Winter 2005

COVER STORY A New Energy Crisis Power Surge A Sunny Past and Future In Brief

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Power Surge Coastal consortium advances alternative energy. PDF format by T.J. Becker

IF InfinitEnergy has its way, Savannah, Georgia’s, reputation for being the South’s “hostess city” may soon give way to the “alternative energy city.”

courtesy Georgia Dept. of Economic Development The coastal Georgia city of Savannah has an abundance of natural resources – including biomass, wind and ocean tides – which make it the ideal test bed for alternative-energy technologies, says William K. Dodd, president of Atlanta-based Biltmore Communications Inc. and industry liaison for InfinitEnergy.

Launched in 2003 with National Science Foundation funding, InfinitEnergy is a public-private partnership based at Georgia Tech Savannah. It promotes the understanding and innovative use of alternative energy. Also known as “green energy,” alternative energy is derived from either clean or renewable power sources such as the sun, wind, water, hydrogen and biomass (organic matter such as wood or agricultural waste).

About 72 percent of the United States’ energy comes from coal and petroleum while alternative energies account for less than 6 percent, according to government statistics.

“Yet it’s only a matter of time before alternative energy becomes the mainstay of our country’s power mix,” says William K. Dodd, president of Atlanta-based Biltmore Communications Inc. and industry liaison for InfinitEnergy.

“Today, economic issues are driving alternative energy as opposed to political ones,” explains Dodd, a Georgia Tech alumnus who helped spearhead InfinitEnergy. “In the ‘70s, there was a push toward alternative energy because of the oil embargo. Many of those technologies failed because they didn’t make economic sense. Today, however, there are many situations where alternative energies, such as wind and solar photovoltaic, are the best economic choices.”

Although California is at the forefront of alternative energy development in the transportation sector, no state has become a real Mecca for distributed generation of alternative energy, Dodd says. “Why not Georgia?” he asks, noting that Savannah’s abundance of natural resources, including biomass, wind and ocean tides, make it the ideal test bed for a variety of alternative-energy technologies.

Comprised of academic, government and commercial partners, InfinitEnergy operates under the umbrella of the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Initiative (SEI). Established under the Office of the Provost, one of the partnership’s goals is to conduct demonstration projects and build an infrastructure that will attract alternative-energy research and development and manufacturing companies to the Savannah region.

With SEI, InfinitEnergy is proposing an offshore wind farm near Savannah that could be the first of its kind in the United States. A demonstration project of three to five wind turbines could generate about 10 megawatts of power. (See “A New Energy Crisis” for details.)

In another project, Kevin Haas and Hermann Fritz, both assistant professors of civil and environmental engineering at Georgia Tech Savannah, are researching methods for harnessing tidal and wave energy. “Our waves in Savannah are fairly small, but we have a large tidal range – about 8 feet – which is among the largest in the Southeast,” Haas notes.

Tidal energy can generate power ranging from the 20-megawatt capacity of a Nova Scotia plant to the 240 megawatts produced at a facility in France. “In the southeastern United States, we would expect to have much less capacity due to the smaller tidal range,” Haas explains. “But we could try to exploit energy from the tidal stream, rather than the tidal head, by extracting power directly from currents using underwater devices similar to wind turbines.”

In other activities, InfinitEnergy partner Savannah Technical College is developing a solar demonstration project to promote alternative energy and give students experience in installing solar panels. Partner Home Depot has expressed interest in installing solar photovoltaic arrays on the roof of its 37-acre distribution plant. These arrays could potentially produce hydrogen for fuel cells to help power the Georgia Tech Savannah campus.

In addition, InfinitEnergy is engaged in public outreach and education. “For the most part, people either don’t know about alternative energy technologies – or it seems like science fiction to them,” says Julie Sonnenberg-Klein, InfinitEnergy’s project coordinator. “We want to make alternative energy more of a reality.”

InfinitEnergy is developing programs to educate K-12 students and the general public about alternative energy – along with educational “toys” to illustrate technologies. For example, a solar cell held up to the sun will cause an attached fan to rotate.

“People have no idea how much fuel they consume now,” Sonnenberg-Klein says. “It takes a pound of coal to generate enough electricity to operate one 60-watt bulb for 24 hours. Yet electricity can also be generated with wind power, and no waste is involved.”

Read more at: infinitenergy.gtrep.gatech.edu

For more information, contact Julie Sonnenberg-Klein at 912-966-7838 or julie.sonnenberg-klein@gtrep.gatech.edu