Random Energy Ideas Part Three
July 14, 2009
This is an idea that I first aired at the Falmouth Energy Week Conference in the innovation workshop, but that I’ll fully explain here.
There is a problem with new physical machinery in general. It doesn’t work very well.
There is a problem with innovation in the physical machinery of new low carbon energy systems. It costs a lot.
There is a problem with gaining people’s acceptance of new things in their landscape. We fear change and the unknown.
Here’s an idea to address all three issues a little at a time.
In order to increase the efficiency of the new physical machinery of a low carbon energy system it needs to be tested. It needs to be tested under different physical loads, under different environmental conditions and in different locations in order to find the optimum design characteristics such as low environmental impact, high output over as large a set of conditions as possible, low failure rates, etc.
But a lot of that can be done without building full-scale pilots and most of it can be done without building anything physical at all.
There is a common characteristic of many of the low carbon energy flux capture devices and indeed energy efficiency improvements i.e wind turbines, wave devices, tidal devices, high altitude kites, vehicle streamlining, etc, etc. That common characteristic is that their efficiency can be modelled using mathematical techniques called finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). These models are difficult to design and take a lot of computing power to run, so only the larger companies and consultancies have their own in-house modelling capabilities.
How about we, the people, pay for a really good modelling tool to be built, but instead of forcing aspiring designers to buy it we give it away. But that’s not all. A key element of this issue is the ability to run lots of simulations to find the most efficient solution before building the damn thing, so we build the modelling tool to run on many, many computers at the same time using another technique called distributed computing. If you’ve seen SETI@Home or any of the other screensaver programs that take a chunk of data and use your home PC to analyse that data before sending the results back to a central point, you known what I mean.
And that’s the third issue dealt with too.
In making the general public part of the design process we automatically build in acceptance. We demystify and educate and empower through the simple act of involvement in the process. In contrast to the shared-ownership models of community acceptance that rely on a certain venality that rankles with many, this would be a genuinely altruistic action that has a side benefit of making sure that every participant had a vested interest, albeit a small and non-monetary one, in seeing these devices work. The designs would be publicly owned, the implementation would be privately done, and could include a portion of community participation if appropriate to the project.
If you wanted to you could have a split between device design and project implementation. If you think about a 3D terrain model (Ordnance Survey already has these) and placing turbines on it to minimise visual impact vs output, or even offshore for lines of sight. You could introduce a genetic algorithm to produce multiple design iterations, for example of a turbine blade and model the efficiency of each iteration to produce an efficiency envelope. You could model vibration modes at different operating speeds to minimise noise and failure rates. Every scenario that you could think of modeling would be accessible to every company.
There you go. Cheaper, community-embedded, device designs with a higher chance of acceptance and therefore a higher chance of implementation.
Random Energy Ideas Part Two
June 19, 2009
Feed-In Tariff Franchises
I like this one. Its got real possibilities.
The UK is going to bring in feed-in tariffs for some renewable energy sources. Not sure which. Not sure when. But it will happen. This opens some possibilities, like roof rental for solar. My idea is a bit more holistic.
If feed-in tariffs were enabled the possibility of local ‘Mom & Pop’ power companies is raised. This could placate much enmity within the planning process with operators being locally based and directly accountable to the communities that they live in (there has always been an issue with perception vs reality here but I won’t go into that).
To get a significant number of these ‘local’ power companies why not set up an off-the-shelf McPower franchising system.
The franchise would cover the technical feasibility, planning process and engineering set-up. Once commissioned the franchisee would be tied to the franchisor (possibly an existing network operator, possibly not) who would supply any specialist consultancy and engineering supplies required at +/- market rate.
The franchisee would be responsible for operation, care & maintenance of the installation. It would, for a large proportion of the set-up fee, take a cut of the energy supplied and a portion of the sale of any carbon credits generated. The option could be given that the franchisee can ‘save’ carbon credits for redemption in the future thus giving them the option to hedge their capital investment through exposure to the EU carbon market.
Capital investment for the project would initially be via a loan from either the franchisor or a commercial bank that has applicable skillsets (it would be an investment bank but I’m not sure that any of those still exist).
The reason for a network operator to engage in this kind of operation is
less on the ground staff, pensions, etc
a quick and guaranteed payback on capital investment (loan would be secured)
probably an increased chance of gaining planning permission for additional generating capacity covered under the RO
a tied-in supply of carbon credits (under supposed terms & conditions of franchise)
Reasons for planning authorities to buy-in
local operator on a scale that is accessible and accountable (to local govt and populous)
meets objectives on employment (many areas with potential for renewables are both under populated and under employed)
meets objectives on sustainable industry (with majority of supply chain easily seen it is easier to assess sustainability)
Reasons for a franchisee to buy the franchise
allows a small skilled/semi-skilled business to operate in an area that is remote (lifestyle)
ethical industry (lifestyle)
allows access to an area of industry that was not previously available (economic gap)
has back-up from the big boys (insurance)
can grow the business by adding more sites (possible for terms and conditions allow for good corporate citizenship proof by operation. This would qualify the franchisee to acquire more sites in the area as they gain a good reputation within the community. Cycle of benefit)
Possible problems
Still requires a well funded corporate or govt agency behind it to sustain the model (to facilitate loans and supply chain economies of scale that make the franchise model viable)
Franchisees may be seen as puppets rather than local operators
Ideal first targets large farmers and land owners with significant on-site energy needs (there is a possibility of linking in with subsidies for CAPEX on renewables for these to negate the need for development loans). It allows a risk reduction and diversification of income stream for these users.
There’s your business model, now away you go and make it happen 
Random Energy Ideas Part One
June 16, 2009
In this train of posts I’m going to share some of the better (less stupid) energy related ideas that I’ve had over the last year or so.
Rural Energy Clusters
It may be difficult for a single farm in the UK to justify the expense of a decent sized wind turbine, biodigestor, biomass CHP (willow), CSP or it may not have a sufficiently large stream to install a micro-hydro plant. However cluster 3 or 4 farms together and the economics may get a great deal better. Not only is the CAPEX spread between several farms, but having a diverse set of energy technologies should smooth some of those intermittency issues and make the finance side more predictable. Farms being farms, they would probably qualify for some grants already, but if not you could put a policy instrument in to encourage low carbon energy use.
Don’t misunderstand I’m not proposing that these clusters go off-grid, they are businesses that require energy whatever the weather after all, rather that they each have a smart meter that reads generated electricty back into a central, aggregated account and offsets each individual farm’s electricity use in proportion to their investment. The only additional infrastructure needed would be the generating technology and a relatively dumb smart meter, maybe a few substation upgrades if it takes off. Where the work is needed is in the back-office to aggregate the account details.
This is where it starts to get interesting. While it would be better for generating technologies such as biomass & biodigestion, where actual stuff is being moved, for the farms to be located close to each other, the characteristics generating technologies such as hydro, solar and wind mean that the farms don’t even have to be in the same district. They just need to come to a mutual agreement to team up where energy is concerned. Distance is no object. Its a sort of extension to the town twinning scheme.
There you go. A way for farms to co-operate in energy production and work towards carbon neutral food production.
Demand Reduction Mortgage Endowments
March 9, 2009
Thinking about how to build demand reduction into home ownership.
When taking out a mortgage in the UK most (if not all) lenders require the borrower to have some form of life insurance so that they can mitigate the risk of non-payment because of death. This has often been in the form of an endowment policy.
How about we turn that around and require the banks to provide an demand reduction endowment for borrowers ?
The issue is this; if we carry out extensive home improvements aimed at demand reduction the value of a home will probably go up. A report published today by Oracle Inc puts US willingness to pay at just under $30,000 extra for a home that is close to energy self-sufficient. That all sounds great if you are a home owner, but it means that if you are on a low income or a first-time buyer the barriers to your entry into the home market gets higher the better the home’s energy efficiency. Effectively the market builds in inequity and forces those with least ability to pay higher energy prices into the least efficient housing stock.
By asking/forcing lenders to put part of each mortgage payment into an endowment that pays directly for demand reduction improvements you could ‘build-in’ the cost of those improvements. Put a tax break on the policies to offset any damage done to lender profits and you get a rolling program of housing stock finance. The endowment pays out on a sliding scale as technologies become affordable and you drive down energy demand across the board.
The cheap stuff is often the most effective by proportion, so the endowments target lower income households, while making sure that the money is saved. Bigger ticket items, like solar PV, come later in the mortgage when the household is hopefully more affluent. As a government you get the flexibility of being able to hand spot payments out to mortgage holders accounts, without being accused of wasting money because it has to go on home improvements. As a householder you know that whatever you do your home’s energy efficiency will go up over time, so taking out some of that uncertainty about what is best to do.
As with a pension you could allow homeowners to add to their improvement pot, but you know that most won’t because they are already paying in their mortgages it doesn’t make much sense to pay in extra.
The upshot could be an improving housing stock where the most efficient homes still command a premium price, but where the market does not discriminate against low income households. Just a thought.
Conference Collaborations 1
March 3, 2009
As a group my student collegues and I are organising a conference to run later this year called “Transforming the Energy Future:Pathways to Change”. We had a competitive pitch between ourselves and the subset that I was part of won. The USP was to bring an incredibly wide range of energy actors together with graphics, media & design students from our campus, our sister campus and beyond in order to get a really inter-disciplinary feel.
Apart from providing a forum for debate on energy between the normal governmental, academic and non-governmental interests, we wanted to give access to students from other disciplines to the, sometimes rather closed, energy policy debate and comment through means that they feel comfortable in i.e. their own disciplines, so films for film makers, graphics for graphicists, etc. It doesn’t sound much, but the bunker mentality in academia is already being felt as the administration starts to express its reservations about the idea.
We had our first meeting with some graphic design students at University College Falmouth today to present our idea for collaboration and it went well. A number have come forward to have a more detailed meeting and maybe take on the task of providing a graphical interpretation of the conference’s mission.
I was a little nervous. I wasn’t sure what to expect. For the graphics students this is an elective choice to be involved, so there was no guarantee that any of them would want to take part. I’m glad that there was a positive response and am looking forward to some really interesting approaches to the brief.
Next meeting, next week.
