Sub's Alternative Energy Thread

[SubGod22]

This could be a bigger deal in certain areas. It's already been used successfully in the UK, Canada, Spain and The Netherlands.

Old Coal Mine Filled With Warm Water Has Been Heating a Town with Green Energy for 6 Months

Britain’s deep coal mines have become a surprising source of green energy, one that’s been heating the town of Gateshead successfully for 6 months.

The scheme is believed to be replicable in areas with extensive abandoned mine works, and offers a kind of renewable redemption for a nation with a long history of dirty energy.

Gateshead Council’s mine water project launched in March 2023 and now has a large central heat pump that provides low-carbon heating to 350 high-rise buildings, an art gallery, a college, an industrial park, and several office buildings.

As oil and gas gradually replaced coal, Britain’s hundreds of miles of coal mining tunnels were gradually abandoned over the decades. Inundated by flood waters that became heated by the Earth’s core, Britain suddenly had a semi-naturally occurring geothermal energy source to harvest.

At certain depths, mine water can sit at over 100° Fahrenheit, or precisely 45°C. The renewable energy use here involves pumping the water into home heat pumps which further raises the temperature.

The super-hot mine water then heats the interior space and home water supply. After the heat is expended the water is sent back down to the mine where it’s naturally reheated. Huge advantages come with this kind of heating, including the fact that the water isn’t affected by the winter or the summer, and the water can also be used to cool homes.

“Recovering heat from mine water below the ground within abandoned coal mines provides an exciting opportunity to generate a low carbon, secure supply of heat, benefitting people living or working in buildings on the coalfields,” Gareth Farr, head of heat and by-product innovation at the Coal Authority, told Euronews.

[SubGod22]

A concept car that could potentially lead to better options in areas that receive a lot of sun.

Students Build World's First Off-Road Solar-Powered SUV - and Drive it Across Morocco

Students in The Netherlands have designed a solar-powered SUV that doubles as a small camper van to produce the ultimate concept car for off-grid adventure in sunny climes.

Driving it 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) across Morocco, the Stella Terra as it’s called showed a wide variety of advantages over existing electric SUVs.

“Morocco has a huge variety of landscapes and different surfaces in quite a short distance,” says Thieme Bosman, events manager for the TUE team. He told CNN the car was tested “on every type of surface that a car like this could encounter.”

The wide sloping roof has inbuilt solar panels that charge the electric battery while the car is driving. This allowed the creators, students from Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE), to shave off the weight of the battery packs, creating a lighter car that used less electricity to power.

By shaving off weight wherever possible and crafting the Stella Terra’s body panels to have an aerodynamic shape, the car is just 2,645 pounds (1,200 kilograms), about 25% less than similar electric SUVs.

It’s also added up to a longer range of around 710 kilometers (441 miles) on roads, and around 550 kilometers (342 miles) off-road, plus or minus 50 for cloudy or sunny weather, plus or minus a bit more because car makers are notoriously untrustworthy when reporting range.

The team drove it from Tangier through the Rif Mountains, down to Fes and up the high mountain tracks near Midelt, Morocco’s highest town, and back down to the Sahara Desert area where it faced loose sandy tracks.

[SubGod22]

And a way to potentially make hydrogen cheaper

Chicken Feathers Can Replace "Forever Chemicals" inside Renewable Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Lowering Cost

With a brilliant idea that could clear two hurdles in one leap for renewable energy sources, scientists at ETH Zurich have discovered a way to use chicken feathers to manufacture a critical component for hydrogen fuel cells.

Hydrogen fuel cells can generate both emissions-free energy and a volatile portable fuel similar to diesel, but at the moment they are manufactured with so-called “forever chemicals” that are toxic in certain quantities and don’t biodegrade in any way.

On the other hand, chicken is an invaluable part of the food supply but comes with 40 million metric tons annually of feathers that are incinerated as a waste product that produces CO2 and other toxic gases as well.

This is where the team at ETH in collaboration with Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has come up with a brilliant solution of using the feathers instead of the chemicals, thereby sparing the environment on both ends in two different ways, and potentially lowering the cost of hydrogen adoption.

“I’ve devoted a number of years to researching different ways we can use food waste for renewable energy systems,” says Raffaele Mezzenga, Professor of Food and Soft Materials at ETH Zurich.

“Our latest development closes a cycle: we’re taking a substance that releases CO2 and toxic gases when burned and used it in a different setting: with our new technology it not only replaces toxic substances, but also prevents the release of CO2, decreasing the overall carbon footprint cycle,” he adds.

Fuel cells create hydrogen fuel by separating the hydrogen from the oxygen in water. At the heart of the fuel cell lies a semipermeable membrane that allows protons to pass through but leaves electrons behind to escape via an external circuit from the negatively charged anode to the positively charged cathode: thereby creating a current that can be harnessed for electricity.

[pinstripers]

https://www.nj.com/news/2023/11/njs-major-offshore-wind-plans-just-imploded-why-it-matters-what-happens-next.html

[Atxshoxfan]

https://www.nj.com/news/2023/11/njs-...pens-next.html

I believe there were more than just the ones in Jersey that were cancelled.
To go along with that a few automakers are pulling production of EVs back do to slow sales and losses financially. Joes heralded Electric bus maker also filed for bankruptcy.
I'm sure all of this will get resolved by handing out our tax dollars to cover the losses. They will probably make further consumer mandates to insure these vehicles are purchased sooner.
This is a real tragedy. I believe that only gives about 5 or 6 more years before earth kills us all. I'd have to check with AOC for the exact time table to be sure.

[SubGod22]

Scientists Engineered a Bacteria to Eat Plastic Bottles and Transforming Them into Useful Liquids

Plastic-chomping bacteria could transform plastic bottles into make-up, drugs, and perfumes, according to a new study.

University of Edinburgh scientists engineered a simple E. coli bacteria to eat our litter and regurgitate it into something else. Writing in ACS Central Science, the researchers announced it was the first “one-pot” solution for making plastic waste useful, or valorizing it, using microbes.

Mountains of disposable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles are thrown out every day. The world produces millions of tons of PET a year, over 80% of which is for single-use products.

The E. coli can upcycle discarded PET into adipic acid, widely relied on in cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and fragrance industries.

Adipic acid is generally created by an energy-intensive process that’s reliant on fossil fuels, and the team hopes their study will encourage industries to use fossil alternatives.

“This approach enables the upcycling of waste carbon from existing industrial processes to create circular economies, avoiding the environmental consequences of landfill and/or incineration processes,” write the authors.

“Although chemical and biological approaches to the depolymerization and recycling of PET waste are being investigated, bio-upcycling technologies to convert plastic waste into higher value small molecules are less established.”

“Herein we report the first one-pot bioproduction of adipic acid from terephthalic acid and terephthalate waste in engineered Escherichia coli.”

[SubGod22]

Efficiencies increased

Solar panel world record smashed with ‘miracle material’ (msn.com)

A team from the Chinese solar technology firm Longi set a new world record of 33.9 per cent for a silicon-perovskite tandem solar cell, breaking the previous record set in May this year by King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia.

The new efficiency record also broke the theoretical limit of 33.7 per cent for the first time of standard single junction cells, which are found in commercial solar panels.

“This provides meaningful empirical data to demonstrate the advantage of crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem solar cells over crystalline silicon single junction solar cells in terms of efficiency,” the company noted in a statement.

“The emergence of crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem technology has opened up a new track for the development of next-generation high-efficiency solar cell technology. This means that the same area, absorbing the same light, can emit more electricity.”

The theoretical efficiency limit of silicon-perovskite tandem solar cells is 43 per cent, however this level is unlikely to ever be realised on a commercial scale.

The first production of ultra-efficient perovskite solar panels could begin in China, with researchers from Nanjing University saying earlier this year that a design breakthrough has made mass production possible.

[SubGod22]

Possible step forward for wind. Cheaper, lighter, smaller.

Bill Gates Backs Novel Merry-Go-Round Wind Turbine: Half the Cost and Better for Landscape Than Giant Towers

Bill Gates has backed a novel wind power system by investing in Airloom Energy, a company that has developed a carousel-style wind turbine.

The Microsoft billionaire’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures led the round that provided $4 million in seed funding to scale up the innovation, touted to slash the cost of wind energy production in half.

The unique utility-scale wind power device is said to produce the same amount of power as a conventional horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) at a small fraction of the mass and cost.

Standard wind turbines can approach a height of 500 feet, with 180-foot blades rotating on a 300-foot tower.

In contrast, the typical Airloom utilizes the same physics but runs 30-foot blades along a lightweight track only 80 feet high.

Founded in 2020, the Wyoming-based manufacturer is currently operating a 50-kilowatt test device. Future systems are expected to be up to 1,300 feet long (400 meters) and produce hundreds of megawatts for utility-scale wind farms that produces the same amount of power as a HAWT at a small fraction of the mass and cost.

“Cost and environmental advantages extend over the Airloom’s entire lifecycle,” said the company in a media release. “It uses readily sourced materials to ensure rapid manufacturing, and an entire 2.5 MW Airloom could be transported in one standard tractor trailer.

[SubGod22]

Wave-Powered Desalination System Produces 13,000 Gallons of Drinking Water a Day From Each Buoy

If a new Canadian startup is successful with its product, it could decarbonize the whole desalination industry, using only energy from the sea to turn seawater into drinking water.

300 million people rely on seawater from a global industry of 21,000 desalination plants, nearly all of which use fossil fuels to complete the energy-intensive process of thermo-desalination, or reverse osmosis—the two methods that can turn seawater into clean water at scale.

The startup Oneka however uses modular machines that attach to the seafloor like buoys and convert the kinetic energy of 3-foot waves into mechanical energy that drives a reverse osmosis and creates 13,000 gallons of drinking water a day with the largest commerically-available module.

It’s expected that if the worst predictions of climate change come to pass, more and more of the world will rely on desalinated water at least some of the year according to data collected by the BBC, and the industry is predicted to grow 9% to a yearly value of $29 billion by 2030.

Oneka presents a suite of advantages over land-based desalination plants. The first is that it takes up no space on land; particularly important for island nations. The second is that their modules emit no greenhouse gases. The third has to do with a drawback of desalination technology as it stands.

Whether using the thermal process or reverse osmosis, desalination of seawater creates a waste product of highly saline brine water or salt. If released or leaked back into the ocean, it can poison acres of sea life, or plants and groundwater if released on land.

There's a 3+ minute video in the link explaining how it works.

Even disregarding climate change, the fact that these are essentially cheaper and take up less space is a plus. They have a safe way of disposing of the waste and all of the fuel/carbon used to run the current plants would be freed up to be used elsewhere as needed.

There are a lot of potential positives to something like this.

[Atxshoxfan]

A new thread really needs to be started for all of this green energy stuff. I am all for new ways of creating methods of supplying energy as long as those who profit from it are paying for the development. I'm not for tax payer money to be invested in these companies to develop new methods. Most of those companies take the money and fold.

I do not buy into this climate change nonsense that has been going on for years. It is only a method for some to get rich on taxpayer money

So start a new thread.

[SubGod22]

Portugal Runs on 100% Renewables Dropping Consumer Electric Bills to Nearly Zero for 6 Days in a Row

Sunny, windy, wavy, and small, Portugal is uniquely suited to renewable energy; which it just proved by powering the nation of 10 million entirely with the forces of nature for 6 straight days.

It all started on Friday the 27th of October when the largest energy company in the nation, Redes Energéticas Nacionais, reported that conditions of wind and waves were generating the entirety of the nation’s energy supply.

They predicted the conditions would carry on through Saturday, but they actually kept on going for the next 5 days, including some periods when the nation’s grid was exporting renewable electricity to the grids in Spain.

In total, there were 149 hours of total renewables generation, 95 of which saw the Portuguese grid exporting to Spain, a run that broke the previous record for consecutive days of 100% renewable use.

While solar power is often seen as the most important renewable electricity source, the record began and carried on for many days in rainy, windy weather. That’s because, according to Canary Media, many turbines were built in the 1990s when solar panel installations were not cost-effective.

Even before that, many hydroelectric dams had been built after the fall of Portugal’s dictatorship in 1974.

While the US would never be able to do this on the whole, there are areas that are probably much better suited to come close to being able to do something similar. And as the technology continues to move forward it will only increase the legitimate opportunities of renewables to play a larger part down the road.

[SB Shock]

Portugal Runs on 100% Renewables Dropping Consumer Electric Bills to Nearly Zero for 6 Days in a Row



While the US would never be able to do this on the whole, there are areas that are probably much better suited to come close to being able to do something similar. And as the technology continues to move forward it will only increase the legitimate opportunities of renewables to play a larger part down the road.

Problem is they did it for 6 days because the conditions were right. But you cannot depend on it. You will always need something dependable like natural gas. It also helpful when the majority of renewable energy is coming from hydroelectric also.

[SubGod22]

Problem is they did it for 6 days because the conditions were right. But you cannot depend on it. You will always need something dependable like natural gas. It also helpful when the majority of renewable energy is coming from hydroelectric also.

Nobody has stated otherwise. They just showed that they do have value and pretty good value. I've always been an all of the above sort of guy when it comes to energy. But even if they're able to run the country at 50% renewables on a consistent basis or something it's a net positive for everybody and the environment. And during some of these times they were able to sell (I assume) extra energy to Spain.

And both wind and solar are improving and there will be more progress to come and the efficiencies will increase to be able to limit the use of coal/gas even more. That frees those things up for other areas where they will still be needed and lowering the price of all of it.

That's the thing with the US. There are areas of the country where we could probably better utilize hydro than we already do. There are areas of the country set up to be able to utilize solar on a higher level as that tech improves. There are areas where wind can be harnessed at a better rate as that tech moves forward. Then there are areas where mining used to be a big deal and some of those areas could be utilized for for the hydro-thermal thing I posted about a couple weeks ago that is being successfully used in England, Sweden and Canada I think it was, though I believe that was more focused on heating homes. Still, it has the potential to eliminate/reduce the need for heat from other sources.

[SubGod22]

470,000 Glass Bottles Turned into Coating for Slashing Heat - It Wins a 2023 James Dyson Award

In Hong Kong SAR, air-conditioning to drive away the muggy sub-tropical heat accounts for almost a third (31%) of total electricity consumption.

In this megalopolis of 7.4 million, two young engineers looked for a greener solution to cooling buildings, and won the admiration of legendary inventor Sir James Dyson.

Hoi Fung Ronaldo Chan and Can Jovial Xiao created E-COATING, an eco-friendly solution that solves two problems in one. It takes advantage of the 470,000 glass bottles that end up in landfills every day to create a reflective coating that reflects the sun’s rays.

Made from recycled waste glass, it can be applied to exterior roofs and walls, thereby tackling the problem of throwaway glass while also reducing the amount of electricity consumed on cooling solutions like air-conditioning.

“Based on my program calculation, you can save about 30% energy usage on air conditioning systems,” said Ronaldo.

“Ronaldo and Jovial have come up with a clever way to turn waste into something much more valuable,” said Sir James Dyson, Founder and Chief Engineer at Dyson, who co-awarded to two inventors the 2023 James Dyson Award for Sustainability.

There's a three and a half minute video from the James Dyson Foundation on the winners.

Pretty cool that they can take something that's easily discarded by many and turn it into something that can help save energy use and money.

[Shockm]

Nobody has stated otherwise.

This statement isn’t true and examples have been documented above. Climate activists state many unrealistic goals on when this will happen. They also state things like the world will not be able to survive past 2030, if we don’t go completely carbon free by then. Lastly they want to force it to happen and they can care less how much it costs our economy.