If you put the world’s power plants on a map, you are sure to notice one thing, most of them are next to water. You might think that water and electricity are not a good mix, but in this case it is. Every power plant needs a lot of water, thirsty beings they are. Those which are not next to a sea or river will need to be supplied from the nearest location. So why on earth do they need all this water?

The answer is simple: Cooling. Power plants produce a lot of heat, how much depends on the type and efficiency. Coal power plants have percent efficiencies generally in the high 30, gas 40’s and combined cycle gas turbines max out at 50%. This means that a CCGT (combined cycle ..) produces as much heat as it does power, and this heat needs to go somewhere.

Now once the water is taken in and used for cooling, the heat has been transferred there, and now the water is hot. This is sometimes annoying for the fish if you are going to dump hot water at 90 degrees back on them. So what can we do?

One factor is  the water body you are dumping the water in, if you are dumping some hot water in the Med then you won’t really affect the sea temperature, although you might cause some damage to the local wildlife. But in a smaller water body you are bound to cause severe damage to the wildlife, and so the power plant location becomes vital. Some power plants in countries that care about fish, are limited to how much power they can produce just because they would dump too much hot water in the surrounding areas.

So what can you with a lot of water at 90 degrees other than dump it? In cold countries you can create a district heating system. (these also work with combined heat and power (CHP)). Put the hot water in pipes and pump them around the surrounding houses, they use this water to heat up their homes and save money and energy. In warmer countries the same principles can be used for a cooling system, through absorption chillers for example, which use a heat source for cooling.

This however all depends on the location of the power plant, if it’s in the middle of nowhere, then this might be difficult as there are no houses around.

So power plants produce loads of heat, they need water to cool down, the water becomes hot, we need to watch out where we dump it or we could use it for district heating/cooling. This means we need to think about this, among a million other things, when we are deciding where to locate the power plant.

Moving back from London to Cairo meant that my transport habits have changed from train based to automotive based, and I started to realise why trains are so much better. The advantage of cars, buses, etc… are of course the point to point availability. But if we are strictly speaking about public transport, then the underground kicks ass (When the British RMT is not on strike).

1. Trains are much cleaner. No not inside, for that depends on the people who are on the train, but for the environment. Electric trains use grid electricity which is much cleaner than car engines, while even diesel trains still give you more transport ability (PassengerKm or whatever other unit you want to use) per ton of CO2 emitted.

2. Trains are better for your [mental] health. If you have ever tried driving in Cairo, you would know that driving might cause depression and severe nervous breakdown. As you try to battle the sheer stupidity, selfishness and incomptence of the drivers around you and at the same time try to figure out which drug the urban planner, if exists, was on while planning the road you are driving you ae bound to fry up a neuron or a million. Stress will get you, if the cars don’t as you try to exit your vehicle.

3. Trains are better for the economy. The one time I tried using my laptop while driving, the results were not good. And while I was more succesful reading a book while driving, it’s still not the same as when on a train. So while you are on the train you can get some work done and contribute to the GDP. This means that your country, that you no noubt love so much, will have a lower emission/GDP figure. It can use this number to boast about to other nations who probably couldn’t care less, but you care, right?

So to sum up, trains are cleaner, healthier and more productive. Should you care, write to your urban planner a letter today. Change your country from cars to trains. Your great grand children would thank you should they miraculously ever find out.

So everyone’s eyes were on copenhagen, waiting to find out what the next deal in climate change is. Kyoto expires by 2012, and the Americans were never keen about it so we have to come up with a new one. But it seems that the ‘Copenhagen Treaty’ is not going to materialise. On the one hand having to write Copenhagen, which is quite a long word every time I want to refer to the treaty is a bit of a pain, so that’s one avantage of not getting a deal there. And I think Kyoto has much more music to it, so if you are going to make a new treaty, at least make the name better.

On the other hand it kind of sucks for all these small islands. Barabdos apparenlty wasn’t so happy with the whole we need more time thing. Ed miliband, despite being all super optimistic about it is now watching his words. But I guess it’s only fair that these small islands sleep with the fish. I mean come on, when all the developed nations spent their time working hard in horrible weather, these islands were getting drunk in beach parties. Fun has to always come to an end, and at some point you are going to have to do some work.

If another year passes by and these developed nations can’t get anything done, I have a suggestion to Barbados and all these whose fate will be similar. Set up a national fund starting now, start saving and go easy on the booze, once your island(s) are completely drowned rent off a piece of another country with your saved money. Now start charging all the tourist divers who will want to dive to see the sunken cities and use this money to pay for the rent of your new land. Genius! And people say rising sea levels are a big deal, of course humans can adapt.

But is it a good riddance? Multiyear ice is, as the name might suggest, ice that has remained ice for years. Going through the summer-winter cycle without completely melting means that the ice starts to have different properties, less salt and more air pockets. It becomes quite tough to break as well. This is why ships tended to go the long way round, because they just couldn’t sail through this tough ice. But thanks to people like George Bush (it’s been a while since anyone mentioned him so I thought I would, he must be feeling neglected) now this ice is gone, in the arctic at least, where most of it used to reside. Because no piece of ice has survived for many years without melting, all the ice there is now is effectively new. While this is a sign for those who are not blind that the climate might actually be changing, there are still advantages to be gained.

The silver lining in this otherwise massive black cloud is that ships can now sail right through this mushy fresh ice without even an icebreaker showing the path. This will save a lot of time and energy (think ships saving fuel but this saving can’t be that much really!). This will also mean that exploration for stuff will be feasible. Let’s just hope they don’t find more oil there. But mainly it is minerals and whatever else they can make money out of. Bad news for Egypt though, seems like less ships will be going through the Suez Canal, and so less money into the country, not like we saw any of it anyway.

So some think that soon enough we would actually be able to sail over the north pole. No one said magnetic or geographic but I am guessing both. Now here I see an opportunity to be the first ship to sail over the north pole unaided. Anyone wants to join?

A phenomenon that is not new at all, but never the less still annoying. Who on earth though an electrical bicycle was a good idea? I know let’s take the most efficient method of transport ever invented by man and then add an inefficient electric motor. A bicycle is the perfect way to look green and stay in shape, but the electric bicyle removes all these advantages and just leaves the side effects of cycling, lower fertility for men. An electric car might take emissions down a notch but an electric bike definetly doesn’t. So stop prancing around and either cycle properly or just buy a motorcycle, at least it will improve your social status.

Sometime during 200-2001 the two major utilities in California went bankrupt. What happened there? The Californians were trying to restructure their electricity market towards more liberalisation. They had liberalised the generatin part of the market, while leaving the retail part regulated and thus selling electricity at a fixed cost. Californians being very green, were not happy to have dirty coal power plants in their backyards. The state was dependant on electricity sourced from elsewhere.

Enter a summer that is hotter and dryer than ususal, hydro dams are not producing much and ACs are turned on full blast. Gas prices are going up as well and the wholesale electricity market price jumps up like crazy. So what happens? The retailers are now buying at the higher price but having to sell at the lower regulated price. Eventually one of them goes bankrupt. The second one tried to be shrewd, it managed to sign a contract for a long term power purchase at a very high discount to the high price. Give it some time and things come back to normal and the electricity price drops again. So now the second utility is stuck with this contract and goes bankrupt as well. It is really not a good idea to regulate a part of the supply chain while liberalising another part.

The details of the story really go much deeper than that, and if you want to learn more, I suggest you download this paper. The paper not only discussed the California story but also went through some interesting properties of electricity markets and how they are structured. One of the more interesting ideas that the paper had was that buying power in a long term contract agreement does not systematically mean lower power prices than buying from the spot market. Because in such a case, an arbitrage opportunity would arise, and someone would just buy long term and sell spot making a profit. So overall the price you pay buying long term is the same as the price you pay buying spot.  The paper also sugges some methods to help avoid such crisis again, an interesting read for sure.

Even in the energy business chosing a right name for your joint venture is important. Some PR work and a second thought would have helped the Russians and Nigerians in their latest deal. The Russian energy firm Gazprom signed a $2.5bn deal with Nigeria’s state controlled company to start a new joint venture to build refineries, gas pipes and gas-fired power plants.

While the Nigerians, accustomed to recurring power cuts, will be welcoming the new power plants, I wonder what they would think of the name of the joint venture, Nigaz!

(The bbc article reporting the deal)

So I am back in Egypt for a short period of time and I thought it would be a good idea to have a post that draws form the experience of the Land of the Nile. The amount of air pollution reminded me of a classical example of policy failure. The Egyptian policy-making institutions are not exactly known for their ingenious policies, so let’s get down to the example…

When the rice farmers around Cairo burnt the rice husk that was left over after they picked their crops, they started a new phenomenon miles downwind, the Cairo black cloud. A massive black cloud that hovered over Cairo for days and days. In non-windy days things got even worse as the pollution accumulated. So in their normal fire fighting quick-fix way of doing things, they decided to go for a fine. Every farmer who burns rice husk on their land will pay LE 10,000. (approx. £1,000) A substantial amount in modern day Egypt.

Now the Egyptian farmer might not look it, but years of evolution has made him quite good at avoiding paying money. So how did the farmers get around the policy that took 5 minutes to come up with? They gathered all the rice husk, burnt it on one plot of land and shared the fine. A classic policy failure.