Insight: How renewable energy may be Edison’s revenge

U.S. inventor Thomas Alva Edison poses in this photograph taken in 1914. REUTERS/NPS/Thomas Edison/Handout

(Reuters) – At the start of the 20th century, inventors Thomas Alva Edison and Nikola Tesla clashed in the “war of the currents.” To highlight the dangers of his rival’s system, Edison even electrocuted an elephant. The animal died in vain; it was Tesla’s system and not Edison’s that took off. But today, helped by technological advances and the need to conserve energy, Edison may finally get his revenge.

The American inventor, who made the incandescent light bulb viable for the mass market, also built the world’s first electrical distribution system, in New York, using “direct current” electricity. DC’s disadvantage was that it couldn’t carry power beyond a few blocks. His Serbian-born rival Tesla, who at one stage worked with Edison, figured out how to send “alternating current” through transformers to enable it to step up the voltage for transmission over longer distances. … Continue Reading

A flawed approach to renewables

Hydro is the Nation's leading renewable energy resource producing 10% and is free of greenhouse gas emissions.

(By Gerard Wynn, Reuters) – Ambitious targets for renewable electricity in the medium-term are likely unfeasible, given they demand forced, early write-offs of fossil fuel power plants and may downplay rival shale gas and the unpredictability of wind and solar power.

The European Commission on Thursday unveiled its “Energy Roadmap 2050,” laying out options for making sweeping carbon emissions cuts through a combination of efficiency and renewable energy and other low-carbon technology.

At present renewable energy (mostly hydropower) accounts for about a fifth of both global and European Union power generation. … Continue Reading

Japan to increase aluminium consumption to 6.5 million tons

the electric vehicles that are just beginning to hit the local highways.

As investors are forever seeking the “hot” new investment, Aluminum could bode well as investors seek  to maximize their investment returns. Japan believes as the electric vehicle market continues to expand, Aluminum consumption will increase too.

Japan, which consumes about 10 per cent of the world’s total Aluminium produced (40 million tons in 2010) every year, has laid out a roadmap to enhance Aluminium consumption to 6.5 million tons per annum from the existing 4 million tons, as new and emerging sectors like renewable energy and electric vehicles and initiatives relating to light weighting of automobiles are driving the demand. … Continue Reading

Could the desert sun power the world?

The power station at Kuraymat uses both natural gas and solar panels to produce electricity. Photograph: Solar Millennium

By Leo Hickman – Green electricity generated by Sahara solar panels is being hailed as a solution to the climate change crisis

During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt’s colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention. Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun’s rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. The now super-heated water turned to steam, resulting in enough pressure to drive the pumps used to irrigate the surrounding fields where Egypt’s lucrative cotton crop was grown. It was an invention, claimed Shuman, which could help Egypt become far less reliant on the coal being imported at great expense from Britain’s mines. … Continue Reading

Solar energy- a promising technology

Concentrated solar power, or CSP, basically amounts to using big mirrors to focus the sun on a small area in order to get something very hot.

 The IMDEA Energy Institute’s Manuel Romero outlines why better exploiting solar thermal power can provide a significant contribution to the abatement of CO2 emissions

Nowadays, the high temperature thermal conversion of concentrated solar energy is rapidly increasing, with many commercial projects taken up in Spain, as well as countries such as the USA, India, China, South Africa, Australia, Algeria, France and Italy. This is the most promising technology to follow the pathway of wind energy and PV in order to reach the goals for renewable energy implementation in 2020 and 2050. With 2,400MW connected to the grid in 2013, and 5,000MW expected by 2020, Spain is taking the lead on current commercial developments, together with the USA – where a target of 4,500MW for 2013 has been fixed – and other relevant programmes like the ‘Solar Mission’ in India, which has recently been approved and is going for 22 GW-solar, with a large fraction of thermal. … Continue Reading

Universities’ solar future illuminated at UC Merced symposium

The campus has an ambitious "triple zero" commitment to use renewable sources to produce as much energy as it uses, eliminate landfill waste and and produce no greenhouse gas emissions - all by 2020.

 UC Merced inaugurates daylong conference

By YESENIA AMARO
yamaro@mercedsunstar.com

A group of researchers met at UC Merced on Friday to talk about some of the latest solar research and its potential impact.

“Solar energy has the potential, and it’s showing its potential, to be a major contributor to solving the world’s problems,” said Sarah Kurtz, interim director for the National Center for Photovoltaics and principal scientist for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “The sooner we can move to renewable energy, the sooner we can divorce ourselves from the increase in prices that we see — for example, the price of oil.” … Continue Reading

Methane power comes to Fort Benning

Methane Plant at Fort Benning

IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 12 — A system that uses landfill methane to generate clean energy has been installed at the U.S. Army’s Fort Benning in Georgia.

California’s FlexEnergy Inc. said its Flex Powerstation FP250 system, which results in zero carbon emissions, will convert landfill gas into enough renewable electricity to power the equivalent of 250 homes.

“FlexEnergy is proud to be serving future generations by providing energy for our nation’s security operations, while protecting the nation’s environmental air quality,” said FlexEnergy Inc. Chief Executive Officer Joe Perry. … Continue Reading

Device captures energy to drive small electronic devices

Power from the air

IMAGE: Georgia Tech graduate student Rushi Vyas (front) holds a prototype energy-scavenging device, while School of Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Manos Tentzeris displays a miniaturized flexible antenna that was inkjet-printed...

Researchers have discovered a way to capture and harness energy transmitted by such sources as radio and television transmitters, cell phone networks and satellite communications systems. By scavenging this ambient energy from the air around us, the technique could provide a new way to power networks of wireless sensors, microprocessors and communications chips.

“There is a large amount of electromagnetic energy all around us, but nobody has been able to tap into it,” said Manos Tentzeris, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering who is leading the research. “We are using an ultra-wideband antenna that lets us exploit a variety of signals in different frequency ranges, giving us greatly increased power-gathering capability.”

Tentzeris and his team are using inkjet printers to combine sensors, antennas and energy scavenging capabilities on paper or flexible polymers. The resulting self powered wireless sensors could be used for chemical, biological, heat and stress sensing for defense and industry; radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging for manufacturing and shipping, and monitoring tasks in many fields including communications and power usage. … Continue Reading