Green Energy News | July 1, 2001

July 1, 2001 – Vol.6 No.14

ENERGIES... week of July 1, 2001

A NEW INFRASTRUCTURE? From a distribution standpoint switching the world to green electricity is a relatively easy task. Any source of energy - the wind, the sun, the oceans, flowing water or wasting biomass - can be converted into electricity that can flow across existing power lines and through our homes and businesses.

But switching the world’s fleet of vehicles to run on something other than gasoline or diesel fuel is far, far more difficult. Competing alternative technologies, including that for hydrogen fuel cells, all need their own infrastructure or alterations to the existing one. It took nearly a century to build the gas/diesel refueling infrastructure we have today - and it’s still growing. Do we spend decades building a new hydrogen infrastructure, or attempt to build hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that run on gasoline distributed from the infrastructure we have now?

Catalytica Energy Systems has been awarded a $11.2 million cost-shared contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a compact, low cost, light-weight fuel processor to be used with Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells intended for transportation. The 3-year program will be used to develop a 50 kilowatt processor that will extract hydrogen from a variety of fuels, such as gasoline or methanol.

Catalytica will also attempt to reduce start-up time to the near instantaneous which drivers have become accustomed to - and expect. Fuel processors, also known as reformers, can take a matter of minutes to begin producing hydrogen. Alternatively, vehicles could run on battery power for the first few minutes until the processor kicks in. Visit Catalytica at http://www.CatalyticaEnergy.com/ .

OUR ELECTRIC INFRASTRUCTURE. The power grid will almost certainly play a part in our future choice of vehicles. Hydrogen can be made at the point of distribution through electrolysis. Battery electric vehicles will need a grid connection for recharging. Metal-air fuel cells would need power to recycle oxidized fuel.

Battery technology advancement, though moving at a slower pace now that interest has shifted to hydrogen fuel cells, is not at a complete standstill. Power Technology continues to report progress with its foam-plate lead-acid batteries. In recent tests by BC Research, Power Technology’s batteries performed as well as nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) technology, but could theoretically be sold for 10 percent of the cost of those batteries. The company claims that the latest generation of their battery could increase driving range compared with a traditional lead-acid electric vehicle up to 90 percent - almost double.

Lead-foam battery plates have a greater surface area than conventional plates. The greater the area of lead exposed to electrolyte the more chemical reaction will take place for more energy output.

A SOLAR INTERNET. No, this Internet-based publication is not powered by renewable energy, but it could be. SolarHost, an Internet Service Provider (ISP), uses Web servers that are 100 percent powered by Siemens AG photovoltaic solar cells. According to the company most of the 360 sites hosted are operated by environmental groups or non-profits, but many are commercial companies looking for power reliability more than green power. The company had only 11 minutes of downtime during the month of May mainly for hardware upgrades. SolarHost has a five-day battery backup power supply.

The company is planning to expand operations from the Washington, DC suburbs to sunny Florida by building a 100-percent grid-free data center in Tampa. Solar and wind power generating 2.5 megawatts will energize the building as well as Web servers.

WORLD SOLAR CAPACITY INCREASE. BP Solar, which operates worldwide, has opened its new production facility in Australia and purchased another facility in Spain. The Sydney plant will have an annual production capacity of 25 megawatts and will be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The Madrid plant, when operating, will produce 60 megawatts, up from 15 megawatts already being produced in Europe by BP. Visit BP at http://www.bpsolar.com/ .