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Arab countries urge solar future
Vanya Walker-Leigh, Times of Malta
Palmyra, Syria — Arab energy ministers and some EU politicians attending a high-level conference in this desert oasis town flanked by the ruins of a vast Roman city, announced support for a revolutionary renewable energy electricity supply system proposed by Germany to link both areas.
The Damascus Declaration adopted here on June 24 by them as well as the several hundred participants (scientists, industrialists, civil servants) at the Fourth Middle East and North Africa Renewable Energy Conference (MENAREC4) advocated “large-scale renewable energy systems” which would permit solar electricity to the EU. All nations were invited to set national renewable energy targets, and donors were asked to massively increase related assistance.
…”A German Aerospace Centre study has shown that solar thermal power plants located in the Arab countries could make a significant contribution to future EU energy supplies. Single plants are already under construction in Morocco, Algeria and Egypt and planned for Libya and Jordan.”
Entitled ‘Trans-Mediterranean Interconnection for Concentrating Solar Power (Trans CSP)”, the study advocates an integrated EU-MENA energy system which would ensure by 2050 that 80 per cent of the two regions’ electricity supplies would be derived from renewable sources, the balance from fossil fuels but with no role for nuclear energy.
Arab CSP plants (comprising desert-based arrays of curved mirrors reflecting solar radiation on to either absorber tubes or towers) would supply national demand for power, heating and cooling while also exporting electricity to the EU via trans-Mediterranean High Voltage Direct Current transmission lines, to be connected to existing EU grids. Renewable energy produced in Europe – whether from CSP plants in the south as well as wind, geothermal, hydropower and biomass – would also be fed in to the new system.
Large-scale CSP-powered seawater desalination (Aqua CSP) could be associated with the new EU-MENA system; solar energy received on each square kilometre of desert land can be used to generate electricity to desalinate 165,000 cubic metres a day (or 60 million cubic metres a year). Rapid introduction of this technology could terminate unsustainable regional water resource use by 2030, the study finds.
(8 July 2007)
New battery packs powerful punch
Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
Batteries have long been vital to laptops and cellphones. They are increasingly supplying electricity to an unlikely recipient: the power grid itself.
Until recently, large amounts of electricity could not be efficiently stored. Thus, when you turn on the living-room light, power is instantly drawn from a generator.
A new type of a room-size battery, however, may be poised to store energy for the nation’s vast electric grid almost as easily as a reservoir stockpiles water, transforming the way power is delivered to homes and businesses. Compared with other utility-scale batteries plagued by limited life spans or unwieldy bulk, the sodium-sulfur battery is compact, long-lasting and efficient.
Using so-called NaS batteries, utilities could defer for years, and possibly even avoid, construction of new transmission lines, substations and power plants, says analyst Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. They make wind power — wildly popular but frustratingly intermittent — a more reliable resource.
(6 July 2007)
Commercial Wavegen marine energy plant to be built in Spain
Staff, Inside Green Tech
What its developers call the “first commercial breakwater wave energy plant” is to be built on the Spanish Atlantic coast for the Basque Energy Board, Ente Vasco de Energia.
The modestly-sized installation is to feature Voith Siemens Hydro Power Generation’s wave equipment, acquired in Siemens’ purchase of Wavegen earlier this year.
The new plant in Mutriku, in Northern Spain, is to be based on Wavegen’s Oscillating Water Column (OWC) technology, which has been successfully field tested in Scotland for seven years. ..
(3 July 2007)
Geothermal Potential in the Gulf of Mexico
Karl Gawell, Renewable Energy Access
..A geopressured resource consists of hot brine (salty water) saturated with methane (natural gas) found in large, deep aquifers that are under higher pressure due to water trapped in the burial process. These resources are often found at depths of 3 to 6 km (2 to 4 miles). Water temperature can range from 90 to 200 degrees C (190 to 390 degrees F). Geopressured resources are present in several areas of the country, ranging from California and the Dakotas to Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. This prime resource is considered to be abundant in the area around the Gulf of Mexico, both onshore and offshore.
An oil field co-produced resource makes use of wells already drilled by the oil and gas industry that are either deep enough to encounter hot water, or could be deepened into these hot zones. To the oil industry, producing hot water is at best a nuisance. It is difficult to handle, costs money to pump, and has to be reinjected at an additional cost. What better way to use this hot water byproduct than to produce free, renewable, reliable electricity?
Southern Methodist University (SMU) researchers have documented the large amounts of hot water produced by existing oil and gas wells. In West Texas, for example, for every barrel of oil produced, nearly 100 barrels of hot water are co-produced. In 2002, Texas produced over 12 billion barrels of waste (often hot) water as a byproduct of oil and gas extraction, which was reinjected into the ground at a cost to the producer. ..
(3 July 2007)
