In the words of the immortal Monty Python – “and now for something completely different” – some energy related thoughts on the amazing Voyager 1 spacecraft which it was recently reported has now “left the solar system”.

Voyager 1 was launched on 5th September 1977 with the aim of flying by Jupiter and Saturn, which it did so in 1979 and 1980 respectively.  The photographs of the two gas giant planets were stunning and much better quality than those from the earlier Pioneer 10 and 11 probes.

I remember the great excitement of first seeing these photos. Voyager 1’s sister ship, Voyager 2 also flew by Jupiter and Saturn and then went on to fly past Uranus and Neptune.  Pluto is the only planet we haven’t visited yet but all being well the New Horizons probe will get there in July 2015.  As was widely reported it has now been confirmed that Voyager 1 passed through the heliopause and entered interstellar space in August 2012 although it turns out that defining the real edge of the solar system is harder than you would think.  So far Voyager 1 has travelled about 125 Astronomical Units, i.e. 125 times the average distance from the Earth to the sun, or about 18,699,733,875 kilometres.

One fascinating energy aspect of the Voyager mission was the “gravity assist” technique used to accelerate the vehicle and change course and accelerate by using the gravity of Jupiter and then Saturn.  Essentially the course selected ensured that the vehicle would be accelerated by the planet’s angular momentum.  Without this technique it would have been impossible to get to Saturn.  The fly by at Jupiter resulted in Voyager 1 being accelerated by roughly 35,700 miles per hour, an energy boost of about 25 MWh by my calculations.  (Usually kinetic energy is measured in Joules but I have converted it to MWh as we can relate to MWh better than Joules).  Of course we know that energy is always conserved so Jupiter lost the same amount of rotational energy but of course the planet is so massive, 317 times the mass of the Earth, that any effect on Jupiter won’t ever be noticed.

The energy to keep Voyager functioning comes from an three RTGs, radioisotope thermal  generators, each of which uses 4.5 kilogrammes of radioactive plutonium 238 (238Pu) in the form of plutonium oxide which originally emitted 2.4 kW of heat which was converted to about 157W electricity by thermocouples – no moving parts, very simple and still working after 36 years.  The output halves every 87 years as the radioactive material decays.  The original 470W electrical output of the three RTGs combined is about half the rating of a domestic toaster.  Interplanetary probes in the inner solar system, out to Mars, can use solar arrays but at Jupiter the sun is between 600 and 800 million kilometres away and the light level is only about 50W/m2 compared to 1,400W/m2 at Earth.  Solar arrays would have to be enormous to generate sufficient power to run the spacecraft.  As the radioactive plutonium in the RTGs decays so does the electrical power output.  NASA have a sequence of switching things off and estimate there will be enough power to run some instruments up to the mid-2020s – nearly fifty years after launch.  Although it is not widely known as an earth-bound energy generation technology several companies are developing thermocouples (not linked to using radioisotopes) to use different low temperature heat sources to generate power, for example O-flexx.  If they can make them cheap enough and they can operate at low enough temperatures there will be a market in utilising waste heat sources to generate power.

The fact that we are still receiving information from Voyager is a testament to the brilliance of radio engineering, an area of technology I always struggle with.  Here we have a probe that is 18 billion kilometres away, it’s radio transmitter emits radio waves with a power output of 23W, (compared to a mobile phone that typically emits c.3W), through a 3.7m parabolic dish antenna,.  By the time it gets to earth after a 17 hour trip the radio wave has a power of one tenth of a billion-billionth watt and somehow this tiny signal is picked up by the Deep Space Network’s giant receivers and turned into useful information – there is no other word for that than amazing.

At the other end of the scale when it comes to radio waves is the enormous amount of energy put out by Jupiter.  Strangely Jupiter emits more energy than it receives from the sun and the total emission in radio, near Infra-Red, Ultra Violet and X-ray is estimated at 100TW – about 100 times the total US electrical generating capacity.

In summary there are many amazing things about Voyager, its mission and the outer solar system.  The technology of Voyager by today’s standards is incredibly primitive, data is stored on a tape recorder of sorts with 69 kilobytes (yes – kilobytes) capacity.  The navigation required to thread accurately through to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond is incredible.  The mere fact that we have sent an emissary out that far speaks volumes for man’s vision, ingenuity and our innate drive to explore.

Finally, one of the most awesome photos taken by Voyager was the famous “pale blue dot” photo – a shot of Earth taken from 6 billion kilometres away which shows the Earth as simply that, a pale blue dot in the vastness of space.

Carl Sagan, the great astronomer, who had been instrumental in getting NASA to command Voyager 1 to take this photograph later wrote about it:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997 

It is worth taking the big picture view sometimes.

For those of you who don’t know my other great interest in life is space exploration and space travel. Normal service will be resumed on the next blog post.

The press coverage on what looks like DECC’s (and Ed Davey’s) attempts to attract, (“woo” in the words of the Sunday Times), Chinese firms into the UK nuclear industry highlights one of the many signs of desperation in UK energy policy.  EDF is also seeking Chinese involvement in Hinkley Point but apparently China General Nuclear Power Group want some operational control for their 50% stake, (probably not unreasonable from an investor’s point of view!).

I have nothing against China and of course the growth in the Chinese economy, as well as their technology development, over the last thirty years has been incredible.  I accept that the world is generally better off through globalization but we really should think seriously about encouraging Chinese involvement in nuclear power on three grounds.

Firstly there is a cost to importing the technology – but that of course also applies to French nuclear technology or any other energy technology from abroad (almost all of it now).  Secondly there are security risks – we have seen concerns raised about Chinese firm Hauwei supplying technology to the telecoms sector – what are the risks of Chinese involvement at the heart of our nuclear plants – part of the Critical National Infrastructure? Finally there should be legitimate quality control concerns.  Although there have been no examples of large-scale failures in the Chinese nuclear sector (that we know about) there have been accidents and concerns have been raised.  In 2011/12 there were reports of problems in the China Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) and safety lapses at the China Institute of Atomic Energy.  A former state nuclear physicist, He Zuoxio, has claimed that a Chinese nuclear disaster is “highly probable” by 2030.  Also we have seen a number of problems in Chinese products and technology including high-speed trains, the Chinese cabinet criticized the railway industry for lax safety standards after the Wenzou train crash in 2011, and milk – in 2008 the milk scandal had a reported 300,000 victims.

Nuclear power requires the highest levels of safety, 24 hours a day. 7 weeks a year for decade after decade.  Of course, we also have train crashes and accidents here – all technology wherever it comes from is risky wherever you are – but we do need to assess all of the risks and all of the costs of all energy options fully.

It is easy to criticise the Green Deal, and many people have done just that in the last few weeks, but it is a very complex response to a complex problem – how to make the UK’s housing stock more energy efficient.

It is inevitably a camel – that is to say a horse designed by a committee.  We need to use this first phase of implementation, and let’s face it we are only in month 9, to measure results, learn and improve the system.  It is now generally agreed that the most cost effective way of addressing our energy issues of high costs, energy security and emissions, is by improving energy efficiency and this is undoubtedly happening at an increased rate due to high energy prices.

Even recently we had statistics that showed average household energy use has gone down by 25%, most of this is probably due to economising – switching things off more often or turning thermostats down – but some is due to previous energy efficiency programmes such as CERT and CESP (now replaced by ECO). Our challenge is how to improve the rate of improvement
of energy efficiency beyond its “natural” rate and the Green Deal is a serious attempt to do this in the residential sector, possibly the hardest sector to address.

To improve the rate of energy efficiency improvements we need to build demand for greater efficiency, build supply of efficiency goods and services and build the flow of finance into energy efficiency investment.  The Green Deal attempts to do all three.  The problems include; we don’t know how to build demand for efficiency – despite high prices people don’t wake up and say I want to buy an energy efficiency retrofit for my house (or building).  Behavioural economics, changing local social norms and identifying the factors that really push people to make such a major decision are all critical factors on the demand side.

On the supply side we need to greatly improve the accuracy of energy modelling – the approach taken by Green Deal just isn’t good enough.  Other countries have similar problems – in California research shows that a frighteningly high proportion of energy surveys get the savings wrong by 50% – a major error especially if you are investing yours or someone else’s money.

Accessing the right kind of finance is critical – the Green Deal’s 6.9% interest rate is too high for home owners with good credit.  Those with cash in the bank may use that rather than borrow. We need to use the public money put into Green Deal into better research on all three aspects, demand, supply and finance – rather than on marketing campaigns that are doomed to only push a few people into action.  We need to learn how to create market pull.  Of course the number of people having Green Deal assessments is much higher than the 132 signed up for implementation last month – we also need to see how many of the others have taken action on their own without further involvement from the Green Deal.  Then we will get a better idea of what is working and what is not.

In previous blogs we have discussed the pros and cons of Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) as a mechanism to enable financing of energy efficiency investments and seen that EPCs have a number of issues and may not be suitable in all situations.  In the EU the main focus of attention is still on fostering growth of the EPC market, (which to be clear is a worthwhile objective), but in the USA we are seeing a flowering of innovation in contract forms and financial structures.  Some of these innovations have the potential to unlock a huge market and transform energy efficiency financing into a mainstream market, rather than the rather small niche market it is today.  Here we take a look at the emerging contract structures.

PACE

Property Assessed Clean Energy financing (PACE) is a modification of an old approach to funding public goods.  Benjamin Franklin invented the original concept in the 1700s to finance investment in sewers.  PACE is a senior obligation which is on an equal footing with other taxes on the house and the system is still commonly used to finance sewers and projects to put utility wires underground.  It is tied to the house and not the owner or tenant.  PACE was first used in California and the first schemes were operated in two very different Californian markets, Berkeley – which has a mild wet climate and liberal politics – and Palm City which has hot dry climate and conservative politics – and it was a success in both markets.

Despite its subsequent adoption in 28 states and Washington DC and rapid growth, PACE in the residential market has been stopped by a controversial decision by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to limit its use in housing.  Since then several states have started to implement PACE schemes in the commercial sector and these hold great promise.  The potential for commercial PACE is estimated at $2.5 to $7.5 billion annually in 2015 with a total opportunity of $88 to $180 billion in large commercial buildings alone.  The largest project to date, recently announced, is a $3.16 million retrofit to a four building, 250,000 square feet, office park in Sacramento California.  The retrofit was financed through Clean Energy Sacramento, a city-wide programme backed by up to $100 million of financing from Ygrene Energy Fund.

Efficiency Services Agreement (ESA)

In the ESA structure, pioneered by Metrus, the agreement leads to the contractor being paid purely for savings on a price per MWh basis.  This makes the client – contractor agreement much more of a services agreement than a traditional EPC and therefore can help in getting the project off the client’s balance sheet.  Metrus contract with service providers (ESCOs) who guarantee a level of savings to Metrus.  Metrus have applied this structure to a number of sites including four sites belonging to BAE Systems and invested $8 million.  It is now rolling it to other BAE Systems’ sites in the US.

Managed Energy Services Agreement (MESA™)

The MESA™ has been pioneered by SciEnergy.  It involves the contractor taking over responsibility for the clients energy bill and the relationship with the utility provider(s).  The building owner then pays the contractor the historical energy bills corrected for weather and other factors i.e. what they would have paid.  SciEnergy invests in energy efficiency upgrades.

On- bill repayment (OBR)

On-bill repayment, where the repayment of capital is added to utility bills, is also growing but this is more of a collection mechanism than a type of financing, as it can be tied to various contract forms.  Investment funds for many OBRs came originally from stimulus money or utilities mandated to invest in efficiency but there is a move towards attracting private investment.  Work is typically carried out by a certified contractor who often introduces the client to the financing scheme.  OBR has been mainly used in the residential sector but is now attracting attention in the commercial sector.  In 2011 New York was the first state to enact state-wide OBR and offers finance at 3.49%.  The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is currently issuing $24.3 million of AAA rated bonds backed by residential energy efficiency loans – 35% of which were on-bill loans and the rest being direct with the householder.  The UK Green Deal is a form of OBR with external financing provided through the Green Deal Finance Company and faces many of the same difficulties as OBR schemes in the US such as generating sufficient demand and the accuracy (or otherwise) of building energy models that are used to predict savings.

Measured Energy Efficiency Transaction Structure (MEETS)

MEETS is the latest structure to emerge and was developed by EnergyRM and applied to the Bullitt Foundation’s “Living Building” in Seattle.  It uses EnergyRM’s “DeltaMeter™ dynamic baseline metering system” which is a system for measuring savings that has been approved by the utility industry in the Pacific North West.  The client pays the agreed price per unit of energy as per normal and an agreed price per unit saved (negawatt hour) on a 20-year agreement similar to a Power Purchase Agreement.  The advantage is that the repayment is linked to the building rather than the occupier and this allows a longer time-frame to be considered when looking at retro-fit options – allowing deeper retrofits to be financed.  The system is well suited to US markets where the utilities are mandated to make energy efficiency improvements (which of course includes EU countries after the implementation of the Energy Efficiency Directive).

Conclusions

The US is seeing significant innovation in energy efficiency financing, prompted by the falling away of stimulus money over the last few years.  Although currently small, these new contract forms have the potential to grow the energy efficiency financing market from its (2010) level of c.$14 billion (some $3 billion of which was stimulus money) to more like the $100 to $200 billion market some analysts predict it could become.  Commercial PACE shows particular promise.  With the exception of the Green Deal, which is an on-bill repayment scheme, we have yet to see these kinds of innovation in Europe, and some structures such as PACE are constrained by existing property taxation systems.  To grow the market for energy efficiency financing to the level we know it could achieve, and the level we need to hit environmental targets, we need to recognise that EPCs are not the be-all and end-all and foster greater innovation in contract form and financial structure.

Dr. Steven Fawkes

Steve’s latest book, “Energy Efficiency: the Definitive Guide to the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Source of Energy”, will be released in September.  It is available with a pre-publication discount of 35% by using the link to the right of this page

Following my note on DUKES one of the important aspects of the UK energy picture that is illustrated by DUKES 2013 is the growing dependency on imports – the dependency has increased from -20% (i.e. net exports equivalent to 20% of energy supply) in 2000 to +43% (i.e. net imports equivalent to 43% of energy supply) in 2012.  This infographic summarises the supply, production and import statistics for crude oil, gas, coal and electricity.  Net energy import costs in 2012 were £24 billion, 41% of the current account deficit and c.1.5% of GDP.