A Report From Energy Ant - My Trips to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Kerr McGee Drilling Rig!

Whew! The EIA really has me traveling. In beautiful Golden, Colorado the U.S. Department of Energy has a cool place called the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). After that the Colorado Oil and Gas Association is taking us to an oil well drilling site owned by Kerr McGee! Boy, there sure is a lot of activity here. NREL works hard to study renewable and energy efficient technology. Let's go look around and see the different things the Lab does.

First up we have a hybrid car. Let me guess, this car looks just like the one your older brother drives, so how could it be new technology? Well, in some ways it is just like the car your older brother drives, although this one didn’t have sweaty gym clothes in the backseat. The difference between this car and the ones we usually see on the road is the technology that powers the car.

Most cars you see on the road just use an internal combustion engine. The hybrid cars that are on the road today use an internal combustion engine to power a battery. These batteries actually run the car. The engine comes on to start the car and when you need more power like when you drive up a big hill. Many hybrid cars also have a technology called regenerative breaking. When you stop your car, the energy that is generated when you stop is stored in the battery too!

The second stop on our tour was a look at a model of an advanced wind turbine. Most turbines like this one are huge! The blades are usually 32 to 66 feet (10-20 meters) long and one blade can weigh more than 900 pounds. That’s more than this ant could carry! Wind turbines are used to produce electricity. A wind farm is a bunch of wind turbines clumped together and hooked up to the electricity grid. You may get some of your electricity from wind energy and not even know it. We can’t use wind energy everywhere though. The wind has to blow at least 9 mph in order to turn the turbine. Wind is one of the most economical renewable energy sources right now, along with hydropower, and the use of wind power is growing about 25% each year.

The National Renewable Energy Lab also has information on constructing new, energy efficient homes. They suggest using compact florescent bulbs. These bulbs fit into a normal light socket but use ¼ of the energy that regular bulbs use. They also put out a lot less heat- in the summer you don’t have to cool your house as much. The people here also suggest having your walls built to store heat in their mass during the day that can keep your house warm at night, landscaping with deciduous trees(trees that loose their leaves in the fall and winter), and using special glass in the windows called low-e glass. Not as much heat escapes through low-e glass as through a normal piece of glass.

Outside we took a look at a huge solar conductor on the mesa (pictured left). The scientists here take data from it and even put the information up online. There is other solar technology being worked on here too. We got to look at the solar panel testing site(pictured right).

There are many different ways you can make solar panels. You can use different gases inside the panel, different materials for the panels, different electrical wiring for the panels and a ton of other design differences. NREL creates and tests all kinds of solar panels hoping to make them more efficient, more durable and more cost effective all the time. The solar panels that you can buy today are made of silicon and glass which means they are kind of fragile. They are also only about 10 to 14 percent efficient.

The Solar Energy Research Facility (SERF) is where they work to create efficient heating, cooling, and lighting(pictured left). They also research the surface of photovoltaic(PV) cells and machines check to see if what researchers made is actually what they wanted.

For the last part of our trip, we headed over to Kerr McGee’s drill site. Thanks to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, we were able to see how an oil-drilling rig works. The rig is powered by a huge diesel engine. Next to the rig, there is a little white building called a “doghouse” where the drilling is monitored. The doghouse is also a great place for the rig workers to take a break.

There is new technology in the oil industry all the time. One way drilling has become more efficient is through the use of directional drilling. At this site, directional drilling was used to reach an oil reserve under a small wetland. Instead of having to place the rig directly above the oil, and in the wetland, drillers were able to come in from the side without disturbing the wetland.

The stuff that comes up from the ground during drilling isn’t just oil, though. It is actually a mixture of oil, water, and gas. The mixture is sorted out by a three-phase separator. This separator has a computer that is run by a photovoltaic (solar) cell. After it is separated from the water and gas, the oil moves by pipeline to a refinery where it will be turned into products like gasoline, diesel fuel, and heating oil. To learn how a refinery works, read the Refining section of this site, or check out my fieldtrip to Carson City Refinery.

Well, after a long day at the National Renewable Energy Lab and Kerr McGee’s drill site, I am beat. Who knew there were so many new technologies? Bye for now!