Update, October 26, 2013:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you for your participation in the 2014 Zayed Future Energy Prize. We are continually grateful for your time and effort in submitting for our Prize.
We regret to inform you that your submission for this year did not pass to the next round of review. If you would like to know more about our process, or have any queries about your entry, please feel free to contact us at info@zayedfutureenergyprize.
The Zayed Future Energy Prize is only as successful as the candidates who participate. We are building more than just an annual award; we are building a community of innovators. We hope that you will continue to participate in the years ahead. We want you to know that your efforts were taken seriously – every candidate received careful consideration.
We hope that you will allow us to further engage you on all things related to the Prize including information on the 2014 Zayed Future Energy Prize winners in January.
Kind regards,
Dalal
Dalal Yassin
Senior Executive, Zayed Future Energy Prize |
Zayed prize entry 2013
Zayed prize entry 2013
1. Please
give us a short introduction to your organization, and its activities in
renewable energy and/or sustainability in particular.[max 100 words]
EPC was formed to pursue elpipes, a breakthrough underground electrical
transmission technology. Longer range electrical transmission is critical for
renewable energy to reach its potential, by tying together generators in
different weather systems. The elpipe can be thought of as a slow moving
electric train that runs inside pipeline rather than on a track. The cars of
the train are solid insulated electrical bus bars that can deploy far more aluminum
per km than is possible for overhead wires, for higher capacity and efficiency. Elpipes can share
ROW corridors with rail, pipelines, or roads, saving considerable time and
development costs.
Long distance electricity transmission is vital for the economics of
wind and solar technologies, because a geographical area spanning several
weather systems allows the aggregated output of wind+solar to be far more
reliable (this means less energy storage is needed). I have made two key
enabling inventions for underground long distance power transmission. These
methods are applicable to high capacity AC or DC powerlines; for technical
reasons, the most effective upgrade to the transmission infrastructure to
enable wind and solar penetration will be meshed HVDC supergrids. This has been
recognized by the European Commission. Elpipes are vital enablers of an HVDC
supergrid:
1) Elpipes are a
unique solution to a vexing problem: how to put really big power lines (with
much higher capacity than cables, and with simpler repairability) underground
or otherwise out of sight.
2) Ballistic Breakers™ are economical, scalable circuit breakers that
will make DC power transmission and distribution dramatically more practical,
and at a lower cost than ABB's
recently announced hybrid circuit breaker.
The world really needs elpipes right now, because it is not
politically feasible to build a supergrid based on overhead power lines in
Europe or North America in a timely fashion. Furthermore the maximum capacity
of an overhead line is only ~9 GW, and to build a supergrid we need much larger
lines ~30 GW, which are well within the capabilities of elpipes. My passionate
belief in the importance of elpipes has caused me to not act in my short-term
financial interest, which is to forget elpipes and HVDC Ballistic Breakers™ and
focus on medium voltage DC microgrid applications of Ballistic Breakers. (I
have been told by multiple financial people that elpipes are "pie in the
sky" yet I have persisted for five years with zero outside funding to
pursue elpipes. I have meanwhile spun out Ballistic Breaker Corporation to
pursue MVDC and lower voltage applications of Ballistic Breakers™.
Elpipes de-risk the cost of HVDC installation and will eventually be
used as the main lines in the future Eurasian-African supergrid. My patents
will hold, or else no-one will be able to patent elpipes.
3. What do people do instead of using
your approach? What comparable solutions or initiatives exist already? How
unique are your innovations? [max 150 words]
The grid is being updated piecemeal using technologies that will not
fit into the future supergrid. These investments will become stranded investments
in the future as they are superseded by the supergrid. Even the HVDC projects
being built are a hodgepodge of different voltages, whereas to be cost
effective, the entire supergrid needs to be at a single voltage, probably
between 500-800kV. Elpipes can be designed to allow essentially any power level
through one pair of elpipes. They compete against overhead HVDC lines, GIL, and gas pipelines, since gas can be converted efficiently
to electricity (~53%).
Elpipes answer these problems with prior underground powerlines:
>higher capacity and easier to repair than cables;
>far less complex than superconducting lines and voltage-compatible
with cables and overhead lines (HTS superconducting lines are not);
>smaller diameter than gas insulated lines (GIL, the only
conventional high capacity underground alternative), and no use of SF6 gas.
4. Do you have a way of defending your
innovations from your competitors? Or, alternatively, do you intend for them to
be easily replicated by others? In either case, please explain how, including
patent numbers or hyperlinks if appropriate. [max 200 words]
I have filed national phase patent applications based on my 2010 PCT
patent application PCT/US2010/048719 in the US,
EU, China, India, Canada, and Malaysia. I need significant investment or joint
ventures with established companies to develop elpipes and defend my patent
position. An 800kV prototype can be done for $35 million. I get the patent, or
no one will; my PCT was thorough.
Elpipes are the best way to move the supergrid underground. The most
important claims in my patent refer to the hybridization of three individually
well-established technologies into a viable system for moving tens to hundreds
of gigawatts around underground: elpipes are essentially a slow electric train
whose cars are bus bars, and which runs on a track comprising the inside of a
pipeline. The movable nature of the elpipe facilitates installation, repair,
and routine maintenance in an unprecedented manner compared to any prior large
power transmission system. The segmented rigid conductors allow advanced
insulation techniques that are not possible for cables. (The maximum capacity of
cables are limited by the fact that they must be able to wrap on a reel; the
rigid elpipe conductors can use much more conductor and therefore achieve
higher capacity.)
5. What is your vision for the future of
renewable energy and sustainability, and how will your organization help shape
it? What are the main obstacles you will need to overcome in order to realise
this vision? Please include details of significant planned developments and
future achievements. [max 250 words]
The supergrid is the key to a sustainable energy future; it is
essential for creating a marketplace for electricity that can span from MENA to
Northern Europe; it would have these major effects:
>makes development of remotely sited renewable energy, nuclear
energy, and energy storage sites feasible;
>increases the aggregate reliability of non-dispatchable energy
sources (wind, solar, oceanic energy) by sharing of energy over large
geographical areas containing multiple different weather systems;
> maximizes the utilization of load balancing resources (gas
turbines, dispatchable hydro, EV charging, demand response) by allowing sharing
over a larger area, which saves a huge amount of capital;
> reduces spinning reserve requirements which saves energy directly;
>will enable greater reliability of the AC grid in several
important ways.
I heard the call to the supergrid project many years ago, from
Buckminster Fuller, and I have worked on advancing the supergrid both
politically and technically, as an activist, political candidate, inventor and
entrepreneur. This document is mainly about the inventor/entrepreneur effort. The high point of my political advocacy for
the supergrid was my 1992 run for the US Senate as a Republican in Wisconsin. I
called for pollution taxes to replace about half of the income tax, as well as
for priority development of a US-based supergrid based on elpipes. I got 20% of
the Republican Primary vote in that statewide race (> 50,000 votes), running
as a complete outsider. The things I stood up for then have become far more
urgent now.
Supergrids are the most cost effective response to reducing GHG
emissions quickly. It will take 20-50 years to build the regional supergrids
(Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Australia). This will be a huge
effort, with at least hundreds of billions of euro investment in transmission,
and a method to build underground transmission is vital. The hard part is the
beginning: utilities won't touch elpipes until they are proven, and investors
(mostly) are too impatient to back something that cannot turn a profit for 7
years.
I have made amazing progress
given that I have not raised a penny from outside investors so far. The elpipe
is the only viable technology for moving the supergrid underground; it will use
millions of tons of aluminum. The Zayed Future Energy prize would provide a
much-needed boost for this critical enabling technology for future supergrids.
I intend to go for crowdsource funding in the US as soon as the SEC
releases its final rules (the enabling law was passed more than a year ago); I
will seek $1 million for preliminary activities, including patent prosecution,
COMSOL Multiphysics modeling and a 200kV prototype. This will move elpipes far
enough along to attract conventional investment.
7. How scalable are your activities?
Please explain the size of the opportunity in terms of the potential
addressable market for your solutions, initiatives, products or services.
Include target customers/segments where appropriate, remembering to benchmark
your figures against external data where possible. [max 250 words]
Scalability is one of the strong benefits of elpipes, compared to
cables for example. Elpipes can scale to higher capacity than cables or
overhead lines. The market in Europe alone for the supergrid will be around a
trillion euro; I estimate that ~50% of that will be for the transmission lines
per se. Elpipes have the unique advantage of being upgradable after
installation; the segment modules are like cars of a train that can be swapped
out for different modules that run inside the same conduit pipeline and have
the same outside diameter, but use more conductor per km (and therefore can
transmit more energy); this makes capacity expansion convenient, as is
inspection, maintenance, and repair.
Elpipes are fabricated from components that can be manufactured by
existing companies, such as aluminum extrusions, aluminum forgings, copper mesh
and copper electrodes; polymer extrusions; fabricated plastic parts, and fabricated
elastomer parts. Quality control techniques that are similar to those used in aircraft
will be needed to get the very high reliability required for elpipes in the
grid. Quality of the electrical junctions will be subject to advanced
inspection techniques, enabled by the fact that all the junctions are made at
one end of an elpipe train prior to insertion into the pipeline conduit, even
if the elpipe segment is hundreds of kilometers long. In addition, each segment
module will have multiple sensors so that developing problems can be addressed
in regularly scheduled maintenance, rather than by emergency repairs.
8. Please tell us about the scale of
impact that your organization’s achievements have had, technically, organizationally
and socially, as applicable. Help us understand the significance of this by
giving tangible, quantitative figures and comparisons where possible, including
details of customers, geographies, success stories, etc. Feel free also to
outline any major obstacles you have faced, and how you overcame them. [max 400
words]
EPC has moved the time forward when a supergrid based on conventional
conductors and sited underground can be built. Invention must precede
development, and elpipes are now a fully formed invention ready to be developed
into a fully capable very high capacity underground HVDC conductor that can
serve as the "trunk lines" of the future supergrid. High voltage
R&D is expensive; it costs around $50k/day to get into an HVDC lab environment,
which is why I have focused on the inventions and the patents; I need some
outside investment to take the needed steps to create a prototype, yet those
steps are now clearly defined, and this is valuable because of my unique patent
position.
It is highly significant that elpipes do not require anything
fundamentally new to be developed; no new materials are required (though new
material can help make elpipes better). No new physics is employed. In fact the
physics is well understood, to the point that the entire elpipe can be modeled
by existing software packages such as COMSOL Multiphysics, and indeed a
thorough analysis and refinement of my design using COMSOL will be one of the
first tasks once I get investment into EPC.
Developing any new HVDC technology is expensive and difficult. We are
all very lucky that ABB and before that Asea has given us this exciting new
transmission option; without their long term commitment we would not be
anywhere near where we are today with HVDC technology. That does not mean however
that we can trust the major HVDC equipment suppliers to deliver what is best
for the supergrid; they are motivated by profit, and elpipes would severely
damage the profitability and market share of HVDC cables, on which ABB is
making money “hand over fist.” ABB has traditionally been the pioneer, with
Siemens, Alstom Grid, and Mitsubishi
playing secondary roles as far as new product innovation. Elpipes are a
disruptive technology which will not be supported by any company making money
on the status quo. Elpipes will enable supergrids, which will for the first
time create open markets for electricity. There will be winners and losers
among both generators and electrical equipment suppliers, but a robust
supergrid will be a big help to consumers and developers of both renewable
energy and pumped storage projects.
9. Please outline your organization’s
financials over the last five years, Using the table below, please outline
details of your revenues, costs and profits (if applicable). In the
accompanying text, please include details of your major financial backers, and
add any relevant additional information on your financial position. [max 250
words]
EPC has been self-funded + friends & family. This shows the
strength of my commitment and belief in the importance of elpipes, which I have
been developing intellectually for more than 30 years.
I think it is remarkable what I have achieved in the last 5 years,
including multiple patent applications, multiple publications, and multiple
conference presentations. What is lacking still is external investment or grant
funding, though it is becoming increasingly clear to decision-makers in Europe
and the US that we must find a way to move high capacity power lines
underground to be able to build the transmission capacity we need to enable
high penetration of renewable energy into our energy mix, and thus break our
addiction to fossil fuels. Elpipes are extremely important for the success of
the whole supergrid concept in Europe and the US; and the supergrid represents
the low cost solution for moving our economies onto a renewable energy basis.
We will license out construction of the conduit pipeline and the
segment modules; make a deal with a company in the electric train business to
provide the low-speed drive mechanism to move long elpipe trains in unison
(without undue stress on the relatively delicate flexible couplings); with an
electronics company to build the on-board intranet used for both control and
for monitoring sensors. The flexible electrical coupling modules between the
segment modules will be directly controlled and manufactured by EPC; these are the
"golden eggs."
10. Other than the achievements mentioned
above, how has your organization and its management team worked to raise
awareness of renewable energy and sustainability across the industry and in the
wider world? Please give details of your members’ involvement in major industry
associations, agenda-setting for the industry, policy development and other
areas of leadership. [max 200 words]
I have presented papers at
numerous conferences; a quick browse through my website
www.elpipe.com gives information, and I have posted my presentations. To name a
few: we (Ron Todd and I) gave a seminar presentation at MIT about elpipes in
November 2009, then repeated
that at Oak Ridge National Lab in December 2009. Both
those presentations were very helpful for identifying the problems in need of
attention.
Among my many conference presentations, I think that the paper in
2010 for the IEEE Conference on Innovative Technologies for an Efficient and
Reliable Electricity Supply (September 27-29 in Waltham MA; my presentation
to the International Conference on High Voltage Engineering
("ICHVE," New Orleans, October 10-13, 2010), and my paper for
the IEEE Power and Energy Society in July 2011 are
especially noteworthy. Based the ICHVE paper, I was invited to publish a more
detailed follow-up paper in the Chinese
Journal of High Voltage Engineering in November 2011. I made a presentation
to the iGrid conference in Shanxi, China in September 2012, and to
the EUEC conference (two papers, one
co-authored by Joe Corbett of Mainstream Renewable Power) in
January 2013. I am involved in a supergrid consultation with the Chinese
government (www.ciwg.net).
11. How have the actions taken within
your organization inspired individuals and other organizations to address the
challenges facing the renewable energy and sustainability industry? [max 150
words]
I am organizing a part of the China International Working Group (www.ciwg.net)
to aid the development of an Asian supergrid. This comes out of the World Cultural Forum in Hangzhou in May 2013
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2013/05/21/china-declares-global-state-of-emergency-an-urgent-telegram-from-taihu/). I am bringing disparate activists and
experts from the West to advise the Chinese government on developing its own
supergrid, which will then become the core of the Asian supergrid. This effort
has the backing of several powerful politburo members. I will not lead the CIWG
because I have a commercial interest in seeing that the Asian Supergrid uses
elpipes, but I am putting the team together. This will include Peter Meisen of
GENI, and Gregor Czisch (both long-term supergrid activists). The whole world is hoping China gets it
right, and pulls us back from the edge of runaway global warming; creating an
Asian Supergrid is the biggest part of that. CIWG will also involve luminaries
from industry.
12. Please tell us about any other
aspects of your company, not covered above, that you feel are relevant to your
candidacy for the Zayed Future Energy Prize [max 300 words]
There are several "fathers of the supergrid." Peter Meisen
formed Global Energy Network Institute "GENI" (www.geni.org) in 1990.
I first talked to him in 1991 as I was developing testimony for the Wisconsin
Public Service Commission's "Advance Plan 6" hearings in which I
advocated for an HVDC supergrid in the US, based on elpipes. I was a Full Party
and Public Intervener in that process and I followed up by running for the US
Senate in 1992, with energy and environmental policy as my focus. Both Peter
Meisen and I trace our interest in the supergrid concept back to Buckminster
Fuller; towards the end of his life he came to see a global supergrid as the most
important single technology to better humankind's lives worldwide.
Another "father of the supergrid" is Gregor Czisch, who is
part of a German intellectual tradition going back to at least 1930 to Oskar
Oliven. Gregor felt so strongly that a European Supergrid was the right
mechanism to move Europe from fossil fuel-based electricity to renewable energy
that he did his Ph.D. dissertation at Kassel University on the European
Supergrid. His dissertation is a real tour de force, and remains to this day
the most comprehensive assessment of how to power Europe with renewable energy. Both
Desertec and Friends of the Supergrid (Eddie O'Connor) got the idea from Gregor
(though neither has acknowledged that).
And finally, the folks at Asea and then ABB are also fathers of the
supergrid. Among these industrial scientists, I think Gunnar Asplund deserves
special mention. Asea put Siemens into the HVDC business by licensing their
patents to them; ABB found they needed a competitor in order to be able to sell
their HVDC equipment.
The elpipe is the missing piece of the puzzle; without it, supergrids
are not possible in Europe or the US.
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