November 23rd, 2009

Solar powered airplane: ready for take-off?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 8:07 pm

Categories: Blogroll, Europe, aviation & aeronautics, energy, engineering, green tech, renewable energy, research, solar

Tags: Monitoring, Plane, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Internet, Harry Fuller

A solar powered airplane has passed its first set of tests. On the ground. The “Solar Impulse” has been undergoing runway tests in Switzerland. It’s powered by over 11-thousand solar panels on its very long wings.

Here on the Impulse’s website you can see videos of the plane. The goal is to fly it around the world. Omega, Solvay and Deutsche Bank are the main corporate sponsors of the project.
Image courtesy of Solar Impulse.

So far the plane has not left the ground, but both engines definitely run. Says the website, “At the controls of the HB-SIA, Solar Impulse test pilot Markus Scherdel cautiously took to the runway under the watchful eyes of the whole team, with computers monitoring the plane’s behaviour online via the embedded telemetric devices.
“This inaugural day out on the runway allowed low-speed runway testing with the prototype going through a series of acceleration and breaking manoeuvres, checking that the calculated and simulated strains are not being exceeded.”

November 18th, 2009

California Dreamin' revisited

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 5:47 pm

Categories: Blogroll, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, green tech, housing, law & politics, renewable energy, solar, wind

Tags: California, BV, Telecom & Utilities, Harry Fuller

I recently blogged about the future of greentech in the State of California in the current state that state is in. Can greentech enable California to get its mojo back?

Well, here comes a blog report on how the state’s goal for alternative energy use could invigorate the statewide economy. One thing California has is plenty of sunshine, especially in those parts of the state with the least amount of water from Palm Springs to San Diego and northward toward Santa Barbara.

Can California get one-third of its electricity from renewable by the 2020 target? That’s the official state target. Sure, the state government’s in deep money trouble. Furloughs of workers, cutbacks in services–standard across the state agencies and universities. But much of California has cash, especially some of the little tech companies most of us have heard of: Intel, Google, Cicsco, Oracle, Apple to name a few landowners in Silicon Valley. And the state has hugely productive agribusiness. Then there are all those parking lots in the San Diego and Los Angeles sprawl. Think this conjures up dreams of a solar powered future?

Some think it may lead to high value for roof space that faces south, or value in covering parking lots with solar collectors. And it would mean re-thinking and re-engineering the electric grid.

Earlier this year the state’s Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) issued a report on what’s needed to bring desert solar-generated electricity to the California urban areas which are mostly along the coast. RETI projected billions and billions in cost. But now one of their consultants, Black and Veatch, says smaller rooftop and subrurban solar farms could decentralize power production. BV says the cost of solar panels is decreasing, as an unwritten corollary to Moore’s Law would suggest. Even in crowded Silicon Valley there are hundreds of days of sunshine yearly plus hundreds of square miles of roofs and parking lots, so, what are we waiting for?

Black and Veatch also see much more harvesting of wind energy, another plentiful California resource.

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November 11th, 2009

California Dreamin'... or fantasizing?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 9:24 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, cars & traffic, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, green tech, law & politics, petroleum, renewable energy, research, solar, wind

Tags: California, Government, Internet, Transportation, Vertical Industries, Harry Fuller, innovation, business, jobs,

Can California once more emerge as the global tech center? A recent NPR program explored the challenges and promises of greentech California style. Amid further state budget problems, California’s governor is counting on greentech to help revive the once Golden State’s economy. Just this week an electric truck and bus company opened its new headuqarters in Stockton. Here is EVI’s website. The company said it moved to California because that’s where they expect most adoption of the electric vehicle tecnology.

The new California gold rush, as it is being characterized, will inevitabley arouse oppisition. What will huge solar farms or wind farms do to land use and wildlife?

Of course from the invention of the transistor through the Apple Mac to the iPOd, Calfironia was where it happened first. Then there was the Internet, from Netscape, Yahoo and Excite to Google and on to YouTube, California has constantly been a center for reinventing technology. Can you imagine Cisco, Oracle or Pixar located anywhere but California?

But this time around every nation on earth is looking for the next generaton of energy and green tech. Governments are watching and investing. The Internet grew out of a DARPA project but once it went public there was little government aid or interference. That will not be true with anything important in the energy sector, anything involving the electricity grid, transportation or even massive water systems. Everybody’s playing for keeps this time.

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November 4th, 2009

Remember Kerry-Boxer?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 3:45 pm

Categories: Blogroll, Kyoto Protocol, air pollution, biofuel, building, cars & traffic, climate change, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, geothermal, global warming, green tech, law & politics, nuclear power, petroleum, renewable energy, solar, water, weather, wind

Tags: Page, Outsourcing, It Operations, Business Operations, Outsourcing & Subcontracting, Harry Fuller

Well, now it may become Kerry-Graham-Lieberman-Boxer. And opponents of nuclear energy may go nuclear over the nuclear option. Not only will the next version of the Senate’s energy and climate change bill include more nuc, it may also include even more offshore oil drilling than is called for by the previous Kerry-Boxer. What’s not known: how many more pages will be added? The now-old bill had less than a thousand pages.

Meanwhile, Republicans on the committee considering Kerry-Boxer insist there needs to be a full economic analysis of its proposals, all 900+ pages worth.

Meanwhile we’re five weeks away from the start of the international climate talks in Copenhagen where the U.S. negotatiors will show up with lots of good intentions and little more. The World Wildlife Fund, focused more on other species with no votes and no money, issued a report asking the nations of the world to re-industrialize. Essentially they’re calling for completely retooling the planet’s energy systems to lower emissions and curtail global warming and the extinctions that it’s expected to trigger. Wall Street wouldn’t like that one bit.

November 2nd, 2009

Kerry-Boxer bill battle set for Tuesday

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 11:27 am

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, biofuel, building, cars & traffic, climate change, conservation, energy, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, geothermal, global warming, green tech, law & politics, mass transit, nuclear power, petroleum, renewable energy, solar, water, wind

Tags: Bill, Pollution, Harry Fuller, Kerry-Boxer bill, U.S. Senate, cap and trade, public opinion, rogue nation, greenhouse gas, emissions

The Republicans are not going to be present, but a U.S. Senate committee will apparently move ahead to approve a massive energy and air pollution regulation bill. This is the Kerry-Boxer bill. There’s a rule loophole that will allow Commitee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to move ahead with no Repubs present.

Here you can peruse the entire bill, all 959 pages of it.

The bill currently contains cap and trade and tighter emission standards than the bill passed by the House last spring. I blogged earlier on the political problems this Kerry-Boxer bill faces.

It’s very clear there’s little public agreement in the U.S. about global warming, or what we should do about it. In the eyes of much of the rest of the world this once again makes the U.S. a rogue nation. Tops in greenhouse gases, along with China, but not willing to admit we need to do anything about it.

November 2nd, 2009

Will there be a new energy and air pollution law?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 6:17 am

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, biofuel, cars & traffic, climate change, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, global warming, green tech, law & politics, mass transit, nuclear power, petroleum, renewable energy, solar

Tags: Pollution, U.S. Senate, Boxer, Harry Fuller, energy efficiency, greenhouse gas, CO2, cap and trade, Congress, emissions

Current wisdom among the Beltway blatherers: it will take six Republican votes to get an energy bill through the Senate. That might be done if the bill becomes a big enough gift to energy corporations and other vested interests. The move to get bi-partisan support might even include an effort to get more nuclear power plants built in the U.S. Nuclear’s been political no-go territory now for three decades. Nuclear in the U.S. gets little support from most American enviornmental groups and is disliked by fossil fuel companies.

So far there’s been no overt Republican support for the Kerry-Boxer bill as it is now. The House last spring passed its own energy and climate change legislation (Waxman-Markey) but the Senate chose to start over.

There’s going to be a move by Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to get the Senate version of an energy bill marked up and out of her committee this week. One of the provisions of the current Senate bill is cap and trade on greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, the seven Republican members have vowed to boycott any such committee work. And without two Repubs present, the committee cannot act under Senate rules. Will they suspend the rules? Is the Senate bill DOA? Boxer intends to move ahead with the bill tomorrow. Not clear what movement can be taken.

November 1st, 2009

The current system is stacked against greentech in big buildings

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 11:39 am

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, building, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, fossil fuel, geothermal, green tech, housing, law & politics, recycling, renewable energy, solar, water, wind

Tags: Green Technology, Harry Fuller' Other World Computing, wind turbine, OWC, Illinois, LEED, Larry O'Connor, building design, geothermal heating, electricity

The current financial systems in the United States makes it very difficult to build a large building using green technology. Most large buildings are built with loans. Those loans are based on standard commercial building costs. So much for warehouse space, so much for office space, etc. There is no margin for the added costs of putting in greener tech or better insulation or windows.

OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with one American CEO who actually went outside the banking system to get his new company headquarters built with the best of current green tech. The loan from the bank paid for a minority of the project, the rest was self-funded by Other World Computing (OWC) in Woodstock, Illinois. CEO Larry O’Connor says his company has always been conservatively run. The don’t like debt and don’t franchise, don’t over-expand.

It can be clearly shown how green tech makes the building more efficient and cheaper to operate. Yet the entire commercial lending and building system is based on least cost, highest profit. There’s no flexible formula to take into account energy or other operating costs or savings. The loan is so much per square foot, take it or leave it.

As O’Connor described it to me, “The bank doesn’t change the appraisal value of building, they do it on square footage. That’s a potential hinderance on long-term green investments.”

The assumption is recent years has been: buy land, build cheaply, flip the commercial space and move on. Let the next sucker worry about energy costs. Of course, at the construction stage it’s more costly to put up a wind turbine or install a geothermal heating system. But those are systems that deliver real savings to the building operator every year. O’Connor told me the geothermal heating system was 10% of the total project cost, way more than a standard gas furnace. But OWC will never pay a cent for natural gas heating, and has a greatly reduced carbon footprint as well.

OWC has built a headquarters he hopes will be in use for decades. No flipping here. So as they looked at green tech for power and water and paper, etc., they realized there’s a great ROI despite the higher original cost. Sure it’s cheaper to build an office building with single pane windows, standard electric or gas heating, powered by the local grid. But those operating costs, month after month, add up. And the company becomes hostage to vicissitudes of the marketplace for energy, water, paper.

As I blogged about OWC earlier, their offices are wind-powered, they have extensive LEED certified green tech for water and heating, a permeable parking area that collects and then cleans run-off, and numerous other clean tech features. O’Conner said the technology is not new, but there’s little incentive or even loan mechanism to get the tech in use for large buildings.

Naively, I asked about the great tax breaks and rebates for putting in greentech. That’s for your home or mine. Office buildings: zilch. O’Connor said they made these green choices because the ROI is so clear and it frees his company from the almost certain grief of the next energy price run-up.

O’Connor said all the tech in their building was installed by local contractors using standard equipment. He said it’s important to work with a design firm that really knows LEED buildings and green tech. That’s where the whole system gets put together before any site work is done. For OWC’s new green HQ it was Harris Architects in Palantine, Illinois.

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October 28th, 2009

Hearings on climate, cap'n'trade, energy

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 4:07 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, biofuel, cars & traffic, climate change, conservation, energy, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, global warming, green tech, law & politics, mass transit, nuclear power, petroleum, renewable energy, solar, tidal, water, weather, wind

Tags: Cap-and-Trade, Senate Committe, Harry Fuller

A Senate Committe is hearing testimony on all sides of the energy, global warming, cap and trade issures. No minds will be changed, but we should see if there’s some way to capture all that hot air, use it to turn a turbine.

It’s the public hearings on the Kerry-Boxer energy and climate bill. C-Span has provided some live coverage of the hearings. They also have archives that you can watch on their website. C-Span does not allow excerpts to appear on youtube.

The White House would like to see this bill passed and they’re working on corporate execs to get behind the cap and trade provision. That means setting standards so lenient that everybody profits except the atmopshere.

Not all Dems favor this current bill with its 900+ pages. And as we blogged here a few weeks back, the elected officials are piqued that the appointed EPA may beat them to the punch in regulating greenhouse gases. Republicans on the committee may simply miss the meetings so there’s no quorum for the necessary procedures to get the bill out of committee. Most of the right-wing groups that lobby Congress hate the very idea of what they call “cap-and-tax.” Much of vocal opposition to any version of the Kerry-Boxer bill comes in the form of “it’ll cripple our economy, kill jobs, etc.” I can recall the exact same arguments were used years ago to try to stop legislation that curtailed emissions that were leading to greater ozone holes and acid rain. Those problems were finally dealt with and, guess what, the economy has been more crippled by business practices than anti-pollution regs. We never seem to learn much from history, do we?

Testifying before the committee were three cabinet secretaries: Transportation, Energy and Interior, the head of the EPA and the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC). Groups representing businesses and environmental interests, city and state governments will be heard from. Among Wednesday’s witnesses: Dan Reicher, Google’s Dir. of Climate & Energy Initiatives.

Here’s the website of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. The committee is chaired by liberal Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and the minority leader on the committee is global warming denier Senator James Imhofe (R-OK). It fits. California is a major oil importing state and we know that Oklahoma is an oil exporter. Boxer is co-author of the bill and her state has a lot of greentech start-ups. Imhofe says it will re-work the entire U.S. economy and he wants to know what effects the bill will have. He’s worried the price of Oklahoma crude might drop. One committee member argued that we Yanks invented nuclear power and should build a hundred nuclear plants and electrify half our cars and trucks and not need a tax on carbon, so there!

The three days of hearings wrap up tomorrow. The bills’ official poetic moniker: “S. 1733, Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.”

You wanna read the bill? Here’s the full PDF. So don’t believe the blather when some say “I never saw the bill before we voted.”

And here are a series of summaries put together by the proponents of the bill.

One provision of the bill that is more stringent than the bill passed last spring by the House: it calls for a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, not just 17%. That gives everybody something to fight over.

October 27th, 2009

Smart grid grants

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 7:24 am

Categories: Blogroll, building, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, green tech, housing, law & politics, solar

Tags: Harry Fuller

Over $3 billion dollars worth of federal money will be awarded to smart grid projects in the U.S. today. President Obama has chosen a Florida solar power plant as the location for making his announcement. He’ll be in Arcadia, Florida, at Florida Power and Light Co.’s DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center. That plant will generate electricity for 3,000 homes when completed.

One large grant: $200 million for Constellation Energy Group Inc.’s Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. (BGE). That’ll provide new electric meters to 1.1 million households for real-time monitoring of electricity use. It’s to help customers adjust their usage during peak times. BGE will add over a quarter billion of its own dollars to the project’s first phase which is to cost over $2.5 billion when completed.

Sempra Energy gets $28.1 million to build a wireless system to link San Diego Gas and Electric Company’s 1.4 million meters and monitor equipment across the electrical grid. Another grant will go to a utility in Marietta, Georgia, for metering customers.

This money’s coming from the federal stimulus program signed into law last February. There’ll be 100 government grants in 49 states. They’re to be matched by $4.7 billion in private investments.

October 26th, 2009

There's still VC juice out there for greentech firms

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 4:36 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, building, cars & traffic, energy, engineering, green tech, housing, renewable energy, solar, venture capital

Tags: Solar Energy, Infinia Website, Telecom & Utilities, Harry Fuller

A Washington State solar power company just got over three million dollars in additional funding. Earlier Infinia had investments from both Vinod Khosla and Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. That’s another little tech company based in Washington State.

Infinia uses parabolic dishes to focus solar energy on a Stirling engine. That in turn takes the heat and turns it into electricity. Here’s the wikipedia piece on how Stirling engines take heat, convert it to mechanical energy, and then we all know how turning wheels or shifting pistons become electricity. Seems so obvious. Eliminates the need to cover huge areas with fixed solar panels. The Infinia website has videos on their system. They even propose their system be used for autos.

Here are some of Infinia’s tech specs. They use helium as the working fluid. Insert gas. They claim very few moving parts and minimal maintenance.