The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

Like the air we breathe, electricity, that magical stuff behind the light switch, is taken for granted by a majority of people. Flip a switch, the lights come on. We are dependent on energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

As populations continue to grow and their need for more and “cleaner” energy grows too, the demand for more production of it will become central in the not-so-distant future.

The production of energy comes in many forms. We’ve been made aware of issues related to some forms of energy production. Fossil fuel energy creates by-products that affect our climate and the air we breathe. Nuclear energy creates a by-product that will need close, long-term attention by future generations. Here in Washington and Oregon, hydropower energy production is the dominant energy source.

A look at what’s on the horizon in energy production may interest you. Renewable energy sources have been and continue to be hot topics. Some question renewable energy’s sustainability while others talk about it as a supplemental energy source. Investments in this sector, including innovations as well as refining current renewables, continues to grow. It’s telling, it may be a sign of a shift in how energy is produced in the United States, that natural gas investments have fallen. According to Power Technology, investments in gas production has fallen from $500 billion to around $300 billion between 2018 and 2020. Yet, some in that sector of energy say it will continue to grow as coal power plants are close down.

Early this year, Power Technology (power-technology.com) highlighted what they call “game changers” in the energy field. Solar energy technology is changing. In 1954, Bell Labs invented the first “useful” silicon solar panel with an efficiency of 6 percent, according to the American Physical Society website. Today, perovskite solar cells are getting a lot of attention. First developed in 2009, now referred to as perovskite-perovskite tandem, two or more materials absorb different parts of the sun’s visible light spectrum, producing electricity. Research has shown this new solar panel has an efficiency as high as 29 percent.

Societies as a whole are moving towards decarbonization of the energy we produce. Hydrogen is being taken seriously in some countries. In Europe there are several projects underway to further develop newer types of electrolysers to produce hydrogen. It takes energy to operate the electrolysis process to produce hydrogen. There are a number of research projects across Europe specifically in the United Kingdom, Spain and Denmark, addressing the production of hydrogen. The Danish wind company, Orsted is moving forward. “The company plans to use a 2MW near-shore wind turbine with onshore electrolysers to observe how electrolysers manage fluctuating power supplies. The 2MW facility would produce up to one ton of green hydrogen daily, with this going toward fueling road transport.”

In East Wenatchee, the Douglas County Public Utility District broke ground in March on a new plant to produce and sell hydrogen it will make using excess hydropower from its Wells Dam. The PUD plant’s capacity of two tons a day can expand. It will initially produce hydrogen for use in its own fleet of cars, and to sell to fuel stations and for industrial use. Toyota has offered the PUD a few of its hydrogen fuel-cell “Mirai” (“future” in Japanese) mid-size sedans, which emit only pure water as exhaust, for the pilot project.

Geothermal energy has been used by several nations for some time. California has been using geothermal energy production since the 1960s. It helps to be near a section of the “Pacific Rim of Fire.” In 2020, geothermal energy production in California produced 11,345 gigawatt-hours of electricity. The United States is the largest global producer of geothermal energy.

A new method of capturing that geothermal energy from deep below the mantel of Earth is being developed. Eavor Technologies is working on its Eavor-Loop system with funding from British Petroleum (BP) and Chevron. Here’s what this geothermal energy producer will do. Two vertical deep wells are drilled down with a cluster of many horizontal multilateral wellbores that creates a closed underground pipe system of sorts. Cold fluid from the top is pumped down, and the different densities between cold and hot fluid will push the hot liquid up, towards the surface, out the exit hole in closed system. This is called the thermosiphon effect. The hot fluid is used in steam generation energy production as well as other purposes. An example of this is now underway in England in Cornwall. The Eden Project is in the midst of drilling to establish this type of geothermal energy capture.

Today, the U.S. federal government is spending tens of millions of dollars overhauling and updating generators in the Grand Coulee Dam, all while other energy producing sources are being further developed, tweaked, or refined. All this innovative research in energy production will eventually bring electricity in ways not considered possible by those who built the Grand Coulee Dam.

A question that needs addressing is: How will electricity from these many new energy sources be carried over our power grids in the future? Is the national power grid robust enough to carry the energy we will demand of it? The next column, a look into the future of power grids.