Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Geothermal energy has been used for thousands of years in some countries for cooking and heating.

How it works

Hot rocks underground heat water to produce steam. We drill holes down to the hot region, steam comes up, is purified and used to drive turbines, which drive electric generators.

Biomass is organic material made from plants and animals (microorganisms). Biomass contains stored energy from the sun. Plants absorb the sun's energy in a process called photosynthesis. The chemical energy in plants gets passed on to animals and people that eat them. Biomass is a renewable energy source because we can always grow more trees and crops, and waste will always exist. Some examples of biomass fuels are wood, crops, manure, and some garbage. When burned, the chemical energy in biomass is released as heat. If you have a fireplace, the wood you burn in it is a biomass fuel. Wood waste or garbage can be burned to produce steam for making electricity, or to provide heat to industries and homes.

Crops like corn and sugar cane can be fermented to produce ethanol. Biodiesel, another transportation fuel, can be produced from left-over food products like vegetable oils and animal fats.

Ethanol and biodiesel were the fuels used in the first automobile and diesel engines, but lower cost gasoline and diesel fuel made from crude oil became the dominant vehicle fuels. The Federal government has promoted ethanol use in vehicles to help reduce oil imports since the mid-1970s.

200,000 homes in the U.S. use some type of photovoltaic solar technology-and the market is expanding at a healthy 15% annually.

PV modules covering 0.3% of the land in the U.S., equivalent to one fourth of the area currently occupied by railroads, could provide all of the US's electricity needs.

Solar power is pollution free during use. Production end wastes and emissions are manageable using existing pollution controls.

In situations where connection to the electricity grid is difficult, costly, or impossible (such as island communities, areas not served by a power grid, illuminated roadside signs, and ocean-going vessels) harvesting solar power is often an economically competitive alternative to energy from traditional source

Intermittency: It is not available at night and is reduced when there is cloud cover, decreasing the reliability of peak output performance or requiring a means of energy storage.

What is wave energy? Waves are generated by the passage of wind across the surface of the sea.  Energy is transferred from the wind to the waves.  Waves travel vast distances across the ocean and at great speed and the energy is concentrated near the water surface.  The energy within a wave is proportional to the square of the wave height.  Therefore a two-meter high wave has four times the power of a one-meter high wave. The longer and stronger the wind blows over the surface of the sea, the higher, longer, faster and more powerful the sea is.

Although wave energy is a form of concentrated wind energy, as it has often travelled over large distances it is regularly out of phase with the local wind conditions.  Wave energy can therefore help to balance output variability from other renewable sources and maximise the efficient use of the electricity networks.   Wave energy is also more predictable than many other forms of renewable energy, such as wind or solar, and can be forecast accurately up to five days in advance.

Wave energy is clean and renewable!  It is one of the last renewable energy forms which mankind has yet to harness, and its potential is huge.

The first tidal power station was the Rance tidal power plant built over a period of 6 years from 1960 to 1966 at La Rance, France.[8] It has 240 MW installed capacity.

Historically, tide mills have been used, both in Europe and on the Atlantic coast of North America. The incoming water was contained in large storage ponds, and as the tide went out, it turned waterwheels that used the mechanical power it produced to mill grain. [1] The earliest occurrences date from the Middle Ages, or even from Roman times.[2][3] It was only in the 19th century that the process of using falling water and spinning turbines to create electricity was introduced in the U.S. and Europe.[

"But if we could harness 0.1 percent of the energy in the ocean, we could support the energy needs of 15 billion people.

Engineered geothermal systems (EGS) are based on a related principle, but they work even in parts of the world that are not volcanically active, by drilling thousands of metres underground to mimic the design of natural steam or hot-water reservoirs. Wells are bored and pathways are created inside hot rocks, into which cold water is injected. The water heats up as it circulates and is then brought back to the surface, where the heat is extracted to generate electricity. Because the Earth gets hotter the deeper you drill, EGS could expand the reach of geothermal power enormously and provide access to a virtually inexhaustible energy resource.

A solar cell is any device that directly converts the energy in light into electrical energy through the process of photovoltaics. The development of solar cell technology begins with the 1839 research of French physicist Antoine-César Becquerel. Becquerel observed the photovoltaic effect while experimenting with a solid electrode in an electrolyte solution when he saw a voltage develope when light fell upon the electrode.

Unlike fossil fuel power plants, no smoke is emitted from geothermal power plants, because no burning takes place; only steam is emitted from geothermal facilities. Emissions of nitrous oxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and carbon dioxide are extremely low, especially when compared to fossil fuel emissions. The binary geothermal plant, which currently represents around 15% of all geothermal plant capacity, along with the flash/binary plant, produce nearly zero air emissions. Even dry steam plants, which are considered to have the highest levels of air emissions, are considered environmentally benign compared with fossil fuels. For example, Lake County, California, downwind of The Geysers, has met all federal and state ambient air quality standards for almost 25 years. There are 21 power plants at The Geysers, comprising a significant complex of electric generation facilities, yet even despite this, air quality is excellent. At The Geysers, air quality has even improved as a result of geothermal development because hydrogen sulfide, which would ordinarily be released naturally into the atmosphere by hot springs and fumaroles, instead now passes through an abatement system that reduces hydrogen sulfide emissions by 99.9%. (1) See also Myth #2.

Solar energy is an infinitely renewable resource that uses the sun's rays to generate electricity for use in your home. By going solar, you can reduce your energy costs and lower your dependence on fossil fuels, thereby making your own contribution to a cleaner environment. Generally, the solar energy systems we use work as follows:

The terms 'wind energy' describe the procedure by which wind is employed to produce mechanical power or electricity.

solar energy exhibits the "fastest growth," providing "more than 10% of global electricity by 2050." The IEA further found that in high renewable scenarios, solar is essential due to its "almost unlimited potential":

At the American Enterprise Institute's blog, Kenneth Green promoted a press release claiming that "Solar cells do not offset greenhouse gases" because solar cell production emits gases that "make carbon dioxide (CO2) seem harmless."

There’s a much cheaper way to produce hydrogen: spray steam on white-hot coals and out comes mostly hydrogen gas (40 percent) and carbon monoxide (50 percent), a mixture known appropriately as “water gas.” It’s the least expensive way to make hydrogen. Unfortunately, the carbon monoxide produced along with it is highly poisonous. To extract the last bit of energy, the carbon monoxide can be burned, and that turns it into the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Electric cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells don’t produce greenhouse-enhancing carbon dioxide. But producing hydrogen does-and if we want to reduce our petroleum dependence, we’re going to have to reconcile ourselves to that fact.

When we get electricity from renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, we avoid the carbon dioxide emissions that would have come from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, or natural gas.

 Wind power is an interesting renewable energy source as wind turbines can essentially be placed anywhere geographically where there is ample wind to turn the wind blades.

One thing that we haven't written about extensively on the MyEnergySolution.com blog is wind power.  Wind power is an interesting renewable energy source as wind turbines can essentially be placed anywhere geographically where there is ample wind to turn the wind blades.

o put this in context, an average U.S. household uses about 10 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity each year. One megawatt of installed wind energy from a single large turbine can generate from 2,400 to more than 3,000 MWh annually – enough to power about 250 homes.

With this technology, sea water turbines do not come into contact with water

Instead, a column of air is set in motion which drives the machines. In detail, this works in the following manner: The waves spill into a hollow container which is open to the sea. This compresses and calms the air column in a so-called collector in a similar way to how an air pump works. The power plant "breathes" in and out. The pressure difference is then turned into rotary energy in a so-called Wells turbine (named after its inventor). This is in turn passed to a generator where electricity is produced. This means that the turbine has the air periodically flow through it from both sides, depending on whether the device is "breathing" in or out. Because of the special rotor geometry, there is no need to either periodically change the blade angles or the direction of rotation. If you consider the fact that an average of some 3 million waves break on to the coast every year, it is clear that only this simple turbine design can offer maximum reliability.

Wave energy is as source of power that comes from the endless march of the waves as they roll into the shore then back out again. Humans harness this power along the coastal regions of the United States, Canada, Scotland, and Australia. Energy that comes from the waves in the ocean sounds like a boundless, harmless supply.

Advantages of Wave Energy 1. Renewable: The best thing about wave energy is that it will never run out. There will always be waves crashing upon the shores of nations, near the populated coastal regions. The waves flow back from the shore, but they always return. Unlike fossil fuels, which are running out, in some places in the world, just as quickly as people can discover them. Unlike ethanol, a corn product, waves are not limited by a season. They require no input from man to make their power, and they can always be counted on

Also unlike fossil fuels, creating power from waves creates no harmful byproducts such as gas, waste, and pollution. The energy from waves can be taken directly into electricity-producing machinery and used to power generators and power plants nearby. In today’s energy-powered world, a source of clean energy is hard to come by.