20x higher power density and thousands of times the cycle life of existing high performance batteries.

“If successfully developed, this transformational new energy storage technology would greatly reduce the cost of hybrid and electric vehicles to enable their widespread cost effective deployment in the U.S. and dramatically reduce U.S. oil imports.”

This technology also holds great promise to enable continuous power from intermittent renewable resources, like wind and solar, to allow them to grow to a large fraction of grid power while maintaining a stable and highly reliable grid.

I commented in my February blog that solar energy is great when the sun is shining, but when we are on the dark side of this dynamic orb we call Earth, we must have a smart way to store the sunlight we enjoyed just hours earlier.

Here is ONE VERY SMART WAY to store the sun’s energy: ultra capacitors. Forget the solar panel-powered batteries and algae photosynthesis-to-bioenergy technologies (not really, we need them all). Imagine SMART local energy grids using micro-ultra capacitors storing solar, geothermal, tidal/wave, biomass and wind energies to power your local power grid. If these capacitors succeed, you can turn off the breaker from the regional coal-fired power plant, unless you have extra electrical energy you want to sell to our antique power grid.

We have an amazing amount of renewable energy resources in the United States that will keep scientists and engineers busy for decades, looking for better methods of utilizing the energies that Mother Nature offers us each and every day.

Keep your local, state and federal elected officials informed about your opinions on the importance of renewable energies in our country’s future. We have the brain power and physical resources to keep our nation on the leading edge of renewable energies. Call, e-mail, write or visit their offices today and every day, that renewable energy development is not moving forward a fast as possible. Use your vote to get your message across to all levels of government. Join and support local, regional and national groups that advocate the use of environmentally friendly, renewable energy solutions for your neighborhood and our planet.

Jim Gardner

Solar power has made great advances since it was developed as a power source for NASA’s space program.  I remember seeing one of the first video simulations of these large arrays of photovoltaic panels unfolding from the earth orbiting satellites.  These huge photo arrays converted the sun’s light energy into electricity while the satellite was in direct sunlight. The electrical power was stored in the satellite’s rechargeable capacitors for 24/7 operations.  We were told that owning a device powered by a photo cell would be commonplace in 20 to 30 years.  That was more than 40 years ago.

We “recycled” our battery-powered calculators several years ago when we got our first solar-powered calculator. A couple of days ago my wife was balancing her checkbook, and  I had to laugh when I observed her holding a flashlight just inches from her photo cell-powered calculator.  The indirect sunlight in our living room was not sufficient to power the calculator, so she was using a battery-powered light to make her calculator work.  I guess that means we still have a “battery-powered” calculator.

One of the shortcomings of using solar power as an alternative energy source has been we only get cost-effective electric power from direct sunlight.  Power on a 24/7 basis is not available from this renewable energy source unless there is a method for storing the energy.

Scientists world wide have been working on cost-effective technologies to store electrical energy produced by solar cells.  Lead acid and metal halide batteries work but are not considered cost effective.  A recent discovery by researchers at Harvard University is to convert the electrical energy produced by photovoltaic panels into chemical energy by using photosynthesis—without using a living plant.  Indications are that this process is considerably more efficient than the biological process.

Development of a super-efficient energy storage technology by a former subsidiary of Coors Brewing Company has just been announced.  This $2,000 battery uses an ultra-thin ceramic membrane to separate metallic sodium from a strong mineral acid.  This new generation of battery was developed by Ceramatec, a subsidiary of CoorsTek (formerly part of Coors, now private). The battery can store 40 kWh of power with eight hours of sunlight in a package the size of a refrigerator. The average American household uses 33 kWh per day.  In short, it’s a battery big enough to power your home operating at a peak temperature of 90 degrees.  Unfortunately, power converters cost $10,000 and up based on the technology used.

Additionally, the Ceramtec battery can be recharged through 3,650 cycles — or once a day — for 10 years. Deep-cycling lead acid batteries often last less than two to three years with daily use.  The implications of such a battery may not be readily apparent to many, but the larger reality is these batteries make “the great disconnect” a real possibility as more and more homes go off grid using wind and/or solar power.

When I was hired to design, train operators and provide start-up support for the first commercial biodiesel plant in the U. S., I had no idea how fast the renewable fuel industry would grow. WOW! What a rush seeing jobs created and farmers finding another profitable outlet for their crops.

In the past 17 years, more than 300 biofuel refineries have been built in the U. S. supplying ethanol and biodiesel to supplement our “mobile” fuel supply. The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) is calling the decade of the 2000′s “the era when biofuels came of age.”

Now that the renewable fuel industry is “of age,” we have seen public opinion shift from “freedom from foreign oil” to “renewable fuels are increasing the price of our food.” In December 2009, Congress failed to renew the $1.00/gal. federal subsidy for renewable fuels to help renewable fuel prices stay competitive with the fossil fuel giants. The consequence of these changes has been a slowdown of the U. S. ethanol and biodiesel industries. Construction has stopped on new plants, and some producing plants have shut down due to the loss of profits and/or market.

Contractor Ron Fagen, the CEO of Fagen Inc., put Granite Falls, Minnosata, on the national map by building 47 ethanol projects across the U.S. between 2006 and 2008. But Ron now says, “The U.S. ethanol building boom is over.” Yet despite the job cuts and slowing sales, Fagen remains an unabashed believer in ethanol and renewable energy.

The company will finish one more ethanol plant in Pennsylvania, but Fagen’s attention already has turned to other forms of renewable energy—biomass and wind. Going forward, Fagen said he thinks his business mix will be about 60 percent biomass projects, 25 percent wind energy and the remaining share from building other types of industrial facilities.

His company recently landed a job in Texas to construct the largest biomass power plant in the country. The Minneapolis office of Zachry Engineering is the design engineer on the project. The 100-megawatt plant will serve customers in the Austin, Texas, area.

“East Texas has more trees than northern Minnesota,” Fagen said, but trees won’t be harvested for the new facility. Instead, chips, bark and other wood waste from wood processing plants will be used to fuel the biomass facility.

“We are making use of forestry residue wood to produce electricity, rather than using coal,” said Alison Cochrane, a vice president with Zachry Engineering. Work crews will start pouring concrete on the Texas site this month.

Tom Erickson, associate director for research at the Energy and Environmental Research Center in Grand Forks, said, “We definitely see the use of biomass as a significantly growing area.” Erickson added that the demand for biomass will likely intensify if politicians approve a carbon tax or place a cap on emissions.

“You can combust [biomass] in a boiler to produce electricity or heat. Or you can gasify it, in which you can produce a syngas, which is similar to natural gas,” Erickson said.

Business leaders in the Ozarks have the opportunity to take a similar path as Ron Fagen. We have large quantities of biomass that can be converted into usable energy. We need to promote the use of renewable fuels, and we need to continue to invest in new technologies that can efficiently use the available biomass in the Ozarks.

You can help by contacting your elected officials to promote legislation that will offer incentives to use local biomass to produce useable forms of renewable energy that reduces our dependency of fossil fuels.

It can be done if you and I do our jobs as responsible, “tree hugging” citizens.

Jim Gardner

The renewable carbon energy industry is almost 20 years old…if you did not know about Rudolf Diesel.  Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858.  His parents were Bavarian immigrants.  Rudolf Diesel was educated at Munich Polytechnic.  After graduation, he was employed as a refrigerator engineer.  However, his true love lay in engine design.

Rudolf Diesel designed many heat engines, including a solar-powered air engine. In 1893, he published a paper describing an engine with combustion within a cylinder, the internal combustion engine. In 1894, he filed for a patent for his new invention, dubbed the diesel engine.  Rudolf Diesel was almost killed by his engine when it exploded.  However, his engine was the first that proved that fuel could be ignited without a spark. He operated his first successful engine in 1897.  His fuel was peanut oil.

We forgot about his renewable fuel for almost a century. We are back, and we are using renewable carbon sources for fueling internal combustion engines and turbines for mobility and electric power generation.

The current industry was stimulated in corn, rapeseed and soybean fields by farmers wanting to develop their own fuels from their crops and reduce their country’s dependence on foreign sourced fossil fuels.

Negative world opinion about using food crops to produce fuel has forced GREEN Tree Huggers to research other renewable forms of renewable carbon sources to produce fuels.  Governments, research institutions, colleges and universities are leading the way to reduce the use of food stocks to produce energy.

A group of farmers in the Ozarks is taking the lead by stepping back in time to replace their fescue fields with the native grass of the Ozarks, called switchgrass.  Polk County farmer and cattleman Ed Cahoj gathered some of his associates, and together they have formed the National Biomass Growers Association, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation focused on using switchgrass as an alternative energy source.  Check out www.biomass-producer.org.  Talk about a “grass-roots” organization!!

Ed is on the board of directors for Ozarks New Energy and is currently serving as the board’s vice president.

Jim Gardner