Ecoenergy as a means for clean natural environment

It’s hard nowadays to imagine life without usage of electric energy. Energy was, is and will be need by people in their lives. It’s form or usage may be various but human mainly need it in industrial production, transport, house heating or enlightening. In the beginning this energy was brought by natural environment in form of non-processed resources: wood, coal, oil or gas. However the constant increase of demand for energy, decreasing natural resources and ecological as well as economical reasons brings forth new challenges and tasks for people interested in this field.
In recent years people tried to create effective methods of acquiring electrical energy from renewable sources such as: sun, water or natural Earth’s heat. Attractiveness and advantages of those sources more and more often encourages us to take care of our natural environment and use renewable energy sources. But what are those sources ?

Renewable energy sources – those are energy sources that use sun energy in all its forms, especially radiation, wind energy or biomass as well as kinetic energy of flowing water and internal Earth’s heat. Due to present level of technical civilization level we can acknowledge that a part of industrial wastes for renewal energy source, especially plastic materials.

Advantages of renewal energy sources: minimal influence for natural environment, economical use of fuels (elimination of use of coal, oil, gas in the process of producing electrical energy), big and constantly renewing energy resources, constant cost of acquired energy, possibility of work in a confined net, used in whole country, which solves the problems of energy transport due the fact that energy can be acquired in any place and eliminates loss connected with distribution and allows to avoid building transport lines.

Kinds of renewal energy:
- wind energy,
- sun energy,
- geothermal energy,
- water energy

Water energetic is one of the fastest developing branches of unconventional power industry in the world. Poland is an average country concerning the wind energy resources. Only in certain regions in the country the average wind speed goes above 4m/s which is the minimum starting speed for most of the power plants. They are however big enough, that in cause of proper country politics become very efficient source of electric energy. Wind energy is nowadays commonly used in households, as well as in wind power plants on a bigger scale. Use of that kind of solutions is not very expensive, due to not very complicated machine design as well as not very complicated exploitation. Wind energy can be used to creation of small installations with a power from one to few hundreds of kW, that can cooperate with batteries and heat pumps as well as big installations with a power from 1 to 5 MW that can be used in cooperation with small water power plants. To increase the acquired power level so-called wind-farms are built – a collectives of wind power plants standing near one another, that are found to be interesting to high number of users. Advantages of wind power plants are: satisfaction of increasing energetic needs of people due to development of ecologically clean energy, possibility of empowering places which are hard to get to, increase of amount of energy acquired from renewal sources, possibility of activation less populated areas or with not very fertile soil. Disadvantages of wind power plants: high costs of building, noise, negative influence on bird population on given area.

Sun’s radiation energy: is a biggest source of energy, that is used by human. The biggest issue is not the acquisition of the energy, but storing up and use of the energy in proper time. In Poland there are mediocre sunlit conditions. Compared to Italy we have above 60% less of sunlight per year. However from created for Poland sunlight energy resource map seems that the best conditions are in the eastern part of Poland. Sunlight energy may be processed into energy and heat due to installations mounted on roofs of buildings and in developed areas. Those conditions are met by about 0,5% areas in Poland. Sun’s radiation is used mainly in agriculture, heat energetic (heat sun collectors), electroenergetics (photovoltaic links). However the biggest chance of developing have those technologies that use sunlight collectors as a base. Sunlight collectors are devices that capture sunlight energy and change it into heat energy. They are most oftenly installed on top of roofs, there is also a possibility to mount them inside of walls or on a ground. While choosing place under the collectors we need to remember that it should work in sun as long as possible. The collector’s layer should be faced to the south. The optimal angle for a collector is 45 degrees. The collectors are most oftenly used to heat the drinkable water, in pools, rarely as house heating. The research conducted in Poland show that 70% of conventional energy can be saved in the process of preparing drinkable water and about 20% in room heating.

Geothermal energy – this is an energy accumulated in soil, rocks and fluids that fill rock cracks. The geothermal energy is talked about mainly when we consider water or steam as medium. This energy is practically inexhaustible due to its traveling inside Earth due to process of conduction and convection. Geothermal energetic is based on hot waters circulating in Earth’s rock layer below 1000m. About its attractivity shows: availability (those sources are not subjected to weather on conditional changes), inexhaustibility of resources, neutrality towards environment (geothermal energy does not cause emitting of any damaging substances), geothermal energy devices does not take a lot of space and does not affect natural environment very much. Geothermal waters located underground can be found in 80% of territories of Poland. Despite so often appearance of those conditions their exploitation isn’t the easiest one. The main obstacle are extraction conditions as well as financial side of such undertaking. Until now in the area of Poland four geothermal facilities exist: Bańska Niżna, Pyrzyce, Mszczonów, Uniejów. The most popular method of use geothermal energy is building of geothermal heating plants. Aside of that it is also used in balneology, building heating with use of heating pumps, agriculture, chemical industry, heating, swimming pools etc. About 40 countries around the world uses geothermal energy for different needs than creation of electrical energy which gives a sum of 11 400MW of energy. The biggest recipients of geothermal heat are: Japan, China, Hungary, Russia, Iceland and the USA. In Europe is noticeable that in Iceland geothermal energy covers 85% of demand for heating as well as covers 46% of basic energy usage in country. Heating houses with the use of heating pumps based on Geothermal energy becomes more and more popular. Heating pumps – are devices that allow usage of low temperature heat for heating , ventilation, and preparation of hot drinkable water. The method of their wok is fairly simple and is the same as method of work of refrigerator. The heating pump collects heat and transfers it to heat exchanger. The acquired energy may be used for water heating or building heating. Basic difference between heat pumps and other heating devices is that 75% of energy needed for heating is acquired from surroundings, while 25% is from electrical current. It results in that the heating pumps are presently the devices cheapest in exploitation, in comparison to other heating devices.

Electricity comes to being due to movement of turbine because of water, linked to the generator. Turbine is a more effective version of older water wheel. It is designed to receive as most energy as possible. Water power plants are built oftenly in rocky areas where a lot of rain occurs. The lake or water tank accumulates water high above the power plant. The amount of energy depends on water fall. Water energy resources of Poland are rather low (usage of 11% of whole potential) due to not big and poorly located raining and low terrain falls. The biggest concentration of water is in he basin of Wisła – about 68% (half of that in the lower fragment) - and Odra rivers and the rivers near sea, about 30%. They are mostly located in the coastal region (provinces: zachodniopomorskie, pomorskie, warmińsko-mazurskie). There is also a lot of them in northern part of kujawsko-pomorskie province. The least number of power plants ios in eastern and central Poland. In contrary, a lot of them is in the western part of the country along the frontiers with Czech Republic and Slovakia. In the recent years area of small power units developed, so called small water power plants are built mostly on existent water levels. Advantages of small water power plants: production of “clean” electrical energy, usage of small amounts of energy for own it’s own purposes, low technical supervision needed, may be remote controlled – doesn’t need high amount of staff, possibility of use of energy by local recipients, emergency energy source in case of damage to transfer lines, regulates water resources in the region, which influences for agricultural areas, it’s building creates water reservoir which can help in tourist and recreation development. They have small realization time – they may be designed and built in 1-2 years.