Imagining a world with wind turbines in every neighborhood

When Professor Richard McMahon, a senior lecturer in the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering, closes his eyes, he sees a future powered by the wind. He envisions a day when wind turbines are as common as trees in the courtyards on his campus. He sees small generators built to be aesthetically pleasing as well as energy efficient. While thousands of massive wind turbines now dot the countryside of England, producing renewable energy with impressive results, small wind turbines in more urban settings are costly, noisy, complex systems that aren’t very reliable.

So, Richard, doctoral students from the University of Cambridge and experts from Texas Instruments have teamed up to make small scale wind turbines a viable energy option.

Before they could get started with their research, they had to solve one big problem – creating a system to simulate the wind. Without a wind emulator, the team could not conduct any sort of testing and would be forced to rely on the ups and downs of Mother Nature. So, the team decided to build their own wind emulator to mimic wind speeds and direction.

“In order to test systems, we need reproducible conditions. It is very hard to go outside and get reproducible wind conditions. You might be waiting a very long time,” said Richard.

With the wind emulator in place, the team looked at opportunities to optimize how the energy is transferred from the turbine to the generator and then onto the electrical grid. While engineers can control a lot of these factors, the challenge for the team came in the lack of control over wind speed or direction.

“How do you get the maximum power from the wind and put it on the grid when the wind can quickly change in different ways?” said Dave Freeman, TI (Texas Instruments) Fellow and chief technologist for TI’s Power Management business.

 

The team narrowed their focus on sensors in the wind turbine, finding many sensors involving turbine and generator speed add unnecessary cost and unreliable mechanics. To resolve this issue, the team has been experimenting with a third-party real time operating system controlling the generator, with the end-goal of putting the system onto a TI microcontroller or digital signal processor.

After more extensive testing with their newly built wind emulator, the team hopes to take their innovation into the real world and possibly make small scale wind turbines a commercially attractive option.

“Let’s test it out with the wind emulator, and then, with TI, we can put forward an offering to companies making small wind turbines,” said Richard.

Dave said the collaboration with the University of Cambridge has been a big win for everyone involved. TI provided funding and know-how with the chips and control systems while the University of Cambridge offered wind energy expertise and access to students with bright engineering minds.He said the research could be done in Kilby Labs, but it was a much better use of resources to work with a university that already had experience and expertise in the wind energy field.

Because of the research done by TI and the University of Cambridge, small scale wind turbines may no longer be labeled costly, noisy, complex systems that aren’t very reliable. Soon, Richard might not have to close his eyes to see wind turbines in his neighborhood.

ORIGINAL: TI

Around TI
Jan 23 2014

Chemist Hopes 'Artificial Leaf' Can Power Civilization Using Photosynthesis

ORIGINAL: Yahoo News
By Carrie Halperin
Jun 3, 2013

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Imagine an artificial leaf that mimics photosynthesis, which lets plants harness energy from the sun. But this leaf would have the ability to power your homes and cars with clean energy using only sunlight and water.

This is not some far-off idea of the future. It's reality, and the subject of a jury-prize-winning film in the GE Focus Forward Film Competition.

Jared P. Scott and Kelly Nyks' short film, " The Artificial Leaf," showcases chemist Daniel Nocera, the inventor of the artificial leaf, a device that he says can power the world.

"The truth is stranger than fiction," Kelly Nyks, a partner at PF Pictures, told ABC News. "What I think is so exciting is that Dan has taken this science and applied it in a way that makes bringing it to scale to solve the energy crisis for the planet real and possible."

Nocera's leaf is simply a silicon wafer coated with catalysts that use sunlight to split water to into hydrogen and oxygen components.

"Essentially, it mimics photosynthesis," Nocera told ABC News.

The gases that bubble up from the water can be turned into a fuel to produce electricity in the form of fuel cells. The device may sound like science fiction fantasy, but Nocera said he hopes one day it will provide an alternative to the centralized energy system - the grid.

Worldwide, more than 1.6 billion people live without access to electricity and 2.6 billion people live without access to clean sources of fuel for cooking.

"This is the model: We're going to have a very distributed energy system," Nocera told ABC News. With the leaf, "using just sunlight and water, you can be off the grid. If you're poor, you don't have a grid, so this gives them a way to have energy in the day and at night."

With just the artificial leaf, 1.5 bottles of drinking water and sunlight, you could have enough electricity to power a small home, but the cost is still a problem, though Nocera said he believes that will come down with time and research.

The artificial leaf is cheaper than solar panels but still expensive. Hydrogen from a solar panel and electrolysis unit can currently be made for about $7 per kilogram; the artificial leaf would come in at $6.50.

Nocera is looking for ways to drive down the costs make these devices more widely available. He recently replaced the platinum catalyst that produces hydrogen gas with a less-expensive nickel-molybdenum-zinc compound. He's also looking for ways to reduce the amount of silicon needed.

In 2009, Nocera's artificial leaf was selected as a recipient of funding by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E), which supports energy technologies that could create a more secure and affordable American future.

Nyks and Scott said they hope "The Artificial Leaf" will bring awareness to the public that sustainable energy solutions do exist.

"We make films for social action," Scott, also a partner at PF Pictures, told ABC News. "We see films as a tool for social change. And what I think Dan sketches out is that we start with energy. And if we solve the energy crisis, we'll solve the climate crisis, and then we'll solve the water crisis, and then we'll solve the food crisis. But it starts with energy."

30 filmmaking teams were asked to make a movie that could highlight an innovation that could change the world as part of GE Focus Forward, a series of three-minute films created by award-winning documentary makers including Alex Gibney, Lucy Walker, Albert Maysles and Morgan Spurlock. Nyks and Scott won a jury prize in a related global competition.

Dan Nocera, inventor of the artificial leaf.

Anyone with an Internet connection has access to the videos online. All the films are featured at focusforwardfilms.com.

So far, total media impressions for GE Focus Forward have exceeded 1.5 billion. In addition, the films are screening at all the major film festivals around the world and have played on every continent, including Antarctica.

Nyks and Scott said they hope to take the success of the short and turn it into a feature-length documentary. 

Growth of 'distributed' electricity could transform utility systems

ORIGINAL: Princeton
By Steven Schultz

May 02, 2013

The U.S. electric utility industry faces a critical juncture as new technology and declining prices allow a more "distributed" system of small-scale generators, renewable energy installations and energy efficiency strategies, according to a group of high-level energy industry executives and regulators who met at Princeton University. 

Jon Wellinghoff (right), chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, speaks with Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. (Photos by Frank Wojciechowski)

"We have a monumental challenge," said Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who participated in the all-day meeting Friday, April 26. Citing commentary by an analyst who warned of a potential "train wreck" in the industry, Wellinghoff outlined converging tends in which technological advances are allowing consumers and companies to take matters of reliability, security and efficiency into their own hands, while utility companies are under pressure to maintain and upgrade a national electricity system that is broadly accessible.

"Everybody saw the Super Bowl," Wellinghoff said, referring to the half-hour blackout that disrupted the 2013 football championship. "Everybody saw the outages in lower Manhattan [after Hurricane Sandy] very graphically. People will want to have more control. People will want the ability to flip the switch and know that when they flip the switch they are in control."

Noting that such independent systems — known in the industry as distributed energy — create significant potential benefits to society, Wellinghoff called on the 31 assembled executives, regulators and academic researchers to look for agreement about how to set prices that encourage innovation, while continuing to fund the infrastructure needed for people and businesses that rely on centralized, public systems.

The meeting was hosted by the Princeton Energy and Environment Corporate Affiliates Program, which is administered through the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment in partnership with the School of Architecture, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Princeton Environmental Institute. The energy company PSEG, which participated in the roundtable, is a charter member of the program.

Anne Hoskins, senior vice president for sustainability and public affairs at PSEG, is a visiting scholar at Princeton. PSEG is a charter member of the University's Energy and Evironment Corporate Affiliates Program.Anne Hoskins, senior vice president for public affairs and sustainability at PSEG and a visiting research scholar at the Andlinger Center, organized the meeting along with Travis Bradford, an associate professor in international and public affairs at Columbia University.

"We decided it was critical to bring the major players together to discuss a new approach for valuing distributed energy and to do it in a neutral and thought-provoking environment, which Princeton provides," Hoskins said.

Participants included two senior administrators at the U.S. Department of Energy; the heads of the public utility boards of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York; the chief executives of two major public utilities, the CEO of a regional transmission organization; the CEO of a competitive solar energy company; the founder of an energy efficiency company, as well as the presidents of solar industry advocacy groups, consumer and environmental advocacy groups and industry consulting groups.

Lynn Loo, professor of chemical and biological engineering and associate director for external partnerships at Princeton's Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.

Participating Princeton faculty included Robert Socolow, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; Warren Powell, professor of operations research and financial engineering; Amy Craft, lecturer in economics and public affairs; and Lynn Loo, associate director for external partnerships at the Andlinger Center and professor of chemical and biological engineering.