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We've long depended on coal-fired and natural gas power plants to convert chemical fuel into electricity. Now, scientists have found a way to convert electricity into a fuel using excess power from renewables like wind and solar.
Scientists from Stanford and Pennsylvania State universities have discovered a process to convert electricity into methane the main constituent of natural gas using microbes. The fuel is carbon neutral and can use the excess electricity from renewable sources.
In a sense, its the Holy Grail, says Alfred Spormann, a professor of chemical, civil and environmental engineering at Stanford who is leading this research. There is a microbiological way to convert electrical energy into chemical fuel. And methane is the most simple fuel that exists and where we have a fairly good infrastructure.
While methane holds potential as a fuel source, it is also a potent greenhouse gas. It is released en masse from landfills, factory farms and natural gas spills and has more than 20 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide. But this microbial methane is different, Spormann says.
The carbon for the methane comes from atmospheric CO2. So the methane that is produced by the microbial electrosynthesis is essentially carbon neutral and so will all other commodity chemicals that can be produced that way, he says.
The electricity comes from clean energy like wind and solar and the process utilizes electricity that would otherwise be lost. With outdated transmission systems, wind farms and solar photovoltaic power plants often produce more electricity than can be used or stored. In the Pacific Northwest, wind farms were taken offlinethis past spring because of an increase in hydroelectric power from dams due to springtime snow melt and an outdated grid that couldnt distribute the additional power.
This microbial technology could turn that excess electricity into useable fuel.
On a pair of hillsides in Downeast Maine, the blades of 19 wind turbines began rotating for the first time recently, spinning air into energy for the Boston utility NStar. The Blue Sky East project is the first of three New England wind farms including the largest yet to be built in Massachusetts that will begin operations before the end of the year and sell their power to NStar.
Together, they will generate enough electricity to supply roughly 50,000 homes, providing a cheaper source of power for NStars customers while increasing economic activity in rural areas that desperately need it. The projects not only put people to work in rural communities, said Paul Gaynor, chief executive of First Wind, the Boston company that developed Blue Sky East, they also generate tax revenues for small towns to help keep taxes down and pay for important community priorities.
Blue Sky East is located in Eastbrook, Maine, a town of just over 400 located about 40 miles east of Bangor. In addition, wind farms will soon will soon start generating power in Groton, N.H., and the Western Massachusetts towns of Florida and Monroe. These three projects, with a combined 62 turbines, will help NStar meet half the state requirement that utilities use long-term contracts get at least 3 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind and solar. Energy from the controversial offshore Cape Wind project will more than cover the rest.
It [means] clean power for our customers for years to come, said James Daly, vice president of energy supply for Northeast Utilities, NStars parent company. Electricity from the these new, land-based wind projects is expected to be cheap because NStar signed 10- to 15-year-long contracts, which, by guaranteeing a customer for the electricity, helped lower the cost of financing the wind farms.
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