Green Biomass Energy Solutions

Getting Ready for the Next Big Solar Storm

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:16:00 +0000

Getting Ready for the Next Big Solar Storm

June 21, 2011:

In Sept. 1859, on the eve of a below-average1 solar cycle, the sun unleashed one of the most powerful storms in centuries. The underlying flare was so unusual, researchers still aren't sure how to categorize it. The blast peppered Earth with the most energetic protons in half-a-millennium, induced electrical currents that set telegraph offices on fire, and sparked Northern Lights over Cuba and Hawaii.

This week, officials have gathered at the National Press Club in Washington DC to ask themselves a simple question: What if it happens again?

Modern power grids are vulnerable to solar storms. Photo credit: Martin Stojanovski "A similar storm today might knock us for a loop," says Lika Guhathakurta, a solar physicist at NASA headquarters. "Modern society depends on high-tech systems such as smart power grids, GPS, and satellite communications--all of which are vulnerable to solar storms."

She and more than a hundred others are attending the fifth annual Space Weather Enterprise Forum—"SWEF" for short. The purpose of SWEF is to raise awareness of space weather and its effects on society especially among policy makers and emergency responders. Attendees come from the US Congress, FEMA, power companies, the United Nations, NASA, NOAA and more.

As 2011 unfolds, the sun is once again on the eve of a below-average solar cycle—at least that’s what forecasters are saying. The "Carrington event" of 1859 (named after astronomer Richard Carrington, who witnessed the instigating flare) reminds us that strong storms can occur even when the underlying cycle is nominally weak.

In 1859 the worst-case scenario was a day or two without telegraph messages and a lot of puzzled sky watchers on tropical islands.

In 2011 the situation would be more serious. An avalanche of blackouts carried across continents by long-distance power lines could last for weeks to months as engineers struggle to repair damaged transformers. Planes and ships couldn’t trust GPS units for navigation. Banking and financial networks might go offline, disrupting commerce in a way unique to the Information Age. According to a 2008 report from the National Academy of Sciences, a century-class solar storm could have the economic impact of 20 hurricane Katrinas.

As policy makers meet to learn about this menace, NASA researchers a few miles away are actually doing something about it:

"We can now track the progress of solar storms in 3 dimensions as the storms bear down on Earth," says Michael Hesse, chief of the GSFC Space Weather Lab and a speaker at the forum. "This sets the stage for actionable space weather alerts that could preserve power grids and other high-tech assets during extreme periods of solar activity."

They do it using data from a fleet of NASA spacecraft surrounding the sun. Analysts at the lab feed the information into a bank of supercomputers for processing. Within hours of a major eruption, the computers spit out a 3D movie showing where the storm will go, which planets and spacecraft it will hit, and predicting when the impacts will occur. This kind of "interplanetary forecast" is unprecedented in the short history of space weather forecasting.

Analysts at the GSFC Space Weather Lab created this 3D forecast-model of a coronal mass ejection (CME) heading for Earth on June 21st. Click here to watch the CME sweep past our planet.

"This is a really exciting time to work as a space weather forecaster," says Antti Pulkkinen, a researcher at the Space Weather Lab. "The emergence of serious physics-based space weather models is putting us in a position to predict if something major will happen."

Some of the computer models are so sophisticated, they can even predict electrical currents flowing in the soil of Earth when a solar storm strikes. These currents are what do the most damage to power transformers. An experimental project named "Solar Shield" led by Pulkkinen aims to pinpoint transformers in greatest danger of failure during any particular storm.

"Disconnecting a specific transformer for a few hours could forestall weeks of regional blackouts," says Pulkkinen.

Another SWEF speaker, John Allen of NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate, pointed out that while people from all walks of life can be affected by space weather, no one is out on the front lines quite like astronauts.

"Astronauts are routinely exposed to four times as much radiation as industrial radiation workers on Earth," he says. "It's a serious occupational hazard."

NASA keeps careful track of each astronaut's accumulated dosage throughout their careers. Every launch, every space walk, every solar flare is carefully accounted for. If an astronaut gets too close to the limits ... he or she might not be allowed out of the space station! Accurate space weather alerts can help keep these exposures under control by, e.g., postponing spacewalks when flares are likely.

Speaking at the forum, Allen called for a new kind of forecast: "We could use All Clear alerts. In addition to knowing when it's dangerous to go outside, we'd also like to know when it's safe. This is another frontier for forecasters--not only telling us when a sunspot will erupt, but also when it won't."

The educational mission of SWEF is key to storm preparedness. As Lika Guhathakurta and colleague Dan Baker of the University of Colorado asked in a June 17th New York Times op-ed: "What good are space weather alerts if people don’t understand them and won’t react to them?"

By spreading the word, SWEF will help.

More information about the meeting, including a complete program of speakers, may be found at the SWEF 2011 home page.

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Bomass - Solar Hybrid

Mon, 23 May 2011 16:14:00 +0000

we hybridized our Biomass Power System with a 1,000 Watts PV array, which keeps our battery bank happy and extends the battery capacity significant while being off-grid.

Now we are doing the bulk charge of our battery bank with the Biomass Power System and the absorption and float charge is maintained by the Solar System.

Biomass Gasification UNBC in Pr. George

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:11:00 +0000

University of Northern British Columbia Biomass Gasification System to Reduce Carbon Footprint

Biomass gasification technology

2010-02-15 - Let the chips fall where they may? Not in the case of wood chips at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC).

UNBC’s Prince George campus is a beehive of activity these days as the late-2010 completion date nears for the installation of a biomass gasification system developed by Vancouver-based Nexterra Systems Corp .

The system will convert locally sourced wood residue — such as bark, branches, sawdust and wood chips — into clean-burning synthetic gas, or syngas. This resource can then be used like natural gas to generate heat and power.

The renewable energy potential of this technology was identified several years ago by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), through which the federal government funded pilot-scale and early commercial demonstrations of Nexterra’s biomass gasification systems in thermal energy generation applications.

In Prince George, wood residue will be used to displace up to 85% of the natural gas currently required to heat the UNBC campus. This approach will have significant results. On an annual basis, UNBC expects the new system to save $600,000 to $800,000; lower its fossil fuel consumption by 80,000 gigajoules, equivalent to the natural gas required to heat more than 700 homes in B.C.; and reduce the university’s carbon footprint by approximately 3,500 tonnes annually, equivalent to taking 1,000 cars off the road.

And as well as heating the campus, the innovative biomass gasification system will anchor UNBC’s new Northern Bioenergy Innovation Centre.

For these reasons, the bioenergy program is an important component of the university’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and implement renewable energy technologies on the Prince George campus.

"It’s one way that we’re being responsive to a community and region that very much sees bioenergy as part of its future," says Dr. George Iwama, UNBC president.

The project is part of the university’s wider activities in working with community, government, corporate and other educational partners to make Prince George and Northern B.C. a centre for engineering, renewable energy, forest product research and community installations. These activities have two main areas of focus:

sustainable bioenergy, with opportunities for interdisciplinary research on the social, economic, political, health and technological aspects of bioenergy, together with the training of specialized technologists

forest product diversification, with research and teaching on resource policy and economics, global markets and trade, emerging markets, product innovation and business development

The broad-based partnerships in these areas are actively supported by all involved. "We look forward to working with UNBC, the province of British Columbia and the federal government to establish UNBC as a northern hub of bioenergy innovation, economic development and job creation," says Jonathan Rhone, Nexterra’s president.

And by working together with companies like Nexterra, NRCan is helping Canada reach its clean energy goals.

The UNBC biomass gasification system is part of a $14.8-million bioenergy program supported by the governments of Canada and British Columbia through the Knowledge Infrastructure Program .

Early Warning System for Solar Storms

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:00:00 +0000

If you want to follow up and be alert about possible efects from solar storms, check out:

www.spaceweather.com

Wood Chips to Power

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 04:02:00 +0000

Successful start in 2011.

Solar Storms - A potential danger for our power grid

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 05:09:00 +0000

Oct. 26, 2010: Every hundred years or so, a solar storm comes along so potent it fills the skies of Earth with blood-red auroras, makes compass needles point in the wrong direction, and sends electric currents coursing through the planet's topsoil. The most famous such storm, the Carrington Event of 1859, actually shocked telegraph operators and set some of their offices on fire. A 2008 report by the National Academy of Sciences warns that if such a storm occurred today, we could experience widespread power blackouts with permanent damage to many key transformers.

What's a utility operator to do?

The sun rises behind high-voltage power lines in North America. A new NASA project called "Solar Shield" could help keep the lights on.

"Solar Shield is a new and experimental forecasting system for the North American power grid," explains project leader Antti Pulkkinen, a Catholic University of America research associate working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We believe we can zero in on specific transformers and predict which of them are going to be hit hardest by a space weather event."

The troublemaker for power grids is the "GIC" – short for geomagnetically induced current. When a coronal mass ejection (a billion-ton solar storm cloud) hits Earth's magnetic field, the impact causes the field to shake and quiver. These magnetic vibrations induce currents almost everywhere, from Earth's upper atmosphere to the ground beneath our feet. Powerful GICs can overload circuits, trip breakers, and in extreme cases melt the windings of heavy-duty transformers.

This actually happened in Quebec on March 13, 1989, when a geomagnetic storm much less severe than the Carrington Event knocked out power across the entire province for more than nine hours. The storm damaged transformers in Quebec, New Jersey, and Great Britain, and caused more than 200 power anomalies across the USA from the eastern seaboard to the Pacific Northwest. A similar series of "Halloween storms" in October 2003 triggered a regional blackout in southern Sweden and may have damaged transformers in South Africa.

While many utilities have taken steps to fortify their grids, the overall situation has only gotten worse. A 2009 report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and the US Department of Energy concluded that modern power systems have a "significantly enhance[d] vulnerability and exposure to effects of a severe geomagnetic storm." The underlying reason may be seen at a glance in this plot:

Growth of the High Voltage Transmission Network and annual electric energy usage in the United States over the past 50 years. Credit: North American Electric Reliability Corporation and the US Dept. of Energy.

Since the beginning of the Space Age the total length of high-voltage power lines crisscrossing North America has increased nearly 10 fold. This has turned power grids into giant antennas for geomagnetically induced currents. With demand for power growing even faster than the grids themselves, modern networks are sprawling, interconnected, and stressed to the limit—a recipe for trouble, according to the National Academy of Sciences: "The scale and speed of problems that could occur on [these modern grids] have the potential to impact the power system in ways not previously experienced."

A large-scale blackout could last a long time, mainly due to transformer damage. As the National Academy report notes, "these multi-ton apparatus cannot be repaired in the field, and if damaged in this manner they need to be replaced with new units which have lead times of 12 months or more."

Permanent damage to the Salem New Jersey Nuclear Plant GSU Transformer caused by the March 13, 1989 geomagnetic storm. Photos courtesy of PSE&G. [larger image] That is why a node-by-node forecast of geomagnetic currents is potentially so valuable. During extreme storms, engineers could safeguard the most endangered transformers by disconnecting them from the grid. That itself could cause a blackout, but only temporarily. Transformers protected in this way would be available again for normal operations when the storm is over.

The innovation of Solar Shield is its ability to deliver transformer-level predictions. Pulkkinen explains how it works:

"Solar Shield springs into action when we see a coronal mass ejection (CME) billowing away from the sun. Images from SOHO and NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft show us the cloud from as many as three points of view, allowing us to make a 3D model of the CME, and predict when it will arrive."

While the CME is crossing the sun-Earth divide, a trip that typically takes 24 to 48 hours, the Solar Shield team prepares to calculate ground currents. "We work at Goddard's Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC)," says Pulkkinen. The CCMC is a place where leading researchers from around the world have gathered their best physics-based computer programs for modeling space weather events. The crucial moment comes about 30 minutes before impact when the cloud sweeps past ACE, a spacecraft stationed 1.5 million km upstream from Earth. Sensors onboard ACE make in situ measurements of the CME's speed, density, and magnetic field. These data are transmitted to Earth and the waiting Solar Shield team.

"We quickly feed the data into CCMC computers," says Pulkkinen. "Our models predict fields and currents in Earth's upper atmosphere and propagate these currents down to the ground." With less than 30 minutes to go, Solar Shield can issue an alert to utilities with detailed information about GICs.

Pulkkinen stresses that Solar Shield is experimental and has never been field-tested during a severe geomagnetic storm. A small number of utility companies have installed current monitors at key locations in the power grid to help the team check their predictions. So far, though, the sun has been mostly quiet with only a few relatively mild storms during the past year. The team needs more data.

"We'd like more power companies to join our research effort," he adds. "The more data we can collect from the field, the faster we can test and improve Solar Shield." Power companies work with the team through EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute. Of course a few good storms would help test the system, too. They're coming. The next solar maximum is expected around 2013, so it's only a matter of time.

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Technology Innovators Business Excellence Awards

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 02:58:00 +0000

Posted on October 28, 2010.

Smithers Chamber Honours Technology Innovators at Business Excellence Awards

The Smithers District Chamber of Commerce honoured three Technology Innovators at the Business Excellence Awards held on October 23, 2010. NSIS was proud to sponsor the inaugural Technology Innovator Award this year.

The 3 Nominees for the Technology Innovator Award were:

1. Airserv (North Central Plumbing)

2. Ardent Energy Inc. (Hans Duerichen)

3. Biomass Energy Systems (John Egenolf)

NSIS Board Member, Joe Wong of Woodmere Nursery, presented the first Technology Innovator Award in Smithers to Airserv.

AIRSERV (NORTH CENTRAL PLUMBING)

30+ years in the business community

Airserv provides stable heating/cooling service for residential and commercial customers, is a powerful resource for home renovation and energy efficient projects, has introduced green heat pump and solar technology to North Central, has been instrumental in woodstove exchange to clean up air shed, and is at the forefront of biomass technology for heat using wood waste.

ARDENT ENERGY INC. (HANS DUERICHEN)

Hans is the President of Ardent Energy Inc. (formerly RSF Energy Ltd) and has been in busienss since 1978.

Hans joined with with Wood-Mizer Inc. in 2001 to develop a small co-gen system using wood waste as fuel and a Stirling alternator as the generating power source. In 2003, Hans began the development of a biomass burner that would run on a much wider range of fuel as presently available with virtually zero emissions. In 2010, a production model of the burner is now available with emissions lower than any other

BIOMASS ENERGY SYSTEMS (JOHN EGENOLF)

John has been the owner of the company for 3 years

Focusing on biomass gasification technology for heating and power generation on a small scale. Also, sells equipment like chippers and small pellet mills to prepare woody biomass and wood waste for these applications. Our BioMass Power Generation test and demonstration facility is open for educational purposes.

2010 Business Forum in Burns Lake

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 01:41:00 +0000

The 2010 Business Forum from our Regional District of Bulkley Nechako took place yesterday in Burns Lake. I attended this forum, because of the presentations of Core Biofuel Inc., Thatsa Pellets Ltd. and the Burns Lake Energy Group.

Well, I must say it was very interesting to get project updates first hand and to meet the people behind it. I expected a little more information from Core Biofuel and the presentation was actually some kind of week for such a mega project.

The Burns Lake Energy Group seems to be a pioneer in the province which could show other communities how to get sustainable. That will be interesting to follow.