Showing posts with label Energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Energy. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Power

Technology Review: The Computing Trend that Will Change Everything: using ultra-low-power computing, consider the wireless no-battery sensors ..... These sensors harvest energy from stray television and radio signals and transmit data from a weather station to an indoor display every five seconds. They use so little power (50 microwatts, on average) that they don't need any other power source. ..... and that means an explosion of available data ..... "nanodata," or customized fine-grained data describing in detail the characteristics of individuals, transactions, and information flows .... if a modern-day MacBook Air operated at the energy efficiency of computers from 1991, its fully charged battery would last all of 2.5 seconds ..... will help the "Internet of things" become a reality—a development with profound implications for how businesses, and society generally, will develop in the decades ahead. It will enable us to control industrial processes with more precision, to assess the results of our actions quickly and effectively, and to rapidly reinvent our institutions and business models to reflect new realities. It will also help us move toward a more experimental approach to interacting with the world: we will be able to test our assumptions with real data in real time, and modify those assumptions as reality dictates.
There are implications to the internet of things, of small sensors constantly streaming data about, say, the ecosystem. This trend is great news for devices that are much smaller than the smartphone. You are looking at pea size particles that are smart.

The Internet Of Things
Another Ode To Big Data

We are looking at smart particles that don't need to have screens.
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Monday, October 18, 2010

Net Neutrality, Clean Tech And Political Fights

SolĂșcar PS10 es una planta solar termoelĂ©ctric...Image via Wikipedia
Wired: What Solar Needs: Its Own Karl Rove: Eighty percent of Americans rated solar power favorably, compared to 39 percent for nuclear and 32 percent for oil. Seventy-four percent believe that solar is a “long-term solution for the country’s energy needs.” ..... 94 percent of Americans see solar as important and 80 percent want to see subsidies transferred from fossil fuel to solar...... Unfortunately, the public also said solar is too expensive, will remain an intermittent source of power, and can’t really directly compete with coal or natural gas. Only 41 percent thought solar was affordable, and only 34 percent thought it was reliable..... Seventeen percent said solar would “never” be the largest source of new electricity for whole cities. Most of those polled were largely in the dark about the subsidies provided to oil and gas. Just 19 percent correctly estimated that the fossil fuel industry gets more than $10 billion in subsidies.
Freedom is not free. The trucking industry killed trains in this country decades ago, and the country is still reeling from it. The best does not always get done because this is a democracy. The people have to actively make the choice, and if they don't actively opt for the best, they don't get the best. Because this is a democracy.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Solar Panels To Roll Out

Solar cellsImage via Wikipedia
Technology Review: Clearing the Way for Cheap, Flexible Solar Panels: lightweight, flexible panels that are cheap to ship and easy to install (by unrolling them over large areas). .... The protective film is a multilayer, fluoropolymer-based sheet that can replace glass as the protective front cover of solar panels ..... Glass has been the armor of choice because it's cheap, weather-resistant, and durable enough to last decades. .... Blending solar panels into roofs also can overcome aesthetic objections .... a plastic film that is 23 micrometers thick, much thinner than the 3,000-micrometer glass typically found on solar panels today .... Flexible solar panels also can be larger than glass panels
Slow but sure innovation in clean tech is happening. One just wishes it were happening much faster.

Offshoring The Wind Harvesting: Google Wind

A Simpler Route to Plastic Solar Cells
Giving Plastic Solar Cells an Energy Boost
Pushing Plastic Solar Cells

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Offshoring The Wind Harvesting: Google Wind

Vestas wind turbine, Dithmarschen.Image via Wikipedia
Christian Science Monitor: Will Google wind power project harm wildlife? Depends on location.: The mid-Atlantic venture would position wind turbines at least 12 to 15 miles offshore, which means they would not be easily visible from land. ..... 6,000 megawatts .... equivalent to five nuclear power plants .... “It is so much better than each of the wind generators building their own transmission lines all over the seabed.”
Nokia did not start out a cellphone company. Nokia as a company has gone through many incarnations, in fact so many that its founders will not be able to recognize the Nokia of today. Google might have started out as a search engine, but these forays far and wide are welcome. This not only makes corporate sense, but this is also Google being a good citizen. This is Google turning Don't Be Evil into an active verb.
Wall Street Journal: Google’s Wind Project Got Lift From Vail Ski Trip: a planned giant wind farm designed to run 350 miles along the Eastern seaboard .... laying undersea cables to connect the wind turbines to electrical grids on land ..... 1,200 to 2,000 wind turbines
Google Earth. Google TV. Google Car. Google Wind. I say bring it on.
Google Blog: The wind cries transmission: offers a solid financial return ..... both good business and good for the environment ..... equivalent to 60% of the wind energy that was installed in the entire country last year ..... superhighway for clean energy. .... stronger and steadier winds offshore. .... Mid-Atlantic region ..... offers more than 60,000 MW of offshore wind potential in relatively shallow waters that extend miles out to sea. .....

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Smart Cars Should Talk To Each Other


Toyota Prius IIIImage via WikipediaRobert Scoble's Not Google Car
Self Driving Google Car

Never mind that this might materialize towards the end of the decade and not any time soon, but I had an idea. Cars that drive themselves are not good enough. They should be able to talk to each other. You should be able to set your journey and have your car talk to other cars to form trains along the highway. So if you are programming your car to take you on a 10 hour ride on the freeway, other cars also going the same length and your car should be able to form a train in the middle lane, perhaps 10 cars per train. And of course this would be an intelligent train. It would be seeing the non train cars and keeping watch on them. The train will do what it takes to avoid accidents, up to and including breaking up. And if only all those cars are 100% electric, we will have solved a major, major problem. 100% electric cars by the end of the decade is not that ambitious.

Software just got wheels. Or perhaps it is the other way round.

You know what would be even better? 100% electric bullet trains that move at perhaps 500 miles per hour. Or even 300. Trains are way more efficient than cars. If you could have such train service that connect all major cities, and have metro trains inside all cities, that still leaves room for 100% electric taxi cabs. And rental cars. And even cars. But I think the heavy lifting should be for trains.

How about people work to design smart trains? What would be your idea of a smart train?

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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Information As Service, Service As Information

Lightnings {{es|Tormenta eléctrica.Image via Wikipedia

Political Sci-Fi
The Energy Solution: Nuclear Energy

Imagine we have solved the food problem. We have. We produce more than people can eat. We just never figured out how to distribute all that food we produce. Imagine we only produce environmentally neutral products, all electric cars and so on. There is abundant electricity from nuclear energy for all humanity. And there is universal, wireless, mobile broadband. In that post agricultural, post industrial, post electricity, post information age, all that we know as cutting edge and exciting today will have become utilities. At that point much of the excitement will be in the service sector.

Information processing, content creation and search will always be as expansive as the human mind. There will never be any cure to curiosity. We are built curious. At that point the two most exciting economic frontiers will remain screen time and face time: information and service.

Why d

Plug-in Electric CarImage by Digital Papercuts via Flickr

o I bring this up? Is this escapism on my part? I don't expect to see that post agricultural, post industrial, post electricity, post information age for decades. But what I do expect to see, what I am already seeing is the emergence of the same in pockets. It is already happening. Why would a Third World guy like me have an interest in those pockets? Why am I out to betray my peoples whose immediate needs are more mundane? Because you have to constantly inhabit the future to constantly seek the quickest, best routes to the present.

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