THE READING GEOLOGIST – BOOK REVIEW
Alternate Energy and Shale Gas Encyclopedia, edited by Jay H. Lehr and Jack Keely (Wiley, 2016)
As Howard C. Hayden noted in the introduction of the Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy and Shale Gas, “energy drives everything.” Alternative energy is loosely defined as being that source which is dif- ferent from the conventional energy source at that time. Coal initially became an alternate energy source to wood after large scale deforestation occurred about 1500 AD in Europe. Coal eventually became the conven- tional energy source, driving
the industrial revolution. Whale oil became commonly used as an energy source in the early 19th century for indoor lighting and it later competed with the new alternate energy source, petroleum hydrocarbons, discovered by Colonel Edwin Drake in commercial quantities in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. Petroleum hydrocarbons were commonly used after the U.S. Civil War, and thus no longer an alternative energy source.
Known collectively as “fossil fuels,” petroleum hydrocarbons and coal have been the primary sources of conventionally sup- plied energy in the U.S. and in most developed nations for more than 120 years. A variety of alternate energy sources have been developed since then. Many of the alternate energy sources are renewable, such as wind, solar, biogas, geothermal, wave, tidal and several others featured in this book. Another alternate energy source that is a petroleum hydrocarbon and described in this book, is petroleum hydrocarbons found in unconventional reservoirs and which require a variety of newly grouped tech- nologies to extract such as horizontal drilling, sophisticated geochemistry, and hydraulic fracture stimulation.
Regardless of the power source, there are five main phases to commonly implement the use of most alternate energy systems: Phase 1 Business Development; Phase 2 Feasibility Assessment; Phase 3 Engineering and Design; Phase 4 Construction; and, Phase 5 Operations and Ongoing Maintenance.
The critical and limiting factor for rapid and safe implemen- tation of a variety of these capital intensive energy projects remains human resources. In Phases 1 through 3, high-level economists, design engineers and environmental impact sci- entists are required to create and investigate the business opportunities, test the concepts and demonstrate and modify as needed, the specific project details. By Phase 4, project managers, equipment operators and numerous technicians assemble the energy systems on a site and develop and connect to an energy network to distribute the energy. Later in Phase 5, operations of the energy system require robust continued
training and health and safety programs for the technicians maintaining the systems.
The needs for large numbers of well-trained engineers and scientists as well as technicians capable of sophisticated real-time assessment, measurement and safety knowledge require a layered infrastructure of community colleges and universities to provide graduates with high level of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills, as well as the social infrastructure to build, develop and deploy this train- ing system. Indeed, the STEM trained workforce could end up being one of the primary limiting factors in the alternate energy revolution that is currently underway.
For those interested in a career in alternate energy systems, the Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy and Shale Gas pro- vides an overview that can be quickly read on various of the seven energy systems. The seven systems are covered in sec- tions, as follows: wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, energy storage (battery and fuel cell), renewable energy concepts (biomass, tidal power, municipal solid waste energy systems, and ethanol), and shale gas.
WIND
One can’t talk definitively about alternate energy sources without speaking about wind-harnessed energy. According to the most recent statistics from the Wind Energy Foundation, wind energy is the fastest-growing source of electricity in the world, with a global installed capacity of 35,467 megawatts (MW) in 2013. In the United States at the end of September 2014, there were 62,300 MW of wind capacity installed and operational, with more than 13,600 MW of new generating capacity under construction. U.S. Energy Department data agree with these trends.
The wind power topics include 18 articles about the accep- tance of wind power, the general concept of alternative wind energy sources, as well as the technical issue of fatigue failure in wind turbine blades. Challenges with wind power include the great variability in wind speed, timing and duration of gusts, and direction of flow. These variables have both tech- nical and economic implications for wind generation system performance and output of energy into the power grid. Wind power prediction research and mathematical modeling is a growth area, and often involves the use of artificial intelligence techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANN) and adap- tive neuro fuzzy interference systems (ANFIS). The article on wind power forecasting techniques, by Michael Negnevitsky, provides various persistence models as well as statistical and neural network methods for very short term forecasting. An interesting case study provided in the article features a data set from a wind energy site in Tasmania (Australia) that includes wind energy parameters from a 21-month time series
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