In our 2012 article Earth’s inside for better air, we explained that New Zealand is a country where geothermal energy is widely developed. We mentioned Wairakei power plant, the second commercial geothermal plant opened in the world. This was in 1956. New Zealand was world leading! Well, being in New Zealand again, we decided to go to the plant…
HAPPY TO BE THERE, READY TO DO MORE
“We are committed to protect the quality and quantity of water to New Zealanders,” Rosanne says. We had the chance to meet Rosanne Jollands, Community Relations Manager and Genelle Slack, Senior Environmental Advisor, at the power plant. The installation has a capacity of 156MW. It is operated by the company Contact, employing 120 people on site.
Genelle on the left and Rosanne on the right.
Geothermal plants exploit natural hot underground waters to generate electricity. They release very few quantities of greenhouse gases compared to coal or gas power plant. Fortunately New Zealand has decided to use its strong geothermal potential. Genelle says: “Currently 82% of the energy comes from renewable sources. It is a very good figure. The objective is to reach 90% by 2020.” New Zealand runs a national carbon emission trade market where “the price of one ton of CO2 is currently around 18 NZD. Such a trade market aims to reduce the country’s emissions year after year by progressively increasing the price of an emitted ton.”
We used a nice plug-in hybrid car to visit the plant!
Genelle adds: “Still our power plant generates greenhouse gases. This is why we invest in projects to reduce further the carbon footprint, and then pay less within the emission trade market. One ongoing project deals with two gases produced during the operations, carbon dioxide and methane. Today they are released to the atmosphere. We want to inject them into to the cold water which is going back to the ground. Such an additional process is viable only thanks to the carbon price.” The experts working on the international negotiations on climate change agree that a major next step is the definition of a carbon price, at the international level.
GENERATING ELECTRICITY, BUT NOT ONLY
“Earlier this year the World Geothermal Conference was held in Melbourne,” Rosanne explains. “Right after the Conference, Contact received many visitors here at Wairakei plant. All these visitors wanted to know more about how we operate here.”
A prawn farm, right outside the power plant.
Rosanne adds: “We do not only produce electricity here, the extracted hot water also goes out to few places nearby. One of them is a prawn farm; another one is hot pools!” Direct use of geothermal waters can supply heat for industrial processes. For instance, in Kawerau, northern New Zealand, the geothermal hot water is directly used by a paper mill. In Iceland, Hellisheidi plant is one of the several plants of the island; it provides 300MW of power but also hot water to the Capital city Reykjavik. Likewise, in numerous districts around the world, the extracted water is used to heat buildings. Earlier this year, we could visit the ecodistrict Fort d’Issy, in France, where 1500 modern apartments are heated by a geothermal installation. Philippines and Italy are other world leaders in geothermal energy. Let’s follow them!
In 2013 New Zealand generated 7,6 tons of CO2 per capita, way lower than its neighbor Australia, who produced 16.3 tons but a little bit more than France with 5,1 tons which is the same figure as the world average. The country who emitted the most in 2013 was Qatar with 40.5 tons per capita. More from the World Bank database here.
Electricity is a beautiful thing. It changed our world during the 20th century, like motorized vehicles also did or like internet is transforming our society. Yet there is one standard which has to evolve about electricity: the storage of it. Today we do not store large quantities of electricity, or only occasionally. Humanity needs to find ways to store large amounts of electricity because in the future more electricity will have to come from solar and wind energy…
In some places around the world, there are days during the year when 100% of the electricity comes from renewables. Without electricity storage. But these places are Portugal or Denmark: a few million inhabitants in a sunny and/or windy coastal region. And depending on the weather, this 100% is not reached every day.
Solar and wind are intermittent. They do not necessarily produce the electricity at the moment we need it. Actually solar produces more electricity in the middle of the day and we need it more at the beginning and end of the day. The non-consumed electricity is just lost, except if you store it! In the previous article, we presented an exciting new class of solar cells. Progress in intermittent electricity generation will have to go with progress in storage.
Today the most common technology for storage is pumped hydro storage: pumping water up to a reservoir, and releasing it when electricity is required. The released water goes through a turbine which generates the current, like in a dam. We find such installations in Switzerland or France for instance. But this option has large footprints; it cannot be implemented everywhere. It looks like what we need is efficient batteries…
AND TESLA CAME IN THE GAME
Innovation is giving us new batteries. These batteries will store more electricity and will cost less, together with a very small environmental footprint. They will change the game! Actually the change has started. Big batteries can be installed at your house or at your office building. They store electricity coming from solar panels, for instance, and provide it when you need it. For several years already this home battery has been available for purchase, however the real change has started recently. The Californian company Tesla is helping…
In New Zealand, Vector has installed nearly 200 Tesla home batteries during the last 5 months. Vector is theNew Zealand largest distributor of electricity and gas. Several years ago the company decided to lead the switch to the green energy technologies. Since mid 2016 they have started to install the Tesla battery solutions, as the only distributor in New Zealand. We had the opportunity to meet Andrew Fraser who is the New Projects Manager at Vector. Andrew could tell us more about their part in this story.
We met Andrew at Vector's head office, in Auckland.
There are two main Tesla products: the Powerwalls and the Powerpacks. The Powerwalls are designed for home; the Powerpacks are designed for businesses or institutions as they offer larger storage capacity. The home Powerwall is dimensioned to meet the demand of a family of four without problem, around 5kWh per day. Most of the time, Vector has provided both the home battery together with solar panels. This is the typical combination.
Andrew explains that recently Rongamai School in South Auckland had a Powerpack installed, together with solar panels, for a four classroom block. The electricity consumption is monitored and the figures are thrilling: 95% of the consumed electricity comes from the solar panels! It does the job.
The year 2016 was a ramp-up for Vector. The distributor sells the "Powerwall and solar panels" package at around 20000NZD (around 13500€), the Powerwall costing around 10000NZD alone. The prices will decrease in the near future together with the growing market, and with innovation. Innovation will allow Tesla and other designers to change the chemistry of the batteries. Also their environmental cost is high today, including the Tesla ones. But it will go down. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), in the U.S., is one of the numerous places developing encouraging solutions. One promising battery uses abundant sources such as oil waste or rhubarb. It is much cheaper and less toxic than current batteries.
Solar and wind farms producing and storing electricity will allow using less and less coal and gas power plants. Things will go even further since each building and each house could generate and store electricity. This is just the beginning...
The Sydney Tesla store exhibits the Powerwall.
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In a
2012 article we talked about smart grids in Perth, Australia. Decentralized
generation and storage of electricity will have to go with advanced electricity
distribution grids. This changes the business model of electricity suppliers; they
need to adapt to this switch.
Two pieces of news these last days. On the one hand, the biggest brown coal plant of Victoria State in Australia, located close to Melbourne and operated by French energy company Engie, will shut down in 2017. This is positive on an environmental point of view since brown coal is the biggest emitter of CO2 among all the energy sources. On the other hand, the Californian company Tesla has presented an unexpected new product: solar roof tiles. The roof tiles themselves integrate solar cells and produce electricity. This is not what one imagines when thinking of solar energy. One would represent the technology by large plane panels with metallic structure. Well, there is an alternative solution, called… organic solar!
ANOTHER CLASS OF SOLAR CELLS
We met David in BIO21 offices in Melbourne. More here.
Tesla did not share any information about the technology behind the nice tiles. The solar tiles may carry organic solar cells. The most popular solar cells today are the silicon solar cells (silicium in French). It is what we find in the solar panels of solar farms or on roofs. Like the silicon ones, the organic cells convert solar energy into electricity. But organic solar cells are different; they use organic materials. They are made from carbon-based molecules or polymers and they have lots of advantages. In Melbourne, a consortium of organisations has been working on the development of organic solar for several years. David Jones is the Project Manager representing the BIO21 Institute of the University of Melbourne. The Institute specializes in molecular science and biotechnology. Gerry Wilson is the Program Director from CSIRO, the federal government agency for scientific research in Australia.
We had the chance to visit labs at CSIRO together with Gerry.
“For years already, organic solar cells have demonstrated a great potential. Today the main drawback of the technology remains their efficiency,” says David. A simple definition of the efficiency is the portion of energy from sunlight that manages to be converted into electricity. Gerry says: “The silicon technology has reached 25% efficiency whereas the current best organic solar is 13% efficient. However the silicon solar has plateaued out while the organic is improving every year. This is why there will be more and more commercialization of organic solar.” Indeed, besides a lower efficiency, the numerous advantages of the organic technology are exciting!
THIN, SEMI-TRANSPARENT AND EVEN FLEXIBLE: LET’S UNROLL IT!
“We print the organic cells!” David explains. “We can print them on plastic, on glass or on metal or on textile. You can get thin, light and even flexible products.” Whereas the silicon panels are fragile, the organic solar items “can be rolled and transported easily. Camping tent can be covered with it. The Danish company infinityPV sells fine small phone chargers,” David says. “The solar panels we know go with heavy metallic structures. In India or in Africa for instance, they are very interested in lighter equipment.
"Solar curtains" for the office? This tree with "solar leafs" should be installed next year.
Additionally we can make nicer equipment from an esthetic point of view. It is possible to alter the colors of the cells. There are even semi-transparent ones, which can be applied to windows for instance.” Gerry adds: “Also what is interesting with the technology is that the printing is not complicated; you can slightly modify a printer from the shelf and start to use it! It is one of the reasons organic solar equipment is simple to produce.”
PRODUCTION IS MORE SIMPLE AND LESS ENERGY CONSUMING
“Compared to traditional solar panels made of silicon, the organic cells require much less energy during manufacturing,” says Gerry. “Indeed there are purification and heating processes for the silicon cells. Organic is much less intensive, basically it is much about printing only. And costs for input materials are lower. The chemicals industry already manufactures the organic molecules.” In the end production costs are significantly lower.
Printers of the CSIRO Flexible Electronics Laboratory.
David concludes: “The technology is quite exciting. There is lot of enthusiasm among us working on it. There is plenty of room for improvement and innovation. We cannot imagine all the commercial applications behind organic solar!” Like the Tesla tiles, plenty of unexpected innovations will allow building the low-carbon society faster than we think.
According to the International Energy Agency, in 2015 renewable sources of energy have surpassed coal in terms of cumulative installed power capacity, with photovoltaic solar adding 49GW. These 49GW represents nearly a third of all renewable energies added in 2015. When it comes to solar, the electricity generation depends on the weather, but the increase in the installed power capacity is putting this energy source rapidly as a key and cheap solution.
Yesterday, in a kitchen in Washington D.C.: - Michele: “Drinking recycled water? What do you mean, my Dear?!” - Barack: “Well, in several places around the world, they purify sewage water and then drink it. The water is safe and good. You know, we will need more of that in the future!...” A BLOCK OF GREEN BUILDINGS
There is greenery everywhere on the facades of the tower. These guys are not cleaning the windows, they are gardeners!
The Central Park block is located in Sydney city center. The green and blue edifices shine among older ones. Several buildings of the block were completed end of 2013, others are still under construction. The first tower was designed by the famous French architect Jean Nouvel. It is an apartment complex with a shopping centre. Thanks to its numerous green features, the tower was rewarded several times. One of these features is really exceptional and it is what we will talk about here: the waste water is recycled, on site! The tower hosts the biggest recycled water facility in the world built in the basement of a residential building. We had the chance to visit the plant together with its best guide, Andrew! Andrew Horton is the Plant Operations Manager. He explains: “In this tower, we collect the apartment wastewater - bathrooms, kitchens, toilets and laundries - we purify it and send the recycled water back to the apartments! The building has two separated water networks: one for the traditional drinkable water supplied by the City of Sydney, and one for our recycled water."
THE PURPLE PIPE
Andrew and Frédéric.
Of course the purification process includes several strong treatments. One of them is microscopic membrane fibres, which “remove bacteria, pathogens and viruses from the water.” A very sophisticated filter blocking very small things! Andrew adds: “Other robust processes are the ultraviolet and the chlorine treatments. At the end of it, the water goes out from the plant in one huge purple pipe. Purple is the official color for recycled water! We do not drink the recycled water here, although we could. After all these purification processes, the water is as pure as spring water, if not more so!” says Andrew. At Central Park, the recycled water is going back to the apartment toilet flushing, washing machines and garden watering; it is not drunk.
We wanted to know more about recycled water around the world, so we went to the University of New South Wales and met Stuart Khan. Stuart was recently appointed to the Water Quality and Health Technical Advisory Group of the UN’s World Health Organization. He mainly works on how hazards and weather events put water supply at risk; he also knows a lot about recycling water. “In Australia we do not drink recycled water yet. There are two main reasons for that,” says Stuart. “The two reasons are linked actually. We do not drink it first because of regulations and secondly because of public acceptance. Australian regulations still do not authorize it; there are political interests behind the issue and people are not ready yet.”
Drinking recycled wastewater may be hard to swallow, literally! In 2006 the citizens of Toowoomba, eastern Australia, rejected the idea through a referendum. However there are more and more stresses on water supplies. On the one hand population is growing. On the other hand, “global warming increases the severity of extreme weather events” says Stuart. “How to protect our water supply from events related to climate change? It is an issue I work on every day. Recycling water is part of the solution for securing drinkable water.”
At the City Gallery of Singapore we could find explanations about how the city recycles water.
Many cities are already incorporating recycled wastewater into the drinking water supply. It is the case in Singapore, the UK, the US and Belgium. Like at Central Park wastewater is purified to the highest standards. Not only is recycling becoming an option, the sustainable city will require it.
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In a 2012 article, we talked about Sydney working on a network of trigeneration plants. Well, there is a trigeneration facility in operation at Central Park! It is located in the middle of the block, inside an old brewery building. The station provides heat and chill water to the buildings around.
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"Extreme weather events include heavy rainfall and floods, cyclones, droughts, heatwaves, extreme cold, and wildfires. Each of these types of events can potentially impact drinking water quality by acting watercatchments, storage reservoirs, the performance of water treatment processes or the integrity of distribution systems." Extract from astudy by Stuart among others.
In our 2012 article Earth’s inside for better air, we explained that New Zealand is a country where geothermal energy is widely developed. We mentioned Wairakei power plant, the second commercial geothermal plant opened in the world. This was in 1956. New Zealand was world leading! Well, being in New Zealand again, we decided to go to the plant…
Geothermal plants exploit natural hot underground waters to generate electricity. They release very few quantities of greenhouse gases compared to coal or gas power plant. Fortunately New Zealand has decided to use its strong geothermal potential. Genelle says: “Currently 82% of the energy comes from renewable sources. It is a very good figure. The objective is to reach 90% by 2020.” New Zealand runs a national carbon emission trade market where “the price of one ton of CO2 is currently around 18 NZD. Such a trade market aims to reduce the country’s emissions year after year by progressively increasing the price of an emitted ton.”
