Living in the hydro-rich Pacific Northwest it is hard to imagine rationing showers and lawn watering in order to have a few hours a day of electricity, but that is what is happening in Venezuela right now.

One of the severest droughts in decades has given Venezuela’s socialist president a political nightmare as hydro-electrical power dribbles to a standstill, unleashing blackouts, rationing and protests. The waters behind the Guri dam, which supplies more than half the nation’s power, have touched perilously low levels.

Nevertheless, with energy production requiring as much water as agriculture and once mighty rivers like the Rio Grande no longer reaching the ocean and energy usage expected to grow beyond existing capacity, unless we decentralize now, it will happen here.

There are many reasons I focus upon wind energy, not the least being the ample supply…this from the November 2009 Scientific American.

Plenty of Supply
Today the maximum power consumed worldwide at any given moment is about 12.5 trillion watts (terawatts, or TW), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The agency projects that in 2030 the world will require 16.9 TW of power as global population and living standards rise, with about 2.8 TW in the
U.S. The mix of sources is similar to today’s, heavily dependent on fossil fuels. If, however, the planet were powered entirely by WWS, with no fossil-fuel or biomass combustion, an intriguing savings would occur. Global power demand would be only 11.5 TW, and U.S. demand would be 1.8 TW. That decline occurs because, in most cases, electrification is a more efficient way to use energy. For example, only 17 to 20 percent of the energy in gasoline is used to move a vehicle (the rest is wasted as heat), whereas 75 to 86 percent of the electricity delivered to an electric vehicle goes into motion.

Even if demand did rise to 16.9 TW, WWS sources could provide far more power. Detailed studies by us and others indicate that energy from the wind, worldwide, is about 1,700 TW

Another reason I favor wind is that wind is the only renewable energy source that does not require any water during the production of electricity. Even solar requires massive amounts of water when used in a centralized system.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity from nuclear power 2.3 litres of water are needed. Coal requires 1.9 litres and oil consumes 1.6 litres…Some CSP technology utilises rows of curved mirrors focus heat onto a tube filled with oil which boils water to make steam, in turn spinning a turbine a turbine – this is called a trough system. Another uses reflective mirrors called heliostats to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto liquid-filled tubes used to generate steam and spin turbines.

In the case of trough technology, the water footprint is considerable – around 3.6 litres per kilowatt hour.

This video produced in England shares the benefits of decentralizing even if still using fossil fuels.

A quick update on the V-LIM.

First, yesterday I gave a couple of talks on decentralized energy and setting up micro-grids to generate local energy and earn revenue to perhaps fund schools and local infrastructure. Again, keeping our dollars local rather than exporting them to investor owned utilities not only helps reduce our dependence upon foreign fuel but provides price stability and improved reliability.

The long awaited carbon fiber version of the rotor is promised to arrive the end of the week. The stator assembly is underway and we expect to test the generator with the existing rotor before permanently affixing the magnets to the new one within ten days.

I can hardly wait.

Energy efficiency, investing in public infrastructure, including schools and education, and improving access to broadband internet are all part of president-elect Obama’s plan to create millions of new jobs. During his weekly address, Obama emphasized the importance of all these matters in order to reduce our dependence upon foreign resources and improve our competitiveness in the global market.
Rebuilding our roads, dams, bridges, schools and transportation and power networks cannot happen too soon. A new report produced by London-based GFC Economics is predicting by next spring, the United States could be facing a million layoffs every successive month.
“Expenses related to corporate debt, and muddy credit markets consumed by fear, are driving a fast-approaching ‘hard landing’.”
Whether Obama’s plan can avert these dire predictions and how he plans to pay for it will soon be learned as he prepares to take office next month. Either way, his drive for energy efficiency is going to be crucial to the ultimate success of his economic plan.
With energy demands expected to increase, the push to find renewable energy sources and almost daily intermittent grid failures, investing in the grid or rethinking the single machine grid matrix is crucial for our economic survival. In order to fully realize renewable energy generation, absent clean storage solutions, is it easier to implement renewable energy using the centralized production model or a decentralized model?
Comparisons between electricity storage and transmission almost always center on utility scale capacity rather than smaller, more manageable micro-grids. Within the realm of centralized electricity storage technologies such as pumped hydro, compressed air, flow batteries, etc., are thought not just in terms of load leveling, peak shaving and arbitrage but also power conditioning.
The best argument for maintaining the single machine grid and subsequent utility scale storage is financial gain whereby huge producers continue to game the system as Enron did to control profit margins. Despite the well documented technological and efficiency benefits of micro-grid applications it is the independence offered to consumers that brings up the most resistance from privatized energy producers.
In any event, the development of electricity storage technologies, such as capacitors, flywheels, superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES), pumped hydro and more will have a profound effect upon the economic recovery of the country and its future as an energy independent state. Rural America has an advantage over our power hungry urban neighbors because we can implement micro-grids and smaller storage systems to manage our load demands much easier and without imposing on a grid network owned by out of state investors.
To help Obama overcome the enormous hurdles before him we all need to do our part and address our energy use habits and our energy production methods. Demonstrating energy independence and modeling it for the rest of the nation will not only help resurrect our own local economy by keeping dollars local but may help small towns all across the country.