Energy storage system to top up peak electricity supply

The amount of power drawn from the electricity grid can vary greatly at different times of the day. It usually peaks in the early evening for a couple of hours after the mass exodus from school and work, while short-lived spikes are also common after major televised sporting events, during commercial breaks and in the morning hours. This can cause headaches for energy companies as they struggle to match supply with demand. But researchers have now found a way to manage these short-lived draws on the electricity grid far that could halve the fuel needed. Read More

Received & published by Henry Sapiecha

OROVILLE, Calif. (UPI) — A California college says it is set to become the nation’s only grid-positive college, producing more energy from its own on-site solar power than it uses.

Butte College in Oroville, Calif., will add 15.000 solar panels to its existing 10,000 by May 2011 to become the largest solar-producing college in the world, a college release said Wednesday.

“Once this solar project is completed, Butte College will provide enough clean renewable energy to cover all of our electricity needs and generate slightly more than we use — which will be a source of additional revenue for the college,” Dr. Diana Van Der Ploeg, Butte College President, said.

The school’s solar panels will generate more than 6.3 million kilowatt hours per year, enough energy to power more than 9.200 average-sized homes, the release said.

The 15,000 new solar panels will be placed atop rooftops and will create covered parking areas and walkways.

The project will cost $17 million, with $12.65 million coming from federal Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, which are low-interest loans that can be used for clean energy projects.

The college will fund the remainder, up to $4.35 million.
Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Enertrade

Level 10, Comalco Place, 12 Creek Street, Brisbane QLD 4000
GPO BOX10, Brisbane QLD 4001

PH: 07 3331 9900 FAX: 07 3331 9901
Email: enertrade@enertrade.com.au
Website: www.enertrade.com.au

Enertrade owns and operates the North Queensland Gas Pipeline, a gas-fired power station at Barcaldine and purchases electricity from privately owned power stations through Power Purchase Agreements and trades this into the National Electricity Market.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

PO Box 332, Cooma NSW 2630
PH: 02 6453 2888 FAX: 02 6452 3794
Email: snowyinfo@snowyhyrdo.com.au
Internet: www.snowyhydro.com.au

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Register Now!

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

WINDATION ENERGY SYSTEMS AUSTRALIA PTY LTD provides the most effective renewable energy wind turbine suitable for installation to urban buildings in the world. The patented TWM 5000 units by Windation produce up to 5Kw of clean electricity, have no external moving parts and discretely produce electricity. The units are un-obtrusive and comply to International standards IEC 61400-2. Windation units are the premier choice for urban wind farming as the units can be mounted in multiple arrays and operate whisper quietly. Additional power can be produced with solar panel mounting making Windation’s urban wind turbines an unbeatable choice for energy conscious building owners, tenants, investors, or clean power companies. Windation’s TWM mounts like a commercial Air conditioning unit with ease and plans are being been made to position Windation as the number 1 clean energy wind turbine network globally.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

• Unique product – No competitor
• Unique design unmatched in suitability for buildings
• Renewable energy sector
• High growth industry and opportunities
• High safety factor – No external moving parts
• Resalable electricity asset
• Discrete mounting and positioning
• Wind turbine for city buildings
• Untapped market
• High output per square metre
• Perfect timing for market readiness

KEY INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

• Increased Electricity costs and feed in tariffs after July 1st
• Valuable Carbon credits and renewable energy certificates produced
• Recent Government support with stimulus programs
• Renewable energy grants available
• Increasing coal and oil costs forcing market shifts
• Electricity grid currently incapable of serving network
• Pre Launch opportunities
• Extremely competitive with solar PV
• High market demand in renewable sector
• Carbon emissions trading will recommence
• Share holding available under ten year licence
• Australia NZ Exclusivity
• Patented first of its kind
• Fastest Growing Wind energy source in the World
• US and International patents in place

BOARD & MANAGEMENT

David Jeffery Hare - Executive Director

Management role assisting Century 21 to be No 1 Telecommunications dealer (Optus) 90’s. Director – ECO REBATES P/L & WINDATION ENERGY AUS P/L 2009. Director – thecomputerschool.net (International website training site) 2005 – 2007. Family background HARE & FORBES (60years) National engineering machine suppliers.

Mark Sheikhrezai – Executive Director

Founder, CEO Rotating Machinery, system design expert, Mechanical Engineer MSME, PE Photo electronic corporation, Beckman Instruments, Composite Rotor.

EXIT STRATEGY

Company wishes to reach an IPO stage on suitable exchange platform or trade sale.

CORPORATE STRUCTURE

WINDATION ENERGY SYSTEMS AUSTRALIA PTY LTD is 80% owned by ECO REBATES PTY LTD a company solely owned and directed by David Hare and 20% owned and directed by Windation Energy systems I

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Reminder: register now

New webinar in association with

Dear Mr Sapiecha,

The latest Renewable Energy Focus interactive webinar, in association with Lectrus is only two week away. Don’t forget to reserve your place, register now.

Topic: Design & Construction of Solar Inverter Substations

When: Tuesday 22nd June 2010

Time: 6.30pm BST. 1.30pm EDT

Duration: 1 hour

Moderator: David Hopwood, Editor, Renewable Energy Focus

Speakers:

• Mike Sutley,Lectrus
• Jack Ring, LGE Sales
• Paula Mints, Navigant Consulting

Registration is FREE. Simply, follow this link and reserve your place NOW!

This webinar will cover:

• PV market and technology trends
• Power management for PV projects
• Getting the right inverter station – structural, electrical and air flow requirements

For more information about the webinar, visit: www.renewableenergyfocus.com/webinars/

Who is the webinar aimed at:

• Renewable energy developers
• Public and private utilities
• Electrical engineers
• Inverter OEMs
• Solar farm contractors

Don’t miss out on this lively interactive web-based seminar in association with Lectrus. Get involved with the renewable energy community in our live question and answer session.

Remember – registration is free and only takes a few minutes of your time to fill in your details.

We hope you enjoy Renewable Energy Focus webinar in assocation with Lectrus. Look out for details of future webinars for 2010 on the Renewable Energy Focus website.

Yours sincerely,

The Renewable Energy Focus team

Received and published by Henry Sapiecha 8th June 2010

Mechanical Engineers’ Device

Helps Electricity Conservation

January 1, 2007 — Smart meters are small computers that provide real-time information on how much electricity is being used by each customer and when, and can relay information back to the head office over the very same power lines they feed from. Smart meters can bill different rates depending overall grid usage, to encourage conservation. Users can program them to control appliances, for example running the dishwasher during off-peak hours, when rates are lower.

SAN FRANCISCO — During the winter, we crank up the heat. During the summer, we turn up the air. And all the time we’re eating up electricity. Now a new smart meter may help to save energy and save money.

Like most parents, finding ways to save is a priority for Trina Camping. But she thought saving on her electric bill was a lost cause. That is, until she saw the light and started using a SmartMeter.

“This is what makes a SmartMeter smart,” Mechanical Engineer Tim Vahlstrom, tells DBIS. “It’s mounted onto a typical electric meter.”

Engineers at Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco are working on SmartMeters. They’re mini computers that provide real-time information on how much electricity is being used by each customer and when.

“This utilizes a technology called ‘Powerline Carrier.’ So it puts the signal back on the lines that actually feed the Meter, back through the power lines, to the transformer, back all the way to the head office,” Vahlstrom says.

Everything is done remotely. You can turn your air conditioning, heating and lights on at home — even when you’re on vacation.

Vahlstrom says, “I want my thermostat to raise temperature by five degrees or four degrees if the price of electricity gets above this level. Then automatically the thermostat we can send a command to do that.”

Power outages can be detected immediately, and within seconds, power is back on. “It actually does these things remotely without a person on-site,” Vahlstrom says.

Peak power hours are from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. By running her dishwasher and other appliances later at night, the power company gives Camping and her family a discount.

“We’ve saved about $150 to $200,” Camping says. It’s the first step to saving electricity and saving money.

Minnesota, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida are already using the SmartMeters. Not all of the functions are available right now in every state, but will be soon.

Electricity generation is the first process in the delivery of electricity to consumers.

The other three processes are electric power transmission, electricity distribution and electricity retailing.

The demand for electricity can be met in two different ways.

The primary method thus far has been for public or private utilities to construct large scale centralized projects to generate and transmit the electricity required to fuel economies.

Many of these projects have caused unpleasant environmental effects such as air or radiation pollution and the flooding of large areas of land. Distributed generation creates power on a smaller scale at locations throughout the electricity network.

Often these sites generate electricity as a byproduct of other industrial processes such as using gas from landfills to drive turbines..

For more information about the topic Electricity generation, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Power station — A power station or power plant is a facility for the generation of electric power. At the centre of nearly all power stations is a generator, a …  > read more

Electric power — Electric power is the amount of work done by an electric current in a unit time. When a current flows in a circuit with resistance, it does work. …  > read more

Distributed generation — Distributed generation is a new trend in the generation of heat and electrical power. The concept permits the “consumer”, who is generating heat or …  > read more

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 7th June 2010

A view inside the National Ignition Facility’s target chamber, a space easily big enough for technicians to stand inside. It is hoped the NIF will eventually be a major source of carbon-free energy.

(Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Lab)

LIVERMORE, Calif.–Think clean energy is a fantasy? What if the power of a star was applied to the problem?

That’s the approach being explored at the National Ignition Facility, a huge-scale experiment in laser fusion based at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory here. Scientists are looking at NIF as a potential key to producing large amounts of carbon-free power.

It’s not known if the system will ever bear the kind of fruit the scientists and administrators who run NIF would like. Still, the facility is a scientific wonder that can transform a single laser beam no wider than a human hair into 192 beams–each of which is 18 inches wide. Together, the beams are designed to produce 4 million joules, the amount of power that would produce 4 million watts of power in a single second.

The NIF was completed in early 2009 and eventually will be used by the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as technicians from national laboratories, fusion energy researchers, academics, and others. It is “the world’s largest and highest-energy laser, [and] has the goal of achieving nuclear fusion and energy gain in the laboratory for the first time,” according to the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, “in essence, creating a miniature star on Earth.”

This is serious high technology. The NIF employs a series of amplifiers and mirrors known as switchyards to route and split the original hair’s-width laser beam over a total distance of 1,500 meters. After being separated by pre-amplifiers into 48 beams, each beam is then split into four beams, and then all are injected into the 192 main laser amplifier beamlines, according to the NIF.

The hope is that NIF will be online as a power plant within 15 to 20 years. For now, the facility is a proof-of-concept system, albeit one comprising two 10-story buildings and more than $3 billion of investment. Eventually, the 192 laser beams reunite to focus on a target fuel pellet that is just millimeters in size, yet placed inside a target chamber that towers over the technicians who sometimes work inside.

And 192 laser beams of this magnitude create some serious heat. The theoretical maximum, according to LLNL retiree and docent Nick Williams, is 100 million degrees Celsius.

For now, because of the amount of power necessary to produce the beams, and the heat created, scientists are only able to fire the laser system once every two or three hours. Eventually, the idea would be to fire it many times a second.

And by 2030, it is hoped, the NIF will be helping produce commercial power and helping scientists and researchers better understand the nature of the universe. That, it would seem, would be a main benefit of producing what amounts to a small star, right here in the middle of Northern California.

On June 24, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2010. After driving more than 18,000 miles in the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last four years, I’ll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more throughout the American northeast. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. In the meantime, you can follow my preparations for the project on Twitter @GreeterDan and @RoadTrip.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 7th June 2010