ALL Power Labs designs, engineers, and manufactures biomass gasification energy platforms. We create physical tools and information resources for people to be able to make and use renewable energy.

We believe that a bottom up, participatory ecology in energy is just as possible as it has been in computing. And we expect the impact of such creative self-determination in energy will be no less transforming than has been in digital realms.

The ALL Power Labs team is an unusual combination of experienced, hands-on fabricators and university-trained scientists and engineers. Imagine a mash up of the Bay Area California art/tech underground with Phd techies from Stanford and MIT. The result is a powerful combination of technical ability and physical know how for building real things in the real world.

We are a group not enamored with designy concepts and dead-end demonstration projects. Rather, we focus on that which can be effectively built and deployed, immediately and in volume, with broad impact and relevance.

Eight years after our founding we’ve grown to 35 full time employees, and support full engineering, design for manufacturing, and production manufacturing capabilities. Our facility is located in Berkeley California. You are welcome to visit next time you are in town.

With APL products, you can generate on-demand power for 1/4 the operating cost of diesel, at 1/2 the capital cost of solar. And while saving money, you can shrink your carbon footprint and contribute positively to global efforts against climate change.

Getting Energy and Climate Right

The stakes in getting energy and climate right are daunting. The shear volume of carbon we’ve dug up from ancient reservoirs since industrialization and returned to contemporary circulation is difficult to get the mind around–we’ve collected some of the details here. So far we’ve mostly been able to ignore the consequences of this tomb robbing, as the temperature rise from CO2 accumulation lags by decades, if not centuries.

APL Carbon Negative Machinery: Today and Future

The process of gasification is an incomplete one, and the leftover “waste” our equipment produces from making energy is a stable form of carbon known as ‘biochar.” Sequestering this carbon is what makes biomass gasification net carbon negative energy production.

While today’s APL Power Pallets produce a relatively small amount of biochar byproduct (around 5% of input mass), it is still enough for carbon negativity in the fuel cycle. The round rule of thumb numbers are as follows:

1 tonne of dry biomass in produces about 1Mw/hr of electricity and 50kg of carbon byproduct.
50kg of raw carbon once recombined with O2 is the equivalent of 185kg of CO2 in the atmosphere. (mass C x 3.67 = mass CO2)
1 tonne of biomass input to the gasifier can soil-sequester the equivalent of 0.185 CO2 tonnes in the atmosphere.
Avoided CO2 emissions from not burning fossil fuel in the process are added to the wins above.

Future APL machines will introduce features that enable increased biochar yield of up to 15-20% of input mass, while still co-generating electricity. For now we are just using the post hearth char. You can learn more about our carbon analysis here. You can also read fantastic coverage of the run up to COP21 in The Guardian. And for an extraordinary insider’s perspective, we’re really enjoying the blog Winning the Carbon War by Jeremy Leggett.

Lecture 3 - Conceptual Overview Video