Frozen Fish Help Reel in Germany's Wind Power

Wind turbines spin during a storm near Cuxhaven, Germany. Storing the power has been a challenge.

Photograph by Ingo Wagner, Corbis

Andrew Curry

National Geographic News

Published April 2, 2010

Cuxhaven, a small city on Germany’s blustery North Sea coast, has ample supplies of fish and wind. A new project is exploring how these two abundant resources can work together to solve some of the problems that have bedeviled Germany’s renewable energy drive.

In short, Germany’s electric grid operators need a place to store all that wind power. And in Cuxhaven, they think they’ve found an answer -- in frozen fish.

One of renewable energy’s most vexing issues is the sheer variability of wind and solar power. It’s a headache for managers of the power system, whose customers need a steady, predictable stream of electricity. Germany is feeling the pain as a leader in alternative power, with 7 percent of its electricity fromwind energy -- one of the highest rates in the world.

“Sometimes there’s a high feed-in of wind power, and at other moments, renewables can only take a small part,” says Wolfram Krause, a researcher at Germany’s EWE power company and manager of Cuxhaven’s 20 million euro ($27 million) eTelligence pilot project, half of which is funded by the German government. “We need to damp out fluctuations of wind power,” he says, “and this is what cold storage can do.”

Deep Power Freeze

In a 5.5-million cubic foot (155,742 cubic meter) warehouse at the mouth of the Elbe River, Cuxhaven’s Erwin GOOSS warehouse unloads and stores the catch from fishing boats sailing in the North Sea. Ordinarily, the warehouse needs to be kept at a chilly -4 F (-20 C). But the temperature inside can be pushed as low as -22 F (-30 C) when local windmills are spinning. The deep freeze gives the warehouse breathing room at times when the wind -- and the power -- dies down. Then, if allowed to warm slowly, the facility still will stay cold enough for the frozen fish. “It’s not that we’re using less power, it’s just that we’re using it when it’s cheaper,” GOOSS technical director Gunter Krins says.

In the summer, the well-insulated warehouse warms about 2 degrees F (1.1 degrees C) every 24 hours when the cooling is turned off. In the winter, the building warms at about half that rate. Depending on the season, that means the shelves stacked with frozen fish can “store” energy equivalent to a week’s worth of refrigeration.

Krins’ warehouse isn’t alone. The pilot project, launched in November 2008, aims to connect all types of power users and electricity providers over the Internet. Hundreds of smart meters that monitor energy usage multiple times per second and transmit the information to an iPod touch have been distributed to local homes.

Major power consumers like the local wastewater treatment facility and the local pool are getting in on the act--adjusting how much electricity they use depending on how hard the wind is blowing. A sophisticated communications network lets people know when power is cheap and when to conserve. “We’ve built a measurement and information control infrastructure that can suck up all this data and give it to all the actors,” Krause says.

Curbing Wind Waste

The hope is that projects like eTelligence will help Germany curb a costly kind of energy waste. By law, German renewable energy producers are guaranteed a certain price for wind and solar power. That has helped Germany create a thriving renewable energy industry, but meshing it into a system accustomed to steady power -- like that from coal power plants -- has been a challenge. “Right now, we’re switching off wind farms if we have too much power in our grid,” says Oliver Weinmann, innovation manager for power company Vattenfall. That essentially means that consumers, through their utility bills, are paying wind farms not to produce energy. “It’s not a very good situation,” Weinmann says. “We have to find a solution to integrate all this wind power in our grid.”

Local efforts like eTelligence are catching on. Initially, Krause says, Cuxhaven’s fish warehouse owners were skeptical. But when it became clear that there was money involved -- cooling primarily during hours of peak wind production will be cheaper than just drawing electricity at all hours -- the proposal became a lot more appealing.

Over the next year, Krause and Krins will be closely watching the warehouse’s savings. “We need to see what the savings are,” Krins says. “But it’s a good idea – we’ve got plenty of wind right outside the door.”

"Roaming" Magnetic Fields Found

"Roaming" Magnetic Fields Found

Weak "seed fields" may solve galaxy mystery

Particle jets shoot from a galaxy's central supermassive black hole in an artist's rendering.

Image courtesy Paolo Padovani, ESA, NASA, AVO

Brian Handwerk

for National Geographic News

Published April 1, 2010

Weak magnetic fields are "roaming" across the universe, according to a new study that may have solved the mystery of where the huge magnetic fields around galaxies come from.

Galaxies such as our Milky Way have their own large-scale magnetic fields. Although these fields are weak compared to planetary fields, scientists think the galactic versions help establish rates of star formation, guide cosmic rays, and regulate the dynamics of interstellar gas.

Most scientists believe the stronger magnetic fields of today's adult galaxies grew from weaker "seed" fields. But it's unclear where these older fields originated.

The two leading theories: The seed fields were created by the movement of charged gas in protogalaxies, or they were produced outside of galaxies by some unseen processes in the early universe.

New observations made with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescopesupport the idea that the seeds were there all along, even before galaxies themselves.

(Related: "Gamma Ray Telescope Finds First 'Invisible' Pulsar.")

Based on Fermi's data, "we've found that these weak magnetic fields should be everywhere. They should be outside the galaxies, filling the whole universe, even where there are no galaxies, no clusters, no anything," said study co-author Andrii Neronov of the University of Geneva's ISDC Centre for Astrophysicsin Switzerland.

Since the new findings suggest magnetic fields can form outside galaxies, "perhaps those magnetic fields were created before the galaxies were formed," Neronov said.

Sowing the Seeds for Galactic Fields

According to the theory, primordial seed fields could have been created from charged particles spit out during violent events such as supernovae.

Over time, the theory goes, a seed field could bulk up inside a galaxy, because the galaxy's slow spin causes charged particles and gases to align along the seed's magnetic field lines. (Related: "Earth's Core, Magnetic Field Changing Fast, Study Says.")

But other seed fields would remain roaming through intergalactic space—and that's what Neronov and colleagues think they've found.

More precisely, the team saw a lack of very high-energy gamma rays in Fermi data on blazars, galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centers that spew jets of particles at near the speed of light.

The gamma rays that reach Earth from blazars should be at a certain energy level. But the gamma rays Neronov's team saw appear to have been sapped of some of their strength, which is exactly what would have happened if the gamma rays had interacted with weak magnetic fields along the way.

The researchers then modeled what happens when gamma rays crash into photons, or light particles. They found that the collisions spawn bundles of electromagnetic activity.

"What we've detected could be this initial weak field, and that could resolve the problem of the origin of [modern] magnetic fields in the Milky Way and other galaxies, because we may now know the initial conditions," Neronov said.

Magnetic Mysteries Remain

The scientists aren't sure which high-energy processes might have created the very first magnetic fields in a young, galaxy-less universe, although there's no shortage of candidates.

(Related: "Earliest Known Galaxies Spied in Deep Hubble Picture.")

It's also unclear whether the roaming seed fields played a role in the subsequent formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters, since the fields' exact intensities have yet to be measured.

"In general, I tend to think that they do not play a significant role in the formation of the galaxies, because they are too weak" at the low levels the Fermi team observed, Neronov said.

The new Fermi data on blazars are published in this week's issue of the journalScience.

Solar Brings Light to Haiti

Solar Brings Light to Haiti

Solar Power Brings Light to Quake-Darkened Haiti

Marianne Lavelle
National Geographic News
Published March 31, 2010

In the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated his country on January 12, Haitian businessman Alex Georges recalls both the darkness and the light.

From the Port-au-Prince house where he had been meeting with his business partner, Georges remembers stumbling into chaos: human suffering and a cloud of dust so thick that he could not see across the street.

But he also saw that at night, even though the shaken city had no electricity, there were bright islands of light—beneath the solar-powered street lamps that his company had installed at two sports fields. People were drawn to the glow and began to set up camps there.

Georges believes that solar energy can do more than provide temporary refuge for Haitians; he thinks it can be a permanent boon to the impoverished Caribbean nation.

As the co-founder of ENERSA (Energies Renouvelables S.A.), a three-year-old Port-au-Prince business that has manufactured and sold more than 500 LED solar streetlights with battery storage in 58 towns and villages throughout the island, Georges is one of a group of advocates and entrepreneurs pushing for greater use of solar, renewable, and other small-scale energy in the rebuilding of Haiti.

With a crucial meeting of representatives of more than a hundred countries taking place at the United Nations today to organize commitments for the rebuilding, renewable energy advocates have been urging relief organizations to direct aid toward more than simply rebuilding Haiti’s old power delivery system.

Energy Access

Before the earthquake, Haiti had one of the lowest rates of electricity access in the world, with only 12.5 percent of its population of nine million connected to the grid. Those who had money relied on small diesel fuel generators for electricity. The cost of diesel spiked after the earthquake, putting that form of power generation even further out of reach for most Haitians.

“Why saddle people with the variable costs and operating costs of diesel fuel?” asks Jigar Shah, chief executive of the Carbon War Room, the climate change advocacy organization founded by Virgin Atlantic billionaire Richard Branson. His group has calculated that solar and other small power systems could be installed throughout Haiti at a cost of $400 million, a fraction of the $11.5 billion in rebuilding funds that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called for over the next decade.

Vijay Modi, an energy systems expert at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, which works to advance sustainable development, says that renewables can, indeed, play an immediate role in meeting the electricity needs of Haiti. But Haiti also has urgent energy needs for cooking as well as lighting and cell phone charging solutions.

When it comes to household cooking needs, Modi believes that in the short term, people would be more helped by distribution of kerosene or propane. In the longer term, he believes, there should be a focus on more sustainable land management practices to provide the wood and charcoal traditionally used for cooking in Haiti—fuels that can be renewable when well managed.

Renewable energy advocates working on the ground in Haiti agree that more efficient use of wood and charcoal will continue to be used in the short term for cooking, although biochar (charcoal from agricultural waste) could be a more environmentally friendly solution. They also worry about the use of kerosene for lighting in the short term for a reason more immediate than its impact on the climate—in addition to the harmful fumes, the fire hazard is acute in the tent camps where so many Haitians are now living.

Security Need

The tent camps, in fact, have turned to solar energy for yet another pressing need—security. Soon after the quake, renewable energy access specialist Richenda Van Leeuwen, of Washington, D.C., organized a donation by the Good Energies Foundation of 6,500 solar light systems that can be used now in tents—and later transferred to new homes.

Van Leeuwen, now working on relief in Haiti, says that the lighting has been vital in addressing the issue of assaults. Only last week, Amnesty International reported that sexual violence against women and girls was widespread in the camps, and called for more action from emergency responders and authorities. At least 35,000 solar lamp systems have been distributed to improve lighting in the camps so far, and Van Leeuwen says the International Organization for Migration is ordering 30,000 more to help with protection of women and girls in particular.

With Haiti’s infrastructure in tatters, and funds being raised around the world, many believe it is an ideal time to deploy new power for Haiti. For example, last summer, the nonprofit Partners In Health successfully had a solar system installed in its clinic in Boucan Carré, Haiti.

Although the clinic maintains its diesel generator system as backup and to ensure reliable power in its operating room and for the higher energy needs of its x-ray machine, its diesel fuel expenses have been slashed. After the quake, in fact, Partners asked the Washington, D.C.-based Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), which is supported in part by the Good Energies Foundation, to accelerate a plan to install solar in five of its other clinics in Haiti.

“It’s very low maintenance, there’s no local pollution, no carbon dioxide, no noise,” says Bob Freling, executive director of SELF. “We have not completely dispensed with diesel, but reduced their reliance. It really empowers people.”

There have been other solar donations with an eye on empowerment. Texas-based FTL Solar has donated three large solar tents to be used by charities; these provide not only light but a source of income, since the charities will be able to earn money by setting up stations where people can pay to have their cell phones or batteries recharged.

Renewable energy activist and film producer Nicole Hansen, president of Green Galaxy Enterprises, helped coordinate the donation, remembering that she saw the solar tents in action at the site of films under production around Hollywood.

Job Creation

But Georges, of ENERSA, and company co-founder Jean-Ronel Noel, believe that what Haiti needs beyond donations of finished solar products is the money to build up its own capacity to make and install solar systems. The pair, after studying engineering, business administration, and solar fabrication in Canada, have trained 18 young men as solar technicians and are training a group of 10 more in hope of expanding their work force.

ENERSA workers have not only manufactured solar panels, lamps, charging stations, and streetlights, they’ve taken them to villages so remote that the equipment had to be hauled by donkey. “It is life-changing for people who did not have electricity whatsoever” to have the access to solar light, says Georges. “Children can study, and parents can meet and just socialize after dark. You can change the life of the community, instantly.”

ENERSA’s factory, which was damaged in the earthquake, is set to resume manufacturing this week.