Cell Phone Companies going Green

I read the following article with great interest. I worked in the wireless telecommunications industry for over 12 years... for companies both big and small. Businesses are big energy users. While the article talks about cell towers... using 4 to 8 times the amount of electric as a single family home, and there are over 200,000 towers, this is really only the 'tip' of the iceberg as it relates to the wireless phone companies. Cell phone companies operate thousands of retail stores, switching centers, customer service centers and business offices. They have technical teams visiting the cell towers on a regular basis. All these activities consume a great deal of energy. On top of that .... they all have millions of customers who have to charge their cell phone on a regular basis.... for many everyday.

I am glad to see that they are working towards alternative sources of energy. They need to continue to do so.... and the company that makes the transition the fastest will certainly benefit significantly. I am confident that consumers would be happy to do business with a truly green telecommunications provider.

..... I know many people who would love to buy a solar cell phone charger.... priced at less than $50 ..... come on cell phone companies..... lets put one out there in the marketplace.

FOXNews.com

Greener Cell Power Presents Challenges

Saturday, March 08, 2008

By DAVID TWIDDY, AP Business Writer

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When wireless industry technicians speak of "green" cell towers these days, they're not just talking about making them look more like trees.

They're talking about towers powered by wind turbines or solar panels, antennas that get backup energy from hydrogen fuel cells and geothermal cooling for computer equipment.

Cell phone companies are experimenting with these and other strategies to reduce their increasingly ubiquitous industry's environmental impact.

To be sure, the "greening" of wireless communication is still in its infancy. The vast majority of the nation's more than 200,000 cell towers and antennas run off the same electric grid everybody else does. And even companies experimenting with alternative energy plan to limit its use to backup power.

The average cell tower requires four to eight times as much power as a typical household, and cell companies say power from conventional supplies is still cheap compared to alternative sources. They say they would use green power mainly in remote areas where towers don't face the same aesthetic and zoning limits as in neighborhoods and cities.

Wireless companies aren't seeing big demand from subscribers for sustainable technology, said Jackie McCarthy, director of governmental affairs for PCIA _ The Wireless Infrastructure Association.

"I think we're hearing a lot more about dependability in terms of the wireless network," McCarthy said. "I don't think the whole 'green' wireless site development (issue) has really gotten to our infrastructure providers yet."

But carriers say it's important they consider environmentally friendly technology, especially if it can save them money.

Sprint Nextel Corp. began seriously investigating alternative energy in 2004 and has since deployed hydrogen fuel cells at several of its roughly 65,000 sites.

"It solves a lot of issues for us regarding the traditional use of diesel generators," said Bob Azzi, Sprint Nextel Corp.'s senior vice president of field engineering and operations.

The company has also installed a wind turbine at its headquarters, is experimenting with geothermal cooling as a replacement for conventionally-powered air conditioning in warmer climates and is testing mini turbines in California that are fueled with natural gas and used for backup power.

"It has the advantage of being quieter," he said of the mini turbines. "They're more reliable and we think they're more efficient than traditional diesel power generators."

Miles Schreiner, director of national operations planning for T-Mobile USA, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG, said his company last year began using a small number of hydrogen fuel cells in the Northeast "mainly to kick the tires and see how it does."

He said the fuel cells cost twice as much as standard batteries or generators and are valued primarily because they are reliable and have lower emissions. He said the company also is making limited tests with solar and wind-powered systems.

"One advantage to alternative power is you get some kickbacks from states in terms of tax incentives," he said. "We're looking at the viability of the long term. We're a business like any other carrier so the question is, 'Is the trade-up and capital outlay worth the costs?'"

AT&T Inc., the nation's largest wireless carrier, said it is working on alternative energy but declined to give specifics.

A spokeswoman for No. 2 Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Britain's Vodafone PLC, said Verizon is considering alternative energy.

(This version CORRECTS the name of Miles Schreiner, who was wrongly named 'Mike Schreiner' previously.)

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Wind Energy Transmission

Whether it is transmission lines or ethanol stations it seems the distribution system for alternative energy and fuels needs to pick up the pace of development. Alternatively, the existing distribution system needs to embrace the new sources of energy.

What would it hurt for a station to dedicate one pump to ethanol fuel... they do it today with diesel. It would expand their customer base. Electric utility companies should also look at rerouting their power as to free up capacity for renewable sources of electricity. Yes it would take effort ... but its the right thing to do.

Government also needs to put up money to speed the development of distribution systems. The recently passed economic stimulus program should have included spending on infrastructure projects... which would have created jobs... and spending... just as they are attempting to do on the consumer side.

It takes time for new systems to be developed... and for change to be truly engendered. Its a slow process... however, everything we can do to speed the process should be done ... today.

USA Today 2/26/08

Wind energy confronts shortage of transmission lines

By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY

As wind farms sprout across the country, they're kicking up a new quandary: how to zap the electricity to homes and businesses that need it.

The USA's wind-power boom, especially in rural parts of Texas, the Midwest and California, is poised to outstrip the capacity of high-voltage lines to send the electricity hundreds of miles to population centers such as Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The transmission-line shortage is threatening to slow wind energy's breakneck growth and could prevent some states from meeting renewable energy mandates.

Wind power depends on a robust transmission grid. Wind farms are in remote reaches where gusts are strongest, while the greatest power demand is in cities.

Until now, wind developers have piggybacked on existing wires, says analyst Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. But after wind energy soared 45% last year, spare transmission capacity is depleted. Wind power generates more than 1% of U.S. electricity.

Stringing new wires is easier said than done. Wind developers won't go ahead with projects until transmission lines are in place, and utilities are loath to build the lines until they're sure the developers won't back out. Also, the first wind developer in an area is often asked to shoulder much of the $1.5 million-per-mile cost of a high-voltage line.

In Texas, which has about 25% of U.S. wind power, more eye-popping growth in 2008 is expected to push generation past transmission capacity by 65% by year's end, says Bill Bojorquez, vice president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a power-grid manager.

Wind farms will have to compete to be among the lowest bidders to get on the grid, leaving others off. "Clearly we don't want to build wind farms and have them not run," says Horizon Wind Energy executive Denise Hill.

In southwest Minnesota, dozens of wind projects have been proposed to serve the Twin Cities. Even if just 30% of them, with 7,500 megawatts of capacity, are developed, that would far outpace the 2,000 megawatts of transmission capacity planned.

Similar bottlenecks are stalling wind farms in the Midwest, Southwest and California. Compounding the standoff: Some states don't want residents paying for lines that will largely benefit neighboring states. As a result, utilities in several Midwestern states may not meet mandates for clean energy to make up about 20% of their energy mix by 2020, says Clair Moeller, an executive for the Midwest grid operator.

Xcel Energy, a Midwest utility, says it can't raise money for transmission lines that might not carry any juice. "You're committing $1 billion in capital in the hope the cost recovery will come, and that's a tough proposition," says Paul Bonavia, head of Xcel's utilities group.

To break the logjam, officials in Texas, the Southwest, Minnesota and California plan to spread transmission-line costs among multiple wind developers or utilities. But that won't offer near-term relief. A wind farm can be built in 18 months, while a transmission line can take five to 10 years.

Wind Electricity -- Texas Success Story

Kudos to Texas. "Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines."

This is absolutely amazing. While we still have a way to go, this is helping the US move in the right direction. Every bit helps as we move toward renewable and alternative sources of energy.





New York Times 2/23/08

Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind

Brian Harkin for The New York Times

Jim Albert, front, and Jerry Tuttle, General Electric wind technicians, perch atop a turbine in Sweetwater, Tex. The turbines stand as high as 20-story buildings.

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Published: February 23, 2008

The Energy Challenge

Hidden Power

Articles in this series will periodically examine the ways in which the world is, and is not, moving toward a more energy efficient, environmentally benign future.

Wind Power in Texas

Graphic

From Oil to Wind

Brian Harkin for The New York Times

Louis Brooks is paid $500 a month for each turbine he permits on his property. More Photos »

SWEETWATER, Tex. — The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.

“That’s just money you’re hearing,” he said as they hummed in a brisk breeze recently.

Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines.

Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy.

“I have the same feelings about wind,” Mr. Pickens said in an interview, “as I had about the best oil field I ever found.” He is planning to build the biggest wind farm in the world, a $10 billion behemoth that could power a small city by itself.

Wind turbines were once a marginal form of electrical generation. But amid rising concern about greenhouse gases from coal-burning power plants, wind power is booming. Installed wind capacity in the United States grew 45 percent last year, albeit from a small base, and a comparable increase is expected this year.

At growth rates like that, experts said, wind power could eventually make an important contribution to the nation’s electrical supply. It already supplies about 1 percent of American electricity, powering the equivalent of 4.5 million homes. Environmental advocates contend it could eventually hit 20 percent, as has already happened in Denmark. Energy consultants say that 5 to 7 percent is a more realistic goal in this country.

The United States recently overtook Spain as the world’s second-largest wind power market, after Germany, with $9 billion invested last year. A recent study by Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., projected $65 billion in investment from 2007 to 2015.

Despite the attraction of wind as a nearly pollution-free power source, it does have limitations. Though the gap is closing, electricity from wind remains costlier than that generated from fossil fuels. Moreover, wind power is intermittent and unpredictable, and the hottest days, when electricity is needed most, are usually not windy.

The turbines are getting bigger and their blades can kill birds and bats. Aesthetic and wildlife issues have led to opposition emerging around the country, particularly in coastal areas like Cape Cod. Some opposition in Texas has cropped up as well, including lawsuits to halt wind farms that were thought to be eyesores or harmful to wetlands.

But the opposition has been limited, and has done little to slow the rapid growth of wind power in Texas. Some Texans see the sleek new turbines as a welcome change in the landscape.

“Texas has been looking at oil and gas rigs for 100 years, and frankly, wind turbines look a little nicer,” said Jerry Patterson, the Texas land commissioner, whose responsibilities include leasing state lands for wind energy development. “We’re No. 1 in wind in the United States, and that will never change.”

Texas surpassed California as the top wind farm state in 2006. In January alone, new wind farms representing $700 million of investment went into operation in Texas, supplying power sufficient for 100,000 homes.

Supporters say Texas is ideal for wind-power development, not just because it is windy. It also has sparsely populated land for wind farms, fast-growing cities and a friendly regulatory environment for developers.

“Texas could be a model for the entire nation,” said Patrick Woodson, a senior development executive with E.On, a German utility operating here.

The quaint windmills of old have been replaced by turbines that stand as high as 20-story buildings, each capable of generating electricity for small communities. Powerful turbines are able to capture power even when the wind is relatively weak, and they help to lower the cost per kilowatt hour.

Much of the boom in the United States is being driven by foreign power companies with experience developing wind projects, including Iberdrola of Spain, Energias de Portugal and Windkraft Nord of Germany. Foreign companies own two-thirds of the wind projects under construction in Texas.

A short-term threat to the growth of wind power is the looming expiration of federal clean-energy tax credits, which Congress has allowed to lapse several times over the years. Advocates have called for extending those credits and eventually enacting a national renewable-power standard that would oblige states to expand their use of clean power sources.

A longer-term problem is potential bottlenecks in getting wind power from the places best equipped to produce it to the populous areas that need electricity. The part of the United States with the highest wind potential is a corridor stretching north from Texas through the middle of the country, including sparsely populated states like Montana and the Dakotas. Power is needed most in the dense cities of the coasts, but building new transmission lines over such long distances is certain to be expensive and controversial.

“We need a national vision for transmission like we have with the national highway system,” said Robert Gramlich, policy director for the American Wind Energy Association. “We have to get over the hump of having a patchwork of electric utility fiefdoms.”

Texas is better equipped to deal with the transmission problems that snarl wind energy in other states because a single agency operates the electrical grid and manages the deregulated utility market in most of the state.

Last July, the Texas Public Utility Commission approved transmission lines across the state capable of delivering as much as 25,000 megawatts of wind energy by 2012, presuming the boom continues. That would be five times the wind power generated in the state today, and it would drive future national growth.

Shell and the TXU Corporation are planning to build a 3,000-megawatt wind farm north of here in the Texas Panhandle, leapfrogging two FPL Energy Texas wind farms to become the biggest in the world.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Pickens is planning his own 150,000-acre Panhandle wind farm of 4,000 megawatts that would be even larger and cost him $10 billion.

“I like wind because it’s renewable and it’s clean and you know you are not going to be dealing with a production decline curve,” Mr. Pickens said. “Decline curves finally wore me out in the oil business.”

At the end of 2007, Texas ranked No. 1 in the nation with installed wind power of 4,356 megawatts (and 1,238 under construction), far outdistancing California’s 2,439 megawatts (and 165 under construction). Minnesota and Iowa came in third and fourth with almost 1,300 megawatts each (and 46 and 116 under construction, respectively).

Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and Oregon, states with smaller populations than Texas, all get 5 to 8 percent of their power from wind farms, according to estimates by the American Wind Energy Association.

It has dawned on many Texans in recent years that wind power, whatever its other pros and cons, represents a potent new strategy for rural economic development.

Since the wind boom began a few years ago, the total value of property here in Nolan County has doubled, and the county judge, Tim Fambrough, estimated it would increase an additional 25 percent this year. County property taxes are going down, home values are going up and the county has extra funds to remodel the courthouse and improve road maintenance.

“Wind reminds us of the old oil and gas booms,” Mr. Fambrough said.

Teenagers who used to flee small towns like Sweetwater after high school are sticking around to take technical courses in local junior colleges and then work on wind farms. Marginal ranches and cotton farms are worth more with wind turbines on them.

“I mean, even the worst days for wind don’t compare to the busts in the oil business,” said Bobby Clark, a General Electric wind technician who gave up hauling chemicals in the oil fields southwest of here to live and work in Sweetwater. “I saw my daddy go from rags to riches and back in the oil business, and I sleep better.”

Wind companies are remodeling abandoned buildings, and new stores, hotels and restaurants have opened around this old railroad town.

Dandy’s Western Wear, the local cowboy attire shop, cannot keep enough python skin and cowhide boots in stock because of all the Danes and Germans who have come to town to invest and work in the wind fields, then take home Texas souvenirs.

“Wind has invigorated our business like you wouldn’t believe,” said Marty Foust, Dandy’s owner, who recently put in new carpeting and air-conditioning. “When you watch the news you can get depressed about the economy, but we don’t get depressed. We’re now in our own bubble.”

Wind Energy Credits

While this article is over a year old, I thought it was worthy of posting again. We all need to support, with our business, those companies that are doing their part to move towards alternative energy. Kudos to Whole Foods. Posted 1/9/2006 11:13 PM Updated 1/10/2006 1:22 AM

Whole Foods goes with the wind By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY Whole Foods Market is about to put some serious wind in its sales. A Wyoming site produces energy from the wind. The trend-setting, natural foods grocery chain on Wednesday will announce plans to become the largest buyer of wind energy credits in North America by purchasing credits equal to 100% of its projected energy use for 2006. That will make Whole Foods the only Fortune 500 company to purchase renewable energy credits — which subsidize the production of energy from renewable sources such as wind — to offset 100% of its electricity use, says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says. "In the corporate world, this is huge," says Kurt Johnson, head of the EPA's Green Power Partnership. "When a market leader does something like this, others will emulate." Like most businesses, Whole Foods can't get its power directly from renewable energy sources. Instead, it is contracting to purchase 458,000 megawatt-hours of the renewable energy credits. One credit represents one megawatt-hour of electricity from renewable sources. Producers of such energy sell the credits through brokers; the proceeds help offset the additional cost of generating electricity that way rather than by burning fuels such as coal. Wind energy is the fastest-growing source of electricity in the USA. The Whole Foods purchase will help avoid more than 700 million pounds of carbon dioxide pollution in 2006, says the EPA. That's the rough equivalent of taking 60,000 cars off the road, the EPA says. "From a branding perspective, it's a stroke of genius," says Barbara Brooks, president of the Strategy Group, a consulting firm. "It shows they understand where their customers are coming from not only nutritionally, but environmentally." Whole Foods declined to state what it spends on utilities or what it's paying for the wind credits. In the 41 states with programs to promote credits, residential customers typically pay a 2-cent premium per kilowatt hour for them, while many business customers pay a 1-cent premium or less, says Lori Bird, senior energy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a Department of Energy contractor. Whole Foods' purchase equals 458 million kilowatt hours, and it gets no tax advantage for it. The move comes at a time when more Fortune 500 companies are trying to project a "greener" image, including General Electric, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt recently pledged to decrease pollution and double R&D spending on cleaner technologies. Whole Foods isn't doing this altruistically. Most grocery stores are massive users of energy. As the 180-store chain grows, Whole Foods is increasingly being asked by its environmentally minded customers and employees what it is doing to limit energy waste, says Michael Besancon, the regional president overseeing the chain's green efforts. "We're looking to show our customers and team members that we walk our talk," says Besancon. Requests to help wind energy showed up on Whole Foods customer comment cards, says Quayle Hodek, CEO of Renewable Choice Energy, from whom the chain bought its credits. "Comments like, 'Wind power is cool,' matter to (Whole Foods) because it matters to their customers."

How Solar and Wind Electric Systems Work

I added two new page to the AltEnergyStation.com website today. How Solar Electric Systems Work and How Wind Electric Systems Work. I primarily discuss how small home systems work and their components. Included are some great diagrams.

I'd encourage everyone to check it out, let me know if you have any feedback.