Hello everyone,

21st Century Power is on a little break … Wishing everyone happy (and green) holidays!

We’ll be back in January with more posts on sustainable energy.

(image courtesy of www.lasvegasgraphicwebdesign.com)

The following news report from Forbes outlines plans by U.S.-based Thorium Power Ltd. to set up a joint venture in India to promote thorium-based nuclear power there and to facilitate other companies entering the country’s nuclear sector. The JV will set up a fund and a consultancy, but in the longer term aims to get involved more hands-on, creating an operator to run new nuclear plants “in countries that have never had them before.” (Whatever that means. IAEA take note.)

Though reserves aren’t confirmed, India is believed to have the 2nd largest amount of unmined thorium in the world after Australia. Thorium is a proposed alternative technology that promoters say would cut in half the amount of dangerous waste produced by more traditional uranium reactors of today. Existing nuclear plants could be re-tooled to take advantage of the still unproven new approach at reasonable cost (the reality is that these would become “hybrids” mixing thorium and uranium fuel rods). For more details, have a look at this backgrounder from MIT’s Technology Review.

Nuclear power in India is becoming a hot competition arena in general, with capacity construction set to take off. As a sign of the intensive angling, Moscow and New Delhi just signed a long-awaited agreement on nuclear cooperation. For a more fleshed-out look at the sector, have a look at the following background article from The Wall Street Journal, which reports that capacity is expect to ramp up to 40,000 MWby 2020, from just 3,900 last year. The chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission was quoted this week as saying construction may in fact “well exceed” that 2020 target.

Many environmentalists criticize nuclear power for not being truly sustainable or renewable, and they’re right, strictly speaking. However, my own view is that it will be mandatory for countries like China and India, whose economic development in the next few decades demands faster growth of energy supplies than all known sources will be able to provide. Given the urgency of fighting climate change and reducing the burning of fossil fuel, it will be almost impossible for Beijing and New Delhi to leave the greenhouse gas-free nuclear option out of the generation mix on principle. Thus, while nuclear won’t be a technology for the 22nd century power, it will be for 21st century power — as a transition tool.

(Thorium rod image courtesy of Technology Review.)

In this article from seekingalpha.com (intended for a U.S. audience), John Petersen gives fascinating analysis of the economics of storage — specifically, at what point storage becomes cost-effective.

Today, most power companies deal with highs and lows in the daily cycle of demand by simply having excess fossil fuel burning generating capacity sitting around idle, only to be fired up in peak demand moments. Maintaining that excess capacity at the ready costs money, and a certain amount of generated power simply not being used at all is also tolerable under current conditions.

“As long as waste is cheaper than storage, waste rules” Petersen writes, adding:

When you start layering in additional storage that will be needed to compensate for inherent variability in solar and wind alternatives, the demand for $1,000 per kW storage systems skyrockets.

When electric utilities were looking for a $700 per kW solution and storage technologies were less developed, there was no market. As the breakeven cost of storage increases; storage technologies improve and the installed cost of storage systems decline, historical revenues in the $20 billion domestic energy storage industry are likely to increase at staggering rates and nimble manufacturers of low-cost storage systems are likely to profit handsomely.

Continuing on the theme of “lesser-known bricks” of sustainable energy systems … let’s move from smart power grids to another essential: grid energy storage. It’s an increasingly hot topic, because some of the key renewable generation technologies that the world needs to build up, such as solar and wind power, are intermittent in nature — they need the grid to absorb and store their output, evening out gaps in the supply to satisfy a 24-7 demand pattern.

What are the best approaches for future sustainable systems? The first thing that comes to mind — batteries — aren’t necessarily well adapted for massive-scale central grid requirements, although some green advocates are calling for prioritization of R&D to improve battery technology, in the context of electric vehicles and home use.

The following wiki article lays out the main storage techniques that are possible, but each has strengths and weaknesses across the following:

- capital requirements (up-front cost)
- operating costs
- energy efficiency (what % of the kW put in do you get out?)
- capacity (scale)
- delivery time (responds in seconds, minutes or hours?)
- local geography

Take pumped storage hydroelectricity for example, a widely used technique based on a principle as low-tech as gravity: When there’s excess power onhand, use it to pump water uphill into an elevated reservoir — then tap it later by releasing downhill flows back through the turbines. The method boasts reasonable efficiency (75-80%), very high capacity and rapid delivery time. The drawbacks: Suitable geography is scarce, minimum scale quite high (not something you could use to manage the output of a solar array on your roof), and capital requirements are very high.

Upcoming posts will explore what options are generally in use in China and India today … and which are best-adapted for greening their energy systems.

(Image of Vanadium Redox battery courtesy of www.treehugger.com)

Following up on the critically important smart power grid theme … I found the following overview on the woeful current state of India’s electricity grid on Smart Grid News.

The above was published roughly a year ago, but the overall situation hasn’t seen a dramatic shift in that span … In fact, the same site’s newsletter reported in its September coverage of the International Smart Grid Summit in Washington D.C. that India loses an eye-popping 50% of its generated power due to technical issues linked to its outdated transmission infrastructure. See the blurb here.

Convincing a country starved for power to go for renewable sources is challenging enough as it is without massive waste being part of the economic model. The good news is that the county stands to enjoy massive upside from introducing smart grid technologies available today.

(Image courtesy of CSIRO Australia.)