Good news, wind power capacity grows to 100 GW

According to a post in Treehugger and the Earth Policy Institute, global energy generation from wind is growing in leaps and will very soon -estimated within a month- reach 100 GW! This considerable amount covers the needs of 150 million people!

Although certainly not solving global energy problems, it is a great start and holds even more promise for the future, since rates of installations are increasing in several countries. In 13 of them, generation exceeds 1 GW and growth exceeds any other type of energy, including natural gas.

Energy harvesting – Part 2 – Is it really viable?

In part 1 of the series I discussed the practical difficulties for widespread energy harvesting adoption. In this second and last part, I will go through some ways that I believe would make widespread adoption easier and faster. The number of applications is huge and I would say that it is wise to divide them in small and large scale.

Small scale harvesting would include all devices installed in homes or buildings that are in the form of modules of the larger electrical system. Large scale applications would be more complicated and involve a multitude of harvesting modules combined in a larger harvesting system to be installed from the start of construction, like for example in a train station.

In any case, I want to look at things from the consumer point of view with the simplest and first remarks that come to mind:

1. If I ever wanted to install a harvesting module, I would like to have the harvesting functionality integrated. For example, for a revolving door with a harvesting mechanism, I would like to be able to buy a model involving a clean and quick installation, that can do what I want it to do without modifications. This means it would be easier to compare prices with traditional models and that installation is a simple matter -except for the electrical connectivity part. As consumers, we are so spoiled with out-of-the-box functionality, that demanding from customers any form of modification would probably lead to commercial failure.

Energy harvesting – Part 1 – 5 obstacles to widespread use

A few days back I wrote about the Fluxxlab design proposal to harvest energy from revolving doors. Managing to install standalone energy producing devices is a significant event, much like when the first solar panels hit the market in the past. Therefore, I have decided to write a two part series, the first part is about obstacles to widespread use, part 2 is for now a viable and necessary option.

Despite the initial enthusiasm, energy harvesting is an old idea that has stayed on paper and is only now gaining some momentum. Car braking systems that recuperate energy to charge batteries are only now starting to appear in mass production and represent a very obvious application. As concepts, designers and engineers will seek more new applications for buildings and transport, it is inevitable that they are going to run against some hefty problems that need to be solved. Here is a few:

1. Energy availability: Like in the revolving door’s case, the energy source is neither continuous, nor of the same intensity. In other words, some of the time -in some cases most of the time- it is not possible to produce any energy at all, and during the periods when harvesting is possible things are not rosy with a well determined input.
2. Energy conversion: Energy harvesting is useless if we do not convert the available kinetic or other form of energy to useful electric energy. The efficiency of this conversion has to be pretty high, especially when we have short bursts of production. Most systems only work well under certain conditions, for example when mechanical revolutions are constant, or when wave patterns are regular. In many cases, for example when harvesting kinetic energy from random vibrations, it is awfully difficult to convert this random pattern in regularly flowing energy. The same when we have kinetic energy in the form of rotations, in which case frequency control is a major issue.

Are OTEC energy islands the answer to our energy needs?

Source: Telegraph

Big problems require large scale innovative solutions. ElectronRun has so far covered solar proposals for the energy needs of the EU and the US. Now OTEC artificial energy islands come as another large scale idea whose main energy source is water temperature differences. The idea is that when we have a difference of about 20 degrees Celsius between warm sea surface water and cold water from large depths, it is possible to drive turbines for energy production.

OTEC means Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and is a method that was thought by French physicist Jacques-Arsene d’Arsonval. In fact, Georges Claude, a French inventor, proved the validity of the theory with his tests in the 1920s, but unfortunately did not manage to develop further.

There is two OTEC cycle types. The closed cycle uses ammonia that is vaporised by warm surface water, then drives turbines for energy production and is finally converted to liquid by cold water. The open cycle has an extra advantage, that of producing huge amounts of drinking water. There is quite a few ocean areas that offer the minimum required temperature differences, mostly around the equator.

Harvesting energy from revolving doors

Source: Fluxxlab

Remember the Matrix movie and the way humans became grown heat-producing plants to provide for their machine lords? The word “harvesting” gives me the crawls, but luckily harvesting in this world is for our own benefit and energy dependence. Interesting ideas so far are the energy harvesting from gym users or vibrations from trains and human steps. Kinetic energy is everywhere, it is just a matter of how to harness the damn thing and convert it to useful energy.

However there are some nice opportunities where kinetic energy presents itself in more organised ways and can be collected more easily. Case in point is Fluxxlab’s revolving door harvester. It can be an all new installation or a conversion to an existing door. Unsuspecting humans rotate the spindle, that then rotates a magnetic wheel, that in turn creates current flow in stationary wire coils. Simple and effective.

IR radiation solar panel uses tiny antennas, has 80% efficiency

Source: Idaho National Laboratory 

There is all sorts of ways to produce clean energy, but the smartest and cleanest of all is definitely solar panels. There is absolutely no moving parts, noise or intermediate materials. Just beautiful clean energy. The catch? Low efficiency that in reality is far from the theoretical 20%, high manufacturing costs and productivity only during daytime -preferably with lots of sunshine. The researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory are addressing all these shortcomings. By putting loads of nanoantennas on cheap base material, they manage to collect energy in infra-red frequencies by day and night.

How solar energy could make the US energy independent

 

We have already written about Desertec and how it could change the energy scene in Europe. Now the January issue of Scientific American describes a project that aims even higher, by using solar energy to produce up to 3 terawatts of energy and cover 69% of US electricity and 35% of its total energy by 2050. And all on US soil, in the sun drenched states of the southwest.

The numbers might sound optimistic but the whole plan has a firm basis and every one of its aspects is convincing. Geographically, the southwest states are perfect as they provide year-round sunny conditions and have large uninhabited public areas without competing uses. By 2050 and at full deployment, solar stations will require 46,000 square miles of land, a large area by any standard but feasible bearing in mind that the states of interest already have this land available and there would be zero burden on local ecosystems.

Google’s new directions, Microsoft’s example

There’s a lot of speculation as to the new directions of expansion that Google is going to take. First of all comes the 700 MHz auction in the US and whether Google will take it seriously or is just testing the water. Then there is the green energy sector that is more of a certainty despite the fact that it is a completely new area for an internet company. So in which direction is Google going to chose to go? In my opinion in the largest possible number of directions, and here is why:

• In just a few years, Google has grown to enormous size with a stock valuation above $500 and enough cash to buy a number of large companies. Investors are used to a company offering enormous performance in the small term and this is not going to change. Something must be done to keep them satisfied and when you have 80% of the online search market sooner or later you have to look elsewhere…
• Google’s dominant market position already has enemies and with time it is going to get worse. Expansion via diversification looks all the more attractive. A recent interview of Microsoft’s Dan’l Lwein a couple of months back at the Gigaom show more or less underlines the fact that a huge company has to investigate all possibilities, in all possible fields. Google is in the same league, it cannot afford to let opportunities go and has to search for them quite actively.

Maglev = magnetic levitation + wind = green energy

Hey, do you feel guilty when you leave your PC on all night for those downloads and virus scans? There might hopefully be a solution to produce enough energy to alleviate this bad feeling if the Maglev project delivers as much as it promises. Just imagine a very large building spinning on a cushion of air, utilising huge vertical blades. The Maglev home page (http://magturbine.com/) requires username and password but has a link to a useful related article in Forbes. Ah yes, this technology is developed by chinese scientists. I hope these boys manage to get some results quickly before chinese coal plants cover the entire surface of the earth with black dust…