Discovery News: Powrtalk

DOD Energy Call ... and Response

It's one of the biggest stories in town ... Washing-town, that is. Shorter supply lines, lighter weight armor, alternative fuels, solar, wind ... and foam-insulated tents - you name it, the high price oil these days has the DOD scrambling to innovate with energy like never before. And the press is all over it.

According to Politico.com in a recent article: "The Air Force is the SUV of the military. Its thirsty planes burn more than half the fuel supply for the entire U.S. military." Wow Air Force. Would you leave some for the Army, Navy and Marines, please?

Reuters, turning its attention to the Army, cites DOD official Tad Davis, who says "The goal is to bring Army emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide down by 30 percent by 2015."  That's a pretty tall order on a very short time line, but it'll be fantastic if they can reach it or get real close.

NPR also turns its sites on the Pentagon and the Air Force, noting that its largest cargo plane, the C-5, gets ".07 miles per gallon." Is anyone making a hybrid cargo plane yet ... hope they're working on one.   

Hopefully Powrtalk will be reporting in the near future on some of the creative things DOD has come up with. As many of these articles note, the Internet was born in such places (DARPA), though the urgency for that was nothing like this.

Photo Courtesy of US Air Force Master Sgt Val Gempis (click on it for larger image)

Belated Response to Reader Comments on Forbes Lofts

Stomv,

Appreciate your interest and the analytical mindset you bring. We try to keep it not just truthy, but outright truthful and accurate here, so it's a (mainly) happy day when a reader spots inconsistencies. After seeing your comment I talked again with the developers and here's what I got per your two primary critiques:

1. "Forbes claims on their web site that the turbine is 600 kW, not 1 MW. I don't know if their site is out of date or the blog post is inaccurate."

Response: Looks like the latter. The current wind energy component from the installed turbine is estimated to be 1MWh annually; this is different than the rating number assigned by the manufacturer. The Forbes web page was accurate (my post was not): the turbine has a 600 kW nominal peak capacity, so it is a 600 kW turbine. From a lead engineer on the project: "We predicted a net capacity factor of 15.8%, so total annual net kWh production will be 833,116 kWh (or 600 kW * 8760 hours * 15.8%, with some rounding). The confusion might have been the turbine will produce approximately 1 MWh (not 1 MW) per year."

You may also find this helpful from Wikipedia on Wind turbines' so called Carrying Capacity: "Since wind speed is not constant, a wind farms"annual energy production is never as much as the sum of the generator nameplate ratings multiplied by the total hours in a year. The ratio of actual productivity in a year to this theoretical maximum is called the capacity factor. Typical capacity factors are 20-40%, with values at the upper end of the range in particularly favorable sites."

2. "Not installing individual meters on the units is just plain foolish from an energy conservation standpoint. It remains to be seen if it makes economic sense [due to bulk metering], but the reality is that individuals will have almost no financial incentive to install CFs or even turn off their lights, put their electronics on a rocker switch, set back their AC, and so forth since they will only see less than 1/68th of the savings."

Response: I was off on the statement about no meters in the individual units. Forbes confirms they will purchase electricity in bulk, but then sub meter it out to each unit. Clearly they anticipated some of the concerns you expressed from not having the metered feed-back loop for each unit. In terms of total renewable capacity, the first phase will enjoy excess energy production and it is expected that phase two will do better than break even as well. By the end of development, with wind and solar power generation and energy conservation measures, they expect that roughly half of the total site's requirements will be powered from Forbes' own renewable sources. And depending on up-coming energy legislation they may be able to receive a higher resale value for the energy sold back to the grid which could significantly amplify the benefits.

Again, appreciate your interest and attention to detail; please keep those cards and letters coming !!!

Your Perfect Scooter is Electric ... and Available

Apart from the fact that it's not free, there is little else not to like about the Vectrix electric scooter. For instance, it:

• Goes fast (at 60+ mph, is highway rated)
• Accelerates well (0 to 50 mph in < 7 seconds)
• Travels far (30 - 55 miles per charge ... sometimes better than the Volt)
• Charges from a regular outlet
• Uses no gas
• Looks good
• Is basically a rolling gadget (see quote below)

According to Newport, Rhode Island store owner Ray Alexander: It's essentially "a software-driven vehicle with an electric motor on the back wheel." Maintenance involves hooking the scooter to a laptop computer to conduct a diagnostic check and look for software upgrades."

Is that cool or what?  I'll need to inquire about future mods for an ipod jack and USB charging stations for smaller devices while you drive. Hopefully they can scale their manufacturing to meet the monster demand $4 gas brings. There are plenty of gas-powered Vespas hitting the streets these days, but these guys are really doing it right.  Here's the full article in today's Boston Glob. Stay tuned.

Photo courtesy of Vectrix Corporation

GM Teams with Utils for Watts for Volt

OK, don't say Shai Agassi didn't warn you.  In fact, he's been working the electric vehicles infrastructure issue for years on his own and through his organization, Project Better Place.

The Wall Street Journal now reports that GM has been coordinating behind the scenes with dozens of the country's top utilities providers to ensure they're all on the same page when it comes to preparing to manage interactions with GM's new lines of electricity sipping (or sucking) cars.

One tech, networking and scheduling optimization challenge has to do with having the cars communicate their identities (as electric cars) to the utilities and the utilities choosing the best times/rates to send them their cheapest electrons.  Or something like that.

This is brave new world stuff.  Let's hope it works pretty close to perfect in the 1.0 implementation.  Time and money are getting pretty precious for the Big 3 US automakers.

Photo courtesy of General Motors

Holy Smoke

Our drive home from the Colorado vacation included a peaceful, thoughtful stretch across Kansas. And you wonder, as a new energy buff, why there aren't more wind turbines on the gorgeous plains that stretch to the infinite horizon in the middle of good wind territory. 

Then you hit Vesper, where turbines are being erected for Phase II of the Smoky Hills Wind Project. As Highway 70 crests, a full-throated display of Phase I's humble giants turning the Kansas wind fills your view, making for an inspiring display of wind's potential for the windshield tourist. Due to be complete in November 2008, Phase II will add to the first to bring just under 250 megawatts of wind power online.

If you're you're looking for something to shake up your drive across Kansas, skip the largest ball of twine and opt for a drive-by look at the future: the Smoky Hills Wind Project.

Mass Movement

You've got to love this statement: "By choice and necessity, the fossil fuel age is coming to an end."

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said this in his July 2, 2008 editorial to the Boston Globe newspaper.

Patrick, like other governors around the country, is tired of seeing his state battered by high energy costs. And like a handful of state leaders in the Northeast, is bracing for the turmoil and suffering this coming winter's home heating bills, due to the escalating price of home heating oil, will bring to his electorate.

However, Patrick is in the favorable spot of leading a state famous for its innovation resources. Surpassed only by California, Massachusetts is a national leader in venture-driven industries like high tech, biotech, and now, renewable energy technology. It also has more universities than any other place on Earth.

Patrick intends to turn the energy challenge into an opportunity, no place better illustrated than by his move to bring the epic Cape Wind debate to a swift close. After what seems like an eternity, he's using his office to end the stalemate and get the nation's largest offshore wind turbine farm project off the ground.  You can read his full editorial here.

Photo: Associated Press

100 MPG Prius @ NREL

With gas over $4 a gallon in the United States, what would you do if you were a Department of Energy Lab and you had smart people working with you ... and money for a renewables project? Why you'd build a better Prius, that's what you'd do!!!

Engineers at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, Colorado took a 2006 Prius, made about $40K worth of mods including Lithium ion batteries and a solar panel roof and, presto chango, a better Prius was born. How much better you ask?  They claim a doubling of MPGs to about 100.

But maybe they're wrong. One of my new favorite ways to talk about mileage that involves middle school math is to describe the MPGs of electric cars, or cars that run on pure electric most days of the week, as "Infinite MPG".  It works like this: if one uses ZERO gas on a given day, then you take the miles you drove (say, 40), and divide by the number of gallons of gas used. As we all know (sort of) if the denominator is 0, then the result is infinite for INFINITY MILES PER GALLON.

Which is nice.

Photo Courtesy of KQED Quest/Creative Commons

 

$4 Gas Brings at Least 10 Good Things

Amanda Ripley and Maya Curry, writing for Time Magazine, recently collected 10 adaptations (with sometimes-unintended benefits) Americans are making to maximize their efficiency or salvage their lives with gasoline now over $4. Some are technological in original (like accelerating improvements in electric lawn mowers, new bikes, scooters, hybrids, etc.). Others are related to work and work flow adjustments (like working fewer but longer days, less reliance on transportation-heavy outsourcing, more police on foot patrol vs. in cruisers, etc).

But no matter how you slice it, if your life involves lots of driving to/from work with no public transit options, and you were already on the edge financially, high gas prices are a disaster. Ditto for independent truckers and a slew of other occupations and situations. But this article makes it clear that there is some very desirable upside to gasoline becoming more expensive in America.

Photo courtesy of Gabi @ Flickr / Creative Commons

 

Your Future Car May Be Farfegnugen

No it's not a Tesla, but the technical accomplishments of this recently announced VW automobile are simply amazing and include:

• 200+ MPG
• 660 Lbs, thanks for some very special materials
• Driver and one passenger ... in tandem position
• Drag coefficent of 0.16
• Carbon fiber wheels
• Diesel hybrid engine
• Gull wing doors
• Camera's and LCD displays

I suspect you can do the math, but just for fun, imagine how far a $50 ten-gallon purchase could take you. See what I'm saying ???!!!???  Totally wunderbar and should be in production in two years according to VW sources.  More tech specs here.

Photo courtesy of: VWVortex

Tapping on the Glass

"I'm 80 years old.  I'm worth $4 billion. I don't need to make any more money."

                --T. Boone Pickens commenting on what are not his motives for promoting his American energy plan