Wisconsin company unveils turbine-inspecting robot

Posted on 07/05/2012 by Dan Haugen

(Photo courtesy Helical Robotics)

Wind Turbine Inspector is a job that requires the right skills — and stomach.

There’s been growing demand in recent years for rope specialists who can climb turbine towers and check for maintenance or repair issues as they repel from the top.

The alternatives include bringing in cranes or bucket trucks, which is expensive, or inspecting from the ground via telescope, which is tedious.

A Wisconsin start-up company thinks it’s come up with a better way: a turbine-scaling robot that lets inspectors keep their boots on the ground.

“It’s a lot easier to work on these things if you’re standing on the ground than if you’re hanging from a rope,” said Bruce Schlee, president and CEO of Helical Robotics in Oregon, Wisconsin.

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Wisconsin utility to close coal-fired units in EPA settlement

Posted on 06/30/2012 by Greenwire

Three coal-fired units at the Alma Station (at center) will be shut down under terms of an EPA settlement. (Photo via USGS)

By Jeremy P. Jacobs

A Wisconsin utility will spend roughly $150 million on installing new air emissions control technology, permanently retire three coal-fired units and invest another $5 million in environmental improvement projects near the plants under a legal settlement U.S. EPA announced Friday.

The Dairyland Power Cooperative will also pay a $950,000 civil penalty, EPA and the Department of Justice said.

The agency emphasized that the settlement, which affects the utility’s three largest units, will lead to significant health gains through reductions in sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. →

Could hot springs hold the key to cheaper cellulosic biofuel?

Posted on 06/23/2012 by Dan Haugen

A geyser in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, the source of a rare heat-tolerant bacteria the Wisconsin researchers think might hold a key for advancing cellulosic biofuel production. (Photo by MOBmole via Creative Commons)

A rare bacteria scooped from a Russian hot spring in the 1980s might contain a key to making cellulosic biofuels less expensive to produce.

The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, in Middleton, Wisconsin, last week announced a patent on a newly discovered enzyme that its scientists extracted from the bacteria.

“It’s a very interesting and strange bug,” said Phil Brumm, chief scientific officer at C5-6 Technologies, one of the research center’s industry partners.

The enzyme is capable of breaking down a variety of plant materials and turning them into fermentable sugars, and it can do so under extreme heat — up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s important because one of the strategies researchers are pursuing to make cellulosic biofuel production more efficient is to heat the plant material first, making it easier to digest.

It’s the same reason we often cook our vegetables before eating them. The heat begins to break down the sturdy cell walls, which means less work for our stomachs.

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Wisconsin ratepayers see 1% increase from renewables

Posted on 06/19/2012 by Dan Haugen

A wind farm near Dodgeville, Wisconsin. (Photo by Dave Hoefler via Creative Commons)

Wisconsin utilities since 2007 have spent nearly $1.7 billion on wind farms and other renewable projects, and passed the bill on to their customers.

The state’s renewable investments, however, have only caused electricity bills in go up an average of 1 percent, according to utility regulators.

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin issued a report Friday on the rate impact of the state’s renewable portfolio standard.

Similar to what’s been reported in other states, Wisconsin officials found the policy’s affect on electricity prices to be relatively small.

Wisconsin’s renewable targets required utilities to provide 6 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010, and 10 percent by 2015.

All 118 electric providers in the state met the 2010 benchmark. In 2010, 7.37 percent of Wisconsin’s electricity came from renewables.

The PSC is required by law to issue biannual reports on how the policy is affecting ratepayers in the state. The new report covers data through 2010.

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Ex-Minnesota governor joins frac sand company’s board

Posted on 06/12/2012 by Ken Paulman

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty campaigning for President in Iowa last year. (Photo by Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons)

In a sign of the growing significance of the frac sand industry in the Upper Midwest, a Pennsylvania sand mining company announced Tuesday that former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has joined its board of directors.

Smart Sand, Inc. is in the process of building an 1,100-acre frac sand facility in Oakdale, Wisconsin, which is about 50 miles east of LaCrosse. The facility is expected to produce a million tons of sand per year, with operations beginning later this month, according to a company news release.

While a number of major frac sand mining operations are underway in Wisconsin, several Minnesota counties have considered or impose bans on mining operations, and port cities along the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River, including Winona and Red Wing, have faced active community opposition to sand processing and shipping operations.

“Shale oil and gas is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the U.S. With proper stewardship, it will help solve our nation’s energy crisis and dramatically boost our economy,” Pawlenty said in the news release.

Pawlenty serves on the boards of five other companies, all of them in the tech sector, reports Ed Stych of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.

Andrew Speaker, CEO of Smart Sand, said in the news release, “We look forward to drawing on [Pawlenty's] expertise as CEO of the great state of Minnesota as we continue to build our company.”

The cost of coal, in lives and dollars

Posted on 06/11/2012 by Dan Haugen

What does electricity from coal really cost?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the fees and charges on our utility bills cover just a fraction of the true, societal costs from burning coal.

A new report (pdf) from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) says pollution from the nation’s 51 dirtiest coal plants last year caused between 2,700 and 5,700 premature deaths.

A standard, government risk-management formula would peg the social cost of those lives lost somewhere between $23 billion and $47 billion, the report says.

Using those figures, the societal cost of premature deaths associated with at least 18 power plants — including four in the Midwest — exceeds the retail value of electricity they produce.

“It may sound callous to weigh a human being’s life against the sales price of a product, even one as valuable as electricity,” the report says. “But no form of energy is risk-free, e.g., we continue to drive cars despite thousands of highway deaths every year, and we often weigh competing values when making decisions without consciously evaluating the tradeoffs.

“Our analysis makes clear that pollution from plants without up-to-date emission controls imposes significant social costs that can outweigh the retail value of the electricity they provide.”

The report is based on research by Dr. Jonathan Levy of the Boston University School of Public Health, who has done extensive research on the relationship between emissions, pollution and mortality.

More than 130,000 Americans die each year from heart and lung diseases caused by inhaling tiny particles that are smaller than the width of a human hair, and coal-burning power plants are a major source of these fine particulates.

Modern scrubbers and other pollution controls can significantly cut down on the amount of fine particulate pollution from power plants, but some owners have resisted installing them because of the expense.

EIP identified the 60 most-polluting power plants in the country that didn’t have public plans to upgrade pollution controls. (It later excluded plants with data that wasn’t compatible with Levy’s model.)
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Scenic state park at center of Illinois frac sand fight

Posted on 06/04/2012 by Dan Ferber

A waterfall at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. (Photo by Anne Hornyak via Creative Commons)

For a century, the picturesque river town of Ottawa, Illinois, has supplied sand to a nation, with several companies mining high quality silica sand from the Illinois River Valley to supply makers of glass, molds to make auto parts, paint, and other industrial products.

But what’s coming to Ottawa and nearby towns in the Illinois River Valley is not ordinary sand mining, says Farley Andrews, an Ottawa-based photographer and school bus driver. It’s “hypermining”—sand mining on steroids.

That’s because the great frac sand rush that has engulfed Wisconsin and Minnesota is making inroads in Illinois. And right now, environmentalists say, frac sand mining threatens one of Illinois’ most beloved and iconic state parks—and perhaps the entire Illinois River Valley.

“Our experience here is that there’s probably no one watching and thinking and worrying about this,” said Glynnis Collins, executive director of Prairie Rivers Network, a Champaign, Illinois-based river conservation group. No one knows the extent of the sand mines planned in Illinois, but Wisconsin-style frac sand mining could do serious damage to the fragile ecology of the Illinois River Valley, she said.

“I don’t even know how much of that is at stake, and I fear that we won’t know until it’s done,” Collins said.

As the natural gas industry ramps up hydrofracking operations from New York to Texas, demand rises for industrial quantities of sand. Frackers need it to prop open cracks in deep underground shale deposits, allowing natural gas to flow freely toward the surface.

The best sand for fracking has quartz grains that are relatively pure, hard enough to withstand the pressure thousands of feet below the earth, and round enough to allowing natural gas to flow around them easily, Tony Giordano, president of Kirkwood, Missouri–based Mississippi Sand.

Such sand is not common. Some of the world’s best deposits occur in the Midwest, in thick sandstone formations left behind by ancient seas. And as the fracking boom has taken off, so has demand for Midwestern sand.

“This is the best sand in the world,” said Annie Mwinga, a Milwaukee-based environmental engineer who works in the sand mining industry. “China wants this sand.” The Midwestern sand mining industry, she said, is “going to be huge.”
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Why is Wisconsin program shifting away from solar?

Posted on 05/29/2012 by Dan Haugen

Wisconsin solar installers want to know why they’re being squeezed out of a state renewable energy incentive program.

A month after utility regulators voted to shift funding from solar to biogas projects instead, the state’s solar industry still has unanswered questions about the methods and numbers used to make the decision.

“From the outside looking in, it does appear that the numbers are skewed to benefit biogas,” said Jesse Michalski, a solar installer with Eland Electric in Green Bay.

Michalski and other members of a solar listserv have spent weeks discussing the theories, which range from politics to the use of outdated data.

Others say it makes sense for Wisconsin to focus on biogas, given the large potential for its dairy industry to convert manure into energy.
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Aerial photos show scale of frac sand mines

Posted on 05/08/2012 by Ken Paulman

As you’re probably aware by now, Minnesota and Wisconsin are the source of much of the silica sand used in fracking operations throughout the U.S. The expansion of sand-mining operations has understandably let to considerable public debate, as well as moratoriums on mining operations in some communities.

Jim Tittle, a St. Paul filmmaker, is working on a documentary, “The Price of Sand,” which explores the impact of these mining operations on the residents who live near them. Recently, Tittle shared some aerial photos of sand mines in Wisconsin (posted here with his permission) that he shot as part of the project.
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Milwaukee program helps boost efficiency retrofits

Posted on 04/25/2012 by guest contributor

Cross-posted from EarthTechling with permission

By Susan DeFreitas

Milwaukee, one of the greenest cities in the country? Scoff all you want, Left Coasters, but the city has announced that it will be leveraging funds it received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to provide up to $60 million in enhanced private-sector financing for building owners to pursue energy-efficient retrofits and renovations.

The program, known as the Me2 Clean Energy Financing Program, works to connect property owners with energy contractors and private lenders, eliminating those upfront costs that keep so many of those who’d like to make energy efficient improvements from pursuing them. As with other such financing programs we’ve seen (for instance, in Louisiana), costs are then recouped via the savings that result from reduced energy use.

The program has secured a high-profile partner in Johnson Controls, which brings extensive experience in building efficiency upgrades to the table, having led or participated in numerous retrofit projects around the world, including the Empire State ReBuilding project expected to decrease the iconic New York City highrise’s energy bills by 38 percent and save $4.4 million per year.

The first Me2 project has already launched at The Newport, a co-op project located at 1620 N. Prospect Avenue in Milwaukee, where Johnson Controls is implementing the removal of existing heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems and replacing them with more energy-efficient equipment. A new building automation system will also be installed to control the HVAC equipment that serves the building.

The overall goals of the Me2 program—which, it has been emphasized, is conducted entirely without the aid of local public funds—are to reduce pollution, create hundreds of private-sector green jobs in the area, reduce energy bills and improve the commercial buildings and houses in Milwaukee. More about the program is available online.

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