Renewable Community Energy request for european contacts

Subject: Renewable Community Energy – request from George Hay in the US. Claverton:   Are there any European “leaders” in community energy/sustainable energy concepts in England/Europe you could put me in contact with?   I’m seeing in CA: the RESCO project by Gerry Braun, methodology for municipalities to plan for distributed resouces, attract critical mass of investment […]

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Gas Turbines on the Isle of Man: A Case Study between the Manx Electricity Authority and Cranfield University. IDGTE paper at Cranfield, Thursday 19 March.

In the volatile energy market effective use of the available technological, energy and financial resources is now, more than ever, highly pursued. In a combined cycle power plant, gas turbines are the prime mover of power generation. Therefore, detailed understanding and monitoring of gas turbine performance, health condition and associated costs have a deep impact in the decision making process concerning the plant’s operational and maintenance strategy.

In this context, research collaboration between Manx Electricity Authority (MEA) and Cranfield University has been carried out since 2001 and a series of technologies and software have been and are still being developed at Cranfield University and some of them have been integrated into MEA Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Power Plant in Pulrose, Isle of Man. During this constructive and successful collaboration period, the University has been fortunate to acknowledge the industrial needs and make significant academic contributions through ongoing research projects jointly supported by both MEA and EPSRC. On the other hand, MEA has valued the complexity of asset management concerning the gas turbine and the combined cycle, therefore enhancing its trading and operational capabilities through the application of developed performance, diagnostic, trading and economic analysis software.

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KIV – Biomass and waste to energy district heating and power generation plants

KIV commenced the commissioning a new gasification EfW CHP and district heating scheme in September 2008. The plant has been designed to environmental standards above and beyond the EU Waste Incineration Directive (WID), which also incorporates Best Available Technique (BAT), lodged with the EU BREF documents office. The plant will be an EU ‘showcase’ project, which incorporates a presentation room for coach parties of visitors.

Approximately five years ago, KIV commenced a joint development for the gasification EfW CHP plant with Celje town council. The plant has an 18MWth input capacity for <38,000 tpa of a mixed fuel (80% RDF + 20% Sewage Sludge), with an average CV of 13.6MJ/kg, based on a guaranteed 8,000 hrs/annum availability. The scheme is connected to an existing District Heating scheme, which has a 110oC flow temperature. The scheme is ‘heat led’ and therefore produces a reduced amount of gross power at 2.1 MWe. If the scheme was ‘electricity led’, it would produce 3.8MWe of gross power.

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Pumping Power calculator – what power is needed to pump seawater to the middle of the Gobi Desert for desalination in the SeaWater Greenhouse? – answer – not a lot

The spread sheet for calculating this, kindly provided by Wessex Water, one of the UK’s leading water supply companies, is available here:       This spread sheet enables you to calculate power needed to pump water any distance through any height: http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/?dl_name=Pipe_Headloss__Power_calculator.xls   You can see that in fact, compared to national energy consumptions, […]

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Revealed – how the hybrid car "works"

The hybrid Toyota is a well known and claimed fuel efficient car. We all know its somehow got a battery and an engine.  But what is the idea? Why does this make it more efficient? Essentially the Toyota is more efficient (well a bit) than many similar cars, because the engine operates on what is […]

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What is Microgeneration? And what is the most cost effective in terms of CO2 reduction

© Jeremy Harrison:

The UK Government definition of Microgeneration[1] applies to a rather surprising mix of heat and power generating technologies with a thermal output below 45kWt or an electrical output of 50kWe. It covers electrical generation from wind, solar photovoltaics (PV) and hydro, and heat generation from biomass, solar thermal and heat pumps as well as micro CHP which produces heat and power from renewable or fossil fuels. It is not just another term for small scale renewables, but comprises a portfolio of low carbon technologies.

There has been a tendency amongst advocates[2] and sceptics[3] alike to lump all Microgeneration technologies together, either as “all good” or “all bad”. This is particularly unhelpful when attempting to understand the potential contribution Microgeneration can make to UK energy strategy and it is important that we understand the particular characteristics and potential role of each technology.

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