I’ll let the following photos speak for themselves. They were kindly sent to me by Emil Moller, a PhD researcher in the Netherlands, who had a chance to visit the Solucar 11-megawatt solar tower (or solar thermal plant) outside of Seville, Spain. More information about the tower can be found reading this BBC online article, which also has a handy graphic that shows how the technology works. It truly strikes a heavenly pose, and shows the power of concentrating technology. Thanks Emil for sharing these photos with us. It must have been a sight to see in person.

My Clean Break column this week takes a look at the idea of space-based solar power systems and how an agency of the U.S. government is recommending that the idea be given serious consideration, as well as funding on the scale we’ve seen for research into nuclear fusion. The National Security Space Office, which reports to the U.S. Department of Defense, argues that energy security concerns, climate change and technological advancements warrant a massive government investment in space-based solar power systems, which could technically beam gigawatts of clean power back to Earth. It’s proposing a 10-megawatt pilot, which if successful, could spur private investment in commercial ventures, much like early government investment in the Internet and GPS eventually transformed the way we do business.

A 2005 survey of members of the space advocacy community found that 35 per cent of those polled saw space-based solar power (SBSP) to be a top priority for future U.S. space efforts, double the percentage who favoured defense of the planet from destructive asteroids and more than three times those who favoured a manned mission to Mars. The report also states that countries such as Canada (Go Canucks!) have expressed past and current interest.

“The technical feasibility of the concept has never been better and all science and technology development vectors appear to indicate that there is a credible potential for SBSP to be built within a strategically relevant period of time,” the report concludes. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Department of Defense report if it didn’t have some military perks. “To the DoD specifically, beamed energy from space in quantities greater than 5 megawatt-hours has the potential to be a disruptive game changer on the battlefield.”

It goes on to envision “energy on demand” for combat units. Hell, combined with satellite TV the battlefield entertainment possibilities are endless. HDTV in the deserts outside Kandahar. Charging of iPods in the mountains of Pakistan. Now we’re talking.

Biomass gasification as a way to produce clean-burning “syngas” offers a carbon-neutral approach to reducing our dependence on natural gas and fuel oil, whether to generate electricity or heat. It also makes it easier to isolate and capture the CO2 produced from the process, so if it eventually makes economic sense to capture and store the greenhouse gas the technology offers a carbon-negative approach to power and heat generation.

A Vancouver-based company called Nexterra Energy Corp. is making impressive inroads in the market, bolstered last week after it announced an alliance with Johnson Controls Inc. that will see the two companies aggressively pursue commercial projects for Nexterra’s patented biomass gasification system. Already, Nexterra and Johnson Controls have delivered a $20-million system to the University of South Carolina that’s expected to be operational sometime this fall. They hope to deploy similar systems to customers in education, healthcare, government, industrial (particularly forestry companies) and power generation markets.

In the area of power generation, Nexterra’s technology can be combined with conventional steam turbine equipment to produce up to 10 megawatts of electricity. “These modular power plants represent a new standard in biomass power production as the systems are simpler in design, lower cost and cleaner than conventional wood biomass combustion power plants,” the company states on its Web site. “This small scale gasification system allows for reliable and efficient electricity production while decreasing wood transportation costs and start-up time (12 to 14 months).”

This is ideal for markets like Ontario, where a standard offer program (offering a feed-in tariff of 11 cents per kilowatt hour on 10-MW or smaller wind, solar or biomass projects) makes such technology economically attractive. On that note, Nexterra Energy has partnered with a Calgary-based company called Pristine Power to help establish a network of modular gasification power plants throughout British Columbia. “The network will help B.C. forest companies and communities create more value from pine-beetle ravaged forest resources by generating up to 200 megawatts of clean, renewable energy using wood ‘waste’ as fuel.”

Sources tell me that General Electric — specifically, GE Jenbacher, the maker of low-cost, high-efficiency gas engines — is in serious talks with Nexterra about using Jenbacher engines to further improve its gasification system. Currently the system to generate electricity works with steam turbines, but the hope in the next two or three years is to get it running reciprocating engines. This would reduce labour costs, partly because you don’t need steam engineers on site. “It would be a breakthrough. There are a lot of people working on the issue. GE has an army of people working on it,” said one consultant doing work for Nexterra. “The fact that GE right now has discovered them means the genie is out of the bottle. You’re going to see them really grow.”

Bern Grush over at the blog Grush Hour says New York City is making a mistake with its plan to introduce congestion pricing in America’s largest city. The mistake, he says, is in its approach. “The assumed, but apparently not absolutely fixed, technological approach for the system is the E-ZPass tag and beacon system that has operated for some years regionally in the New York area and other U.S. regions,” he writes. “This would be complemented with license plate recognition cameras to enforce payment from motorists that elect not to use E-ZPass.”

In other words, 340 gantries would be set up at access points into Manhattan, similar to the system set up in Toronto to enforce payment on our 407 toll highway. “What a terrible step they are contemplating,” wrote Grush in a recent e-mail to me.

He says the only advantages with this approach is that people are familiar with the technology and the system, while limited in function, works. But it’s also very expensive, complex, is “infrastructure heavy,” and has a more difficult time scaling up if a decision is eventually made to expand the system, which is similar to what has been used in congestion zone in London and Stockholm.

Grush has a point, but as chief scientist of Toronto-based Skymeter Corp., it’s also fair to say he’s biased. Skymeter is attempting to sway New York toward its own approach, which is a pay-as-you-go model that would combine satellite tracking with vehicle location billing. The argument is that such a system could allow city officials to get more creative with congestion pricing (i.e. introduce time-of-day incentives for parking, downtown driving, or charge per mile driven) and could easily expand the reach of the system with little additional cost. No expensive gantries would be needed, though in-car devices would be necessary for anyone entering the city.

The one problem? It’s untested. But that didn’t stop Skymeter from submitting a proposal to NYC Economic Development Corporation in hopes of pursuading the authorities to think outside the box. London is apparently considering the Skymeter approach as a way of expanding its current downtown system, and several other jurisdictions are as well.

It’s certainly worthy of a serious look, because personally, I think all jurisdictions of this size and cost should be attempting to future-proof themselves as much as possible. The gantry approach, while it works today, may proof too inflexible down the road.

So yes, Grush is biased — but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

Okay, maybe the idea of having plug-in hybrids and electric cars that interact with the grid is far off in the future. But we all have to admit that it’s an attractive future. It means as the grid gets cleaner, so do vehicle emissions. It means millions of cars collectively act as a huge battery storage system, drawing power when it’s cheap and selling it back to the grid at a premium. A plug-in future is potentially a grid stabilizer; it also offers a way of smoothing out demand peaks so we don’t have to build extra just-in-case generation.

But getting to this utopia, assuming battery technology will ever be mature enough, requires some highly complex software that can manage the individual connections between car and grid. A Seattle-based software company called V2Green Inc. is getting into the game early, betting that such a world will one day exist. According to the company’s Web site, utilities using V2Green’s software “can remotely control the time and rate at which vehicles charge, minimizing demand spikes and matching load to the availability of intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power.” The company says it plans to launch field trials with “leading U.S. energy companies” beginning in the fourth quarter of 2007 — in other words, beginning now.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a more in-depth story on the company here, based on an interview with founder David Kaplan, 54, a former Microsoft software veteran who, seeing cars like the Chevrolet Volt and Tesla WhiteStar in the not-so-distant future, figured there was serious money to be made in car-to-grid energy management.

BTW: Another plug — if you’ll excuse the pun — for a plug-in hybrid conference that will take place on November 1 and 2 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The PHEV2007 Conference is shaping up to be an insightful, information-packed event. Everybody who’s anybody in the plug-in hybrid universe appears to be attending this conference. Two technical sessions that look particularly interesting deal with battery technologies and vehicle-to-grid applications.