安大略种族向清洁动力经济

A year after Hurricane Sandy, the costs and risks of inaction on the climate are becoming clearer. Among the costs are those revealed in a newCeres report关于气候无为日益增长的纳税人的负担。从气候造成的海平面上升对海岸线不断升级的风险凸显粒状详细的一个重要的新扩张Surging Seas, Climate Central's online toolto analyze theimpacts of sea-level rise。

Happily, despite the increasingly frantic efforts of the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel fat cats to force Congress to throttle the rising clean energy industry, the renewable energy gospel is spreading. Even the wing-nuts of the right are getting on the bandwagon, asGlenn Beck shills solar generators to his fans。

With solar and wind power costs coming down -- and parity with fossil fuel electricity (including natural gas) in sight -- the carrot of decreasing prices will join the stick of increasing costs to rev up the race toward a clean power economy.

但与真正的进步the availability of solar and wind power comes increasing need to store energy for use, and to smooth out the intermittence of supply -- the Achilles heel of renewables. (Wind power, for example, can vary from full capacity to a mere 10 percent of capacity.)

In addition to energy and capacity, the power system depends on flexibility -- the matching of supply with changing demand to operate properly. In the renewables space, finding ways to store energy, whether physically or by taking it from where it is in oversupply and shunting it to where it is needed, is the key to flexibility.

安大略省的绿化

One government supporting innovation in the search for efficient energy storage is Ontario, as I discovered during a press tour of the Canadian province's green energy initiatives in September. Its urgency is being driven by an ambitious expansion of wind power -- 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy, mostly from wind, are due to go online within the next 18 months.

几年前，安大略省电力公司安装在家庭和企业，他们服务的智能电表，初步缓解停电和峰值负载的问题。但是，利益已经超出了预期。随着现在流经系统中的数据 - 多伦多，安大略省的首府，拥有全球智能电表数据的任何地方的最大的数据库之一 - 机构可以创造更多的有针对性的养护方案，消费者可以使用应用来监控他们的能源使用。为了帮助安大略走向清洁能源未来的举动，公司力求创新，令人兴奋的方式。

创新之一：与平台软件需求管理

The market forthird-party apps to help consumers manage their energy useis exploding. But software to help utilities exploit the data to maximize their capacity and supply of power is also in demand. One company seeking to fill this niche isEnbala, which has developed an ingenious real-time demand management software platform, the Enbala Power Network, that's being deployed by Ontario industrial and commercial facilities.

该网络可与数据在哪里能力闲置，并匹配到需要更多的能量另一个地方智能电网的精确位置。大电力用户，如工业，商业和机构业务，通常具有不被上绘制能力无时无刻能源资产。与这些用户Enbala合同连接到网络，给他们提供电力给电网时，是没有必要的对自己的工作吧。

Enbala's software allows utilities to buy flexibility separately from capacity and generation, smoothing out supply and demand like a kind of cruise control for the grid. The company expects to be able to extend the system to Ontario's residential customers, offering them returns in the form of rebates for hooking up to the Network.

创新二：存储电力用不锈钢机械电池

Flywheels are mechanical batteries that store energy by means of angular momentum. They've been around for a long time -- think of the potter's wheel -- and they are a natural solution to smoothing out energy supply from wind and solar.

然而，高成本和安全问题阻碍其普及。安大略启动Temporal Powerthinks it has solved these problems with itsstainless-steel flywheel。Made out of recycled auto parts, the unit is relatively inexpensive to build and can provide from three to 15 minutes of stored energy in a rapid response to smooth out fluctuations in power supply.

The company says its flywheel can store up to 50 times more power than other industrial flywheels. The units can be sized to provide from two to 100 megawatts.

Temporal has a contract to supply the Ontario utility HydroOne with 500 kilowatt units to balance out wind power and another contract with the publicly owned power company, Ontario Power Generation. It's also attracted the attention of energy giant Enbridge, which has invested $13 million in the company.

The startup, like the others I visited on Ontario's Renewable Energy press tour, has the full support of the provincial government, through development subsidies and business consulting. It's all part of a virtuous chain -- government support, innovation, thegreening of the grid- 这表明有经济增长和可持续发展之间没有分歧。竞彩足球app怎么下载这是一个教训，各国政府应采取的心脏。

了解更多关于安大略省的绿色创新here。

Photo of Toronto, Ontario's capital, byAqnus Febriyantvia Shutterstock