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)

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!