Like Putting Lightning in a Bottle

Energy is all around us.

Wind, solar, hydro, tidal, geothermal – all of these alt-power sources are so promising because they are able to harness the energy created by the very forces of nature, rather than by consuming finite resources.

Now, perhaps we can add a new option to this list. Brazilian researchers say they have developed a way to extract electricity from the atmosphere. That’s right, just pull power from the air.

Everyone knows the skies are full of electricity – ever see a wild lightning storm? Now that’s a lot of energy!

But until now, nobody really knew how this power was generated. The key, it turns out, is water.

The old thinking was that water droplets in the air were electrically neutral, but scientists at Brazil’s University of Campinas have proven otherwise. In fact, water picks up charges from dust particles in the air, and the more humidity in the air, the more electricity is being stored. Makes sense, since lighting is usually accompanied by heavy rain.

Fernando Galembeck, lead researcher on the project, found “clear evidence that water in the atmosphere can accumulate electrical charges and transfer them to other materials it comes into contact with.

Galembeck calls this effect “hygroelectricity,” or “humidity electricity.”

Though this is still just a lab project, Galembeck says it could be possible to commercialize the concept and create hygroelectricity collectors that would draw electricity from the air that could be routed to homes or businesses. These would be most effective in regions with high-humidity, including many developing countries.

One extra benefit: siphoning off power from the air would electricity from accumulating in the air, and perhaps head off any damage caused by lighting strikes. Though we might miss watching those really dramatic lighting storms.

Poor Planning

Remember way back in 2007, when we tweaked the United Kingdom for building wind farms in areas that don’t get enough wind?

Well, we have a similar problem here now; according an article in Wired magazine, a significant number of turbines in rural areas, especially in west Texas and Iowa, are situated in sparsely populated areas that lack the high-power lines needed to carry electricity back to the big cities where it’s needed.

The problem is so bad that some operators actually have to pay the local utilities to take surplus electricity off their hands, instead of selling the juice they feed into the grid. (Technically, it’s called “negative electricity pricing.”) Wow, that just seems amazingly… dumb.

Why does this happen? Well, here’s the part that does make a little sense. Wind farms take up space, a lot of space, and people in the cities and the suburbs don’t want to devote precious acreage to turbines. Hello, NIMBY politics!

Out in the country, of course, there’s a lot of space, often filled with struggling farmers who see windmills as a potential new source of revenue. Tax subsidies for running wind farms makes turbines even more appealing. But the low populations in these areas (as well in the deserts and other undeveloped areas where wind and solar projects spring up) mean utilities have never built the transmission lines needed to bring the juice back where it’s needed.

One expert says developers can build a wind farm in a year or two, but it takes about five years to install the transmission lines needed to carry the power back to the cities. And that’s assuming there aren’t any bureaucratic headaches getting the rights to string the wires through public and private lands.

The lesson here is that government incentives, like the ones that encourage people to build alt-energy project, are good, but they also need to be smart. And sometimes it seems like “smart” and “planning” are two words that rarely go together.

Winds of Change

So there are some signs of positive change.

According to data released this week by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, overall power consumption in the United States is falling, and the amount of energy generated by renewable sources is climbing.

Power generated from coal, natural gas and petroleum in 2009 is down from the year before, according to the new figures, while solar, hydroelectric, geothermal and, most significantly, wind all gained.

Total power usage in the U.S. was 94.6 quadrillion BTUs last year, down about 4.6 percent. In part, the decline in overall power use is tied to the recession – less economic activity means people and businesses use less power, researchers say. Another key factor was the growing use of energy-efficient appliances.

Meanwhile, renewable power sources became a more important part of the mix. Wind saw one of the biggest spikes, up more than 37 percent, to 0.7 quadrillion BTUs. And since most of that fed right into the grid, it offset the need for coal-fired electricity plants.

"The increase in renewables is a really good story, especially in the wind arena," Lawrence Labs researcher A.J. Simon told Science Daily. "It's a result of very good incentives and technological advancements. In 2009, the technology got better and the incentives remained relatively stable. The investments put in place for wind in previous years came online in 2009. Even better, there are more projects in the pipeline for 2010 and beyond."

Wind Power Dangerous to Birds

Birds, bats and wind turbines – still a bad combination.

Researchers are studying wind farm in the Northwest to determine their impact on the local raptor population (that’s hawks, eagles, vultures and other big birds of prey). Big wind farms, naturally, are located in areas with strong, consistent wind patterns; unfortunately, those winds are also appealing to large birds, allowing them to glide for hours while scouting for prey. And when a diving hawk comes into contact with the whirring blade of a wind turbine, well it’s not pretty. Turbines also are a danger to bats, for all the same reasons.

“It’s like a crime scene,” says one researcher in this article from The Seattle Times, who’s been keeping track of the number of bird-kills for the wind-power industry. The initial results show that wind power is not a major threat to wildlife (but the studies were commissioned by the power companies, so were you really expecting a different answer?).

Still, this is an issue that won’t go away. I covered it back in 2005, when the Altamont Pass wind farm in California was temporarily shut down so environmental researchers could find a way to minimize the number of bird kills. A 2004 report found 880 to 1,300 raptors were killed at Altamont every year, including red-tailed hawks and the federally protected golden eagle.

The best answer, it seems, is finding locations for wind farms without a major population of raptors. Of course, if you don’t do your homework, then a big wind farm will eventually make sure the local area doesn’t have a substantial raptor population.

Focus On: Tidal Energy

Tidal power has always been one of our favorite ideas, and now it’s starting to evolve from cool theoretical concept to a practical source of energy.

Ocean Power Technologies is one of the front-runners here, with ongoing projects in Australia, Spain, two in the United Kingdom, Hawaii, New Jersey and two in Oregon.

Most of these are small deployments, mainly to test the technology, but the Oregon projects are noteworthy because they are slated to be full-scale, commercial power wave parks. In Coos Bay, OPT has proposed installing up to 200 of its PowerBuoys about 2.7 miles offshore, enough to generate up to 100 MW – the company says this will be the largest wave-power plant in the world.

Not far up the coast, in Reedsport, OPT expects 10 PowerBuoys offshore. It’s currently waiting for all the necessary federal permits; if it actually happens, it will be the first such commercial wave power site on the West Coast.

OPT has been testing the PowerBuoy near Atlantic City for more than two years, but the energy produced is simply dissipated. (These are big machines – see the pic above.)

Wave power is simple, in theory, but really hard to pull off. Like windmills, these systems convert kinetic energy into electricity. As the tide and waves move, the PowerBuoys move up and down, generating power.

Tide power has some key advantages over other green energy concepts. The tides, they never stop, so there’s a seemingly infinite supply here, and it could be more consistent than wind power. Plus, the tide is everywhere, so tidal power systems could be installed in a wide variety of sites.

But the sea is a very tough environment. Water and salt don’t mix well with electricity, metal and electronics, and it’s tough to send out a maintenance crew. But OPT’s systems seem to be holding up over time, so maybe we’ll see more of these. In fact, despite these not-so-trivial challenges, the main hurdle may not be the technology, but the regulatory process (see Cape Wind).

A Modest Proposal

I have to give these guys plenty of credit for being bold.

As part of an effort to come up with a series of futuristic projects that could remake the world of tomorrow, researchers at the Japanese tech company Shimuzu Corp. have suggested turning the surface of the moon into a massive solar power plant.

Wow. That’s really all I have to say about that.

The idea behind the Luna Belt, as they call it, is to build a series of enormous solar arrays all the way around the moon’s equator, nearly 7,000 miles. It would initially be a few miles thick, and would eventually grow to as wide as 250 miles.

The power would be beamed back to Earth via lasers or microwave, and then converted into electricity.

And how would this enormous project be built, you might ask. Good question. Shimuzu says that much of it could be constructed using the rocks and dust found on the moon, including cement, bricks and glass fibers, and most of the work could be handled by robots. Shimuzu even says it can combine hydrogen with moon dust to generate water (but it’s BYOH from home, unfortunately).

Modestly, the company says the idea will lead to “the infinite coexistence of mankind and the Earth.”

Tilting at (Green) Windmills

Cape Wind makes the cover of The New Yorker!

This totally awesome image says so so much about this project’s years-long approval process. Which, by the way, is still not over even though Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave it the thumb’s up last month.

Native American groups still oppose the wind farm, which they say desecrates sacred ground. That’s an argument that may still carry some weight, I think, though other groups that claimed the project could interfere with fishermen and wildlife probably have little ground to continue their appeals.

But this cover – so fun. A pilgrim (that would be Cape Cod locals, I assume) riding a whale (to represent fishermen? Or is that pro-environmental groups?) tilting at windmills. Are they saying the whole Cape Wind debate was a Don Quixote-style fight they could never win? A total waste of time?

But for who – Cape Cod residents who opposed the wind farm project, or environmentalists who embrace green energy?

The ambiguity is the best part.