Archive for On Grid
June 19, 2007 at 4:39 pm · Filed under Bio Fuel, Green Tech, On Grid, Video, Wind Power, hybrids
Google.org – the philanthropic arm of Google – yesterday lauched an exciting project that offers a glimpse of a smarter energy future: cars that plug into an electric grid powered by solar energy. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles can quadruple the fuel economy of the average car on the road today. As Google.org demonstrated at yesterday’s event, plug-in hybrids can sell power back to the electric grid when it’s needed most through vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology
Google.org’s core missions is to address climate change. In the U.S., transportation contributes about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions –- with more than 60 percent of those emissions coming from personal vehicles. By accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrids and vehicle-to-grid (“V2G”) technologies, this new project, RechargeIT.org, aims to reduce emissions and dependence on oil while promoting clean energy technologies and increasing consumer choice. Linking the U.S. transportation system to the electricity grid maximizes the efficiency of our energy system. From these efforts, we believe the environment will benefit – and consumers will have more choices to fuel their cars.
We’ve been working with Google engineers and Hymotion/A123Systems to build a small fleet of plug-in hybrids, adding an external plug and additional batteries to a regular hybrid car so that it runs on electricity with gasoline (or even better, biofuels) to extend the driving range for longer trips. Here’s what it looks like:
[youtube]oDjSbWTJbdo[/youtube]
February 11, 2007 at 5:46 pm · Filed under DIY Projects, Green Tech, On Grid, Solar
I promised to tell you more about our use of solar energy. After having re-build our house last year we now make us of solar energy in 3 ways:
* Solar cells for 220 Volt on-grid electricity
* Solar panels for heating water combined with floor heating
* Passive heating through a huge thermo glass area facing south.
First we got the photo-voltaic cells. Our roof is perfect for this, facing south in an angel of 45. The disadvantage of this system is the price, but in 2003 we got selected for a project called “Sun 2000″ in which different organizations and state subsidies paid 60 pct. of the total price. Our price was about 6.000 euro, but what really made this project interesting from a financial perspective was the agreement with the local power company: The system is build to produce 220 V and it is connected to the grid. Normally if you produce electricity for the grid you will only get paid the basic price pr. kW. But when you buy you will have to pay the basic price plus taxes. Since the taxes make about 3/4 of the power bill this would not be interesting for at all. Instead we now can sell power at the same price as we buy as longs as we produce less than we use pr. year. This is great because the system produces about 1/3 of our total power consumption. The system is build of 6 BP panels at 170 WP each which will produces about 800 – 1000 kWh/year. To generate 220 V for the grid and our own use we have 1 Fronius micro inverter. This is no in longer in production, but has been replaced by a new series of Fronius inverters, the IG series. Read the rest of this entry »
January 10, 2007 at 4:20 pm · Filed under Green Tech, On Grid
I am having a meeting with the Danish company EC-Power in a couple of days. They had seen some of my articles in Berlingske Tidende about renewable energy and thought I might be able to help doing some PR for their products. This post is not to promote EC-Power, but I find their products and approach very promising.
EC-Power has developed a gas/oil generator that produces electricity. This is a known technology, but the machine, XRGI, is also used for heating water. This heat is normally wasted. In general, the production of 1 kilowatt of power creates 2 kilowatts of usable heat energy.
From the EC-Power website:
“The extremely high efficiency of EC Power Micro CHP systems is dramatically superseeding ordinary energy technology.
By comparison, traditional electricity production has an efficiency of only 30 – 40%. Thus, the EC Power Combined Heat and Power solution can reduce energy bills by 40 – 60%, or increase efficiency by more than 100% – a considerable improvement. Furthermore, the EC Power solution will reduce future investments in the energy infrastructure. By decentralising energy production, the need for new, regional transmission systems for heating and power will be diminished and transmission losses, a substantial cost factor in any centralised energy supply system, will be greatly reduced or become non-existent.”
The system is in use several places in Denmark and other European markets. One of the great future prospects of the technology is that it very easy can be convertet to operate with fuel cells. EC-Power was bought by Norwegian Statoil some years ago.
Link to video.
