AXP - More Fun with Numbers in 2008

A nice article in this month's Wired magazine outlines how 2008 will see the real launch of the Automotive X Prize, with dozens of competitors going for broke (with some going broke) to reach the objectives:

• Efficiency: at least 100 MPG
• Emissions: while producing less than 200 grams of greenhouse gases per mile
• Economic Viability: with solid plans for safety, mass production and affordability

Contestants range from the well heeled (with millions in VC funding) to the non-heeled (sandal clad long haired California types). One point of interest - none of the big auto makers are participating. Just as Clayton Christiansen, Mr. Innovator's Dilemma, would have predicted, the large entrenched players cannot see past their current plans and their perceptions of what their best customers have always wanted. I think that guarantees we're going to see some great results.

207 Reasons Revisited

The 2003 book Small is Profitable offers 207 reasons for decentralizing electricity production. In the few short years since its publication, conditions favoring the book's premise have improved markedly: building-integrated wind turbines on the drawing board, rapidly improving photovoltaic technology, a flood of venture capital, growing public awareness of the need for energy security and energy independence, among other things.

Here's a sampling of the 207:

24 Small units with short lead times reduce the risk of buying a technology that is or becomes obsolete even before it's installed, or soon thereafter.

49 Volatile fuel prices set by fluctuating market conditions represent a financial risk. Many distributed resources do not use fuels and thus avoid that costly risk.

60 Distributed resources matched to customer loads can displace the least utilized grid assets.

82 Distributed resources have an exceptionally high grid reliability value if they can be sited at or near the customer's premises, thus risking less "electron haul length" where supply could be interrupted.

89 Multiple small units are far less likely to fail simultaneously than a single large unit.

123 Distributed resources defer or avoid adding grid capacity.

178 Distributed resources can often be locally made, creating a concentration of new skills, industrial capabilities, and potential to exploit markets elsewhere.

Power 2030

The American Institute of Architects intends carbon neutral buildings by 2030. Why not look at every building, the vast acreage and surface area this entails, as the opportunity to produce power (not just be "carbon neutral")? Every new building a Power Plant by 2030. Produce clean power in abundance at the point of consumption. Be carbon negative.

The goal of creating power is ambitious and captures the imagination, as compared to the more middling objective of neutralizing carbon emissions.

PowerSheet My Plug In

Gizmodo's report of the already-on-the-market, cost competitive, put-it-anywhere Nanosolar Powersheet pictured above conjures visions of hundreds of PowerSheet skinned cars soaking up a little sunshine during peak power so they can send some back to the building from their plugged in parking spots.

Pimp my building.
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The Oil for Wind Program

If the energy bill passed by the House (but not the Senate) would have drawn down $13.5B over ten years in oil industry subsidies, and assuming you could frictionlessly redeploy this money, what could you buy? Follow this simple, klunky math to gauge the magnitude of $13.5B:


Subsidies forgone by the oil industry in the failed energy bill: $13,500,000,000 over ten years

If it cost $1M to build a 1 MW wind turbine,

You could buy 13,500 wind turbines outright, or,

If you subsidized 25% of wind turbines' construction cost

Then 13,500 turbines x 4 (representing the 25% subsidy): 54,000 turbines

Since 1 GW = 1,000 MW

New wind power created: 54 GW

Current US Renewable Nameplate Capacity: 26.5 GW

So you could more than double US renewable energy capacity by 2018. Since wind competes on cost with other power sources on occasion now, a 25 percent subsidy ought to make wind consistently, broadly competitive.

Sure, these calcs might be simplistic and hurried, but they're intended to serve as a ten minute assessment of the opportunity to buy the future instead of simply continuing to dole out for what the future used to be. Transform the oil subsidy into the wind subsidy. The Oil for Wind Program.

Quote of the Day

“One of the top 10 pleasures in life is watching your electrical meter go backward."

-- Marc Schambers, California residential wind turbine owner/operator

Wind turbines for homes becoming increasingly affordable in many US states. From article today in the gardening section of the NYT.

Out of Africa - Winds of Change

The Wall Street Journal featured this story on page one today about a young man in Malawi named William Kamkwamba showing some incredible imagination and initiative. He's building windmills (and changing lives) out of local materials and old bicycle parts based on pictures he saw in textbooks. William's blog here reprints the WSJ article and provides more background on this great success story. So, individuals can do it. Countries can do it (see recent post on Great Britain's 20 Gigawatt plan for offshore turbines). So what's keeping the mighty US from taking a giant step forward? What do you think it could be?