EREN Network News

November 28, 2001

News and Events

• Washington to Host Largest Publicly-Owned U.S. Wind Plant
• MIT, ENECO Develop New Heat-to-Electricity Device
• "Nuna" Wins World Solar Challenge Car Race
• Gallup Poll Shows U.S. Support for Efficiency, Renewables
• EPA Launches Energy Star for Hospitals, Aims for Telecom
• DOE Marks 25th Anniversary for Weatherization Program

Site News

• Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE)

• Save Energy With Your Holiday Lighting
• Quads and Exajoules: A Note About Energy Units

News and Events

Washington to Host Largest Publicly-Owned U.S. Wind Plant
A wind energy developer was given approval in mid- November to begin construction of a 48-megawatt wind plant in south-central Washington state. The Nine Canyon Wind Project will be the largest U.S. wind project that is owned by public utilities. Energy Northwest, a public power agency made up of 16 public utilities in Washington, recently completed a $70.675 million bond sale to finance the project. Formerly the Washington Public Power Supply System, Energy Northwest last issued such bonds 20 years ago to finance the WNP-4 and -5 nuclear plants, which were later cancelled. It currently operates one nuclear plant and one hydroelectric facility.

RES Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of United Kingdom's Renewable Energy Systems Limited, has been awarded the contract to build the wind plant. The Nine Canyon Wind Project will comprise 37 1.3-megawatt wind turbines from Bonus, a Danish company. With an anticipated federal rebate of 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, it will generate power at a cost of 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Nine of the Energy Northwest member utilities will buy the power from the project. See the RES press release.

MIT, ENECO Develop New Heat-to-Electricity Device
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced yesterday the development of a new highly efficient device for converting heat into electricity. MIT claims the device is two times more efficient than its closest commercial competitor, opening up new possibilities for making use of waste heat from vehicles, industrial processes, and power plants.

The device is based on thermionic technology, in which heat is used to drive electrons across a vacuum gap to another conductor, thus creating an electric current. Such devices typically require temperatures of about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. The new device, developed by an MIT professor in collaboration with ENECO, Inc., replaces the vacuum gap with a multi-layer semiconductor to create "thermal diodes" that operate at temperatures as low as 390 degrees Fahrenheit. The research was presented yesterday to the fall meeting of the Materials Research Society. See the MIT press release.

"Nuna" Wins World Solar Challenge Car Race
"Nuna," a solar car from the Netherlands, broke all records as it took first place last week in the World Solar Challenge, an annual race of solar vehicles down the middle of the Australian continent. Nuna finished on day four of the race, a day ahead of its nearest competitors. The team took a total of just 32 hours and 39 minutes to complete the nearly 3,000-kilometer (1,864-mile) race, for an average speed of 91.18 kilometers per hour (56.66 miles per hour).

The European Space Agency (ESA), one of the Nuna sponsors, hailed the achievement as a triumph of space technology. ESA supplied high-efficiency dual-junction and triple-junction gallium-arsenide solar cells — designed for satellites — for the car, which also carried power control devices that were developed for satellites. The main body of the car was built from Kevlar-reinforced carbon fiber. Nuna even carried two strips of solar cells retrieved from the Hubble Space Telescope. See the ESA press release.

The Alpha Centauri Team, which built Nuna, also has its own Web site (in Dutch only).

Meanwhile, Australia's own Eastern Fleurieu School appears to have won the World Solar Cycle Challenge. Their entry, the Solar Flare, achieved an average speed of 39.2 kilometers per hour (24.4 miles per hour). The cycle challenge features solar-assisted bicycles. See all the race results on the World Solar Challenge Web site.

Gallup Poll Shows U.S. Support for Efficiency, Renewables
A poll released yesterday by the Gallup Organization shows a continuing support among the American public for energy efficiency standards and renewable energy sources. In polls conducted in May and again this month, a full 91 percent of Americans polled by the organization favored the development of "new sources of energy, such as solar, wind, and fuel cells."

The May poll also found that 85 percent of Americans supported mandates that future cars be more energy efficient. In the latest poll, the percentage dropped slightly, to 77 percent. Gallup attributed the drop to decreasing prices for gasoline.

Gallup says the maximum error in the poll is plus or minus 5 percentage points. See the Gallup press release.

EPA Launches Energy Star for Hospitals, Aims for Telecom
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched a new Energy Star rating tool for hospitals in mid-November. Three hospitals — one each in New York, Illinois, and California — were the first to earn Energy Star labels. The rating tool will allow hospitals to benchmark their energy performance against others on a nationwide scale of 1 to 100.

The EPA also called on the telecommunications industry to help increase energy efficiency and establish a national benchmarking tool for central offices. Central offices house the computers and other equipment needed to connect and switch phone lines, and require more energy per square foot than all other commercial buildings. EPA is currently working with Verizon on a benchmarking tool. See the EPA press releases, 11-15-01 and 11-16-01.

DOE Marks 25th Anniversary for Weatherization Program
DOE celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Weatherization Assistance Program yesterday by commemorating the weatherizing of the five-millionth home under the program. Weatherization reduces the annual utility bills of low-income families, saves energy and enhances national energy security by reducing U.S. energy dependence.

Low-income families typically spend 14 percent of their annual income on energy compared with 3.5 percent for other households. Last winter alone, the savings for all households weatherized since the program began in 1976 totaled more than $1 billion. For every dollar spent, the Weatherization Assistance Program returns $2.10 in energy savings. See the DOE press release.

Site News

Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE)
The Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE) has been updated and improved to make it more informative and user friendly. The new database provides a wealth of information on incentives, programs, proposed policies, and existing legislation that promote renewable energy. DSIRE, a project of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), is funded by DOE's Office of Power Technologies and managed by the North Carolina Solar Center.

For this and other recent additions to the EREN Web site.

Energy Facts and Tips

Save Energy With Your Holiday Lighting
With the passing of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving, the time to add holiday lighting has officially begun. The Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) suggests that consumers can save money and energy with their holiday lighting, without, as ASE says, "dimming the holiday spirit." ASE recommends leaving holiday lights on for at most six hours in the evening and points out that new "icicle" lights have more lights per foot than regular light strands. See the ASE press release.

The Energy Ideas Clearinghouse has an even more interesting suggestion: Buy new holiday lights made with light-emitting diodes (LEDs)! Now a popular energy-saving item for upgrading traffic signals, colored LEDs are also finding their way into holiday lights. One downside is that they only come in red, green, and yellow (blue and white bulbs are expected soon). The Clearinghouse finds that the lights don't quite pay for themselves compared to mini-lights, but other features such as extremely long life, durability, and safety may make them worthwhile to some consumers. Compared to the larger old-fashioned "C-7" bulbs, however, either mini-lights or LED lights are significant energy savers. The low energy use of the LED lights also yields a practical advantage: You can connect 25 strings together without overloading a typical electrical circuit.

The Clearinghouse has one further suggestion for those looking for the ultimate in energy-efficient lighting: the Fiber- Optic Tree! These technical wonders use a single light source and fiber-optic "needles" to create a highly efficient tree that glows from each branch of the tree. Some even come with a built-in color wheel. See the "Holiday Lighting Factsheet" on the Energy Ideas Clearinghouse Web site. (PDF 346 KB), Download Acrobat Reader

Quads and Exajoules: A Note About Energy Units
As many faithful readers of EREN Network News were quick to point out, we incorrectly defined "quadrillion" last week. A quadrillion is, in fact, 10 raised to the 15th power — one thousand times greater than the definition given in last week's edition. We apologize for our turkey-brained editor, who obviously had more edible items on his mind.

(Note: the online version of last week's edition has been corrected.)

While we're on the subject of the "quad," the shorthand name for a quadrillion Btu, it's worth mentioning that there's a metric equivalent on the same scale — the exajoule, or EJ (that's 10 to the 18th Joules). It turns out that a quad equals 1.055 exajoules, so the two units are nearly equal. That means that at least on this scale, us backwards Americans can catch up with the rest of the world without too much effort.

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