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May 03, 2015 19:40 +0000  |  Energy Environment The Economy 1

A few days ago, Elon Musk and Tesla announced the release of their new Powerwall system to much fanfare. It's being widely recognised as revolutionary and a gateway to the democratisation of energy production, but I think that the media is focusing on the wrong aspects of this story.

While it's true that Powerwall makes personal power generation more feasible, I would argue that this doesn't even scratch the surface. The real value of this technology is in the potential to delegate mass energy storage to smaller subsystems and, in so doing, effectively eliminate much of our addiction to fossil fuels.

What Powerwall Is

A photo of the powerwall

This is Tesla's Powerwall. Essentially it's a nice-looking box that hangs on the wall that can power your home for a day or two (more if you live in an apartment). It can charge off a personal solar array or wind turbine or, more importantly, it can be charged simply by connecting to your city's power grid.

The magic of Powerwall is in the details:

  • It's Cheap. At $3500 USD, it's a viable option for millions of people, which is nice for those who like expensive toys, but the real value is in the fact that this price point allows utilities and industry to apply this technology at a massive scale.
  • It's Versatile. Designed to be used in the home or chained together to form a serial super battery for large venues and industrial-grade buildings, Powerwall can be applied at the scale required where needed.
  • It's Unencumbered by Patents. Tesla has a standing policy on opening its patents to the world so that other companies can develop competing or compatible technologies without the fear of crippling lawsuits.

How We Manage Power Right Now

All of this is interesting from a technical perspective, but I want to talk about the potential to drastically change how we manage energy use in our cities.

One of the most difficult issues with power management is that it must be generated as needed. That is to say, the power you use when you turn the lights on at home was generated far away, often hundreds of kilometres away, and it was done so with the expectation that it will be used right away. Indeed, it has to be used right away because there's nowhere else for it to go other than into light bulbs and dishwashers across the grid.

A diagram of what our energy generation/use looks like now

The result is a power generation diagram that looks a lot like this. The entire network is essentially divided into two parts:

  • Base load is the power used regardless of the time of day. The network is built with the understanding that at any given time someone, somewhere will be using that power, so this power is generated using methods that are difficult to adjust, like nuclear or sometimes hydro.
  • Peak load is the power generated as we need it. We add more generation in the mornings and evenings and taper off considerably at night. You can only manage this variable nature if you make use of less rigid generation technologies. Typically that means coal or natural gas, though in some parts of the world, hydro is also a viable option.

The take away is this: fossil fuels are necessary for our current system because they're the only proven technology that can manage the variable nature of our energy needs at peak times. Nuclear reactors take days to start and stop and wind and solar are dependent on the weather. Fossil fuels can be spun up and down on a whim and for roughly a century this has been the one and only way to provide reliable power to the masses.

What Powerwall Means for Our Current Situation

Powerwall has the potential to change all of this. With a battery in every home (or even just every neighbourhood), any form of power generation is viable: simply dump that energy into the grid and let the batteries stabilise the flow. Powerwall eliminates the need for variable power generation and, by extension, fossil fuels.

A diagram of what our energy generation/use will look like with cheap, ubiquitous batteries

Instead, we get a power distribution that looks more like this, with the base load still generated by big industrial forces like nuclear, but with the added possibility of making better use of renewables like solar, wind, and even tidal & geothermal.

The Outlook

This is so much bigger than allowing upper middle class yuppies to power their espresso machines with solar power. Cheap and ubiquitous battery technology is the missing link in responsible energy production in the coming century.

Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables

Coal, oil, and natural gas (methane) can still play a part in the short term, but, in the long term, the market will inevitably move away from them, as it's impossible to compete with free energy beaming from the sun. Governments will delight in being able to appear "green" as they move with the market to curb CO₂ levels in the atmosphere.

The Democratisation of Power Generation

And of course there's the story everyone appears to be running with: the democratisation of power generation. This will be an exciting change too, as shopping malls, factories, and even apartment buildings opt for local generation as a means of supplementing or even avoiding the grid. I honestly don't think that so-called "democratic power" will be the primary means of generation, but this will undoubtedly play a part.

Excited

So yes, I'm excited about the whole thing. So much so that I checked whether Tesla was hiring in Europe (they don't appear to be interested in software developers, pity). Powerwall and technologies like it are a Really Big Deal and so far from what I've seen, much of the media hasn't quite grasped this. I'm convinced however that that all of the above is Musk's grand plan and that this reality is not lost on the heads of power utilities around the world.

March 26, 2009 01:52 +0000  |  Activism Energy Environment Public Space Toronto Vancouver 9

I'm going to participate. I'm not really concerned about the effectiveness of that single hour's darkness on energy consumption as a whole, rather I'm more interested in taking a moment (or in this case, an hour) to reflect on our habits and maybe even convince others to slow down a bit. Besides, who doesn't love a party in the dark?

As always, Toronto is having a party in Nathan Phillip's Square while Vancouver still lacks any real public space capable of such an event. If you know of anything that Vancouver is doing that's interesting please let me know.

July 28, 2007 20:18 +0000  |  Energy Nifty Links 2

Maglev Turbine

This is probably the coolest development I've seen in wind technology ever. According to their site, these new MAGLEV Wind Turbines operate in a near-frictionless environment leading to BIG gains in energy production. How big? roughly 1000 times that of traditional wind turbines. In other words, you can build one of these on a farm and save the 64,000 acres of space you would have had to use for a traditional wind farm.

If the claims are true, the potential here is really big, so they're putting one up in Arizona as a pilot project. If I hear anything new, I'll post about it here.

More information on this turbine and the technology supporting it can be found here:

Big thanks to Margaret for finding this and sending it my way.

June 15, 2007 18:05 +0000  |  Agriculture Conservatives Energy Environment Nuclear Politics 1

I'll start with the good news because it's quite exciting and I have a picture ;-)

SkyFarm

According to Torontoist, there's a guy by the name of Gordon Graff who wants to build a massive vertical farm right in the middle of Toronto. Imagine, instead of trucking in our food from all of the place, we grow it right here, a 20min walk from our homes.

The structure above is designed to feed 35,000 people and would consist of growing areas for everything from potates, to wheat to chickens for meat and eggs. I've been talking about this sort of thing and people have been telling me that I'm crazy... I guess I'm not the only one :-)

For more information (and pictures!) of other designs by other architects around the world, visit Vertical Farm.

And now the bad news.

The Conservative minority government has seen fit to approve a plan to search for a site to permanently store nuclear waste. Note that I used the word "store" and not "dispose" as the article does, since it's important that we remember that you can't dispose of nuclear waste... ever.

This decision is going to live with the next 1000 generations of Canadians and our government is making it sound like we can just put this stuff in a hole and ignore it 'till it goes away. It won't. Not until it leaks into the groundwater and contaminates the biosphere. Sadly though, I'm not surprised.

April 18, 2007 19:29 +0000  |  Energy Environment Liberals Politics 1

Following in Australia's footsteps, Ontario will soon become the first jurisdiction in North America to ban the old, inefficient, incandescent bulbs. It's a good step in the right direction, I just wish someone had thought of it sooner or at the very least introduced sliding taxes on the whole thing instead.

April 11, 2007 15:45 +0000  |  Energy Environment Nuclear 0

I found this great article today about the future of energy production and of the country. Written by an economist, it begins with the good & bad about nuclear and then goes on to strongly support sustainable alternatives instead; not because they're better for the environment, but because they will generate more power, for less cost and better the country as a result. It's a good read if you have the time. Here's a snippet:

When asked about the nuclear waste element, one engineer took out a map of Ontario and made a minuscule little dot on it with his sharpened pencil. "You see that?" he said. "That is all the room we need to safely store all of Ontario's nuclear waste for ten generations."

But I'm an economist with a masochistic attraction to complex social conditions. So when I look at a map of Ontario, I don't see the little pencil dot. I see 630,000 MW of wind power (for scale: that's more than 20 times Ontario's current peak consumption) and upwards of 7,500 MW of new hydro, but almost all of it stranded in the northern part of the province, inhabited by First Nations communities living in poverty conditions with few wealth-building prospects. This vast power potential is stranded because there is no transmission grid to get it down to market.

Toby A.A. Heaps, A Green Power Corridor