Gregoire's CleanTech Blog

Tapping Rocks for Power: A European consortium is drawing closer to building a megawatt-scale power plant that uses bedrock heat.

Spend time in the French village of Soultz-sous-Forêts and you're likely to experience a manmade earthquake. The vibrations -- some as high as 2.87 on the Richter scale -- are the most conspicuous element of a renewable energy research program that may succeed where others have failed.

By fracturing granite bedrock located five kilometers below the surface and pumping in super-saline water, a team of French, German, and Swiss engineers are extracting the rock's thermal energy, and they plan to use it to produce pollution-free electricity. At least they will if the local residents put up with a little more shaking.

The project is the most advanced effort to date to deliver on the promise of so-called hot-rock mining. Since the 1970s, geothermal engineers have tried many times to push enough fluid through hot rocks to capture energy at a commercial scale. Now the Soultz project has achieved the highest flow rates in the world through some of the hottest rocks. By this time next year, they expect to be transforming this heat into at least 1.5 megawatts of renewable power for the grid.

The concept of hot-rock mining is deceptively simple. Two or more wells are drilled into hot bedrock, and the intervening bedrock is fractured with hydraulic blasts. Brine is then pumped into one or more injection wells, and it flows through the rock to one or more production wells, heating up as it travels. When the salty water reaches the surface of a production well, its heat is bled off to produce power or to be used for area heating, then returned to the injection wells.

Despite its simplicity, this concept has failed several times. In the 1970s, a pioneering project initiated by Los Alamos National Laboratory demonstrated that one could fracture rock and circulate brine to extract heat. But that project could never get enough brine in -- and therefore enough heat out -- to make the process competitive with conventional power plants burning fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas.

Gunnar Grecksch, a geophysicist and hot-rock fracturing expert at the Leibniz Institute for Applied Geosciences in Hanover, Germany, says follow-on efforts in the U.K. and Japan failed for the same reason: the fracturing of the rocks was never sufficient. "Flow resistance is still the key problem," he says. "In none of these projects were the flow rates in the range you need for a commercial system."

The Soultz project was initiated in 1987 and funded by the European Commission. Since 2001, it has been managed by a consortium of European energy companies, including Shell and Electricité de France. French, Germany, and Swiss research agencies support the science.

The key to its success to date has been painstaking geological analysis, which ensures they position their wells to hit the right rocks. In 1997, after ten years of work, the project demonstrated impressive flow rates, moving brine heated to 140 degrees Centigrade at a rate of

25 liters

per second and a depth of

3.6 kilometers

. And the resistance was less than half that encountered at Los Alamos.

That positive result emboldened the project's leaders to push their wells deeper, into 200-degree Centigrade granite five kilometers deep -- and last fall they finally turned on the taps. Daniel Fritsch, project coordinator, says the system "could probably do 40 to

50 liters

per second" with the addition of pumps that will be installed in the wells this summer -- another kind of technological challenge given the punishing temperatures involved, which few pumps are capable of withstanding. Then the plan is to build a pilot electrical plant by early 2007 to generate 1.5 megawatts, about the same output as one of today's towering wind turbines. But the hot-rock plant won't go idle every time the wind dies down, and should produce about three times more energy per year.

Fritsch says that to cover the cost of its equipment and to generate a profit, however, the project should produce closer to five megawatts. To produce more power, however, they must more than double the flow rate, to around 100 liters/second, which could be a challenge due to the large amount of shaking their blasts cause on the surface. Lawsuits from some disgruntled citizens claiming property damage have limited Fritsch's willingness to use stronger hydraulic blasts. To many local people, though, it seems like much ado about nothing. Local journalist Bernard Stéphan, who lives two kilometers from the project's ground zero, says his home has not been affected by the blasts. And Soultz-sous-Fôrets mayor Alfred Schmitt says "There is no problem."

Nevertheless, instead of using stronger hydraulic blasts to open the rocks further, Fritsch plans to complement the blasting with a new method: pouring acid in the wells. The idea is to dissolve salt deposits in the fractures immediately surrounding the wells. Fritsch says that tests in Italy with acid have improved the functioning of some geothermal wells by a factor of 10.

By Peter Fairley

Source : Technology Review

Battery Breakthrough -- An Update

As President Bush talks up the need for more research, scientists are making advances in hybrids and all-electric vehicles.

While President Bush spoke this week about a new kind of highly efficient hybrid vehicle, on a visit to battery-maker Johnson Controls in Milwaukee, WI, an article appeared in the current issue of Science describing the latest in a series of recent advances that could make hybrids, and even all-electric vehicles, practical.

Researchers have long known that a material based on lithium, nickel, and manganese could be used to make lithium-ion batteries that store large amounts of energy. The problem has been that batteries based on this material could be charged and discharged only slowly, otherwise the amount of energy they could store would drop dramatically.

In the Science paper, researchers at MIT and the State University of New York (SUNY) in Stony Brook described a way around the problem. The breakthrough came last summer, when Kisuk Kang, a materials science graduate student at MIT, created a computer model that showed that when it was under conditions of high power, disorder in the lithium-nickel-manganese material caused it to compress and trap the lithium ions that allow electricity to flow. The researchers then synthesized a version of this material without this disorder, freeing the ions to move quickly.

The newly structured material might be a candidate for replacing the batteries used in today's hybrids cars. But its real value could come in taking advantage of both its power and high energy storage capacity in a different kind of hybrid, known as a plug-in hybrid -- the potentially highly-efficient vehicle Bush spotlighted in his speech on Monday, saying these cars could eventually get

100 miles

per gallon. The new technology could also help make all-electric vehicles practical.

President Bush came to Johnson Controls, which last fall announced a new center of excellence for developing lithium-ion batteries for hybrids, to talk up his Advanced Energy Initiative, first announced in this year's State of the Union address. The Bush administration's 2007 budget provides $31 million for battery technology research, compared with $150 million for research into deriving ethanol from biomass, and nearly twice that amount, $288 million, for hydrogen fuel-cell research.

Unlike today's hybrids, which ultimately depend on gasoline for power, but run efficiently by storing extra energy in batteries, a plug-in hybrid would use energy from the outlet in a garage, charging overnight, and would run completely on electricity for distances typical in a daily commute. The gasoline-powered engine would only kick in for long trips, after the batteries were depleted. This type of hybrid could save significant amounts of gasoline, since something like 75 percent of daily driving is for short trips, says Gerbrand Ceder, the materials science professor at MIT who led the effort to develop the new material.

Ceder says the new material could reduce the weight of battery packs for plug-in hybrids by four to five times. The higher rate capability should also make for speedier charging, allowing top-offs between trips that extend the distance a vehicle could go between overnight recharges.

Other attractive features of batteries based on the new material, according to Ceder, are improved safety over other lithium-ion batteries and lower cost. Lower cost, lighter weight, and faster charging might make the batteries attractive for electric vehicles as well.

The material still needs to go through extensive testing to find out if it will have the longevity and performance capability needed for demanding automotive applications, says Khalil Amine, group leader for battery research at Argonne National Laboratory.

The MIT-SUNY research joins other recent advances in battery materials. Amine's own work at Argonne has produced promising new lithium-ion electrodes, as has that of researchers at A123 Systems in Watertown, MA, and E-One Moli Energy in British Columbia. Meanwhile, Firefly Energy, Peoria, IL, is developing lighter lead-acid batteries that may work well for hybrids.

Developing battery packs using these new technologies and incorporating them into hybrids could take several years, as automakers perform further tests and integrate the technologies into their vehicle development cycles. Even then, the impact on fuel prices and energy consumption could take decades, as consumers gradually purchase the more efficient vehicles.

Because of this long time frame, some experts, including John Heywood at MIT, say that, to achieve shorter-term reductions in oil consumption and prices, people will have to buy cars available now that have better fuel economy. "The only things that work really fast are for people to change their buying and driving habits," Heywood says. To encourage these changes, advocates have called for higher fuel-economy standards and tax breaks for purchasing higher fuel-economy vehicles.

Meanwhile, the MIT-SUNY computer model could help the field generally. Stanley Whittingham, professor of chemistry at SUNY, whose work led to the first commercialized lithium-ion batteries (and who was not involved with the current project), says the computer model, by showing how disorder affects materials, will help other researchers to develop new high-performance batteries. As for the new material, "In the end, to really determine whether this is a critical material, what we need is some extended cycling," he says. "But the rate capability looks great. It looks really promising."

By Kevin Bullis

Source : Technology Review

Solar Silicon Squeeze : The rise in solar-panel use is tightening the market for silicon.

HONOLULU (AP) -- In a state where tropical sunshine is near constant and electricity costs twice the national average, solar power seems an easy answer.

But with the panels that produce the electricity already popular abroad and a batch of new domestic tax credits just kicking in, solar suppliers locally and around the globe are scrambling for stock.

''Those of us with a long vision here aren't jumping up and down,'' said Rick Reed, who has witnessed the fickleness of government incentives for his industry for 25 years. ''But we're sure happy business is good.''

The problem is that while demand for solar panels is increasing, the ability to meet that demand has not caught up, said Reed, president of the Hawaii Solar Energy Association.

The pressure could soon become even tougher in Hawaii as state politicians push for bigger incentives for residents to install the panels. Governor Linda Lingle has proposed boosting the caps on credits for single family homes from the current $1,750 (euro1,475) to $10,000 (euro8,429). The caps for businesses would double to $500,000 (euro421,478).

With a growth rate of almost 40 percent per year over the past five years, the solar panel industry is today worth $15 billion (euro12.6 billion) globally, said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

And the United States is beginning to catch on.

Citing soaring oil prices and the need for a more reliable and environmentally friendly fuel sources, a number of states and the federal government are pushing rebates and tax credits to encourage people to install solar panels on their roofs.

In a plan detailed earlier this month, President George W. Bush outlined a strategy to increase domestic solar power from its current 175 megawatts to up to 10,000 megawatts in the next decade.

Homeowners in January could begin claiming federal tax credits for installing solar power for the first time in 20 years. And in a bold move earlier this month, California energy regulators approved a plan to provide $2.9 billion (euro2.4 billion) in rebates for solar panels between 2007 and 2016.

Add to that, major government programs in Germany and Japan have already got those countries' markets humming -- and demand has quickly outstripped supply.

At the same time, however, the solar panel industry is being forced to slow down. That is because popularity has put a squeeze on the supply of the silicon, the key ingredient in the panels -- as well as the brains of computers and other high-tech gizmos.

In 2006 the solar industry is on track to use more of the silicon, known as polysilicon, than the entire semiconductor industry, Resch said.

''We've grown to such a point that there is no available polysilicon feedstock to continue to put into the solar industry so that we can grow at that rate,'' he said.

Historically solar was only a third of the market for the polysilicon also used in microchips, said Lara Chamness, senior market analyst for the trade group Semiconductor Equipment and Material International.

''But the solar guys are using more and more of the polysilicon than ever before. So that's causing a really tight supply situation and prices are going up accordingly,'' she said.

Contract prices are coming in at $70 (euro59) per kilogram, up from $30 (euro25) per kilogram just two years ago, she said.

The big players on the microchip market, such as IBM and Intel, are aware of the problem, but they are not showing any fear, she said. A spokesman for high-tech giant Intel said his company has long-term contracts with its suppliers.

And those companies use very little of the precious material in each of their products, so they can easily pass on the higher prices to customers, Chamness said. By contrast, polysilicon is the main ingredient covering the coffee table-size solar panels.

So with stocks scarce and raw material prices high, the prices for solar panels have yet to drop.

Polysilicon makers are moving to boost their supply.

Hemlock Semiconductor Corp., which is majority-owned by Dow Corning Corp., is the top supplier of polysilicon to the solar market. It is now working to double its capacity in the next two years with a $500 million (euro421 million) expansion at its Michigan facility.

The unforeseen government incentives for solar as well as the microchip industry's recovery after the dot-com bubble burst added to the unpredictability, said Marie Eckstein, vice president of advance technology and venture business at Dow Corning.

She said that for now the shortage is compelling the solar industry, which is still striving toward maturity, to find different ways to use silicon -- including less of it.

''I think we're just in startup pains,'' she said.

Reed said he's seen excitement for solar before. He's also seen it quickly fade when oil prices drop or when the White House changes hands.

But there are signs that the industry is maturing, he said, and the ups and downs aren't what matters anyway.

''At the end of the day, we're saving the world one roof at a time,'' he said.

On the Net:

Hawaii Solar Energy Association: http://www.hsea.org/ 

Solar Energy Industries Association: http://www.seia.org/

Semiconductor Equipment and Material International: http://www.semi.org/

Hemlock Semiconductor Corp.: http://www.hscpoly.com/

By Associated Press

PV Concentrator - SolFocus

SolFocus, a solar PV concentrator developer that was incubated at Xerox PARC announced they have taken in $25mm of an anticipated $32mm Series A. This comes very soon after the company's seed round back in February, which is a sign of how hot and heavy VC interest is in solar right now. Funders in this Series A include NEA, NGEN, and Yellowstone Partners. SolFocus has also recently posted listings to hire a Product Champion for their Gen One concentrator product.

Source : cleantechvc.blogspot.com

The Palo Alto Research Center, the Xerox subsidiary simply known as PARC, announced today that it is contributing core patents and long-term development support to SolFocus Inc. in exchange for equity in SolFocus and royalties from its commercial products.

SolFocus's concentrator photovoltaic technology creates electricity "using precision optical components such as lenses and mirrors to direct and 'concentrate' sunlight onto high-efficiency solar cells," according to PARC. "SolFocus's prototype solar panels are smaller, cheaper, and easier to manufacture than the flat-plate photovoltaic panels that currently dominate the market."

How much better? SolFocus CEO Gary Conley says the company's second-gen panels with PARC technology will produce electricity for half or less than the $7 per watt typically associated with flat-plate PV systems. In fact, Conley has given presentations regarding SolFocus's goal of reaching $1-per-watt for solar.

"Among the advantages of the new module: it does not use scarce silicon, it has no moving parts that could lead to mechanical failure, it has minimal components, and assembly technology is automated. Together, these features have yielded breakthrough improvements in cost, size, durability, and scalability," according to the companies.

This is all part of PARC's new clean technologies initiative, through which a research team identifies cleantech market opportunities and aggressively goes after them with a multidisciplinary approach. Joel Makower has an interesting take on PARC's move beyond the computer world to the cleantech arena. "It's a watershed moment of sorts: the birthplace of today's user-friendly computing wants to be the birthplace of tomorrow's clean and green innovations."

Reminds me of a recent interview I had with Ian MacLellan, vice-chairman and CEO of Arise Technologies Corp. in Kitchener, Ontario. Arise, with help from the University of Toronto, claims to have figured out a new lower-cost manufacturing process for solar cells based on many of the same processes used in disk drive manufacturing. The result is 18-per-cent efficient solar cells produced for less cost than a 14-per-cent efficient cell, and the company says it has already sold two years worth of product -- about 20 megawatts worth -- before the first cell has even come off the production line.

MacLellan, who in a former professional life worked in the computer industry, draws clear comparisons between the computing and solar worlds.The solar industry today, he says, "reminds me of the personal computer industry in 1982, and we're just seeing the beginning of what I think will be a multi-decade boom."

"The reason is that energy is the largest business on this planet, and we're going through a fundamental shift in energy. You have these big oil refineries, big nuclear plants, coal plants -- it's all big plants. This all reminds me of big mainframe computers, and solar is the personal computer of the energy world. We're going to go through a fundamental shift to solar, and eventually we're going to see solar farms in the desert, which will be like server farms made up of 100 of PCs."

The comparison is solid. And we all know how much things improved between 1982 and 2006. In other words, we ain't seen nothing yet.

The Ultra Battery : A new type of ultracapacitor could eventually have you throwing out your conventional batteries.

A breakthrough technology is holding forth the promise of charging electronic gadgets in minutes, never having to replace a battery again, and dropping the cost of hybrid cars. Indeed, the technology has the potential to provide an energy storage device ten times more powerful than even the latest batteries in hybrid cars -- while outliving the vehicle itself.

The new technology, developed at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems, should improve ultracapacitors, by swapping in carbon nanotubes, thereby greatly increasing the surface area of electrodes and the ability to store energy.

Ultracapacitors, a souped-up version of the capacitors widely used in electronics, have been around for decades. They're well-known for being powerful, that is, able to quickly absorb and release electricity. But they can't store much energy, so their stored electricity is depleted in a matter of seconds. As a result, they've been limited to niche applications, such as providing quick bursts of power in some hybrid transit buses.

Now researchers at MIT have found what they believe is a way to improve the endurance of ultracapacitors several-fold -- allowing the devices to retain the power and longevity advantages, while storing about as much energy as the batteries used in hybrids.

The amount of energy ultracapacitors can hold is related to the surface area and conductivity of their electrodes. The researchers have increased surface area by "more than an order of magnitude" by using carbon nanotubes, says Joel Schindall, professor of electrical engineering at MIT and one of the researchers on the project. One square centimeter of conductive plate, when coated with the nanotubes, has a surface area of about 50,000 square centimeters, compared with 2,000 square centimeters using the carbon in a commercial ultracapacitor today. The highly pure carbon nanotubes are also extremely conductive, which should increase power output over existing ultracapacitors, the researchers say.

The technology may find applications beyond hybrids, too. Ultracapacitors could allow laptops and cell phones to be charged in a minute. And, unlike laptop batteries, which start losing their ability to hold a charge after a year or two, they could still be going strong long after the device is obsolete. "Theoretically, there's no process that would cause the [ultracapacitor] to need to be replaced," says professor John Kassakian, another of the researchers.

The main hurdle the new technology is likely to face is not technical but economic. "The nanomaterials are probably a hundred or a thousand times more expensive, today, than the materials that we use," says Michael Sund, spokesperson at Maxwell Technologies, San Diego, CA, a maker of commercial ultracapacitors. "The markets that we serve are price-enabled. If our product stored a hundred times more energy, but cost a hundred times more, there might not be any market for it."

However, the MIT researchers hope that, over time, and with help from economies of scale, nanotube ultracapacitors can be made for the same cost as batteries.

The next step is to measure the performance of a device using the carbon nanotubes and to grow the nanomaterials on a flexible substrate that can be rolled into a large-scale ultracapacitor.

By Kevin Bullis

China courts clean capital

This weekend, China encouraged state and local governments to set up venture capital firms to stimulate investment in technology startups. The Middle Kingdom is already overpopulated with foreign venture capitalists.

“China is becoming a booming market with lots of international players coming to hunt for deals,”says Don Ye, CEO and president of the China Environment Fund, the leading sustainability investment fund in China, of his foreign venture capital competition. Of the billion dollars in US venture capital that has been invested in China over the last year, clean energy technologies have not gone unnoticed. The Suntech IPO in December further heightened interest in clean technologies in China, says Ye.

Yet given the vast opportunity in China, investors are expecting vastly higher returns from the greening of the world’s most populous country. China’s economy is growing at a rapid 9 percent clip each year and energy demand is keeping pace. It has targeted 20 percent of its power to come from renewables by 2020. Ye says the CEF targets returns of 25 percent and over. Sectors CEF is investing in include energy efficiency (ESCOs), LEDs, solar and bio-diesel.

Expect the domestic competition among private equity investors to become even more intense. China is lifting its 10-month ban on IPOs and launching a market for small companies, similar to NASDAQ. Both these developments will mean more exit strategies for Chinese clean technology investors.

Source : Eco Log - ecofinance.blogware.com