My Visit to Solarworld

Solarworld, one of the world’s leading producers of commercial and residential solar PV panels is located just a few miles west on Highway 26 in Hillsboro. The business of producing solar panels that generate electricity is booming.   There are several reasons the solar PV business is so good these days. The biggest factor is the urgent need to end our dependence on coal and oil for energy. Our addiction to dirty fossil fuels has put us on a collision course with climate change.  Weather extremes driven by human induced atmospheric warming are already here. Anybody noticed how warm it’s been in the first few months of 2015 in Oregon? What happened to the endless rain we normally experience in the winter months?  The short answer is elevated sea surface temperatures caused by human induced atmospheric heating. 

The other factor favoring wind and solar PV is the amazing drop in cost.  Solar and wind are already economically competitive to the long entrenched, dirty forms of energy on which we have long been dependent.  Nobody is investing in new coal, oil, or nuclear infrastructure these days, because it just doesn’t make financial sense.  

Kevin Keene, Regional Sales Manager for Solarworld, gave me a tour of the company’s plant in Hillsboro, Oregon, a few miles from my home.

Solarworld Plant, Hillsboro, Oregon

 

 

Solarworld manufactures photovoltaic panels that are made up of silicon-based PV wafers linked together in 38” X 66” sealed panels. The panels are 17% percent efficient at converting solar photons from the sun into electricity. Each panel is able to generate about 280 watts of electric power. In commercial and residential applications, the panels are coupled together to achieve the power level desired. A typical rooftop residential system would link 12 panels to deliver about 3500 kWh of energy, enough to meet at least half of a typical American home’s energy needs.

Kevin from Solarworld showed me the Hillsboro plant’s main manufacturing facility.  We took an elevator to the second floor and found ourselves in an open office that spans the length of the plant, with large windows overlooking the production line.

 

 

It’s no wonder the cost of PV panels is dropping precipitously. The entire production process is automated, with robots handling virtually every task.  The cavernous production space is filled with machines linked by conveyors that move each unit from one assembly step to the next. I only saw a handful of people working in the assembly area. Most of them were inspectors, tasked with conducting a rigorous round of testing to confirm that each panel produced meets Solarworld’s very high standards.

The assembly line operates 24 hours a day, with only a fraction of a percent of the new PV panels rejected because of defects or substandard performance.  Solarworld’s current production line, operating at maximum output, puts out 360 Mw annually.   The company is adding a new production line in an adjacent building that will increase capacity by nearly 50 percent. 

The clean energy revolution is clearly underway, and Solarworld is a big part of it. Their technology is second to none in quality and performance, and very competitive in cost.  

I don’t have any financial incentive or otherwise to endorse Solarworld. I just think it’s a very good company, with great technology, with a business model that works in the new, clean energy marketplace.  I expect to have solar PV on my roof in the near future. Very likely the panels will be made by Solarworld,  a ‘Made in America’ success story.

Check out this video…

Here is the link to Solarworld’s webpage…  http://www.solarworld-usa.com/

Solar Energy - Too Cheap to Meter?

Commercial scale solar power is headed for 2 cents/kWh.  That kills the economic justification for pretty much any fossil fuel alternative, as well as nuclear.  If  we were not subject to the deep pockets political influence of the coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power interests,  we would likely already have a national energy policy that would fully encourage the transition to clean, inexhaustible energy alternatives like solar and wind.  Unfortunately, we are under the influence of a hulking, profit driven corporate juggernaut.  Their game is lame, but their money is buying them a  lot of time in the public policy driver's seat.  Their blind pursuit of profit is causing our Earth's natural systems to collapse.  We must change our ways. The sooner, the better.

Where energy is concerned the future is already emerging.

Every place on Earth has access to some type of clean, low cost energy. In transport applications where an energy source is needed that is both clean and available on demand, the path of least resistance is battery stored electricity. In many transport applications, battery stored electricity will not meet the load requirements.  That is where hydrogen comes in as an energy carrier. Hydrogen is the simplest, most abundant element in the universe.  It is clean, non-toxic, and inexhaustible in supply. You can't mine hydrogen, you have to make it by splitting it away from chemical bonds with readily available chemical compounds, like water.

The simplest way to make hydrogen is to split water molecules, which consist of two hydrogen atoms linked to an oxygen atom.   In an electrolyzer, it  takes about 50 kWh of electricity to split about   two gallons of water into enough free hydrogen to equal the energy in one gallon of gasoline.  At 2 cents/ kWh, you would need about a dollar's worth of the solar energy to make the hydrogen equivalent of gasoline. When run through a fuel cell, the efficiency of energy delivered to the wheels of a car from hydrogen is two or three times better than gasoline IC engine. 

I recently got a bid to put a 5,000 kWh solar PV system on the roof of my house. After government incentives, the system would pay for itself in about three years. After that,  all the electric power it produces would be pretty much free. Surplus electricity generated by such a system could be routed through a small residential scale electrolyzer to produce hydrogen for use on demand.  The stored hydrogen could be used to power the home at night when the solar panels are not producing. It could also be used in a car powered by a fuel cell.  Some see hydrogen as a competitor for battery technology. A lot of trash talk still emanates from some battery enthusiasts.  I share the opinion of many people who have a stake in the success of hydrogen.  The fact is hydrogen is an inexpensive way to store electricity for use later on demand. Hydrogen and electricity are two sides of the same coin. They complement each other beautifully. It just makes sense for  them to coexist.

The problem we have now is that our government's energy policy has been captured entirely by big oil, coal, and nuclear interests.  They own the majority of our elected politicians, and those politicians are aggressively engaged in obstructing the pathway to a clean energy future.  Because of that brand of political intransigence, the US is dragging its feet on the clean energy revolution, Instead, it is Europe, Japan, and China that are leading the way. 

I want to live in a  net zero energy house, and I want to drive a car that is pollution free and running on a fuel I can generate with the solar panels on my roof.  A growing number  of  people are already on that pathway.  In two years, I expect to be part of that caravan.

The attached article comes from the renew economy website





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Solar at 2c/kWh – the cheapest source of electricity

By Giles Parkinson

Major new study says policy makers and energy planners still underestimating cost potential of large scale solar. It says that within in a decade, it will be cheapest form of power and will fall to 2c/kWh.




A major new study from a leading German think tank and renewable energy specialist says the cost reduction potential of large scale solar is still misunderstood, and predicts that solar PV will be the cheapest form of power within a decade, and cost less than $US0.02/kWh by 2050.

The study by the Berlin-based Agora Energiewende says that the end to cost reductions from solar plants is “not in sight”, even after falling more than 80 per cent in recent years.

It cites a range or reasons for this. Primarily, though, it comes down to an expected doubling in module efficiency, which will mean less panels are needed to produce the same amount of power, and therefore less land, less materials, less maintenance and lower installation costs.

These balance of systems costs are expected to fall by up to 2/3 in coming decades, and combined with a fall in the cost of finance, could cut the cost of solar technology in areas such as Australia, the US and parts of Europe to as low as 1.5 Euro cents/kWh.

“Even in the most conservative scenarios for market development, without considering technology breakthroughs, significant further cost reductions are expected,” the report says.
The forecasts produce a range of outcomes, depending on the actual increase in module efficiency – to 24, 30, or 35 per cent; the scale of deployment in coming decades, and the extent of “learning rates”.

Finally, depending on annual sunshine, power costs of Euro 4-6 c/kWh are expected in Europe by 2025, reaching Euro 2-4 c/kWh by 2050. That means it will be cheaper than conventional technologies – which costs between Euro 5c and 10c/kWh – by 2025.
It will even cheaper – at Euro 1.5c/kWh in countries with more sun.

“For the next decade, this represents a cost reduction of roughly one third below the 2015 level,” it says. “In the long term, a reduction of roughly two thirds compared to the current cost is expected.”
Lead author Daniel Fuerstenwerth said one of the reasons for the study was the lack of recognition among policy makers and advisors about future cost falls in solar PV, and official forecasts which continued to downplay the potential role of the technology.

This is despite the fact that organisations such as the International Energy Agency has predicted that solar costs would fall to 4c/kWh, and would in effect become “unstoppable”, and predicts it will be biggest single source of energy by 2050. Even Australia’s Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics recognises that solar will be the cheapest technology by 2030.

“The long term scenarios tend to underestimate the role of solar in power systems and in decarbonisation efforts,” Fuerstenwerth told RenewEconomy in a phone interview.

“When you look at the scenarios being prepared – there is always a very small share of solar. For example, in Germany, the power grid system is being discussed for scenarios that include a maximum 10 per cent share of solar PV in long term future.”

The Agora study found that in “large parts” of Europe, large scale solar was likely to be competing with conventional technologies – which costs between Euro 5c and 10c/kWh – by 2025.





In other regions of the world with higher solar irradiation, solar power will be even cheaper than in Europe.

“Our results indicate that solar power will become the cheapest source of electricity in many regions of the world, reaching costs of between Euro 1.6 and 3.7c/kWh in India and the Mena region (Middle East and North Africa) by 2050.

Cost competitive- ness with large- scale conventional power plants will be reached in these regions already within the next decade, at a cost for solar power by 2025 ranging between 3.3 and 5.4 ct/kWh.

(Indeed, in UAE for instance, solar is already cost competitive, with a tender for 200MW of solar going at less than $US0.06/kWh, less than the prevailing cost of gas-fired generation at $US0.09/kwh.

In North America, the study predicts that costs for large scale solar photovoltaics will reach Euro 3.2 to 8.3c/kWh in 2025 and Euro 1.5 to 5.8 c/kWh in 2050, the wide cost range due to significant geographical differences within the region.

In Australia, the study says, costs will reach Euro 3.4 to 7.1c/kWh in 2025 and 1.6 to 4.9 c/kWh in 2050. Interestingly, the study underlines how the cost of capital will be critical to the cost of electricity delivered by solar. This graph below illustrates how (remember the currency is in Euro).

“The cost of capital is and will remain a major driver for the cost of power from solar photovoltaics,” the report says. “Producing power from solar photovoltaics requires a high up-front investment, but subsequently allows power production for 25 years and more at a marginal cost of close to zero. It is thus a very capital-intensive power-generation technology, and the interest paid on both debt and equity has a large effect on the total cost of a large-scale photovoltaic project.”

It estimates the difference of the cost of technology could be as much as 50 per cent. “The regulatory environment will thus be key for reducing the cost of power from solar photovoltaics in the future, as the cost of capital is largely driven by the risk perceived by investors,” it notes. Australian developers understand this very well.

Here is the estimates on all regions:



 

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Green World Rising

A new video produced by Leo DeCaprio and Thom Hartmann shows that with existing technology, our global human society can be completely free of our dependence on coal, oil, and natural gas in about two decades.

Clean, renewable sources of energy from wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro power derived from ocean tidal forces and river currents can provide all the power the world needs without generating any atmospheric pollution.  This new video, narrated by Leo DeCaprio presents that clean energy future very effectively. 

The impediments to this kind of life-affirming future are not technical. We can do it with technology that is already developed.  The obstacle to this kind of future is entirely political, driven by corporatists and elites who profit from the status quo and are unwilling to accept any change that threatens their income.

Bottom line: A clean energy future is imminently achievable, if the people demand it.

Here is a link to Green World Rising... http://www.greenworldrising.org/#!ep3-green-world-rising/ches

Toyota's Hydrogen Inspiration

Just learned about this video from Michael Stitzki, an engineer from New Jersey, who has been on the leading edge of hydrogen energy technology for more than a decade.  I share Michael's belief that hydrogen is poised to become a major component of the clean, renewable energy era that is emerging. 

Here is the link to Toyota's very creative expression of confidence in hydrogen as an important, clean energy commodity. https://vimeo.com/106472439

Elon Musk's Big Bet on Batteries

The advances in battery technology are very impressive.   It certainly appears that we are on the cusp of a transition away from dirty hydrocarbon fuels like oil to a world powered by clean, renewable sources of electricity like wind and solar. The sooner it happens, the better..

Ultimately,  battery electric cars will have a big place on our highways, but they will hardly be the only option. In fact, the plug in hybrid (PHEV) that combines an electric motor to power the wheels, batteries to store energy, and a small, on board fuel cell to recharge those batteries could turn out to be the best, long term solution for our all around transportation needs. Why? Because the solar panels on your house that can be used to recharge your car's batteries, can also be used to produce hydrogen, a clean, inexhaustible energy commodity that can  power a PHEV vehicle's on board fuel cell.   This technology is already nearing maturity. In a few years, fuel cells could be integrated into PHEV vehicles at a cost that's competitive with the gasoline engines we have relied on for a hundred  years.

Elon Musk is all about batteries. He is definitely pushing the technology envelope with his massive commitment to battery production.  We are now seeing credible predictions that a clean energy transition could be nearly complete by 2050.  That means, almost everything will run on wind and solar generated power.

More than anything at this point, we must find the political will to overcome the aggressive resistance already coming from obsolete technologies...  It can't happen too soon.



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Why Musk Is Building Batteries in the Desert When No One Is Buying

           
By Tom Randall - Sep 11, 2014 
         

Tesla’s planned 5-million-square-foot ‘gigafactory’ wouldn’t just be the biggest battery factory in the world. It would be one of the biggest factories in the world, period. But hours before CEO Elon Musk took the podium last week to tout the $5 billion facility came August sales numbers for electric vehicles and a spate of news stories about how U.S. interest for electric cars has stalled.

So what gives? Why would Tesla build capacity for half a million car batteries a year if no one is buying? Four charts below tell the story.

First the bad news.

August brought another month of electric-car sales that came up short of previous highs. Interest isn’t falling, but at four percent market share for combined sales of hybrids and plug-ins, people aren’t exactly clamoring for them. The dark blue shows hybrids, the light blue shows anything with a plug; stack them together and you've got what's known as the electrified-vehicles market.

But here’s the thing: the “stall” is happening entirely in the category of plugless hybrid vehicles (shown above in darker blue). These are gasoline engines backed by fuel-saving battery drive systems. The batteries are primarily nickel-metal hydride like those found in the standard Toyota Prius -- not the high-efficiency lithium ion batteries that Elon Musk wants to crush the market with.

Here’s what’s happening in the smaller subset of cars that don’t require liquid fuel to roll:

Time to plug in.

The chart above shows the exponential rise of U.S. plug-ins. The light purple signifies rising monthly sales, while the dark purple shows cumulative sales since December 2010.

The rise of the plug-in has been fast, but the category is still diminutive. Most car trackers put plug-in sales at a fraction of a percent of U.S. vehicles sales. But just as it’s misleading to lump in growth with hybrid gas cars, comparing plug-ins to all vehicles on the road isn’t apples to apples. Plug-in SUVs are only just starting to hit the market.

The chart below shows plug-ins as a share of U.S. car sales, excluding those larger vehicles.

Quiet, but with great acceleration.

For 2014, plug-ins average 1.5 percent of cars sold in the U.S. That’s still not a lot, and the trendline for market share appears more incremental than exponential. At this rate, plug power wouldn’t be the dominant form of fuel until the end of the century.

And that excludes the ever-popular SUV category. The BMW i3 and the Mercedes-Benz B Class are still rolling out. Tesla and Toyota recently ended their collaboration on a $50,000 plug-in version of a RAV4 after just 2,000 units sold in two years. Like the Nissan Leaf, the RAV4 was hampered by a limited battery range: 100 miles. Musk told reporters in Tokyo last week that he envisioned a larger project with Toyota than the RAV4 “maybe two or three years from now.”

Tesla's first SUV, the Model X, is set to go on sale in the first half of next year, complete with a third row, space-age falcon doors (pictured above), all-wheel drive and little compromise on the Model S’s 265-mile range. Here’s a sneak peak of pre-orders for the Model X, based on self-reported waitlist numbers tracked on a Tesla Motors Club forum (Tesla doesn’t release pre-order tallies). A reservation for the luxury Model X requires a $5,000 deposit.

Americans heart SUVs.

These reservation numbers are significantly higher, and picking up faster, than reservations of the Model S prior to its June 2012 ship date.

Still, to justify the gigafactory, it would take additional market forces to bend the curve skyward on plug-in market share. That’s exactly what Tesla is working on. The biggest obstacles to plug-in adoption are availability of charging stations, range, charge time and cost. Here’s where those things stand:

Charging stations: By the end of the year, there will be more than 5,000 electric charging stations operating in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Department. In the first half of 2014, more stations were opened than from 1970 to 2011 combined.

Range: Drivers want to know they can make their daily commute, get stuck in unexpected traffic and stop by the store for some emergency pickles without having to worry about being stranded. The best-selling Nissan Leaf, at $30,000, leaves room for worry with its 84-mile average range. The high-end Tesla Model S, at more than twice the price, has an EPA-rated range of 265 miles. That’s a lot of pickle stops.

Charge time: Home charging of a Tesla is still a commitment at 58 miles per hour of charge. The Tesla Supercharger stations, on the other hand, get 170 miles in 30 minutes. Musk has opened up the system’s design for other carmakers to adopt.

Cost: Tesla hasn’t released the official price tag for the Model X, but it’s expected to be in the same luxury range as the Model S, which starts at $60,000 for a version with smaller battery. Bringing down the cost of batteries will be key to plans for a more-affordable Model 3, still years away from market. Musk estimates the gigafactory will reduce the cost of lithium-ion battery capacity by 30 percent.

Musk’s diamond factory.

Last week, Tesla released sketches of the future plant. It’s powered by renewable energy and shaped like a diamond. So why has Musk designed a gigafactory to produce batteries for half a million cars a year (twice the number that's been put on the road by all companies combined)? Because it's increasingly looking necessary.

Deutsche Bank analyst Rod Lache last month increased his estimate for sales of the Model S and Model X to 129,000 units in 2017, from a previously estimated 83,000. Tesla can reach its 500,000 annual run rate before the end of the decade, Lache said, in time to put the gigafactory to full use. 

Tesla’s growth will be “much steeper, their mix will be much richer, and their costs will ultimately be much lower than we previously assumed,” Lache wrote in a report on Aug. 11.

This doesn’t mean you should rush out and buy Tesla stock. Just 11 out of 20 analysts tracked by Bloomberg give the company a “buy” rating, and the stock price is 261 times estimated earnings, compared with a 12.5 estimated P/E for Ford Motor Co. Even Musk admitted last week that the stock price is “kind of high” right now.

Still, it’s easy to get caught up in Musk’s vision for the future of cars. Defying skeptics, Musk has established the biggest U.S. solar company by market value, built a private space company that’s making deliveries to the International Space Station, and has conjured a $35 billion car company out of thin air.

Now the dude’s got diamonds in his eyes.




 

Solar Freakin' Roadways

This is such an amazing idea. Think of all the landmass around the world that is dedicated for use of of one kind of transport vehicle or another - roadways, parking lots, airport runways.  What if those paved places were resurfaced with tiles that produce solar energy.  It's a fantastic idea. 

Check out this video produced by a group that has a plan to make it happen... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU





 

An 'Online' Magna Carta

This is a very important issue.  The internet is the only media arena that remains reasonably open and accessible. Corporations like Comcast and Verizon are trying to use their political influence to take control of the internet and limit the ability of users to freely access its content.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet.  We must take what he has to say seriously.
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Published on Wednesday, March 12, 2014 by Common Dreams

Web Inventor's Bold Call: Time for 'Online Magna Carta'

Tim Berners-Lee issues call for "a global constitution – a bill of rights" to defend digital rights

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

As the World Wide Web celebrates its 25th anniversary Wednesday, Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the system, is calling for an online 'Magna Carta' to protect users in the face of growing surveillance and attacks on an open internet.




 Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web inventor, speaking at a press conference on Human Rights Day in December 2013. (Photo: UN Geneva)

 

Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web inventor, speaking at a press conference on Human Rights Day in December 2013. (Photo: UN Geneva) Twenty-five years on, Berners-Lee said, "we need to make sure we establish the principles that the Web's been based on — principles of openness, principles of privacy, principles of not being censored."

"Unless we have an open, neutral internet," he told the Guardian, "we can rely on without worrying about what's happening at the back door, we can't have open government, good democracy, good healthcare, connected communities and diversity of culture. It's not naive to think we can have that, but it is naive to think we can just sit back and get it."

"It's time for us to make a big communal decision," he told BBC. "In front of us are two roads — which way are we going to go? Are we going to continue on the road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more control — more and more surveillance?"

"Or are we going to set up a bunch of values? Are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta for the world wide web and say, actually, now it's so important, so much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human rights?" he continued. Echoing that statement, he told the Guardian, "We need a global constitution – a bill of rights."

Because an open internet must be "nurtured and protected" from "some companies and some governments [that] threaten our fundamental freedoms on the Web," Berners-Lee's World Wide Web Foundation has set up the Web We Want campaign to support those groups working for an open, universal web.

A critic of government surveillance, Berners-Lee posed the first question to Edward Snowden Monday at the South by South West conference in Austin, thanking the whistleblower for the surveillance revelations that have been "profoundly in the public interest."
His Web We Want campaign is asking people to help craft an internet Users Bill of Rights to defend digital rights.

Efforts like this are "laudable and noteworthy," Timothy Karr, Senior Director of Strategy at internet rights group Free Press, told Common Dreams, as they "align people around the world around a set of principles that support internet freedom."

"The trick, though," Karr continued, "is going from declaration or statement of rights to action defending those rights as they are continually under assault around the world."
Berners-Lee is also marking the web's anniversary by taking part in a Reddit Ask Me Anything session Wednesday beginning at 3PM ET.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Hitler Hates the Tesla S

I pulled this off the Clean Technica website.  It seems this movie footage of Hitler has been twisted numerous times to deliver an effective message about something that Der Fuhrer might not have liked.

I actually think Hitler would have said 'Heil!'  to the Tesla Model S had it been around during the Third Reich. Very clever ad. The guy who plays Hitler is scary.

Here is the link to 'Hitler Hates Tesla' ... http://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/21/hitlers-response-tesla-takeover-video/?utm_source=Cleantechnica+News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6b92e0a5b4-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b9b83ee7eb-6b92e0a5b4-331969041

Sugar-Powered Batteries

Here's a very interesting new twist on battery technology. It takes a page from the biosphere's living playbook.

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Sugar-powered biobattery has 10 times the energy storage of lithium: Your smartphone might soon run on enzymes

• By Sebastian Anthony on January 21, 2014   

As you probably know, from sucking down cans of Coke and masticating on candy, sugar — glucose, fructose, sucrose, dextrose — is an excellent source of energy. Biologically speaking, sugar molecules are energy-dense, easy to transport, and cheap to digest. There is a reason why almost every living cell on Earth generates its energy (ATP) from glucose. Now, researchers at Virginia Tech have successfully created a sugar-powered fuel cell that has an energy storage density of 596 amp-hours per kilo — or “one order of magnitude” higher than lithium-ion batteries. This fuel cell is refillable with a solution of maltodextrin, and its only by products are electricity and water. The chief researcher, Y.H. Percival Zhang, says the tech could be commercialized in as soon as three years.

Now, it’s not exactly news that sugar is an excellent energy source. As a culture we’ve probably known about it since before we were Homo sapiens. The problem is, unless you’re a living organism or some kind of incendiary device, extracting that energy is difficult. In nature, an enzymatic pathway is used — a production line of tailor-made enzymes that meddle with the glucose molecules until they become ATP. Because it’s easy enough to produce enzymes in large quantities, researchers have tried to create fuel cells that use artificial “metabolism” to break down glucose into electricity (biobatteries), but it has historically proven very hard to find the right pathway for maximum efficiency and to keep the enzymes in the right place over a long period of time.





 A diagram of the enzymatic fuel cell. The little Pac-Man things are enzymes

Now, however, Zhang and friends at Virginia Tech appear to have built a high-density fuel cell that uses an enzymatic pathway to create a lot of electricity from glucose. There doesn’t seem to be much information on how stable this biobattery is over multiple refills, but if Zhang thinks it could be commercialized in three years, that’s a very good sign. Curiously, the research paper says that the enzymes are non-immobilized — meaning Zhang found a certain battery chemistry that doesn’t require the enzymes to be kept in place… or, alternatively, that it will only work for a very short time.

Energy densities of various battery types. “15% Maltodextrin”, in dark blue, is the battery being discussed

here.

The Virginia Tech biobattery uses 13 enzymes, plus air (it’s an air-breathing biobattery), to produce nearly 24 electrons from a single glucose unit. This equates to a power output of 0.8 mW/cm, current density of 6 mA/cm, and energy storage density of 596 Ah/kg. This last figure is impressive, at roughly 10 times the energy density of the lithium-ion batteries in your mobile devices. [Research paper: doi:10.1038/ncomms4026 - "A high-energy-density sugar biobattery based on a synthetic enzymatic pathway"]

If Zhang’s biobatteries pan out, you might soon be recharging your smartphone by pouring in a solution of 15% maltodextrin. That battery would not only be very safe (it produces water and electricity), but very cheap to run and very green. This seems to fit in perfectly with Zhang’s homepage, which talks about how his main goals in life are replacing crude oil with sugar, and feeding the world.

The other area in which biobatteries might be useful is powering implanted devices, such as pacemakers — or, in the future, subcutaneous sensors and computers. Such a biobattery could feed on the glucose in your bloodstream, providing an endless supply of safe electricity for the myriad implants that futuristic technocrats will surely have.

 

 

 

 

Net Neutrality on Life Support

Net Neutrality is about having unbiased and unfettered access to all variety of content - websites, blogs, search engines - that populates the internet.

Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, and other communication giants have been working to gain more control over the net. They are lobbying relentlessly to change the laws governing the public airwaves and they have petitioned the judiciary to alter the rules in their favor.

On January 14, 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia gave net providers what they wanted. The court ruled against neutrality and for providers. In effect, this allows the big corporations that deliver the net to introduce their own bias into how internet content is presented to their customers. Bottom line: net content that is politically unpalatable to providers can be stifled or cut off completely from customers.

The case can be made that the traditional media has already been coopted by large corporations. Television and radio and the print media once had local ownership. Now, they are all controlled by a handful of large corporations.  Content is now managed to maximize profit, above all else. The news that is delivered through TV, Radio, and the print media is also shaped to fit the political interests of corporate owners. Fox News is the most egregious example.

The internet has been the one place where the public could go to find content that is not subject to censorship or any kind of bias.  In a net neutral world, all content is treated more or less equally. With the court's ruling, providers like Time Warner can decide what customers are able to access, and when, and how, if at all.

Net neutrality is critical to the  maintenance of a citizen democracy.   Every person should be deeply concerned about the court's decision to hand the keys to the internet over to private corporate interests. 

Here is Stephen Colbert's satirical take on net neutrality... http://www.hulu.com/watch/587624

Hydrogen Cars Arrive in 2014

Hyundai and Toyota have both announced that they will be introducing hydrogen fuel cell cars into the marketplace in the latter part of 2014.  In the U.S., it will begin in California, where the various car manufacturers have been testing fuel cell prototypes for years.  In the U.S., California has been a leader in clean, automotive technology. A number of hydrogen fueling stations are already in place and more are coming.   Europe has put much more effort into building infrastructure for hydrogen vehicles. Most likely, these clean running machines will gain a foothold in the European Union first, simply because European energy policy aggressively encourages  the adoption of hydrogen and other clean energy technologies.

Toyota Fuel Cell Car

The fossil fuel industry has long used its wealth and political influence to undermine the credibility of hydrogen as a clean energy alternative.  Despite the naysayers, hydrogen continues to emerge, because it works. It is nature's elegantly simple answer: clean, non-toxic, cost effective, and safe when properly managed.  I suspect by 2020, the transition into the hydrogen age will be well underway.

Here is a very engaging video from Toyota showcasing their new fuel cell car... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7xCbmkWKkw


Here is a link to the website for the California Fuel Cell Partnership... http://cafcp.org/

Hydrogen is Happening in Europe

I am a staunch advocate of hydrogen as a clean, inexhaustible, non-toxic energy carrier replacement for fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.   I wrote a book about it. I've made several documentaries and educational videos about hydrogen and renewable energy.  I'm not saying hydrogen is a panacea. But it is an important part of any well considered vision of a clean, sustainable energy future.

For Europe, the future is now. They are allocating 20 percent of the European Union budget to clean energy, climate mitigating technologies over the next few years.  Hydrogen is a big part of the Europe's plan, because it offers a relatively easy pathway to storing clean energy for use on demand. Ultimately, it would involve using surplus electricity generate with wind turbines, solar PV, or some other renewable technology to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, which can then be stored for conversion back to electricity when needed.  

The European Union organization behind the development of hydrogen as an energy carrier is HyER. 

Here is a link to the HyER website....   http://www.hyer.eu/

Hyundai's Hydrogen Fuel Cell Farm

Hyundai Motor Company is on the leading edge of fuel cell technology for automobiles.  They are the first to put FC cars into production on an assembly line.

Hyundai Fuel Cell SUV

This week, Hyundai is opening an exhibit in London, U.K. called the Hyundai Fuel Cell Farm.

The Europeans will be the first to put hydrogen powered vehicles on the road in large numbers, and Hyundai is one of the companies that is leading the way.

Here is a link to Hyundai's  Fuel Cell Farm website... http://www.hyundai.co.uk/about-us/environment/hydrogen-fuel-cell?goback=%2Egde_137901_member_5797067451594190851#fuel_cell_farm





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Google Map View - Large Hadron Collider

This is a Google link with resizable, rotatable photo images of the inside of the CERN Large hadron Collider [LHC] in Switzerland.   All kinds of mega-sized hi-tech hardware in cavernous spaces.

This place is the center of the Earth for experimental physicists.

Here is a very cool link to the LHC images...  https://www.google.com/maps/views/streetview/cern?gl=us

Vindskip

Lade A S, a Norwegian ship design firm, has come up with a refinement on the sailing ship concept. Like the tall ships the plied the seas before the 20th century, vindskip is propelled primarily by the wind, using a hull design that works like a rigid sail. 

Lade A S Vindskip

Using this design, a vindskip can achieve a 60% reduction in fuel consumption and an 80% reduction in exhaust pollution.  That sounds pretty compelling to me.

Here is a link to a promotional video on the vindskip design...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZo33MQeFN4

Deep Flight Super Falcon

The sub-aquatic terrain from ocean's surface down to about 100 feet is where most marine life forms hang out. The best place by far to experience fish and other sea life is in the shallow areas where the sea meets the land.  I've been lucky enough to have a few experiences like that.

In recent years, there's been a lot of technical innovation with submersibles designed for personal exploration of the marine environment.  Almost all of these personal submersible craft depend on filling ballast tanks with water to operate beneath the water's surface. Getting back to the surface safely requires a system to purge the water ballast with compressed air, thus returning buoyancy to the submersible.  While margins of safety are built into this kind of submersible, there is always a risk.

A new submersible design  developed by Graham Hawkes does away with the need for ballast. Called the Deep Flight Super Falcon,  this new submersible works on the same principles as an aircraft.  It remains positively buoyant at all times, providing a high margin of safety. In essence, it 'flies' underwater. It's electric propulsion system provides the forward thrust required to submerge and keep the craft beneath the water's surface.  Like an aircraft, the submersible Falcon has steerable 'wings' that allow it to be controlled.  Most important,  if power is lost, this submersible will return to the surface on its own.

The things I've read about this technology don't give an indication of the cost. I'm guessing the Falcon is too expensive to be anything more than a research tool for well funded institutions or a new kind of 'toy' for the super rich. 

Still, it is a very worthwhile innovation and offers the possibility of making underwater exploration safe and accessible to more people than ever before. 

Deep Flight Super Falcon

Here is a link to Hawkes Ocean Technology   http://www.deepflight.com/

Here is a You Tube link of the Deep Flight Super Falcon flying beneath the sea... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRsV_eUovKw#t=22

Vestenskov - World's First Hydrogen Community

There is a village on the island of Lolland in Denmark called Vestenskov. It is poised to become the world's  first hydrogen powered and heated community.

Vestenskov

I have invested a lot of my own time and sweat equity into encouraging a pollution-free energy future that employs hydrogen as a clean, non-toxic storage medium for the wind, sun, and other renewable sources.  In Denmark there is a small community that will soon be a model for how that can work.  It's an example of how the European Union is moving aggressively toward clean renewables as a response to climate change.

There are many renewable hydrogen demonstration projects around the world. Vestenskov is the first that shows hydrogen at work on a community level.

In Vestenskov,  electricity from wind turbines located close by will be converted to storable hydrogen for use on demand in the community's residences and businesses.    Europe intends to replace coal and oil with clean energy systems that will not harm the environment.    We should be doing the same thing here in North America.   That makes a lot more sense than extracting dirty oil from Canadian tar sands.

Here is a link to a website that reports on the renewable hydrogen vision for Vestenskov. .    http://www.dac.dk/en/dac-cities/sustainable-cities/all-cases/energy/vestenskov-the-worlds-first-hydrogen-community/?bbredirect=true#!

Rocket Scares Cows

This is a very cool video.  It's a Space X  'Grasshopper'  rocket lifting off from a rural test pad, going up a couple hundred feet, then reversing itself and riding its thrust back to the launch pad. I remember seeing pretend stuff like this in space movies that predate the Star Trek era, but I never thought this kind of thing could actually work.  The proof is in this video.  Obviously, it was unnerving for a herd of cows grazing in a pasture adjacent to the rocket test pad.

SpaceX   'Grasshopper' Rocket

Here is the link to the Space X rocket scaring the cows... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXdjxPY2j_0

The Infinite Resource

So, I read a blurb about this book on the net, and I decided to read it. The Infinite Resource by Ramez Naam is non-fiction.   Naam is a very smart guy, who likely made a fortune when he was a top software developer at Microsoft. 

Ramez Naam is also the author of two science fiction novels,  Nexus and Crux,  both of which I have read and reported on in this blog.  The way this happened is, I got a copy of The Infinite Resource, started to read it, then learned about Nexus and Crux.  So, I set aside The Infinite Resource while I read both of Naam's science fiction offerings.  All that happened in the last few weeks because Naam's writing is very engaging.  I've already reviewed the two science fiction novels in earlier blogs. This one is focused on The Infinite Resource.

What one is struck by first is the intellectual rigor of The Infinite Resource. I've read a lot of non-fiction focused on the science, economics, and politics of the greatest challenges we face as a global  civilization in the 21st millennium. Many of these books paint a very gloomy picture of the mess we humans have made of things. 

Ramez Naam's assessment of the current state of humanity and the Earth does not pull any punches. He presents climate change, resource depletion, our dangerous dependence on fossil forms of energy, and other global scale challenges in very sobering terms. Overall, however, the tone of The Infinite Resource is optimistic. Naam is definitely a guy who sees the glass half full.

Using clear and credible examples of civilization scale challenges that we've already confronted successfully, Naam effectively makes the case that the resources,  the ability, and the will to develop worthy answers to our problems already exist.  I don't agree with everything he says, but on most things, we're on the same page. Naam's arguments about nuclear power and genetically modified foods were persuasive enough to moderate my previously held views, particularly in the area of food security.  I'm still a serious skeptic on nuclear power, but my mind is a bit more open. Naam makes a compelling case for a continuing role for nuclear power, particularly for new forms of fission power that can digest radioactive waste materials generated by older nuclear plants and turn them into a form that is far less deadly over the long term.

In the last chapter of The Infinite Resource,  Ramez Naam offers four takeaways for action we, as global citizens, must pursue if we are going to solve our greatest challenges. 

1. Fix our markets to properly account for the value of the commons
2. Invest in R&D to fund long-range innovation
3. Embrace the technologies that stand poised to improve lives while bettering our planet, even when these ideas seem alien
4. Empower each of the billions of minds on this planet, to turn them into assets that can produce new ideas that benefit all of us

I like Naam's takeaways. If we followed his prescription, things would surely start to look a whole lot better.

The Infinite Resource is engagingly written and, by all appearances, impeccably researched.  It's an unambiguous warning, punctuated with hope and reassurance. I do wish the book had gone a bit further in identifying a course of action.  But I understand why it didn't.  Naam's target audience is not people like me, who are already with him. This book was written for the persuadable 40% of Americans who remain on the fence but are aware enough to know that humanity is in need of a serious course adjustment.

 Five Stars for Ramez Naam's book, The Infinite Resource.



 

Badass Neuro Shit - Part Deux

A few days ago,  I wrote a blog entry about a novel I just read titled, Nexus. It is the first novel written by a very gifted writer named, Ramez Naam.  I found that story so compelling that I went out and got a copy of the recently published sequel to Nexus, which is titled Crux.   This morning (three days later), I finished reading Crux. At 500 pages, Crux is a daunting read. But, having been drawn into the world Ramez Naam has created, I found myself unable to put the book down.

Nexus and Crux are set in the near future, the year 2040. The world Ramez Naam creates is based on real science, seriously advanced from where we are at the moment, but eminently plausible given what we already know.

If anything, Crux is even more of a wild ride than Nexus.  At the core of this relentless action adventure is a struggle between humanity as we know it, and the emergence of a new augmented reality; post-humans with strength, intelligence, resilience, capabilities far beyond the mortal limitations of the homo sapiens species that has dominated the Earth and the biosphere for the last 250,000 years.

In the future Ramez Naam as created, the ascendance of post-human intelligence is taken as a mortal threat to the cultural status quo. The established powers that be are determined to strictly limit access to advanced neural, nano, and human augmentation technologies,  except where they can use these technologies to stifle descent and manipulate history for their own benefit.

If anything, Crux is even better that it's predecessor, Nexus. The writing is crisp, lean, thoroughly engaging.   The action is gripping. The characters terrific. The abuse of power is like a dark spector driving the plot forward in both of these stories.  As with Nexus, there is much in Crux that one can see at work beneath the everyday headlines of our current era.

Crux is much more than just an entertaining read.  For that reason, like Ramez Naam's first novel, Nexus, the sequel Crux, gets five stars from this reader.  If you like science fiction, Crux is  a must read.