November 24th, 2009

Schneider Electric is latest to draw link between building and network energy controls

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 1:17 pm

Categories: building, conservation, energy, engineering, green tech

Tags: Schneider Electric, Network, Physical Security, Data Centers, Storage, Hardware, Data Management, Heather Clancy

Facilities infrastructure giant Schneider Electric has adopted an architectural approach to intelligent energy management that it has dubbed EcoStruxure.

The effort will better integrate the company’s technologies across power distribution and protection systems, data centers (where the company’s sells the APC by Schneider Electric InfraStruxure line), industrial controls, building controls and physical security technologies. The company has positioned these technologies as vital to corporate-wide energy intelligence. The connections between these various components, through open IP and Web services, is also seen as critical.

Most of the pieces of the EcoStruxure approach exist already. What’s missing is the business practices and reference architectures that businesses can use to apply an integrated approach. Look for related training and documentation to emerge throughout 2010, according to the company.

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 23rd, 2009

East Anglia hacking: no arrest, plenty of investigation

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 7:52 am

Categories: Blogroll, Europe, air pollution, climate change, engineering, environmental health, global warming, law & politics

Tags: Hacking, Global Warming, Realclimate, E-mail, Online Communications, Harry Fuller

I’ve blogged about how global warming skeptics and ring-wing newspapers have been enjoying greatly their own interpretation of the emails and docs hacked from the University of East Anglia climate study center. Police have made no arrests in the cyber-theft. But investigations now are legion. And the findings break down along predictable political lines.

Here’s a left-wing British publicaiton condemning the letters for…being “dull.” No conspiracy, no cover-up. Lots of references to lunch. That pub goes on to talk about the global warming deniers use of strong emotional appeal to undermine the science.
The realclimate website was where the hackers originally tried to upload the documents, apparently. Realclimate alerted East Anglia’s climate center to the possible theft.

Realclimate says it’s been through the emails and found, “There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.”

On the other side, conservative observers can find conspiracy in the emails. Here’s one talkback on an American news website “It appears that the East Anglia researchers have been not only refusing to share the raw data, but actively doctoring the results. Science has now been politicized by the left, like liberal arts, like entertainment, like what passes for print journalism. This has been going on for decades and there are no trustworthy sources anymore, which is tragic.”

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November 21st, 2009

American cars giving slightly more miles per gallon

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 4:12 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, cars & traffic, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, petroleum

Tags: Car, Emission, Carbon Dioxide, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Harry Fuller

The avergae MPG of cars driven by Americans continues to edge up. According to the EPA, average MPG hit 21 in 2008. It’s up nearly 2 MPG since 2004.

High gas prices and then the cash for clunkers program are expected to keep the MPG moving up this year. CO2 emissions have also been fallling since 2004. That year marked a turnaround in the U.S. The EPA reports CO2 emissions increased and fuel efficiency decreased in the United States from 1987 to 2004.

MOST EFFICIENT

Honda again leads in fuel efficiency on American highways, says the EPA. Next come Hyundai-Kia and then Toyota. VW finished fourth in fleet efficiency. Both GM and Ford showed fuel efficiency gains.

November 20th, 2009

East Anglia, the next chapter

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 2:00 pm

Categories: Blogroll, Europe, air pollution, climate change, engineering, environmental health, global warming, law & politics, research

Tags: Global Warming, E-mail, Blogging, Online Communications, Internet, Harry Fuller

Earlier today I blogged about the propaganda war that has broken out following the hacking of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia’s climate study center. Here’s a left-wing British newspaper blog on the words beking flung about. This blogger has read some of the correspondence. Sees little meaningful and lots of missing context.

Yet one blogger sees deception and fraud, at least. Plus a little cruelty when a critic dies and isn’t mourned.

Thie blogger claims to have read the emails. There is no question about the basic science, he claims, but there was definitely the intent to deceive and skew the public message.

Here’s the BBC analysis of the emails that were hacked and the claims made by global warming skeptics about those emails.

Here’s the Fox News version of the story.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal blog. It repeats second-hand info that the emails are all genuine and there are over 3000 files stolen from East Anglia. Not sure this blogger’s surmise that it was stolen by Russian black hats is vaild. But there is much interest in Russia and its rich in keeping the price of oil as high as possible as long as possible. That means any global warming treaty is a business threat to Russia, Saudi, Venezuela, Nigeria, Norway and other oil exporters. But access to a Russian-based server is not limited to Russians, of course.

This is one hack that will have a long-lasting political life. At least through the Copenhagen meeting if not beyond. Copenhagen talks begin December 7.
So far no public statement from the British government which runs University of East Anglia. All publicly-funded universities there are run by the national government. The UK has long been a vocal public advocate of global action against global warming.

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November 20th, 2009

Science of better fuel cells

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 11:58 am

Categories: Blogroll, energy, engineering, green tech, housing, renewable energy, research, water

Tags: Fuel Cell, Fuel Cells, Emerging Technologies, Harry Fuller

An MIT energy and chemistry researcher is working on better ways to produce energy on a personal, household level. His goal: workable fuel cell tech that is efficient. Today he explained on NPR how his group has found a new catalytic process that takes water and through hydrolysis releases hydrogen which is then burned in the fuel cell to produce electricity.

The MIT hydrolysis process uses a catalyst consisting of cobalt metal, phosphate. Then add an electrode.

November 19th, 2009

Alcohol and fuel cells in our future?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 11:21 am

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, cars & traffic, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, fossil fuel, green tech, renewable energy, research, venture capital

Tags: Fuel Cell, Neah Power, Navy, D'Couto, Methaol, Fuel Cells, Emerging Technologies, Harry Fuller

Neah Power, a Seattle-based company, is finding widespread interest in its portable fuel cells. Some of the company’s past research and development was paid for by the Pentagon. The Navy has been especially eager to see Neah’s technology developed. The Neah fuel cells can operate in anaerobic conditions. No air. Can’t do that with gasoline, diesel or even traditional fuel cells.

Other early money for Neah came from Novellus and Intel. The power for portable gear is very attractive to corporations making all manner of remote or portable equipment.

I recently spoke with Neah’s CEO, Chris D’Couto, who’s got a PhD in chemical engineering and an MBA. Right combo, because Neah has a number of chemical processes they intend to patent. And they’re building and selling fuel cells that use methanol for fuel. No Kevlar-reinforced cylinders full of liquid hydrogen. Just simple plastic cartridges with methanol inside. For portable uses, no expensive and heavy lithium-ion batteries with their concomitant ability of exploding on a ship or plane. Just plastic cylinders of methanol. Neah’s goal: better power through chemistry.

D’Couto sees Neah’s tech becoming common across many parts of the economy. The military needs to get those heavy batteries out of the foot soldier’s backpack, and out of ships at sea or airplanes overhead. Neah fuel cells can help run digital technology in remote areas where there’s no electrical grid. Campers, hikers, boaters will use it for many purposes. Already Neah and Hobie are teamed making electrically-powered kayaks. The parts needed for Neah fuel cell on board a kayak.
The Torqueedo. Images courtesy Neah and Hobie.

D’Couto sees easy acceptance of the Neah fuel cells. Methanol is already widely produced and available in the U.S. It is much easier to handle and safer than liquified hydrogen. The chemistry: methanol is CH3OH. When it burns in the fuel cell it produces water, carbon dioxide and a spare electron. That’s the electricity. Neah has developed super-efficient fuel cells, says D’Couto. Neah claims efficiency as much as 2.5 times as great as the traditional fuel cells using pure hydrogen and requiring an constant air supply.

The Neah fuel cells use only miniscule amounts of gold or platinum, the necessary catalysts for breaking down the methane and freeing the hydrogen which gets burned in the fuel cell. D’Couto says they can get down to sub-micron thickness of gold and platinum in their fuel cell design. Important because those metals are expensive. That’s why they are classed as “precious.”

And there’ll be no need for building large, new infrastructure to build the cartridges or other components. Neah will hire existing computer chip fabrication plants to create the necessary catalyst parts for its fuel cells. No capital expenditure, no ramp up.

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 17th, 2009

Smart grid networking with smart appliances

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 4:49 pm

Categories: Blogroll, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, green tech, housing, research

Tags: Appliance, General Electric Co., Network, Grid, Harry Fuller

More information and more efficient use of the electrical grid is clearly a way to save energy and customers’ money. So now utlities and large appliance makers are working to get the smart grid to talk to the smart appliances. Like a clothes dryer or dishwasher that waits to run after the electric rates drop overnight.

GE is working with several utlities in smart grid test programs. Reliant Energy and The Vineyard Energy Project join Masdar City and Louisville Gas & Electric as the latest to launch pilot projects using GE‘s smart grid enabled appliances.
Courtesy GE. For a more legible version of this image click here.

How about appliances that really turn themselves off completely? And where are our electric sockets with off/on switches like you find in many parts of Europe? The passive or “phantom” waste of electriciy by home appliances is notoriously pointless. Too many items are in constant syand-by as long as they’re plugged-in. Even if the homeowner is on vacation in another country, that toaster or TV is ready to roll at all times.

November 17th, 2009

Cap and trade controversial in Australia

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 11:54 am

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

Tags: Cap-and-Trade, Harry Fuller

It’s not only in the U.S. that cap and trade (CAT) is a controversial approach to try to lower greenhouse gas emissions. A report written in Australia, and critical of CAT, has sparked a battle over censorship. Finally the report’s author and the leading science agency in Australia have reached a compromise that will allow publication there.

Currently there are CAT schemes in place in the European Union and among the northeastern states in the U.S. Here’s the website for RGGI which administers CAT across ten states in the northeastern section of the U.S.

Japan’s current government is looking at introducting CAT in the next two years. Some major metro areas of China have long had carbon trading schmes in place. But there is no national emissions regulation or CAT in China.