Paul Raven @ 26-09-2008
Energy crisis? What energy crisis? You’ll be laughing all night in your floodlit garden under the gaze of your jealous fossil-fuel using neighbours once you’ve got Hyperion’s clean, safe and portable[1] backyard nuclear reactor up and running!
Yes indeed; using good clean water as both moderator and coolant, the Hyperion reactor simply cannot become a runaway reaction, and the uranium hydride fuel is useless for making weapons with - so you’ll not get any politically-motivated sanctions imposed on you by coalitions of powerful nation-states!
The Hyperion reactor will start shipping in the summer of 2013, so start saving now! Or alternatively take out a loan based on the projected amount of energy you’ll be able to sell back to an increasingly desperate and expensive national grid - provided you can find a bank that’s guaranteed not to collapse[2], or a cooperative government administration to bail you out when the worst happens.
[ 1 - 2.5m tall concrete unit can be transported by most commercially-available heavy plant machinery. ]
[ 2 - You may want to consider researching financial institutions based in China or other Asian nations. ]
[Story originally found at grinding.be; image from Hyperion's website, and there's an interview with surprisingly lucid and woo-free Hyperion CEO; please note snarky tone of post is a form of gallows humour after an hour of wading through the day's news.]
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Paul Raven @ 11-07-2008
I’d love to be able to fit solar panels to my home (not that we’ve been getting much sun this year, grouch grouch), but as I live in a flat I don’t have a roof to put them on. Thanks to a crafty hack from the boffins at MIT, that may not be a problem - they’ve found a way to turn windows into solar panels. [image by uqbar]
Sunlight is concentrated in existing solar power devices using large, mobile mirrors that track the sun as it moves across the sky. But these can be expensive to deploy and maintain. In the MIT device, called an “organic solar concentrator” and described in the latest issue of Science, the researchers painted a mixture of organic dyes onto the surface of a pane of glass. The dyes trap different wavelengths of sunlight and then guide the energy along the glass towards the PV cells at the edges.
“The point of all this is to get away with using far fewer solar cells,” said Marc Baldo, an electrical engineer at MIT. “The concentrator collects light over its whole front surface, but the solar cells need only cover the area of the edges.”
Not only does this make solar an option for people who don’t own an entire building, it also makes it a much cheaper proposition in general; solar cells aren’t cheap to make, and the industry can’t keep up with current demand as it stands.
And just to pre-empt someone piping up and saying that solar will never fully replace [energy source x], yeah, you’re probably right. But as one of a suite of renewable sources, it can make a contribution towards doing so - and right now we need every option we can get.
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Tomas Martin @ 20-03-2008
The Guardian has this interesting snippet of an article that makes sense to me on so many levels. Professor Andy Hopper of the University of Cambridge has been looking at the power usage of computers and made an astute suggestion: locate large processing servers near sources of alternative energy like solar or wind farms. When the power is flowing through the turbine or photovoltaic, computers all around the world can tap into the processors of the server farm. When there’s no wind or sun in one location, the network can call on the processors of somewhere there is.
This kind of synergy is fascinating and I think it’ll be a major feature in our future working lives. Flash drives getting bigger, faster and cheaper all the time and programs like Portable Firefox run straight off a portable drive. I’m writing this post on my portable usb, using only the processor and screen of the laptop I’m borrowing time on. Sooner or later all our computers will be a usb-style stick with all our programs, data and settings stored on it. Plug it into a nearby screen (or project your own), whack out your laser keyboard and dial into any heavy processing power from an external server. Who needs a big computer tower in your room when you can fit it in your pocket?
[story via the Guardian, image by Brent Danley]
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Paul Raven @ 07-02-2008
File under “gimme one of those” - a Canadian university team has developed a knee brace device that harnesses the movement of the leg while walking to produce 5 Watts of power. [Image from linked NewScientist article]
That’s enough to run ten mobile phones at once, apparently (though why you’d ever need more than one isn’t clear … I kid, I kid). From the article:
“The generator does not significantly increase the effort required for walking, says Max Donelan of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, who led its development.
“Muscles spend about the same amount of time working as brakes as they do working as motors,” he explains. The device is designed so it only generates electricity during the “braking” phase of each step. This is when the leg is being unbent and is decelerating, just before the foot touches the ground.
The device works similarly to hybrid and electric cars, Donelan points out. They boost efficiency by generating electricity from energy expended during braking – known as regenerative braking.”
A device that saves on my electricity bill and encourages me to exercise? It’s the ultimate accessory for the self-sufficient cyberpunk-around-town - where do I sign?
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Tomas Martin @ 11-12-2007
Toshiba has reported that it plans to launch a new range of SCiB batteries in March 2008 that charge up to 90% capacity in just five minutes and have a lifetime of 5000 charges without much reduction in charge (an effective lifetime of 10 years). The two versions, 2.4V and 24V, shouldn’t explode either, which is always a bonus. Although this battery is designed primarily for the hybrid car and electric bicycle market, as Engadget and DailyTech comment this would be incredible in the laptop market…
[via Engadget, image by Toshiba via DailyTech]
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Paul Raven @ 29-10-2007
Now this is just a great idea, plain and simple - clothing made from fabrics with piezo-electric materials embedded in them, which will generate electric current as a result of the flexing produced by the wearer’s motion. The project has been sponsored to the tune of AUS$4.4million by the Australian Defence Department, and the potential for military applications is obvious enough, but the same technology would be very lucrative in the commercial sector too. Of course, it’s not in the bag yet - the researchers behind the idea suggest a viable product may be ready in four or five years - but the day when I can travel without having to pack an arsenal of batteries and wall-warts can’t come soon enough. [Via SmartMobs] [Image by Mgus]
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Jeremy Lyon @ 06-08-2007
So called hot dry rock geothermal technology has the potential to be a huge generator of emissions-free technology for a relatively steep initial investment but very low ongoing costs. The basic concept is simple — dig a big hole in the ground to where the granite is very hot, pump in water, and let the resultant steam power a turbine. [photo by futureatlas] [slashdot]
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Jeremy Lyon @ 03-08-2007
Retired engineer Louis Michaud makes small tornados in his garage, but he wants to build them miles high. It works like this: route a nuclear power plant’s cooling pipes through an especially constructed building. Use big fans to blow air over the pipes. Use baffles and retaining walls to shape the hot air into a vortex. Put turbines in the path of the resultant tornado and recapture the energy that would otherwise be lost as waste heat. The idea without all the journalistic fluff of the article linked above is described on Michaud’s website, complete with diagrams. [digg]
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Jeremy Lyon @ 08-07-2007
Gargoyles and uber-geeks begarlanded with gadgets may have the Department of Defense to thank for improvements in portable power supplies. They’re sponsoring a new $1 million prize to encourage the development of a power system that weighs less than 4 kilograms and provides 96 hours of power for soldiers in the field. [image by moria] [defense tech]
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