#That Self-driving car In Your Future Might Make You Sick Remember back when virtual reality was being touted as The next Big Thing the first time around?
Videogame maker Sega developed a mass-market head-tracking VR system and showed it to reporters and industry representatives with great fanfare at the 1993 winter Consumer electronics Show.
It performed as advertised, carried an affordable $200 price tag and was set to launch the following year.
Unfortunately, among other issues, testers reportedly developed headaches and motion sickness using the headset and the system was shelved quietly.
A report just issued by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, suggests a similar problem could befall those riding in autonomous-driving cars.
Invest A lot More In The Grid Want to increase the use of green energy and reduce the level of harmful emissions?
Invest heavily in the grid to both modernize and expand it, which will accomplish such aims
That the view of energy and utility experts assembled by Public utilities Fortnightly at its energy, money and power conference last week in WASHINGTON DC.
A smarter and more extensive grid that is able to distribute greener power is expensive. But the benefits of creating a modern infrastructure are huge. his vision is also about job creation
and economic benefits, says Massoud Amin, chairman of the IEEE Smart grid and a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota.
Just ask Centerpoint Energy Inc. and DTE ENERGY Co, . which have invested hundreds of millions of dollars (with some federal help) to improve performance over their wires.
Those who run electricity systems can now apply algorithms to tell operators which units to run
Christopher Berkey/AP Images for S&c Electric company) Today, the bulk power system as it is known is comprised of 10,000 power plants, 170,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and nearly 6 million miles of low-voltage distribution lines.
and solar energy that need access to the transmission lines. Professor Amin says that if wind energy is to swell by 40 percent during this time,
To that end, the PJM Interconnection that manages the transmission grid over 13-states in the Mid-atlantic
Specifically, 10 of its 13 states have renewable portfolio standards that will require more green energy.
and then inject it later on to the grid. xpansion is happening, says Terry Boston, chief executive of PJM. he planning process is broken not.
adds Philip Moeller, commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). ou can just snap your fingers.
says Julia Hamm, chief executive of the Solar Electric power Association. The recent past has seen such mega-deals as the 392-megawatt concentrated solar plant called Ivanpah,
which is joint venture among NRG ENERGY, Google and Brightsource energy. That project takes 173,000 mirrors and focuses the sunlight to the plant solar receiver steam generator,
when then produces electricity. However, it costly and out-of-favor, given that it is much easier and much less expensive to put rooftop solar panels on homes
and businesses not to mention the headaches of trying to get new transmission built to carry the power to where it would be consumed.
That why Hamm says that the trend now is to build smaller utility-scale projects that may total 30 megawatts.
The existing grid is becoming better and smarter, allowing for more efficient and cleaner transportation of energy.
But network expansion will also be necessary, not just to accommodate a growing economy but also to satisfy pending clean air rules.
but even the two data points of sleep and physical activity have augmented my own reflections on personal health, energy, and mood.
a regulated utility has created self-styled electric grid to service its remote campus outside Dallas . While Oncor Electric is still sending electrons to its 7. 5 million customers throughout Texas using high-voltage transmission lines,
it decided to construct its own icrogridto bolster reliability. Centralized networks were designed a century ago as the most efficient way to generate
and deliver electricity to the masses. While they will remain paramount to the distribution of electricity,
the reality is that it is politically difficult to expand them. Even more significantly businesses that cannot afford even a momentary disruption in power must look to new technologies that include distributed generation
and off the grid, says David Chiesa, director of microgrids at S&c Electric, which along with Schneider Electric Schneider Electric, built the Oncor project. ncor microgrid is showing the world how utilities can help their communities in the future.
other industrial campuses can choose to stay connected to such utility-provided electricity all the time or until the lights flicker out.
which can harness electricity and release it on to the localized microgrid when it is needed.
but it can also help spur green energy development. Oncor is using a small battery developed by Tesla motors.
Microgrids are getting the attention of utilities, not as potential threats but as a possible complement to their business models.
It all part of their smart grid layout which seeks to beef up cyber security, reduce emissions and cut costs s
unless a person is willing to live ff the grid, it is nearly impossible to avoid disclosing the most personal of information to third-party service providers on a constant basis,
#Why Tesla Batteries Are Cheap Enough To Prevent New Power plants Last year, analysts hired by Oncor Electric Delivery Company were toiling away on a study of the costs
and benefits of installing enormous batteries on Oncor grid in Texas. The benefits would surpass the costs,
if Oncor could buy batteries for $350 per kilowatt hour of capacityr less. That was the break even point.
At the time, the cheapest utility-scale batteries cost twice that much, the analysts noted, and some cost nearly ten times that much.
and the analysts predicted batteries might reach the $350 point in 2020. They didn have to wait nearly so long.
Tesla Powerwall home battery unveiled late Thursday night, dominated energy news all weekend, but the real news was the price tag on its utility-scale big sister, the Powerpack:
$250/kwh. here nothing remotely at these price points, said Tesla product architect Elon musk. Earlier Thursday night,
I was covering a Northwestern University debate on the future of nuclear energy, in which the nuclear critic Arnie Gundersen predicted Tesla new utility-scale battery would render new-build nuclear plants obsolete.
The battery would be cheap enough to solve the reliability problem of intermittent solar and wind,
he predicted, providing a cheaper alternative to nuclear power 24-hour output. Gundersen predicted the cost of the utility-scale battery would fall to 2 cents per kwh of the electricity that passes through it
which in coming years would render renewable energy with reliable storage cheaper than a new nuclear plant.
Gundersen focused on the utility-scale battery, which we would soon learn to call the Tesla Powerpack,
but most of the chatter in the wake of Musk announcement focused on the home battery, the Tesla Powerwall,
which is both more expensive per kwh and less poised to reap benefits. Some writers noticed both batteries. he Tesla battery is better than
I thought for homes, wrote the author Ramez Naam in a review of Tesla new battery line. nd at utility scale,
it deeply disruptive. At Tesla price, utility-scale batteries have the potential to perform better than 2 cents per kilowatt hour where it counts the most:
on the customer electric bill. The capital cost of utility-scale batteries may be more than offset by their benefits, according to the Texas study,
and if deployed at the grid level, they could actually lower electric bills. Even modeling batteries $100 more than the Tesla, the Texas analysts concluded that storage arrayed across the grid should cause a typical consumer electric bill to fall slightlyrom $180 per month to $179. 66.
That not a remarkable number if one is looking for savings, but it a remarkable number if one expects new capital expenditures on batteries to increase electricity bills. onsidering both the impact on electricity bills and improved reliability of grid-integrated storage,
total customer benefits would significantly exceed costs, the analysts, from The Brattle Group, found. Here why, according to their study:
1. Power Purchase Cost Savings. Utilities without sufficient storage often have to purchase power during system peaks,
and those purchases are billed directly to customers. Batteries eliminate those charges. 2. Customer Bill Offsets from Storage Merchant Value.
Utilities would make batteries available to independent companies participating in regional wholesale energy markets, auctioning off battery capacity
and returning most of the proceeds to customers by reducing their bills. 3. Avoided Distribution Outages.
By preventing blackouts, batteries would save residential customers about $10 a year and commercial customers an average of $700 a year.
An example: Socore, a Southern California Edison subsidiary, is installing Tesla batteries at two Cinemark Theaters to keep them in business
when the power goes out.)4. Deferred Investments. Typically, utilities need enough power plants to serve their customers at peak hours, not at average hours.
By using batteries to serve peak loads, they can invest in fewer power plants. They can especially avoid firing up expensive eaker plants,
which are usually fast-starting but inefficient natural-gas plants. They can also build fewer peaker plants in the future.
By deploying batteries along the grid where peak loads are greatest, they can also defer investments in transmission
and distribution infrastructure designed to serve peak loads. An example: Southern California Edison installed a battery in Orange, Cal.
and found that it both improved reliability of the grid and allowed the utility to defer replacement of a circuit for 5 to 7 years).
he combined value of these benefits exceeds the costs of storage by a substantial margin across a range of deployment levels,
And remember, that with hypothetical batteries up to $100 more expensive per kilowatt hour than Tesla. n this analysis,
Customers would then receive offsetting reductions in retail electricity costs from the storage in the form of deferred investments, refunds from the wholesale market auction proceeds,
Tesla Powerwall and other batteries for the home should produce similar benefits, but not as powerfully:
they are not likely to directly monetize the larger grid-wide and wholesale power market benefits.
Tesla is offering the utility-scale batteries in 100kwh battery blocks that are grouped in packs from 500kwh to 10mwh+.
+The Texas analysts recommended up to 15mwh for Oncore grid. Installation costs are uncertain, but installations are likely to be performed by utilities in-house
Ramez Naam review also led me to a study by the Electric power Research Institute, which found the benefits of grid-level storage exceeded costs in nearly all examined scenarios.
Utilities expect similar results. Green Mountain Power among the first utilities offering the Tesla Powerwall for homes,
is also purchasing Tesla grid-level batteries. e will also be using the Tesla grid scale system,
In its press release last week, Tesla named Southern California Edison as a partner for grid-level storage. here are a few opportunities
and also as batteries improve. Gundersen based his 2¢estimate in part on improvements in cyclinghe number of times a battery can be drained
and rechargedhat Tesla is known to be working on, and that have begun already to appear in other batteries.
Analysts often assume batteries will cycle once per day, 1, 000 times. The Michigan company Xalt Energy markets a lithium-ion battery that it says can cycle 4, 000 to 8, 000 times.
Some lithium-ion batteries used to back up data servers are designed to cycle up to 10,000 times.
These achievements are likely to be exceeded soon by the next generation of batteries coming down the pipe.
More cycles mean longer battery life and lower cost per kwh. Booms, Busts And Billionaires: An ebook From Forbes Find out what happened to the oil industrynd where it headed next. oth solar
and batteries are not uelsbut rather technologies, Gundersen said. he extraction cost of fuels continues to rise,
while technology costs continue to fall. My Doctoral contacts at battery companies are confident that 2 cents is indeed here in the lab and on the horizon commercially.
It is all about the number of cycles that can be pulled from a battery. We still don know what cycling improvements Tesla has bundled into the Powerpack,
if any, and Tesla has responded not to a request for comment. Ramez Naam thinks that both Gundersen optimistic 2¢(for the Powerpack)
and my Forbes colleague Chris Helman pessimistic 50¢(for the Powerwall are outliers in the range of possibilities for the cost of electricity flowing through Tesla batteries.
If utilities get the same 10-year warranty Tesla offers to home customers, Naam estimates the Powerpack cost per kwh will be told 7,
Even at twice that price, he said, grid-level batteries offer utilities a return on investment now:
hat batteries bring positive ROI at such a price surprises lots of people. And it means windmills+batteries may be cheaper than nuclear plants right now,
with windmills+solar panels likely to follow e
#Medical marijuana Sparks New Technology The emerging cannabis industry has created not only thousands of new jobs, it has also given birth to a new technology niche.
Existing software companies are adapting and news ones are being born to address the specific needs of this new sector.
The ethod and system for shockwave attenuation via electromagnetic arcisn quite the all-purpose energy shield you see around spaceships in movies like Star wars,
and distance of the shockwave relative to the rotected asset The system would then calculate a firing plan for an arc generator that capable of dispersing the energy density of the shockwave.
and LEDSENSE will automatically adjust light levels in a building to balance grid demand. If a light sees people enter a room it will raise the lighting to a brighter level.
the lights will be lowered, providing additional energy savings. If a dangerous gas is detected in the air, or if a person using a restroom leaves it odorous,
LEDSENSE is primarily an energy efficiency tool LEDSENSE can, in some applications, reduce energy costs in a building by up to 90%.
%But these gains are created not simply through the power reduction that LEDS bring, but rather through combining this benefit alongside smart lighting control.
that of retrofitting a more economically friendly light bulb into commercial settings, is of real benefit on its own,
global energy use traditionally increases and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions also go up. Only when economies stumble and businesses shutter as during the most recent financial crisis does energy use typically decline,
in turn bringing down planet-warming emissions. But for the first time in nearly half a century, that synchrony between economic growth and energy-related emissions seems to have been broken
according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, prompting its chief economist to wonder if an important new pivot point has been reached one that decouples economic vigor and carbon pollution.
The IEA pegged carbon dioxide emissions for 2014 at 32.3 billion metric tons essentially the same volume as 2013,
and upticks in renewable electricity generation there using solar wind and hydropower could have contributed to the reversal.
and economics are unlikely to be realized, given changes in energy consumption patterns in various countries and the status of ultimately recoverable fossil fuel resources globally. n a business-as usual situation,
and installation alternative energy generation technologies to improve their energy and economic security. There is clear evidence of this already occurring in Europe and China especially.
but also carry electronics, sensors and batteries.""This would be an extremely difficult task, since the weight of the body has to be really lightweight for it to jump on water,
The design, described in the journal Energy and Environmental science, consists of three main components: two electrodesne photoanode and one photocathodend a membrane.
and are used therefore in solar panels. However, these materials also oxidize (or rust) on the surface
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
Instead, the residual energyuantum noiseemained. his energy is part of the quantum description of natureou just can get it out,
Light is an electromagnetic field, and the field of single-color, or monochromatic light oscillates at all points in space with the same frequency but varying relative delays, or phases.
Polarization refers to the trajectory of the oscillations of the electromagnetic field at each point in space.
for some materials to conduct electricity without resistance, even at ightemperatures approaching 00 degrees Celsius. he discovery of this phase was unexpected completely and not based on any prior theoretical prediction,
where an additional amount of energy is required to strip electrons out of the material. For decades, scientists have debated the origin of the pseudogap
wee sending a lot more energy to that spot than the energy sent by the sun, he explains.
the mathematical framework developed by the team can compute energy-efficient codes that optimize the amount of energy that reaches the camera. e have a way of choosing the light rays we want to capture
noting that a robot sensors expend a relatively large amount of energy because they are always on. very watt matters in a space mission. arasimhan says depth cameras that can operate outdoors could be useful in automotive applications,
when the machine is shut down. 100 times less energy Modern memory chips have many requirements: They have to read
which requires 100 times less energy than present devices, has the potential to hit all the marks. his tantalum memory is based on two-terminal systems,
and switch from a metabolism that depends on glucose for most of its energy to a metabolism that derives most of its energy from fats.
#Flexible, fast-charging aluminum-ion battery offers safer alternative to lithium-ion Researchers at Stanford university have created a fast-charging and long-lasting rechargeable battery that is inexpensive to produce,
and alkaline batteries powering our gadgets today. The prototype aluminum-ion battery is also safer,
not bursting into flames as some of its lithium-ion brethren are wont to do. The prototype battery features an anode made of aluminum, a cathode of graphite and an ionic liquid electrolyte,
all packed within a flexible, polymer-coated pouch. And unlike lithium-ion batteries which can short circuit
and explode or catch fire when punctured, the aluminum-ion battery will actually continue working for a short
while before not bursting into flames.""The electrolyte is basically a salt that's liquid at room temperature,
so it's very safe, "said Stanford graduate student Ming Gong, co-lead author of the study.
The aluminum-ion battery hits the target here, too, with the Stanford team claiming"unprecedented charging times"of just one minute for recharging the prototype battery.
The aluminum-ion battery has covered you there, too. Unlike typical lithium-ion batteries that last around 1, 000 charge-discharge cycles,
or other aluminum-ion battery lab attempts that usually died after just 100 cycles, the Stanford researchers claim their battery stood up to 7, 500 cycles without a loss of capacity.
This would make it attractive for storing renewable energy on the electrical grid.""The grid needs a battery with a long cycle life that can rapidly store
and release energy, "team member Hongjie Dai explains.""Our latest unpublished data suggest that an aluminum battery can be recharged tens of thousands of times.
It's hard to imagine building a huge lithium-ion battery for grid storage.""The experimental battery also has added the advantage of flexibility,
which gives the technology the potential to find applications in the burgeoning field of flexible electronics.
Furthermore, the researchers point out that aluminum is a cheaper metal than lithium, and the aluminum-ion technology offers an environmentally friendly alternative to disposable AA
and AAA alkaline batteries used to power millions of portable devices. Currently, one of the prototype battery's biggest shortcomings is its voltage.
Although Dai points out it is more than anyone else has achieved with aluminum, the battery only generates around two volts of electricity,
which is around half that of a typical lithium-ion battery. However, the researchers are confident they can improve on this."
"Improving the cathode material could eventually increase the voltage and energy density,"says Dai.""Otherwise, our battery has everything else you'd dream that a battery should have:
inexpensive electrodes, good safety, high-speed charging, flexibility and long cycle life. I see this as a new battery in its early days.
It's quite exciting.""The team's work is detailed in a paper published in the online edition of Nature
and the battery can be seen in action in the video below. Source: Stanford Universit t
#"Smart"facade keeps offices from overheating, without using any electricity Office buildings with plate glass windows may provide a nice view for workers,
but they're certainly not ideal when it comes to energy-efficiency. Among other things, the sunlight that pours through them can raise the temperature in the office,
causing the air conditioning to come on. Now, however, researchers from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Machine tools and Forming Technology have created a light-blocking facade for such windows that only kicks in
when exposed to strong sunlight and it's powered by that sunlight, too. The facade was developed via a collaboration between Fraunhofer and the Weissensee School of art in Berlin.
Based on a concept by design student Bára Finnsdottir, it's composed of an array of circular flower-like components.
or to generate electricity via flexible solar cells. A working prototype of the technology will be on display from Apr 13 to 17, at the Hannover Messe industrial trade show d
#Graphene device makes ultrafast light to energy conversion possible Converting light to electricity is one of the pillars of modern electronics, with the process essential for the operation of everything from solar cells and TV remote control receivers through to laser communications
In this vein, researchers from the Institute of Photonic Sciences (Institut de Ciències Fotòniques/ICFO) in Barcelona have demonstrated a graphene-based photodetector they claim converts light into electricity in less than 50 quadrillionths of a second.
along with an ultra-sensitive pulse detector to capture the speed of conversion to electrical energy. When this arrangement was fired up and tested
they remain in that state and transfer their energy much more rapidly. As such constant laser pulse excitation of an area of graphene quickly results in superfast electron distribution within the material at constantly elevated electron temperatures.
This is because their operation is dependent upon overcoming of the binding electron energy inherent in the material for an incoming photon to dislodge an electron
the practical upshot of this research may be in the eventual production of novel types of ultrafast and extremely effective photodetectors and energy harvesting devices.
whether it was possible to reduce the energy cost of walking without the use of an external energy source.
not only exerts energy when pushing a person forward, but also when performing a clutch-like action to hold the Achilles tendon taut."
but still using substantial metabolic energy, "Collins explained.""This is the opposite of regenerative braking. It's as if every time you push on the brake pedal in your car,
This is accomplished through the use of a mechanical clutch that produces force without consuming any energy.
To offset the initial penalty that sees an increases in energy costs when heavy objects are placed on the legs,
"said professor"The efficiency of the tunneling process depends intimately on the degree of alignment of the molecule discrete energy levels with the electrode continuous spectrum.
At the Molecular Foundry we developed an approach to accurately compute energy-level alignment and tunneling probability in single-molecule junctions.
"In addition to breaking symmetry, double layers formed by ionic solution also generate dipole differences at the two electrodes,
and energy flow at the nanoscale. What is exciting to me about this field is its multidisciplinary nature the need for both physics and chemistry and the strong beneficial coupling between experiment and theory.
#Aluminum"yolk"nanoparticles deliver high-capacity battery recipe Researchers at MIT and Tsinghua University in China have found a way to more than triple the capacity of the anodes,
or negative electrodes, of lithium-ion batteries while also extending their lifetime and potentially allowing for faster battery charging
and discharging. The new electrode, which makes use of aluminum/titanium"yolk -and-shell"nanoparticles, is reportedly simple to manufacture
The lithium-ion batteries in our phones, tablets and laptops store their energy-carrying ions inside negative electrodes made of graphite.
Other electrode materials could in theory do a far better job by packing in more energy
Lithium could store about 10 times more energy per unit weight than graphite, but it's prone to short-circuiting and catching fire;
but only if the battery is charged at a slow rate, which is rarely practical. Many of the high-capacity alternatives also tend to expand
storing and releasing ions without damaging the structure of the electrode and leading to much longer-lasting, high-capacity batteries.
like lithium or silicon, can store much more energy per unit weight than conventional graphite.
However, it isn't usually considered a good choice for building lithium-ion batteries because the repeated expansion and shrinkage inside the electrode cause aluminium particles to shed their outer layer.
the new electrode can reportedly store over three times as much energy per unit mass (1. 2 Ah/g) at a normal charging rate.
it could lead to batteries that are longer-lasting, more energy-dense and faster-charging than today's cells s
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011