News: Producing, using, saving

A professor investigates how to use leaf "technology" to harness solar power. Another helps architects use dirt to conserve energy. A third looks at ways to squeeze more power from existing systems.

What's the common thread? The broad variety of disciplines that these Portland State professors and others across the campus are using to shape the future of alternative energy.

With oil reserves dwindling and the world's energy appetite escalating, understanding and developing new sources of power is increasingly important. Current research at PSU and across the nation may shine a light toward a green and sustainable energy future.

"For renewable energy to be developed effectively and to be useful, a lot of things need to be understood," says Jennifer Allen, associate director of the PSU Center for Sustainable Processes and Practices.

The breadth of research on campus, she says, is adding to that understanding, from new energy sources, to what motivates people to conserve, to making the Northwest power grid as efficient as possible.

Convinced to conserve

A FUNNY THING happened during the 2001 energy crisis in California. As summer temperatures soared, people turned off their air conditioners—without being asked.

When surveyed about the reason, residents said it wasn't to save money. In fact, prices hadn't started to rise at that point. Rather, by voluntarily curbing their energy consumption, Californians said they felt like they were doing something to help their home state avert an energy crisis. And that made them feel good. Although he's studied consumer behavior for years, surveyor Loren Lutzenhiser (pictured above), professor of urban studies and planning, was surprised.

Before the survey, commissioned by the California Energy Commission, "It was assumed," says Lutzenhiser, "that people would tar and feather you" if you suggested they do without modern conveniences such as air conditioning. "That was the received wisdom, but that's not what happened."

Under the auspices of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, Lutzenhiser has also studied such questions as who's in charge of creating a greener Portland skyline—finding that it's not just architects, but also developers and bankers. And he's looked at how the city of Portland and other Oregon governments decide whether to buy green—finding that it's not just purchasing managers, but a wide range of employees that decides what technology to buy and how to use it. In the future, Lutzenhiser hopes to shed light on how decisions are made by consumers and manufacturers.

There are two broad categories ripe for investigation, he says. First, the types of technology that are brought to market. After all, consumers can buy only from the list of choices they have. The second category is why consumers make the choices they do.

Bottom line, says Lutzenhiser, is understanding what motivates people to buy, not buy, conserve energy or not. This will be crucial as the world grapples with global warming.

[caption] What makes one family use more or less energy than its neighbor? Loren Lutzenhiser, professor of urban studies and planning, is interested in the answer.

Energy like the sun

Squeezing hydrogen atoms together creates heat. It's what the sun does every day—using intense gravity to suck in hydrogen and squash it into a smaller and smaller space, until it fuses.

If you could squeeze hydrogen on Earth, you could produce the power of the sun and deliver plentiful, clean energy. Just one problem: Earthly methods of squeezing hydrogen use more energy than the power produced. Or do they?

Researchers around the world, including John Dash (pictured at left), professor emeritus of physics, are pursuing a way to make hydrogen squeeze itself, so to speak.

The metals titanium and palladium are sort of super sponges for hydrogen. Palladium can attract and absorb up to 900 times its own weight in hydrogen. And when that much hydrogen gets attracted into and squeezed onto the metal, cold nuclear fusion happens. (It's "cold" because no heat is used to squash the atoms together.)

Researchers at a handful of U.S. universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Illinois, are working on developing cold fusion to a scale where it could be useful. There might be more scientists working on the technology except for the stigma.

About 20 years ago, two scientists trumpeted to the press that they had created cold hydrogen fusion. Their claims made them the wunderkind of the age—instant Einsteins. But when only a few scientists of the many who tried could duplicate their claims, the study of cold fusion gained a reputation as pseudoscience and government funding fizzled.

With that kind of skepticism, only a few intrepid scientists, like Dash, continued to investigate cold fusion and its potential for safe and inexhaustible energy.

With funding from PSU and the U.S. Army Research Office, Dash got positive results with his first experiment. He and his student assistants continue to produce incremental improvements in heat output. Their efforts caught the eye of a private, anonymous donor, who has contributed $1 million to Dash's research.

To power up or not

Managers at the aluminum companies along the Columbia River do their job with one eye on the clock. They have to.

From hour to hour they have to decide whether to make aluminum or sell the electricity the process would have used. With their monthly electric bills reaching $10 million or more and prices for electricity bouncing up and down, the chance to make—or miss—a small fortune is colossal. Fortunately, they have Gerald Sheblé (pictured at right), Maseeh Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, to help.

Sheblé is an expert in optimizing systems, especially power systems. When a Texas utility started using Sheblé's methodology, it began saving $3 million a year. Globally, Sheblé has helped more than 40 electric utilities, and he can analyze any system—from massive coal power plants to rooftop solar panels.

Sheblé's current efforts are aimed at helping an Oregon company, Rogue River Wind, develop models for its urban wind turbines, which supply power for a single building, while integrating efficiently and reliably with the Northwest power grid. He's also in contact with Bonneville Power Administration and the Northwest Power Pool, a consortium of utility planning groups, discussing technological changes to optimize power.

Sheblé even looks at futuristic systems. For instance, what if utilities could store excess power in your garage?

It might work like this: Electric cars have large storage batteries that aren't used when a car is not being driven. What if power companies could use that storage capacity, when it is not needed by drivers, for, say, wind power—an off-and-on-again energy source?

Sound like something from a sci-fi novel? Sheblé says a proposal to allow electric utilities to do just that is already making the rounds on Capitol Hill.

Turning down urban heat

Cities are hot. Machinery, cars, buildings—they all spew heat. Even the average human contributes—producing about as much heat as a 60-watt light bulb.

All that warmth adds up. In any good-sized city, downtown temperatures are as much as seven degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside. And all the buildings and roads create a massive heat stockpile that radiates for hours after the sun sets.

Scientists say cities are heat islands and that's where David Sailor associate professor of mechanical engineering, steps in.

Sailor (pictured at right on The Broadway's green roof) studies how much heat is gained or lost by specific activities or items—say, driving to work versus staying home with the air conditioner on. Or planting 100,000 trees versus installing 1,000 green roofs.

Sailor hopes his data will help people understand how to turn the urban heat island's temperature down. And it has.

Until Sailor's research, architects and builders could not evaluate precisely whether a green roof would benefit their project. Did a layer of soil and plants allow a building to absorb less heat and therefore use less air conditioning? Using software developed by Sailor, they can now figure it out.

Sailor is also part of a PSU faculty team mapping Portland and Houston, Texas, block-by-block to determine the precise air temperature coming from asphalt roads and from shady lanes. When he's done, cities will be able to verify whether planting 100,000 trees, for example, will really pay off in lower temperatures.

The project is also surveying residents to determine what they actually do when they hear an air quality alert, which will help governments determine how best to design effective advisory systems.

For Sailor, cooling off the island all starts with the data. "Understanding the causes of the urban heat island," he says, "is the first step in knowing what to change."

Learning from leaves

If you lived inside a leaf, you'd have all the free energy you could want. Sound a little crazy? Scientists have already developed prototypes.

The method is called artificial photosynthesis, and Carl Wamser, professor of chemistry, believes we'll see commercially viable applications within the decade.

A leaf's green chlorophyll membrane absorbs sunlight and uses that solar energy to push electrons that exist in the membrane into the plant cell in a form the plant can use for energy.

Wamser (pictured at left) and about 50 others researchers worldwide are developing synthetic membranes using a similar process to convert sunlight into electricity—on a scale that one day could be used in homes and skyscrapers.

To date, scientists have created artificial membranes that work; however, these prototypes are only about five percent efficient (compared to silicon cells, which can be 10 to 15 percent efficient). But Wamser is optimistic that current research—including his—will one day result in membranes so efficient, durable, and thin they could be embedded in, say, roof shingles or siding to power a building.

"Scientists like to point out," says Wamser, "that in one hour the amount of sunlight that falls on the Earth is more than all the energy used worldwide in an entire year."

Wamser, a longtime solar power enthusiast, is also working with more traditional solar panels. Using a $144,000 U.S. Department of Energy grant, he'll be testing nine configurations of solar panels. The panels are set to begin operation on top of Cramer Hall in summer 2008.

Melissa Steineger, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the article "A Different Casualty Count" in the fall 2007 Portland State Magazine.