Tagged: department of energy

In its Energy Outlook for 2012, the Department of Energy has reduced its estimate of unproven "technically recoverable reserve" (TRR) natural gas in the Marcellus Shale from 410 trillion cubic feet to 141 trillion cubic.

For those of you playing at home, 141 trillion down from 410 trillion represents a nearly one-third  two-thirds reduction in natural gas across the whole Marcellus Shale formation.

But it's still pretty far off from the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) competing estimate, of about 84 trillion cubic feet.

Beacon Power Corporation, a Massachusetts-based renewable energy company, is declaring bankruptcy - after receiving federal funds from the same program that subsidized the failed solar firm Solyndra. 

The company also received funding from New York State.

Last July, Beacon Power celebrated the opening of its new flywheel plant in Stephentown, N.Y.

The flywheels were designed to help modernize the state’s power grid. They act as a sort of shock-absorber, to quickly store and release energy to the grid.

The project received $43 million from the United States Department of Energy, and $2 million from New York’s Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

The possibility of large scale offshore wind on Lake Erie was shelved late this summer, but a group of international scientists still believe the site has potential.

Through a grant from the Department of Energy (DOE), half a dozen researchers from the U.S. and Europe will test new methods of better harnessing wind energy, especially in farms with more than a few rows of turbines.

The team will employ remote sensing technologies, like unmanned aerial vehicles controlled from offshore. The custom devices will produce a three-dimensional analysis of the behavior of winds in Lake Erie.

Turbines and wind farms could be designed differently in the future as a result.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) now estimates that 40 times more gas is waiting to be recovered from the Marcellus Shale than it had thought.

The new number: 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That replaces the previous estimate of a mere 2 trillion cubic feet.

The amount of gas believed to be in the Marcellus Shale is important because higher estimates of gas and monetary returns have made the shale play a bigger political football.

A Department of Energy panel hopes new recommendations — if implemented — will restore the public's trust in hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" for natural gas.

In the last few years, fracking has brought new life to old gas fields around the country. Most of the increasing production comes from dense layers of shale deep underground. By pumping huge deep underground amounts of water, along with smaller amounts of chemicals and sand, drillers can force gas out of shale.

Due in part to fracking, the Energy Information Administration estimates the U.S. now has enough domestic natural gas to supply the country's needs for 100 years, based on 2010 consumption levels.

Managing the power grid is a balancing act. As we flip on our coffee makers and turn on hairdryers, the grid is reacting, breathing harder, to keep up with our demand. A facility in upstate New York is using battery power to try to make walking that tight rope more efficient.

The energy experiment is playing out behind the smokestacks of an old brick coal power plant in Johnson City, N.Y. on a small, snowy lot.

The storage facility is contained in a row of shipping containers elevated on stilts. John Zahurancik, who's overseeing deployment of the project for AES Energy Storage says the trailers contain racks of batteries - about 80,000 of them.

So far this story is pretty easy to understand: the power grid needs to stay balanced to meet our energy needs, batteries store power.  Well here's where we get to the physics lesson.