Group items tagged

The Anglo-Dutch steel producer, which this week announced the elimination of 2,500 jobs at its UK plants, says the surge in British electricity prices from £24 a megawatt hour to £75 MWh over the past five years has been greater than "virtually anywhere else in Europe". If that is so, Britain's liberalised energy market is serving its users ill.

In keeping with the amount of virtual ink this item deserves, we're going to try and keep this short. The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine held a press conference this morning to announce that 31,000 "scientists" have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming.

Until November it was virtually impossible for a private developer of renewable energy power plants to become an independent power producer (IPP) in Mexico. Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution precluded private investment stating that electricity generation for public use is an activity to be undertaken exclusively by the Government. Mexico's enactment of a new law for the use of Renewable Energy and the Financing of the Energy Transition ( Ley para el Aprovechamiento de Energías Renovables y el Financiamiento de la Transición Energética ) substantially improves the legal framework for private investment in renewable energy projects. The law regulates renewable energy electricity generation for purposes other than providing public electricity services. The law states that the use of renewable energy for electricity generation is possible for private use and any excess energy can be sold, but only based on regulations and approvals by Mexico's energy regulatory body, CRE .

Also on display was a technology for transmitting power wirelessly by using coupled resonators, which show the potential of turning the now ubiquitous laptops into virtual transmitters to power multiple handheld devices, Intel executives said. Two flat copper coils -- a transmitter and a receiver -- are used, each tuned to resonate at a particular frequency.

* Globally, more than half (54%) of the organizations installing new copper cabling would invest in Category 6A 10Gb/s solutions - its high-performance and reliability are key for virtualization and consolidation, which are the main drivers of green and cost-reduction strategies and are highly dependent on reliability. Airports (86%) and healthcare (71%) are the business sectors leading the drive toward investment in Category 6A 10G copper solutions.

It looks ordinary, like a razor-thin metal ribbon. But the high-temperature superconductor power transmission cable the Long Island Power Authority recently installed in Ronkonkoma revolutionizes how electricity is delivered, utility and federal officials said. The cable -- which is a fraction of the size of a traditional copper wire but can carry three times the power -- made its ceremonial debut yesterday with officials from LIPA, the U.S. Department of Energy and officials from the company that makes the cable. It went online April 22, the world's first use of the new technology in a commercial power grid. Utilities around the world are looking at superconductivity to improve efficiency of their grids and make them less vulnerable to blackouts. LIPA has buried three 2,000-foot wires in its right-of-way, and it will be installing a second generation of the wire in the same area as a test. "We view superconductor power cables as an important option that will help us further enhance the reliability of our grid as we meet our customers' increasing demands for electric power," LIPA chief executive Kevin Law said. He said the new cable allows the utility to increase capacity where its system has bottlenecks while increasing reliability and longevity and lowering costs. The wire, manufactured by American Superconductor Corp., conducts 150 times the electricity of the same sized copper wires, strand-for-strand. This means transmission cables can be far smaller and still conduct as much as three to five times more power in a smaller right-of-way.

Nexans won a contract to supply most of the power, control and data cables in a project of Bombardier Transportation involving the construction of 27 passenger locomotives for the New Jersey Transit Corporation. The cables will be used in the production of the ALP-46A locomotives, developing a technology that Bombardier has been applying since 2002. Nexans cables meet the required technical specifications for fire resistance and efficiency, and they will be produced in the company's plants in Nuremberg and Monchengladbach, Germany. Delivery will start in April 2009. As Global Segment Manager for Rolling Stock Dietmar Steinbach reported, ''the main factors that persuaded Bombardier Transportation to place this major contract with Nexans are our proven capability to design, develop and deliver on-time and throughout the world a complete range of special cables to meet virtually any rolling stock requirement.''

Essex Group Inc., a subsidiary of Superior-Essex Inc., announced the acquisition of the magnet wire sale and distribution assets of Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd. (FEC) and American Furukawa Inc. Magnet wire is produced out of copper or aluminium and is used largely by the motor and electronics industries. The product is becoming increasingly popular due to its applications in the manufacture of electric motors for the hybrid vehicle market.

Why travel when this type of technology exists.

wire and electricity is the new plane, car, facr to face meeting