Electric Genes

I am a frequent poster on Seeking Alpha on energy subjects, especially about batteries, renewable energy, and the follies of (most) electric vehicles. I have been fascinated with energy projects my whole life; pre-high school I was inspired by a project in  Engineers Dreams to siphon the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea and make huge amounts of electricity. Forty five years later, Dead Sea Power is still active, still a great idea, but still not built.

Electricity is in my genes. I have occasional fantasies of running a PV-powered vehicle on Criehaven island, which is not totally crazy. Trying to propel EVs (electric vehicles) at 70 mph over 200 miles per charge is crazy and pure hopium; investors falling for that fairy tale will lose.

On the other hand, occasionally driving a small vehicle slowly over short distances on an island with difficult (and expensive) access to fossil fuels is an example of a (very) small niche that might be suitable for EVs. Electric off-road vehicles ("4-wheelers"),  off-road motorcycles, and some utility vehicles do exist.

My great-grandfather, George Krementz, was an electric aficionado.  He electrified his jewelry factory, one of the largest in the country, before AC power was available; he generated his own DC power in Newark NJ in the 1890s. When the factory was closed in the 1980s, some of the original 19th century equipment still had their original DC motors, which had huge, ancient AC-DC converters so they could run off todays' grid.

One of my great grandfather's prides was his electric delivery car. Well, I actually have no idea if he was proud of it or even how well it worked; all I know there is an old family photo of the car, emblazoned with "Krementz", which was used for deliveries in New York. Electric taxis came to NYC in 1897.

Krementz was known then, beside uncompromising quality, for complete vertical integration. I smile thinking that he had his own coal powered generator to run his car.  A century later today's EVangelists still run their EVs from coal, too.

Some Trivial but Very Important News

Usually the idea of the government reducing waste is a good thing. The Post Office, the black hole of losses that "makes money" by delivering junk mail you don't want, is a prime example of incompetence. FedEx and UPS usually work better, cheaper, faster, and is profitable so it pays taxes.

My alma mater, Harvard Business School, has it own post office - even though it is just a few hundred yards from the Harvard University post office, and another 0.3 miles in the other direction. No news if this waste will be shuttered.

However, the bureaucracies ashore have rightfully decided that Matinicus deserves to live. Hip, Hip, Hooray! Our post office is much than mail. With our own zip code, UPS and FEdEx can deliver to Criehaven and Matinicus. It give our lifeline airline a steady cashflow, helping to ensure its continued viability. Our trivial little post office's survival is Very Important News for islanders - and shows how hard it is too reduce government.

Goodby, Ammonia

This posting is the obituary for http://krementz.blogspot.com/2010/01/matinicus-and-criehaven-sustainable.html

It has been a long time since I posted about the island wind-to-fishing-boat-fuel project. I do not see any way for this project to move forward. A few of the reasons:

1 ) Technical Risk - There are three times the technological risk investors might be interested is.

1 - The technology for running internal combustion engines well with NH3 is still quite aways away. I do not see any fundamental obstacle, but it will need several million dollars of engineering.
2 - The technology of solid state NH3 synthesis is still very early. Will it scale, will it be robust, will it be economic, and most important, will it work? All unanswered questions. Some physicists doubt the process will work anywhere close to being effective.
3 - Can wind, not supported by a grid connection, be stable enough to provide sole power to both the communities and NH3 production facility? Large wind turbines are designed to attach to the grid, and cannot generate power without a grid connection.

2 ) Bureaucratic Risk - This project would have required tremendous efforts to overcome bureaucratic inertia, so-called do-gooders, NIMBYs, BANANAs*, and random naysayers. Cape Wind has been battling for a decade to put a few turbines in the water near Cape Cod, and still has not started construction. There is a ruckus about the Vinalhaven turbines; right or wrong it creates uncertainty in the approval process. Getting community acceptance and governmental approval of a significant NH3 storage facility would be problematic.

3 ) Financial Risk - Funding for many green projects is getting ever more difficult. Convincing investors than our offshore communities are stable enough to service the debt will be challenging. There has not been strong enthusiasm for the project, which further increase the perceived financial risk of the project.

In summary - risk, risk, risk.

RIP, sustainable local energy self-reliance. But who knows what the future will bring.

* NIMBY - not in my back yard
BANANA - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody

Making waves

I had a very interesting visit this week to Ohmsett, a huge wave testing facility in New Jersey. Resolute Marine Energy, who I mentioned about a year ago, is testing one of their wave energy conversion (WEC) devices there.

Ohmsett is four times a long as an Olympic swimming pool, and generates controlled waves at varying sizes and frequencies. Repetitively measuring output of their WEC with different waves, and adjusting parameters on the device itself produces reams of data. A little (or rather, a lot of) number-crunching later, they should have a pretty good model for some real in-the-water prototypes.

The first in-water tests should be next summer (2012) in North Carolina. We had discussed possibly doing some tests off Criehaven, but NC looks like a better opportunity for them. There definitely will not be any Criehaven tests in 2011; no plans have yet been made for 2012.

Resolute's shallow water design is meant for a water depth (MLW) about 10 to 40 feet - one of the tank testing goals is to decide an optimal depth. It is completely underwater, with a vertical "paddle" that oscillates with every wave. Since it is invisible from the surface, there should be little resistance from beach-goers and landowners, and deep enough to be a non-issue for recreational boaters. I think it will be a very useful technology for islands and some other off-grid situations. The Navy is quite interested for some of their island bases; they have a mandate to supply 50% of their shore-side power from renewable resources.

The obvious question: would this wave energy be appropriate for Matinicus? Maybe. The waving paddle clearly would not work tangled with lobster gear, so a dedicated "no-fish" zone would be needed, and respected. The no-fish zone to produce a useful amount of electricity might be 50 feet by 100 feet, parallel to the shore, in 20-40 foot depths, in an area with good wave action. It would not completely replace the diesel generators, but since waves don't "disappear" instantly (unlike wind), there would always be time to start the generator. My very rough guess (without wave data or design data) is that it could produce 90% of the winter electricity demand and 50-75% of the summer demand. However, unless the fishing community is 100% behind it, there is no point in pursuing it.

Does anyone have any estimates on how often we have no surf, winter or summer? Love to hear from anybody.

Televisions. So 20th century.

The Pew Research Center just published a survey of "luxuries" and "necessities". I still marvel at how small a minority I am. They listed the top 12 necessities, as reported in a telephone survey of 3000 adults. The list included a landline telephone (62%), microwave (45%), TV set (42%), and flatscreen TV (10%). The percentages refer to the number of people who consider these items a necessity. I don't own any of them, either on-island or on the mainland.

A car was considered the most essential (86%) necessity. However, of my five children, nephews and niece over age 20, none of them have a car or consider it a necessity.

A decade ago ago I had a TV, microwave and a landline. I don't miss them.

The New York Times write up is about the decline in interest in televisions, but also noted that 54% of Americans have three or more televisions; zero percent have zero televisions, according to Nielsen. I love being part of the zero minority.

This is a rather depressing view of the oceans. I hope this guy is wrong.



If the above video doesn't work, you may click on this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-05-05

Keep warm and save money with renewable energy!

Looks like a good idea happening on Vinalhaven by using the excess electricity for heating houses and saving money.  See http://workingwaterfront.com/articles/Excess-wind-energy-keeps-islanders-warm-during-pilot-project/13790/ for a summary.

Finally, the first in-water wind turbines were approved. The Department of the Interior approved the plan for Cape Wind, the wind farm in Nantucket Sound, to move forward. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/science/earth/29wind.html?ref=science.

Matinicus Wind Maps

I finally found the wind map for Matinicus (and a little bit of Criehaven). The second image is the map legend. Double click on the images to make them larger.

Notice how the better wind is on the west side. The cross-hatched areas are the existing cable areas, as defined on the navigational charts, and are not anything new. Each of the dots is a proposed location for a wind turbine (Island Institute's proposed, not mine.) They are sited in the shallow water, which is marked by the blue dotted lines. I told Philip that such an intense wind turbine development (29) was highly unlikely to be accepted by the fishermen. Let me know your opinions.  Notice the two circles around No Man's Land, which would be setbacks for the bird sanctuary.

I am quite sure this wind farm will never be built. The plan was to have it connected to the mainland, as it would produce much more power than the islands could possibly consume.




In other news, I had an interesting conversation with Bill Staby of Resolute Marine Energy, Inc. (www.resolute-marine-energy.com). I met him last year at an energy conference, and he is developing energy-from-waves equipment. He claims that there is plenty of energy even in Maine waves, although not quite as much as the West coast. Putting wave energy collectors in the offshore floating turbine farms that have been proposed for offshore Maine has several advantages. Wave energy is not strongly correlated with wind energy. After a strong wind dies down, the waves continue for quite a while longer. There can be large waves with no wind - remember the huge waves after Hurricane Bill last summer. Wave energy is said to be much more predictable and reliable than wind energy.

The wave collectors would push the energy through the same underwater infrastructure as the wind turbines, so more effective use of the capital cost is possible.

The firm is working on two versions. One is a floating ball with three cables to the bottom. As the ball goes up and down with the waves, the cables reel in and out to capture the energy. In the event of a big  storm, the ball might be pulled underwater, close to the bottom, to avoid damage. This version would be for deep water.

A shallow water unit would be completely underwater, with at least ten feet of water above it at low tide. As waves go by, paddles capture the energy.

Bill hopes to have two small prototypes temporarily working in Penobscot Bay in the summer of 2011.

Comments and questions are always welcome.

Noise and remediation

This is an interesting article on noise issues regarding wind farms. One conclusion is that by raising the cut-in speed, i.e., the wind speed when the turbines start spinning, the perceived noise is greatly reduced. The amount of power produced at low wind speeds is so small that is often not significant financially.

Some of the comments discuss various decibel (noise) readings, and what is acceptable. I guess I have to find a dB meter and start measuring. Anybody have one?

Turbine noise

Electric lobsters

I just spent time at the Lobster Institute's Town Hall meeting in Portland. Very informative and useful, it was good to hear from a wide variety of industry participants, not just the fisherman. Probably the most important conclusion is the importance of effective marketing to overcome the over supply of lobster (hence the low prices). Several people recommended a five cent per pound levy. The Wild Blueberry Association presented their marketing results, which are outstanding. I proposed that the industry lobby Augusta to establish a levy, and work cooperatively with Canada, who is considering the same approach. The Promotion Council should not be a government bureaucracy, but independent and controlled by those in the industry. It should be a lot easier to get Augusta to do this than trying to convince grid-locked Washington, populated by inland state politicians, to accomplish anything

A concern with in-water wind turbines is whether the underwater cabling would have an adverse impact on the lobster fishery. Bob Bayer, from the Lobster Institute and Univ. of Maine, kindly sent me some resources. From my reading of the document, it appears these issues on Criehaven and Matinicus will be minimal. There is some bottom disruption as the cables are buried, but that appears to be similar to after a bad storm. We are not going to have dense cabling or underwater substations, which appear to be more problematic. More research should be done.

Summary document
Bibliography

So much for the on island "good news". I'm enjoying the fireplace while the rain blasts my windows on island. Now for some really "bad news", GM, aka Government Motors, has just announced a 556 hp station wagon! Blech. GM goes bust because of follies like the Hummer, and now this, with our tax dollars?

Wind Noise

I am, of course, quite concerned about noise issues related to wind turbines. As everyone who knows me knows, I am quite intolerant of noise.

A wind power acquaintance from Buffalo, Dave Bradley, sent me the following links "proving" that wind turbine noise is not a problem, so I thought I would pass them along. Dave very kindly showed me some possible sites for NH3 production at abandoned industrial locations. His idea is to generate NH3 from inexpensive electricity from Niagara Falls, then use the excess heat from production to keep greenhouses warm (and fertilized). The green house proposal would generate a lot of local jobs and produce food locally all winter. His blog is at http://www.wagengineering.blogspot.com/. I stopped in Buffalo on my way to Detroit to work on NH3 engines.

This whitepaper is a quite good explanation of the technology and science behind measuring noise from wind turbines. Interestingly the most bothersome noise tends to be when the wind is quiet, i.e., below 10 mph. However, wind turbines do not begin making noise until there is enough wind to start spinning, typically about 6 - 8 mph. There is very little background noise at low wind speeds, so the noise of the turbine is more apparent. At higher wind speeds, the ambient wind increases and masks the sound. By 30 mph, this report says that perceptible turbine noise disappears, even close by. Seems like a reasonable approach to minimize noise would be not let the turbines spin until the wind is over 10 mph. Not much power is produced at low wind speeds, anyway.

This noise report is an engineering study of a proposed wind farm in upstate NY. A brief review on Google does not show any widespread opposition. The report, like most engineering reports, measures wind speed in meters per second. One meter per second equals 2.24 miles per hour, so 3 m/s is 6.7 mph. This is rather dry reading, and it does not convince me of anything except that the developers spent some money on a report. I have no idea if this wind farm studied is/will be noisy. Let me know your thoughts.

Speed Rules

Business Week has a good article about hypernet benefits.

As the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland says, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Welcome to the 21st century...

Communicate, communicate, communicate!

Responding to The New York Times March 13 article on high speed Internet.

The Internet lexicon laments the “digital divide” as if America were divided into ignorant hillbillies without Internet and the new, cool Internet hipsters. Recent discussions of the FCC "100 squared" initiative, i.e., 100 million people will get 100 megabit connectivity, emphasize the differences.

Reality is, of course, different than how the media presents it. American Internet usage should be divided into three categories, not two. Yes, there are some Internet hillbillies. They might have a ten year old computer, or they might have their secretary print out their emails. They enjoy hand written letters, or might occasionally receive an email or access some specific item over the Internet. They may be our parents or grandparents, or they might be kids in Amish homes. They may belong to a fundamentalist sect. There are two important points: first, there are not a lot of these people, and second, no government or private initiative is going to change them. I see this as similar to the home schooling movement -- immaterial to the discussion about our failing education systems. The "100 Squared" initiative should not be trying to change them.

At the other end of the spectrum are the crusaders, the hipsters. The complainers who think 100 megabits will still be too slow, behind the Netherlands, Korea, Japan, etc. The ones begging for Google's gigabit service for their city. They support "100 Squared" because it is at least moving in the right direction.

In the middle is the dangerous plurality, those that think they understand the Internet potential. They regularly do email. They have a Facebook page, and have seen videos on YouTube. They Skype with their friends, and do some on-line banking. As the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live said, "Isn't that special?"
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The 1930s saw a huge expansion of the roads in the US as cars became mainstream. The WPA built bridges and the US highway system. Who would ever of thought we needed more? We could drive to California on US-66; it was finally paved in 1938. Eisenhower knew we needed something better - he had experienced the autobahns of Germany. Because of him, the world's finest highway system was built. We broke free of provincial local and state highway commissions and linked up our country. We need to do the same with our telecom infrastructure.

What would we do with the hyper-internet? Customer service calls could be full video, so the representative can show you the details on the product, demonstrate it, pull up the data sheet, put your account info on your screen, etc. It allows the account representative to be distant from the central office, perhaps working out of their island home. Head-mounted tiny wireless videocams are readily available now (skiers use them to record their runs). Engineers and repair people could be showing the details of repairing equipment, crawling under the truck or up the wind tower. A consumer could be walked through a repair of a tractor, or at least identify which parts need replacement. A gardener or farmer could walk through the plants showing the problems to an expert to find out what ails them: do the plants need more water, fertilizer, or what type of pesticide. Education can utilize fully immersive video so there is much more interaction. Top quality education can be distributed, and not limited by what the local school board and union does.

Movies and entertainment are obvious, but the less obvious is participating with live conferences and events. Compare jerky small screen video with large HD TV. Very few present consumers can support live HD video over Internet.

Tele-medicine is beginning. Today's slow speed Internet supports looking at medical records, but the huge files created by CAT scans and high resolution x-rays are not easily handled. Remote surgery has been tested by the military, and can be a way of getting sophisticated health care to rural areas at lower cost.
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So why are those in the middle the dangerous plurality? They want to block the future and keep America behind, yet think they are acting responsibly. Is the government the solution? Rarely. Our challenge will be overcoming the provincialism and petty self interests, such as the lawsuits that tried to prevent the Interstate highway system from circumventing the traffic jams (and businesses) of the little down towns. Today's obstructionists are ATT and Verizon, intent on protecting their oligopoly of pricing and (lack of) performance with the aid of (pick one: corrupt | stupid | incompetent) government officials.

My argument is that our islands are in greatest need of the "hypernet" since we have so many other distance and isolation issues to overcome.

The Collapse

I got to thinking about the various species we have on island and realized a lot seemed threatened. Below is my summary of the what I have observed over the last 30-40 years. I would greatly appreciate other islanders inputs. COLLAPSED means a 90% sustained drop in population. I am ignoring land mammals (rats, muskrats, etc.) and insects. The nesting sea birds are my estimates of nesting birds at Sou'west Point at the end of May each year. Non-nesting populations are much lower. Are there other species I have forgotten? Some species are seen so rarely from shore, such as whales and porpoises, that I am not including them. My guesstimate for those species are significantly more during the late 70s and 80s than from the 60s, stable in the 90s, and slight decline in the 00s. Other inputs and observations welcome.

Species	1970s population	2000s population	Status	Comments
Nesting birds
Herring gull	10s of thousands	Low thousands/ hundreds	COLLAPSED
Black back gull	10s of thousands	Low thousands/ hundreds	COLLAPSED
Eider ducks	Thousands	Low hundreds	COLLAPSED
Cormorants	Dozens	Zero	COLLAPSED
Barn swallows	Hundreds?	Fewer?	?	Need more data
Bald Eagles	0	2-4 adults, chicks	Healthy	There may be second nest at Eastern End
Pheasant	Dozen	Low Hundreds	?	Introduced in 60s. Summer 2009 did not appear to have any chicks. Racoon predation?
Sea Life
Herring	100s of tons caught	Zero	COLLAPSED	Purse seiner harvest
Harbor Pollock	1000s	Near zero	COLLAPSED	In harbor estimates
Mackerel	100s	Near zero	COLLAPSED	In harbor estimates
Barnacles	Common	Rare	COLLAPSED
Mussels	Common	Rare	COLLAPSED
Dog whelk (conch)	Common	Rare	COLLAPSED
Periwinkles	Common	Rare?	COLLAPSED
Urchins	Common	Rare	COLLAPSED	Over harvested in early 90s
Clams	Limited	?	?
Lobsters	100s of tons	100s of tons	Healthy	Harvest quantities
Crabs	Common?	Common?	?	Need more data
Starfish	Limited	Rare	?	Need more data
Harbor Seals	100s	100s	Healthy?	I think they have increased. Other comments?

Ocean Acidification

Had a good time at the MLA meeting in Rockland. The most interesting session was about Ocean Acidification. When CO2 gets absorbed into the ocean, carbonic acid is formed and the pH drops, making the oceans more acidic. Crustaceans (animals with shells) are very sensitive to acidity: the calcium carbonate in their shells dissolves.

The speaker went on about corals (not many in Maine), oysters (only a few in Maine), and urchins. He showed pictures of the larvae dissolving in water with elevated CO2 levels. Urchins are the most sensitive to dissolved CO2.

Lobsters and crabs react differently when exposed to slightly acidic water. Preliminary studies indicate that they tend to grow thicker, bigger shells with less meat inside. He cautioned the audience about the diet of the lobsters in the future, since they eat a lot of the crustacean larvae.

The urchins were over-harvested 15 years ago, but I always wondered why they never came back. And then it hit me - the other shellfish are gone, too! I remember 30 years ago, the pilings and ledges were covered with barnacles and mussels. Urchins and whelk (conch) often filled traps. Today they are pretty scarce.

What are your experiences? Aren't there now a lot, lot less barnacles, conch, mussels and urchins? Does anyone have a feel on clams, limpets or periwinkles?

What I find really scary is that we haven't had any significant changes in population, fishing, technology, pollution or other outside effects. We are far away from mainland problems. Except for the urchins, none of these species were ever commercially harvested on Criehaven or Matinicus.

What if we use NH3 now?

I just got back from driving to Iowa looking at ammonia engines, and noticed that diesel prices were often over $3.00 per gallon. So I started thinking what would we be paying for ammonia if our engines were converted.

Last week the price of ammonia was $365 per ton. On a btu basis, that is about $2.28 per gallon for the same amount of energy. We will ignore that ammonia engines are supposed to be somewhat more efficient than diesel.

This is not a fair apples-to-apples comparison. The ammonia price quoted is wholesale, and buying retail in New England would cost more. Road diesel includes a lot of taxes, while ammonia is exempt at present. Eventually there will be a tax if NH3 becomes significant, but that is many years away.

Even so, ammonia is quite competitive with diesel especially if we can make it in state.

Fair Isle, Scotland: Sister Island to Matinicus?

Stumbled upon Fair Isle, the most remote island off of Great Britain, with 68 year round residents. They are using wind for much of their power production, and use two separate grids for constant power and for flexible power, used for heating and non-essential uses.

links at Wikipedia and Fair Isle Electricity . There may be something for us to learn there.

I have been reading Withouthotair.com which has a very good book about renewable energy. Read about Fair Isle on page 198 of the pdf download. If you use the page numbers in Adobe Reader, it is located on p. 211 (out of 383)

Bad press for bad reporting

Philip Conklin has written an excellent rebuttal to the Portland  Press article about Vinalhaven's wind turbines. The article stated implied that ten percent of the island residents were complaining about the noise (which would be terrible), when the actual quote was that ten percent of the people within one mile were complaining. In other words, not 200 people complaining, but maybe half a dozen.

Philip's article is in Working Waterfront , the Portland Press article is at Portland Press.

We all need to have our facts straight on the issues in order to make good decisions. Our media often does not help or has objectives other than truth.

Lobsters and turbines

Here is an article than discusses some of the scientific research necessary before we put in any turbines.

http://www.workingwaterfront.com/articles/Fathoming-What-are-the-marine-impacts-of-offshore-wind-turbines/13667/

I look forward to hearing more.

Why wind?

Any discussion of sustainable energy for the islands has to include other options. There is a lot of non-fossil fuel energy in world. Which might make sense for Matinicus and Criehaven?

First a note about electricity. Most of the technologies below create electricity, which is not directly practicable for transportation, such as fishing boats. For example, 100 gallons of diesel weigh about 700 pounds. To store the same amount of energy in high tech lithium phosphate batteries would require a battery bank that weighs about 22,000 pounds. Using traditional lead acid batteries, the batteries would weigh over 380,000 pounds. So, even ignoring capital cost, life cycle costs (batteries wear out), recharge time, etc., it is pretty obvious most fishing vessels cannot bear the additional weight of batteries. “Plug-in” lobster boats are a very long way off. (So are plug-in cars, but that is another story.) We need to convert the electricity to an energy dense fuel. [see revision comments at end]

Why don't we just build a cable to the mainland? Construction costs would be about $25 million, about the same as the proposed wind turbine/NH3 facility. Assuming we get 20 year 5% mortgage, that will cost us about $2 million per year in interest. Then we still get to pay 15 cent/kwh (Maine average, October 2009) and whatever the amortization of the local grid on Matinicus is. It still would not provide power to the lobster fleet, nor would it provide for other energy needs, such as gas for cooking.

For routine transportation, there are just two basic fuel types available, carbon and hydrogen based. (I am going to ignore rocket ships, portable nuclear reactors, and other sci-fi). The carbon based fuels, such as gasoline, diesel, methane, ethanol, and propane, have most of their energy released by the combustion of carbon (and some hydrogen) in an internal combustion engine, turbine, or boiler. All carbon-based fuels need carbon to be created, obviously. On-island, we do not have significant quantities of carbon available. We do have trees, but they grow slowly. Theoretically we could gasify the trees (and certain other “waste streams”) to make a methane mixture, but we would run out of trees pretty quickly. Sugar cane produces the most fuel per acre today, but that won't work in Maine. Corn (for ethanol) by some reckonings actually uses more energy than it produces, and it doesn't grow well here, either. I'll do some specific calculations some other day.

Hydrogen fuels, such as H2, metal hydrides, and NH3, do not require any carbon to create. Since we do not have large carbon resources, we are essentially limited to hydrogen fuels to produce locally.

H2 (hydrogen gas) has serious problems as a transportation fuel. To have the same energy as 100 gallons of diesel, one needs a 2,700 gallon heavy tank of hydrogen, compressed to 6,000 lbs/in2. For comparison, a SCUBA tank is usually pressurized to 3,000 lbs/in2. Hydrogen has another big problem in that it is extremely susceptible to leaks. Hydrogen is the smallest atom and leaks through fittings that are tight against other gases. Pure hydrogen burns invisibly, so a fire from a leak cannot be seen. Safety manuals suggest using a broom to find a hydrogen fire: wave it over the suspected flame and see if the broom catches fire. Since the hydrogen atom is so small, it tends to penetrate metals, especially steel, and embrittle them, eventually leading to a catastrophic failure. So, pure hydrogen gas is very problematic.

Some people discuss storing hydrogen in metal halides, compounds that can chemically bind hydrogen. I do not know much about them yet, but I have heard they suffer from significant energy density issues. Several of the hydrides react explosively with water. Probably not a good idea for a boat.

NH3 is an effective hydrogen carrier. NH3 actually has more hydrogen per gallon than either compressed hydrogen or liquid hydrogen. Our 100 gallons of diesel would require 253 gallons of NH3. Not great, but still it would fit under the deck on most boats. Boats would not have to carry as much fuel as diesel, since the supply would be local. A fisherman does not have to go inshore or wait for the buyer to deliver fuel.

NH3 is a relatively large molecule, so there are not any special concerns regarding fittings and leaks. While it does not embrittle metals like H2, NH3 when reacted with water is corrosive to copper and zinc. Conversions of engines will require substitution of any copper or zinc in the fuel line. I am not aware of modern engines having any of these metals, however. There would be no change in the use of zincs as sacrificial corrosion inhibitors.


On to other energy options!


Deep geothermal

Extracting heat from deep below the earth's surface has several advantages. The heat is constant, with equal amounts of heat in winter and summer, day and night. The heat is used to make steam which then runs turbines to make electricity. There is enough deep geothermal energy to provide over 100% of the US energy needs. The electricity then needs to be converted into a usable engine fuel, such as NH3.

Unfortunately, the deep geothermal resources in the US are all west of the Mississippi. We are out of luck.


High altitude wind

There are several research projects for putting wind collectors up in the jet stream, over 20,000 feet high. The wind is constantly blowing, often over 200 mph. One design is held aloft like a paddlewheel on a balloon, another is an autogyro, which looks a little like a helicopter. A cable brings the power down. Because the wind is stable up so high, the kite stays aloft and stays in the same position.

The wind blows west to east, so a kite launched from the islands would be flying way out to sea, and not over any other populated places. This technology is said to be 10 to 20 years away. It has been estimated that capturing one percent of the jet stream wind could supply 100% of the global energy needs. We are located in a good jet stream area, so maybe this will be effective for us one day in the future.


Solar

Thermal solar, converting solar radiation to steam that goes through electric turbines, has great possibilities. A plot 100 mile by 100 miles in the Arizona desert could produce enough electricity for the whole US, assuming you could get it built with all the little bugs, “environmentalists”, and lawyers in the way. However, last time I checked, we don't have quite as much sun as Arizona, so we are out of luck.


OTEC

OTEC stands for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, which is a technology that takes advantage of the difference in temperature between the bottom of the sea and the surface. In the tropics, surface waters can be as high as 90 degrees, while a mile down the temperature is below 40 degrees. That difference can be used to power a turbine. The potential is huge; tapping one percent of the heat could meet 100% of the world's energy needs. It is highly capital intensive and still in development. Unfortunately, our surface waters are lot closer to 40 degrees than 90 degrees, so it won't work for us.


Waves, Tides, and Currents

This always seems like the obvious stuff to research in the Gulf of Maine. Seeing the surf smash up on Sou'west Point, I always thought waves should be a no-brainer. I discussed this with several researchers, who almost laughed. We actually have very little wave power because a) we are sheltered by Nova Scotia, and b) we are on the East Coast. All the big wave energy is on the west coasts, as the waves build with the wind across the ocean. This is a non-starter.

Harvesting current and tidal power usually requires rather specific geography in order to have high speeds. The Minas Channel in Canada and Passamaquoddy Bay have some interesting opportunities which are being developed. The total energy from these projects is not as large as you might expect. Neither project, at full development, will produce enough power to satisfy all the state (or province) electrical needs. One of the biggest challenges for any of these tidal current projects is survivability. The devices need to be light enough to produce power on normal summer days yet need to survive winter storms.

Our geography does not lend itself to ocean water-produced electricity, and I doubt we will ever have effective technology to harness our tides.


And that leaves...

Ground-mounted in-water wind turbines to make NH3, unless someone has a better idea. NH3 will probably be the fuel of choice even if other means of capturing energy is used, such as high altitude kites. Suggestions and discussion welcome.