VoxSolaris Energy News

Alternative Energy Newsletter: Issue 1

There is an Alternative! - That can meet global energy needs - That emits no Carbon Dioxide - That can compete with Oil on Price

We are VoxSolaris, an independent energy think tank and welcome to our introductory edition of our alternative energy newsletter. We believe that the wholesale replacement of the 'fossil fuel economy' with a hydrogen economy is essential but also achievable - as long as the alternatives can benefit from just some of the economies of scale currently enjoyed by the oil and gas industry. In this edition, our main article sets out how the world's current and future energy needs can be met on a sustainable and economic basis. In the forthcoming editions we continue this theme but also describe greener industrial process, innovative transport solutions and zero or low energy houses, keep you up to date with the latest advances in energy devices and of course, the climate debate. And on a smaller scale, what you the public can do to benefit yourselves and the planet.

Hydrogen Economy 'within reach' The case for the hydrogen economy Reports that we are running out of oil are grossly exaggerated. The current high prices are due mainly to geopolitical factors including but not limited to the Middle East, and are unlikely to be sustained. Even though some oilfields are becoming depleted there are many yet to be developed - not including deep sea oilfields that are vast but present enormous engineering challenges to drill. As a result, those two great engines of economic growth, China and India, will within two or at most three decades from now, be as inundated with cars as the west is today. And their populations will likely prove to be as fond of flying as we are. Unless a way can be found to power cars and planes without oil, use of oil will soar. Global warming will worsen and eventually prove catastrophic even if oil consumption remains static. But sharp rises in consumption threaten a greater catastrophe much sooner. We are not running out of oil but in a very real way, we are running out of air in which to burn it. But there is no sense in blaming China and India for the world's ills. Before all this talk of carbon dioxide emissions, world poverty was the scourge. China and India are sorting their poverty by the only means known to be effective - opportunity and hard work. You can't knock them for that. And the same goes for all the other countries yet to follow in their footsteps. The corrective measures taken so far are hopelessly inadequate and ineffective. The Kyoto protocol for instance, is nothing more than a loose commitment in which signatory states agree to reduce carbon emissions by some arbitrary percentage. Most if not all signatory states are on course to fail to meet these commitments, and even if they were on target or ahead of target, the reductions would still be dwarfed by growth in China, India and elsewhere. Whilst every little does help, it won't help in the end if the total isn't enough.

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We can build as many wind turbines and install as many solar panels as we like. It won't stop global warming if we continue to use oil to power our cars and planes. We must switch to hydrogen, a fuel that produces only water as the exhaust. It is as simple as that. The Challenge The Hydrogen Economy certainly poses a major challenge - starting with the question from where will the hydrogen come? Hydrogen is most abundant element in the universe but here on Earth it has to be extracted from compounds containing it. Most hydrogen produced today is extracted from hydrocarbons, mostly methane. But these contain carbon and this ends up as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Hydrogen is a secondary source of energy that is only as clean as the primary source. Water is the best starting material as it is plentiful supply and contains no carbon. But to get hydrogen out of water you need either electricity or very intense heat - and clearly, the source of this electricity or heat must be carbon free. We have carbon free sources of energy. Wind turbines, hydro-electricity, geothermal power, solar panels and to a lesser extent, nuclear power, are all technologies that produce electricity without polluting the atmosphere. But the challenge lays in the sheer scale of our present day and projected demand for fossil fuels. We currently use more than 80 million barrels of oil a day or about 30 billion barrels per year. But as this will soar, perhaps ultimately quadruple, we need to think in terms of 120 billion barrels per year - the equivalent of 5 billion tons of hydrogen. Producing this by the electrolysis of water would require something like 250 trillion KWHr of electricity - the output of about 30,000 power stations running all day, all night and all year round. This of course is on top of electricity we generate already for lighting and other electrical appliances. The Future is Non-BIO It is the sheer scale of oil usage that rules out the most established direct replacement for oil to date, the bio fuels, ethanol and bio-diesel. Brazil pioneered the wholesale use of ethanol derived from sugar cane some 30 years ago and now other countries, most notably the United States are following suit with crops such as corn. But Brazil did not pioneer ethanol to save the planet, it did it because it wanted a home grown energy supply and had plenty of spare sugar. America too wants a home grown energy supply. But increased use of bio fuels are already causing problems by driving up the price of the crops used to make them - and as of yet, outside Brazil, the use of bio fuels when compared to the use of oil, is miniscule. The simple truth is bio fuels are a 'gimmick'. They are cleaner than oil and they are competitive on price in the current market. But even with anticipated improvements in yield, bio cannot be scaled up beyond replacing a few percent of world oil consumption. There simply isn't anywhere near enough land. And nor will we glow in the dark Fortunately nuclear power shot itself in the foot years ago and is only hobbling up to the stage now as a contender for future energy supplies because scientifically ignorant and poorly advised ministers are becoming increasingly pre-occupied with their impending failure under the banal equation that is the Kyoto protocol. Equally as fortunate is that World's reserves of extractable Uranium are in fairly limited supply and as a result of this, nuclear power stands no chance whatsoever of becoming a major player in reducing our dependence on oil. Sadly this won't stop ministers from committing billions of pounds to building these dirty and dangerous white elephants. One does have to be grateful for small mercies though. Building 30 nuclear power stations will just lumber us with yet another crippling tax burden. Building 30,000 would be a better guarantor of man's destruction than global warming could ever be. A cure worse than any disease. The Chocolate Teapot Nuclear fusion which uses no uranium and instead works on the same principles as the Sun, could yield the energy required except for the fact that as of yet, it does not work. It is in fact a chocolate teapot that not only takes in more energy to ignite the fuel than can be extracted from the reaction, but the heat released melts the sides of the reactor! The scientists involved believe size is the key and are building a massive experimental reactor in France at a cost of something like 10 billion euros, to see if that will do the trick. We wish them the best of luck but we fear it will be their biggest and most expensive chocolate teapot yet. The future is lying in the sun 'Solar energy is abundant enough to replace fossil fuels but the technology to harvest has been too expensive to compete. Any idea we could adopt solar in spite of this ignores the lessons of history that suggest we would go to war rather than pay more. For any desired outcome to become reality, you have to work with market forces. Without a technology that can compete with fossil fuels the hydrogen economy will remain a dream and we will continue on the fast track to judgment day. But with a technology that can compete with fossil fuels, helped by the legislative bandwagon continuing to roll in the right direction, the hydrogen economy becomes an inevitability.' To put some figures to this, the solar energy reaching the Earth amounts to an average of 1000 Watts per square meter during the day and that is half of the time, an average of 12 hours per day or a total of 4,380 hours per year. So each square meter of the Earth's surface receives an average of 4,380 kWhr of energy per year. More at the equator, less at the poles. To put this into context, the average home in the UK consumes 3,300 kWhr per year of electricity and 20,000 kWhr of gas. The average car consumes something in the order of 12,000 kWhr per year in fuel. Far more energy falls on the roof of your house than you consume and yet more falls in the garden and the road outside. There is no absolutely no shortage of energy available from solar. But at current prices of around $5 per peak watt, solar panels are far too expensive. The peak watt rating of a solar panel is it's electrical output under ideal conditions - which are rarely if ever achieved. In a good location one might expect to get something like 1800 hours worth of peak output per year out of the 4380 hours of total sunlight. Solar panels are maintenance free but deteriorate over time. The useful life of a solar panel is something of the order of 20 to 25 years but taking into account interest on the capital cost, a payback period of 10 years is needed to break even. 1800 hours of peak wattage is 1.8 kWhr per year per peak watt. That works out at about 28 cents per kWhr. Factoring in costs of panel mounting, associated power electronics and the cost of electrolysis cells, this cost rises anywhere from 15 to 25 percent. That might sound reasonable when compared to some recent domestic electricity bills but if we were using this electricity to make hydrogen, each kilogram (equivalent in energy to just under 4 liters of gasoline), would cost about $18 - more than $700 per barrel in oil terms. We are already struggling with oil prices of about $125 per barrel. To be competitive with oil we need solar panel prices to come down by a factor of at least 10 and preferably more. A maximum of 50 cents per peak watt. At that point, internationally coordinated legislation starting in wealthier nations and later in all nations, could mandate increasing use of hydrogen and decreasing use of oil without crippling the economy. But at the moment solar panels are showing no signs of becoming cheap enough. The solar panel industry currently holds up the $1 peak watt as a price landmark to aim for. This would certainly put the wind up the electricity supply companies but would fall a long way short of making a hydrogen economy viable. In any event, few manufacturers are saying this landmark will be reached any time soon. Solar thermal concentrators

The picture on the right is not in spite of it's appearance, that of a space alien or even a humble robot. It is in fact, courtesy of the United States department of energy, a photograph of a solar thermal concentrator. The myriad of little squares form a large parabolic reflector which focuses sunlight into a Stirling heat engine which is contained within the large cylindrical object at the end of the robotic arm. The focused sunlight is absorbed by a blackened receptacle which provides the heat for the Stirling engine which in turn runs an electrical generator. The whole ensemble rotates on it's central pillar and moves the reflector and engine through an arc to track the sun. This solar thermal concentrator is of the dish type. Others are arranged as long troughs that focus sunlight onto a blackened pipe. Dishes by focusing to a point rather than a line, achieve higher temperatures than troughs, a key factor in efficiency. The prototype in the picture has recorded operating efficiencies of 40 percent, double that achieved by typical trough designs. For the same amount of electricity, you would need troughs of twice the area of the dish. But troughs are more established and there are several operational solar power stations around the world based on troughs. This is because they can more readily be plumbed in large arrays to feed a single steam turbine generator, lowering the costs. Both designs convert more of the sunlight falling on them than silicon based solar panels which typically have conversion rates of 10 to 12 percent.

Delivering on Price As a technology, solar thermal concentrators have three disadvantages when compared to solar panels: They do require some maintenance, they do not operate when the sun is obscured by clouds and when packed too closely together in arrays, cast shadows on adjacent concentrators. Not operating in clouds is a problem in the UK but fortunately there are many parts of the world where they would work very well. They blow bio fuels out of the water. Instead of getting low yields from valuable fertile farm land, very high yields can be obtained on any land, including otherwise useless desert. Australia alone could more than meet world demand for hydrogen, as could Africa, the Middle East and the USA. The price of generating electricity with this technology is less than half that of solar panels in spite of the fact that all solar concentrators in operation today are expensive prototypes. We at VoxSolaris asked the obvious question: How far could the price of solar electricity be brought down by mass production? It was not long before we had a very exiting answer. It does not take an engineer to work out that the solar concentrator in the picture is somewhat unwieldy. It is very large so it won't fit in an average garden. It also has a lot of thick metal bars holding it together. These are needed in order for a structure that size to withstand wind sheer but that much metal adds to the cost. A smaller dish would need a lot less metal per square meter of reflector than a large dish. But life is never quite that simple and mitigating in favor of size is that fact that small heat engines are not significantly cheaper than large ones. Also small heat engines are generally less efficient than large ones. Both these factors add to the price per unit of output power. The same applies to the tracking motors and the electronics needed to control them. Nonetheless, in navigating these factors we already have designs that our research suggests could be mass produced at prices that would translate to 50 cents per peak watt or 3 cents per kWhr, taking into account both maintenance and capital costs. Our design process is ongoing and in addition to the use of heat engines to generate electricity we are investigating other methods. One very promissing technology that could halve the cost again, generates electricity directly by concentrating sunlight onto the cathode of a thermionic valve. Another method as yet lacking a practical design for small dishes, is to use the high temperatures available to drive a series of thermo-chemical processes whose net effect is to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Delivering Hydrogen to your tank: The Ammonia Economy A price of 50 cents per watt, the eqivelent of something like $70-80 per barrel, does render hydrogen a viable competitor to oil. We have therefore got a viable alternative that is carbon free and for which we do not need to go to war or pay more. But before we can say 'Eureka' there is one more step. Hydrogen is very difficult to store and thus to transport. A kilogram of hydrogen at normal atmospheric pressure occupies a staggering 11,000 liters. It can be compressed of course but even at pressures of 300 atmospheres you will still need a tank several times the size of your current gas tank for the same range. A tank that size and capable of safely withstanding that pressure would be very heavy not to mention expensive. And as we explain in our page on the ammonia economy the problems don't end there. We also explain that use of liquid hydrogen is an even less viable proposition. But storing hydrogen chemically is viable and the chemical to use is ammonia. This is easily made from hydrogen and nitrogen, the gas that makes up 78 percent of the atmosphere. Ammonia is also easy to store as it is a liquid under a pressure of as little as 8 atmospheres at normal temperatures. The tank would still be nearly 3 times the size as the gas tank for the same range but as it would be a low pressure tank this is something we could live with. Ammonia is easy to decompose back into hydrogen and nitrogen although this is only important if we were to use the efficient but not yet economically viable fuel cells. The great beauty of ammonia is that we don't have to wait for fuel cells to become viable. We can with a modification similar to that for LPG, burn it directly and efficiently in our existing gasoline or diesel engines. Three Cheers for Henry Ford The people we speak to about this all start out having an issue with the sheer scale of the proposal. To cope with world demand for energy would require not just millions of solar concentrators but many billions of them. And ultimately, they would cover an area the combined size of France and Spain. But the example to consider is the impact Henry Ford had. He is the man who probably did the most to get us into this mess after all! He proved cars could be produced at a price low enough to be afforded by a significant proportion of the population. Once this had been achieved cars proliferated and are now over 600 million strong. If you accept that the price of solar thermal concentrators can be brought down to a level where they compete with oil, market forces can be exploited to take care of their proliferation. So next time you hear someone, particularly a minister, bleat on about how we are all going to have to learn to love our cars less and take more public transport, email them this article or tell them the answer is lying in the sun. That's where all the other answers they need are, right in front of their noses but up a little bit.

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