The Energy Puzzle's Blog

2010 Energy Conference / Jornadas de Energia en Mendoza, Argentina – April 2010

theenergypuzzle — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:46:37 +0000

La Facultad de Ingeniería de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza – Argentina con su Maestría en Energía está organizando unas JORNADAS INTERNACIONALES DE ENERGÍA que se realizarán en Mendoza, Argentina los días 16 y 17 de abril de 2010. Estas JORNADAS son de suma importancia dada la situación energética mundial y particularmente la de nuestro país y los que conformamos el cono sur de América.

Jornadas de Energía

Qué	Jornada
Cuándo	16/04/2010 09:00 a 17/04/2010 21:00
Dónde	Facultad de Ingeniería
Nombre	jornadasdeenergia@fing.uncu.edu.ar

Es nuestro deseo que como especialistas en el tema participen de esta reunión en la que esperamos obtener una visión global de los desafíos a superar en materia energética. Con tal motivo los invitamos a participar de las Ponencias que forman parte del Programa previsto. El formulario de preinscripción estará publicado en la Página de la Facultad-Posgrados-Maestría en Energía.

Los trabajos aceptados serán publicados como parte del material entregado en las JORNADAS y la fecha límite de recepción será el 26 de febrero de 2010.

URL:

http://fing.uncu.edu.ar/academico/posgrados/energia/jornadas-de-energia-1/jornadas-de-energia

Este anuncio fue copiado del sitio web de ingenieria de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo / Investigacion / Jornadas de Energia.

Solar energy after the sun goes down. This article makes me happy.

theenergypuzzle — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:27:34 +0000

This article was extracted from Green Inc blog, published on December 26, 2009, 7:33 am by Todd Woody.

The solar thermal storage approach described in the article below adds tremendous value to solar power. I can see that this is just one of the few clever approaches that we will see and that will change how we produce, deliver and use energy in the future.

SolarReserve Two farms being planned by SolarReserve of Santa Monica, Calif., would store the sun’s energy in molten salt, releasing the heat at night when it could be used to drive a turbine and generate electricity. An artist’s rendering of such a solar plant is shown here.

Solar farms that would serve two Western utilities are planning to use technology that will generate electricity after the sun goes down, a move that could be a potential game-changer for the industry.

The two farms being planned by SolarReserve of Santa Monica, Calif., would store the sun’s energy in molten salt, releasing the heat at night when it could be used to drive a turbine and generate electricity. Two utilities, NV Energy in Nevada and Pacific Gas and Electric, Northern California’s biggest utility, would buy the power.

The sun’s intermittent nature has made large-scale solar farms most useful as so-called peaker plants that supply electricity when demand spikes, typically in the late afternoon on hot days. But the ability of SolarReserve to store the sun’s energy for use at night would be a step forward in technology.

“The energy storage characteristics were a key factor in our selection of the Tonopah solar energy project,” NV Energy’s chief executive, Michael Yackira, said in a statement. The utility will be able to draw electricity from the solar farm more or less on demand, which makes it easier to balance the load on the power grid.

NV Energy would buy power from the 100-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project being planned on federal land near Tonopah, Nev., about 215 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

“We’re expecting to put in 12 hours of storage, which allows us to move power within the day to meet peak requirements as well as to operate at full load,” SolarReserve’s chief executive, Kevin Smith, said of the Tonopah plant.

But the technology comes with its own set of problems.

The site of the Nevada project has been moved several times because of concerns from the Air Force that the project would interfere with advanced radar systems. The solar farm features a 538-foot-tall concrete tower topped by a 100-foot receiver that contains millions of gallons of molten salt. The Rocketdyne division of United Technologies developed the molten salt technology and has licensed it to SolarReserve.

Huge fields of mirrors called heliostats focus the sun on the receiver, which heats the salt to 1,050 degrees. The liquefied salt flows through a steam-generating system to drive the turbine and is returned to the receiver to be heated again.

SolarReserve’s other farm, the 150-megawatt Rice Solar Energy Project for P.G.and E. in California, is expected to have seven hours of energy storage. The solar farm, to be built on private land near the desert ghost town of Rice, will provide electricity to the utility under a 25-year contract.

SolarReserve, which is also building a solar power plant in Spain, expects the California and Nevada projects to create 900 construction jobs.

Every single form of renewable energy counts

theenergypuzzle — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:17:06 +0000

If there was just another planet Earth that we could use to host “us” the whole 6.7 + billion people… As the “Energy Industry Issues Map from 2008″ below shows how important the issue “Energy and Climate Change” is, it is time to think out of the box and put our creative minds to work, because there isn’t a second planet Earth.

I just had a crazy idea but I thought of calculating how many seconds are left till the end of year 2009…Let’s say we start the countdown at midnight on the 22nd of December, 2009. Doing quick math ~ 9 days x 24 hours / day x3,600 seconds / hour = 777,600 seconds. We sleep a third of the 24hours per day, so now we have only 777,600 x 2/3 = 518,400 seconds left, and if we assume we can come up with one good idea on what kind and how to utilize any renewable energy (ie: solar, wind, geothermal, etc.) every minute, then 518,400 / 60 second /min = 8640 minutes. Let’s say that only 8,640 people from the planet Earth has the time to spend just “1 minute” on writing an idea. If we do the math 8,640 people represent only 1.2896 x 10 ^ -4 % (~0.00012896 %) of the entire population!

Conclusion: If you are one those 8,640 people that want to think for a minute and come up with a type of renewable energy and how you would use it, write it down here as a comment!! I look forward to look at them and discuss further pros/cons, the know-how’s; the goal is to create a blog to exchange thoughts and discuss information related to The Energy Puzzle.