By ZENAJI CTO – Charles van Dongen
Why should we even focus on having zero emissions? In many ways the world and Australia are undergoing one of the biggest revolutions in our society and technology since the introduction of electric power distribution at the turn of last century. Back then society moved from a predominantly rural decentralised industrial environment to a more centralised large city-based society with centralised power generation. A society based on the infinite abundance of both coal and oil with not much thought of the future consequences.
Today we are moving towards a more diversified mix of technologies both centralised and decentralised with the additional changes of how and when we use the energy. Even in the last year COVID 19 had educated us to the possibility of working from home where possible, this significantly reduced transportation energy. The plus side of the lockouts, is seeing crystal clear skies around the city centre!
The big steps towards zero emissions.
Whilst the much talked about carbon credits/ taxes etc are a useful tool that can encourage industry to reduce emissions they are also very prone to both “garbage in/ garbage out” and a good accountant could make the numbers dance to what ever tune you desire. Right now I hear Australia is reducing emissions yet I see more and more 4WD cars, bigger Mc Mansions, more people and increasing consumption.
A less prone to fiddling and more direct method of reducing emissions is real action and the use of the latest technologies. The first step is:
Reduce your existing energy demand
Zero emissions in Architecture
Over 40% of wasted domestic use energy is architecturally related, new houses should or better yet must design themselves with the solar direction in mind, fully insulated walls and roof, double glaze windows, reverse cycle air conditioning. Heat pump hot water (eliminate gas), induction stoves, LED lighting, higher efficiency modern appliances. Similarly, people need to encourage updating existing houses to this standard. Plant lots of trees, they create a micro climate and save power and absorb carbon. As these factors add up to our zero emissions goal.
Home insulation is number 1, despite the pink bat debacle of several years ago it is still the quickest and most cost-efficient way to reduce energy loss or keep the heat out. Heat is energy.
Zero emissions in Travel
Choose smaller, LOWER cars either hybrid or pure electric. For instance, If electric ensure you buy power from a green source or have enough panels on your roof to generate this power. For the average 45 klm per day. You need 8 kWh of generation or about 6 X 375W solar panels feeding into either the grid of directly charging your car.
- Car pool
- Work from home
- Work closer to home if possible
- Use public transport
- Start walking or run to work. Work places need to have showers!
- Controversial but we need to stop the “stop start” – we really do need freeways now!
- We need pay car charge points at the work locations that bill direct to your home solar array and an account fees collection system
Zero emissions in Food
- We need to reduce meat from our diets (try the impossible burger, it fooled me!)
- Choose food locally produced to reduce transport
- Encourage feed diets that reduce Methane emissions
- Grow vegetables at home
Zero emissions for Industry
- High efficiency lighting and air conditioning
- Switched proximity detection lighting
- Turn stuff off when not in use
- Insulation
Create the national / international grid
We hear lots of distorted reports in the media about solar panels causing local over Voltages. The grid tie inverters are in fact over Voltage restricted. It is hard to understand how this could occur. In addition, over Voltages are very common at night in low energy usage times. I believe the use of transformer taps at the substations are deliberately present high to ensure higher Voltages and this higher billed revenue. On resistive loading a 5 % increase in Voltage results in a 10% increase in revenue! The cause is from solar panels. So solar panels are still a viable step for zero emissions.
Having said that the biggest issue with wind/ solar energy is that it is intermittent and with solar panels the peak generation time does not typically match the peak energy usage time. Certainly It is often used as an argument. In favor of the much overuse “base load” generation of coal or gas fired power stations.
We urgently need to connect all the state grids, but initially a HVDC line from Perth to Port Augusta S.A. We need a separate HVDC line from Gippsland Victoria to the South Island Benmore in New Zealand. Refer the Zenaji document Timeshift.pdf
I note there is an existing proposal to link to Singapore- great idea.
Doing this we can match the peak power generation times to the peak usage times. By a maximum of around 5 hrs of discrepancy. In addition, the establishment of these links will greatly reduce power fluctuations and strengthen the grid against outages.
Adoption of electric vehicles
Conventional petrol/ gas powered vehicles are intrinsically a low efficiency usage of energy. With less than 30% of energy used for moving the vehicle! Electric vehicles can offer an overall energy transfer efficiency of around 85%. The issue is recharging and recharge time. Hence better emissions, meaning a step toward zero emissions.
There is a lot of talk about fast charging station. But little realize about the situation with each state and how can they support the huge power transfer. As states meeting the requirement are very limited. To be economical. You would need to be able to support 10 vehicles at any one time all getting a 15-minute recharge. Given the battery capacity of such vehicles is around 80 kWh, this represents a load of over 3 MW. These loads can only support itself on 220 KV terminal stations and higher. This limits large fast charging stations to a few locations. Unless there are expensive battery storage on the stations site.
Predicting future of electric vehicles
It is likely that the most electric vehicle charging will be done at home during night time during off peak rates. Additionally, all parking meters will need to become EV charge points and workplace car parks need to be WV charge points. The key to the network being able to cope with the loading will be SLOW CHARGING at around 1 kW for an 8-hour period. This will enable an average EV to travel 45 Klm (the average daily travel distance).
Electric Vehicles are only green if the energy comes from renewable sources! An EV powered from our coal/ gas fired existing network. Actually contributes the same amount of CO2 than a conventionally powered car. It does however clean up other emissions such as NOx , SO2 and airborne particulate matter.
In practicality to meet the 8 kWh energy requirement to cover the average 45 klm per day every EV user will need to offset their vehicle energy requirement with roof top solar panels. If we use energy from the solar panels for the night charge cycle. The user would need around 6 to 8 X 375 W solar panels. If the user uses the grid to store the energy, they would need at least twice this to allow for the net import/ export tariff differences. This needs to be happen for EVERY VEHICLE.
To enable transfer of electricity an energy charge accounting system. Will be need to be developed to pay for the source of the energy and allow for transfer from the home array to the vehicle charge point anywhere. Such a pa proposed in the Zenaji document attached entitled “ NRG LINK Possible features and benefits 8”
Expansion of rooftop solar
Contrary to the erroneous claims of government and electricity suppliers. Since AS 4777.2 became effective on 9 October 2016. The inverters are at a limit to a 255 Vac output, meaning they are incapable of producing over Voltages! The high distribution Voltages reported are the result of the distribution companies deliberately increasing transformer taps and in doing so disproportionately increasing their revenue.
There is a lot of talk from various state energy ministers. Who have been misled that they will need to reduce the tariffs paid back to customers to reduce this overvoltage issue. In reality they need to crack down on the various distribution companies to encourage them to reduce the transformer taps at the substations. In addition, the linking of the state and international grids as described in “Create the national / international grid” will enable far more domestic roof generated solar.
It is currently claimed by the CEC that 23.5% of rooftops have solar PV arrays. Yet only around 6.6% of Australia’s electricity generation comes from solar PV on roof tops. Part of the reason is that most rooftop arrays are undersized and need to increase to fully cover the new “all electric household” .
Rooftop arrays need to be increased to cover.
- All domestic electricity requirements
- Hot water with the use of heat pump technology
- Air conditioning
- Charging of electric vehicles.
In many instances, this may also require the installation of 3 phase connections so that the total export can be increased to above 10 KW. An advantage to this approach is that more of the roof should be covered with solar panels and thus creating an additional thermal barrier in the summertime to reduce cooling requirements.
For example, my roof with 73 panels complete with insulated walkways (still under renovation!)
The system can generate up to 170 KWh per day and instantaneously 27 KW. I have made provision for EV charging (I drive a V8 at the moment!). Currently I generate 5 times more than I use and pays back $1500 in 11 weeks.
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is much talked about and is a great storage medium with a high portability and offers very fast recharge capability. What is often forgotten is that Hydrogen is not a fuel. It is an energy storage medium with a round trip efficiency of between 30 – 50%. Its highly suitable for applications that demand fast charging. The military and where the Hydrogen is obtained from waste sources or where you have excess solar generation capacity.
If the Hydrogen is obtained from non-renewable sources. Then it will in fact produce more CO2 due to its low round trip efficiency.
Batteries (horses for courses)
There are many different chemical compositions of battery types and they all have their uses, for example even lead acid the oldest technology is still probably the most cost efficient for intermittent usage power storage. In pure electric vehicles Lithium-iron-phosphate current represent the best compromise but for domestic and industrial long term high usage cycling the most suitable technology is the Lithium Titanate type in terms of safety, temperature tolerance, highest lifespan and high cyclic capacity.
The issue that holds back Lithium Titanate continues to be up front cost. And to a lesser extent size/ weight (that is not an issue for stationary usage). The Lithium Titanate cells are the only battery technology that can pay off its cost within its useful lifetime, in fact they can pay off as much as 4 times the cost over the lifetime.
As state governments are currently actively discouraging customers putting energy back into the grid by reducing the tariffs many people will soon opt to store excess energy and use it at night. Many will chose to completely disconnect from the grid again by purchasing more batteries.
Pay in tariffs
Probably one of the biggest issues in Australia is the tendency of state governments reducing the pay in tariffs with the false excuse that solar power is overloading the system. This trend will continue to make it less economical to pay off solar panels quickly. In addition, it will encourage the consumers to go off grid and put excess solar energy into batteries.
Properly used and interconnected the best and cheapest battery is still the national grid.
Solar Panels
As prices have dropped considerably over the past few years and are stabilising as things are getting close to the raw material costs. The use of a basic grid tie inverter is and remains the single most cost-effective purchase to reduce your carbon footprint and reduce your energy bills to zero. Currently the payback period on a well designed system is 3 – 4 years.
Please note that I am the CTO of a Solar battery technology company and our primary purpose is to manufacture and sell our Lithium Titanate batteries. The opinions expressed in this paper are in no way intentionally biased towards the purchase of batteries
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