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EREN NETWORK NEWS -- March 6, 2002
A weekly newsletter from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE)
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Network (EREN).
<http://www.eren.doe.gov/>
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Featuring:
*News and Events
Nevada Power to Buy Wind Power from DOE's Nevada Test Site
Wave Energy Demonstrations Planned for North America
New Commercial Building Energy Codes Take Effect in Seattle
DOE and States Team Up on Clean Energy Research
Report Finds Efficiency, Clean Power Potential in U.S. South
California Electricity Report Confirms Energy Savings
*Energy Facts and Tips
Have Scientists Found A New Version of "Cold Fusion"?
*About this Newsletter
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NEWS AND EVENTS
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Nevada Power to Buy Wind Power from DOE's Nevada Test Site
Nevada Power Company announced last week that it will
buy the power from a new 85-megawatt wind power plant at
DOE's Nevada Test Site (NTS). MNS Wind Company LLC, a
joint venture of Global Renewable Energy Partners and
Siemens Energy and Automation, will build the 60-turbine
wind plant. Construction is expected to begin as soon as this
summer, and the plant should begin operating in 2003. The
wind power agreement will help Nevada Power meet the
goals of the state's Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard,
which calls for using renewable energy sources for five
percent of the company's energy sales in 2003. See the
Nevada Power press release at:
<http://www.nevadapower.com/news/releases/1014969600.html>.
The NTS, located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was
used for testing nuclear weapons until 1992. Last year, plans
were announced to build a 260-megawatt wind facility on the
site, but that facility has yet to materialize. See the January
24, 2001, edition of EREN Network News at:
<http://www.eren.doe.gov/newsletter/archives/2001/jan24_01.html>.
U.S. wind power facilities may someday be dwarfed by an
installation on the coast of our northern neighbor: a
700-megawatt offshore wind plant in the Canadian province
of British Columbia. Uniterre Resources Ltd. signed an
agreement last month with ABB New Ventures GmbH to
conduct a feasibility study for such a wind facility. The study
will examine building the plant in two phases in Hecate
Strait, at the extreme northeast tip of Haida Gwaii in the
Queen Charlotte Islands. The agreement was one of
29 business deals signed between Canada and Germany in
Berlin. See the February 19th press release by selecting
"News Releases" on Prime Minister Jean Chretien's Web
site at: <http://pm.gc.ca/default.asp?Language=E&Page=newsroom>.
Wave Energy Demonstrations Planned for North America
British Columbia may also be the site of the first wave power
facility in North America. BC Hydro, the province's electric
utility, announced last week that it will help develop a
3 to 4 megawatt ocean wave energy demonstration project
on Vancouver Island. BC Hydro signed a memorandum of
understanding with Energetech Australia Pty Ltd. for the
project. The Energetech system uses an oscillating water
column (OWC) system to produce electricity. OWC systems
consist of a large fixed tube that is open to the ocean at the
bottom and projects above the ocean surface. Waves cause
the water level in the tube, or column, to move up and down.
These oscillations push air in and out of the top of the
column, past an air-driven turbine that generates electricity.
BC Hydro is currently verifying the wave energy resource at
a site near Amphitrite Point off Ucluelet. The project is part of
a 20-megawatt Vancouver Island Green Energy
Demonstration project, which will include 10 megawatts of
wind power and 6 to 8 megawatts of micro-hydroelectric
power by 2004. See the BC Hydro press release at:
<http://eww.bchydro.bc.ca/news/2002/feb/feb02-26a.html>.
To help develop such projects in North and South America,
Energetech has established a U.S. subsidiary, Energetech
America, which it says will be based in Connecticut. See the
Energetech Web site (particularly the "What's New" section)
at: <http://www.energetech.com.au/index.html>.
BC Hydro may have some competition from down south: a
wave energy project is also being planned for the northwest
coast of Washington State. AquaEnergy Group Ltd. is
proposing to build a $2.5 million demonstration plant off
Wa'atch Point in Neah Bay. The local utility, Public Utility
District (PUD) No. 1 of Clallam County, has agreed to buy
1 megawatt of power from the project. Although the
published information on the project is limited, it was
discussed in the January 28th meeting of the PUD's
Board of Commissioners. See:
<http://www.clallampud.net/staff-minutes.htm>.
AquaEnergy's system uses a moored buoy that captures the
kinetic energy of the waves. See the AquaEnergy Web site
at: <http://www.aquaenergygroup.com/>.
California is also getting into the act: Scientists at San Diego
State University are planning to determine just how much
electricity could be produced along the state's 1,100-mile
coastline, the likely costs of generating electricity from
waves, and environmental issues that may be tied to
developing ocean wave energy systems. Their goal is to
determine the best places to deploy ocean wave energy
systems off the California coast. The California Energy
Commission (CEC) recently awarded $120,000 to the
university for these studies. See the February 28th press
release on the CEC Web site at:
<http://www.energy.ca.gov/releases/>.
To learn more about ocean wave energy, see the
Wave Energy page on EREN at:
<http://www.eren.doe.gov/RE/ocean_wave.html>.
New Commercial Building Energy Codes Take Effect in Seattle
New building energy codes for commercial buildings went
into effect in Seattle, Washington, last week. The new codes
exceed national energy efficiency standards by nearly
20 percent. Although revisions were only made to the
equipment requirements for commercial buildings (for
instance, the heating and ventilating systems), a much
broader revision of the energy codes for residential buildings
will go into effect in July. That revision -- the most significant
since 1991 -- mandates high-efficiency windows as well as
insulation R-values ranging from 21 in the walls to 38 in the
ceilings. See the City of Seattle Web site at:
<http://www.cityofseattle.net/dclu/news/20020228a.asp>.
How do builders achieve such efficiency standards
affordably? This question will be tackled at the 2002
Affordable Comfort Conference, an annual conference to
advance building performance. DOE is part sponsor of this
year's event, which takes place in Cincinnati, Ohio. See the
Affordable Comfort Web site at:
<http://www.affordablecomfort.org/home1.html>.
DOE and States Team Up on Clean Energy Research
DOE awarded nearly $10.5 million for 14 cooperative
agreements with states last week. The agreements with
state energy offices, energy associations and universities will
help to advance research in energy efficient technologies.
Four of the agreements focus on distributed generation
technologies, such as fuel cells; another four relate to
building technologies; three involve transportation
technologies; two will help industrial energy efficiency; and
one will develop fuels from waste products. For example,
one of the cooperative agreements will design and build an
advanced "brake-by-wire" system that will replace hydraulic
braking systems in advanced high-efficiency vehicles. See
the DOE press release at:
<http://www.energy.gov/HQPress/releases02/febpr/pr02031.htm>.
Report Finds Efficiency, Clean Power Potential in U.S. South
The southeastern United States can reduce its production of
carbon dioxide while cutting nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide
emissions through energy efficiency, renewable energy, and
other clean energy sources, according to a new report from
the Renewable Energy Policy Project. The report finds that
biomass, wind power, natural gas, and distributed generation
sources, combined with energy efficiency, can allow the
region to reduce its air emissions from power generation
without increasing the cost of electricity. See the REPP
report on the Powering the South Web site at:
<http://www.poweringthesouth.org/report/>.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which serves
Tennessee and parts of surrounding states, is in a key
position to influence power development in the South. TVA's
Green Power Switch program just signed on seven new East
Tennessee distributors of green power, and is working on
plans to add 20 megawatts of wind power by 2003. TVA
recently received 20 proposals for wind facilities ranging
from 20 to 60 megawatts in capacity. See the TVA Green
Power Switch News at:
<http://www.tva.gov/greenpowerswitch/newsletter/vol2_1/index.htm>.
To further advance green power in the South, the 2002
Southeast Green Power Summit will be held in Raleigh,
North Carolina, in early May. See the Southeast Green
Power Network Web site at:
<http://www.southeastgreenpower.net/>.
California Electricity Report Confirms Energy Savings
The California Energy Commission (CEC) released last
week its formal report on the state's actions during last
summer's electricity crisis. The report confirms that
conservation efforts helped cut overall electricity use by
6.7 percent throughout the state, while the summer peak
electricity demand was cut by 10 percent. The report says
that energy conservation programs, and not weather or
economic factors, were responsible for the drop in electricity
use. See the CEC Web site, which includes links to the full
report and the accompanying press release from Governor
Gray Davis, at: <http://www.energy.ca.gov/>.
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ENERGY FACTS AND TIPS
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Have Scientists Found A New Version of "Cold Fusion"?
As renewable energy and energy efficiency continues to
advance in strides, a new energy competitor may be on the
horizon: a low-temperature means of achieving nuclear
fusion. Research to be published in Friday's edition of the
journal Science suggests that the explosive collapse of
bubbles in a liquid may be able to trigger nuclear fusion
reactions. Nuclear fusion, the source of energy for the sun,
generally requires extremely high temperatures and
pressures to occur.
The new research was driven by the phenomenon of
"sonoluminescence" -- the emission of light from the collapse
of bubbles in a liquid. First observed randomly during studies
of pumps, the phenomenon was reproduced in the early
1990s by passing sound through a liquid (a mixture of water
and glycerin was found to work well). The results are
intriguing to physicists, since a sound wave with a low
energy density can create bubbles that emitted energetic
light, suggesting that the bubbles were reaching
temperatures of more than 10,000 degrees Celsius, and
possibly more than 1 million degrees Celsius. This
suggested that these small bubbles might get hot enough to
achieve nuclear fusion. See "Sonoluminescence: an
Introduction" on the Web site of DOE's Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory at:
<http://www-phys.llnl.gov/N_Div/sonolum/>.
The new research -- performed by scientists at DOE's Oak
Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, and the Russian Academy of Sciences -- used
acetone as the liquid, and replaced the hydrogen atoms in
the acetone with deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen
that fuses more easily with itself to make helium. And
although the experiment occurred at low temperatures, it
was hardly a low energy process: the researchers
bombarded the acetone with neutrons at energies of
14 million electron volts to help generate bubbles in the
liquid. According to the researchers, small but statistically
significant amounts of tritium were detected, suggesting that
nuclear fusion might have taken place. However, the
researchers have had mixed results when attempting to
detect the neutrons that would be emitted by a fusion
reaction.
The deputy director of ORNL suggests "a cautionary view"
toward the experiments until further experiments can confirm
the results -- an understandable view, considering the
controversy created by the announced discovery of "cold
fusion" in 1989. If the research holds up, however, it will
provide a new technique for creating nuclear fusion, a
process that holds vast potential for energy production. See
the ORNL press release at:
<http://www.ornl.gov/Press_Releases/current/mr20020305-00.html>.
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ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
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