Tag Archives: energy

Blog

Wind farm, server farm

1 Comment

wind turbinesServer farms use a whole lot of power, and with the price of energy likely to start skyrocketing again before too long, canny businesses will be looking for a way to keep a cap on the costs of running their hardware. Enter Texas firm Baryonyx, which intends initially to build server farms powered primarily by renewable energy sources like wind power… but that’s just the start.

Baryonyx plans to build a 28,000 square foot data center in Stratford, which will be powered by 100 wind turbines built on the adjacent land that will generate up to 150 megawatts of power. Each of the turbines will be able to generate up to 3.3 megawatts of power. Capacity not needed by the data center will be sold to local utilities. Baryonyx said it will take about 3 years to reach the operational phase for the wind-powered data center.

The second phase is the offshore wind farms, which will feature up to 450 wind turbines, which are each 300 feet tall and capable of generating 6 megawatts of power. Baryonyx was the high bidder in a July 14 lease sale by the Texas General Land Office. Baryonyx will pay a “nominal fee” to lease the two offshore areas for wind development.

Now there’s a sound business model; sell a more affordable solution to the desperate-for-efficiency first, and then sit back as rising oil prices ensure that your target market just keeps growing… [via SlashDot; image by jesse.millan]

Blog

Epic engineering: It still lives

1 Comment

hooverThis Arizona Republic item put me in mind of William Gibson’s early story “The Gernsback Continuum,” a rumination on the golden age of mega-construction. I saw this engineering marvel on a recent drive to Vegas (bookie, debt, showgirl–long story) and it’s an awe-inspiring sight.

A quarter-mile downstream from Hoover Dam, two fingers of concrete stretch toward each other from sheer cliffs, suspended nearly 900 feet above the Colorado River.

In a month, the fingers will meet, an 80-foot gap will close and the longest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere will be complete.

The union will mark a major milestone in the nine-year construction of the Hoover Dam bypass bridge, scheduled to open in late 2010.

But even incomplete, the overpass, officially known as the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, evokes a sense of wonder. Towering columns perch on naked rock. The arch is held by tendons of steel cable…

The $114 million bridge project has been a challenge. Accidents delayed it by two years and claimed one life, as workers battled intense heat, dangerously high winds and perilous heights…

Work crews had to build foundations for the arches midway up two sheer cliff faces, hundreds of feet above the river.…

Temperatures as high as 120 degrees strain workers and heat up wet concrete. Crews use liquid nitrogen to keep the concrete cool so blocks don’t develop fatal cracks.

[Nevada side of the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge under construction at the Hoover Dam. Taken May 3, 2009 by squeaks2569]

Blog

Space-based solar again

solar eclipseSpace-based solar power is about as science fictional as an energy solution can be, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping people from trying to make it a reality. We mentioned Solaren’s combined energy platform and hurricane killer idea back in April; now here’s PowerSat, who (naturally) have their own unique selling point:

Most proposals for space-based solar have involved a constellation of satellites, each transferring those 17MW to a central unit for transmission back to earth. This adds to the complexity of the system and means at least one satellite has to integrate a very large amount of power. PowerSat hopes to avoid all that. The satellites will receive a pilot signal from the ground and use that to coordinate their energy-carrying return signal to the ground-based receiver. “The satellites act as a radio frequency cloud to create a phase array of phased arrays,” Maness says.

When the microwave signal hits the ground, the transmission from each satellite should be additive—all of which dramatically cuts down the weight and complexity of the hardware that has to be put into orbit.

There are, of course, concerns about the effects of the power transmission beams when they reach the surface, but PowerSat are convinced (after researching thoroughly) that there would be no harm to humans, animals or anything else living. However, the beam would certainly knock out your mobile phone signal – which is a pretty minor flaw, but one that’s bound to create a significant obstacle to PowerSat’s plans… [image by James Jordan]

Blog

The romance of steam power returns

steam valveDespite its association with a bygone era of anachronistic and bulky (but very stylish) technology, steam power is making a comeback thanks to stimulus money from the US government. Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems are appealing to large organisations because of the efficiency they offer, but the same logic could apply to more domestic situations as well:

Today, most of the time, we make electricity and generate heat in different places. We get our electricity for lighting and power from a central station located far away and transmitted to us through the grid. Heating or cooling, on the other hand, is often accomplished with on-site boilers or electric radiators. Both systems work less efficiently when they stand alone. Together, waste heat generated during the process of making electricity can be scavenged and piped around to provide climate control.

Makes sense, right? It sure does – and it’s environmentally sound as well.

A DOE report released late last year found that CHP was already responsible for reducing American emissions by 248 million metric tons of CO2, which is equivalent to taking 45 million cars off the road. That’s a lot more than wind, solar or any of the other renewables. They have such a big impact because they effectively double the amount of work that we get from burning the same amount of fossil fuel.

With the extra impetus to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to combat global warming, these electric plants that also use their excess heat could experience a lot more growth over the next 30 years. To do so, though, they have substantial challenges to overcome.

For one, many of the regional benefits of CHP are not recognized by existing environmental and utility regulations. Utilities resist CHP systems because they complicate their transmission infrastructure and they say that’s costly. And people have grown used to having their power generated in some far off place and often object to the installation of a power plant nearby.

Ah, good old NIMBYism… but perhaps those complaints will be fainter once the markets have made fossil fuels into ludicrously expensive commodities again. [image by waddie]

It’s interesting to note yet another field of concern and endeavour where the solution might involve a move back from centralised provision to localised. Economics, politics and now energy… is it time for the return of the city-state?

Blog

Fusion power: now even more futuristic!

3 Comments

Fusion power is just around the corner, it’s often said… but my father told me they told him the same thing when he was an apprentice back in the early sixties. It seems to be fusion’s destiny to have its reality date rolled back perpetually – the latest example being the announcement that the France-based ITER international experimental fusion project is being scaled down, with the prospective date for its first actual power-generating experiments delayed by a whole five years from the original schedule:

Faced with ballooning costs and growing delays, ITER’s seven partners are likely to build only a skeletal version of the device at first. The project’s governing council said last June that the machine should turn on in 2018; the stripped-down version could allow that to happen. But the first experiments capable of validating fusion for power would not come until the end of 2025, five years later than the date set when the ITER agreement was signed in 2006.

[…]

Indeed, the plan is perhaps the only way forward. Construction costs are likely to double from the €5-billion (US$7-billion) estimate provided by the project in 2006, as a result of rises in the price of raw materials, gaps in the original design, and an unanticipated increase in staffing to manage procurement. The cost of ITER’s operations phase, another €5 billion over 20 years, may also rise.

Bit of a bummer – but then maybe we’d be better off investing in energy technologies that we already have working versions of. €10 billion could probably make a huge difference to the current state of play in solar, geothermal and other sustainable energy sources , I’d have thought. [via SlashDot]

But don’t despair, fusion fans – the wonderfully-named National Ignition Facility in California is working on a laser-fusion method that comes with all the too-cheap-to-meter promise of those thast have come before. I’d love to see fusion arrive in my lifetime, and perhaps I will – but in the meantime I think I’ll stick to pragmatism. The Chinese seem to be on a similar wavelength, as they’re suddenly ploughing a whole lot of cash into developing renewable energy sources like solar power. Place your bets, ladies and gents, place your bets…