A giant cylinder will splash into the water off the coast of Scotland next Spring, all in the hopes of harnessing the energy of waves and converting it to electricity.
Engineers are still tweaking the marine power converter, according to Reuters:
Dwarfed by 180 meters of tubing, scores of engineers clamber over the device, which is designed to dip and ride the swelling sea with each move being converted into power to be channeled through subsea cables.
The sea snake, as it’s called, is being developed for the German power company E. ON and represents a serious investment in marine power, which is considerably more costly than offshore wind power. A push by regulatory agencies to slash emissions has companies taking a closer look at marine power these days—and apparently these so-called snakes have the potential to capture a decent share of the energy market:
The World Energy Council has estimated the market potential for wave energy at more than 2,000 terawatt hours a year—or about 10 percent of world electricity consumption—representing capital expenditure of more than 500 billion pounds ($790 billion).
E. On is hoping the current project in Scotland will fare better than their fist foray into marine power—a commercial wave project in Portugal that flopped after one of the partners ran out of cash.
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Looking for an example of irony? Here’s one, compliments of the oil industry: A solar-powered oil field. Yes, that’s right—sunlight will be used to make the petroleum easier to extract on a Chevron oil field, instead of the natural gas that traditionally does the job.
The New York Times’ Green Inc. blog reports:
The 100-acre project’s 7,000 mirrors will focus sunlight on a water-filled boiler that sits atop a 323-foot tower to produce hot, high-pressure steam.
In a conventional solar power plant, the steam drives a turbine to generate electricity. In this case, the steam will be injected into oil wells to enhance production by heating thick petroleum so it flows more freely.
Is using alternative energy to fuel oil production a step in the right direction? Seems like power produced by solar technology could perhaps be used a liiiittle more efficiently.
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Remember those cookies that were baked on the dashboard of a car? Well, now someone who’s extra-crafty has upped the ante by converting a papasan chair into a solar cooker.
The apparatus is made of a reflective cone that consists of triangles of anodized aluminum bolted together in the center, which fits into the frame of the chair. There’s even a bamboo tripod to hang the food or water that the reflective cone will cook.
This idea comes from Appropedia, a site dedicated to sharing ideas and knowledge about sustainability. According to the author:
My hope was that, in the spirit of synergy, the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts and that people may find the idea of owning a solar cooker more practical if they can also sit and read a book in it when its not in use.
Compared to the traditional mono-functional Parabolic Solar Cooker, this project serves as a chair when not in use, which saves space and is less of a fire hazard than the traditional Parabolic Solar Cooker.
The site has a DIY guide to crafting your very own papasan chair-solar cooker. Sounds pretty sweet… just be sure not to sit on the hot aluminum cone.
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Image: Bart Orlando
We need to figure out a way (besides oil) to fuel cars. This is not news. What is news is the innovative thinking currently being focused on solving this problem. Today’s example is a group of M.I.T. undergrads, who had the idea of harnessing the shock of hitting potholes as an energy source. Sci Am reports:
When a car’s wheel hits a hole or bump, a standard shock absorber disperses the impact energy through hydraulic fluid and moves a piston. In the M.I.T. design, the fluid is instead forced through a small turbine attached to a generator. The generator, powered by the compressions, can recharge batteries or power the vehicle’s electrical equipment. The students say that for heavy vehicles such as Hummers, the system can boost fuel efficiency from 2 to 10 percent, depending on the terrain. They have formed Levant Power Corporation to commercialize a product they are calling GenShock. Right now they are tailoring GenShock for U.S. Army vehicles and big-rig trucks, but it could possibly be adapted for passenger vehicles.
Will it work? Remains to be seen. But either way, it’s still better than ethanol.
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Is the U.S. getting less windy? That’s what scientists from Indiana and Iowa State Universities are speculating, based on data collected across the nation since 1973 that show average and peak wind speeds. Some parts of the Midwest show a 10 percent drop in wind speed, with winds slowing the most near the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes.
So why the wind loss in the Great Lakes? It might be because less ice on the now-warmer lakes means winds travel across them more slowly, hypothesizes the study’s lead author.
And why does this matter? Well, less wind could mean a share of the power we expect to reap from turbines is, well, gone with the wind.
Some experts say the decreased wind speeds could be linked to global warming. For example, the warming of the earth’s poles decreases the difference in air pressure between the poles and the equator, and this difference is a factor in creating strong winds, according to one co-author of the study.
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Despite their energy-saving efforts, wind farms have a bad rap for killing birds. And now there may be a bigger problem: The noise from turbines could be killing livestock as well—or, at least, playing a part in their deaths.
According to one Taiwanese farmer, Kuo Jin-shan, the turbines erected near his farm on an island in the Taiwan Strait have been keeping his goats awake at night. Now that 400 of Huo’s goats have died, he is blaming their deaths on the loud noise coming from the wind farms.
After eight turbines were installed on the Penghu archipelago four years ago, the farmer began to notice some marked changes in his goats—they weren’t as hungry, they were losing weight, and many had started to die.
It seems outlandish to suggest that hundreds of goats dropped dead from sleep deprivation, but local livestock inspector Lu Ming-Tseng has backed up the farmer’s claim. Apparently, unusual sounds can affect an animal’s appetite, disturb how it grows, and make it lose shut-eye, all of which cause serious disruption to the animal’s health.
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A Formula 3 car that’s compost-able? Probably not completely, but if it’s made from potatoes and soybean foam, it must be pretty close!
The ecoF3, developed in Britain, has a steering wheel made from carrots, outer bodywork made from potatoes, and an interior seat made from soybeans. The biodiesel engine runs on chocolate extracts and vegetable oil, and plant-based lubricants grease the car’s moving parts.
The car will not be permitted to compete in championships since the fuel prevents it from meeting regulations, but its developer says it would deliver the same performance as a more conventional race car—and probably be more fun to watch! (Especially if any loose parts fall off along the way—carrot sticks on the racetrack?)
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While automakers (and magazines) are shrinking their car designs to become fuel efficient these days, one man decided to forgo fuel altogether and tap into wind power. And now, British engineer Richard Jenkins has broken wind-powered car records, reaching a whopping 126.1 miles per hour when he drove his Ecotricity Greenbird in Nevada.
Arguably, the Greenbird doesn’t look anything like a car—people describe it as a “very high performance sailboat.” But while most wind-powered cars use large sails, Jenkins decided to use a solid wing, so that wind could sweep over it and propel the 1,300 pound car into motion. To offset the resulting lift, Jenkins added smaller wings to keep the car on the ground.
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Bathroom time may not be wasted time after all: A year’s worth of your poop can be turned into 2.1 gallons of useable diesel. And the Norwegian capital of Oslo plans to put all that waste to work powering 80 of its buses with fuel made from the Bekkelaget sewage treatment plant, which houses the waste of 250,000 people.
If all goes as planned, the city’s other waste treatment plant, as well as biofuels made from food waste, will eventually contribute to the total supply—and with serious results: Fueling 400 or so buses this way would reduce 30,000 tons of carbon emissions a year.
While the idea certainly has an “ick factor,” it’s not like gas-station attendants will have to start shoveling sewage directly into a bus’ fuel tank.
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We’re all for innovative new forms of fuel. And when there’s a hint of irony, it’s all the better.
Last week, SITA UK, a recycling and waste management company, and the Kirklees Metropolitan Council in Northern England unveiled a garbage truck that runs on power produced by the very garbage it collects.
The truck will gather waste from 25 bins that have been newly installed around town, and transport the trash to the Energy from Waste power station and recycling center. There, the refuse will be burned to produce electricity, which is not only used to recharge the battery-operated electric vehicle overnight, but also contributes about 10 megawatts of power to the municipal electric grid every day.
The truck, a modified Ford Transit, runs on a 40kWh lithium-ion battery pack and can reach 50 mph. It has a range of 100 miles and takes six to eight hours to recharge.
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