Upcoming
Event
Microgrid 2021
Microgrid Knowledge
May 11 - June 3, 2021
Free to attend, the digital event features lively discussions and in-depth webinars, delivered by more than 50 energy leaders, who will be available to network and answer audience questions.
Upcoming
Event
Producing Low or Negative Carbon Fuels from Sustainable Biomass Resources
GTI
May 12, 2021, 11 to 11:30 am ET
Transformational technologies that produce low-carbon fuels from renewable resources are being demonstrated at facilities all around the world. This engaging webinar will present insight on near-market and other improved process technologies that can even enable carbon negative energy when combined with carbon sequestration.
News
DOE awards additional $8M to FuelCell Energy in pursuit of solid oxide fuel cell technology
Daily Energy Insider
May 6, 2021
This SOFC effort is based on a multi-stack module that represents a modular, scalable foundation for larger systems. In theory, it could help decarbonization efforts, and ARPA-E has been developing systematic approaches for ultra-high electric efficiency in that space.
This new funding follows successful phase one design activities. Phase two will focus on designing and building an actual SOFC sub-megawatt power generation prototype system, including improved pressurized stack module designs.
“We continue to make progress in advancing our solid oxide fuel cell platform toward commercialization with the aid of key DOE programs in addition to our own capital investment,” Jason Few, president and CEO of FuelCell Energy, said. “With the addition of solid oxide technology, FuelCell Energy offers one of the most complete portfolios of stationary fuel cell platforms in the industry. FuelCell Energy is committed to providing distributed power platforms that help modernize the electric grid, provide a path to decarbonization, deliver energy resiliency and offer a solution to more seamlessly integrate intermittent sources of renewable power like wind and solar.”
Additionally, FuelCell is advancing a modular solid oxide electrolysis project, with funding from DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). That project seeks to promote the solid oxide platform for high efficiency electrolysis, using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. In this regard, it’s the polar opposite of traditional fuel cell operation.
“FuelCell Energy’s platform has the ability to extend the life and usefulness of existing nuclear plants and firm up the capacity of intermittent renewable technologies,” Few said. “Additionally, electrolysis technology supports the hydrogen economy by providing carbon-free, clean hydrogen for transportation, power generation, agricultural uses, and a host of other industrial applications such as making steel. Our solid oxide platform will allow us to add long-duration energy storage, electrolysis, and global sub-megawatt power generation to our commercial offerings, increasing the Company’s total addressable commercial markets.”
Solid oxide cells used with electrolysis allow for the production of hydrogen more efficiently than existing technology. That production only becomes more efficient with the addition of thermal heat.
News
Equity, security and load: FERC conference considers the challenges and potential of electrification
Utility Dive
May 5, 2021
The electrification of transportation, heating and other end uses necessary for the United States to meet its decarbonization goals will require the country to double its electricity load by 2050, panelists said Thursday at a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission technical conference. With that additional load will come opportunities, responsibilities and challenges, they said.
The panelists frequently acknowledged the need to consider issues of equity, affordability and environmental justice throughout the energy transition. "If we don't address those issues, what are we doing? We're not accomplishing anything," said FERC Chairman Richard Glick.
They also raised cybersecurity concerns. It will be a constant battle to secure the grid, said Carlos Casablanca, managing director of distribution planning and analysis at American Electric Power Service Corp. But he added that AEP "does not believe that these risks are brought upon by electrification efforts alone, as these risks already exist in our industry and we actively manage them."
With the United States now aiming to eliminate economywide carbon emissions within 30 years, federal regulators announced the technical conference as a chance to initiate a dialogue "on how to prepare for an increasingly electrified future."
News
ASSISTING FEDERAL FACILITIES WITH ENERGY CONSERVATION TECHNOLOGIES (AFFECT) 2021
U.S. DOE
May 4, 2021
This is accomplished through leveraging the use of a privately financed performance contract in the form of an Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC), ENABLE contract, or Utility Energy Service Contract (UESC) to enhance Federal agency climate change mitigation via energy efficiency, clean energy, and adaptation at mission critical sites. The AFFECT 2021 FAC is expected to provide ‘value added’ additions to projects allowing for greater impact from the projects in terms of energy cost savings and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, enhanced climate change adaptation and resilience.
FEMP also intends for the AFFECT 2021 FAC to provide demonstrated opportunities for replication of projects at other Federal facilities, while building a diversified workforce within the clean energy economy in construction, skilled trades, and engineering to enhance American infrastructure.
Building a clean energy economy and addressing the climate crisis is a top priority of the Biden Administration. This Federal Agency Call (FAC) will advance the Biden Administration’s goals to achieve carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 and “deliver an equitable, clean energy future, and put the United States on a path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050“ to the benefit of all Americans. The Department of Energy (DOE) is committed to pushing the frontiers of science and engineering, catalyzing clean energy jobs through research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D), and ensuring environmental justice and inclusion of disadvantaged communities.
As part of the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the Federal Energy Management Program’s (FEMP) priority is to help federal agencies advance the energy efficiency and resilience of their operations, while addressing climate change and minimizing the carbon footprint. FEMP assists Federal agencies in meeting energy- and climate change-related goals by bringing expertise from all levels of project and policy implementation to identify affordable solutions and facilitate public-private partnerships.
DOE and FEMP intend to play a leading role in meeting the challenge facing our nation and our planet from climate change through advancing a plan to lead the world in building a clean energy economy to address the climate emergency. DOE and FEMP will use its resources to turn the threat of climate change into an opportunity by catalyzing our partners across the Federal government to lead through the power of example toward the goal of building a 100% clean energy economy with net-zero emissions.
Applications must address either or both of the Climate Change Adaptation-Resilient and/or Efficient Areas of Interest, and describe a Replicability Plan highlighting (a) how replication and/or scalability across the agencies’ enterprises will be promoted, and (b) agree to develop a Government Use Case for leveraging across applicable U.S. Federal government-owned facilities.
Through the AFFECT 2021 FAC, FEMP intends to facilitate and promote the use of energy performance contracts to leverage a wider adoption of Climate Change Adaptation-Resilient and/or Efficient projects and processes at all Federal facilities.
The full FAC is posted on the EERE Exchange website at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. To apply to this FAC, Applicants must register with and submit application materials through EERE Exchange, EERE’s online application portal.
Information on where to submit questions regarding the content of the announcement and where to submit questions regarding submission of applications is found in the full FAC posted on the EERE Exchange website.
News
Mainspring Energy Lands $150M Deal To Deploy Its Linear Generators With NextEra
Green Tech Media
May 4, 2021
On Tuesday, Mainspring's vision garnered a vote of confidence from U.S. utility and renewables giant NextEra in the form of a $150 million agreement with its business services arm NextEra Energy Resources to purchase, finance and deploy Mainspring's devices across the country.
Mainspring started testing its linear generators last summer with an unnamed national supermarket chain, which has agreed to expand its use to up to 30 grocery stores, according to Tuesday’s announcement. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup, formerly called EtaGen, has also shipped products to big-box retailers and utility customers, and it is in discussions with other Fortune 500 companies.
The core concept behind Mainspring’s generator — capturing the back-and-forth motion of pistons, or oscillators in Mainspring’s terminology, to generate energy — is shared by a wide class of devices, ranging from Stirling engines to linear alternators and motors. But Mainspring’s system differs in several key ways from the variety of similar technologies developed over the decades, CEO Shannon Miller said in an interview.
“It’s a full systems integration: making sure the emissions are low, making sure the efficiency is high, making sure we have the controls in place to use different fuels,” said Miller, a former mechanical engineer at Tesla who developed the idea behind Mainspring’s technology at Stanford University with company co-founders Matt Svrcek and Adam Simpson.
Low-emissions, fuel-flexible, dispatchable on-site power
One of the key innovations is Mainspring’s use of “air springs” and an “air-bearing system” as cushions of air that hold the magnet-equipped oscillators in place within the structure that captures their back-and-forth motion to generate electricity. Using air instead of mechanical bearings or oil reduces friction and does away with the key mechanical points of failure that have challenged other linear generator designs, said Miller.
In simple terms, “it’s like an air hockey table that you’ve wrapped around into a tube,” Miller said. In terms of its sophistication, getting this air-based system to work smoothly and reliably has required “a lot of good engineering,” helped along by research and development funding. Mainspring has raised $133 million to date from investors including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures, utility AEP and the venture arms of oil giant Statoil and energy company Centrica.
Mainspring has also tapped advanced power electronics developed for electric vehicles, solar inverters and other digital power conversion and control technologies to “adjust the position of the floating tubes very precisely,” she said, “down to the thickness of a piece of paper.”
This makes its generators “dispatchable,” that is, able to adjust to changes in the electrical loads they’re supporting or rising and falling levels of energy on the grids they’re connected to, Miller said. That’s a differentiator between Mainspring’s devices and typical fuel cells, which are designed to run at a steady output.
That same control flexibility also gives Mainspring the ability to “move the oscillators to a different position for different fuels” with different energetic characteristics, she said. That will allow its devices to convert from using natural gas, which emits carbon dioxide when converted into energy, to fuels that are carbon-neutral such as biomethane or hydrogen as they become more widely available, without significant changes in how they’re designed or operated.
Finally, Mainspring’s generators can operate with almost no emissions of nitrous oxides, or NOx, she said. That’s because the generators combine fuels with oxygen in a central reaction cylinder between their two oscillators, and then use the rising pressure as those two oscillators are pushed back inward by the air springs at either end to create a “uniform and flameless reaction” to release energy.
That’s different than using electrical sparks to ignite fuel-air mixes, as most fossil-fueled engines do, and again requires fine-tuned engineering to operate effectively. But the end result is a generator that can meet California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District’s stringent NOx emissions standards for on-site power and uses fuel more efficiently to reduce carbon dioxide emissions compared to engines, according to Miller.
News
Renewable Natural Gas Emerging as Serious Decarbonized Gas Contender
Power Engieering
May 4, 2021
RNG is essentially a gaseous fuel derived from biogenic or other renewable sources, which can be “upgraded” and processed to pipeline-compatible, near-pure methane. According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), landfills account for the bulk of current RNG production, mainly because they already have methane collection mechanisms. A smaller share of RNG is derived via anaerobic digestion (AD) of solid organic matter removed in the wastewater treatment process at municipal water resource recovery plants, animal manure at livestock farms, and food waste at other facilities. RNG can also come from gasification of “dry” organic wastes, such as agricultural and forestry residues.
As Karen Crippen, Research and Development director at GTI’s Energy Supply & Conversion division, explained during a recent webinar, RNG differs from natural gas in that it’s “nearly all methane, none of the extra hydrocarbon seen in natural gas. It also contains some small amounts of trace constituents, depending on the biogas source. Great strides have been made in the past decade with numerous testing programs, so we now have a good understanding of what the trace constituents in RNG are,” she said. Modern biogas “upgrading” technologies typically used to achieve pipeline-quality standards include membranes, pressure swing adsorption, solvent scrubbing, and water scrubbing. While these can add to production costs, the resulting RNG can be a form of gas that combines low to negative lifecycle carbon emissions with the high energy density, storage capability, and transportability of natural gas.
These environmental attributes are attractive to both policymakers and investors alike because they offer both a pathway for the natural gas industry to meet energy sector decarbonization goals, as well as future resilience of the energy system by providing a locally sourced supply of clean energy. According to David Cox, founder and chief financial officer at the RNG Coalition, a member-led nonprofit organization dedicated to RNG advancement, the recent drive for decarbonization is fueling a boom in the production of RNG. “RNG has had a fairly consistent 30% growth rate (by volume) in recent years,” he said. “Ten years ago, there were 30 RNG facilities in North America. Today we have 157 operating facilities—with another 76 under construction.”
Investors are bullish on the low-carbon gas because it is economic today, said Stifel Equity Research in a recent white paper. “In 2020, dairy and landfill gas projects earned average price realizations of $100/MMBtu and $30/MMBtu, respectively, well above their respective average cost of supply. Based on our assessment of over 20 projects across the primary RNG feedstocks (landfill, animal manure, wastewater), we estimate the industry generates project-level [internal rate of returns (IRRs)] in the 10% to 65% range assuming strip prices, and current federal and state programs. We expect returns to improve as operators advance anaerobic digestion technology, improve operating efficiency, and better integrate digestate sales into their operations.”
It also offers remarkable growth potential. While the International Energy Agency projects an 18-fold increase in RNG supply by 2040, Stifel suggests dairy and swine farms alone represent an 80-fold increase in potential projects.
Combined Heat & Power eCatalog of Recognized Package CHP Systems
Packaged CHP Systems:
Rigorous Recognition Process
The Packaged Combined Heat and Power Catalog (eCatalog) is a voluntary public/private partnership designed to increase deployment of CHP in commercial, institutional and multi-family buildings and manufacturing plants. The core of the eCatalog are CHP Packagers who commit to provide pre-engineered and tested Packaged CHP systems that meet or exceed DOE performance requirements and CHP Solution Providers who commit to provide responsible installation, commissioning, maintenance and service of recognized Packaged CHP systems and also provide a single point of project responsibility.
Customer Engagement Partners: Incentivizing CHP in Your Area
Maximize Your CHP Investment When You Install Recognized Systems
An essential element in market success of energy efficient technologies, such as CHP, is a robust customer engagement partner to educate end-users and provide assistance through the project development process. States, localities and utilities that are implementing programs and policies to increase the use of CHP in support of key economic, security, efficiency and environmental goals can integrate the eCatalog into their efforts by linking recognized CHP packages offered by Solution Providers or Packagers in their region to their programs. The eCatalog provides a unique platform for convening recognized CHP equipment and suppliers with state, local and utility market outreach, customer acquisition and incentive programs.
eCATALOG PACKAGED CHP SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
Packaged CHP System standardized1 electrical and thermal performance data presented for comparison in the eCatalog have been reviewed and recognized as accurate based on engineering data and available performance test data submitted by the Packagers. Emissions data presented in the eCatalog are based on either third-party emissions test results when available, or prime mover manufacture’s emissions certification data, both using standard EPA test methodologies or equivalent. When evaluating CHP performance for a particular project, it is important to use final performance data from the Packager or Solution Provider that reflects specific site conditions such as actual fuel characteristics, ambient temperatures and altitude, and thermal load temperatures or pressures. As an example, hot water thermal capacity ratings in the eCatalog are based on a standard hot water supply temperature of 180 F, with packager specified return temperatures for each system. Actual hot water available from a packaged CHP system for a project will depend on the specific temperature requirements of the hot water supply and return at the site, and may vary from data presented in the eCatalog.
“Even a small blip on the power grid can disrupt our production equipment and cause six to eight hours of lost production time. With the CHP systems, if there is a power blip we go into island mode and don't experience any disruption.”
Learning
What are the benefits of CHP?
Combined heat and power (CHP) systems can provide reliable, flexible, low-cost, energy efficiency to a variety of industrial, commercial, and institutional energy consumers.
See MoreApplying
CHP IN ACTION
Is there any potential, and are there real opportunities in my market? Where has CHP been installed? Is CHP a good fit for my facility?
See MoreCase Study
Get the details.
Interested in what others in your field of use are doing with CHP Systems? Case studies provide even more information about CHP solutions in neighborhood or in your business world.
See More