With over 15 years in the industry, as a private sector company, Domino is always on the go, elevating their presence by continuously finding new initiatives to support and lead. Their clients have come to depend on Domino to educate them on new products and services being offered and where the future of electricity is heading.

It’s become apparent, Lockhart notes, that many businesses in the public sector have capitalized on years of complacency, inaction, outdated knowledge and regulations. Domino is committed to pushing past the status quo by forcing the industry to modernize and re-evaluate the way things have “always been done”.

“We recognize the future needs of the industry; that is how we think and operate,” Lockhart says – noting this mindset has guided Domino for the last decade and a half.

Much has happened for the company since its previous feature in Resource in Focus Magazine in early 2020. Lockhart says that, as of last year, Domino is officially the only privately held electrical utility focused critical infrastructure supplier, with stocking locations across the country in almost every time zone. Their suite of vertically integrated services and businesses in the Canadian market has a foothold in both the Pacific and Atlantic regions.

Domino currently has offices in operation or under construction across Canada (in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia), as well as having made the first steps into the continental United States, with a base in Texas. The company has also expanded to Puerto Rico, investing in a new two-story office in the centre of Caguas, and are currently sourcing new regions where they can expand even further.

Lockhart mentions that the company has joined up with RFID (radio-frequency identification) manufacturer Star Systems International to boost its considerable in-house SAAS (software as a service) system. This robust Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) is used by Domino as their centralized database, used across all of their divisions to ensure the client receives reliable and accurate information every time they place an order or request a quote.

Lockhart describes his intention to make Domino the “’Amazon of our industry’ as it relates to our core businesses,” noting that the company is three to six months away from customers being able to view stocked inventory in Domino warehouses, place orders or request services online. Customers will have access to product information, order history and reports, and can manage their own inventory and track their orders. This will boost the high level of customer service Domino customers already receive.

COVID-19 created unforeseen obstacles for many businesses; however, Domino was able to navigate through and ultimately, their efforts resulted in growth. The company did initially experience delays in projects but was able to keep most of their North American employees working. Domino’s in-house software and established procedures helped keep business running as usual, while adhering to both provincial and federal quarantine guidelines.

Lockhart recalls various occasions where Domino went the extra mile, offering employees home-delivered meal programs, rides to work for those who usually take public transportation, and the precautionary suspension of inter-office travel, avoiding even a single COVID-19 case within the company. The Domino team has maintained their enthusiasm and their commitment to support their clients and the industry in general.

The company has placed a growing emphasis on understanding consumer needs, an understanding which has to constantly evolve as new technologies and ideas are presented. Lockhart observes that today’s consumers want innovation, speed, and quality, at an affordable price. Domino sees this demand and proactively sources solutions.

Lockhart enthusiastically promotes Six Sigma, a disciplined, data-driven continuous improvement methodology that aims to improve efficiency and reduce or eliminate errors. The quality and timeliness of product delivery consequently improves, and employee enthusiasm gets a big boost. Domino’s take-up of Six Sigma principles applies to all areas of the company, boosting employees’ understanding of the company, its products, and ways to best serve its clients.

As customers’ demands intensify, a growing trend in the electrical utility industry has been the consolidation and shrinking of former competitors within the market, leading in turn to fewer options for the client and the end user. Domino’s response to both the increase in demand and the decreasing supply option is to ensure coast to coast accessibility, availability of stock, and access to both the domestic and global market space for immediate comparable and competitive pricing for delivery options. Domino gives their customer a customized “made to fit” experience. Domino’s customers receive quotes with multiple options, offering different manufacturers, material, delivery methods, et cetera which best suit their budget, timeline and scope of work.

Domino recognizes their clients’ needs to move away from unsustainable material toward new and innovative products like their Fibreglass Reinforce Polymer (FRP) crossarms, through their division, Transmission Innovations. Domino’s FRP products are lighter to ship and install and add decades to the lifecycle of its application.

Another division within the Domino Group is AllPower Tooling and Rentals. AllPower is a tool and equipment company that offers specialty tools for sale and rent. Lockhart saw the need to alleviate the stress of buying costly tools, for his clients, and quickly added this business to the Domino Group of companies.

Lockhart feels that the electrical utility maintenance and construction industry has been stifled by long lead times, which is why Domino carries over $9 million in inventory in Canada alone. The company’s Major Projects Team presents a global package price to the customer, with assurance from Domino’s Global QC/QA Team that the quality of the products has been vetted and approved for use. The team travels around the world and inspects and audits manufacturing facilities and sub-suppliers – in person – to ensure a safe and quality product that meets and/or exceeds the clients required specifications.

Lockhart believes that it is Domino’s responsibility to provide a product that surpasses the current standards and safety specifications. It is the company’s responsibility to ensure extended factory warranties and that client-mandated increased product lifecycle requirements are met. Meeting these challenges and delivering this type of quality product and service provides, not only to the client but also the end user, a more reliable and consistent means of delivering electricity to their homes and businesses.

Lockhart points to how, decades ago, public utilities had the responsibility of building electrical transmission and distribution solutions and competently devised safe ways to do so, communicating with manufacturers and distributors to create industry standards. With this concern for safety in mind, Domino partnered with ComplyWorks, a compliance management company.

Domino’s collaboration with ComplyWorks has created an ability to see the cradle-to-grave ingredients of every product that is eventually put into service through Domino. “This acts as a centralized library of the global specifications, with historical data, for every product we supply.” If you are a manufacturer, Domino has auditing practices for the types of material used and the processes they go through before being delivered to customer. Those practices may include audits for smelting, forging, stamping, rolling, threading, machinery or equipment, and the transportation of the product. Every stage a product goes through must be approved and documented. “It’s about reducing risk.”

20 to 40 percent of the total cost of a project is in the materials used. It’s above our heads and below our feet every day. The most important thing for Domino is to ensure the best quality is provided to clients at the best price but provides the most current and available safety technology for the end user in day-to-day life. Lockhart asks, “Why are we racing to the bottom price on items that haven’t been updated in 50 to 60 years?”

Lockhart sees remarkable developments in electrical power coming soon to the industry. There is a general trend now toward education and information for consumers. Having a “middleperson” is necessary to deliver, support, teach, and share risk. This is a role that the Domino Group fills perfectly, according to Lockhart.

A trend on the horizon is the move away from massive generation, and overspent public utility transmission supply, and the move to SMRs (small modular reactors). This could mean that, instead of a city or township buying electricity from a local utility as is common, they can buy a few of these reactors to power an entire city with no transmission lines for big generations.

“Someone needs to come up with a new and innovative way to transmit the electricity we generate. Voltage loss on an open-air conductor is huge. So much is spent on making electricity and sending it out, however a lot of that energy bleeds off the line into the air.” SMRs help this problem because they generate power locally instead of across miles, so line loss is minimized.

Beyond this, Lockhart foresees a greater place in the industry for tidal technology, as the planet’s oceans are the largest source of our much-needed energy on the planet. The oceans are much more dependable than wind or solar. As the world has moved toward electricity as a primary source of power over traditional sources, the current infrastructure will need to be upgraded, inclusive of generating stations, T&D and substations.

For Domino Highvoltage Supply, the company’s growth plan includes a move into the public sector. They have secured several utility contracts across the areas they service and operate, which allows them to make further impacts in the electrical utility industry. Lockhart observes that with manufacturers buying each other up, and with the current appetite for M&A within the manufacturing sector, there are fewer than a handful of manufacturers left servicing the public sector market. This ultimately has led to a reduced competitive environment and potential for price gouging.

Consequently, there is opportunity for customer-centric competitive practices in the public sector, although monopolistic practices pose a challenge, as does the education of public utilities that purchases do not need to be made from only so-called “approved manufacturers and suppliers.” The end user loses when there’s no competition.

Latin America is also part of the company’s growth plan. Domino is excited to step into a new world, where they can put their knowledge and practices into place to help improve the delivery of electricity to the end user by providing reliable and sustainable infrastructure.

Lockhart says he couldn’t be more proud of every employee across all of the Domino Group divisions and companies and is excited to see how they will reshape the industry moving forward.

The post Driving the Industry Forward<p class="company">Domino Highvoltage Supply Inc.</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

This shift came in 1972 when the company was purchased and incorporated as Russells Technical Products by Don Bench, already established at that point in the test chamber industry through his work with Conrad Inc. which was founded by chamber industry heavyweight Charles Conrad. Over the ensuing half century, Bench’s family became a part of the company, with his grandson Jim currently serving as president.

Jim Bench explains that, after his grandfather took over the company, the focus pivoted to test chambers as it was a field he found to be more interesting than “sitting on top of a local restaurant in January fixing their HVAC.” Even greater attention was paid to environmental test chambers by Don Bench and son Bill in the 1980s as hires were made from other companies to continue its growth, including current Chief Executive Officer Gary Molenaar.

Some three decades later, the company is growing rapidly and will be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2022.

Russells is active in many different industries today including automotive and aerospace and especially within space technology. The company has been in the field since the early 1970s, supplying standard and custom design-built environmental test systems. Customers from across the industry use the chambers to test products to ensure optimum efficiency on land and in outer space through methods like temperature and humidity testing, altitude testing, cryogenic freezing, solar radiation, wind/freezing rain, and thermal shock testing.

Clients’ products have experienced incredibly fast temperature changes of 600 degrees Celsius per minute so the company has gotten used to accelerating its lifecycle testing to ensure solar arrays or pieces will work in space without having to worry about needing repairs.

Sales Manager Ryan League adds that, since developing a reputation in the seventies for its capabilities in design-build and engineering experience, Russells has enjoyed a good amount of standing with larger aerospace and defense contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman and more, in addition to automotive and commercial customers like General Motors, Hewlett Packard, and others. Clients like these have strict requirements for equipment at both high altitudes and low temperatures, and the company’s attention to these details has made the space industry “the bread and butter of [Russells] for the better part of thirty years.”

A collaborative and open relationship is what Russells application engineers and management strive to foster with clientele. Bench explains how application engineers at the company gladly lead customers through every step of the process, with the same point of contact being present for a client throughout the entire process, with information readily at hand. Russells offers a friendly and personable approach along with a unique, in-depth knowledge of the client’s project.

“That same engineer is still responsible for your bottom line [as the project goes to the test floor] and will work with you through the installation process as well as in startup and post-installation,” Bench explains.

Russells focuses on customer service at the heart of its priorities. As League explains, the company is small enough to be nimble and offer hands-on solutions while still operating on a global scale, an approach that is highly valued in its segment of the marketplace.

This amicable approach applies to more than customer relations, and Russells demonstrates a philanthropic streak. Many Russells employees are involved with FIRST Robotics competitions, a program encouraging high school kids to pursue careers in science and technology. Several workers volunteer and mentor as professionals and team with students to build robots for worldwide competition, a company practice in place for over twenty years. This involvement forms the base of the company’s community-minded practices and has even led to some students choosing Russells as a place of employment after their education.

The company also gives back to its local Michigan community through initiatives to benefit local rescue missions, women’s shelters, or even local families in need, efforts that it considers vital to its annual operations and to the ongoing growth of its local community. Russells and its employees view the company as an important piece of the community and seek to breed that culture from within.

Bench acknowledges that the company gets to work with exciting aspects and products in the industry, and although it is not responsible for making these products directly, it does play a part in improving them. This vision is projected to employees so that it is understood that what may seem like a relatively minor task can have a real impact within the industry.

Although countless companies were taken aback by the effects of COVID-19 in 2020, including within the testing industry, not much slowed down for Russells during that time. League attributes this to the company’s primary customer base being essential government businesses, like the U.S. Department of Defense, so demand never slowed down.

As a result of the pandemic, there has been a big change in the global and local supply chains which has led to a significant impact on how Russells accumulates the materials and components that go into equipment. The pandemic caused the company to re-evaluate its own supplier network, as it typically deals with many Michigan-based suppliers for its raw materials like steel and its pre-manufactured components. Because of the impact on the supply chain, it had to invest in new relationships, and these have strengthened it and allowed for the development of new, more agile business partnerships. This was a tumultuous time for countless industries, but Russells is leaving the pandemic in even better standing than it was before.

“If we can’t make it financially, we can’t meet everybody’s needs,” Bench says, underlining that the company is always keeping an eye on its financial footing. “Our customer base depends on us to service their equipment… we need to be here.”

Growth is slow but consistent, and he adds that the company intends to be around for a long time so its clients can rely on its strength and expertise. Russells will be looking into its internal systems to grow and get better at serving these clients moving forward, including experimenting with new refrigerants, and investing in new software for both machine operations and internal corporate operations.

Bench explains that the goal is not necessarily to be on the leading edge, but to be close enough to remain a leader in those spaces. The company is capable of solving many testing issues and uses much expertise and tried-and-true methods while being unafraid to try new things.

League highlights that test chambers have come far in the past thirty-to forty years and that the industry has built systems with a profound longevity. “We stand behind our products and want customers to understand that we build test chambers to last, and they can have confidence in the products we offer.”

The post Test Chamber Solutions Built to Last<p class="company">Russells Technical Products</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

With myriad uses across military, towing and recovering, all-terrain, forestry, mining, utilities, and large-scale industrial and consumer applications, the popularity of Ramsey Winch products can be attributed to their dependability and ruggedness, which is genuinely legendary. And all this is framed by committed customer service.

Designed and manufactured to the highest possible standards, Ramsey Winch products are punishingly tested to ready them for a hard, unforgiving life in the field.

As company President and Chief Executive John Celoni says, “these aren’t winches made to sit on front bumpers and look pretty,” but winches manufactured for the military, mining, and other tough-as-nails industries where working vehicles and equipment sent must be able to self-recover in any environment, from muddy terrain to deep snow and ice.

Far from an ordinary winch company, Ramsey employs highly trained, dedicated staff who ensure their products function under these challenging conditions – every time!

The people factor
Responsible for the design, machining, assembly, sourcing, finishing, painting, and outfitting of over 400 different winch products, Ramsey’s team is composed of mechanical engineers, manufacturing engineers, electrical engineers, machinists, supply professionals, warehousing, and shipping and receiving with both domestic and international capabilities.

“The differentiator between Ramsey Winch and any other competitor is our people,” says Celoni. “It’s our people and our culture standing behind the product and service. We have staff with over 40 years’ experience in the winch business – specifically the Ramsey Winch business,” he says.

“We machine our own products, and we take it from concept to delivery, and everyone collaborates to solve problems and find opportunities to grow the business. It all evolves. Anybody can have a great strategy and a great product, but it’s the people that differentiate Ramsey Winch from anybody else.”

Unlike many companies where clients call and are immediately placed on hold, the opposite is true at Ramsey Winch. When customers phone, they talk to a live person, not a recording. “This is a people business, and Ramsey Winch is a people-first business, both internally and externally,” says Director of Sales and Marketing, Samuel Rooke.

With an extensive background in heavy equipment, Rooke knows the challenges of the industry, and the importance of working closely with customers. “We take care of our employees internally, and they want to take care of our clients externally. The single biggest piece of what makes our customer service team successful is that they care, and they’re going to work through a solution until it’s resolved, not give you piecemeal answers.”

Hard-won skill sets
Much of the company’s strength comes from the scope of its skill sets, which are shared among three wholly-owned subsidiaries: Ramsey Winch, Auto Crane, and Eskridge.

Ramsey represents the winch side, while Auto Crane designs and manufactures truck-mounted electric and hydraulic cranes, crane-control technologies, mechanic service bodies and work ready trucks, with Eskridge designing and manufacturing power transmission products such as planetary gear drives, anchor drives, and associated integral brakes. The three entities complement one another and continue the vision of founders Claude and Rayburn Ramsey.

Established as Ramsey Brothers Tool & Die in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1944, the company started off making tools, dies, and parts for the world-famous Douglas Aircraft Company.

The next year, the brothers unveiled their first winch, a design by Claude called Model 101, a heavy-duty worm and gear model. Ideal for pulling stuck vehicles out of sand, mud, snow, and through rough terrain generally, the Model 101 was soon seen on “Willys,” the iconic jeeps conceived and manufactured by Willys-Overland Motors for theater-of-war use.

The winches produced by the Ramsey brothers soon became essential equipment in the towing and recovery industry. Demand for products grew so much that Claude and Rayburn renamed the business Ramsey Brothers Winch Company in 1947.

As Ramsey Winch phrases it, “due to the significant impact that Ramsey Winch had on the Towing and Recovery industry, in 1987 the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame inducted Claude Ramsey as the first member who was not actually a towman.”

Still steadily growing, the company continues to manufacture products that set the benchmark of quality and endurance, including the PowerMaster™ Series – made for power and utility markets – and the Wildcat Series, used in oil and gas production.

Ongoing innovation
To satisfy every extreme of customer requirements, Ramsey developed two types of winches: worm-gear driven, and planetary-gear driven. While the early years saw a focus on heavy-duty industrial worm gears – which, even today, some customers prefer for their ruggedness and durability – the technology grew to include planetary gear sets, the company’s primary focus today.

“The planetary tends to give you a faster and more efficient product,” says Rooke, “and therefore can potentially give you better return on investment.” He does point out, nevertheless, that with more moving parts, planetary winches can be more expensive than the worm-driven models. But whatever the final choice, Ramsey Winch quality is never in doubt.

Paying close attention to customer requirements, Ramsey Winch constantly designs and produces new series to meet the needs of the marketplace. These now include Wildcat and the Hercules series which was unveiled to the market about a year and a half ago, with 2021 seeing the full release of this exciting product along with Helios.

Focused on tow and recovery, the company’s Hercules has a line pull of 20,000 pounds (9,072 kg) to 50,000 pounds (22,679 kg), while the Wildcat has a line pull from 50,000 pounds (22,679 kg) to 250,000 pound (113,398 kg), making it well-suited to the oil and gas industry.

With a pull of 20,000 pounds (9,072 kg), the Helios 20000 has a speed of 37.5 feet (11.4 meters) per minute, and a cable capacity of 155 feet (47.2 meters) short, and 260 feet (79.2 meters) standard. The model is also available in other specifications. “When you need it to work, the Helios will pull it for you,” says Rooke.

Although relatively new to the market, client feedback on the Hercules and Helios lines has been overwhelmingly positive, both in terms of quality of manufacturing and of product performance.

“People are excited about these products coming into the market,” says Rooke. “They are a new iteration, and perhaps a little bit more modern than the older series of winches. Efficiency and return on investment is what we strive for.”

Like all Ramsey winches, they are subjected to rigorous testing internally, and undergo a four-step gate process for new product development at the company’s facility, which is ISO 9001:2015 certified. Meeting additional external standards including those set by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and SAE International standards, products are then field tested with customers in real-life situations before being rolled out.

Future growth
At Ramsey Winch, it can take anywhere from 18 to 24 months to bring a new product to market. Winches are never rushed out the door, but thoroughly tested over and over to ensure they’ll easily stand up to client demands.

Among its many innovations, Ramsey has developed and patented thermal limiting modules and overload limiting indicators for electric winches, which allow customers to maximize the cycle duty time of a product while in operation.

Since electric winches generate a lot of heat, this is essential to their successful operation. By working with thermal technologies, heat is better controlled, with winches cutting off once they reach a certain amperage level or heat level. This allows them to cool down and recycle to become more efficient, critical in applications such as military.

“What was happening before we got in with this patented product is that the winches would burn up, then you’d be stuck out in the theater, so to speak, and at risk,” says Celoni. “So this prevents the motor from overheating and the winch from not being able to operate.

“It takes an operator’s knowledge and reduces the need for it, because technology manages that process for them. It’s a differentiator, and it saves lives.”

With the belief that the business is only as good as its people, Ramsey Winch continues to attract top-notch employees like Chad Martin. Vice President of Operations, Martin is responsible for all three businesses – Ramsey Winch, Auto Crane and Eskridge – and says what drew him to the company was its culture, people, and products.

“It’s a very cool product with a long history of performance, and fantastic name recognition in the industry,” he says. “Everybody knows Ramsey Winch, and there are high expectations for that product. So the challenge I was ready to accept, coming to work for this organization, was to make sure I help continue that legacy of Ramsey Winch, as well as expand its capabilities and breadth across multiple industries.”

In business for 76 years, Ramsey Winch’s past achievements and sustained reputation for quality will ensure its success long into the future.

“We are a mission-critical component on a very critical piece of equipment that’s time-tested, with almost eight decades of experience and reliability that’s been out in the marketplace,” says Celoni. “And it’s all wrapped up in innovation and responsiveness when there’s a need. When you want to work, we’re ready… and the winch will work.”

The post Better Winches Make a Better World<p class="company">Ramsey Winch</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

With projects across three countries, the U.S.-based energy company has been providing on-grid and off-grid power solutions via its own small gas turbine generators (also called microturbines) and custom-fit heat exchangers for over ten years. In New York, FlexEnergy Solutions just came through one of its biggest challenges yet, proving to itself and the world that, yes, it can make it anywhere.

FlexEnergy Solutions’ products, including the patented Flex Turbine®, provide uninterrupted power distribution for industries like oil and gas, commercial, industrial, and multi-family residential facilities. That was attractive to the residents of the Sheffield Condominium building in Manhattan, who were looking for just that – a power source that would not fail, no matter what the conditions.

New York is the home of some extremely tough environmental regulations, and the Sheffield’s Board managers were looking to exceed those requirements. They were searching for a way to meet New York’s emission reduction targets and boost the efficiency of power generation. The Flex Turbine unit, complete with Flex’s heat exchanger, fit the bill. A single 333 kW combined heat and power unit is now powering critical loads for the forty-nine-story building. The full gas turbine solution brings an annual estimated energy savings of between $200,000 and $500,000 and a resulting payback in fewer than six years.

“We believe this will demonstrate to the state and city of New York what we can do about greenhouse gas and carbon reduction,” said Flex’s Chief Commercial Officer, Doug Baltzer. “Resiliency was a big driver for them. They wanted to be able to run through any disturbances in power and avoid what has been happening with outages throughout the U.S.”

One of those instances he is referring to is the major winter storm that occurred back in February, which took out much of Texas’ power generation capabilities and left most of the state without power. It should be noted that during that ice storm, Flex Turbines delivered power to Flex’s Texas customers without interruption.

“If you become dependent upon a source of power that’s not naturally reliable, you’re going to want to find ways to get through these types of power interruptions. We fit into what the Sheffield condo Board was aiming to do with combined heat and power for efficiency and carbon reduction.”

That project presented challenges, as most projects do. The only real available space Sheffield could offer was in a utility room in an underground garage. It was not the most spacious place for an ultra-modern power generation unit, but the company made it work. The unit, a GT333S model, had to be partially disassembled to be brought in because of some low overhead clearance issues. Also, the exhaust system, which typically runs out the top, was reengineered to fit within the condominium’s specifications.

“So, we had to design a side exhaust exit for our machine. That will become an option (for other projects) going forward, but it was a first time for this particular installation,” said Chief Executive Officer Mark Schnepel. “The exhaust will be fed into a heat recovery steam generator, so they’ll utilize the waste heat coming off the turbine, which will offset their boiler loads.

Baltzer commended the facility managers in that particular project for being so progressive. “Many of them are trying to get every last drop of juice they can from inefficient, unreliable, dirty equipment they bought in the fifties and sixties,” he said, “and here’s the facility’s ownership group, getting out ahead, asking how they can improve over the next decade or so. It’s really exciting for us to lead these forward-thinking groups in figuring out what is next in terms of energy.”

Schnepel said Flex is working with facilities and organizations throughout the globe to incorporate these methods of efficiency and carbon reduction.

Flex managed through the pandemic fairly well, all things considered, because it supplies critical power to industries that cannot shut down, such as medical, manufacturing, and oil and gas facilities. Baltzer said that the leasing side of Flex’s business did well through 2020 in spite of significant reductions to many customers’ capital budgets. When oil and gas took a severe dip in the last year—Baltzer still admits to being surprised at how low prices dropped—he said that clients appreciated that Flex could work with them through the difficult time. Flex’s scalable, clean power solution was what proved most attractive, he said.

“I think a lot of clients fail to really think about power until it’s absent. No matter how low the economy dropped, it would have cost our customers even more to shut completely down,” said Baltzer. “Budgets and expenses were cut throughout most of last year, but it’s coming back now.”

Schnepel said FlexEnergy Solutions was fortunate to have several existing orders that carried it through, with a great deal of inventory built up in preparation of those orders. But now, many businesses are back up in terms of capacity and have taken a lot of that inventory. A couple of years ago, Flex started designing, manufacturing, and selling heat exchangers in addition to its microturbines. Schnepel called this a “bright spot,” for business during the pandemic, because it helped the company maintain operations. He said many companies continued to invest in power generation, which kept Flex quite busy.

“We’re actually having to add labor now, because the turbine side is returning, and the heat exchanger side never really went away,” he explained. “A lot of investment is going into the next generation of power to run on hydrogen, and the pandemic seems to have accelerated this.”

So, business goes on.

“One startling thing has been the price of materials, like the increases in steel and copper and a lot of components,” said Schnepel. “We’ve seen some price increases that we’ve had to balance and stay on top of or else our costs would go up dramatically. It’s taken a lot of negotiation with our suppliers to make sure those prices remain at least close to where they’ve been in the past.”

Now, with the world beginning to see the end of the pandemic, Schnepel said companies are beginning to view energy in a different, more positive way and are adapting to using it differently, which is to Flex’s ultimate advantage. With a North American power grid designed in the 1950s powering twenty-first-century technology, things need to be done differently.

“I think what we’re experiencing in the market is growing sophistication with how businesses look at energy. It’s no longer just a utility bill, but is a substantial part of their operations,” he said. “That’s driving industries to get creative and to find savings through renewables or incentives, or combining everything into one system that can give them resiliency as well as an opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint.”

Baltzer said he is proud to be part of a company that offers new solutions to old technology. FlexEnergy Solutions helps companies and communities rethink what they have been doing with old, inefficient (dirty) power sources and introducing them to technology that helps reduce costs, improve performance, and provides more efficient operations.

“Customers are asking FlexEnergy for solutions that integrate with new renewable and clean energy sources and how we can become a part of the customer’s microgrid solution,” he continued. “This is how a lot of different sources of energy get combined into one resilient solution. Customers are being driven by the need for clean energy options – for the ability to tie in with wind and solar, and to maximize all sources available for a carbon-neutral solution.”

What that means is that with Flex’s technology, a company can optimize their power sources. They can access solutions to seamless connections to clean energy sources that combine microturbines, wind, and solar instead of strictly getting electricity from unreliable utility grids.

“We feel we can play into that larger picture with the customer who wants to use everything available, and we’re the ones capable of connecting all sources into one,” Schnepel added. “The way the world is going, energy diversity is becoming increasingly important – utilizing different sources of energy such as solar and wind power, battery storage, and generators to help maintain battery charge when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. This diversity will help companies and communities take advantage of different rates rather than just having to rely on what the local power company charges at any given time.”

In the area of power solutions, FlexEnergy Solutions offers services for on- and off-grid power, unique gases, and cogeneration, among others. The company sells and manufactures high temperature heat exchangers for a diverse range of end applications as well as for gas turbine recuperation.

The post Flexible and Sustainable Power Solutions<p class="company">FlexEnergy Solutions</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

For the uninitiated, solar energy is all about large, south-facing solar panels. But there’s a lot more to it.

It’s about controlling the charge and converting it into usable electricity for building owners, whether they’re off- or on-grid, and doing it reliably and efficiently, through an expertly designed system.

This is where MidNite Solar with its extraordinary range of ground-breaking products comes in.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Robin Gudgel, President of MidNite Solar, the company he founded in 2005, about all this. The company name, he admits, is an oxymoron but a good conversation starter at trade shows. And no, the company does not generate solar energy at night nor is it located high in the Arctic for the sake of midnight sun.

A cat called MidNite
Instead, MidNite Solar is based in Arlington, WA, and is named for the stray black kitten who adopted Gudgel and his late wife, Mary Rintoul, on the night they first inspected the building that would become home to their company – and which has now expanded into a campus of eight, and soon to be nine, buildings.

The ninth building, instead of being a production or sales facility, will offer daycare services for children of employees.

Gudgel had noted that, during the height of the pandemic lockdown, parents were finding they could survive on one salary and that it benefited the entire family to have a parent at home all the time. It’s a sentiment that he sympathizes with – and says that his mother was a stay-at-home mom – however not one that is helpful to his business. With a company-run daycare, where parents can visit their children on breaks and at lunch time, he believes he has the solution to both family and staffing issues.

Gudgel says he’ll need to hire 50 to 60 people when he returns from a major trade show in New Orleans in September to fill anticipated orders for the state-of-the-art products in which he’s invested 17 years and millions of dollars.

Behind the scenes
Although the official start-up date of MidNite Solar was 2005, the expertise in electronics that supports the ground-breaking products dates back to 1971, when Gudgel was a young mechanical engineer working for Phase Linear (later the Carver Corporation), building massively powered stereo amplifiers.

“I learned a lot about power electronics from Bob Carver,” Gudgel says. “He was the godfather of stereo amplifiers and every rock band in the world used them.”

Then Gudgel started his own company, Spectro Acoustics, building amplifiers, tuners, and equalizers. For a while in the ‘70s, he says, it was the largest equalizer manufacturer in the world. He later did a stint designing nuclear bomb launchers and aircraft, and says he “learned how to make things reliable,” which led to his third career, in the solar industry this time, and the formation of his second company, Outback, which he has since sold.

When Gudgel’s business partner Ken Cox became president of Trace Engineering (now Schneider Electric) he began designing products for them, with some of his designs from the 1990s still in use today.

What he designs and produces he says is “really a combination of physics with the look and feel of hi-fi gear and the ruggedness and reliability of military aircraft. The stuff I designed and produced still works after 30 years. You can take a 30-year-old inverter that I helped produce and it is still running whereas competitors’ products have failed,” he says.

“I’m not a business genius, and my late wife would force me to look at a P and L statement once a year,” he admits, “but I do come up with some products that work quite well, because that’s what I enjoy doing – designing products,” he shares.

“My goal has always been to produce the best equipment out there, to pay attention to what the competition is doing, and figure out how to do it better. My brother Bob (who is also part of MidNite) and I have been doing this all our lives. This is what we do.”

The big reveal
When distributors arrive at MidNite Solar’s booth at the Solar Power International trade show in September in New Orleans, and at other large trade shows later in the year, they will be introduced to some outstanding products.

First, there are two new charge controllers, the Hawke’s Bay MPPT Solar Charge Controller, and the Barcelona, an MPPT battery charger, both of which are named in fond memory of vacation spots enjoyed by Gudgel and his late wife in New Zealand and Spain.

Product literature describes the Hawke’s Bay model, which can be paired with a HB Breaker Box, as the least expensive large 600VDC MPPT, either by itself or when outfitted with options, and has three auxiliary inputs/outputs, the most in the industry, and comes as a 90 amp or 120 amp model.

Meanwhile, with a 200 amp, 48V output, the Barcelona “is the most powerful and versatile charge controller in its class and is ideal for medium-to-large size stand-alone and grid-tied renewable systems.”

The Barcelona contains “a built-in breaker box and built-in talking MNGP2 graphics which allow communication, monitoring and programming of all future MidNite products from a single unit,” meaning there is no planned obsolescence, something Gudgel says he hates.

The Barcelona is the ideal companion to the third new product, the 7000-watt Rosie inverter/charger (named for World War Two’s iconic female riveter, Rosie), with an alternative 2800 W, 12-Volt model available for marine, RV, and other mobile applications.

The fourth product is the MNB17 (named for a B17 bomber).

The bomber
The MNB17’s unique modular construction with the inverter, charge controller, circuit breakers, and lighting system all in one is so advanced that eight patents have been granted. The product literature describes it “as one of the most advanced battery-based, inverter/charger systems ever devised.”

The ‘bomber’ is available in two sizes, the B17-3F and the more powerful B17-5F with a capacity of 15,000 watts, at 52 volts. Its talking graphics panel speaks in English, Spanish, and French and its optional communications module allows communications with other MidNite products as well as to the Internet.

In addition, the pleasing appearance of its artistically designed exterior led one distributor who saw the prototype to say to Gudgel, “I don’t know what this is, but I want it on my living room wall.”

A significant feature of its construction is that its individual components are separated into discrete modular elements, meaning there are no heavy parts to lift and manipulate, which makes installation and repair so much easier. “No matter how good you are, something can fail,” admits Gudgel, “but it’s different with the B17 because of its modular construction.”

The modular moment
He goes on to explain what happens when the lights fail (always on a Sunday afternoon) and the customer calls and asks, ‘What do I do?’

All the dealer can do is tell him to start the generator and throw the bypass switch, and he’ll come out the next day. On Monday, the dealer drives two or three hours to reach the customer, diagnoses the problem, takes it back to repair or replace, and maybe a week later returns to install it. All that time the generator has been running, filling the air with gas or diesel fumes.

But if something happens to one of the B17 inverter modules, the customer can read the meter and tell the dealer there’s a problem with a certain bay. The entire system doesn’t go down and simply operates with less capacity. Nor does the dealer have to spend precious time traveling, but instead, can send a replacement module that “a 10-year-old kid can install in 30 seconds.”

“And it’s safe because these are hot-swappable, meaning that you can pull a module in or out after waiting a tenth of a second to discharge all the voltages down to a safe level. We spent months perfecting that and it works incredibly well.”

“I think in the future the B17 is going to play a large role commercially, because you could have a 10,000-watt inverter if you kept stacking the modules. I can’t imagine all the uses and applications, but, for example, it could be used for a municipal sewer pumping station. I like producing the power where it is used – at residences, for instance.

“So you could have 10,000 or 20,000 watts of solar-panel power, and when you get home at night you could plug an electric car into the battery bank that has an inverter, and charge it with the power you generated during the day.”

Made in America
All of the products MidNite Solar is about to launch meet NEC, UL and CSA standards and have ETL, UL or TUV approval. They are die cast and extruded aluminum enclosures, as opposed to sheet metal; they can switch between 120 / 240 60Hz and 230VAC 50Hz voltage, which makes them suitable for offshore markets as well as the North American one. Circuit boards are coated with Conformal to protect them from contaminants and moisture. Every detail is carefully considered.

Perhaps most importantly, they are all made in the U.S., in contrast to so many electronic products now produced offshore, in China, India, Germany and the Philippines. “People ask me why I build here because no one else is,” Gudgel says, “and I tell them I do it because I’m stubborn, and I like to keep good guys working. That’s my only reason.”

And as for anyone who ever thought black cats were unlucky, the company’s namesake has proven them wrong. At age 16, “MidNite is the most spoiled cat in the world,” Gudgel says, “and sits up with Doug, one of our engineers, and looks at squirrels through the window,” while the company named for her is poised on the brink of huge success with its revolutionary new products.

The post The Energy May Be Alternative – But These New Products are All-American<p class="company">MidNite Solar</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

At the time we last spoke, Capstone Turbine primarily designed and sold proprietary electricity-generating microturbines. These products can be used to generate heat and power at the same time in a process called co-generation or combined heat and power (CHP for short) and produce minimal noise, vibrations, and ultra-low emissions.

Capstone has shipped over ten thousand of its unique “air-bearing, microturbine power generation systems, around the world,” according to President and Chief Executive Officer Darren R. Jamison.

Shortly before COVID-19 struck in early 2020, the company launched a new direct sales and solutions division.

“We realized we were leaving customers a little short as far as green energy solutions go. A lot of our customers would buy the microturbine, then they would want to add some battery storage or solar PV.” A decision was made to expand the business. “We’ve gone from a single product company to being an energy service provider with multiple products and storage solutions,” he says, with pride.

Today, Capstone has four distinct business lines: Energy as a Service (EaaS), Energy Conversion Products (ECP), Energy Storage Products (ESP), and Hydrogen Sustainable Products (HSP).

The Energy Conversion Products business line is responsible for microturbines, which remain a flagship product. Its microturbines range from the C65 model, capable of generating 65 kW of power, to the C1000S, capable of generating 1,000 kilowatts (kW). These microturbines run on natural gas, kerosene, aviation fuel, biogas, butane, propane, and other fuels and can be arrayed together in a microgrid for enhanced power generation and maximum efficiency.

The Energy as a Service segment contains Capstone Factory Protection Plan or FPP that offers extensive product life cycle coverage. The company also provides spare parts and repair, training for certified service providers who assist clients in the field, and the Capstone Service Network (CSN). The CSN monitors and records performance data of customer-installed microturbines. The EaaS division also oversees product rentals, a service that was introduced roughly two years ago and is quickly growing in popularity with customers.

“It’s about long-term rentals. For us, long-term is a year to ten years. It’s for customers who don’t have the capital dollars or are uncertain about their business in today’s turbulent times. Oil and gas customers are a great example. They may have a marginal producing oil or gas well. If oil prices drop, they want to close it in until prices increase again. We’ve also done a lot of rentals in cannabis and other areas where folks need power quickly,” Jamison explains.

The Energy Storage Solutions business segment designs and manufacturers hybrid energy stations and energy storage systems for lithium-Ion batteries, among its other duties.

Capstone’s fourth division consists of Sustainable Hydrogen Products. The company is eager to explore opportunities in this burgeoning sector with its own line of hydrogen-based products and solutions.

“We started a ten percent blended hydrogen product about a year ago. We’ve announced publicly that we will go to a thirty percent hydrogen blend by next spring,” says Jamison. “We’ve patented a new innovative hydrogen fuel injector to take us to one hundred percent hydrogen. We’re kind of walking that product through the development process… I think hydrogen will be a big part of our business going forward—blended or one hundred percent hydrogen. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when.”

About half of Capstone’s clients are based in the United States, with the rest of the world taking up the remainder. The firm’s power-generating products are popular in areas with high energy costs, such as the eastern and western U.S. seaboards. It has also expanded its market reach in Florida, Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, and other more central states.

The company’s products are sold through both direct sales and a global distribution network. Today the distributor network is comprised of roughly seven hundred people and accounts for about ninety percent of sales, Jamison says.

The company serves the natural resources, oil and gas, critical power supply, renewable energy, transportation, marine, cannabis cultivation, and brewery sectors, among others. Capstone’s products are popular with organizations that want to reduce energy costs or improve the environment and are well-suited for hospitals, data centers, hotels, and any location where it is critical to have a continuous, reliable supply of electricity and thermal.

Given climate conditions like frequent hurricanes, wildfires, or the recent ice storm that knocked out the Texas power grid, having a dependable energy source is more important than ever, notes Jamison. Companies and people “should care about resiliency. The reliability of the electric grid is getting lower, and outrages are getting more frequent and lasting longer. Losing power for more than a few hours is painful for any business and if it’s longer than a few hours, it can be fatal.”

Expanding its scope has allowed Capstone to serve its clients better. “A lot of customers buy three different energy technologies and try to get them to all work together. It’s a lot cleaner and easier to have one highly qualified solution provider,” he says.

He points to the firm’s biggest U.S. installation, which is based at Mohawk Carpet and Tile in Tennessee, as an example of how clients can reap several benefits by embracing a comprehensive energy solution.

Mohawk is “one of the largest carpets and tile producers in the world. We put in a five-megawatt CHP installation at their Tennessee location. We provide five megawatts of electricity, and we’re taking all the exhaust heat from the microturbines and pumping it into the side of the building, basically to cure the tile—direct drying the tile—so they don’t have to run the natural gas boilers to dry the tile.”

Capstone designs and manufactures its own products but often contracts out the installation to local firms that are familiar with the local building, utility, and energy codes in their given regions. Sometimes, it also develops products in partnership with other companies.

Collaborating with renewable energy company 24/7 Solar, for example, Capstone modified a 200 kWe (kilowatt-electric or one thousand watts of electric capacity) turbine to create a new turbine called Heat2Power, which converts solar energy to electricity and heat. In another partnership, Capstone and energy firm Baker Hughes developed a series of low-emission NOVALT gas turbines capable of generating over 60 megawatts for the industrial and commercial CHP sector.

In addition to its head office and manufacturing facilities in Van Nuys, Capstone maintains a plant near London, England. The U.K. plant “started as a service hub, and it turned into more of a remanufacturing and customer training center. As machines in the field start to get older and we start getting used parts back from the field for maintenance, instead of bringing these parts all the way back to the U.S., inspecting them to see if we can remanufacture them, it made more sense to take a lot of those parts to the U.K. for remanufacturing or recycling,” explains Jamison.

As with all other firms in North America, the advent of the COVID-19 virus had a major impact on Capstone.

“We ended up furloughing forty percent of the workforce, and the Capstone leadership team members and higher compensated employees took twenty-five percent pay cuts but continued to work full-time. The mid-management folks took fifteen percent pay cuts. As hard as it was, it was important that we acted quickly. We installed cleaning stations, hand washing stations, Plexiglas. All the stuff that became the norm, we got in the first few weeks,” says Jamison. “We took chairs out of our lunchrooms, had people work at home whenever we could to have them work safely.”

The company helped furloughed staff with medical coverage and hired back as many employees as possible as quickly as possible.

The company currently has roughly 115 employees, down from 160 to 165 in 2017, and continues to emphasize cross-training and efficiency, according to Jamison. Workers are trained to handle numerous tasks across different departments. The service part of the business is “almost all paperless,” and there is a focus on online training.

In addition, Capstone “is very focused on employee health and welfare. We have a Capstone Cares program, where we try to do things for local communities: blood drive, cleaning a park, feeding the homeless, holiday toy drives,” he says. “We also have a Capstone Culture Club that coordinates employee events such as potlucks, events around holidays, going to a baseball game, bowling—as a way to promote team building and encourage our employees to get to know one another and do things that fit our corporate culture of helping people out.”

While company revenue remained relatively steady during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, dealing with the economic havoc wrought by the virus was a significant challenge. “I think the hardest part was fear of the unknown—not knowing what was going to happen and what was going to happen next to our vendors, distributors, and customers. We managed to stay open the entire time,” he says.

In the future, Jamison sees tremendous opportunity in the green energy sector. More electricity is being generated using renewables, and people increasingly “want to work for green companies and buy sustainable products.” He believes that companies that can demonstrate real progress in their steps to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions have the opportunity to communicate that to their customers and potential customers. It seems likely that at some point, that will be a competitive advantage, especially for high-impact businesses like hospitality and consumer brands.

He returns to the company’s recent decision to expand beyond just selling eco-friendly microturbines to become a more rounded firm. “For us, we kind of want to be the Amazon of green energy, be that one-stop-shop that customers come to and say, ‘When I look at my energy use, whether it’s electric or thermal energy or backup power, Capstone Green Energy is the company I turn to.”

The post New Name, New Mandate, New Outlook<p class="company">Capstone Green Energy </p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

The energy sector is evolving faster than at any other time in history as fossil fuels like coal – one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases (GHG) – are being phased out and replaced with solar, wind and other renewables.

Having been a simple source of warmth for thousands of years, the use of coal increased radically with the evolution of the steam engine and coal’s new use as a generator of power, largely thanks to Scottish-born James Watt.

Although he didn’t invent the steam engine, in 1769 Watt came up with significant improvements over previous designs by inventors such as Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen, making the engines more efficient and helping to usher in the Industrial Revolution. Burning coal to heat water and produce steam power led to applications not only in factories, but also the development of locomotives and steamboats for transportation.

For decades, coal was a logical choice as an energy source. As a fuel, coal maintained the output of heat for much longer than wood, and coal was plentiful and cheap. A fossil fuel formed over millions of years, it is unfortunately also non-renewable, and controversial for its impact on the environment and health.

A foggy week in London Town
Both surface and underground coal mining damages landscapes and erodes soil. Sulphur, waste rock and coal produce acid drainage which combines with oxygen in water vapour, resulting in sulphuric acid, while heavy metals leach into groundwater. When burned, coal releases harmful impurities including sulphur and nitrogen, with one of the worst examples of this being the “London Fog” of 1952, also known as the “Great Smog of London”.

On the occasion, a lack of wind and bitterly cold weather over London caused coal-smoke pollution to blanket the city. Lasting from December 5 to 9, the sulphurous smog killed at least 4,000 people, sending another 150,000 to hospital. A national disaster, the deadly fog led to the introduction of the Clean Air Act of 1956 to reduce smokeless fuels in the United Kingdom.

The sun rises on cleaner energy
Smog remains a serious health issue, especially in densely packed urban areas. Cities like Los Angeles have become infamous for their murky, lung-burning haze, caused primarily by the exhaust from millions of cars and nearby industrial manufacturing.

Although a combination of local and federal air-quality initiatives and improved automotive technology has resulted in tremendous improvements, the push for clean hybrid and electric vehicles is stronger than ever, with investments in environmentally friendly power sources at an all-time high.

Along with environmental and health considerations, another factor in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables is power dependability. In North America, we have an expectation of reliable flows of electricity to our homes and businesses; however, recent experiences have demonstrated the opposite. While power interruptions and rolling blackouts – where electrical delivery is deliberately halted by utilities to present a total blackout – are an inconvenience, entire electrical grids going down for days or weeks is disastrous, and one of the major culprits is our ever-changing weather.

In less than five years, the world’s power systems have experienced many setbacks, from Category 5 Hurricane Maria pummelling Puerto Rico and the northeastern Caribbean in the fall of 2017 to Hurricane Michael impacting the Gulf Coat of the United States in October 2018; mysterious blackouts in all of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay in 2019; and power outages caused by Hurricane Isaias in the U.S. and parts of Canada in 2020.

The records nobody wanted
As recent power outages in Texas have shown, you don’t need heat and hurricanes to cripple electrical systems when unexpected cold snaps are just as destructive. Ravaging the Lone Star State in mid-February, a trio of winter storms created record-breaking low temperatures of -20 degrees F (-28 C) in the Texas Panhandle.

Some, including media outlets and Republican governor Greg Abbott, initially (and incorrectly) faulted frozen wind turbines and solar panels. In fact, poorly winterized natural gas equipment was the main reason for the catastrophe, which resulted in over 150 deaths, and more than four-and-a-half million homes being left in frigid darkness for days.

The Editorial Board of the Houston Chronicle called out the governor and his fellow politicians in their statement, “Gov. Abbott’s ‘wind turbine’ excuse is full of hot air, while Texans are dying”. The Board wrote “Wind makes up a tiny fraction of the state’s energy grid this time of year. The vast majority of power sources knocked off line were natural gas and coal, largely because those facilities weren’t properly weatherized.

“The real problem, as Abbott knows, has to do with Texas’ loosely regulated grid and a system of energy delivery that tries to maximize profits and keep consumer prices cheap by failing to insure against a crisis like this one.” It was failing to heed earlier warnings about the state’s lack of emergency preparedness that was a factor in the electrical catastrophe, which the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said was “seconds or minutes away” from complete failure at the point of partial grid shutdowns.

Leader in renewables
Texas is renowned for its many energy-resource assets, from coal and crude oil and natural gas to nuclear and hydro-electric. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently defined Texas as “a large state with a wealth of energy resources. It leads the nation in energy production, providing more than one-fifth of the country’s domestically produced energy.”

Due to its massive land area (second only to Alaska) and extravagant levels of sunshine and wind, Texas is also a leader in renewable energy – number one in the U.S. for wind-generated electricity, which is responsible for over one-fifth of the state’s 2020 utility-scale net generation.

Despite the rapid growth of renewables – Texas being second only to California for solar photovoltaic (PV) sourced power, and achieving over 30,000 megawatts of wind generated capacity last year – some continue to deride the sector.

All power sources were affected this past February, including coal, natural gas, and oil and nuclear, yet some state lawmakers want to shift the financial burden of ancillary services guaranteeing power to the grid to the renewable energy sector. In 2020, the cost of these ancillary services, such as keeping voltage consistent, was $275 million; with the February energy crisis, the price tag jumped to $7 billion.

Unfortunately, targeting wind and solar energy is not new. In May, the Texas Tribune reported that a conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), was lobbying “to make wind and solar projects ineligible for a popular local property tax-abatement program.”

The singling-out of renewables has led some, including the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), to go on record stating that renewables were not to blame for recent power outages in Texas and California. Yet in mid-June, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board published “The California and Texas Greenouts: Renewables show again that they aren’t reliable to power the grid.” This prompted ACORE to accuse the paper of spreading “blatant misinformation” and promoting a false narrative against renewables.

“The WSJ Editorial Board did not need to look any further than their own newsroom to know that natural gas shortages led to the disastrous power outages that impacted millions of Texans earlier this year,” said ACORE on its website.

“Taking political shots at renewable generation is of little help when it is widely apparent that to ensure a more reliable power supply during these increasingly common extreme weather events, we need to modernize and upgrade our outdated and balkanized electrical grid. What editorial pages should be urging is construction of a nationally integrated Macro Grid to send available power to where it’s needed, which would enhance grid reliability, save consumers billions of dollars, deliver significant job creation and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Attempting to clarify the actual reasons for the issues with the electrical grid, ACORE included facts surrounding the power outages of this year, including that 80 percent of forced outages in ERCOT territory in June “were coal, nuclear or gas plants,” not renewables. ACORE said that renewables not only provide affordable energy, but “have proven less susceptible to the impacts of climate-induced weather extremes than fossil-fired or nuclear power plants.”

Despite these clashes around renewables, the market for this kind of energy may well be unstoppable. Less than a year ago, the EIA reported that renewable energy consumption surpassed coal in the United States – the first time in over 130 years – with coal consumption diminishing to its lowest level in 42 years.

No matter how heated the debate, it appears that renewable energy is here to stay, for reasons varying from state policies and lower costs, to demand from the public and businesses for cleaner power. For that matter, in the United States, under Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), a certain percentage of power sold by utilities has to come from renewable energy sources.

These factors, along with Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) and the setting by Canada of a new 2030 carbon reduction target, will ensure a cleaner, greener future for all.

The post Greener and Cheaper<p class="company">The Renewable Energy Revolution</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Solar and wind power are two alternative energy sources earmarked to take the mining industry on a more environmentally conscious and less toxic growth trajectory with greatly reduced greenhouse gas emissions and more energy efficiency. These energy sources also make operations cheaper in the long run through a combination of price hedging and not being tied to volatile global crude oil prices. Solar energy can also power far-flung mines in inhospitable places like the Atacama Desert, where heavy fuel oil generators would otherwise make exploration too expensive.

In the race to go off-grid, microgrids are fast becoming all the rage with some operators adding hydroelectric power and backup gas-powered systems. South African-owned Gold Fields mines in Australia use predictive weather technology to program energy supply software that allows easy switches between energy sources depending to cloud cover and prevailing wind speeds.

Great as all these innovations are, the reality is that, to achieve cleaner mining, rare earth elements (REEs) like the indium and cadmium used in producing solar energy, the neodymium and boron used in wind turbine magnets, as well as other minerals like aluminum, iron, and copper for wiring, must still be extracted from the earth and processed by using copious amounts of resources like water and electricity.

Another consideration when it comes to REE commodity value is availability. In light of these points, researchers are advising caution lest a single country hold power over entire supply chains. Clean energy cannot be separated, at this stage and in our present model of production, from the environmental and diplomatic challenges presented in obtaining and extracting the minerals essential for mining’s electricity infrastructure. While the lion’s share of these materials comes from faraway places like South America, Kazakhstan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, China, and even Ireland, their impact on the environment and economic value is of global and national relevance.

With some luck for North American supply chains, not all of these locations are abroad. Closer to home, California’s Mountain Pass Mine is but one mine classed by the Minerals Education Coalition as having some of the world’s biggest REE deposits outside of Asia. According to an investingnews.com article of this past June, the United States and Greenland rank seventh in the world with an estimated 1.5 metric tons of rare earth elements; however, demand is increasing, and supply is, ultimately, finite.

But dark clouds often have silver linings—mainly thanks to the sun, and this brings us to the earth-friendly promise of solar power. There are currently two forms of solar capturing technologies. The first, reserved for large power plants, is concentrated solar power (CSP) that employs reflective materials to concentrate sunlight. Then there is photovoltaic power (PV), which converts solar energy into electricity, as seen in solar panels.

Many mines are beginning to use this technology. Anglo American reported the world’s first floating solar farm at one of its mining facilities in Chile in March 2019. The almost 260 photovoltaic panels at the Los Bronces copper mine handle 330 watts per unit and are suspended as a single island-style array on the surface of the Las Tórtolas tailing pond.

Here, water from the copper mining process is stored to allow sediments to separate and settle until the water is clear enough to be repurposed and the desirable mineral particles are extracted from the slurry. The solar plant is estimated to potentially lower the mine’s carbon dioxide production by close to sixty tons annually while providing it with 150,000 kWh of electricity over the same period. It also stops any significant water losses as it covers a large part of the pond surface, preventing evaporation and allowing nearly all of the water to return to the mine’s extraction cycle. The impact of such tailing ponds is regulated by government bodies and management and mitigation protocols set out by the United Nations in 2020.

In March, the Rio Tinto mine in Utah announced its plans to start setting up a tellurium extraction facility toward the end of 2021. This by-product of copper smelting is derived from cadmium telluride. Its semi-conductor properties allow sunshine to be transformed into electricity in thin-film photovoltaic (PV) solar panels.

“The minerals and metals we produce are essential to accelerate the transition to renewable energy,” Gaby Poirier, managing director of Rio Tinto Kennecott, said in a recent statement. “Adding tellurium to our product portfolio provides customers in North America with a secure and reliable source of tellurium produced at the highest environmental and labour standards with renewable energy. Rio Tinto is committed to using innovation to reduce waste in our production process and extract as much value as possible from the material that we mine and process.”

Rio Tinto is the first recorded large mining corporation to commit to investing in ‘clean’ energy as it sold the last of its coal assets—Australian-based Hail Creek coal mine and Valeria coal project—to Glencore in 2018. It now reports powering its operations with over seventy percent renewable energy. Part of Anglo-Australian’s multinational mining portfolio, the company went on record in 2020 with its goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. In a 2016 report, the mine vowed to close all three of its coal-burning units at the Kennecott mine for good. Since then, its power needs have been fulfilled by renewable energy certificates procured from Rocky Mountain Power, which has been supplying the mine with energy derived from a range of renewable local sources as well as wind turbines in Wyoming.

Considering the hefty amount of minerals needed to fabricate wind turbines, it is good to see that mines are beginning to employ the energy generated by these whispering giants to power their extraction activities. Once these minerals are extracted and transformed into workable materials like steel, most can be reused infinitely. This is exactly what the Rio Tinto mine has discovered in Utah where it derived nearly three million pounds of copper in 2018 from waste that had accumulated since the early 2000s.

Some of the mined materials needed to fabricate solar and wind-generated power include the more common ingredients like clay, shale, gypsum, limestone, silica, molybdenum, zinc, aggregates used in the cement that anchors these large structures, and even coke, a fuel product made from coal. This list is by no means exhaustive.

While lithium and cobalt are still the leading components of batteries used for power storage, researchers are looking to replace highly flammable, toxic lithium with gentler substances. One alternative power storage device, the proton battery, which powers itself by separating water into hydrogen and oxygen, was presented recently by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Others are working on batteries based on graphite, potassium, or aluminum salt liquids while China reportedly developed an earth-friendly, non-toxic battery using nickel-zinc that is fully recyclable but has a shorter life span. Trade-offs prevail.

There continue to be some major environmental impacts to consider when it comes to extracting rare earth elements. Scientists point out that the solvents used in the extraction process are often more toxic to the environment than burning fossil fuels. REEs are noted as ‘relatively abundant’ but rare due to the complexities involved in isolating these metals from the dirt in which they are found. Part of the difficulty is that these elements are not found in concentrated deposits, and so large volumes of earth must be processed to obtain comparatively small amounts of these minerals, taking much hard work and energy.

On the bright side, there are always smart people capable of solving big problems and big companies with the ability, vision, and budget to bankroll such work. Last year, in the Financial Times, U.S. Bureau of Energy Resources Assistant Secretary of State Francis Fannon referred to the mining for clean energy issue as “the green revolution’s inconvenient truth about mining.” As the market currently stands, investors are increasingly shying away from industries running on fossil fuels and coal, making it imperative for renewable energy development to become a whole lot cleaner a whole lot faster.

According to a McKinsey Sustainability report last year, titled ‘Here’s how the mining industry can respond to climate change,’ between a third and a half of the world’s deposits of minerals needed by the renewable energy market are located in areas without plentiful water needed for cooling machinery and supporting workers. These areas are also already under great pressure from climate change. Issues like water shortages in desert mining regions and flooding in coastal mining areas pose very real threats to extraction operations. Automation is playing a huge part in protecting workers from toxins, yet methane and carbon dioxide from the mining industry account for nearly one-tenth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2019, in the United Kingdom, Lord Sales of the UK Supreme Court, questioning whether companies can act ethically toward the environment on their own, suggested a new senior management requirement for mining corporations in the form of a director dedicated to overseeing the integrity and safety of a company’s presence in the natural world.

There are other solutions to help ‘green’ the mining industry. Apart from attempting to use cleaner REE chemical extraction methods, materials can and should be recycled and reused. While this is still a painstaking and expensive process, the technology needed will likely get cheaper over time.

Sustainalytics.com describes itself as providing “environmental, social and governance (ESG) research, ratings and data to institutional investors and companies,” and mentions in a 2019 article titled ‘Implications of the use of rare-earth elements in the wind energy market’ that only 1 percent of REEs are recycled at present, making a strong argument for strengthening supply through reuse. It also notes that Goldwind, a wind turbine fabricator already smelts used magnets and reuses the precious metal content.

As well as recycling, improvements in design could potentially eliminate the need for REEs. Enercon, a German firm, has come up with a gearless wind turbine design that does exactly that. Another wind turbine project was driven by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, which footed the bill for developing superconductor technology that would render permanent magnets obsolete in generators, slashing the need for REEs in many of these machines.

Considering the red tape posed by European countries’ protective environmental legislation, the search for alternative technologies could go beyond these precious metals toward a genuinely cleaner energy future.

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