They’ve set themselves long term renewables targets that they can’t hope to meet, but that’s not the fault of the underlying technology. So we’ve heard the positive spin for the dash for wind power, but what are the challenges to be faced?

Construction

Deep water offshore wind farm construction carries significant environmental and financial cost born of the location itself, and justifying this expense means building big, really big.

Modern offshore turbines will be larger than even their industrial sized onshore counterparts at well over 100m high, with a 120m rotor diameter and weighing in at 1000 tonnes. Add to this that they’ll be built in water 40 to 60m deep, and I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a big structure.

Now imagine that you’re going to build 350 of them over 500 square kilometres of sea bed and you’ve got a working wind farm capable of generating about 1500 MW. That’s the same as a large conventional power station. Unfortunately, it only generates this much about half of the time it’s operating.

Life and Performance

The availability of sufficient wind is always an issue, it’s one of the reasons for favouring offshore applications where the wind is typically stronger and more consistent. Generally speaking, deeper water locations, up to 200km from the shore, produce better conditions than the current generation of farms. Out there weather conditions start becoming much harsher.

Salt spray, ferocious winds and a battering from high seas are conditions of which onshore facilities remain blissfully unaware. They reduce the life expectancy of equipment and maintenance teams alike. The technologies and practices required to overcome these problems are available in the Oil and Gas sector, but they all come at a price: offshore operation is neither a cheap nor easy option.

Electrical systems and salt water are not great bed fellows, and mechanical systems tend to react badly to these conditions too. You have to build robust structures where you can, and use expensive materials where you can’t. It’s a challenging environment for any engineering system and reliability will be a key to viability.

Assuming they’re working, we’ll have to collect the power from all 350 turbines and delivery it to the shore 200km distant before it can join the centralised grid where 10% of our power is wasted in transmission–a story for another day. These extra transmission losses over the kilometres of undersea cabling that’ll be required are going to dent performance. In my opinion this is one of the biggest problems for offshore generation, although transmission losses are something common to any centralised solution, most power stations aren’t so remote.

Support and Maintenance

We’ll need an extensive support infrastructure for deep water wind farms that’s akin to that in the Oil and Gas industries. That shouldn’t be a problem, we’ve been doing that for years, and as fossil fuels dwindle the jobs and some of the hardware currently employed in the North Sea could be transferred. But what about the transition, won’t new resources be required? We can’t wait until they become redundant; where will they come from?

Anyone with an offshore background will tell you how hard it is to keep deep water systems running. Bad weather takes it’s toll on both men and machinery, and there are times of year when you can just forget about any sort of maintenance. In all probability deep water wind farms will need support platforms with full time dedicated onsite maintenance teams, a significant additional cost and risk.

Is it possible that the environmental impact of such support activities may wreck the green credentials of the technology?

Economics

Whilst we’re comparing these two industries, I wonder how the value of oil extracted for $80 a barrel by a major rig compares to that of the power generated by one of these wind farms?

We should bear in mind that a large wind farm, like the ones proposed as part of the Crown Estates Round 3 licenses, is going to be an undertaking of similar proportion.

The fact is that I don’t have an answer for this, may be it’s something I should take a look at. If I ever do, I’ll make sure I post the results.

The outcome of the meeting was that we had a set of dataloggers installed to look at the air usage over a week.  From that we received a report detailing the loads during the week, the cost of generating the air, the annual cost of the air, and a number of recommendations for saving energy and money.  It is hoped that when faced with the hard data, then maintenance and management would decide that changes needed to be made.

The first of the recommendations was to use only one compressor, not only would this save us electricity costs in excess of £1000 per year, but would also save £250 a year in servicing costs.  This might not have been an economically viable option if it wasn’t for the fact that the pipework is already in place  and all we have to do it turn a valve on.  So, from this, another question arises – why do we have a separate compressor?  The second plant was installed in 2001, 15 years after the first plant – why not use the same compressor?  There is no one in the Company that can answer this question – so, as maintenance cannot think of a good reason not to do this, the valve will be opened and both plants monitored to check that there is no problem.  The specification of the main compressor and the air requirements of the main plant are such that it can easily provide enough air for both plants.  Money saved.

Second recommendation?  You’ve guessed it, turn the pressure down – apparently a one bar reduction in pressure will save £185 per year.  You might think that this is not much of a saving, but at 10p per kWh, it is equivalent to 1 tonne of CO2e per year, and it is all waste.  I was a little disappointed that the survey could not tell me what my minimum operating pressure is, but as far as I can tell, as long as I keep above 6bar, then the second plant will be fine, and if I do reduce the pressure below the minimum for the main plant then it will just stop – which is not a disaster, we just turn the pressure back up and start it up again – as long as it is in a controlled way no damage will be done.

Recommendation three was something I am not sure about – there is the possibility of recovering the heat generated by the compressor and using it to heat the warehouse.  However, the figures were based on the cost of electrical heating, gas is about 20% of the cost of electricity at the moment, and we do not want heat all year round.  This suggestion is parked for now.

The final suggestion is to conduct a leak survey.  Whilst we do check for leaks on a weekly basis, this is only done by listening for any leaks.  It is possible that this is missed, and, if we are using the connecting pipework across the warehouse to power both plants it may be more worthwhile (expected cost £350).  However, what is making me think that this could be worthwhile is that the survey showed the air usage graphically for the week.  There were a couple of days where the main plant was shut down, and the air usage, whilst low, was not zero.  Whilst there may be something that is kept under pressure when the plant is off, in which case maybe we can lock it off, it may be because of leaks in the system.  I have estimated that if this was the case, then the cost of these leaks is £300 per annum.

So, I have the data, and although it cost £200 to get the survey done, we should be able to save up to £1500 a year for no outlay at all and we can have the changes made by the start of the CRCEE.

I work for just such a company, and am part of a steering committee tasked with ensuring that we are compliant and that we are taking steps to reduce our carbon footprint.  However, this is not an easy thing to coordinate without having someone dedicated to ensure that it happens and we could be doing it better.  I thought that I would write a few blog posts to record the things that work well and the areas in which we can improve.  Whilst I am not sure anyone in the Corporate world would approve of such altruistic actions, as it could affect our league position, we could also improve by learning from our own mistakes.

So, firstly what is the CRCEE (as it is now called) scheme.  Well, if you don’t know by now, it is perhaps a little late – but it is not always disseminated down to those who can really make a difference  i.e. those who can turn the lights off and run the equipment that uses the electricity.  I prepared a couple of posters for the start of the Switch Off campaign so that everyone might have an idea of what it is all about and why energy efficiency has suddenly become a buzzword.  You can download them here if you like – CARBON REDUCTION COMMITMENT ENERGY EFFICIENCY SCHEME_EM.  Even those who have heard about it seem to be confused, so I have included a brief outline of timelines.

The scheme is part of the Climate Change Act (CCA) and is aimed at large consumers of electricity that are not already subject to the CCA or part of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (therefore not electricity suppliers).  It will work on the allocation of carbon credits – so polluters pay, but is supposed to be non-revenue generating and therefore not a tax, those saving the most money will get the most money back.  However, as with all things these days, there is a lot of paperwork to be completed (think of the trees) and it therefore pays to be organised and set up some systems for data capture in advance – something I am working on at the moment.

The government has made a few changes, and so it is always a good idea to check the website out for the latest guidance.  Unfotunately, it has been mired in confusion for the past year, the forms weren’t sent out on time, there was a worry about finding the cash up front for two years’ worth of credits, some companies wanted recognition for their early efforts to reduce energy usage (otherwise companies were holding off any changes whilst waiting for the appropriate year in order to improve their league table position), and others didn’t seem to have a clue – mainly government departments from what I can gather from the web discussions.  So, in response, there is now no longer the requirement to buy two years’ worth of credits – only one is required and an early action league table.   (Unfortunately the only way to do well on this is to gain the Carbon Trust Standard  – which takes a year and involves at least two years of energy efficiency improvements, and to install automatic metering.) There is now more discussion on the internet about CRCEE and also, a lot more  companies willing to take your money to ‘help’ you improve your energy usage.

The first actions in the scheme involve collation of all the necessary data, then, the fun begins and, hopefully, energy efficiency takes centre stage.

Going forward I will outline the things we have tried at work with regards to improving our energy efficiency – some are the so-called low hanging fruit, some will involve a little more thought, some will require capital investment and all will need a great deal of persuasion from those both above and below me within the Company.

A month later a reminder came out with a start date of 4th January. OK, so now I have a deadline, but still no guidance. So, what to do?  I could email the Site Managers and tell them to organize a switch off campaign – that would work! I turned once more to my trusty friend Google and found a couple of bits of information, mainly from local councils who had jointly run just such a scheme and used these as the starting point for my ideas.

The first thing I did was make an action plan for the actual campaign which was to be over a two week period:

• Energy measurements to be taken at the same time each week for two weeks before, during and after the campaign.
• Site Managers to brief all of the staff about the campaign
• Site Managers to conduct a walk around the site during the campaign and provide positive and negative feedback to staff
• Staff to be encouraged to submit energy saving ideas

etc, etc.  The action plan was emailed out to the Site Managers a couple of weeks before the start to give them a little advance warning.  I have found that each of the seven sites we have is very different in size and culture, and so, one size does not necessarily fit all, so the Site Managers were the best people to decide how to get local buy-in.

Next on my list was to create some advertising material, something that would remind staff about the campaign and why they should be turning things off.  So, back to Mr Google for some more helpful hints and tips, followed by a trip to an online stock photo site for some appropriate pictures (yes, I know that one of my other passions is photography, but I was in a hurry and did not have the appropriate props).  A couple of late nights later and I had a series of posters for display at the sites detailing environmental facts and energy saving tips.  You can view them here:

SWITCH IT OFF

If you would like to use them please feel free to download – just let me know – it is always interesting to see where others are in their quest for energy efficiency as well as being good for the ego.

OK, so now I needed a bribe for the energy saving ideas bit.  I settled on the promise of a tree planted in the name of the person with the best idea or a box of chocolates – should appeal to a lot of people I thought.

The campaign ran with mixed success, I will outline the reasons for this, along with the results, in my next post.

The fuel mix is published for the main UK suppliers on electricityinfo.org, and it also tells you the amount of carbon dioxide emitted when generating each unit of electricity in kilograms of carbon dioxide per kiloWatt-hour (kgCO₂/kWh).

We were supplied by Powergen (E.ON), who at 0.575 kgCO₂/kWh have slid to the bottom of the table since I started looking at my options. I notice that the proportion of renewable energy used has dwindled to almost nothing in the latest figures.

My baseline was originally 0.377 kgCO₂/kWh, and the goal of this exercise was to reduce this further. There are significantly better performing suppliers out there and we decided that a modest increase in the bill was acceptable.

My guiding principles.

There seem to be three main approaches used by suppliers when trying to provide a greener tariff.

1. Buying carbon offsetting and environmental investment funds.
2. Mixing traditional and renewable power generation to dilute the overall impact.
3. Using power entirely from renewable sources: principally wind, hydro and solar.

Now the first option seems pointless to me. I’m perfectly capable of offsetting my own carbon emissions, I decided to do just that this year, and that way I can choose exactly how my offset money is spent.

The point of this exercise is to avoid offsetting and channel my money into fostering the development of renewable energy. Either of the last two options would help to achieve this goal, but clearly the latter is the most effective by excluding fossil fuels entirely.

Finally, I’m a big fan of a diverse approach to just about everything. In my experience these solutions tend to be far more robust: it might be that one type of renewable technology becomes dominant in the future, but at this point there isn’t enough operational experience to tell which one.

Assessing my options.

Most of the mainstream suppliers offer green energy tariffs, but these appear to heavily depend upon the carbon offsetting route to gain these green credentials: failed at the first hurdle.

One company taking the middle route is Ecotricity who still use a diverse range of power generation methods, including renewable and more traditional sources. As you now know, I like diversity, but unfortunately Ecotricity are entirely focused on investment in wind turbines for their renewable power.

Wind power is the focus of renewable attention in the UK, but it’s not the only game in town. I’m not convinced that I want to help fund wind power technology to the deficit of all other renewable sources. I don’t believe wind power is the answer many seem to think it is.

What remains are the top performing green alternatives, both relatively small companies: Good Energy and Green Energy. Both support a range of renewable generation technologies, both have price plans that are entirely based on renewable sources, both are committed to supporting smaller power producers, and both cost about the same.

So why did I settle on Good Energy? Two reasons really: I’d read favourable reviews of the switching process, and more importantly, their close involvement with the supply of grid attached domestic solar systems and the purchase of the subsequent excess electricity.

I suspect that this use of British roof-tops may have valuable contributions to make to meeting our power demand and energy security needs in the future, and it’s something I’m considering for another day.

As a brief intro, we essentially have 5 warehouse areas built over the last 20 years or so, of different heights, lit by fluorescent tubes for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; such is our working pattern.  In addition, we have a few office areas that are, in the main, occupied only during office hours. 

Whilst I will admit there is plenty we can do to cut our lighting bill, I think those auditing the site are under the impression that it is a bigger problem than the data actually suggests. The Carbon Trust report estimated that lighting accounted for 27% of our electricity consumption, and this is what I have discovered to date.

1. We have over 500 tubes of varying sizes on site.
2. If a room lit by fluorescent tubes is unoccupied for more than 9 minutes it is more energy efficient to turn the light off.
3. Getting people into the habit of turning off lights when leaving a room is difficult, but not impossible – I deem this a work in progress.
4. Two of our warehouses which were built in the last 10 years were fitted with daylight sensors – these warehouses have higher roofs and are generally lighter.
5. These sensors are in an unsuitable place, and in failing to control the lighting acceptably they have been covered up.
6. There are no light switches for these warehouses; the lights are on all day, every day.
7. Indoor lighting is responsible for approximately 11% of our consumption, with outdoor lighting on a sensor and adding about another 0.5-1%.

As stated at the beginning, there are measures we can take, but at only 11% of consumption, they will have a limited effect. I will update you with the results of these efforts at reducing our lighting bill in a later post.

• Electricity.
• Natural gas.
• Transport.
• Water.

I’ve been tracking three of these for sometime, as previously discussed using the Carbon Account, but as a starting point, I’ve had to extract water data from our bills.

I’m hoping to personally read the water meter weekly in the future, as I do the other utilities, but it’s dependent on being able to see my submerged meter… Anglian Water, I’m looking at you.

Energy not CO₂.

I prefer to work with energy units (kWh), rather than the now popular kgCO₂. Energy is more definitive whilst the mixture of energy supply sources is shifting; some energy is ‘green’, and some is not, but it’s not something I can control.

To make this review process meaningful, I’m going to need an idea of my current energy profile: where I’m spending the energy I consume. That way I can make sound decisions about were to cut back.

Converting meter readings into energy.

Converting from meter units to energy requires a little maths in the case of natural gas, transport, and water. Here’s a brief explanation of how I went about it armed with a little technical data and the information from my bills.

Natural Gas.

The conversion for the gas supply was provided on my bill:

Energy consumed (kWh) = (2.83 x 39.5679 x 1.02264) / (3.6 x 100) x volume of gas used (ft³)

Most of these numbers are volume and energy conversion constants, but the 39.5679 figure is the calorific value of the natural gas: its energy content.

Transport.

In our case, transport can be defined almost exclusively as a 35 mpg car, so the job here is to convert mileage into a mass of fuel burned, and then into the chemical energy released.

I’ve take data from the seventh edition of Technical Data on Fuel, which given a density of 0.75 kg/litre, and a calorific value of 44000 kJ/kg for petrol:

Fuel consumed (kg) = ( miles / mpg ) x 4.54609 x 0.75

Energy consumed (kWh) = ( fuel consumed x 44000 ) / 3600

If you work this out for our car, each mile travelled uses 1.191 kWh of energy.

Water.

I’ve used data from issue 4 of the BRE Water Centre newsletter:

• Energy used in supply = 0.468 kWh/m³
• Energy used in treatment = 0.437 kWh/m³

It states that about 90% of all mains water supply is returned for treatment, which allowed me to estimate a total energy consumption associated with water supply of 0.861 kWh/m³.

These data are from 1998/99, and as such a little old, but I’ve check the results against more recent Government information, and it appears to be accurate enough.

The results.

The data collected over the last year result in the following average energy mix profile.

The only thing that surprised me was the insignificance of the energy contribution from our water supply. It would appear that the environmental impact is almost entirely related to the availability of water in a changing climate.

As for reductions… we use Gas for central heating, water heating and some of the cooking, and it looks like the best target for improvement.

We use too much.

I’ve always been aware of our global environment and the fact that we all share responsibility for its well being. It’s also been evident to me from an early age that we’ve not done the best job of it so far.

The official targets are full of promises to halt or even reduce the overall emission of CO₂, thereby putting a stop to climate change. This supposes that climate change is entirely dependent on CO₂, an assertion that is far from bullet-proof. Attaining these targets must require the global economy, population and… dear God I can hardly think it… even the supporting technology to substantially reduce its rate of growth. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the world is confidently waiting for this same technology to solve all its problems: like the fat guy, I’m not slim so I can say this, expecting the next pseudo-science diet to shed that excess weight when he really just needs to eat less and exercise more. The same basic principle applies to our environment: if we want reduce our impact we need to use less stuff!

Is my life environmentally friendly?

Now this is the focus of the crisis in question. Can being a technophile, or just working and living, ever be reconciled with this principle. I’d love to say yes; but, I just don’t know. Clare and I gave up commuting for personal reasons, one of which was its clear environmental impact. Doing this just about halved our household income and not everyone can afford that type of compromise. However, doing the majority of my work from home using broadband should be possible, especially in IT. The question is does it help?

Some maths.

My equipment uses a lot of electricity and there’s no doubt that our domestic utility bills have generally gone up whilst I’ve been around the house. But it has to be offset against the effect of using my car: assuming Petrol/Gasoline has an energy density of 9.5 kWh per litre, I used to commute 15,000 miles each year at a good average fuel consumption of 40 miles to the UK gallon; or about 8.8 miles per litre, it’s a small car. I made that an annual energy consumption of around 16,190 kWh. I’ve measured, remember I’m a technophile, an average increase in electricity use of 280 Watts whilst I’ve been at home. I make that an increased energy usage of about 2,500 kWh each year, nowhere near that used for commuting. Doubtless I’m using more of the other utilities but, looking from an environmental perspective, I used at least the same whilst at my employers premises. So, at a relatively superficial level I’m obviously doing the right thing.

Think of the toys!

What concerns me is that this lifestyle is supported by the use of lots of high-tech gadgets. These become redundant much too quickly to be sustainable, despite the claims of some manufacturer to be producing what they call ‘Carbon Neutral’ hardware. These usually consider only the energy used in running the equipment and not that consumed in design, manufacture and disposal: if they did I doubt any hardware could be carbon neutral without either generating excess energy from nothing whilst in use or planting a major forest for each chip! Don’t get me wrong, I think that any green initiative is to be supported, but don’t let the marketing men get too close.

Getting fewer toys.

Applying my principle to this issue, it follows that equipment, or any physical possession, should be designed to be as reusable and long-lived as possible. This means choosing your toys in the expectation that nothing particularly new is going to come along for sometime, and if it does you can’t buy it until your old one is well and truly broken. This isn’t a good thing if you hold stock in the companies producing this stuff. The problem is that I probably do and I like getting new toys, hence the crisis.

Using less power.

One upside is the fact that the focus of the computing industry appears to have shifted from ever increasing processor speed to maximising processing speed to power consumption ratio. I suspect this is mainly due to the temperature problems the waste heat was causing the old processors rather than to a green conscience, but the final effect is much the same: it fits nicely with the ‘use less’ principle. Less waste heat improves processor efficiency and reduced the power demands for cooling, both in the machine and often building air conditioning.

Change is possible.

The real problem is that society and the environment share a common trait: inertial. Changes implemented today won’t have quantifiable effects on either for decades. Basing policy on the belief that consumption and population are going to fall in the next few years is clearly crazy. But climate change is only one facet of the threat to the environment. There are a range of other ethical issues that need to be addressed and some of these could see change in a shorter time-scale. In the end, it’s mostly a state of mind. Forcing people to comply with a set of hastily implemented rules rarely results is real change. People actually do things that they personally believe in and at best pay lip service to rules. I guess I just need to make the effort to figure out in what I truly believe. I hope others choose to do the same.