Category Archives: Alternative Energy
Time Square in the dark is now impossible to imagine, with its Las Vegas like lights flashing with adverts, it makes it an overwhelming sight for the first time tourist. Yes looking at that makes us wonder as to how much power is being consumed and in turn wasted when the street is desolate. Japanese electronics maker Ricoh has decided to do something radical in spirit of the environment. It is erecting a 47 x 126-foot billboard at Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street that will be completely powered by the sun and wind. Fueled by 45 solar panels and four wind turbines, the billboard won’t even need a backup electric generator.
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If you still haven’t realized how serious the fuel problem is, it could only mean two things either you live on an island disconnected from the rest of humanity or your filthy rich. The price of fuel doesn’t seem destined to fall anytime soon even though Saudi Arabia promises to ease up on trade norms. The automobile manufacturers didn’t see the present fuel crisis as a long term situation, and automobile manufacturers somehow thought that announcing better fuel efficient hybrid vehicles to be launched years from now will ease our present woes. Toyota is slipping out info of its next generation Prius almost everyday, and Honda soon coming out with its Clarity FCX Fuel Cell car. What are we to do by knowing of future cars being more fuel efficient while we drain our money into $4 a gallon gas everyday till the next hybrid is out that promises 40Mpg. With the plethora of new alternative fuel projects being announced everyday, it makes it very hard for us to decide on which technology will stand the test of time in the new war of the alternatives. It is the same reason car companies are hesitant to roll off alternative fuel cars into the market; they simply cannot afford watching more loss graphs already donated to them by the recent gas price inflation. The technology to build alternative fuel cars simply hasn’t been available until recent years.
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Bluewater Wind, an offshore wind power company has won the contract to build America’s first offshore wind turbine park off the coast of Delaware. Using electricity generated by the wind, “Delmarva Power will be able to light about 50,000 homes a year, every year” for the duration of the 25-year contract, with first power expected by 2012. The project may help stabilize consumer energy costs, since the contract locks in the price Delmarva will pay per kilowatt-hour. Each turbine sits on a pole about 250 feet above the waterline. The units will be constructed in such a way that it will withstand hurricane-force winds. Each blade on the three-blade rotor is to be 150 feet long.
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The DJ of this new eco-nightclub better play great music if he wants to keep his turntable working. For if the feet stop thumping so will the power. Britain’s first eco-nightclub, set to open in King’s Cross, will require the patrons to dance on a modified dance floor that will harness the energy expelled by the clubber’s moves and convert it to electricity. This place is so Green-oriented; they even plan on using a recycled water system to flush their lavatories. The Club will also serve organic spirits served in polycarbon cups. Entry to the club will cost £10, but those who can prove that they cycled, used public transport or walked to the venue will be welcomed in free. That’s not it customers will have to sign a pledge before entering the club that they will work towards curbing climate change.
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Trash, as it turns out, is an attractive feedstock. There are several commercial companies developing technologies that use wastes as fuel. The military currently burns its trash in incinerators, emitting icky emissions and eating up a lot of fuel, time, and human power since it takes quite a few people to run one. Also, cutting down on the use of diesel fuel is especially important since the trucks that haul the fuel are basically moving targets sure to make huge bangs. They have developed a prototype generator that uses trash as fuel to generate power. The generator is called TGER (“tiger”) and the acronym stands for Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery. The prototype, which uses a variety of technologies to run an electrical generator, will be tested until August. The purpose of the unit is to cut down on the amount of diesel fuel used and to cut down on the amount of garbage that camps generate, which are security risks. The wet and dry wastes are separated. The dry trash is crushed, pelletized, and fed into a gasifier where the pellets are heated until they’re turned into synthetic gas, which then fuels the generator. The wet waste is converted with the use to enzymes into hydrous ethanol, which is then blended with synthetic gas to boost the generator’s output to 55 kW.
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Batteries dying out at multi-day events are not an unfamiliar sight today, but simply having a conventional power dispenser is not an easy option for event managers. To keep mobile phone users from avoiding such events, Mobile Operator Orange is working with a renewable energy company Gotwind, the recharge Pod is an evolution of the Orange portable wind charger, tested at 2007’s Glastonbury Festival. The recharge Pod will be stationed within the Pennard Hill camping grounds at Glastonbury and will be a free service allowing all festival goers to charge their mobile phones throughout the weekend. Over 7 meters in height, the free standing “recharge Pod” is a self sufficient unit that supports a wind generator and solar panels and can charge up to 100 mobile phones per hour.
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Although the picture shows a totally cultivable land concretized and converted into a solar farm, this is somehow a green solution to the energy crisis that we face today. Far West Rice Mills in Nelson, Calif., on Wednesday dedicated a one megawatt solar array that will provide three-fourths of its electricity. The Global energy crisis have hit business bottom lines hard, that’s the reasons Corporations and agribusiness invest in these systems to get a predictable electricity price over several years, to keep a check against rising prices.
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The US and India both rely on coal for its power generation needs; the US has now initiated a 10 year joint venture to produce and share technology for emission free power between both countries. FutureGen is a $1Billion a year plan to build a zero-emission, coal-fired electric and hydrogen production plant. It aims to integrate advanced technologies in coal gasification, extracting hydrogen from coal, power generation, carbon dioxide containment, and geologic storage. Around 55% of India’s total power consumption is based on coal. Last year, 500 million tons of coal was used for power generation in India.
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A start-up alternative energy firm has announced that it has found a way to convert sunlight, CO2 and microorganisms such as algae into gasoline. The San Diego, Calif.-based company also disclosed that it has raised $50 million from Arch Venture Partners, Venrock, and the Wellcome Trust. The company, they say, started with 3 friends discussing a very interesting question: “Why is the biofuel industry spending so much time and energy to manufacture ethanol — a fundamentally inferior fuel?” The friends – a bioengineer, a chemist, and a biologist – set out to recruit the best minds they could find to collaborate with them on the project, and the results speak for themselves. They developed a unique platform using sunlight, CO2 and microorganisms such as algae” to produce the fuel, without the use of arable land.
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Siemens Energy will be soon opening its first U.S. based wind turbine R&D competence center in Boulder, Colorado. The facility is expected to employ an estimated 50 people and will focus on atmospheric science research, aerodynamic blade design, structural dynamics, wind turbine dispatch prediction and reliability. The new Siemens R&D Center is expected to create 12-15 green-collar positions in the first year, followed by 5-10 additional careers every year thereafter, resulting in approximately 50 new positions by 2013. Most employees will be new hires with a PhD or master’s degree in the desired disciplines.
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