What if it were possible to create energy out of air? A purely sustainable and renewable source of energy that wouldn’t require towers or panels. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed just that. It turns out that air humidity is a vast, sustainable reservoir of energy that is continuously available. The researchers claim that just about any surface can be turned into a generator by replicating the electrical properties of storm clouds. A storm cloud is a mass of water droplets, all of which contain a charge. When the conditions are right, the cloud can produce a lightning bolt. The researchers have used similar properties to build a small-scale cloud that can produce electricity predictably and continuously.
So how does it work? Their air generator (Air-gen) relies on microscopic holes smaller than 100 nanometres (even more minuscule than a strand of a human hair). The small diameter of these holes is called a “mean free path”, which is the distance a single molecule can travel before it collides with another molecule of the same substance.
Water molecules float all around the air, and their mean free path is around 100 nanometres. As the humid air passes through Air-gen’s minuscule holes, the water molecules will directly contact an upper and lower chamber in the film. Because each pore is so small, the water molecules would easily bump into the pore’s edge as they pass through the thin layer. This interaction creates a charge imbalance and results in electricity.
The researchers claim that their product could offer kilowatts of power for general usage as long as there is any humidity in the air. Their Air-gen device could be more space efficient and blend into the environment compared to other renewable energy options such as solar and wind power. Moreover, humidity exists at all hours of the day and night, rain or shine, to provide non-stop energy.
The researchers also claim that harvesting the air and water droplets could be designed from all kinds of materials, which offers many opportunities for cost-effective and environment-adaptable designs. The Air-gen device is so small that thousands of them could be stacked on top of each other, increasing the amount of energy it gives off without increasing the environmental footprint of the device.
This device stems from the researcher’s previous inventions of generating an electric current using moisture in the air using a microbe called Geobacter. Their device produced a sustained voltage of about 0.5 volts for about 20 hours and could light up small LED bulbs. However, they couldn’t get the microbe to create enough nanowires (the small holes that generate the electric charge) to scale up the technology further.
Their new Air-gen device has never been discovered before, and it opens up many possibilities for effectively using renewable resources to create energy. It’s incredible to think we could harvest energy from the air around us. This discovery and invention could be scaled up. They could make renewable energy more accessible to people around the world. They could reduce the negative environmental impact we see with some existing forms of renewable energy (solar panels or wind turbines).
Minister of Power Dullas Alahapperuma says the first power plant generating electricity using solid waste in Sri Lanka established in the Kerawalapitiya area in Hendala will be added to the national grid by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on the 17th of this month.
The power plant is planned to generate 10 megawatts using 700 tons of garbage daily and will operate by collecting waste from the area.
The Minister said that the use of waste collected in this manner for the generation of electricity in the entire district is also environmentally beneficial.
In addition, the Ministry of Power plans to commence the first project to generate electricity from biogas using biodegradable waste in the Matara District.
Source: Business News LK
The project, which is being constructed in Kotawila in the Matara District, is planned to add 400 kilowatts to the national grid using 40 tons of garbage per day. The project is expected to be operationalized by October this year and added to the national grid.
President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s Vision of Prosperity policy framework marks the milestones of an innovative power generation process that goes beyond conventional power generation, and as the Minister in charge of the subject, he has been given the challenge of increasing the contribution of renewable energy to 70% of the national grid by the year 2023, Minister Alahapperuma said.
The Minister added that it was his responsibility to overcome the challenge and provide uninterrupted, quality, reliable and affordable electricity to the electricity consumers. Accordingly, steps will be taken in the future to implement the process of generating electricity from garbage as well as the process of generating electricity from biogas at the district level covering the entire island, said the Minister of Power, Dullas Alahapperuma.
Saudi Arabia is working to replace the use of petroleum liquids for power generation with solar energy and gas-fired capacity, Argaam reported on Monday, citing Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, as saying.
As part of the program ‘Hydrocarbon Demand Sustainability’, the world’s largest oil exporter will aim to replace petroleum—which it still burns for electricity—with solar power energy, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said at a meeting to describe the strategy of the Saudi energy ministry.
“The program will rank among the most important initiatives, given its value added to the national economy and its ability to stop the country’s financial waste,” Argaam noted.
Replacing petroleum with solar energy for electricity generation would free up more oil for OPEC’s top producer and de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, to export. This could potentially give the Kingdom even more sway on the global oil market and help it obtain more revenues from crude oil sales, despite constant assurances that the economic diversification away from oil is underway.
At the event on Monday, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman also noted that Saudi Arabia made “strong efforts” to balance the oil market last year, according to Argaam.
Last year, Saudi Arabia went on a brief and ill-timed oil price war with Russia after the two friends/foes disagreed in March 2020 how to manage oil supply to the market at a time of collapsing demand in the pandemic. After Saudi Arabia and Russia returned to negotiations and sealed a new OPEC+ pact a month later, both leaders of the alliance had to cut their production much more than what they had discussed in March.
This quarter, global oil demand and the market are still wobbling due to the still spreading COVID, and Saudi Arabia abandoned, this time around, its insistence that everyone at OPEC+ take their share of the burden in rebalancing the market. The Kingdom announced a surprise unilateral cut of 1 million bpd of its crude oil production in February and March.
Natural gas-fired generation continues to provide much of the electricity in the UK, but renewable power in total at times has taken the lead spot in the country’s generation mix over the past several months. The country has moved almost entirely away from coal, which a decade ago teamed with natural gas to provide three-quarters of Great Britain’s power.
The UK government in 2019 passed laws that require the country to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, beyond the previous target of at least an 80% reduction from 1990 levels. The UK also plans to phase out all coal-fired generation by 2025. Chris Skidmore, the UK’s Energy and Clean Growth Minister when the legislation was passed, at the time said, “We’re leading the world yet again in becoming the first major economy to pass new laws to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050 while remaining committed to growing the economy—putting clean growth at the heart of our modern Industrial Strategy. We’re pioneering the way for other countries to follow in our footsteps driving prosperity by seizing the economic opportunities of becoming a greener economy.”
Boris Johnson, the UK’s prime minister, earlier in November announced plans for what his government has called a “green industrial revolution,” which includes expanding the country’s use of nuclear and hydrogen power. Johnson said the 10-point plan included as part of the initiative reiterates previous pledges to end the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2030, and quadruple the amount of offshore wind power capacity within a decade. Though environmentalists praised much of the plan, some say its does not move fast enough to end the use of fossil fuels.
Carbon Price a Key
Global energy analysts have said the UK, even with continued reliance on some thermal power, has “cleaned up” its electricity mix faster than any other major world economy. Grant Wilson, a lecturer at the University of Birmingham who focuses on energy issues, told POWER that’s in large part due to the country’s price on carbon, now in place for several years, which accelerated the country’s move away from coal (Figure 1).
1. The Drax Power Station, with a generation capacity of nearly 4 GW, is the UK’s largest single-site power generator, and currently home to Europe’s largest decarbonization project. The Drax Group is converting the long-time coal-fired power plant in North Yorkshire to run on sustainable biomass. Courtesy: Drax Group
Wilson pointed out that “2019 saw the annual total for coal generation drop below solar and into seventh place [among all generation types] for the first time. Britain’s renewables also generated more electricity than coal and natural gas combined over a month for the first ever time in August [2019].” That trend has gotten stronger over the past year; government data released in October of this year showed that renewables’ share of UK electricity generation climbed to 44.6% in the second quarter of 2020, up nine percentage points on the year.
Wilson also noted that demand for power in the UK has trended downward for more than a decade, as the country has embraced energy efficiency measures. Wilson, along with Iain Staffell of Imperial College London, and Noah Godfrey of the University of Birmingham, noted what they called a “remarkable shift in Britain’s electrical system during the 2010s. The amount of electricity consumed fell by nearly 15% between 2010 and 2019, with the economy using 50 terawatt hours (TWh) less electricity in 2019 than it did in 2010.” Wilson said, “Britain now has the cleanest electrical supply it has ever had.”
Providing for Baseload Power
A caveat for the UK’s transition away from fossil fuels has been that any changes to the country’s generation mix must still provide for reliable sources of baseload power. While coal-fired generation supplied less than 2% of Britain’s electricity last year, natural gas today provides about 40% of the nation’s electricity. Wind power is in second place, supplying nearly 21% of the UK’s electrical demand in the past year, up from just 3% in 2010.
David McLeod, ULC Technologies UK head of business development, told POWER, “By 2030, it is likely that we will see a significant growth in wind and solar-powered energy, while the conversation around hydrogen is just getting started. Natural gas is still a major part of the UK’s power generation, and it will take some time for it to officially phase out. As the UK moves away from fossil fuels for power generation though, technology will be essential in assisting with this transition to ensure safety and efficiency.”
McLeod said his company plans to launch an unmanned aerial services program in 2021. Its “mission is to help utility and energy companies solve problems through the application of our unmanned aircraft technology. This includes looking at exciting applications for offshore wind companies to increase safety and reduce maintenance costs as the growth of renewable energy continues. Unmanned aircraft are great for capturing tremendous amounts of inspection data with very low risk, and that goes together with the need for machine learning (i.e. artificial intelligence) to process the data.”
As McLeod noted, changes in the UK’s power generation system enhance the need to introduce new technologies. Construction recently began on the first new synchronous condenser in the UK, under the National Grid’s Pathfinder program. The condenser, being built in Wales, is expected to provide critical support services to stabilize the grid as the UK moves away from thermal power generation and increases its use of renewable resources, including solar power (Figure 2) and energy storage.
2. The 72.2-MW Shotwick Solar Park was the largest solar installation in the UK when it was commissioned in 2016. Courtesy: British Solar Renewables
The UK government in late May threw its support behind plans to develop the country’s largest solar park, a £450 million ($555 million) joint venture between Hive Energy and Wirsol Energy. The Cleve Hill Solar Park, designed with 350 MW of generation capacity, will use 880,000 solar panels and be located near the towns of Faversham and Whitstable on the north Kent coast.
Flexible Reserve Capacity
Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a global investment manager focused on lower-carbon and renewable energy infrastructure investment, has taken a lead role in the UK’s energy transition, including the National Grid program. The company over the past two years has developed, built, or acquired several assets including those dealing with flexible generation, grid support infrastructure, and demand response.
Those projects include more than 300 MW of flexible reserve capacity either operational or under construction across 21 sites in Wales, Scotland, and England. The company also acquired Flexitricity, among the first of a group of demand-response operators in Great Britain. Flexitricity has participated in UK power markets for more than 10 years, looking at customer demand management as decarbonization accelerates. The group works to create cost savings for energy consumers, while enhancing grid support during periods of high demand and higher power prices. The Flexitricity virtual power plant includes an aggregated 540 MW of distributed flexible power from a range of assets owned by customers across the UK.
ESG Impact
Rory Quinlan, who co-founded Quinbrook along with David Scaysbrook in 2015, told POWER the company “has specialized in the creation of new infrastructure assets that deliver real and tangible ESG [environmental, social, and governance] impact on behalf of its investors. Quinbrook is operating at the forefront of the accelerating energy transition to achieve ‘net zero’ emissions from the UK’s energy supply system.” Quinlan said Quinbrook “is currently constructing one of the UK’s largest diversified portfolios of reserve power assets for managing intermittency challenges arising from the rapid growth in wind and solar.”
One business Quinbrook has invested in is Velox Power, which comprises a diversified portfolio of reserve power and grid support infrastructure assets providing secure, dispatchable, peaking power using modern, high-efficiency gas engines. The technologies within the portfolio include gas peaking, landfill gas, and coal mine methane. More than 96% of the 357.5-MW portfolio within the Velox Power business have secured 15-year Capacity Market contracts.
Quinlan said the synchronous condenser is an important technological piece to support renewable generation resources. He told POWER that a “synchronous condenser is an electric generator/motor whose rotor can spin freely. Synchronous condensers are applying an established century-old technology to support the current operation of and transition to the power system of the future. With an increase in renewable penetration and the retirement of nuclear plants, generation from synchronous sources such as coal, gas, and nuclear is expected to decrease significantly in the future. This is creating increasing instability of system frequency and local voltage levels, which synchronous condensers are able to help control without displacing renewable energy generation.”
Challenges Await
Mark Chadwick, managing director of Sustainability Solutions at ENGIE Impact, told POWER that the UK’s transition to more renewable resources comes with challenges. “Renewable sources will continue to become a growing trend over the next several years. However, renewable sources typically connect to the grid with technologies that are not synchronous machines, which may have implications on the technical characteristics of the system, such as lower inertia, lower short-circuit power, strong fluctuations due to RES [renewable energy system] variability, and so on. These can pose challenges so it’s important to consider all the variables when transitioning to renewables.
“We’ll also expect to see new grid portions based on entirely new technologies. For instance, offshore wind is expected to become a significant part of the generation matrix for the UK and other countries that have access to the North Sea.” Chadwick added, “As the grid becomes more digitized over the next decade, it will offer an opportunity to increase the level of intelligence between the various agents that compose the power system and support the balancing function to ensure the equilibrium of supply and demand is maintained.
“For example, consider EV charging—a misalignment between the actual RES output and what was forecasted can have significant efficiency and cost implications. Overall, to truly transform the UK power grid, there must be better cross-sector collaboration among public and private entities in order to simplify the changes that will need to be made, particularly as it relates to the impact on consumers. We can envisage a power system that is digitally controlled, with connected devices such as electric vehicles able to provide grid balancing services by charging and discharging as required. We can also envisage a more decentralized system, with a far greater proportion of energy consumers also being producers.”
Migration to Renewables
CIL Management Consultants, an international investment advisory group with offices in London and also Chicago, Illinois, in a report provided to POWER said that for the UK to reach its carbon emissions reduction goals the country’s “energy generation will have to migrate to renewable sources. Energy distribution, storage and exploitation will need to adapt to accommodate this shift. [The country] will need to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide.” The group said it “is currently not possible to capture and store carbon on a large scale. In order to meet net zero by 2050, CCS [carbon capture and storage] will need to be operational by the mid-2020s and operating at scale by the 2030s.”
Said Quinbrook’s Quinlan: “The drive to reduce the carbon intensity of power generated and consumed in the UK is economy-wide [and] this rapid transition of power supply infrastructure is expected to create attractive investment opportunities featuring both regular cash yield and capital appreciation.” He said “the next three to five years will be a critical phase” for the country’s energy transition as investors sort out which technologies will have lead roles in UK power generation.
A cattle station halfway between Alice Springs and Darwin is set to house the world’s largest solar farm, with energy generated from the project to ultimately power Singapore.
Newcastle Waters, where casino mogul James Packer worked as a jackaroo for a year when his father, Kerry, owned the 10,000 sq km property, has been earmarked for the $20bn solar farm, according to the company responsible for the project, Sun Cable.
Sun Cable’s chief executive, David Griffin, told Guardian Australia the site would take up about 12,000 hectares, and that a referral for the project has been submitted to the Northern Territory’s Environmental Protection Authority – the first stage of a lengthy approvals process that is expected to allow construction to begin in late 2023, energy production by 2026 and export by 2027.
Speaking about the reasons for proposing the Newcastle Waters site, Griffin said its location was “a meeting point of a few key criteria”.
“It’s on the Adelaide to Darwin rail corridor, which is brilliant for our logistics given the enormous amount of material we’ll have to transport to the site,” he said. It was also within 30km of the Stuart highway, the main highway running through the sparsely populated Northern Territory.
“It’s a bit of a balancing act too, because it’s far south enough to get away from the main patch affected by the wet season, so it’s a steady solar resource throughout the year,” he said. “There’s plenty of sun and not many clouds.”
Griffin also said the site was not so far south that it made the costs of transmitting the electricity to Darwin too high, and that the existing land was “really ideal for construction of a solar farm as it’s extremely flat”.
Sun Cable has entered into an agreement with the current owners of Newcastle Waters, Consolidated Pastoral Company, to use the land. However, Griffin said he could not reveal the financial details of the deal.
Overhead transmission lines will send the electricity generated by Sun Cable to Darwin and feed into the state’s power grid, but Griffin said two-thirds of the power would be exported to Singapore by high-voltage direct current undersea cables.
There will be at least two cables, each with a diameter slightly smaller than a soccer ball, with Sun Cable able to provide about a fifth of Singapore’s electricity needs as the country looks to move away from its increasingly expensive gas-fired power system.
Griffin has also said the solar farm could supply power to remote communities in the Northern Territory that currently rely on expensive diesel generators for electricity.
Sun Cable expects the project will generate 1,500 direct jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs during construction, and about 350 permanent jobs once in operation.
Griffin said Sun Cable was working on a training and employment opportunities plan so part of the workforce could be sourced from nearby Indigenous communities, and that supplies would be produced by local businesses.
We have reached a defining moment for the energy industry in Sri Lanka, as the government has announced a policy for the country to reach 80% renewable energy by 2030.
This is a bold and ambitious target that will play a major role in enabling Sri Lanka to meet its climate change goals as part of the Paris agreement.
However, with the right policy framework in place, we could achieve even more. We could enable Sri Lanka to become energy independent, create thousands of jobs and increase the stability of the network to avoid future blackouts.
Current and future scenarios
The Sri Lankan energy generation is currently around 40% renewable, which is predominantly hydro power, with the remaining 60% largely coming from coal and combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs).
A significant proportion of energy generation in the country is delivered by just a few generators. The result? When one power station experiences an issue, it has dramatic energy supply consequences for the entire nation.
That’s what we saw in August when a technical failure at the Kerawalapitiya Grid Substation left the entire country without power for several hours.
The Ceylon Electricity Board controls the major functions of power generation, transmission, distribution and retailing in Sri Lanka. It recently published its draft Long Term Generation Expansion Plan (LTGEP), outlining its plans for energy generation over the next 20 years.
Although the draft LTGEP has a significant share of renewables included, the majority (55%) of the new capacity would be from conventional coal and CCGT’s which do not support renewables well.
Traditional inflexible plants such as coal and CCGT are efficient when running continuously on high load, but their disadvantage is poor ramp rate, start and stop capability and part load efficiency.
This means that they won’t be well suited to working alongside the increased level of renewable generation that is expected by the 2030 target and would create an unnecessarily expensive energy system.
If that target is achieved, then renewables will become the “new base load”, so we must write the rules for the rest of the system according to what works best for renewable power. That means installing additional capacity which can run efficiently on part load, have fast ramp rates and no limits on start and stops.
The document was written before the government announced its policy to achieve 80% renewable energy, but we’ve conducted further modelling which shows that the more ambitious target is also achievable.
To make this highly renewable system work effectively, there must be a focus on flexibility, as energy storage and flexible gas engines can help balance the peaks and troughs of solar and wind generation. The paper therefore advises installing 1.4 GW of newly built flexible engine power plant capacity and 1.6 GW of battery energy storage.
This energy mix would achieve a 70% drop in emission intensity compared to the current plan, while still having enough capacity to meet growing electricity demand of the nation.
This cost-optimal energy system plan will also enable 100% renewable power generation in the future, as gas engines can be converted to run on clean, synthetic fuels, once commercially feasible.
Preventing blackouts
A flexible, renewable power system would reduceSri Lanka’s reliance on a few major power plants, as these technologies can be decentralised and spread across the country in smaller solar, wind and gas engine plants and batteries.
The chances of future blackouts will be greatly reduced by this new model, and when they do occur, they would have a far smaller local impact.
To enable this future, power plant tenders must be technology agnostic to enable the most cost-optimal forms of generation to come to the fore and support the greater amount of renewable electricity on the grid.
A boost for jobs and the economy
The renewables revolution, supported by significant flexibility, could create thousands of new jobs in Sri Lanka for local people, enabling entrepreneurs to deliver neighbourhood projects that help to achieve national renewable targets.
Our power system modelling shows that a more flexible grid could generate huge savings of around 925 billion rupees (five billion US dollars) for Sri Lanka between now and 2037.
Around 370 billion rupees (two billion US dollars) of the total savings are from operation cost, mainly fuel, which is currently imported to Sri Lanka. By utilising the country’s own solar and the wind resource, Sri Lanka would not only save money, but also be more energy independent.
Energy independence
The COVID-19 pandemic had a fascinating impact on energy markets around the world, but particularly in Europe, where we saw unprecedented levels of renewable energy generation.
Through our Energy Transition Lab, we found that countries with high levels of power network flexibility were able to capitalise on the changing circumstances, while inflexible nations had major issues.
This was most notable in Germany, where grid inflexibility meant that, at midday on 5 July, it was exporting more than 10 GW from its neighbours and paying almost 167 billion rupees (900,000 USD) per hour to do so.
This is a lesson that should be learnt by countries around the world, including Sri Lanka.
By building a grid with high levels of renewables and flexibility, Sri Lanka will be able to become an energy independent nation. It can supply all of its own power and reduce its reliance on importing fuels.
In fact, if an interconnector was built with India, it could become an exporter of electricity during times of high levels of renewable generation – or import energy when there is a surplus in neighbouring countries – becoming a pioneering model for island nations around the world to follow.
The Long Term Generation Expansion Plan needs to be aligned with the government’s ambitious plan to reach 80% renewables by 2030. If successful, it would be transformational for the country – creating jobs, boosting the economy, reducing emissions and creating an energy independent Sri Lanka.
Published by Roshan De Saram (Charted Engineer specialized in the power and energy sectors)
