Hydro Power Increase PLUS Prototype #2

According to a recent news article. There has been an increase in the amount of energy generators allowed to work in England and Wales.  This is great news for all of us hoping to one day be able to do the same.  The more comfortable governments become with allowing renewable energy systems into their lakes, rivers and oceans the easier the process for all of us. 

Take a look at the short article below.

In other news our prototype (Les Paul I) was water tested a couple of weeks ago and we got some really great data out of it.  Of course, it also allowed us to see where we want to improve.  So we are back at the drawing board and ready to create Les Paul II.  Les Paul II will be what we present at our first conference in Oregon in the end of September.

We can't wait!


Surge in hydro energy plans

THE number of small-scale hydropower schemes to generate energy from rivers in England and Wales has surged in the last decade, figures from the Environment Agency showed today.

The number of new licences issued by the Government agency for hydropower schemes has increased sixfold since 2000.

Last year, 31 new licences for energy schemes in rivers were granted - compared to just five in 2000.

The Environment Agency has already issued 29 licences this year and is considering a further 166 applications, as businesses and communities attempt to cash in on a new government incentive which pays people for generating electricity from small-scale renewables.

In all, there are around 400 hydropower schemes in England and Wales.

Copyright 2010 Coventry Newspapers LimitedAll Rights Reserved
Coventry Evening Telegraph (England)

California Climate Law

As a company getting started in California this article seems particularly applicable.  We would hope that a climate law would actually encourage more companies like ours to create renewable, clean energy.  More companies like ours also means more jobs.

Those who want to stop this law seem to be looking at things with such a self-serving, one sided perspective.  And it seems rather obvious but important to note that Texas oil companies are the ones paying to have this law taken down.

So, check out this article and let us know what you think.



Calif. climate law under assault in poor economy


…

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Four years ago, California earned accolades for adopting a law that would slash its greenhouse gas emissions and serve as a model for national climate change legislation.

With the state mired in a crippling recession, the law that once looked like a landmark achievement is coming under assault. The regulatory effort Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger set in motion is facing a political backlash and could come to an abrupt halt in the months ahead.

A coalition of businesses, financed largely by three Texas oil companies, is funding a ballot petition that would delay the law until California's current unemployment rate is cut by more than half.

Leading Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has vowed she would suspend the law on her first day in office, which she would have the authority to do.

Even Schwarzenegger, who has staked his legacy on environmental issues, has begun urging air regulators to take a go-slow approach. But he has vowed to fight the ballot initiative.

The possibility that a state that has set the national agenda on environmental change for decades might shelve its highly publicized climate regulations could have ramifications beyond California's borders. In Congress, lawmakers are struggling to craft a national climate bill that uses California's as a template, but are facing headwinds of their own.

"This could very well be an effort to focus on California with the goal of delaying federal legislation," said state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, one of the law's authors.

At issue: Whether imposing costly regulations on businesses is a smart move as the nation struggles to emerge from recession.

Under the measure, oil refineries, manufacturers, cement plants, utilities and other carbon polluters are to begin cutting their emissions in 2012.

It is the first economy-wide cap on emissions in the nation, obligating California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, about 30 percent from the levels projected if there were no climate regulations.

Oil companies have long opposed California's climate law.

The ballot petition is expected to qualify for the November ballot, with taxpayer groups, businesses and oil companies contributing nearly $1 million so far to get signature gatherers on the streets.

The bulk of that money has come from Texas-based oil companies. Valero Services Inc. of San Antonio, has given $500,000. Tesoro Companies of San Antonio and World Oil Corp. of Houston have given $100,000 a piece.

Petition backers say California cannot afford to impose environmental regulations that would raise utility bills, fuel prices and cost jobs. Republican lawmakers say the law gives companies another reason to flee California or locate elsewhere when they decide to expand.

That may be an appealing message to voters who are frustrated with high unemployment, continuing home foreclosures and an ongoing state budget crisis that has forced deep cuts to social services, public schools and higher education.

"We need to try to heal our economy before we travel a road we've never traveled before," said state Assemblyman Dan Logue, R-Linda, one of the initiative's sponsors. "Since this is going to have such a huge effect on every person of California, what's wrong with the public being able to weigh in and decide if this is what they want?"

The global warming law also is a target of both Republican candidates seeking to replace Schwarzenegger, who is termed out of office after this year.

Whitman, former CEO of eBay, intends to trigger a so-called "safety valve" in the law that allows a governor to suspend climate regulations in "extraordinary circumstances, catastrophic events, or threat of significant economic harm." Ironically, it was a provision Schwarzenegger demanded on behalf of business interests at the time he was negotiating the bill with Democrats in 2006.

"Let's take stock of where we are. Let's understand what our alternatives are," Whitman said during a March debate in Orange County.

Her opponent in the GOP primary, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, said suspending the law for just a year isn't enough. He supports Logue's initiative to delay climate regulations until California's 12.5 percent unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent and stays there for a year.

Both candidates cite a much disputed study by the dean of the business school at California State University, Sacramento, which concludes the law could cost 1.1 million jobs.

That study, which also is a key element of the initiative campaign, has been discredited by the state's nonpartisan legislative analyst.

The California Air Resources Board, the entity charged with implementing the law, estimates climate regulations will promote investments in clean energy and will reduce California's overall fuel expenses $3.8 billion by 2020.

Yet it also could lead to higher energy prices because utilities and oil and gas companies are among California's top carbon emitters.

Valero spokesman Bill Day said the initiative gives California voters a "chance to delay the detrimental economic effects" of the climate regulations, which are slated to go into effect in 2012.

Valero has more than 1,600 employees in the state and has a vested interest in keeping California's economy strong, Day said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

The state's dismal economy — hit by the nationwide foreclosure crisis and bank failures — also has given Schwarzenegger pause.

He has urged regulators to tread cautiously as they write the rules to oversee a carbon market in California for the companies that will be asked to cut their emissions.

In a March 24 letter to the California Air Resources Board, the governor suggested the state initially give away carbon credits as a way to avoid high costs to regulated industries. That idea has been criticized by environmentalists, who argue that oil companies, cement plants and other polluters ought to pay to cut their emissions.

Nevertheless, Schwarzenegger has ruled out any call to suspend the law, the centerpiece of his environmental legacy.

"I think that the California people are outraged about the fact that Texas oil companies ... are coming to California and trying to change laws and policies in California," Schwarzenegger told reporters recently, after touring an exposition of Sacramento-area businesses considered environmentally friendly.
___

Associated Press Writer Juliet Williams contributed to this report.

MIA

First off.... I know we've been missing in action for awhile.  The Reason:  Our prototype!  It's almost ready for field testing.  We are really looking forward to sharing the results with you.  So far, things are going just as they should.  So, stay tuned.  We hope to have our first prototype tested within the next couple of weeks.

For now, we'll leave you with an interesting article.  We thought it was just another great example of why we need to find some serious alternative energy solutions.  Stillwater anyone?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100304/sc_nm/us_climate_methane

Natural Gas - Not the Answer

One of the wonderful things about so many alternative energy options is the lack of effect they have on nature.  For example, Stillwater Energy techonology is non-invasive with a very low impact on it's surroundings.  At Stillwater Energy we strive to do everything to limit the impact on ocean water and ocean life.  In fact you can even use our technology in your personal well or pond.  I think there is one big lesson we can learn from articles like the one below: nothing is free when you take from the earth.


Gas drilling in Appalachia yields a foul byproduct

By MARC LEVY and VICKI SMITH, Associated Press Writers Marc Levy And Vicki Smith, Associated Press Writers – Tue Feb 2, 2:40 pm ET

HARRISBURG, Pa. – A drilling technique that is beginning to unlock staggering quantities of natural gas underneath Appalachia also yields a troubling byproduct: powerfully briny wastewater that can kill fish and give tap water a foul taste and odor.

With fortunes, water quality and cheap energy hanging in the balance, exploration companies, scientists and entrepreneurs are scrambling for an economical way to recycle the wastewater.

"Everybody and his brother is trying to come up with the 11 herbs and spices," said Nicholas DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association.

Drilling crews across the country have been flocking since late 2008 to the Marcellus Shale, a rock bed the size of Greece that lies about 6,000 feet beneath New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. Geologists say it could become the most productive natural gas field in the U.S., capable of supplying the entire country's needs for up to two decades by some estimates.

Before that can happen, the industry is realizing that it must solve the challenge of what to do with its wastewater. As a result, the Marcellus Shale in on its way to being the nation's first gas field where drilling water is widely reused.

The polluted water comes from a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are blasted into each well to fracture tightly compacted shale and release trapped natural gas.

Fracking has been around for decades. But the drilling companies are now using it in conjunction with a new horizontal drilling technique they brought to Appalachia after it was proven in the 1990s to be effective on a shale formation beneath Texas.

Fracking a horizontal well costs more money and uses more water, but it produces more natural gas from shale than a traditional vertical well.

Once the rock is fractured, some of the water — estimates range from 15 to 40 percent — comes back up the well. When it does, it can be five times saltier than seawater and laden with dissolved solids such as sulfates and chlorides, which conventional sewage and drinking water treatment plants aren't equipped to remove.

At first, many drilling companies hauled away the wastewater in tanker trucks to sewage treatment plants that processed the water and discharged it into rivers — the same rivers from which water utilities then drew drinking water.

But in October 2008, something happened that stunned environmental regulators: The levels of dissolved solids spiked above government standards in southwestern Pennsylvania's Monongahela River, a source of drinking water for more than 700,000 people.

Regulators said the brine posed no serious threat to human health. But the area's tap water carried an unpleasant gritty or earthy taste and smell and left a white film on dishes. And industrial users noticed corrosive deposits on valuable machinery.

One 11-year-old suburban Pittsburgh boy with an allergy to sulfates, Jay Miller, developed hives that itched for two weeks until his mother learned about the Monongahela's pollution and switched him to bottled or filtered water.

No harm to aquatic life was reported, though high levels of salts and other minerals can kill fish and other creatures, regulators say.

Pennsylvania officials immediately ordered five sewage treatment plants on the Monongahela or its tributaries to sharply limit the amount of frack water they accepted to 1 percent of their daily flow.

"It is a very great risk that what happened on the Monongahela could happen in many watersheds," said Ronald Furlan, a wastewater treatment official for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. "And so that's why we're trying to pre-empt and get ahead of it to ensure it doesn't happen again."

Regulators in Pennsylvania are trying to push through a new standard for the level of dissolved solids in water released from a treatment plant.

West Virginia authorities, meanwhile, have asked sewage treatment plants not to accept frack water while the state develops an approach to regulating dissolved solids.

And in New York, fracking is largely on hold while companies await a new set of state permitting guidelines.

For now, the Marcellus Shale exploration is in its infancy. Terry Engelder, a geoscientist at Penn State University, estimates the reserve could yield as much as 489 trillion cubic feet of gas. To date, the industry's production from Pennsylvania, where drilling is most active, is approaching 100 billion cubic feet.

Wastewater from drilling has not threatened plans to develop the nation's other gas reserves. Brine is injected into deep underground wells in places such as Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma, or left in evaporation ponds in arid states such as Colorado and Wyoming.

However, many doubt the hard Appalachian geology is porous enough to absorb all the wastewater, and the climate is too humid for evaporating ponds. That leaves recycling as the most obvious option.

Entrepreneurs are marketing portable systems that distill frack water at the well site.

Also, in southwestern Pennsylvania, Range Resources Corp., one of the gas field's most active operators, pipes wastewater into a central holding pond, dilutes it with fresh water and reuses it for fracking. Range says the practice saves about $200,000 per well, or about 5 percent.

In addition, a $15 million treatment plant that distills frack water is opening in Fairmont, W.Va. The 200,000 gallons it can treat each day can then be trucked back for use at a new drilling site.

For years, regulators let sewage treatment plants take mining and drilling wastewater under the assumption that rivers would safely dilute. But fracking a horizontal well requires huge amounts of water — up to 5 million gallons per well, compared with 50,000 gallons in some conventional wells.

"In this case," said John Keeling of MSES Consultants, which designed the Fairmont plant, "dilution is not the solution to pollution."
___

Vicki Smith reported from Morgantown, W.Va.

The world is ready!

We stumbled upon this great video. It says that this honeywell wind turbine will soon be available in your local hardware store.

We love that a major source of alternative energy will soon be so readily available! It just goes to show that people are ready. We are ready to put solar panels or wind turbines on our roofs.

Now Stillwater Energy is NOT wind energy. But we do hope to be able to market ourselves for home use. Everyone should eventually have the option to generate their own power.

Over here at Stillwater, we want to share the wealth.  We encourage you to think about this new way of life.

 

• Check out this great MSN Video: Better Wind Turbine

Day 16

In these beginning phases of Stillwater Energy, we are taking a lot of time to make sure things are done right. We feel like this is such an important idea....we can't let something like administrative error screw it up.


In our opinion one of the most important steps is the Prototype. Our inventor has been spending all his time lately sourcing the parts, computer modeling the prototype and running numbers.

The Result:

The prototype is done.... on paper anyway. And it's amazing. As far as we can tell (we're having a PhD on our staff review our numbers this next week) this prototype is highly effective. Meaning even on a small scale somebody could take our prototype onto their property and make it work for them. It would only take two machines to completely power the average american household and at that scale these homeowners could even be MAKING themselves money within 1-2 years.

The initial calculations show the cost is about $0.06/per kwh including maintenance for the lifetime of the product. That means our prototype is competitive with utility scale power generation.

Can you imagine the impact this Alternative Energy invention is going to make on the Utility scale?

So, next step: Get someone to fund our prototype to prove the idea. We are a small little start up and need to find some money because it is worth it!

Environmental Effects

A Geo-Engineered World by Erik Sofge, published by Poplular Mechanics



The term geo-engineering - direct technological interventions to reshape the planet - calls to mind the dark laughter of a science-fiction villain. But researchers are pondering ways to use geo-engineering to counter the effects of global warming. This past year, three European institutions released reports on the benefits and risks of "climate engineering". Recommendations vary, but the reports each conclude that the most promising technologies should be tested on small scales. Scientists worry that some nation's future unilateral geo-engineering project could cause frightening side effects that cross national boundaries. "If a country's leaders feel some existential threat they might resort to desperate measures," says Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegies Institution at Stanford University. "What if Greenland is sliding into the ocean? And what if you could stop it?"



Is Earth ready for these global warming fixes?



Dim the sky - Objective: Block solar radiation to drop the Earth's surface temperature. Proposal: Unmanned airships or air-bursting artillery rounds inject sulfur-dioxide particles into the stratosphere. A former Microsoft executive proposes lofting a hose with helium balloons to pump liquefied sulfur dioxide into the sky. Blowback: Global temperatures could spike as soon as treatments stop. Seeded areas may see redder, hazier skies. Proposed by: Copenhagen Consensus Center



Soak the Clouds - Objective: Decrease the amount of sunlight - and heat - absorbed by cloud cover. Proposal: Funnel salt water into the air with robotic ships, brightening clouds to cool specific areas, such as the Arctic. Blowback: The tactic is likely to alter weather patterns, nudging rainfall from one region to another in unpredictable way. The good news is that seawater droplets cycle out of the clouds within a few days. Proposed by: Copenhagen Consensus Center



Grow Algae Everywhere - Objective: Suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reducing gases that contribute to warming. Proposal: Deploy vast algae farms on land and at sea. Strips of algae could be built onto buildings, and miles of algae-filled plastic bags could stretch across an ocean's surface. Blowback: To work well, a continent of algae is needed, and that's more pricey than other carbon-capture schemes. Proposed by: NASA (algae farms); Institution of Mechanical Engineers, U.K. (buildings)



Whitewash Everything - Objective: Deflect solar radiation to cool the surface of the planet. Proposal: Installing white or otherwise reflective roofs on buildings and replacing less reflective crops with ones engineered to be glossier could lower summer temperatures in the U.S. nearly 2 F. Blowback: Large-scale genetic modification of crops could face stiff resistance, and there might not be enough rooftops to make a difference. Proposed by: University of Bristol, U.K. (crops); U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu (roofs)



End Article





We have spent a lot of time researching all possible environmental impacts. The purpose of Stillwater Energy is to help the energy crisis. However, it seems as though so many creative ideas for energy or global warming (as in the article above) could end up just causing a whole lot of new problems. Our goal at Stillwater Energy is Simplicity. Simplicity in design and simplicity in the environment. We want to create a solution.



Now until we can actually test our small scale prototype in the water we won't know our true impact. So, we're excited. Excited to get initial funding and get a prototype in the water. Let's see what we can do. Our outlook is positive.