This Tuesday we met up with Jose Maria Oliveira from the Green Islands project. The Green Islands project is a collaborative enterprise between MIT Portugal and the Portuguese government to provide for the long-term energy self-sufficiency of the Azores. The project is multi-faceted – the main areas of concern include smart energy networks (including various techniques to meet real-time fluctuations in energy demands with renewable sources), societal perceptions of the environment, consumer decision-making, the unique resource options and limitations of each island’s geography and geology, and sustainable transportation.
As an environmental studies major, I was pretty excited about this meeting. It really made me interested in learning more about environmental engineering, since most of the Green Islands research focuses on alternative energy. We talked a lot about the viability of various sources, and how they vary by island. Wind energy seems to be the most promising on Terceira, although if a wave-powered turbine of some sort could be engineered, that might be another good source. What surprised me was the fact that there is no storage system for excess energy produced by the wind turbines at peak gust times, which happen to be at night. Thus EDA, the local electrical company, introduced a three-tiered energy pricing system where energy at night is cheapest and during the day is most expensive. However Jose was saying that the Integrated Island Scenarios research uncovered that many people don’t even know about the system, and that consumers’ bills don’t even break down their consumption at the various prices so that they can change their behavior.
Speaking of technology, Jose was telling us about various cool alternative energy ideas: a concrete box that holds a column of air underwater, which is then compressed upward by waves and drives a turbine when the water moves both up and down (invented in the 80’s). Connected rods that float on the water, the movement of which cranks a turbine. (Here) Pumping water from low ground to higher ground to store excess wind energy, which can be converted into hydropower when the energy production drops below energy demands. Flywheels, which even out small oscillations in energy production and demand to make alternative energy more feasible to energy companies. It was really exciting to hear about how much innovative work has already been done.
The politics of convincing energy companies to adopt alternative energies and encouraging consumer frugality are really interesting and vary a lot by country. In the US, to my limited knowledge, energy companies have started investing in alternative energies to meet consumer demand and get an in on a potentially more profitable energy source in the long term. However it sounded like one of the problems in the Azores is convincing the energy company EDA, which basically has a monopoly on energy production and the electrical grid, to do simple things like list out what proportion of consumers’ energy bills come from which pricing schedules. To some degree it behooves them to keep consumers in the dark so that they spend more, but from a good-citizen and sustainability point of view, it makes no sense, and I am curious to look up what sorts of government incentives and partnerships have been established in the US with energy companies to encourage their good behavior.
One interesting topic of conversation was the differences between the islands. Nine islands, each with their own geographic restrictions and opportunities, make it hard to prescribe one panacea for conversion to renewable energy in the Azores -- although I was impressed that 23% of the islands’ energy already come from renewable sources and that there were days last year when some islands didn’t fire up their conventional energy sources at all.
Corvo is an interesting case study. As the smallest island, it’s too tiny to have a harbor, so it can’t accommodate the boats necessary to construct large wind turbines, despite the good winds that it gets. But there is a strong need for alternative energy because in the winter they have to throw gas and food off boats in the open sea into smaller boats to even get supplies to Corvo. The government pays 40,000 euros every year to transport enough gas, so they are making an investment to install solar panels for all 450 residents’ homes as a way to save money in the long run.
São Miguel is the main testing ground for the program, since it is the largest island and has about half of the total population of the Azores. It has tons of potential for geothermal energy, due to the hot springs and subterranean volcanic activity on the island. However geothermal is harder to engineer here than in the mainland, for physics reasons I didn’t quite follow. It sounded like geothermal works by forcing water into the earth, through areas of high heat, transferring the heat along with the liquid. And this doesn’t work in the Azores very well because the rock here is metamorphic rather than sedimentary and so the basalt is too porous to allow scientists to easily predict the direction of the resulting water flow. (You can see a diagram of the system he was talking about here)
We also talked about electric cars and the feasibility of implementing them on the islands. Jose said that there’s an adoption curve that must be taken into account, which basically mean that people need to see lots of charging stations before they’ll overcome their fear of being stranded with a car with a dead battery (even though research shows people primarily charge at home anyway, but that the stations serve as a mental reassurance mechanism). When I suggested that people just put up dummy charging stations, he said that some people have actually discussed it, amusingly enough. They also talk about range anxiety, which is a quantitative value of how far people will actually drive their electric vehicles from fear of running out of power, regardless of the manufacturer’s predicted range. Jose said that, for example, most people would only drive 100 miles if the range was 150. We also talked about zones of adoption. Generally speaking, people who live in the center of a city will not buy an electric car because their gas costs are relatively low; those who live in the next ring out, however, will see the immediate cost benefits of going electric since they live far enough from the center to have significant gas costs. The next third ring out will not adopt electric cars as quickly because they have more range anxiety. However, electric cars would be great for smoothing out the energy demand peaks and valleys on the islands, since most people charge their cars at night, which would allow for greater harnessing of the better nocturnal wind flows on Serra de Cume.
While we’re on the topic of transportation: public transportation in the Azores (as I can attest) is rather spotty. Most buses only come every one to two hours, and take much longer than going by car. Thus most people don’t use it – if it’s close enough to walk, they will walk, and if it’s far enough to require driving, it’s about 30 minutes to get to anywhere on the island driving your own car, which is about how long it would take to even get on a bus. So it’s not very practical for most people, and there’s not a significant enough tourist population to require it.
One really cool aspect of this talk was that the Green Islands project is very similar to the climate change risk mitigation project I’ll be working on in Cambridge in three weeks, which focuses on energy districting and cogeneration schemes, as well as building retrofitting and analyzing governmental policy, so I’m hoping there will be parallels and lessons to learn from this project. Speaking of policy, Jose told us at the end that the entire project (despite all the good work it has turned out and the methodical way in which they’ve pieced together the various aspects of the program) is in danger of getting its funding cut by the new government as part of various austerity measures. Hopefully the program will receive enough funding to continue operations (even if at a slower pace) until the economy picks back up. It would be a huge shame if this program couldn’t continue.
Laura H
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