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Johnson Controls, a global leader in building efficiency, announced the new LX Series of air conditioners and heat pumps by York, its leading air conditioning, heating, refrigeration, and ventilating company. They feature a MicroChannel coil with enhanced heat transfer characteristics, enabling them to achieve the desired performance levels with less coil surface area than competitive condensers and up to 50 percent less refrigerant. The units are available with environmentally friendly R-410A refrigerant as well as R-22. 14.5 SEER LX Series air conditioners use a compressor blanket and swept-wing fan blade for quieter operation. 15+ SEER can be achieved when the air conditioner is matched with a variable-speed air handler or gas furnace. A fully louvered steel coil guard, corner posts and a polymer mesh protect the condensing coils from damage. The unit's heavy-duty cabinet is made of powder-painted steel that resists corrosion and rust creep.\n\n\n\n\nIn addition, the MicroChannel coil offers better galvanic corrosion resistance than conventional coils. In testing, the coil withstood 7,000 hours of salt spray with a higher success rate than conventional coils at just 1,000 hours, making the units particularly desirable for seacoast applications, reveals the company's press release.\n\n

"The new standard has removed rare earth high-Fe aluminum alloy cable in favor of AA8000 series aluminum alloys defined under the US ASTM standard. Applications of AA8000 series aluminum alloy - widely used in low-voltage cable in North America nowadays - will become more common in China once the new standard takes effect, SMM understands. Henan Zhongfu Aluminum Alloy, Jiaozuo Shenghao Aluminum, and other producers of such aluminum alloy rod will benefit from the new standard, SMM aluminum analyst said. "

"The first series production cars to incorporate 48V technology in one form or another have hit the road in recent times, and further integration of 48V architecture is expected in the very near future. The Bentley Bentayga and the Audi SQ7 are the first two vehicles to incorporate a higher voltage electrical system, and the industry as a whole is gearing up for further development in the coming years."

Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity. Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission's Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% The scientists are calling for the creation of a series of huge solar farms - producing electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun's heat to boil water and drive turbines - as part of a plan to share Europe's renewable energy resources across the continent. A new supergrid, transmitting electricity along high voltage direct current cables would allow countries such as the UK and Denmark ultimately to export wind energy at times of surplus supply, as well as import from other green sources such as geothermal power in Iceland. Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than on the traditional AC ones, which make transmission of energy over long distances uneconomic. The grid proposal, which has won political support from both Nicholas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, answers the perennial criticism that renewable power will never be economic because the weather is not sufficiently predictable. Its supporters argue that even if the wind is not blowing hard enough in the North Sea, it will be blowing somewhere else in Europe, or the sun will be shining on a solar farm somewhere.

Earlier this week Google.org, the philanthropic arm of web technology company Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), announced its first two investments under its RechargeIT initiative, which aims to accelerate the adoption of plug-in electric vehicles. Google.org's official blog stated that RechargeIT, which released a request for proposals last Septmber, invested a combined $2.75 million into ActaCell, an Austin, Texas-based battery developer, and Aptera Motors, a Carlsbad, California-based electric car maker. In the blog posting Karl Sun, an investments principal Google.org, said, "Both of these innovative companies and their capable teams are working to develop technology that is crucial to helping us realize the RechargeIT vision: millions of plug-in vehicles on the road." The ActaCell investment was part of a larger Series A funding round that raised $5.8 million for the company, which began at the University of Texas at Austin. Funders included DFJ Mercury, Good Energies and Applied Ventures, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT).

Greentech Media has a series of excellent articles today profiling a few companies trying to tap wind energy in a different way than what we see from conventional wind farms. Companies mentioned in the pieces included Magenn Power (read here), Mariah Power (read here) and Southwest Windpower (read here). Another I've written about the in past is WhalePower.

The AirJelly performs a series of motions similar to that of a real life jellyfish to navigate and move around.

"a series of articles aiming to inform how to safely extend the life of commercial aircraft from the electrical wire interconnection system (EWIS) perspective"

"In the first of a series of exclusive articles, James Gordon explores the latest developments in V2G systems and asks if the technology has the power to reshape global electricity distribution networks.…. It is the world's largest consumer of energy(1), and with over half of China's 1.3 billion population choosing to live in its sprawling and gridlocked super-cities, the demand for power has never been greater. But ensuring that the 680 million who live in China's megalopolises receive a steady stream of electricity is no easy task. However, while the solution - to install a network of long distance super-grids - has proved to be effective, it has come at great cost. This highly innovative smart grid infrastructure that the State Grid Corporation of China, has been specially designed to transmit ultra-high-voltage-direct-current (UHVDC) at over 600,000 volts to China's main population centres from rural areas rich in energy(2). America, India, Germany and Brazil are also incorporating UHDVC lines into their grids, but Britain, whose population is expected to grow from 64,875,165 (2015) to 77,568,588 by 2050(3), is only in the early stages of exploring the potential of the technology according to the Energy Networks Association. And while the UK's Utility giants may yet decide to invest billions of pounds in these high-tech super grids, a fully functioning next-generation Battery Electric Vehicle to Grid (V2G) charging system, located in Birmingham, the UK's second city, may mean they never need to. But how could this potentially game-changing technology, which has been installed at Aston University's European Bioenergy Research Institute (EBRI), one day save the National Grid and the tax-payer billions of pounds?"

Source: Frost & Sullivan

According to data from the Copper and Brass Servicenter Association(CBSA), total shipments from US brass and copper mills slipped 1.1% y-o-y in 2012, to 261.5Mlb (118,600t). Data from November had indicated that year-to-date shipments were roughly unchanged from 2011, however, a 16.9% m-o-m drop in shipments in December tipped total shipments into contraction territory for the year. In general, copper semis shipments were stronger than alloy shipments, with copper rod shipments up 8.3% in 2012, to 64.4Mlb (29,200t). Total alloy shipments fell 5.4% in 2012, to 139.6Mlb (63,300t), with 300-series alloy RBS shipments declining by the largest amount in the year, falling 11.9% to 61.3Mlb (27,800t).

According to Aurubis Buffalo's vice president of marketing and sales, demand for brass mill products in the US has been strong so far in 2013. The company has seen a strong pickup in demand from sectors including ammunition, electronics, heating and HVAC so far this year. The executive said that lead times at service centers were longer than eight weeks in January for flat-rolled products and that the company is considering hiring more workers at its Buffalo operation to meet the demand.

The demand for copper flat-rolled products softened coming into March after a strong start to the year, according to sources at some US service centers. Lead times for some copper products, which were quoted as long as eight weeks back in January, may have shorted to six weeks or less in March according to an American Metal Market report. A drop in demand for appliances and connectors market was noted by some sources contacted by AMM, but sales of ammunition, a key end-use of flat-rolled brass, have remained buoyant since the start of the year.

According to a survey conducted by the Copper & Brass Servicenter Association, a US-based trade group, US servicenter shipments of copper and brass products amounted to 22.7Mlbs (10,297t) in April, down by 7.0% m-o-m and down by 0.9% y-o-y. The m-o-m decline was largely attributed to weaker demand for 300-series brass rod and bar, as shipments declined by 9.9%, reaching 5.2Mlbs. Servicenters enjoyed a good Q1 as shipment levels rose to reach 72.7Mlbs (32,736t), up by 4.2% y-o-y, with the peak of the quarter occurring in March, just as it did in 2011. Over 50% of servicecenters surveyed believed that incoming orders will stay at the same level in June-August 2012 as they were in March-May 2012.