CarbonetiX

A short flight from energy waste to energy poverty

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to the island of Tanna, in Vanuatu, as a volunteer with start-up non governmental organisation Village Infrastructure Angels. VIA have developed a micro-credit programming for the financing of solar lighting, and I was there to demonstrate a range of household solar lights to see which lights were of the greatest interest to villagers.

The most popular lights were those with a central battery and a number of lights, so that several rooms in a house could be lit from the one battery and solar panel.

It was very different to my work in energy efficiency, which my role is to point out where energy, mostly electricity, can be used more efficiently. Here I was introducing electricity, and small lighting systems that produce much high quality light than that produced from a fire, a candle or a kerosene lantern. Normally my work is about reducing energy wastage, here I was introducing (efficient!) energy usage. From addressing energy wastage in a country (Australia) with substantial generation and distribution infrastructure to addressing energy poverty in a country with little energy distribution infrastructure.

This has not been possible or affordable until very recently, and has arising by the dramatic decrease in solar PV costs, improvements in LED lighting efficiency, and drops in LED pricing.

Just as mobile phone networks have provided phone access in many countries without the need to invest in expensive fixed line infrastructure (e.g. most of Africa), so lighting systems such as those promoted by VIA are eliminating the need for high cost electricity distribution infrastructure, and accelerating the pace of development. VIA’s hire-purchase model is also similar to a phone plan – pay as you go – and makes electric lighting affordable to almost everyone.

The video below has Vallette Nako, one of the people promoting the project, describing the lighting systems, the loan payments and highlighting two human development benefits: the ability to now weave mats and baskets at night (economic benefit), and for kids to do their school homework (educational benefit).

Where are the extra charges on your electricity bills going… inefficiently?

Victoria’s electricity consumption has dropped and in real terms peak demand has been stagnant over the last four years (see https://carbonetix.com.au/gallery/a-surprising-analysis-of-victorian-electricity-consumption-demand/). Yet over this time electricity prices have increased.

One local government client cut its energy consumption by 34% between 2006 and 2011 at one of its larger sites, yet the amount it paid for electricity increased by 7%. Its average tariff went from 8.6 cents to 13.9 cents/kWh.

At the same time the average spot price for electricity on the wholesale market dropped from 3.4 cents/kWh to 2.9 cents/kWh. Renewable scheme energy charges (SRET, LRET) went from 0.09 cents/kWh to an estimated 1.3 cents/kWh.

The price increase and the components of this price increase are shown in the graph below. The sum of retailer and distribution charges has risen by 87%, and now comprises over 2/3rds of the charges.

Where price increases subsidise energy efficiency in buildings or more sustainable forms of energy generation I am in favour of such price increases, as this hastens our transition to a low carbon economy.

Higher prices can also be a driver for consumers to reduce their energy use, saving electricity. And when implementing an Energy Performance Contract higher prices mean that larger savings can be achieved within a given payback.

However the price increase added to electrons between the generator and the power point is extraordinarily high. The main argument for this is that the distribution businesses have needed to invest in more assets to cope with increasing peak demand. But weather-adjusted peak demand appears to be stagnant. So any investment has been into assets that may not be used, and may never be used as we now appear to be on a trend of decreased consumption and flat and potentially decreasing peak demand.

The Australian Energy Regulator needs to address this, and review the need for planned investments in network infrastructure. The billions that are being ploughed needlessly and inefficiently into network infrastructure that is unlikely to be used could instead significantly hasten our transition to a low carbon future.

In the meantime, what can be done about the high prices? Reducing energy use will reduce your electricity costs.

To reduce energy use mid to large sized energy users could consider implementing an Energy Performance Contract (EPC). You can typically expect to achieve guaranteed savings of 30% to 50% on a seven year payback. Smaller energy users could have an energy audit or energy assessment undertaken then take action on the audit, and also get very good savings. A valuable precursor to either of these actions would be to develop an energy management plan in order to get the corporate commitment necessary to make the investment needed to achieve substantial savings through energy efficiency.

DETAILED REPORT: A surprising analysis of Victorian Electricity Consumption & Demand

Bruce Rowse investigates Victoria’s electrical energy consumption and demand data. This is an extremely in-depth article from the CarbonetiX director. Bruce’s independent research finds there is a need at the political level to recognise a new energy paradigm and take on the vested interests that have unreasonably increased electricity charges. He identifies a need to claw back the unjustified price increases already in

Cleaner, Not Cooler – The Economist

This weeks Economist highlights the environmental draw-backs of substituting gas for coal in power generation globally:

“For global warming, though, gas is a mixed blessing. It produces less carbon dioxide for a unit of energy than coal or oil, so the climate will benefit to the degree that gas replaces either of those: it will mostly substitute for coal, though some oil too, especially if gas-powered trucking becomes widespread. But if gas is plentiful and cheap enough to replace carbon-rich coal, it will also be in a position to replace carbon-free nuclear and renewables, and in doing so more carbon dioxide will be emitted than would otherwise be the case. At the same time, the availability of a cheap and relatively green fuel may push up global energy consumption. A recently published scenario from the International Energy Agency projects that by 2035 the overall increase in energy use and the reduced use of nuclear and renewables in a gas-happy world would almost perfectly balance out the gains made by burning gas instead of coal.”

The Economist, Aug 6th 2011, Title: “Cleaner, Not Cooler”
http://www.economist.com/node/21525418

The takeaway for proponents of energy efficiency is that reducing energy use remains the most available and most effective means of lowering carbon emissions and is driven by individual organisations – not utility companies.

Renewable Energy Crowded Out

THE proportion of Australia’s energy produced from renewable sources such as wind and hydro has declined dramatically over the past 50 years, a new report shows.

Despite all the policy implementations and public awareness campaigns, Australian’s are getting a smaller proportion of their energy from renewable sources.

The report by consultancy group Green Energy Markets showed that in 1960, renewable energy provided 19 per cent of the grids electricity compared to just 7 per cent today. Coal-fired power, which produced nearly 200 million tonnes of green house gas in 2008, had risen 1200 per cent and currently provides over 80 per cent of our electricity.

The ratio of renewable energy to coal-fired power on the main national electricity network has declined slightly from 11 per cent in 2001 to 10 per cent in 2009. The image below shows the share of CO2 emissions associated with the different generation methods.

(source: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/~/media/publications/greenhouse-acctg/national-inventory-by-economic-sector-2009.pdf)

This has occurred despite policy targets such as the federal government’s Renewable Energy Target which aims to ensure 20 per cent of electricity is produced from renewable sources by 2020.

Such initiatives are fantastic but as yet have been all carrot and no stick. Mark Wakeham, Environment Victoria’s campaign director, said:

“[The findings] highlight that we are going to need a broad mix of renewable energy technology,”.

A price on carbon is still the most effective way to reduce Australia’s dependence on Coal power.

”Until someone who is polluting stops polluting, or pollutes less, we are not going to see a fall in our national emissions.”

All comments on Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and Government Policy are welcomed. We encourage friendly open debate.

Warning: Australia’s Greenhouse Emissions are on the rise!

It has been a turbulent time during the last few weeks regarding the climate change issue. There have been a number of natural disasters all around Australia all linked to weather pattern changes. Although, some may argue that these would have happened anyway –saying that these have nothing to do with global warming- it is unlikely. There has been an increase of floods all around the world in the last few years as well as extreme temperatures resulting in bush fires or heavy snow falls in countries where they don’t normally have these. And the list goes on. But I won’t go on about this as it is a huge issue in itself, just look at Bruce’s previous blog with the weather map of Australia; it sums it up succinctly.

What is a concern is that the first reaction of the Australian federal government is to cut back on the environment budget in order to rebuild flood-affected areas. Fair enough some of those policies were real duds anyway but weren’t some of these catastrophes caused by the fact that we have been putting too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? So it would make more sense to try to reduce these to minimise the occurrence of more natural disasters. However, this is not the case. According to an article in The Age (http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/greenhouse-emissions-to-double-unless-action-taken-20110211-1aqnb.html) quoting Ross Garnaut the way we are going at the moment Australia’s greenhouse emissions will increase by 24% by 2020 (based on 2000 levels). Hang on; weren’t we supposed to reduce our emissions by an incredible 5% by then? Oh, yes but we still haven’t got any decent policies in place such as a carbon tax after years of debating it. Instead the current and the previous federal governments have spent around $5.5 billion on mediocre and piece meal abatement programs some of which were very poorly-managed indeed.

Overall all these approaches will not make hell of a lot of difference to Australia’s greenhouse emissions and we paid a very high price for the minuscule CO2 that we did manage to curtail, which is estimated to be about one-tenth of that famous 5% target. See: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-cash-goes-up-in-smoke-20110214-1atnh.html). On a state government level (referring to our home state Victoria) the recently-elected government doesn’t seem to have much to say about Climate Change –so far. They are not too concerned to the extent that some of them don’t even believe in it and suggest the commissioning of more brown coal power stations to keep up with the ever increasing electricity demand.

The only ones that are actually rolling their sleeves up and are really doing something about reducing greenhouse emissions are our local governments with the support of their constituents. There are many passionate people in these organisations that are constantly doing the right thing. In many cases they are ignoring the financial cost of implementing strategies in order to improve their environmental impact. Those higher up should learn from them.

It is paramount that we as a country start doing something about Climate Change. The longer we wait the more it will cost the economy to retool and the longer we wait the worse it will get when it comes to natural disasters.

Don’t trust your home’s star rating to reduce your environmental impact

Reports recently published in newspapers indicate that the government’s mandatory energy star rating schemes of homes is rather inaccurate. The scheme has been heavily-criticised by the building industry (HIA and MBA) and they are calling on scientists and the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency to review the way the star rating is calculated for new houses.

Tracking Energy Use

I’ve decided to write this blog in a somewhat different format than usual. I thought I should share some of my observations in tracking energy use since I’ve been involved for a little while now in installing, analysing, presenting and monitoring ‘real time tracking systems’ (or ‘carbonrealtime’) as we refer to it.

I was actually really shocked to learn recently -when an environment officer at one of the councils posed the question to a small business audience, whether they knew how much power they used, how much their tariff rates were or how much their actual bills were- that most didn’t have a clue. Out of about 35 people only one knew. The rest had no idea! Even more surprising was the fact that a few of these audience members were accountants and financial advisors. They just automatically pay their bills both at home and for their businesses. How are you supposed to reduce your electricity use, cost and of course greenhouse emissions if you don’t even know (or care) how much you use and pay?

So there are a number of ways to overcome this problem of knowing your electricity use. Starting with the analysis of basic yearly use of the bi or three monthly bills you can get a bit of an idea what’s happening throughout the year. However, many of the larger sites already have interval electricity meters. These record power consumption every 15 minutes and eventually send some aggregated data to the suppliers. This information can be requested free of charge from the electricity retailer and we usually do this on our client’s behalf. Having access to at least a year’s worth of data is extremely useful. If you know how to compile the data and what to look out for one can get a really good idea of a site’s usage profile and how to save energy.

If your site doesn’t have interval metering another option is to install temporary electricity loggers on various distribution boards. Again the data obtained from this is very useful and we often do this for specific circuits at some of the sites. However, the latest revolution is in online tracking. We have developed an affordable real time tracking system that is extremely easy to install and then it’s plug and play. Once set up the device sends the data through the internet and can be accessed from anywhere. The user-friendly interface on the monitor presents all the data in an easy to understand language with graphs and images that don’t need a physics degree to understand. Some of our systems have everything incorporated such as water, gas, electricity consumption/generation and temperature. All these are highly valuable tools for any facilities or environment managers and even for educational purposes.

The ‘carbonrealtime’ systems are used in households and offices greatly reducing energy consumption but schools and council buildings have also installed them to keep an eye on their energy use. From some of these systems a few sites have already identified huge wastage that occur out of operating hours during the night or weekends. The findings from larger council site had effected changes in the HVAC BMS in relation to public holidays, starting and finishing times or discovering faulty equipment or in one instance double charging of electricity over 12 years! Lowering the base load is another useful outcome of using such a system. The tracking system can also be employed to overcome electricity apportioning disputes between tenants, which we often have to investigate for our clients.

With electricity prices going up constantly and with the emphasis on reducing greenhouse emissions; monitoring your electricity consumption is no doubt one of the most important steps towards averting huge electricity bills and the threats of climate change.

Solar Thermal Energy – The Neglected Renewable Energy in Australia

Contrary to what the terminology suggests ‘solar thermal energy’ is not a recent development and it is certainly not something that has just been invented as another answer to reduce greenhouse emissions. According to the Renewable Institute for Sustainable Research, the first solar powered engines were constructed back in the 1860s by a couple of French mathematicians. During the past 30 years a number of solar thermal plants have been built and operated around the world to produce guilt-free electricity. However, the technology has been rapidly evolving in recent years and Australia has perfected the technology to make it commercially more viable.

Unlike wind power or solar photovoltaic panels, which generate electricity directly, solar thermal power uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy onto a receiver and create heat, which can then be used to produce steam to run a turbine and generate electricity, in the same way as a conventional coal-fired power station. The other advantage of solar thermal technology is that it can be stored very efficiently in large tanks of molten salt and then be dispatched to generate electricity at any time of the day or night, making it in effect base load solar power.

The way solar thermal energy plants work is by focusing the glare of the sun’s rays on a central location –usually on a tall solar tower- to create heat, which is then turned into electricity. The concentrated heat is extreme between 500-2000 C and it could easily melt metal. Due to various heat exchange processes involved –which were further advanced in Australia- the water eventually turns to steam, powering the turbines at the base.

Various methods exist to concentrate the solar radiation, including parabolic troughs, power towers with mirrors that track the sun (heliostats), parabolic dishes, and Fresnel reflectors (these consist of multiple flat mirrors). Each technology differs in the way that it concentrates the solar energy, but they all track the sun to maximise energy capture and produce heat, which is then converted to electricity.

These technologies are at different stages of development and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. It is fair to say that parabolic troughs are the most mature, having first been installed at utility scale in the 1980s; although the other types may ultimately prove cheaper due to their inherent design advantages. These technologies have been successfully used in the USA and Spain since the 1980s. But the Australian National University has re-designed the dish for optimisation for manufacturing and mass production with mirror panels that should be able to concentrate the sun at least 2,000 times.

Solar Thermal Uptake in Australia

Australia has large areas of high solar intensity and little rain, where large concentrations of renewable energy power stations could be developed. In fact the Australian continent has the highest average amount of solar radiation per square meter per year of any continent on the planet ranging from 1500 to 1900 kWh/m2/year. In other words Australia is better-suited to this technology than any other country in the world, including Spain who is expecting to operate 60 solar thermal plants by 2013.

Peter Meurs (Managing Director of WorleyParsons-EcoNomics) has said that establishing advanced solar thermal centres could allow Australia to exceed the 20 per cent renewable energy target by:

• Facilitating the commercialisation of developing renewable energy technologies.
• Triggering the development of domestic solar thermal component manufacturing.
• Enabling Australia to become a world leader in these technologies.
• Allowing the construction of larger scale solar thermal power stations over time.

Wizard Power is also part of the same consortium who has been trying to commercialise big dish technology in Australia for the past five years. Their unique technology was developed by the Australian National University’s solar thermal group over the past 40 years who have perfected ‘the big dish’ and they’ve also figured how to best store the sun’s energy thermo-chemically. It appears that Wizard Power may be getting some support from the federal government in the form of $60 million towards a $230 million solar plant it’s building in South Australia. Wizard Power suggested Whyalla in South Australia as an ideal place to establish large scale solar facilities, because of the climate and the number of large scale resource projects requiring power. Australia’s very first solar oasis in Whyalla is going to provide enough electricity to power the town of Whyalla and also to provide power to the neighbouring steel works. In total it’s capable of powering approximately 9000 average homes or replacing something in the order of 17000 motor vehicles on the road each year in terms of carbon emissions.

There is no reason why Australia couldn’t match the Spanish government’s commitment who is expecting to cover 12 percent of its primary energy from renewable sources by the end of this year. Spain is the fourth largest manufacturer in the world of solar power technology and exports 80 percent of its production to Germany. Australia cannot quite export electricity to other countries but we could export our expertise in this technology to build solar thermal plants in other countries. At the same time there is no reason why 30 solar thermal plants could not provide 40 per cent of Australia’s renewable energy needs by 2020-according to WorleyParsons. But to achieve this goal, action must be taken today.

References:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13826548)
http://www.abc.net.au/insidebusiness/content/2010/s2925759.htm
http://ecogeneration.com.au/news/advancing_solar_thermal/002019/
http://ecolocalizer.com/2008/04/12/mega-solar-the-worlds-13-biggest-solar-thermal-energy-projects/
K. Lovergrove and M. Dennis Solar Thermal Energy Systems in Australia 2006 International Journal of Environmental Studies (www.tandf.co.uk/journals)

Climate Change and Water Shortage

Easing water restrictions in Victoria may have an undesirable impact on the fight against climate change. According to a recent article in The Age, “the sight of greener gardens and healthier trees that will regain our image as the ‘garden state’ will also turn people’s attention away from the bigger environmental picture – that is global warming”. The soon to be available extra water also means more greenhouse emissions and more climate change.

Some observers expressed that for many Australians climate change wasn’t a real issue until their backyards began to turn brown. Water restrictions for these people were the most visible and tangible manifestation of the drought and that there is something going on with our climate. Lifting water restrictions is sending the wrong message to the public and once again relegates concerns about global warming to the back of their minds. However, the extra water won’t be falling out of the sky either.

Unfortunately the lifting of water restrictions is not entirely due to the restoration of normal rainfall and increased dam levels (which may have appeared so during the deluges of the last few months) but due to the completed construction of the north-south pipeline and the controversial desalination plant near Wonthaggi. (Some cynics say it is also due to the upcoming state elections).

Ironically, to compensate for the reduced rainfall which is most likely a consequence of changed weather patterns, we are building a desalination plant that is extremely energy intensive and polluting. The annual energy use of the plant will be around 900 GWh. The pollution from this will equal to putting 365,000 cars on the road emitting around 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 (in terms of black balloons that’s around 30 billion of them). This is not including the ‘carbon footprint’ of the plant during construction, which equals to about 1.4 million tonnes of CO2. It is still not clear where the extra energy will come from but it was suggested that gas-fired power stations.

There are of course many other side effects of the desal plant that environmentalists highlighted, such as producing 30,000 tonnes of solid waste that include toxic chemicals and 200 million tonnes of brine that will be pumped back into the ocean each year. All of which will impact on marine life without knowing what the ultimate outcome will be.

Many people believe that we should be focusing on better ways to capture and store the remaining rainwater instead of constructing desalination plants that will significantly increase greenhouse emissions which in term contribute to the larger issue of climate change. Despite the reduced levels of rainfall it is still more than enough to cover our water usage if it is harnessed properly. Money would be better spent providing households with water tanks, which would have much less impact on climate change. Otherwise, we will have to deal with more than just shorter showers and not being allowed to water our gardens or wash our cars at home.

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