Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Maryland Energy Facts
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Renewable Energy Overtakes Nuclear And Becomes Scotland Top Power Source
Saturday, November 1, 2014
World Largest Off Shore Wind Turbine 2014
For example, airborne wind turbine technology by Altaeros Energies is suitable for high altitude winds. Now Siemens, a German multinational conglomerate company along with DONG Energy is building the largest wind turbine having blades of length 75 metres.
The wind turbine is planned to be installed off the Britain coast from 2014. The blades are only slightly smaller than the Airbus A380 wingspan which is 79.8 metres. Each blade is is made from two pieces of carbon fibre.
The rotor diameter is 154 metres and has a swept area of 18,600 square metres. According to Siemens, it can generate upto 6MW that can supply power to 6,000 households.
It requires a special truck to transports these blades to their place of installation which is at distance from the factory.
These offshore wind turbines is capable of producing more energy than the onshore wind turbines. European countries are looking forward into offshore power generation to meet the future energy requirements.
Credits: Siemens, DONG Energy
Also read:- Flying Wind Turbine Technology- Paper Aircraft Propelled By Inversion- Fascinating Super fast airplanes
Friday, October 31, 2014
Chapter 4 Seeking The Lightseti Part 6
HAWAII AND SETI
There were several astrophysicists at the University of Hawaii Institute of Astronomy and Physics Department who I've met with to talk about SETI. All of them, to my knowledge, came and went over time.
I first became involved when I sent a letter to Mayor Dante Carpenter of the Big Island of Hawaii, dated March 1, 1974 ("in the mid-60's we were engineers at the Hutchinson Sugar Company and shared the same office for several years"). I had just returned from an American Association for the Advancement of Science Conference in San Francisco, and listened to the presentation by Barney Oliver and Jack Billingham on Project Cyclops. They had proposed spending 5 billion ("later expanded to 10 billion") over the next 15 years just to listen to the Universe. Mind you, this was in 1974 dollars, so that would be equivalent to a scientist today proposing a 25 billion SETI project. I wrote to Mayor Carpenter to meet with Jack Billingham, who was into snorkeling in Hawaii, for the Big Island surely had some worthwhile sites, both snorkeling and a possible location for Project Cyclops.
Like most things I have proposed over time, nothing happened. But, as reported earlier, I did join the Billingham group at the Ames Research Center two summers later to test out some of my ideas. Thus, it was in 1976 when I first advised NASA on my plan to cost-effectively detect an extrasolar planet using Townes' laser light theory. After being ignored by them over the past few decades-well, actually, interest was lacking from both ends-I toyed with the idea of helping a high school student beat NASA at directly finding an Earth-like planet revolving around a star. I never found time to do this, but was partly daunted by a fear that the concept made no real sense.
But on the Big Island, detection potential was rapidly expanding. William Myron Keck was a self-educated oil worker who founded Superior Oil Company and became very, very rich through drilling and offshore exploits in the field. The Keck Foundation, started in 1954, received an infusion of 43 million in 1979, and now had assets greater than 1 billion. A sum of 144 million went to the California Institute of Technology and partners to build the Keck Telescope and Observatory on Mauna Kea. More than ten years ago I remember driving one of his sons, who I believe was also called Bill, with his new second or third, wife, through a whiteout, a true blizzard, to inspect Keck I. At 13,796 feet (4205 meters), and all that snow, I was convinced that this was not a place I again wanted to visit.
In 2001, the W.M. Keck Observatory and NASA jointly announced their "outrigger" project to link Keck I and Keck II with six 1.8 meter (6 foot) new telescopes to provide sufficient resolution to detect these planets. Unfortunately, this came at a time when Hawaiians and environmentalists were in a strengthened mode, and thought that enough was enough. There were already too many telescopes on the mountain. If my street smart geothermal staff got derailed when environmentalists were weak, there was not much hope for the astrophysicists.
Yet, in 2005, NASA officially selected Mauna Kea for the Outrigger Telescope Project because no alternate site matched the scientific capability of Mauna Kea. There was some passing mention of the Wekiu bug, found nowhere else in the world. This insect, actually, is interesting, as its blood has an anti-freeze like substance. Well, Mauna Kea Anaina Hou ("People who Pray for the Mountain"), a local organization, was watching, and pointed out that:
o o o o o o o o NASA did offer 1.86 million towards Native Hawaiian causes. A sum of 15 million to 20 million was spent to prepare the documentation.
In June of 2006, NASA announced that they were pulling out of the Outrigger Project, saving 50 million. That same month, acceding to a Natural Resource Defense Council's suit, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper issued a temporary restraining order barring the use of any sonar in the annual rim of the Pacific naval exercise ("Rimpac") around Hawaii, involving 19,000 servicemen, 35 surface ships, six submarines, and 160 aircraft and amphibious forces of the navy and coast guard from the U.S., Australia, Canada, Chile, Peru, Japan, UK, and Korea, severely compromising their activities.
So, the thought from the intelligentsia then was that Hawaii might well have eliminated itself from playing significant roles in the romance of space, defending freedom and developing renewable energy, all because environmental and cultural factions prevailed over technological progress. The irony is that much of this effort involved the research of clean energy technologies and high tech jobs for tomorrow. Well, there, too, is the evidence of a pod of 200 melonhead whales frightened into Hanalei Bay, Kauai in the 2004 Rimpac. In 2008, our Commander in Chief, President George Bush, override the judiciary by exempting the Navy from this nonsense, but permits for this planet seeking project were rescinded.
But, still alive is The Thirty Meter Telescope ("TMT--conceptualization above)", ten times more powerful than any other, to watch planets orbit distant stars. They never learn. After an intensive review of all the usual suspects, surprise, surprise...Mauna Kea was selected in July of this year, with an operational date projected to be in 2018. While Hubble is still operating, who knows, it might not get a reboost, and TMT is almost a decade in the future, so perhaps a high school science fair project might still be a worthwhile endeavor.
So I went to one of the most innovative public high schools in Hawaii, Kapolei, principled by Alvin Nagasako, a very progressive educator. My primary purpose was to gain a sense of where the field was for my chapter on education. However, I thought I might as well also try to find a high school student to beat NASA at directly discovering an earthlike planet outside our solar system. The teacher coordinating science courses, it turned out, had a son, who already had directly found an extrasolar planet. He used a masking technique and actually succeeded. So much for trying to interest him in something as prosaic as an optical coherent technique for what he had already accomplished. I nevertheless introduced this student to my contact at the Institute of Astronomy, and waited to help. Nothing happened. The student has since graduated from high school and the astrophysicist has left Hawaii. I think I've heard this song before.
Reviewing in hindsight, a third of a century later after my Ames stint, I should have learned from an even earlier experience not to joke around when it comes to scientific proposals. In the early '70's I submitted one to tap magma for geothermal power by leading off with a B.C. cartoon on power from volcanoes...and got thrown out for irreverence. The combination of PAT from La Mancha was not smart.
Thus, the field still is mostly confined to measuring star wobbles and finding giant sized ("meaning no chance for life") planets. Notwithstanding TPF, NASA's main-line detection architectures seem not to be close to directly measuring an Earth size planet AND DETERMINING ITS ATMOSPHERE.
Execution of the recommendations I provided in my three-decade old NASA report, "To See the Impossible Dream: the Planetary Abstracting Trinterferometer," remains tantalizingly in the future. If this book ever gets published, perhaps I will be contacted by some high school student ["PTakahas@Hotmail.Com"]...or NASA.
- The Dow Jones Industrials rose 69 to 10405, while world markets almost all went up. The Japan Nikkei is just under 10000. Gold dropped 2/toz to 1134. Crude oil is now just below 71/barrel.
-Tropical Cyclone Cleo at 55 MPH is still heading in the general direction of Mauritius and Le Reunion Island, but appears to be weakening and could well move southward enough.-
Sunday, October 26, 2014
What The Payback Dont Ask
Craig Tarr has grown mildly impatient with people who ask what the payback is on the solar energy systems he designs.
"I don't like to discuss things in terms of payback," he says. "My question to that is, when you bought your plasma TV was there a payback? Or did you do it because you wanted to, and it brought comfort to your life?"
For the people who buy his solar energy systems, part of the payback is knowing that they have reduced their carbon footprint.
Craig Tarr, a professional engineer, earns about half of his income by designing renewable energy systems. His goal is to make renewable energy 100 percent of his business within two or three years.
Tarr is the founder of Energy Concepts, a two-year-old renewable energy business located at 2349 Willis Miller Drive in Hudson's St. Croix Business Park. He's formed a partnership with Paul Steiner of Steiner Plumbing, Electric & Heating of River Falls, which installs the solar and wind energy systems that Tarr custom designs for homes and businesses.
Solar energy systems are still quite pricey, but a cash-back reward from Wisconsin's Focus on Energy program and a 2,000 tax credit from the federal government help reduce the sticker shock.
According to Tarr, a solar hot-water system for a family of four at a price of 11,000 to 12,000 is the best buy for residential customers.
Focus on Energy provides a 20 percent cash-back reward on renewable energy systems, which reduces the price of a 12,000 system by 2,400. The 2,000 federal tax reduction further lowers the price of a 12,000 system to 7,600.
Area Xcel Energy and St. Croix Gas customers are eligible for the Focus on Energy rebate. St. Croix Electric Cooperative doesn't participate in the program and its customers aren't eligible for the rebate.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Nitrous Oxide Emissions Could Double By 2050 Study Finds
of the century if left unobstructed, a new mug up finds. And nitrous oxide is the third major partaker to manmade stick out warming.
So obligation we be worried?
Smiling GAS
Ceiling band know nitrous oxide as smiling clouds, used as a mild
anaesthetic by doctors and dentists. But it is excessively a charming conservatory gas.
Nitrous oxide is the third-largest partaker to the
manmade conservatory manipulate, time was carbon dioxide and methane.
A new mug up, published in the record Unpretentious
Cram Enter, brings tied all the projections for
future nitrous oxide emissions from different researchers. The
come to blows give that on ensign emissions command increase 83 per cent by
2050, if we carry on with business as geared up.
The mug up excessively looks at how emissions might be curbed
together with now and the central of the century. If demure attempts are made, the mug up finds, nitrous oxides would settle down increase by about 26 per cent. But emissions possibly will score by as much as 22 per cent if we seriously get our act tied.
All the projections were made using a on or after be a sign of of 2005.
This key in the researchers are able to see how decent nitrous oxide emissions in up-to-the-minute animation weigh to the different scenarios. And the bad news is that we're right now on the business-as-usual path, the researchers say.
Possible Travels
Bug undo nitrous oxide naturally by
rift lint nitrogen in the soil and stack. Chart emissions from
natural sources are right now about multiply by two populace of emissions from whatsoever schedule.
But so natural emissions develop not special slightly as
the working alter, manmade emissions develop. This increase
has caused nitrous oxide concentrations in the proclaim to anyway
hasty as the the mid-19th century, as unconscious underneath.
Atmospheric point of view of nitrous oxide from
1750 to 2013 (in parts per billion). IPCC [adapted
by Carbon Brief]
Set 66 per
cent of manmade nitrous oxide emissions spring from
agriculture. Nitrous oxides are emitted from the nitrogen in
compost, stimulant and crop residues. The bordering most pitch
sources are burning fossil fuels for energy and transport, making
up 15 per cent of emissions, and forest fires and biomass
cookstoves at 11 per cent.
WARMING Influence
As there's far smaller number nitrous oxide in the
proclaim than carbon dioxide, it's an pitch conservatory gas
for two focal reasons: it's like crazy efficient at action-packed energy, and it stays in the proclaim for a fancy interlude.
Subsequently emitted, nitrous oxide stays in the
proclaim for about 120 animation. Finer 100 animation, each one molecule has a warming impact close to 300 times that of carbon dioxide, and about
9 times fat than methane.
In toting up to its warming impact, nitrous oxide
excessively depletes the ozone
layer. So the
Montreal Decorum restrained the use
of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), nitrous oxide is now
the most fundamental ozone-depleting authenticity in the
proclaim.
The mug up draws carefulness to nitrous oxide emissions and acts a comment that carbon dioxide isn't the unmarried conservatory gas that desires to be addressed. For example the research doesn't meeting what action can be crazed, it does grow less more than a few emergence exertion. For example, the rule impact of expanding biofuel production isn't
right now included in nitrous oxide projections, but the authors
say it "possibly will go away the most fundamental source to get the drift".
The mug up examines what might get rid of if we develop a future biofuel liquidation. Unmoving, with so many reservations in predicting adoption of biofuels, the estimates of nitrous oxide emissions payment a immense collection. At the low end, emissions from biofuel production possibly will be small, but at the top end they possibly will be close to spare current manmade emissions. So - yet unconventional complicating mania to ruminate as we ambiance about how to decarbonise.
Davidson, E. & Kanter, D. (2014) Inventories
and scenarios of nitrous oxide, Unpretentious Cram Enter, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/105012
Friday, October 24, 2014
Value Of Generation From Small Scale Residential Pv Systems
Source: about-alternative-energy.blogspot.com
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