Group Bookmarks shared by Colin Bennett
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Batteries have to contain all of the chemicals on both sides of their energy releasing equation. The very best batteries available today can store about 0.4 MJ/kg (0.05 kw-hr/lb) including the cases and safety systems. In contrast, gasoline carries about 46 MJ/kg (5.7 kw-hrs/lb).\n\nEven with a 20% efficient IC engine, a gasoline tank stores 20 times as much energy as a battery of equal weight. As the vehicle is moving it gets rid of some of that weight. Battery powered vehicles must carry the full weight of their energy source.\n\nThe energy density difference also plays a key role in the time that it takes to put more energy back on the vehicle once a fuel load is consumed. A two minute fill-up of a 12 gallon tank puts the equivalent of 87 kilowatt-hours into the vehicle, again, taking into account the 20% thermal efficiency.\n\n87 kilowatt-hours in 2 minutes works out to 2.6 MegaWatts. Even with a 220 volt connection, that would require about 11,800 amperes of current. Just imagine the size of the electric cables for that current.\n\nThere are certainly places and applications where electric vehicles have a role, but it is worth remembering that at least five or six generations of engineers have looked very hard at trying to meet transportation needs and they keep coming back to the same fact - when you want to move a vehicle, you need power, (energy per unit time).
more from cleantechnica.com
the company believes that billing strategies could be used to adjust the way people use power. If there’s a lot of capacity on the power grid then make it cheaper, etc.
more from www.greenbang.com
The water wheel produces one to two kilowatts of power and generates at least 24 kilowatt hours of sustainable green energy in a day, just less than the average household’s daily consumption of around 28 kilowatt hours. It should cost around £2000 to install, and will pay for itself inside two years.
more from www.greenoptimistic.com
Penn State researchers have found a cheaper method of producing hydrogen from water by the same old effect of electrolysis aided by the Sun’s rays. They do not use classic solar cells, because these are expensive, but made a nanotechnology-based solar cell, called photoelectrochemical diode, that is simplistically said on the bottom of the water holding recipe.
more from www.greenoptimistic.com
The research team has ‘designed and built an absorption chiller capable of using solar and residual heat as an energy source to drive the cooling system.’
more from blogs.zdnet.com
Conventional geothermal power taps hot water rising naturally to the surface from shallow beds of volcanic rock. By contrast, hot rock, or engineered geothermal systems, depend on heating water by circulating it through rock as far down as 5 kilometres,
more from environment.newscientist.com
The most efficient form of solar technology today is (arguably) extreme concentrated photovoltaics, essentially solar panels placed under a magnifying glass, but the problem with these systems is heat. Concentrated sunlight can melt silicon solar panels unless you include specialized cooling systems. Cooling technology costs money, and the panels require expensive tracking mechanisms to follow the sun through the day. MIT’s new solar system bypasses the heat and traching problems all together.
more from cleantechnica.com
U.S. researchers have developed the solar device that can do this source of renewable energy cheaper, using pieces of glass covered with organic paint.
more from www.econewz.info
Forbes has ranked the planet's top 10 most efficient countries, as measured in BTUs per U.S. dollar of GDP.
more from mariaenergia.blogspot.com
An exciting piece of solar research from MIT was published today in Science. Researchers at the university have created a new way to harness solar power that should hopefully reduce the cost of installations massively by using normal windows as solar generators.
more from www.greenbang.com
Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented a simple "solar concentrator" that gathers sunlight over a large area and channels the energy to photovoltaic cells at the edges.
more from www.ft.com
What is needed is a new European Community that can successfully tackle the combined challenges of climate change, energy security and sustainable competitiveness. As the former Commission president Jacques Delors has suggested, the EU needs to build an institution that can facilitate common action in this field. In comparison with the formative years of the Community - when both the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community pursued energy-oriented goals - there is a lack of common action to expand the use of renewable energy that mitigates climate change, provides energy security and increases European competitiveness by transforming its economy into an energy-efficient system.
more from www.ft.com
a report published today in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology details research from scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which estimates that electricity demand could outstrip supply by as much as 17 percent on the hottest days in the coming decades.
more from earth2tech.com
This is a double-helix wind turbine known as aeroturbines. The design of these aeroturbines is simple and Dr. Becker tries to eliminate the drawbacks of the existing turbines.
more from www.alternative-energy-news.info
As this post will show the likelihood that the EU’s fossil fuel consumption has peaked, back in 1979, is now very real. It will also compare the degree of net fossil fuel self-sufficiency between the EU and the USA as of 2007.
more from www.theoildrum.com
To wrap up my ode to John Henry (and a more sustainable lifestyle) I am going to cover a few more everyday household plug-ins by giving the current ON the grid offering, it’s OFF the grid alternative, and weigh in on whether a switch is warranted.
more from cleantechnica.com
In August, Alaska will sell prospecting rights to Mount Spurr, one of several volcanoes located near Anchorage. It is estimated that Mount Spurr could generate “tens of hundreds of megawatts of energy”.
more from cleantechnica.com
Sure, regenerative braking – the process that converts the energy typically wasted as heat when slowing down and storing it as electrical power in batteries – is a terrific energy saving solution. Many hybrid cars, such as the Prius, use regenerative braking and it's starting to appear aboard hybrid diesel/electric trains as well. But more efficient still is to maintain your momentum and dispense with a train's need to make stops
more from www.ecogeek.org
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said new towns were "the least sustainable way" of developing housing and other plans should be examined.
more from news.bbc.co.uk
Tony Lodge of the Centre for Policy Studies and Charles Anglin of the British Wind Energy Association talk about the issues.
more from news.bbc.co.uk
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