City of Sydney plans recycled water network

Clover Moores Sydney city council seems to be plotting a slow secession from the electricity and water grids. The SMH has a report on an interesting plan for storing recycled water in local aquifers - City of Sydney plans recycled water network.

THE City of Sydney council is finalising plans for a recycled water network to be established throughout much of the city. It will include use of the Botany aquifer which extends from Redfern and Surry Hills, through Centennial Park and on to Botany Bay.

The rethink of the citys water supply comes as the council finalises plans to decouple the electricity network from the statewide supply grid, instead using a new network of power generators throughout the CBD which will provide cheaper and more reliable power to the city. If youre digging up the streets to put in the new trigeneration [electricity, heating and cooling] system, thats the golden opportunity to put in a recycled water network, the councils chief development officer for energy and climate change, Mr Allan Jones, said.

Sixty per cent of the cost of the infrastructure is in the trenching and traffic management. Thats why were also looking at automated waste collection.

The council recently outlined plans for an automated waste collection system, which remains under study. Piping water into the city and only drinking 2 per cent of that is just crackers, Mr Jones said. Taking into account cooking, and any possible way of ingesting water, no more than 20 per cent of the citys water needed to be of drinking quality, he said.

Central to the plan will use of recycled water and stormwater at new developments such as Barangaroo and Green Square.
Barangaroo will generate a surplus of recycled water which is expected to be used in water cooling towers and similar structures in other parts of the CBD.

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3rd Symposium Small PV Applications Rural Electrification and Commercial Use

Next Symposium on Small PV applications will take place again in the beautiful Ulm (Germany), in June 2013. Straight after this conference, the Intersolar is being organized again in Munich, so it is an excellent combination for those interested in the latest developments of the PV industry but also in the state of the art of small applications for remote and rural areas.

The period for submission of abstracts is open now and will end on January 4, 2013.



This event is held every two years and in the latest edition covered topics as exciting as:

• Success of Rural Electrification by Solar PV systems in Bangladesh
• Field evaluation of PV rural electrification programs in South America
• Rural electrification with Solar Home Systems in the Amazon Region
• PV charging enhancement of SHS using Super-capacitors
• Economic assessment and design optimisation of PV-battery systems in off-grid applications
• And many others!

Main topics for next year conference are:

 
1. Electricity supply for remote rural households away from the national grid (Solar Home Systems)
2. Provision of electricity to public institutions such as schools, clinics, churches, mosques and temples, administration offices, water pumping systems or street lighting.
3. Electricity for industrial use and income generating infrastructure (telecommunication equipment, grain milling, welding, food preservation, meteorological stations or remote sensing)
4. New concepts for integrated “over-the-counter PV products” often called “pico-systems” (solar lanterns, solar radios, mobile phone chargers, etc.)
5. Electricity supply for urban households as backup to increase reliability
6. Components such as charge controllers and batteries or other alternatives for energy storage
7. Policy, financial aspects and market development for off-grid PV (government programs, incentives, testing facilities, etc.)

Categories:

• Components, including energy storage
• Systems
• Costs
• Maintenance, quality assurance
• Capacity building, distribution channels, ownership
• Financing
• Market development
Looking forward to meeting you there!
 

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Oil Supply Update

Stuart at Early Warning has returned with one of his once monthly oil supply updates - Oil Supply Update.

Nothing very dramatic happened in the last three months: supply continued to inch up, and prices are a little lower than during most of the last couple of years, but $100 remains an effective floor for Brent ...

This last picture shows also (green line) the narrower definition of oil given by "Crude and Condensate", which has been flatter than the "all liquids" represented by the black line.

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Coretrack Deeper faster cheaper geothermal drilling

The Climate Spectator has an article on a company looking to make geothermal drilling a lot cheaper - Deeper, faster, cheaper.

The transformation of Australian industry into a low-carbon economy is often said to depend on the development of smart and high technology, but some of the country’s most prospective clean energy resources could be unlocked by some good old-fashioned mining know-how.

A Kalgoorlie-based drilling company, Coretrack, believes new drilling technology that it is has unveiled in the past two months could shave millions of dollars off the costs of drilling for geothermal resources, and enable aspiring developers to prove up resources at a fraction of the cost they currently face.

If proven, it will be a critical breakthrough for the Australian geothermal industry, which has been stranded at the starting gate because of the huge up-front costs of drilling programs, and the reluctance of investors to commit large sums to high-risk new technology.

A total of seven geothermal firms have received promises of $50 million funding grants from the federal government under its Geothermal Drilling Program. But these monies remain largely untouched, because none of the five recipients in round two of the program – allocated in late 2009 – have been able to provide matching funding.

Drilling for geothermal wells can cost $15 to $20 million, and Australian developers have been frustrated by the lack of rigs in the country and the “premium” rates demanded by rig owners to ship to Australia. Only Geodynamics owns its own rigs – at a cost of more than $40 million – and this is now being used by joint venture partner Origin Energy to pursue shallower geothermal resources in the Cooper Basin.

Coretrack has spent four years as a listed R&D company – an adventurous place to be in Australia – but is now looking to cross over into commercialisation. It pocketed its first revenues last month, with a $711,000 contract with Woodside for a 20-day program to build a shallow and wide hole using the GT3000 rig.

The GT3000 is the brainchild of Coretrack director Warren Strange, who in between coming to grief in Dakar rallies on his motorbike, built up a large drilling business before selling out to Brandrill for an estimated $26 million. He kept one subsidiary, Globedrill, and an idea to build the fastest, most compact and manoeuvrable, most affordable deep drilling rig in the world, and one designed specifically for the geothermal industry.

Coretrack says the GT 3000 has been achieving hard rock penetration rates of more than 30 metres an hour, many times faster than the existing platform-based drill rigs. It has used just a three-man crew and consumed only 14.6 litres of diesel per hour, compared to as much as 600 litres per hour used in competing oil and gas rigs.

The Salamander 1 well drilled by Panax Geothermal in South Australia in 2010 reached a depth of 4025 metres after 42 days and at a cost of $15 million. That equates to an average drill rate of 95 metres a day at a cost of $3,750 per metre. It says the GT3000 could have done the same job in half the time and half the cost.

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Ivanpah Photo Essay

Time has a great photo essay on the Ivanpah solar thermal power project - The Ivanpah Solar Project: Generating Energy Through Fields of Mirrors.

When I visited the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which sits in the Mojave Desert on the border between California and Nevada, I had to be careful where I looked. The engineers warned me not to look directly at the receivers arrayed on top of the centralized solar towers, which collected the desert sunlight concentrated by thousands of mirrors on the desert floor. The solar receiver was as bright as the heart of the sun, glowing with a retina-melting white. I had to force myself to look away.

Jamey Stillings, though, has far better eyes than I do. A photographer known for his work capturing mega-scale projects like the new bridge at the Hoover Dam, Stillings has been tracking the construction of Ivanpah since 2010, when he began an aerial survey of the site. His epic black-and-white images of Ivanpah reveal how different this solar plant is from other major infrastructure projects. Unlike solar photovoltaic plants, which generate electricity directly from sunlight, Ivanpah uses hundreds of thousands of curved mirrors to reflect and concentrate the desert sunshine. Three tall solar towers, each ringed by the mirrors, collect the heat and generate steam, which drives electric turbines. When it finally opens later this year, it will be the biggest solar thermal plant in the world.

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Power companies overstate cost of smart meters

The ABC reports that utilities havent been helping public perception of smart meter programs by overcharging for their installation - Power companies overstate cost of smart meters.

The Australian Energy Regulator that says Victorias power companies have overstated the cost of rolling out smart meters by $500 million.

In a draft decision, the regulator says CitiPower, Jemena, Powercor, SP AusNet and United Energy Distribution have not made a good enough case for charging $1.24 billion for the three-year roll out.

Andrew Reeves, the chairman of the electricity and gas regulator, says the cost increase is not justified.
"On their numbers put in front of us, charges would typically go up from currently about $100 a year to about $160 a year," he told ABC Local Radio.

"Under our proposal the charges would still increase, but would only increase by about an additional $20 a year."

The regulator says the cost of the rollout should be $760 million.

Energy Minister Michael OBrien says the State Government was always concerned that costs were not properly scrutinised by the former Labor government.
"Well be making our own submissions to the regulator before they make a final decision.

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Amazons Biodome Greenhouses

Inhabitat has a post on some green buildings proposed by Amazon - Amazons Biodome Greenhouses Receive Green Light From Seattles Design Review Board.

Last night Seattles Design Review Board voted unanimously to approve Amazons plans to build a set of futuristic biodomes for their new downtown headquarters. Now that the project has received the green light it will move on to the city’s planning and development department before the domes receive final approval for construction.

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