20% Wind Power?

The DOE has published a 248 page document “20% by 2030″ providing a technical background of wind power and a roadmap for creating 20% wind energy supply in the US electrical energy mix.  At last week’s Renewable Energy conference there was an update from three of the consulting firms that have been providing input for the Department of Energy.  The firms are highly qualified engineering and technical firms with excellent credentials in the electric generation industry.  The update included trade-off analyses based on the cost trends over the next ten years and how the mix of costs will impact the US energy picture.  Another topic was to identify supply chain issues in the wind energy sector so that the needed resources will be available to produce horizontal wind turbines.

The studies were all quite well done and very informative.  The top line result is this; in order to achieve 20% wind power by the year 2030 we will need to create 280,000 megawatts of new wind power.  If the projected average size machine is 2.6 megawatts, then that means 108,000 horizontal wind turbines will be needed over a ten year period.  That’s a lot of turbines.  And good news for GE and Siemens.  Maybe not so good for US workers if the majority of the turbine content is sourced outside the US.

At today’s cost for land based wind power, $2.47 million/megawatt, it will cost  $691.6 BILLION dollars over twenty years.  And if wind turbines actually produced their rated power, that might be OK.  But the fact is they do not.  The industry average is in the 22-28% range of productivity, with some hope of achieving 35% due to forecast improvements in the technology.  The utility factor takes into account the number of hours per year of wind blowing, down time losses, parasitic losses, etc.  The utility factor is also impacted by the poor system efficiency at anything other than the ideal wind speed.

If the electronics industry ran at this level they would have shut down years ago.   In response to this, the wind industry is moving offshore.  Why? Because offshore winds blow more frequently.  So the expectation is that by moving the wind turbines to the sea, the utilization factor will increase to 65%.  Great!

One small problem.  How do you make one of these things float?  Are they safe during a hurricane?   It’s like putting up a drilling platform, only harder because instead of drilling down, you have to go up with 20 tons of equipment suspended 250 feet above the platform.  The best estimates  for this feat of engineering put the cost at $5.94 million per megawatt.  Pushing the price tag for 20% wind power to $1.66 TRILLION.  And we haven’t begun to find out about the technical problems at sea compared to the problems we are discovering in land based wind power.

But here’s the scary part; you’ll never get to vote on it.  US energy policy is being implemented without Congress or legislative oversight.  The DOE has paid for a road map and by virtue of it’s $9 Billion per year budget, is spending that money and incentivizing businesses with matching grants.  R&D resources are being committed to achieve a goal that is, at best, very controversial.  We’ve had a lot of press, a lot of campaigning, but no real discussion and no real performance review.  But the DOE seems committed to the wind power roadmap, regardless of the cost or how long it takes.

Creating policy with your tax dollars.  With no input from you and me.  Now that’s scary!

Motor and Drive Combinations

There is a subtle premise that often escapes us as we talk about motors and the controls that run them.  It is that the motor and controller operate as a package.  In most situations, a customer specification is for input voltage and output torque and speed.  That’s all that is important.  How you get there doesn’t matter a great deal.

But ironically, most motor manufacturers are predominately mechanical engineering centered.  And most drive electronics companies are electronics centered.  And they have very little in common with each other.  Except that their products must work together.  And oftentimes, that’s where the trouble starts.

The drive manufacturer warrants that his drive will produce current and voltage.  But the the motor can have very complex constraints to deal with in response to the excitation of the electronics.  How accurately a 6 step approximation of the sine wave performs, for example, can result in overheating in the motor depending on the loading of the system.  And as the motor winding heats up, the resistance in the motor can change dramatically, especially in the low inductance windings that are common in many specialty motors available today.

Then there are the cabling issues for connecting the motor and drive electronics.  The ac drive industry found out quickly that long wire runs can result in stored energy in the wires themselves.  Standing wave phenomena could cause higher voltages than expected and blow holes in the winding insulation in the motor.

Power semiconductor prices have fallen considerably in the last few years creating situations where it is sometimes cheaper and more reliable to put in parallel devices than to attached single power devices to large heat sinks.  This leads to some serious new options for packaging the electronics.  How about drive circuits in the end bell or junction box attached to the motor?  Actually, some models of the GE ECM motor (now owned by Beloit) are ac fan motors with variable frequency drives and intelligent controls built directly into the motor end bell.  You may have one in your main air handler in the air conditioning system of your home.  I was surprised to find out that I did.

I used to think that thermodynamics of these systems would be impossible to manage.  But the fact is that the drive efficiencies are getting really good.  One team I worked with was producing a 500 Watt brush drive that only shed about 20 Watts of loss at full load.  That’s some incredible efficiency.  So the notion of integrating motors and drive electronics is much more reasonable than it used to be.  And there are stepping motor packages that have been doing it for years.

So where is this all heading?

The fact is that the motor and drive electronics must work together as a package.  There is an increasing need, and an opportunity to create further performance enhancements, by the two technologies working more closely together.  More innovation will lead to better energy efficiency and new design opportunities and a chance to recharge (pun intended) an industry that has been losing share to offshore competition in the last few years.

Wind Energy Equipment Testing

Some friends were discussing the recent visit of Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chiu to Clemson University to deliver a check for $45 million to start a test facility for horizontal wind turbine gearboxes.  It seems that there have been a number of gearbox failures in recent years that suggest a wider problem that will need to be solved in order for wind energy to become as reliable and cost effective as promised.  Gear boxes are failing in the range of 10 years of operation, and occasionally, sooner than that.

This is not difficult to understand.  The forces acting on the gearbox are huge.  On the input side you have 3 blade propeller with blades that are now approaching 200 feet in length.  I don’t care how light weight they are, carbon fiber epoxy or Kevlar or whatever, the forces are tremendous.  In addition the blades have to rotate to take them out of the wind when the wind is too fast for the system to operate.  So there are actuators at the base of the blades adding to the weight and mechanical complexity.

Then there is the intermittency of the wind itself.  This can manifest itself as bursts of wind or winds of different speeds hitting the same rotor.  Which can lead to all kinds of impulse loads on the gearbox.  Gear teeth becoming momentarily unloaded and loaded in response to the wind.  This is actually one of my favorite “Stump the Band” questions for mechanical engineers; what is the formula for the shock load of gear tooth reversal?  It’s big, whatever it is.  And the shock load of the propellers is driving the gearbox against a high inertia load, the generator.  So there is a lot of resistance to overcome.

But the really scary part is that the gear systems are often in the range of 30,000 pounds in weight.  And they are mounted on metal masts at heights of 1.5 times the blade length.  So that would be 300 feet up in the air in the case of a system with a 200 foot blade.  Making the replacement of a failed gearbox a bit more complex than dropping the transmission out of a car, for example.  Especially since most wind farms are in very remote locations where the land is cheap and the wind blows some of the time.

This lead the Department of Energy to put out requests for proposals to address the technical question of providing the industry with a resource to help in the design of gearbox systems with much higher reliability than the current designs.  Total cost of this effort, approximately $100 million dollars.  The proposed test facility is targeting 20 megawatt power handling capability, or approximatley 27,000 horsepower depending on the exact rpm of the system.  This is an incredibly big piece of machinery.

Clearly, gearbox technology has to get better for the wind industry to continue to prosper.   I wonder if we are putting a band aid on a technology that is fundamentally flawed.  Maybe we need to be concentrating on the next generation of the technology and improving the cost performance by an order of magnitude.  Surely we can do better.

Scientists Create First-Ever Circuit Powered By Light

For the first time, scientists have created a circuit that can power itself, as long as it’s left in a beam of sunshine. Created by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, the world’s first photovoltaic circuit could eventually power a new line of consumer devices or even model the human brain.

Right now the creators can only coax minuscule amounts of electricity from their photovoltaic circuits, far too little to power consumer electrical devices, although those amounts could quickly skyrocket.  There are plenty of other ways they say that they can squeeze more electricity from light. Right now only about 10 percent of the photovoltaic circuits on a glass side work. Increasing that number will boost the power output.  Another way to get more power is by turning their 2D structures into 3D structures. Stacking multiple layers of light-collecting and electricity-using circuits would also boost power.

The photovoltaic circuit is a scientific breakthrough, not a technological one. These new circuits will most likely never replace their silicon counterparts.

Photovoltaic circuits could be ideal for other applications, however, such as powering tiny robotic devices or running computer calculations at the speed of light.  Far into the future, these circuits could even be used to set up as artificial neural networks that could model the brain.

At their most basic, computers represent data as on or off, a “0″ or a “1.” Using light instead of electrons, these photovoltaic circuits could store data from, say, one, two, three or four. Each number would correspond to a certain wavelength or color of light — red, green, blue and yellow, for example. To model the human nervous system, each color of light could correspond to a different neurotransmitter, say red for dopamine and blue for serotonin.

The potential applications of the technology are huge, but will take years to develop into any kind of practical equipment.

www.news.discovery.com

Magnetics 2010 and Motion, Drive & Automation

There is a small industry conference that takes place every year with a lineup of industry experts that is top notch by any standard.  It’s called the Motion, Drive and Automation Conference put on by E-Drive magazine.  This year it is located at the Disney Hilton Resort in Orlando and is taking place on January 28 & 29.   The conference includes a wide range of industry experts from many fields of advanced electric motor design, advanced motor control concepts, power semiconductors and state of the art motor testing system.  There will be a lot of technical and product presentations that showcase leading edge technology in electric motors, precision gear reducers, new technology for motion sensing, and a number of improved power semiconductor devices for the motor control industry.  This is a great place to get up to date on the latest technology that will impact of motor and control technology across many industries over the next few years.

In addition, the Magnetics 2010 Conference will be running concurrently at the same venue.  Magnets are a strategic material without which many motors would simply not operate.  In the ever-changing motor industry, there is always a new design that seeks to make an enhancement over previous solutions, or introduce a new solution to old problems.  Declining prices for Neodymium Iron Boron magnets over the last few years have created a number of novel design shifts which have been instrumental in bringing more varieties of permanent magnet machines into the forefront of motion control and mechatronic technology.  To the point where over the last two years a resurgance of permanent magnet rotor designs have been created to improve the energy denisty and lower the cost of specialty motors in washing machines and air conditioning compressors.

This last development, combined with the forecast increase of hybrid electric car sales coming this year, are expected to increase the sale of permanent magnets by 10-15 percent by 2011.  That’s a staggering jump in a market that is almost exclusively supplied by China.  And there is no assurance that China can meet the forecast production.

The US Department of Commerce usually has a say in the sale of products or businesses to foreign countries that are deemed to be strategic or sensitive technology.  In fact, I got stuck in a situation where my employer was told specifically that we could not sell a CNC controller to a Korean customer.  That’s pretty small potatoes compared to controlling the supply of permanent magnets which influences billions of dollars worth of electric motors manufactured and sold all over the world.  So it strikes me as a little odd that the sale of Magnequench to its current owners, Neo Materials, was completed without a much discussion. leaving the US without a domestic magnet supplier.

There will surely be a lot of discussion about this situation at the conference, and I will be in attendance to get the latest information on the subject.  So look forward to a review of the conference in an upcoming post.

Big Wind – Big Picture

I have been slowly working my way through the DOE’s Wind Power study targeting 20% of the projected US electrical capacity to be generated by wind power by the year 2030.  It’s 248 pages long.  You can view, download or print it at your pleasure.  No, I haven’t read the whole thing.  Based on the 40 pages I have gone through so far there are a number of really interesting things to consider.

The DOE estimates that it will require 100,000 wind turbines to be installed and connected to the grid in addition to the ones we already have running to achieve the stated goal.  That’s great news for GE and Siemens who are the leaders in wind turbine manufacturing.  And what about Energy Secretary Chu’s recent comment that “more than 50% of the turbine’s content is made in America” ?   Maybe not so comforting for the American worker.

Large multinational corporations do not have any implied loyalty to the country that they are incorporated in.  In fact, the bigger the company, the more adversarial the relationship can become.  Microsoft is sure feeling it with restraint of trade problems in the US and the EU.  We have watched US tax policy drive world renowned US corporations to move their assets and factories to other countries to improve their cost structure.  Ultimately benefiting others instead of the workers here in the US that helped build their respective companies.

In this situation, particularly if some financial analysts don’t look favorably on GE’s current situation, surely the upcoming wave of spending on wind power will serve to bolster the giant corporation’s position.  After all, we are talking about machines that sell for $2-6 Million  each.  Multiply that times 1000.  And that’s only a fraction of what will be required to hit the DOE target.  But an increase of cash flow of $2-6 Billion a year for the next twenty years sounds like a “wind fall” to me.

But that’s only a fraction of what is needed.  100,000 wind turbines over the next 23 years is 4347 units a year.  And where is the money for this going to come from?  A significant portion of it will be underwritten through investment tax credits, accelerated depreciation and direct subsidy.  That means that several billion dollars a year in taxes eliminated from the US Government’s revenue.  Revenues that will have to be made up elsewhere.

And please let’s not go into the number of barrels of imported oil thing again.  Almost none of the electricity generated in this country is  powered by oil, foreign or domestic.

But when did this get approved as domestic energy policy?  I know I sure didn’t get to vote on this plan.  Did you?

And I sure don’t remember when we made the three digit slip from millions of dollars being spent by the US Government to billions of dollars being spent by the US Government. 100,000 wind turbines at $2-6 million each is $200 to 600 billion dollars over the next 23 years.

I love clean technology.  It is absolutely the way to go.  But we’ve got to be smarter shoppers with tax payer money.  Pebble bed nuclear power is way cheaper and unplugging existing wells in the US will stop the flow of funds to terrorists and make the US energy independent in 1 to 2 years while putting huge numbers of people back to work.

Maybe sustainable energy isn’t so sustainable financially.

Big Wind Machines

Recently I had occaision to discuss the merits of wind power with a colleague.  In particular there is a controversy between horizontal axis wind turbines, the giant propeller driven systems you see in advertisements, and vertical wind, which does not have much presence in the marketplace.  The premise is that horizontal systems can take advantage of the large swept area of the propeller blades to generate a great deal of force.  I’m not sure if this is supposed to imply that large swept areas intrinsically convert more kinetic energy from the wind into electricity.  And it is easy to conclude that this is the benefit of horizontal wind turbines.

Except that there is a fundamental mechatronic system at work.  The large propeller turns at low speeds, typically around 18 rpm on average, and there is a massive gearbox that is used to increase the speed of the output to turn a generator at high speed, which is typically where generators are most efficient.  The gear increaser has the effect of also increasing the amount of torque required at the input (propeller) by the gear ratio.  So if the gear increase is 100:1, then the propeller must be size 100 times larger in swept area in order to produce the needed torque to turn the generator.

This actually gets a bit worse since the mass, and it is very substantial, of the gear box itself represnts inertia that is resisting the turning of the blades.  And there is a generator rotor at the end of the gearbox whose mass (massive mass) is now resisting the turning of the propeller by the square of the ratio.  So if the ratio is 100:1, the inertia is increased by 10,000 times.  Even magnetic drag, or the residual attraction of the rotor to the stator, will get amplified in the same fashion, making it a significant force to contend with.

Add to this situaion a list of systems losses for overall fricitional loss of the bearings and gearbox, parasitic losses for steering and blade pitch adjustments.   Efficiency losses due to long distance transmission of power, that is a by-product of the remote sites that have favorable wind conditions.  It’s a pretty difficult situation to engineer.  And they keep proposing to build them bigger and bigger, hoping that the scale effect will overcome the problems.

All of the vertical wind systems I have seen so far are much smaller due to the fact that smaller rotors can turn at higher speed and power electric generators directly.  The flax axial generator is very popular in do-it-yourself designs that people are experimenting with in their back yards.

But vertical wind can also scale up.  And there are a few companies doing it.  With convertional wind power costing $2/watt, vertical systems could bring that price down very quickly and allow systems that can be installed close to the point of use or in offshore arrays where generation takes place almost 100% of the time.  Unlike the average 31% on the large land based systems.

Now that’s progress, 300% increase in energy generation at lower cost.  Hope it comes to market soon.

Defining Green Jobs

The American Solar Energy Society (ASEA) reported a staggering forecast of “37 million jobs resulting from Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in the US by 2030″.  That’s pretty exciting stuff.  In fact, the numbers are so big, I had to get a closer look.  37 Million new jobs would certainly fix things in this, or any, economy.

I know from having lived in Colorado that there is a lot going on there because there are 300 sunny days a year, so it’s a great place for solar power projects.  Many businesses like the Whole Foods company and other large retailers have projects going on and the Federal Center is putting in major solar power arrays to reduce their electrical demand .  The National Renewable Energy Labs are in Golden Colorado, near Denver, and they have huge campuses with thousands of people working on all sorts of energy related topics.  Public Service, the local power company has major wind farm projects going on in the state.   And there are major wind testing facilities that have recently sprung up to support the wind industry in Colorado.

So as part of measuring the impact of Renerwable Energy and Energy Efficiency activities, the report from the American Solar Energy Society focuses quite a bit on the local Colorado situation.  I have heard that Colorado claims to have 10,000 new jobs in the renewable energy arena.  There is a long way to go to get from 10,000 jobs to 37 million.  More importantly, the report states that  5600 of those jobs are at NREL and other government or non-profit organization, like ASEA.  I don’t think you can count jobs that are paid for with taxes, they don’t produce revenue.

The methodology of the report includes under it’s definition of Renewable Energy category of business; wind, photovoltaic, solar thermal, hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass (ethanol, biodiesel, biomass power), fuel cells and hydrogen.   That’s pretty broad by itself.

Then the Energy Efficiency businesses include; appliance, HVAC, insulation, automobile and other.  So on a statistical basis some of the appliance and HVAC businesses, which already exist, get counted for a certain amount of head count and revenue generated because portions of their product sales focus on energy efficiency.  Wow!  That means you can count a small percentage of almost everything else.  Personally, I don’t consider guys putting insulation into your home part of the emerging green economy.  But the folks at ASES do.

And jobs that are federal, state or local government that are related to renewable energy are counted as well.  Non-profits, trade associations, foundations, consultants, investment, and other related positions are all in the count if they are related to Renewable Energy or Energy Efficiency.

So there is a huge gap between estimating the “impact” of the green economy and job creation based on the green economy.  Looking at the report from ASEA, they are clearly not the same thing.  If 56% of measured jobs in Revewable Energy in Colorado are in the government and non-manufacturing roles, then the claims for job creation can not be more that 4400.  And the size of the “green” job creation opportunity is significantly lower than the announcement would lead you to believe.

Worse still for the US economy, one of the dominant suppliers in wind power is Siemens, which means that a lot of the sales generated here, translates to revenue for Europe.  In the solar cell market Japan, Germany and China supply the majority of the market and several foreign suppliers have operations in the US.

We sure hear a lot about how the green economy is going save our economy.  I think some of the messages are exaggerated and taken out of their proper context.  The analysis needs to be based in terms of what we can really expect in Growth.

Will Solar Make It?

Solar Power is here in a big way.   It may not make the front pages of the paper, but it is huge.  The rate of new installations is breathtaking.

Large retailers like Target and Walmart are putting solar arrays on the roof of their stores to reduce energy costs over the long term. British Petroleum may have been one of the first companies to consider the implication of eliminating the cost of electrical power from their operating expenses.  The long term benefit of converting the unused roof space on local gas stations are staggering, and may have been the incentive for BP to enter the solar manufacturing business.

And why wouldn’t businesses be interested in reducing their costs?  Especially when the costs are paid for by subsidy programs from the power companies, incentive programs from the Federal government and in many states, programs from the state level to help pay for the technology.

I don’t even know how to do the math on this one.  The utility contribution is often 30% or more of system cost paid directly to the contractor.  The Federal contribution is another 30% plus 5 year accelerated depreciation.  Some states have subsidies of 20 and 30 percent.  So 80 to 90 percent of the direct cost is paid by others, plus the depreciation value.

What a great deal!  It’s not surprising that the solar industry is booming.

But is this how American businesses run?  I thought that the incentive to start a business is the opportunity to make a profit.  To earn money for goods and services, pay a living wage to employees and hopefully return a profit after everything ia accounted for.

Well not in New United States.  We underwrite new businesses with Tax dollars when the government decides the situation is important enough.

But the utiliity companies are running out of money to pay for the incentive programs and are having to cut back.  And the Federal and State subsidies must eventually follow suit.  What then?  Will the needed jobs be created or will the industry stall?

We come back to the Absolute Value of the technology.  Actual ROI’s for the standard photovoltaic systems going into today’s projects are in the range of 9 years without the discounts and subsidies.  If  Solar Power is going to make it as an industry it has to achieve better rates of return, especially as subsidies become less available.

Silicon based photovoltaics are falling in price.  Which would seem to be a problem, but in fact, falling cost should lead to more sales.  As the technology becomes less expensive, it’s rate of return increases.  If panel prices are falling, then the balance of system costs, labor and installation, will be under pressure to find means of cost reduction..

There is a lot of work to be done to get solar energy to stand on it’s own.  I say, let’s get to it!

E-Gear Drive on All Electric Sedan

AUBURN HILLS, Mich., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — BorgWarner announces another eGearDrive transmission application on the all-electric CODA sedan, scheduled for introduction in California in 2010. Ideally suited for full performance electric vehicles on either front-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive transverse driveline applications, the BorgWarner 31-03 eGearDrive(TM) single-speed transmission delivers high torque capacity, high efficiency, and low noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) in a compact package. Paired with a UQM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. (NYSE Amex: UQM) PowerPhase(R) electric propulsion system, the BorgWarner eGearDrive(TM) transmission will propel the five-passenger CODA sedan at highway speeds while providing maximum powertrain efficiency.

“BorgWarner’s 31-03 eGearDrive is a purpose built, high performance transmission that can be broadly adapted to a variety of electric propulsion systems,” said John Sanderson, President and General Manager, BorgWarner Drivetrain Systems. “Designed for fast-to-market implementation, we expect this eGearDrive transmission to accelerate growth in the all-electric and hybrid electric vehicle segments.”

In addition to providing primary drive for front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles, BorgWarner eGearDrive systems enable launch assist, energy recovery, and AWD performance for the secondary-driven axle on any type of vehicle. Also available is an optional electronically actuated park lock system as well as various electronic driveline disconnect systems.

Headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., CODA Automotive is an all-electric car and battery company. The company designs, brands, markets and distributes electric vehicles utilizing a strategy that allows CODA Automotive to develop vehicles rapidly in a flexible manner, avoiding the traditionally capital-intensive nature of the automobile business. Through its exclusive transportation battery joint venture with Lishen Power Battery, China’s main state-owned battery manufacturer, CODA is also a leading designer and large-scale manufacturer of power battery systems.

“BorgWarner’s commitment to excellence and leadership position in the powertrain component business made the company an ideal transmission supplier for the all-electric CODA,” said Kevin Czinger, President & CEO CODA Automotive. “We’re looking forward to working with BorgWarner.”

BorgWarner Drivetrain Systems produces highly engineered drivetrain technologies for the global vehicle industry. Key product segments include: Dual clutch modules; wet friction clutch components and systems; mechatronic transmission control modules; electro-hydraulic solenoid valves; mechanical clutch assemblies; all-wheel drive couplings, transfer cases and software/controls; and electric vehicle transmissions. These systems improve fuel economy and performance while enhancing vehicle stability. BorgWarner Drivetrain Systems is a trusted supplier to virtually every major light vehicle and automatic transmission producer in the world today.

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