technology

Can text messaging solve some of our cities’ climate & traffic challenges?

A story in the new Plenty magazine gives details on a cab company that's giving the late-night clubbing crowd of Liverpool great green service with the magic of text messages:

It's a solution any 14-year-old would love: The challenges of foreign oil dependency, global warming, and gridlock are not so big that you can't text-message your way out of them.

The Texxi text-dispatchers arrange carpool cab rides based on who's texting from where and their desired destinations. Besides the other benefits, it also saves its riders money, which is proving popular. The company is planning to leap the pond and expand to cities in Texas, California, and North Carolina -- but of course, you need to have a mobile phone that can text message, leaving this here Luddite out.

If renewables are to work, we need good storage

David's recent post on pumped storage attracted enough angry responses that I guess it is time for a more detailed post on energy storage and renewable sources.

Solar and wind energy are variable sources. If we want them to provide more than 20%-40% of our power, we will need some storage method.

Fortunately, long-distance transmission lines can reduce this need. While the sun and wind have gaps at any one spot, if we use long distance HVDC transmission lines to connect sites thousand of kilometers apart, the sun will be shining or wind blowing somewhere almost all the time. As I pointed out in previous posts, connecting wind farms with such lines could provide a 96% reliable firm commitment with only 12 hours of storage, or a 99%+ reliable firm commitment with 22 hours of storage. With an extensive long-distance grid, most supply gaps shrink to a few hours.

Modular pumped storage (MPS) is not only the lowest cost, but lowest ecological impact electricity storage means available to fill this gap. Separate two artificial reservoirs by a difference in elevation. Pump water uphill when you have extra electricity. Run the water downhill through turbines when you need the power back, recovering from 70-85% of what you put into storage.

A concise introduction

The great question about wind is intermittency, and the great answer is energy storage. There are a number of energy storage technologies out there; I suspect the right storage mechanism will differ from region to region. One of the most interesting storage options out there is pumped hydro. The concept is pretty simple: you build […]

Birth of a new feature

Technical note: The Topics features mentioned below no longer are supported on Grist. As Dave noted yesterday, we rolled out a new site feature last weekend, and although we simply call it “topics,” it’s something we’ve been working on for months. Eventually it will be integrated into the site just as profoundly as commenting. Like […]

A123 introduces new battery

From the Energy Blog:

A123 Systems today introduced its 32-series Nanophosphate^TM Lithium Ion cells, specifically designed for Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) use.

The 32-series cells are designed with abuse-tolerance in mind. A123 Systems Automotive Class cells take advantage of lessons learned from the mass-production of ANR26650M1 cells, used in DeWalt's and Black & Decker's power tool lines, in order to deliver 10+ year and 150,000 mile projected life requirements in engineered automotive battery packs. The cells have shown minimal power degradation and impedance growth after 300,000 cycles. The battery is able to operate at a temperature range of -20 F to 140 F (-29 C to 60 C).

Personally, if I owned a plug-in hybrid that could go thirty miles on a charge, I would fill my tank about twice a year.

Neat

World wide wind potential (using only conventional wind technology) exceeds our current energy needs by many times. However, that is merely the potential of wind near the ground, at 80 to 100 meters.

Most wind energy is in the jet stream, miles over our heads. No one is going to build a tower that high to support a wind turbine; cost alone would prohibit that. But we can use flying energy generators -- turbines supported by kites or balloons or what amounts to stationary helicopters. The latter technology (stationary helicopters supporting wind turbines) has actually been demonstrated briefly, and has been claimed in peer reviewed research to be ready for commercial implementation (PDF). Questions like net energy, metal fatigue, stability, transformers and power loss have all been answered -- at least on paper. (Net energy at really high altitudes is higher than with either kites or helium balloons -- due to wasted energy on the downward part of the cycle with kite systems, and drag with balloon systems.)

According to the corporation developing this technology, Sky WindPower, they can put together a system out of commercially available products that will provide wind electricity (at a profit) for 2 cents per kWh -- competitive with current fossil fuel generation.

Unused mobile power adapters still use energy

As part of an announcement by Nokia regarding new green initiatives and features for future phones, the company revealed a little-known fact about mobile phone adapters:

Information technology accounts for 2 percent of world’s CO2 emmissions

Just as Steve Jobs was polishing the final draft of his defense of Apple's environmental programs, computer industry analyst firm Gartner announced to the world its findings about Global IT's carbon footprint. It's not good.

Greenpeace ranks Apple as least eco-friendly electronics firm

Are you reading this on a Mac? D’oh. A new Greenpeace report ranks Apple’s environmental record worst among 14 major electronics firms, based on use of hazardous chemicals in production and efforts to recycle products at the end of their lives. The iPod manufacturer was i-poohed for continuing to use several types of harmful chemicals, […]