The Homely Scientist

Nice to start off the week with some good news:

The wind power industry made big strides last year, according to a Worldwatch Institute report released late Thursday.

15,200 megawatts of new wind turbines were installed around the world last year, representing a 26 percent jump in global wind power capacity, according to the study.

By year’s end, total wind power capacity exceeded 74,200 megawatts, enough to offset 43 million tons of carbon dioxide, the institute said. Source:Study: Wind power soared in 2006 | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Large-scale deployment and adoption of any alternative energy is the key.  Once it hits that magic tipping point, then things just move on their own.  Costs decrease, technology improves by leaps and bounds.  I’d wager that wind-power has hit that point now.  Solar energy is close to that point.  The technologies are improving and with examples like Google’s solar array, I can see reaching that tipping point soon.

Heck, I think the idea of solar panels on laptop bags (which has been done) will start to catch on more.  Imagine charging your gear as you take a walk … double carbon savings!  Use the sun to charge the device (not the Grid) and not use a vehicle!

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 Microsoft is in the midst of building a new data centre.  Building, of course, means trucks and in this case trucks of cement.  One problem, when those trucks use petroleum diesel, they spew all kinds of garbage into the air.  Those chemicals and particles aren’t just bad for the planet in the long term they are bad for people in the short term.  Solution to the potential workplace hazard?  Biodiesel!

The construction company working on the new data centers approached Steve Verhey, the chief executive of Central Washington Biodiesel, with a problem earlier this year, he said. The company had built the shell, including walls and ceiling, of the 500,000-square-foot (46,451-square-meter), 11-acre building and found that laying the cement floor and finishing the rest of the interior presented a health and safety issue. That’s because cement trucks and other machinery that run on diesel and propane emit harmful exhaust into the enclosed space.
They wanted to know if biodiesel might solve the problem, Verhey said. The exhaust from biodiesel contains half the carbon monoxide of regular diesel, he said. In addition, one gallon (3.78 liters) of biodiesel lets off just 1.5 pounds (0.68 kilograms) of carbon dioxide, compared to 22 pounds per gallon for regular petrodiesel, he said, so biodiesel has a much smaller impact on the environment. Source: WinBeta.org Beta News and Reviews

Those stats are amazing.  Think about how internal air quality can be improved in warehouses even fire stations (which have to employ sophisticated venting systems now because of truck exhaust).  These are problems that can save real money.  Now the big question is, how quickly can we get more trucking companies to use biodiesel and how fast can we get in in the distribution system?

Technorati Tags: biodiesel, alternative energy, green technologies

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How would you like to have a device that generates electricity just from the vibrations that are all around us?  How about if this device were smaller enough to be used in lots of small devices?  Making things like wireless transmitters small, cheap, and self-powered?  It’s a reality now:

The trick with this generator is efficiency: Its vibrating magnets are 10 times better at generating current than other machines of this sort. The obvious use for this is in wireless sensors, that currently use batteries that need to be replaced, and therefore must be located in accessible spots. With a vibration generator like this, you can stash a sensor wherever you like. Wherever you like.

The generator may also one day be used to power a pacemaker, which would indeed be a funny twist: It would derive its power from the beating of the heart that its job is to keep on track. How’s that for existentialism? Source: Free Energy Isn’t Free: Here’s One Magnetic Free Energy Machine That Actually Works - Gizmodo

Just to recap how this actually works, when you spin magnets around a copper coil you generate current.  Basic stuff … it’s what powers all those wind up radios and flashlights.  Through the same principle and physics these two vibrating magnets do the same thing.  If you want to know more about the physics behind this Wikipedia’s article on electrical generators is very cool.

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Need a daily dose of ideas to help save energy (and the planet…but that is such a huge concept, too distant for many…stick to stuff closer to home and you)?  Check out LiveEarth’s Twitter feed:

Shading windows. It can lower your home’s temperature and reduce your cooling costs by 30%. Source: Twitter / LiveEarth070707

This tip is especially good right now as the hottest part of the summer is coming our way in the Northern Hemisphere (the Dog Day … which are named such because Sirius the Dog Star become visible this time of year).  Another great one is to put a fan at the top of the stairs to your cellar (if you have one) to bring cold air up from there.

The LiveEarth concert is this weekend.  I’m going to try to listen to it as much as possible, but since it should be a nice weekend I think I’m going to get everyone out of the house for some fun.

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 When I’m ranting and raving about alternative energy and lauding companies like Google, I talk about being able to feed into the system and get credit for it.  Looks like the Province of Ontario is finally getting it:

One of the key elements in the incentive programs is a solar “feed-in” tariff that pays people and organizations with solar panels cash for any electricity they feed into the grid. In the United States, utilities offer credits for solar power; a homeowner or business can reduce their electricity bill with these credits, but at best end up owing nothing to the utility.

With feed-in tariffs, solar panels become profit centers. In Germany, the government gives panel owners around 45 cents for every kilowatt hour fed into the grid, which is more than a kilowatt hour costs.

“You can go to financial planning meetings and you’ll see people with spreadsheets calculating hours of sunlight and the potential revenue,” said Jeff Osborne, an analyst with CIBC World Market in a recent interview. “Half of the solar power in Germany comes from farmers.”

Ontario has adopted a feed-in tariff for solar that will provide 42 cents per kilowatt hour. The response so far has been positive. After the feed-in tariffs were unfurled, a North American company has said it will build solar power plants that will produce 60 megawatts of power, said the representative from the Ontario Power Authority. Source: Ontario: The new frontier for alternative energy | CNET News.com

Now if we can get more governments and utilities on board with this, we’d be getting much farther along in our global need to reduce emissions.

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The big announcement from Google a while ago that they were going to cover the roofs of Googleplex with solar panels has come to pass:

It’ll still be quite a while before that free electricity offsets the initial cost of the system, but at least the panels have earned Google a little positive PR.  The Earth Times Online, for example, states, “The Google system is also now the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the United States.”

To help people grasp the size of this development, Google has even created a new performance monitoring site; I’m told that, over the past day, those solar panels have generated enough electricity to run almost 6,000 loads of laundry.  There are interesting charts, as well - as it is solar power Google’s using, you’ll note that output drops to zero overnight. Source: Google’s Solar Panels Power Up | WebProNews

Google even lets you look at how much power has been generated. What does this mean for the rest of us?  We should do it.  Think about every building in a city with solar panels.  Think about an apartment building that generates enough power to cover, say, 50% of the residents’ requirements.  It’s powerful stuff.  No, this isn’t a 100% solution.  At night, well, no power generation, but if we’re trying to reduce the need for fossil fuels, being able to reduce power generation during daylight hours would be a huge step forward.

Now what we have to do is to get governments on the stick to allow homeowners to do this and be able to hook the panels to the grid so their power meter runs forward and backward.  On a long summer day you might not be at home using power, but your house could be pushing power onto the grid to keep you cool at work.

Not bad.

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What am I nuts?  Nope, while you might scratch your head at this, read what this C|Net article wraps up with:

With an infrastructure already in place due to commercial trucks never leaving the diesel fold, diesel seems like an obvious solution to help fulfill automakers’ immediate needs–to sell more vehicles while meeting emissions standards and consumer demand to save on fuel.

Today’s diesel engines and diesel fuel itself have come a long way. Advances in turbocharging and fuel injection have boosted performance. New kinds of particle traps and low sulfur diesel fuel have reduced the emissions and soot-producing byproducts. Source: And the winner is…diesel? | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

This is the thing, diesel engines are common.  Pumps and tanks are there and if you start cutting the petroleum diesel with biodiesel then you really have something.  I’d buy one of the cool little Smart Cars, if they weren’t so dang small!  A diesel hybrid would be a really great thing.  I think my next car will be a diesel, and here in Victoria biodiesel seems to be becoming more common so, yeah diesel is a good choice for alternative fuel.  Engines don’t have to be tweaked, like ethanol or other gasoline alternatives.  You don’t have to build a whole new ways to store, transport, or sell it, like hydrogen. And diesel can be “grown”.  Let’s get on it then!

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