Preparing for Climate Change through Energy Internet and eVehicles: Small Windpower Can Make a Difference in Remote Telecom Facilities

Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview

Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.

Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with autonomous eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. These new energy architectures will also significantly reduce our carbon footprint. For more details please see:

Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37

Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG

High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP

Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g

How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd

Monday, November 23, 2009

Small Windpower Can Make a Difference in Remote Telecom Facilities

http://www.facebook.com/#/notes/laina-raveendran-greene/small-windpower-can-make-a-difference-in-remote-telecom-facilities/186185043115
[..]
Small Windpower Can Make a Difference in Remote Telecom Facilities
Share
Yesterday at 7:12pm

In the spirit of James Burke, it is always fun to follow the leads and find the connections. In this case, we start with a USA Today article “Wind backs up Honolulu airport power.” Hawaii and clean tech are one of my personal interest. The crux of the story is how the Hawaii Department of Transportation (DOT) has supplemented the power consumed with 16 small 1 Kw wind turbines. Nothing remarkable about a 16 Kw system. 16 Kw would be fine to offset daily power use for a utility building (in this case, the backup power for the Honolulu airport). How these small turbines were mounted drew in my attention.

The system is a state Department of Transportation pilot project and data is being gathered to determine the system's cost savings and energy output. It was installed at the end of June and cost about $100,000. Photos by RICHARD AMBO | The Honolulu Advertiser

We’ve seen many different wind systems which take advantage of the building’s real estate. But, the leading roof top edge has interesting aerodynamic benefits. Buildings have interesting aerodynamic effects. It is a whole specialty realm of engineering which is currently focused on physical stress loads on the build’s structure.

AeroVironment, the makers of the small, modular wind turbine installed at Honolulu’s Airport is on to something which would have significant impact to the way we look at structures. AreoVironment is a revolutionary aviation company. They understand aerodynamics from a flight perspective. Yet, with their Architectural Wind Services, they are applying that knowledge to leverage “the natural acceleration in wind speed resulting from the building’s aerodynamic properties. This accelerated wind speed can increase the turbines’ electrical power generation by more than 50% compared to the power generation that would result from systems situated outside of the acceleration zone.” Imaging what would happen if the expertise from AeroVironment was synergized with a company like Force Technologies? What could be gained by mindfully designing a building to capitalized the natural wind dynamics and use the changes the build acts on those dynamics to recoup energy?

As a minimum today, we can see telecoms buildings in remote rual areas use AeroVironment’s small wind technology to cost effectively offset power utilization. The price range for 12 units range at list between $134,000 to $180,000. In most areas of the US country with commercial electrical rates, that would be a ~5 year payback for the investment. Given that most telecommunications facilities have lifecycles which last decades, this is an interesting investment in energy offsets. Move this to a developing country installation, where you have higher electricity rate, fuel cost (generators), and unpredictable power, and the attractiveness increases. Then add the utilization of space. AeroVironment’s installation on the building does not interfere with other roof mounted solar installations or pole/antenna mounted wind systems. So this specific design can be used as a local power producing suite – offsetting the electrical cost of the telecommunications facility while opening the door for feed-in tariffs for any excess (if there are feed-in tariffs).