Named for Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, Borea began in 2006 and has constructed nearly one-third of Canada’s renewable energy projects, leading the charge in this necessary transition.

Over 70 large-scale projects, comprising over 6800 MW of completely renewable energy, have been completed or are in process.

Borea’s staff boasts over 200 skilled and experienced professionals, with an estimated five hundred site employees across Canada. Thanks to its experience and ability in renewable energy, the company can focus its skills on bringing cost-effective, turnkey alternatives to move the nation’s entire energy grid forward.

Putting the ‘new’ in renewable
Despite the pandemic, Borea’s mission to “deliver renewable with care” is moving ahead without interruption. Borea is using new technologies to improve renewable energy as well.

A major recent example is the Suffield project in Alberta, completed in October 2020. The plant utilizes both bifacial panels and solar tracking technology, generating more power in a smaller space compare to a monofacial panel and fixed tilt racking system.

The union of these two technologies heralds a bold new development in solar energy and may prove instrumental in future plant design.

Suffield’s location in Canada’s Energy Project is no coincidence. Although Canada’s Western provinces are facing a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, they have a far greater resource available; thanks to the flat terrain, they boast the sunniest weather in Canada.

Alberta alone enjoys an average of 1,900 hours of sunshine in the north and 2,300 hours in the south, making it the nation’s sunniest province—and a natural hotbed of solar development.

The Suffield project, boasting 90,000 solar panels organized into ten blocks, will help Canada move down the road toward its renewable energy future and it demonstrates bold new technologies as well.

As their name implies, bifacial solar panels display photovoltaic cells on both sides, substantially increasing their output capacity. But more practically, the bifacial panels mitigate the blockage caused by accumulations of snow. This technology significantly improves the reliability of the solar farm during the frigid winter.

Making light of snow
With many types of solar panels, snow accumulation can at the very least necessitate tedious cleaning, and potentially take whole power plants out of commission. But with bifacial technology, power can still be generated on the panels’ reverse side from sunlight, even from the light reflected off fallen snow.

This advantage provides enough power and heat through the power generation process to melt the snow and hold power generation steady.

Project Engineer Moran Wang explains that as our planet faces the extreme weather that will result from climate change, it will be more essential than ever to maintain a resilient power grid during these events—and bifacial technology can help provide that.

But the bifacial panels are only one half of the Suffield project’s new advantages. Panel tracker technology, which adjusts the panels so that they remain permanently perpendicular to the sun on a single axial, helps the panels maintain constant optimal power production. The result is that their output is far superior to static panels, which in comparison enjoy full sunlight only for a limited time each day.

The second function of the solar tracker is to facilitate the snow removal process. Wang explains that, “If we detect snowfall, the panel will be triggered into a ‘snow-dumping’ mode. That makes it more reliable, in the sense of facing a more extreme environment.”

Tracking technology and bifacial panels could produce as much as 30 percent more energy than traditional panels. This helps achieve more power production in a similar footprint than monofacial with fixed tilt racking.

Or as Wang prefers it, “To achieve the same amount of energy, you have a smaller footprint.”

Bird’s eye view
As project engineer on the Suffield project, Wang also oversaw development of the plant’s weather station, Suffield’s eyes and ears, plus another innovation: an aerial drone outfitted with infrared cameras.

“It’s a huge asset,” says Wang, who pilots the drone himself. The bird’s eye view can highlight panel problems instantly, saving time and money during diagnostic procedures.

“We used to spend a huge amount of money to call in actual aircraft with human pilots and human camera operators to do this kind of service,” Wang recalls. “Now, we can use a tiny little drone operated by someone on-site.”

With the success of the Suffield project, Wang says he believes the next step in renewable energy is increasing energy storage capacity and reliability; keeping the power flowing so energy grids don’t need to fall back on fossil fuel backups.

“I think one missing piece of the puzzle is making it more reliable,” he says. “From there, we can only improve it.”

Advances in battery technology can ensure wind power and solar continue supplying grids even during night hours or inclement weather, bringing renewable energy more in line with Canada’s ever-increasing energy requirements.

But while the Suffield project highlights Borea’s embrace of new ideas, it is but one of the company’s recent projects.

In Saskatchewan, approximately 10 km south of Herbert and approximately 40 km east of Swift Current, the Blue Hill Wind Energy Project is a 175 MW facility comprising 35 wind turbines with a capacity of 5 MW each. This project called for careful planning, as environmental constraints and hot afternoon temperatures presented some unique challenges, which Borea rose to meet.

Carbon-neutral coming
As Borea continues to advance these renewable energy projects as well as the relevant technology involved, the company is still committed to building a carbon-neutral energy grid in Canada.

“I do think renewable energy is the way of the future,” Wang says. He adds that although wind and solar power are hardly cutting-edge ideas, it is only recently that they have become really practical.

He agrees that with the additions of bifacial panels and tracker technology production and implementation costs may increase, but he argues solar technology is still very much an industry in its infancy.

“With everything in human history, we have to let it grow,” he says. “I’m proud to be at the forefront of this.”

The post Innovation in Alberta: Bringing New Technologies to Solar Power<p class="company">Borea Construction</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Named after founder August Claas in 1913, the company has expanded its reach globally to more than 160 countries across five continents. But while the group’s harvesters first reached North America in the 1950s, the CLAAS of America sales unit was formally organized in 1979. Today, there are two operational units in the U.S.; CLAAS Of America Inc. handles sales, while CLAAS Omaha Inc. manages the production of combines for the North American market.

We spoke with CLAAS of America President and General Manager, Eric Raby, in March 2018. More than three years later, it is a very different world but still one that requires agribusiness. Raby and CLAAS Omaha’s new President, Matthias Ristow, laid out the company’s groundwork moving forward. Ristow, who has more than seven years of experience with CLAAS, has recently taken over responsibility at CLAAS Omaha and is supervising the company’s production of new cutting-edge line of combine harvesters.

Now in their second year of production, the company’s LEXION 8000-7000 Series harvesters boast the highest capacity in their class combined with unprecedented fuel efficiency. The machines harvest an average of 20.3 acres per hour, which the company calculates to as much as 31 percent higher than other harvesters. This is largely due to its patented APS SYNFLOW HYBRID threshing and separation system. Pre-separating up to thirty percent of the grain before it even reaches the threshing units and twin separation rotors, the unique system provides higher output using less fuel while not damaging the crop itself. “This is a completely new range of combines, from top to bottom,” Raby remarks. “You never think that combines can any get more capacity or more efficient, but we find ways to do it.”

In addition to its harvesting efficiency, the LEXION DYNAMIC POWER system helps farmers reduce fuel costs by being up to thirty percent more fuel-efficient than competitors. This helps the machine harvest up to 7,240 bu/hr and unload more than five bushels per second. Finally, a DYNAMIC COOLING system and central lubrication system help keep the engine and all moving parts running smoothly, reducing maintenance and downtime.

The new LEXION is merely the newest addition to CLAAS’s extensive product line, which extends from combine harvesters, forage harvesters and tractors to mowers, tedders, rakes, and square and round balers. The new harvesters also sport the company’s seed-green color. Raby hopes this will reinforce the company brand beyond traditional marketing.

As Raby described, the company is in the midst of a transition that began before the pandemic. For the past five years, he estimates, CLAAS has been increasing its distribution network. The result, he says, is more cohesive; far from increasing complexity by adding more vendors and products, the practice actually helps simplify the distribution network—in defiance of traditional logic. “It’s really easy to make things complex,” he says. “It’s more difficult to make things simple.”

By diversifying the distributor network, the company offers a closer relationship with its dealers and end-users, superior to a simple transactional relationship. Raby says the results have been positive, with no signs of abating. “We’ve seen good growth in the past few years, and it looks like the current trajectory, especially with current trends in the market, will continue to propel us forward.”

This growth may well help CLAAS continue to diversify its product line. Raby points out that, while CLAAS of America’s product line is extensive, it does not yet supply equipment for planting, tillage or spraying—all vital components of the farming process. Yet he and the leadership team hope that, by expanding its distribution network, the company’s suppliers may be more amenable to this development.

“Over time, not only do they become more dependent on us, but we become dependent on them,” he says, developing a relationship that is more than a mere convenience of transaction. “We partner with dealers on the basis of promoting that business together,” he continues. “When we’re dependent on each other, it becomes a relationship that seems to be much more synergistic.”

This reflects CLAAS’s desire to develop close relationships not merely with suppliers but with end-user farmers as well. The company has a history of staying in touch with vendors and customers long after agricultural shows. On a smaller scale, the company goes directly to the source. In ‘customer clinics,’ company sales representatives and product specialists meet with dealers and customers to discuss harvesting practices and harvesting issues, and to collect performance feedback from customers.

As an essential business related to food production, CLAAS of America was largely unaffected by COVID shutdown measures; indeed, Raby relates that, though many employees worked remotely, the company more than rose to the challenge. “Despite the adversity that the pandemic brought, we were still able to deliver our best fiscal year ever.”

Yet, so much of CLAAS’s business model remains face-to-face. It is difficult to demonstrate a combine harvester virtually, after all, and the company is looking forward to resuming in-person farm shows throughout the country.

Thanks to successful pre-pandemic planning and CLAAS’s role in an essential industry, its goals remain steady and ambitious. “Our goal, over the next five years, was to double the size of our business in North America,” Raby recalls of the 2019 decision. “That’s a pretty tall order.” Yet bold new developments are keeping the company on schedule to achieve this.

It recently opened a trailblazing new tractor factory in Le Mans, France. The product of three years of development and €40 million in investment, this ‘Future Factory’ will utilize the latest digital technologies such as virtual reality throughout all stages of assembly. Additionally, new automated guided vehicles (AGVs) move tractors around the facility and are capable of moving up to twenty tons of material at a time. The result is unprecedented production totals. When fully up to speed, CLAAS predicts the factory will produce up to 13,000 tractors annually.

The company’s move into automated vehicles is further reflected in its new minority shareholding stake in Dutch start-up AgXeed, which is working to advance automated farm machinery. Raby describes this, like its customer relationship, as symbiotic. “This gives us an opportunity to start to leverage the technology that they have…with some of the tractor savvy that we have. So that’s very exciting.”

But closer to home may be where CLAAS’s most effective development is taking shape. The company’s new training academy, 20,000 square feet of space in Omaha that is the product of two years of development, heralds a bold new chapter in the company’s labor recruitment, workforce development and dealer training. The academy hosts the company’s new apprenticeship program, mirrored on the same system, which has built and maintained the German economy for centuries.

Apprentices work at CLAAS in a laboratory setting, learning the intricacies of agricultural machinery. The second half of the program, partnered with Omaha’s own Metropolitan Community College, provides further academic and practical training. After three years, apprentices take an exam administered by the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest. The program is globally respected and provides candidates with accreditation that opens doors to employment anywhere in the world. Ristow says that this particular apprenticeship program, while new to North America, will help provide a steady supply of skilled labor. “It’s pretty much the backbone of the German economy, a continuous supply of qualified employees,” he says.

This global reciprocity that makes the apprenticeship program powerful, as Ristow notes that CLAAS operates similar programs in Russia and Hungary as well. “Everyone who has that certificate is known to have a certain level of knowledge,” he says. Finally, while the program is designed to move employees into CLAAS’s production side, they can easily move to service as well. “They have the training; they have the know-how,” Ristow says, “and they should be of interest to our service team as well.”

With these developments and despite increases in steel and fuel prices, CLAAS’s team is confident about the future. The company earned the Equipment Dealers Association’s dealer choice award just before this writing, its third such award in four years, demonstrating its strong customer service prowess. Yet new product developments are on the horizon, and the company is already increasing its production capacity to accommodate them. Despite the cyclical nature of agriculture, CLAAS remains a constant. As it looks ahead to future decades of service, the company will always be outstanding in its field—in every sense of the phrase.

The post Farming For the Future: New Developments, Facilities and Labor Practices<p class="company">CLAAS of America</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

After years of patient research and development in its Dayton, Ohio headquarters, Aeroseal is helping to create hyper-efficient ducts to help home and building owners live and work more cheaply and environmentally responsibly. With proper implementation of its technology, the company hopes to reduce building carbon emissions by one gigaton each year.

Its flagship product is an aerosolized, water-based, non-toxic formula which is injected into duct networks. The formula is then naturally drawn to any cracks, leaks or incomplete seals in the network, over which it then forms completely airtight seals guaranteed for at least ten years, and has been stress-tested for a potential forty-year lifespan.

The process can range from several hours to as short as sixty minutes, depending on the size of the house in question, and patented sensors provide real-time air efficiency updates. Upon treatment completion, customers receive a printed certificate of air quality and efficiency, as part of Aeroseal’s guarantee of quality.

The company also offers commercial duct sealing, helping raise the energy efficiency and air quality of hospitals, office buildings, high-rise apartments, university dormitories, and military complexes. As an example, the company recently completed a major overhaul of Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), performing duct-sealing work on two high-rise towers. Aeroseal was able to reduce air loss from over 15,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM) to 257, an average leakage reduction of 98.3 percent.

As well as improving ductwork in existing construction, the company offers full building envelope sealing of ongoing construction projects through its AeroBarrier technology. Using a single crew, Aeroseal can provide complete air sealing in one-third of the time needed for manual sealing, with the entire process taking between sixty and ninety minutes.

The result is a fully sealed and pressurized building envelope guaranteed to meet any ENERGY STAR®, LEED, Passive House, or Net Zero requirement. The technology can be applied pre- or post-drywall (sheetrock), and will adhere to various building materials, including drywall, treated or untreated lumber, metal, and oriented strand board (OSB). AeroBarrier can help contractors save money, time, and infrastructure, making it the ideal building envelope sealant.

As an example, Aeroseal was contracted to provide sealing to a Seattle area townhouse complex. The developer’s stated goal was to provide energy efficiency of twenty percent over code cost-effectively. Using AeroBarrier helped drop the townhouses’ ACH50 air loss from an average of 9.28 to 1.49, helping the development earn a five-star Green Built rating. An ACH50 rating indicates the number of times that the air volume changes per hour at fifty pascals pressure differential and shows the energy efficiency of a building.

The company estimates that ninety-five percent of all American homes have leaky ducts and that an average of thirty percent of heating costs pay for wasted air, adding up to $25 billion in annual waste in the USA alone. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) states that the typical home loses between twenty-five percent and forty percent of its conditioned air due to leaky ducts, forcing heaters and air conditioning units to work harder, wear out sooner, and consume more energy. Aeroseal’s products can help homes and businesses operate at maximum efficiency, saving money, infrastructure, and irreplaceable natural resources.

Additionally, sealed ducts mean higher air quality through dust reduction. Particularly in older homes and offices with equally old ductwork, Aeroseal can help block dust, allergens, and other pollutants from entering. The clean air is also low-humidity, preventing mold build-up in largely unreachable duct networks. Finally, sealed ducts provide greater comfort through superior air flow and even temperatures, as poorly sealed homes may be warmer and stuffier on upper floors and colder below. Aeroseal provides comfortable living and peace of mind in homes and offices of any size.

The company’s story begins in 1993 with Dr. Mark Modera, an engineering professor at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and the University of California, Davis, who today serves as Aeroseal’s Scientific Advisor. While working at the national laboratory energy efficiency projects, Dr. Modera discovered massive energy inefficiency in plain sight. “He learned there was an enormous problem with leaky ductwork and the role that plays in inefficient homes and buildings,” says Peter Eberly, Senior Director of Marketing.

Dr. Modera’s new product was well-received, but he found it difficult to balance his projects with his academic career and sold the technology to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning giant Carrier. From there, it landed on the desk of Amit Gupta, at the time a product manager at Carrier but now Aeroseal’s Chief Executive Officer. Gupta had developed a reputation for embracing unconventional projects, so Dr. Modera’s work intrigued him.

“As he learned more and more about the duct-sealing technology… he realized that it had enormous potential, from a market and ‘fit’ standpoint,” Eberly says. More specifically, the product had a fundamentally positive potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Amit recognized that at a big company like Carrier, this was “not even a rounding error,” but he had the opportunity to go private. With the help of some friends and family, Amit worked to acquire the technology from Carrier, and Aeroseal as a company was born twelve years ago.

From such humble beginnings, today Aeroseal has serviced over 200,000 homes and earned awards from the likes of Popular Science and the United States Department of Energy’s ‘Energy 100’ award. Eberly and his colleagues see it as a ‘right place, right time’ business. While growth has been steady, this spiked last year as the company approached outside investment groups including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the Bill Gates-led energy investment fund, to accelerate the company’s technologies, advance its mission, and become the default in duct and building envelope-sealing solutions.

The funding is being invested into Aeroseal’s research and development (R&D), all of which is done in-house. “We have an extensive engineering and R&D team,” Eberly remarks. “We’re constantly looking to make the equipment faster and more efficient.”

While the products are simple and easily applied, Eberly says the company is working to upscale production to meet growing demand. “The key for us, from an R&D perspective, is to make a seal faster, less expensive, and more efficient for our dealer partners who do this work.”

The technology, at its core, has stayed the same over time. What has unmistakably changed, however, is the growing importance of improving building efficiency, which Eberly says tends to be overlooked as a carbon contributor. “Folks think of cars. Folks think of manufacturing,” he says. “They don’t think of their houses or buildings that they’re living in as greenhouse gas contributors.” He elaborates that, in traditional thinking, leaky ductwork was seen as an inescapable construction reality.

Fortunately, Aeroseal’s primary advantage in combating climate change is its ability to provide consumers with a largely passive solution. “It doesn’t require them to make a contribution or a difference, doesn’t require them to change their lifestyle,” Eberly says, adding that a single afternoon duct-sealing appointment can solve a building’s efficiency problems for years, if not for its entire lifespan.

Legislation such as the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act provides significant tax incentives for consumers to patronize companies like Aeroseal. The technology is one of several highlighted as an energy improvement measure. At the more local level, the company has dealers in all fifty states and in twenty-seven countries, overwhelmingly through solar and HVAC contractors and providers.

Eberly notes that, in addition to government incentives, changes in local building codes have spurred the company’s expansion. “Adoption of our technologies often comes in bursts geographically,” he remarks. “Our technologies make it easier… to ensure that code is met.” As Aeroseal continues to grow, new management roles in policy management and international business development will continue to help the company navigate domestic and global building codes and business opportunities.

Aeroseal is rapidly moving beyond its initial start-up phase and, as such, has been developing its own unique culture. This is particularly a passion project of CEO Amit Gupta, who realizes it must exemplify next-generation business.

“Company culture isn’t just an enabler—it is vital to becoming a great company, to meeting our business objectives, and hitting our lofty ambitions,” Eberly says. “It is fuel for our business success and the lynchpin to ensuring we have the right team in place to tackle our big goals.” To this end, Gupta takes a personal stake in ensuring new hires are well-acquainted with the company’s core values, and that veterans reacquaint themselves regularly as well.

As Aeroseal’s growth continues unabated, Eberly and his colleagues are confident that more consumers will see the simplicity and effectiveness of the company’s offerings. It has built solid stockpiles of materials and parts to keep costs manageable and lead times low and is regularly testing secondary materials to serve as alternates. This ensures that it suffers very little downtime, as more consumers realize that the problem of leaky ductwork—once thought to be part of the cost of living—can be solved quite easily.

Moreover, Aeroseal acknowledges that climate change solutions must be global. “This is not just a North American challenge,” Eberly says, “and there’s appetite for these solutions at all corners of the globe.”

The post Breathing Easier: Simple and Effective Duct Sealing for Better Air Quality and Energy Efficiency<p class="company">Aeroseal</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

In Andover, Massachusetts, 25 miles (40 kilometers) outside Boston, there’s a well-established company that has shown its mettle through hard-earned experience with a consistent focus on its customers.

It’s not surprising, then, that ACE Solar has been ranked the #1 solar contractor in Massachusetts for six years in a row.

With combined decades of experience in solar and a reputation for professionalism, ACE continues to brighten the future of renewables around its home of New England.

Those professionals who would one day comprise ACE Solar entered the industry in 2012. ACE traces its origins to their 2015 regrouping, organizing themselves around a common purpose.

Building on combined experience, ACE expanded quickly, acquiring numerous area subcontractors and earning its place among New England’s leading solar providers and construction contractors.

In only seven years in business, ACE has installed over 300 megawatts of solar energy, making it one of the largest and busiest outfits of its kind in New England.

Today, ACE offers solar installation and maintenance experience in greenfield, brownfield, landfill, and roof arrays from 2 kilowatts to 20 megawatts. The company has also acquired a large assemblage of subcontractors, 86 in all, to facilitate ACE’s commercial and residential solar projects.

“We’re positioned nicely for the onslaught of growth in renewable energy in the solar space,” says Bob Kiley, Co-founder, Managing Partner, and Director of Sales. As both inflation and the relative price of fossil fuel energy continues to rise, Kiley is confident more customers will see the long-term value of investing in solar.

In addition to these market forces, ACE’s experience and customer focus continue to provide it with uninterrupted growth, excepting the pandemic-related slowdown. “At the end of the day we’re a client-driven company,” says Co-founder and Director of Operations Eric McLean, who himself has over 15 years in the solar industry.

McLean has an interesting take on ACE. “On the residential side, we’re a home improvement contractor,” he says, comparing ACE’s work to installing kitchens and the like. “To homeowners, their homes are their castles, so it’s important to them.”

He adds that, in contrast, after dealing with the residential side ACE must switch gears when dealing with commercial clients: “On the commercial side, we’re a general contractor, and we need to act professionally, stand up to our work, and really meet our clients’ needs.”

By putting themselves in their clients’ shoes, ACE’s team is able to empathize and communicate better with the company’s client base. “From the top down, Bob and I will bend over backwards to make sure we complete what we’re contracted for in the best manner we can, and drive home that client focus,” says McLean.

While ACE does boast 86 employees, it’s remarkable how its executive staff still get on the phone to deal with every customer project. Thanks to this nimbleness, ACE has weathered the tide of COVID, supply chain mishaps, and economic shortfalls.

In contracting, mishaps and setbacks are inevitable, McLean says. “To a homeowner or building owner, that can be a big deal; how you then handle it is what makes you a good or bad contractor and makes the experience good. From the top down, we strive for that.”

He mentions how ACE does not upsell its services and strives for clear communication, even when it’s not necessarily in the company’s best interest. “We’re not a nickel-and-dime contractor,” he remarks.

Which brings us to ACE’s carefully cultivated company culture. First of all, Kiley says, “We look to recruit and retain.” ACE offers its employees numerous incentives including fair and competitive compensation, profit-sharing measures, and equity participation in company ownership.

Yet perhaps above all is the company’s largely “hands-off” attitude toward its multitude of subcontractors. With all ACE’s experience behind them, the management staff has intimate knowledge of their subcontractors’ capabilities, deftly assigning each contractor the projects that suit their skills. As Kiley remarks, ACE’s team sets up a secure balance of trust with both employees and subcontractors.

“We give them the power and the tools to do their job, and I think we set an example for them in how to deal with issues, problems, and resolutions,” he says.

Several recent projects exemplify ACE’s growing capabilities, scale, and skills. A recent project with local solar partner Catalyze has ACE building a large solar plant in the southern Massachusetts town of Blackstone.

Located on a repurposed dairy farm, the plant will comprise nearly 16,000 solar panels to generate 3 megawatts and 6.4 megawatt hours of energy to the surrounding residents and businesses. Expected to be up and running by the time of this publication, the Blackstone project will power over 700 homes and displace 6,500 tons of carbon dioxide from the air—the equivalent of the exhaust from 1,200 cars.

Another project to showcase ACE’s capabilities and scale was the provision of integrated solar power for Arsenal Yards, a mixed-use, smart growth development in the Boston satellite city of Watertown. More than just an apartment building, Arsenal Yards comprises a number of discrete structures such as a hotel and parking garage, each with its own set of engineering challenges.

As all new construction must include renewable or solar energy infrastructure, per state law, ACE was the natural choice for the job and was consulted for its expertise in the design and build of such projects. But the biggest challenge was Arsenal Yards’ urban location—the facility itself, including all storefronts and the parking garage, had to remain open during construction. ACE aced it. “The build, challenging as it was, can’t beat solar,” Kiley says with satisfaction.

A third project, well demonstrating ACE’s versatility, was the dual contract to install panels at the middle school and high school in the small town of Auburn, just south of Worcester. Both these schools, opened within the last ten years, meet Massachusetts’ requirement for renewable energy, and gave ACE a rare opportunity to explain the benefits of solar power to the next generation.

Bolduc recounts how the company to set up kiosks to explain its operations and solar power in general to students and curious visitors.

But one of ACE’s ongoing projects may be its most ambitious yet: building a solar farm in one of Massachusetts’ famous cranberry bogs. “That’s a little challenging, from a design and construction standpoint,” Kiley remarks dryly. As the harvest season cannot be paused, ACE must work around the bog’s nearly century-old vines and take care not to disrupt operations.

“We’re veterans in solar, and we have the experience to accomplish difficult projects,” says McLean, adding that this project reflects ACE’s all-round ability with the most complex challenges. “There’s not one we can’t overcome.”

While these achievements exemplify ACE’s ability with large-scale projects, the many smaller projects remain the company’s bread-and-butter.

Even with utility prices rising, many potential clients, both residential and commercial, initially consider solar to be unreasonably expensive. As director of marketing and technology, Casey Bolduc notes that ACE’s customer focus means empathizing with clients and not trying to upsell solar features.

“It’s more of a consultative approach when we work with clients,” Bolduc says. “We get into the costs that you’re offsetting, and that makes it more tangible.”

Kiley breaks it down to simple economics for clients. “In our proposal, we give them the predicted cash flows of the system for the next twenty years,” he says. “In most cases, the return on investment for residential solar is in the five-, six-, seven-year range,” and he predicts that the trend will continue as fossil fuel energy prices continue to rise.

As ACE approaches its eighth year in business, the company is emerging from the COVID-induced slowdown to take on new projects, as well as pick up some older ones where they left off.

Solar subsidies, such as Massachusetts’ SMART program, continue to provide market initiatives for consumers to switch. And while pre-pandemic, ACE had planned to expand into new markets in the Carolinas and the Midwest, its leadership team is content to remain closer to home, as New England provides numerous markets ripe for expansion.

The post Leading Through Expertise<p class="company">ACE Solar</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Named for Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, Borea began in 2006 and has constructed nearly one-third of Canada’s renewable energy projects, leading the charge in this necessary transition.

Over 70 large-scale projects, comprising over 6800 MW of completely renewable energy, have been completed or are in process.

Borea’s staff boasts over 200 skilled and experienced professionals, with an estimated five hundred site employees across Canada. Thanks to its experience and ability in renewable energy, the company can focus its skills on bringing cost-effective, turnkey alternatives to move the nation’s entire energy grid forward.

Putting the ‘new’ in renewable
Despite the pandemic, Borea’s mission to “deliver renewable with care” is moving ahead without interruption. Borea is using new technologies to improve renewable energy as well.

A major recent example is the Suffield project in Alberta, completed in October 2020. The plant utilizes both bifacial panels and solar tracking technology, generating more power in a smaller space compare to a monofacial panel and fixed tilt racking system.

The union of these two technologies heralds a bold new development in solar energy and may prove instrumental in future plant design.

Suffield’s location in Canada’s Energy Project is no coincidence. Although Canada’s Western provinces are facing a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, they have a far greater resource available; thanks to the flat terrain, they boast the sunniest weather in Canada.

Alberta alone enjoys an average of 1,900 hours of sunshine in the north and 2,300 hours in the south, making it the nation’s sunniest province—and a natural hotbed of solar development.

The Suffield project, boasting 90,000 solar panels organized into ten blocks, will help Canada move down the road toward its renewable energy future and it demonstrates bold new technologies as well.

As their name implies, bifacial solar panels display photovoltaic cells on both sides, substantially increasing their output capacity. But more practically, the bifacial panels mitigate the blockage caused by accumulations of snow. This technology significantly improves the reliability of the solar farm during the frigid winter.

Making light of snow
With many types of solar panels, snow accumulation can at the very least necessitate tedious cleaning, and potentially take whole power plants out of commission. But with bifacial technology, power can still be generated on the panels’ reverse side from sunlight, even from the light reflected off fallen snow.

This advantage provides enough power and heat through the power generation process to melt the snow and hold power generation steady.

Project Engineer Moran Wang explains that as our planet faces the extreme weather that will result from climate change, it will be more essential than ever to maintain a resilient power grid during these events—and bifacial technology can help provide that.

But the bifacial panels are only one half of the Suffield project’s new advantages. Panel tracker technology, which adjusts the panels so that they remain permanently perpendicular to the sun on a single axial, helps the panels maintain constant optimal power production. The result is that their output is far superior to static panels, which in comparison enjoy full sunlight only for a limited time each day.

The second function of the solar tracker is to facilitate the snow removal process. Wang explains that, “If we detect snowfall, the panel will be triggered into a ‘snow-dumping’ mode. That makes it more reliable, in the sense of facing a more extreme environment.”

Tracking technology and bifacial panels could produce as much as 30 percent more energy than traditional panels. This helps achieve more power production in a similar footprint than monofacial with fixed tilt racking.

Or as Wang prefers it, “To achieve the same amount of energy, you have a smaller footprint.”

Bird’s eye view
As project engineer on the Suffield project, Wang also oversaw development of the plant’s weather station, Suffield’s eyes and ears, plus another innovation: an aerial drone outfitted with infrared cameras.

“It’s a huge asset,” says Wang, who pilots the drone himself. The bird’s eye view can highlight panel problems instantly, saving time and money during diagnostic procedures.

“We used to spend a huge amount of money to call in actual aircraft with human pilots and human camera operators to do this kind of service,” Wang recalls. “Now, we can use a tiny little drone operated by someone on-site.”

With the success of the Suffield project, Wang says he believes the next step in renewable energy is increasing energy storage capacity and reliability; keeping the power flowing so energy grids don’t need to fall back on fossil fuel backups.

“I think one missing piece of the puzzle is making it more reliable,” he says. “From there, we can only improve it.”

Advances in battery technology can ensure wind power and solar continue supplying grids even during night hours or inclement weather, bringing renewable energy more in line with Canada’s ever-increasing energy requirements.

But while the Suffield project highlights Borea’s embrace of new ideas, it is but one of the company’s recent projects.

In Saskatchewan, approximately 10 km south of Herbert and approximately 40 km east of Swift Current, the Blue Hill Wind Energy Project is a 175 MW facility comprising 35 wind turbines with a capacity of 5 MW each. This project called for careful planning, as environmental constraints and hot afternoon temperatures presented some unique challenges, which Borea rose to meet.

Carbon-neutral coming
As Borea continues to advance these renewable energy projects as well as the relevant technology involved, the company is still committed to building a carbon-neutral energy grid in Canada.

“I do think renewable energy is the way of the future,” Wang says. He adds that although wind and solar power are hardly cutting-edge ideas, it is only recently that they have become really practical.

He agrees that with the additions of bifacial panels and tracker technology production and implementation costs may increase, but he argues solar technology is still very much an industry in its infancy.

“With everything in human history, we have to let it grow,” he says. “I’m proud to be at the forefront of this.”

The post Innovation in Alberta: Bringing New Technologies to Solar Power<p class="company">Borea Construction</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

In the heart of Canada’s Energy Province, one company has emerged as the natural leader in this necessary field. With nine years in business so far, Prolium Industries offers bold new technology to make oil and gas tank cleaning and storage easier, safer and more convenient than ever before.

Company founder and President Brad Cruikshank joined several other engineers to start his company back in 2012. “We were fortunate that we had a large market in Canada’s oil and gas sector, and we just saw a niche in the industry,” he remarked when we first interviewed him two years ago.

Now, and in a very different world, Prolium has expanded beyond its headquarters outside Calgary to field offices in Newfoundland and just outside Edmonton. With this national reach, Prolium can coordinate tank cleaning and servicing efforts anytime, anywhere.

With its highly specialized staff, Prolium’s team can work with clients and inspectors to ensure all tank operations meet API653-code standards. Additionally, the company’s engineers work equally closely with all clients over design specifications. Ensuring all potential discrepancies or design conflicts are identified, Prolium can then advise the best project route in terms of safety and efficiency.

Indeed, Prolium can handle all aspects of tank servicing and cleaning in-house, thanks to its versatile staff. General contracting and construction management services ensure proper procurement, scheduling and budget tracking, as well as key performance indicators and quality control.

Qualified technicians and labourers provide both CWB and B-Pressure welding and pipefitting. Finally, Prolium’s fabrication facility ensures any needed components, such as pipes or other structures, can be fashioned to spec.

With all the services for tank cleaning and servicing available in-house, Prolium is also able to manage every aspect of projects through its industry-leading cost-control system.

Cruikshank notes how the company has earned a reputation of dependability with predictable results. “Prolium has a reputation for doing repeat business with major oil and gas producers, transporters and refiners,” he says, adding that Prolium’s ability to develop accurate estimates and consistently meet targets sets it well above industry averages. “Our cost controls system is as industry-leading as our safety program.”

Prolium’s cost control system maximises efficiency, arguably the most important project success factor in a service-based industry. “Our control system allows us to reduce the overall schedule for any given project to take place, ultimately reducing costs to our clients regardless of market conditions,” Cruikshank says. An experienced team of project managers also helps deliver consistent results on or under budget.

This experienced team is an extension of Prolium’s own business model. On each project, Prolium’s assigned team works so closely with clients that they are almost regarded as employees by completion of the task.

While these clients learn to share Prolium’s philosophy of safety, quality, and efficiency, and tend to offer repeat business, Prolium’s teams increase their reliability and efficiency with experience gained on specific projects. Over time, designated and highly specialized teams will be available for equally specialized tasks.

“This business model has been incredibly successful with many of our largest clients across Canada,” Cruikshank says.

All these in-house services occur under Prolium’s safety umbrella. Prolium’s commitment to safety remains the company’s primary motivator, and its enduring success. Over the past three years, the company’s technicians have logged over 500,000 exposure hours without a single recordable injury, lost workday, or recordable incident report.

These numbers are simply the best vindication of Prolium’s commitment to safety standards, and the workplace culture it has built to support this.

In its most recent developments, Prolium and its subsidiary Proterra Energy have expanded their service portfolio to include oil-carrying railcars. “Over the past year, the Prolium Group has increased its focus on innovative solutions for entry-less tank cleaning, which adds a huge factor of safety by eliminating or reducing risks associated with these types of work activities,” Cruikshank reports.

While there is less demand on oil pipelines, Cruikshank remarks how demand for oil tank railcars has increased to fill the gap. Without giving away insider info, he explains how Prolium can now clean rail cars containing crude oil, heavy fuel oil, asphalt and other heavy, fume-rich products mostly without the need for any human entry.

“This can be done right at a client’s job site, saving them time and money by not having to mobilize their rail cars to a fixed cleaning/repair facility.”

With Prolium’s experience in both confined-space and entry-less cleaning solutions, this was a natural evolution and extension of the company’s skill. Thanks to Prolium’s previous experience in remote cleaning, Cruikshank remarks how this niche skill sets it above its competitors.

“From what we can tell, our competition simply can’t compete with us from a safety or technology standpoint, which ultimately reduces the overall cost to our customers,” he says. The new technology not only reduces exposure man-hours, thereby reducing safety risks, but is also faster than other leading cleaning methods.

Prolium has even further intensified its commitment to worksite safety over the course of the pandemic. “We encourage a high volume of reporting of hazard IDs and ‘near misses’,” Cruikshank reports.

An internal company committee comprising representatives from the company’s offices across Canada makes constant reports and revisions “almost in real time,” as Cruikshank describes it. “With this approach, we can react proactively instead of reactively when it comes to safety, keep our employees vigilant and safe, and projects running smoothly.”

As a result, the company’s operations have been left largely untouched by COVID-19. “We were able to understand the risk; develop and implement safe working procedures almost immediately,” Cruikshank says, “and as a result, COVID has had little direct impact on our ability to keep people working.”

As experts in worksite safety, Prolium’s staff views COVID as simply another risk to its workforce, albeit a more serious one. But thanks to its track record, the company is again proving itself a beacon for others to follow.

“In many cases, our clients have looked to us as the example of how to safely perform work through the pandemic,” Cruikshank says.

In a rapidly changing labour and energy market, Cruikshank credits his team and Prolium’s business model for the company’s ongoing success. Through years of economic upheavals, pandemics and climate change, Prolium and its staff have continued to adapt.

“Since inception, we have maintained key individuals and crews who enjoy working for Prolium because of the culture and pride in workmanship,” he says. “I believe that nine years of being in business is a testament to our employees’ commitment to our values, level of safety and our approach to long-term client relationships.”

As our world enters a post-COVID era, Prolium is ready to help the energy sector regain its strength. Canada’s oil and gas industry has some of the most stringent safety and production standards in the world, and Prolium is well-positioned to help players operate in this challenging industry in an acceptably safe and efficient way.

New technologies in carbon emissions reduction, plus new energy sources such as Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) and hydrogen will provide access for new players. “We are proud to be a part of the Canadian energy industry and look forward to being involved in the energy transition,” Cruikshank says.

Canada will still need intelligent and talented individuals who will lead the nation through its energy transition, he says, and adds, “As Canadians, we simply need to continue to support Canadian oil and gas.”

The post Your Tank Experts<p class="company">Prolium Industries</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Named after founder August Claas in 1913, the company has expanded its reach globally to more than 160 countries across five continents. But while the group’s harvesters first reached North America in the 1950s, the CLAAS of America sales unit was formally organized in 1979. Today, there are two operational units in the U.S.; CLAAS Of America Inc. handles sales, while CLAAS Omaha Inc. manages the production of combines for the North American market.

We spoke with CLAAS of America President and General Manager, Eric Raby, in March 2018. More than three years later, it is a very different world but still one that requires agribusiness. Raby and CLAAS Omaha’s new President, Matthias Ristow, laid out the company’s groundwork moving forward. Ristow, who has more than seven years of experience with CLAAS, has recently taken over responsibility at CLAAS Omaha and is supervising the company’s production of new cutting-edge line of combine harvesters.

Now in their second year of production, the company’s LEXION 8000-7000 Series harvesters boast the highest capacity in their class combined with unprecedented fuel efficiency. The machines harvest an average of 20.3 acres per hour, which the company calculates to as much as 31 percent higher than other harvesters. This is largely due to its patented APS SYNFLOW HYBRID threshing and separation system. Pre-separating up to thirty percent of the grain before it even reaches the threshing units and twin separation rotors, the unique system provides higher output using less fuel while not damaging the crop itself. “This is a completely new range of combines, from top to bottom,” Raby remarks. “You never think that combines can any get more capacity or more efficient, but we find ways to do it.”

In addition to its harvesting efficiency, the LEXION DYNAMIC POWER system helps farmers reduce fuel costs by being up to thirty percent more fuel-efficient than competitors. This helps the machine harvest up to 7,240 bu/hr and unload more than five bushels per second. Finally, a DYNAMIC COOLING system and central lubrication system help keep the engine and all moving parts running smoothly, reducing maintenance and downtime.

The new LEXION is merely the newest addition to CLAAS’s extensive product line, which extends from combine harvesters, forage harvesters and tractors to mowers, tedders, rakes, and square and round balers. The new harvesters also sport the company’s seed-green color. Raby hopes this will reinforce the company brand beyond traditional marketing.

As Raby described, the company is in the midst of a transition that began before the pandemic. For the past five years, he estimates, CLAAS has been increasing its distribution network. The result, he says, is more cohesive; far from increasing complexity by adding more vendors and products, the practice actually helps simplify the distribution network—in defiance of traditional logic. “It’s really easy to make things complex,” he says. “It’s more difficult to make things simple.”

By diversifying the distributor network, the company offers a closer relationship with its dealers and end-users, superior to a simple transactional relationship. Raby says the results have been positive, with no signs of abating. “We’ve seen good growth in the past few years, and it looks like the current trajectory, especially with current trends in the market, will continue to propel us forward.”

This growth may well help CLAAS continue to diversify its product line. Raby points out that, while CLAAS of America’s product line is extensive, it does not yet supply equipment for planting, tillage or spraying—all vital components of the farming process. Yet he and the leadership team hope that, by expanding its distribution network, the company’s suppliers may be more amenable to this development.

“Over time, not only do they become more dependent on us, but we become dependent on them,” he says, developing a relationship that is more than a mere convenience of transaction. “We partner with dealers on the basis of promoting that business together,” he continues. “When we’re dependent on each other, it becomes a relationship that seems to be much more synergistic.”

This reflects CLAAS’s desire to develop close relationships not merely with suppliers but with end-user farmers as well. The company has a history of staying in touch with vendors and customers long after agricultural shows. On a smaller scale, the company goes directly to the source. In ‘customer clinics,’ company sales representatives and product specialists meet with dealers and customers to discuss harvesting practices and harvesting issues, and to collect performance feedback from customers.

As an essential business related to food production, CLAAS of America was largely unaffected by COVID shutdown measures; indeed, Raby relates that, though many employees worked remotely, the company more than rose to the challenge. “Despite the adversity that the pandemic brought, we were still able to deliver our best fiscal year ever.”

Yet, so much of CLAAS’s business model remains face-to-face. It is difficult to demonstrate a combine harvester virtually, after all, and the company is looking forward to resuming in-person farm shows throughout the country.

Thanks to successful pre-pandemic planning and CLAAS’s role in an essential industry, its goals remain steady and ambitious. “Our goal, over the next five years, was to double the size of our business in North America,” Raby recalls of the 2019 decision. “That’s a pretty tall order.” Yet bold new developments are keeping the company on schedule to achieve this.

It recently opened a trailblazing new tractor factory in Le Mans, France. The product of three years of development and €40 million in investment, this ‘Future Factory’ will utilize the latest digital technologies such as virtual reality throughout all stages of assembly. Additionally, new automated guided vehicles (AGVs) move tractors around the facility and are capable of moving up to twenty tons of material at a time. The result is unprecedented production totals. When fully up to speed, CLAAS predicts the factory will produce up to 13,000 tractors annually.

The company’s move into automated vehicles is further reflected in its new minority shareholding stake in Dutch start-up AgXeed, which is working to advance automated farm machinery. Raby describes this, like its customer relationship, as symbiotic. “This gives us an opportunity to start to leverage the technology that they have…with some of the tractor savvy that we have. So that’s very exciting.”

But closer to home may be where CLAAS’s most effective development is taking shape. The company’s new training academy, 20,000 square feet of space in Omaha that is the product of two years of development, heralds a bold new chapter in the company’s labor recruitment, workforce development and dealer training. The academy hosts the company’s new apprenticeship program, mirrored on the same system, which has built and maintained the German economy for centuries.

Apprentices work at CLAAS in a laboratory setting, learning the intricacies of agricultural machinery. The second half of the program, partnered with Omaha’s own Metropolitan Community College, provides further academic and practical training. After three years, apprentices take an exam administered by the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest. The program is globally respected and provides candidates with accreditation that opens doors to employment anywhere in the world. Ristow says that this particular apprenticeship program, while new to North America, will help provide a steady supply of skilled labor. “It’s pretty much the backbone of the German economy, a continuous supply of qualified employees,” he says.

This global reciprocity that makes the apprenticeship program powerful, as Ristow notes that CLAAS operates similar programs in Russia and Hungary as well. “Everyone who has that certificate is known to have a certain level of knowledge,” he says. Finally, while the program is designed to move employees into CLAAS’s production side, they can easily move to service as well. “They have the training; they have the know-how,” Ristow says, “and they should be of interest to our service team as well.”

With these developments and despite increases in steel and fuel prices, CLAAS’s team is confident about the future. The company earned the Equipment Dealers Association’s dealer choice award just before this writing, its third such award in four years, demonstrating its strong customer service prowess. Yet new product developments are on the horizon, and the company is already increasing its production capacity to accommodate them. Despite the cyclical nature of agriculture, CLAAS remains a constant. As it looks ahead to future decades of service, the company will always be outstanding in its field—in every sense of the phrase.

The post Farming For the Future: New Developments, Facilities and Labor Practices<p class="company">CLAAS of America</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

It’s true that current economic indicators show fossil fuel and its related industries to be enjoying a probably limited and temporary recovery, but this is but a small blip in a larger trend of shifting away from fossil fuels to renewables.

It is also true that COVID-19 has accelerated this, and, along with governmental actions both large and small, is leading our planet further away from dependency on fossil fuels.

So more than ever, the time has come for businesses to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and energy efficiency, for the betterment of world economies and for our planet’s very survival.

Related to this, an idea that must be immediately put to rest is the mistaken belief that COVID-19 has halted climate change.

The United Nations has concluded that, while there was a momentary slump in global emissions, climate change has not abated. Similar to a single unseasonably cool day in summer, the dip in emissions hardly constitutes a larger trend.

At every level, there is agreement. “Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, climate change would continue,” reports an official from Environment Nova Scotia, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The air travel effect
This momentary slump in emissions was the result of decreased travel, as well as lower industrial and commercial power consumption due to lockdowns. Commercial air travel is a heavy user of fossil fuels, and statistics reflect this drop in usage.

November statistics from the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) show that, while air travel dropped dramatically early in the year (from 70,000 daily flights in January to fewer than 25,000 in April) the industry is beginning a recovery, albeit a slow and disjointed one.

This recovery is further supported by recovering stocks in aviation fuel providers such as CVR Energy, which is beginning to rebound from a share price nadir of $10.05 in late October to just over $15 at the time of this writing, according to the NYSE.

Still fueling the world
For companies seeking to do business in the developing world, particularly Asia, fossil fuels continue to drive economic recovery and growth for the present. The continent imports 69 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas exports, a 45 percent increase since 2015 according to an EIA study.

China became the region’s largest importer in 2018, with gas fueling its manufacturing and heavy industry.

Coal is also a readily available source across the continent, with China and Indonesia leading production.

The EIA study also concluded that, if energy needs continue to rise according to current rates (the study makes a projection of a 50 percent increase above current usage by 2050) fossil fuels will likely remain a necessity, with renewables only slightly overtaking them.

Therefore it may be useful for businesses involved in fossil fuel infrastructure, extraction and storage to increasingly focus their marketing activities outside North America, as future opportunities abroad will likely eclipse those at home.

However, financial recovery in fossil fuel stocks and industries may very likely be the result of artificial government intervention and not natural recovery.

The government factor
While governments around the world have engaged and are continuing to engage in financial assistance programs, some more readily than others, these measures appear to be merely propping up the 2019 economy rather than building a post-COVID world. The non-profit Energy Policy Tracker has found that 53 percent of government recovery funds in G20 countries are going towards fossil fuels, an investment of over $240 billion.

By contrast, less than $150 billion has been allocated toward renewables and clean energy. This measure appears to be a stopgap to keep workers employed throughout the ongoing crisis, and neither can nor will continue to prop up the fossil fuel energy sector indefinitely.

With a majority of employees working from home for at least a few days of the working week, we may expect a continuous decline in fossil fuel usage in gasoline, despite it being counterbalanced by more workers using private vehicles as opposed to potentially unsafe public transport.

Enter the EV
While an increasing number of countries are banning the sale of traditional gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles after 2030, the pandemic also appears to be accelerating the proliferation of electric vehicles (EVs).

Electric car manufacturer Tesla’s stock price skyrocketed by over 600 percent last year, though the company was also a heavy recipient of government subsidies. It is therefore possible that investors may see Tesla as a ‘safe harbour’ during economic uncertainty. Still, Tesla is well on track to continue rolling out electrical recharging stations across the United States, as well as newly developed home batteries and capacitors.

A 2019 report from Allied Market Research anticipates the global EV market can grow by almost 23 percent annually through 2027. This would translate to more than $800 billion in annual worldwide EV sales by 2027, with Tesla likely leading the charge.

But while Tesla might currently dominate the market in electric vehicles thanks to pandemic-related recovery funds, other manufacturers are hot on its heels. Ford has pledged $11 billion for EV investments, with General Motors setting aside an even larger $27 billion for electric and autonomous vehicles through 2025. GM anticipates releasing 30 EV variants globally within the next five years.

With this competition accelerating thanks to Tesla’s increased capital, this will equally accelerate the transition from combustion engines to newer electric and hybrid technologies sooner than anticipated.

Cost cutting
Outside of the traditional energy market competitors, cheaper renewable alternatives are continuing to grow during the pandemic as a result of lower demands in terms of manpower and maintenance.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that bioenergy is leading the way, thanks to new technological breakthroughs, and that renewables will account for 40 percent of new energy development over the next five years.

But solar power remains the most effective renewable, both in terms of cost and output; the energy market research firm Wood Mackenzie has concluded solar module prices have dropped by 90 percent over the past ten years, while the cost of building a new conventional plant has increased by 11 percent.

So, blessed with free fuel and cheap hardware the average solar farm is now intentionally designed to produce some 130 percent more power than it can deliver to the grid, with new battery technologies allowing excess power to be stored for peak usage times, or for other uses.

With very few workers required, solar power remains the ideal power source in a world that will likely continue social distancing for the foreseeable future.

Green gets the green light
Finally, the pandemic’s ‘pause’ on global economies requires faster development, as many nations remain committed to net-zero carbon emissions policies. China, for instance, has pledged to reach its CO₂ peak by 2030 and reduce emissions moving forward, as part of the Paris Climate Change Conference.

With China setting an example for its Asian neighbours, it is equally likely that the temporary reliance on fossil fuel will rapidly be replaced with renewable infrastructure and cannot be considered a long-term trend.

Canada has famously declared it a national goal to have net-zero emissions by 2050, and the introduction of nuclear reactors are a part of that plan.

In the United States, meanwhile, the incoming Biden Administration’s elaborate climate plan furthers the ‘Green New Deal,’ promising a revolution in renewable energy.

While it may be easy to dismiss these national aims as empty political promises, policies on a smaller scale are producing more tangible results. Nova Scotia’s Sustainable Development Goals Act, Canada’s most ambitious in this area, promises to lower the province’s emissions by 53 percent below 2005 levels.

Government and industry are working together to meet this goal by investing heavily in tidal, solar, and wind power to further the province’s transition to renewable energy. “In 2021, more than 60 percent of our electricity will come from clean, renewable sources,” says Rachel Boomer, Communications Director for Environment Nova Scotia.

In addition to combating climate change, the downturn resulting from the pandemic is giving new opportunities for economic progression into new industries. “Nova Scotian companies are actively involved in the supply chain for renewable energy,” Ms. Boomer says. “We need this to continue so we [can] build capacity here, and create jobs in our communities.”

The all-change challenge
With governments across the developed and developing world recognizing the rising danger of climate change – made all the more imperative thanks to the time lost to the pandemic – more economies will likely see restrictions to phase out fossil fuels in favour of a long-term transition to renewables.

It is tempting, now more than ever, to be conservative and cling to the familiar – traditional attitudes, traditional infrastructure, traditional industries. But to truly move forward in energy output in a post-COVID world, the time has arrived to move beyond fossil fuels into a new era.

Although current indicators do show small signs of recovery in the fossil fuel sector, these are just islands of “normalcy” in an ocean of change and the message remains clear.

While the economy may have slowed thanks to the pandemic, climate change has not. If our species intends to remain committed to adapting to its effects and continuing to meet rising energy needs, we must adopt renewable energy in lieu of fossil fuels on a completely new scale.

It is now up to us to meet this challenge.

The post From ‘Back to Normal’ to a New Frontier<p class="company">How COVID-19 is Accelerating the Decline of Fossil Fuels</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

As we search for ways to further limit our environmental impact, food waste remains a serious concern with a growing population. Americans produced 38 million tons of food waste in 2014, with an accompanying 34 million tons of yard trimmings, according to a study conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

American Organic Energy has its roots in Long Island Compost, a firm with over thirty years’ experience managing Long Island’s and New York’s organic waste. Brothers Charles, Dominic and Arnold Vigliotti entered composting after successful careers in waste management. “This was a period of time prior to any material recycling in this country,” CEO Charles Vigliotti recalls.

As the company expanded, the brothers learned not only to compost properly but also to turn organic waste and lawn clippings into green products such as mulch and topsoil. To Vigliotti, it was a no-brainer to use the waste in this manner; “If you don’t have a use for it at the end, you’ve wasted your time.”

Out of space
The growing company began fielding new requests for food waste disposal, which, despite new state and municipal requirements on recycling in the 1980s, remained a problem. There was simply no space anywhere in New York to dispose of food waste, requiring it to be sent as far away as Virginia. “It is our feeling that that’s just crazy,” Vigliotti comments. “It’s the wrong way for a 21^st century society to handle its waste.”

Despite the brothers’ expertise in composting yard waste, food waste was a new kind of problem, Vigliotti says. “We found that we really couldn’t handle meats, fish, oils, things like that with our existing outdoor wind-row technology approach.”

In search of a solution, the brothers learned about anaerobic digestion. This biological process uses bacteria to break down organic waste, producing biogas (which is mostly methane) that is then used to produce clean, renewable energy. Anaerobic digestion requires no oxygen or ventilation, so the heat produced by the bacterial breakdown creates a greenhouse effect. With enough insulation, the process becomes virtually self-sustaining and is unaffected by outside weather factors, unlike solar and wind power.

The brothers decided this was the way forward, and American Organic Energy was born.

Dedicated family
Today, both Long Island Compost and American Organic Energy remain family-run businesses, with Charles as CEO, brother Arnold as Senior Vice President and Director of Operations, and Charles’s daughter Gia as Director of Sales.

Long Island Compost provides the family with solid revenue streams from its fertilizer and compost, product lines the Vigliottis have offered for decades. Long Island Compost has been involved in such high-profile projects as the World Trade Center Memorial Garden and New York’s Green Roof Initiative, which installs green roofs, porous parking lots and green sidewalks throughout the city. When complete, these developments will recapture 40 percent of the city’s rainwater runoff and save taxpayers an estimated $2.4 billion over the next twenty years.

But American Organic Energy is doing something even more ambitious.

The company’s objective is to build and manage an 11-acre anaerobic digestion plant. When complete, American Organic Energy’s new facility will process 180,000 tons of food waste per year, plus an additional 10,000 tons of yard waste and 30,000 tons of fats, oils and greases (known collectively as ‘FOG’).

Estimates indicate the plant will reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the New York metropolitan area by 85,000 tons annually, eliminate an estimated 1.4 million miles per year currently travelled by trucks on Long Island Region roads, and produce over 500,000 mmBtu of renewable natural gas per year that will be used to help meet the natural gas shortage on Long Island.

Although similar plants do exist in other parts of North America – in Toronto, Ontario, Edmonton, Alberta, and San Luis Obispo County, California, for instance – nothing on this scale has ever been tried. As Vigliotti relates, the company needed to build on a massive scale if it hoped to have any impact on the Greater New York area.

“We happen to be geographically located in the heart of over 10 million people,” he explains simply. “Every single one of them eats food.” Anything smaller than the plant’s current scale would hardly make a difference in America’s most populous city. “If we were going to build a facility,” Vigliotti remarks, “we were going to make sure this would be a facility that could have a material impact on how much waste is going into landfills.”

Bringing the regulators on board
It’s been a long time coming, with this project having been in development since 2011. American Organic Energy has used the Vigliotti’s connections with private industry to form solid partnerships with other companies such as Suez, Air Liquide, General Electric, and Scotts Miracle-Gro. But the largest hurdle, Vigliotti relates, has come from getting all the various regulatory agencies on board with this idea, particularly on such a massive scale.

“They don’t handle ‘new’ very well,” he remarks. “They do what they do very well, but ‘new?’ You’ve got to bring them along, so it was a learning experience for everybody involved.” Groundbreaking is now scheduled for December 2019, with an anticipated December 2020 completion date.

These regulatory agencies are now providing significant financial and technological support. While most of the project development is being funded by Long Island Compost’s own profits, the project did receive $400,000 in state tax funds and a $1.35 million grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency (NYSERDA). This was the agency which helped further Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Green New Deal program.

The Governor on side
Having New York State’s government on side, Vigliotti remarks, greatly helped the project get going. “The support of the governor’s office was absolutely critical in us being able to move the other regulatory agencies,” he says, noting that this leadership was necessary to further this and other renewable energy projects. “Albany and the governor’s office have been extraordinarily supportive, and we are so appreciative of what this governor [did] on our project and environmentally throughout the state.”

Once it is properly harnessed, the possibilities presented by anaerobic digestion of food waste cannot be overstated. Far from simply providing renewable natural gas to the local pipeline to meet requirements on Long Island, the process can also provide vehicle fuel and clean, purified water. The primary by-product from anaerobic digestion, known as digestate, can be converted into organic fertilizer and compost. But perhaps most importantly, anaerobic digestion can significantly reduce methane emissions into our atmosphere and pollutants in our water. With a steady source of energy input through food and other organic waste, anaerobic digestion is a bold new step towards renewable, sustainable energy.

Getting it built
Once American Organic Energy’s anaerobic digestion plant is completed next year, it remains to be seen how this will affect renewable energy policy in New York and the United States as a whole. While the Vigliottis remain fully committed to this project, they also remain focused on the immediate future. “Let’s get the first one built,” Charles remarks, “and then we’ll see where we go with more.” Still, he remains cautiously optimistic. “We can get this one built, and show the world what we can do here, and look at exporting it to municipalities all across the country.”

However, Vigliotti makes it clear that the facility will be cost-effective, requiring neither significant technological advancement nor large government tax increases – thus refuting a common argument from renewable energy naysayers. “Our waste generators will not have to pay any more than what they’re paying right now to dispose of their material, even though it’s a very expensive proposition.” Once this facility proves anaerobic digestion is feasible for a large population, changing economies of scale will inevitably make future facilities even more affordable.

Poised for change
Vigliotti and his family all see the facility as a win-win. From reducing carbon dioxide and methane emissions to curtailing food waste and producing clean, renewable energy and water, the anaerobic digestion plant is poised to change how renewable energy is produced in the United States. While he remains noncommittal about the plant’s impact on energy policy, Vigliotti is adamant that the current system is non-sustainable. “Taking food waste and sticking it in a hole in the ground is a barbaric way for a 21^st century society to handle its waste,” he says, regardless of its origin. “It’s a dumb way to handle things. There are better ways to handle it.”

This cycles back to the reason Vigliotti and his brothers entered waste management all those years ago. While he and his family consider that creating renewable energy sources is a meaningful goal in and of itself, they are also continually focused on improvement. “Every day, we’re striving to get better at what we do,” he remarks, “to process better, to be better neighbors, to be better citizens.”

With a simple paradigm shift, he and his company – and other similar companies – can view, handle, and use waste not as a burden, but as an opportunity to improve our planet. “We can all use that. That’s all good stuff.”

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Kaiser Premier traces its roots to the Colorado-based Premier Oilfield Equipment Company, which built hydro excavators and distributed through Caterpillar dealerships. These truck-mounted excavators primarily served the oil and gas field through both the exploration and pipelaying markets.

But that changed in 2014 with a major slowdown in oil and with Caterpillar bowing out of the vocational-truck business. With the company facing an uncertain future, it searched for investors to no avail.

“I went to all the typical financial institutions, as well as strategic buyers that are already in our market space in the U.S.,” recalls present CEO Dan Weber, who was initially hired as a consultant.

Meeting of minds
His search led him to Lichtenstein, in Europe, where Kaiser AG Chairman Markus Kaiser is the latest of his family to lead Kaiser and its various subsidiaries. Weber’s timing was fortunate; Kaiser was looking to expand its American holdings, and had in fact been eyeing Premier Oilfield Equipment as a suitable vehicle for Kaiser’s advanced technology.

The deal that the two men put together was formalized in May 2017. Kaiser Premier was born. As one of the Kaiser family of business entities around the world, Kaiser Premier would benefit from international financing and globally-leading technology.

With Kaiser’s support for the company, Kaiser Premier could press on with manufacturing and distributing its hydro excavators. With strategic intent, it formed a subsidiary division, Kaiser Rental, shortly after Kaiser Premier’s formation.

As well as expanding the business, this action was intended as a clear statement to the business community at large. As Weber explains: “We felt we needed to reassure the marketplace that the chassis issues are behind us.”

Thanks to the rental process, client companies could now sample (and purchase) Kaiser Premier’s hydro excavators and sewer cleaner recyclers. From a production capacity of two new hydro excavators per month in July 2017, the company can now put ten on the road every month.

New products, new performance
Kaiser Premier’s CV Series, the latest in its hydro excavators, is the culmination of decades of development. Powered by a Robushi three-lobe PD blower, these hydro excavators have a suction power of 6,600 cubic feet of air per minute with a vacuum level of up to 27” of Hg.

The CV’s design provides 342 degrees of boom rotation, and is able reach 26 feet out or 20 feet down without any additional suction hose extensions required. An internal 700,000 BTU boiler provides hot water as needed for cold weather applications.

This ruggedness and reliability showcases Kaiser’s global presence. The company designed its trucks for deployment in harsh conditions such as the Canadian oil fields, thereby creating a system capable of doing its job under any condition, as Weber remarks: “It’s a very robust, strong, simple design, and over the course of the last few years… we have started reintroducing the hydro excavator back into the market.”

Kaiser Premier’s advanced technology also extends to truck-mounted sewer cleaning systems. The company’s trucks are able to service any sewer line, from 6-inch to 100-inch pipes. Proprietary Kaiser technology allows Kaiser Premier’s trucks to save and recycle water during cleaning, reducing cleaning times.

Weber estimates that cleaning productivity improves by between 50 to 150 percent. “This is the technology that, over the past year and a half, we’ve been introducing to the North American market,” he says. “Recycling is a mature technology in Europe, but an emerging technology in North America. With over 2,000 recyclers delivered to the global market, Kaiser is the definitive leader in the industry,” Weber added.

Kaiser Premier’s AquaStar line of sewer cleaners, with its advanced KDU jetting pump, delivers water at up to 132 gallons per minute (gpm) at a pressure of up to 2,900 psi. Its large hose reel capacity of up to 985 feet of jetting hose and 55.6 feet of suction hose largely negates the use of suction tube extensions. The placement of the vacuum pump inside the fresh water chamber helps reduce noise, cool the system and increase suction power due to shortened suction lines.

In addition to these improvements, both the CV and AquaStar utilize Kaiser innovations from around the world to increase efficiency and safety. Advances in automation now allow operators to operate trucks remotely through full radio control, with an intuitive LCD display delivering all relevant feedback on some models.

Finally, KAISERteleservice allows for unprecedented remote diagnostics, allowing service engineers to access all data and adjust service parameters remotely.

International benefits
These innovations are the product of Kaiser’s international focus, true in both Lichtenstein and Colorado. “We sell our product in multiple countries all around the world, so the technology has been developed and proven in various conditions,” Weber says. “The conditions of a sewer pipe in Houston, Texas, are very different from the conditions of a sewer pipe in New York City.”

As part of the Kaiser family, Kaiser Premier benefits from some of the most rigorous testing and advanced technology available today. On a local and international level, the company is continuously receiving feedback from clients and operators.

“This is a constant cycle that never ends,” Weber explains. “We have over 30 engineers on staff to support this improvement and development. It’s our firm belief that we can distinguish ourselves by having a technology better than anything else on the market.”

As an example, Kaiser Premier has been continuously refining the water filtration system on its sewer cleaners to minimize or prevent the chronic issue of clogging. The company has managed to only require single filtration, no mean feat.

Rigorous testing has also resulted in a liquid-ring hydro excavator, a first for the industry. “We’re the only manufacturer in the world… that provides a liquid-ring vacuum pump in the hydro excavation application,” Weber says. This liquid ring mitigates risk by removing the possibility of metal-on-metal contact, eliminating the risk of sparks and explosions.

Like any Kaiser product, these new vacuum pumps endure rigorous testing to ensure they work anytime, anyplace. “That’s an advantage of our existing product technology,” Weber concludes. “We’re taking a large leap forward by introducing this application.”

Kaiser Premier’s innovation is now being extended to adapting existing Kaiser products to the U.S. market. The company’s trademark walking excavators, its mainstay in all-terrain excavation, are being utilized in steep cliff work in the Rocky Mountains to swampland clean-up projects in Florida.

Thanks to their unique design, the walking excavators eliminate the need for environmentally-disruptive rigging. “This excavator has been proven to work in some very severe conditions – 30, 40 degree slopes,” Weber remarks. In true Kaiser fashion, the excavators are also highly automated, with independently functioning arms requiring little input from an operator.

Needed: a few good people
Yet, as Kaiser Premier moves forward under its new banner, it faces the growing pains of any expanding company. Finding qualified personnel remains a perpetual challenge, particularly skilled-trades professionals such as welders and machine operators.

Growing from an initial workforce of 25, Kaiser Premier now boasts over 100 employees, and Weber says the company plans to continue its bounce back – but with caveats.

“We see us growing to 150 employees within the next three years, but we’re going to need qualified people to make sure we do not, in any way, suffer from a lapse in quality, design and representation.”

To ensure smooth growth, he and his team are striving to build a new, strong, workplace culture at Kaiser Premier. Formalized top-down leadership-training classes place a heavy emphasis on personal development, delicately balancing the act of motivating employees without creating negative repercussions.

But Weber says the risk is worth the reward. “The purpose of it is so we can understand our strengths and our tendencies, so that by understanding them, we’ll be able to work forward together and challenge each other in areas where we might not otherwise, because we’re concerned that we might be stepping on each other’s’ toes.”

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