It was an exciting month for electric cars powered by energy generated from wind turbines with the news that supercar Nemesis may have broken the 2002 land speed record for electric cars (although the record still has to be ratified). Gloucestershire-based EcoTricity (the company whose CEO is behind Nemesis) and Nissan have teamed up to deliver the ‘electric motorway’. China has ordered major electricity suppliers to ‘go renewable’, while struggling to make the figures add up, and Chinese company Ralls Corp sues President Obama for thwarting its wind farm plans.

Phew! Still, you can always reply on UPS power protection to maintain a supply of electricity in absence of any wind. Check out Riello UPS for reliable and robust power protection, alternative energy sources (such as UPS batteries and on-site diesel generators) to ensure a source of supply even on still days.

Get the low-down on the above stories by clicking here.

A few developments of interest on the renewables front this month: first of all, engineers at Highview Power Storage demonstrated their long-awaited and smaller-scale Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) technology. Then, the Co-operative edged closer to its aim of bringing a clean energy revolution to communities across the UK  by pledging funding and support and Tim Yeo, chairman of the Commons’ Energy and Climate Change Committee, called on the Government to work towards reinstating the UK’s pole position as an exporter of wave and tidal power.

Is liquid air storage the answer to unreliable wind energy?

Earlier this month, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Imeche) became the platform for the launch of the UK’s first demonstrable LAES technology, hailed as the answer to the highlighted weaknesses of wind energy. The fact that turbines produce too much energy when there is heavy much wind and not enough on still days renders them highly inefficient and expensive to operate. Wind farm producers are compensated for switching off turbines in high wind conditions and this is said to have cost the UK consumer £24 million in 2011.

How the technology works is that LAES takes electricity from the grid at peak times, such as on windy days, and uses it to cool air until it liquefies at 196 degrees Celsius. The liquid air is then stored, cheaply and safely, under pressure until it is needed and when brought back to normal temperature it turns back into gas, expands by 700 times and is rushed through a turbine. This then creates electricity, which can be fed into the grid.

UK company Highview Power Storage has been developing the technology in association with Imeche for the past five years and recently completed a successful year-long pilot – the first LAES plant in the world – connected to the National Grid and hosted by Scottish and Southern Energy in Slough, Berkshire, UK.

The energy storage market is said to be worth some $100 billion over the next ten years and could create 100,000 jobs.

Other companies have focused on Battery energy storage using Lithium Ion batteries, which although quick and viable, have been found to be limited and unable to scale to the degree required. Other technologies such as pumped hydro need green belt space and billions of litres of water.

Co-op gives to community renewable energy projects

The Co-operative has pledged £1 million to renewable energy projects run by local communities.

The Community Energy Challenge is an initiative that has set out to summon local community energy co-operatives to come up with ideas for renewable generation. It will offer six to eight of the most ambitious finance and support to get them off the ground.

UK could be the world-leading exporter of wave and tidal power

So say MPs on the Commons’ Energy and Climate Change Committee. It makes sense, as we are and island nation, that the UK could take the lead when it comes to exploiting the power of the sea but is being number one in the world enough of an incentive to get Government and industry backing?

Earlier this month, the Government was called to increase its support for wave and tidal power in a new report from MPs warning that the country is at risk of repeating mistakes, which allowed it to lose its early lead in the development of the wind power industry.

Currently, seven out of eight full-scale prototype marine energy installations worldwide are in UK waters, making us the current world leader in the development of wave and tidal energy technologies.

Marine power could provide as much as 27GW of capacity in the UK by 2050.

An over cautious approach by the Government, say MPs, may allow other, less risk averse countries to steal the UK’s lead. The industry is worried that Government plans for subsidies for marine and tidal only extend to 2017, thus leaving them vulnerable in the future.

According to The Carbon Trust, the first commercial wave farms are likely to deliver energy costing 38-48p/kWh and the first tidal farms 29-33p/kWh, which will require a subsidy if anyone is to be persuaded to pay the premium tariff required to fund investment payback. Obviously, costs will fall as the technology matures but even so, at those prices it will take a while for this to happen.

Whatever form of power generation your supply is made up of, and if you rely on electrical equipment for your very commercial survival, you will need adequate and reliable power protection and that means a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and generator, or some form of protection and back up system (flywheel UPS, fuel cell, batteries, capacitor). To found out more and view our full range of products and systems, visit Riello UPS’s website.

While the debate surrounding the pros and cons of wind power rumbles on, the increasing numbers of turbines that are appearing across the country are beginning to make a real contribution to the UK’s energy supplies.

The National Grid reports that Monday 6^th September saw a record output for the wind farms of Britain – generating nearly 5% of all power going into the Grid at that time. The company confirmed that with output peaking at 1,860MW, the power generated by the wind energy sector was greater than that produced by three nuclear power stations.

The National Grid believes that over that 24-hour period (and taking into account embedded wind generation), nearly 10% of the UK’s power came from the wind alone. A great achievement, even if the UK is still a long way behind other parts of Europe in this field. Spain and Portugal, for example, consistently meet 50% of their energy demands through wind farmed along the Iberian Peninsula. But as mentioned in an earlier post, the political, social and economic infrastructure of these nations seems to offer greater support to the renewable cause than here in the UK.

When considering the 2020 target of generating 15% of the UK’s energy from renewable sources, this latest data should be encouraging news for the industry – and could go a long way to helping raise the common image of wind farms from ‘noisy blots on the landscape’ to valuable part of the renewable energy mix.

The developers of an innovative ‘wave power’ device claim that within 5 years, their invention will be generating energy for 50,000 UK homes. The ‘Anaconda’ energy converter is currently in the test stage, but recently announced results have shown that each 200 metre rubber tube could generate enough energy to power 1,000 homes.

The Anaconda (named for its resemblance) is anchored to the ocean floor, moving with the tides. The waves in the water create bulges along the tubing that travel along its length gathering energy. At the end of the tube, the surge of energy drives a turbine and generates electricity. It’s rubber construction makes it cheap, resilient and low-maintenance, and the designers, Checkmate Seaenergy Ltd are confident that not only will it be cheaper than it’s wind-farm equivalent , but it will face less opposition from the public as the ‘shoals’ will be under the surface of the water – effectively out of sight. The company are now looking for further investment to sea-test the devices, with the aim of deploying a shoal along the west coast of the UK by 2014.

With the EU targeting the UK to source 15 per cent of all the country’s energy needs from renewables by 2020 (the majority of which is expected to come from wind power ) the Carbon Trust suggests that the Anaconda ‘has the potential to deliver breakthrough reductions in the cost of wave energy’ and that it could ‘represent the next generation of marine renewable energy’.