Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

I'm not generally a fan of Jeremy Rifkind's work. But, as a commenter is quoted as saying at the end of this BBC News report on Rifkind's latest ideas for energy policy, "The world has room for visionaries." At a Prague conference, Rifkind outlined a grand scheme for solving economic and energy problems by rapidly moving Europe to distributed renewable energy resources integrated with smart grid systems. If you strip out the seemingly-obligatory-in-public-pronouncements-these-days promise of millions of "green jobs," it is a vision of what a smart grid system can do for distributed energy. Sure, too ambitious by half, but that is part of what makes it a vision and not a program for immediate action. Although, I'll have to say, there is an odd bit of centralization in a distributed energy proposal in which at "any one time the system will know what every washing machine is doing in Europe" and in the case of "peak demand, [with] not enough supply, software can say to two million washing machines 'forget the extra rinse'." (Though Rifkind notes his system is entirely voluntary and participants would be paid for their contributions.)

"China, the world leader in wind power by installed capacity, is facing a growing problem with grid connection as more than half of the electricity its wind farms generate goes unused."

Good catch. Such lack of coordinated planning is not unusual in a start-up, but let's hope it will be just that - a temporary mismatch in the synchronisation of planning 2 major infrastructure projects (wind power generation & transmission networks).

"Energy security is rapidly becoming a major concern for citizens of both developed and developing countries. We have grown totally dependent on low cost oil and gas for our everyday lives. As increased pressure is put on the remaining reserves, prices are rising inexorably, and alternatives must be sought. This requires a change of lifestyle for the 21st Century. Wastewatts is a technology discussion forum that looks at ways in which we might change our fossil fuel dependent lifestyles, off-setting petroleum with renewable fuels or those derived from industrial or agricultural waste."

MPI's generator technology exhibits electrical performance very similar to chemical batteries except that the output voltage does not gradually decline with time, but remains indefinitely constant. Variations can readily be scaled to produce 1 kW of electricity. These 1 kW generators will be modular. They can be combined to fulfill larger power requirements.

When a story sounds too good to be true ...

300 years after its invention, Stirling engines are coming to stay... and probably take a nice share of the Solar Power market. the cost perspective is also quite attractive. these structures cost now around $20 000 against 50 to $100 000 3 years ago.