The UK’s South West Regional Development Agency (RDA) has successfully deployed its Wave Hub testing facility on the seabed.
By Matthew Wolstenholme
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Italian renewables developer Alerion Clean Power has received permission to build a 64.8MW wind farm in Romania. By Matthew Wolstenholme
Japanese engineering firm JGC has bought stakes in two 50MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plants being developed by Spain’s Abengoa Solar. By Matthew Wolstenholme
Indian wind turbine giant Suzlon has won an order to install 30MW of turbines in the Jaisalmer and Jodhpur districts of Rajasthan. By Matthew Wolstenholme Read more at www.greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com A team at the Almaden Research Center of I.B.M. in California is trying to develop a new battery technology called lithium air that could allow a car to go 500 miles on a single charge. But a top researcher says that it will take many years, if it ever happens at all, to make the technology useful. Back to Energy Sources Now! Home Read more at www.greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com Turkey may be frustrated in its bid to become part of the European Union, but by the end of September, it will join Europe’s electric grid. Back to Energy Sources Now! Home Read more at www.greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com The energy industry centered in Prudhoe Bay is the economic engine of the North Slope, helping preserve the Inupiat culture, but it also presents a potential threat to that culture. Mayor Edward Itta of the North Slope Borough e-mailed answers to our questions about these conflicts. Back to Energy Sources Now! Home Read More from www.EcoGeek.org
The ship called the Campbell Foss is a conventional dolphin tugboat assisting ships in the San Pedro Bay. It will be fitted with motor generators, batteries and control systems by Foss at one of their shipyards. The retrofit should cut 1,340 tons of CO2 emissions and save 100,000 gallons of fuel per year. Foss and the Port plan to introduce more hybrid tugs over the coming years and see more retrofits in the future. The Port of Long Beach received a $1 million grant from the California Air Resources Board for the retrofit project. via Press Release
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But I have bad news. Today, here at EcoGeek, we are declaring the air car dead. It’s a question of physics, every conversion from one type of energy to another decreases efficiency. With battery electric vehicles, energy is converted into electricity and electricity is converted to motion. With air cars, energy is converted into electricity, electricity into compressed air and then compressed air into motion. Because of this, compressed air cars will always be less efficient than electric vehicles. Even more problematic, no air car has ever been developed that can reach highway speeds and no air car has even been demonstrated to have a range of more than 10 kilometers. Promises were made, and with the entrance of Tata Motors to the fray, we thought there might be some truth to the claims. But Tata’s goal of a 2008 release of an air car has, obviously, not been met. In 2009, Tata stated that the short range of the cars and issues with keeping them from freezing up (when compressed air is decompressed, temperatures drop dramatically) were proving them impractical. So, I’m sorry my friends, we’re all going to have to be happy with the much more technologically confusing (though also much more efficient) battery electric vehicles. The good news is, with the Leaf and the Volt already hitting the road, that’s one technology that definitely isn’t vaporware. More on the disadvantages of air cars.
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The researchers made an optical film that colors and polarizes the light that passes through an LCD, taking the place of the several layers of optical devices that typically serve the same function in an LCD. Those multiple layers give rise to inefficiencies: the best LCDs out today only emit eight percent of the light their backlights produce. The researchers found that the film allowed 36 percent of the light to make it through – a huge increase. The color filter is made up of three ultra-thin layers — two layers of aluminum enclosing a layer of insulating material — and it only measures 200 nanometers thick. The filter is etched with slits that produce different colors when illuminated by the backlight. The slits are matched in scale to the wavelength of visible light and their length and distance apart determine the color produced. This grating pattern is where the efficiency boost comes in. In current LCDs, a polarizing filter absorbs half the light (the part with the wrong polarization). The grating on the new filter doesn’t absorb the light with the wrong polarization, it instead reflects it back towards a mirror that flips some of its polarization, letting more light pass through the filter. Researchers are trying to improve the efficiency further and are coming up with ways to mass produce the filters, like with roll-to-roll printers. via MIT Tech Review
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It sounds like a good idea: Use electricity to compress air, stuff it in a tank and use the power expelled by the air’s release to power a vehicle. Seems like a good idea, certainly a lot easier to understand than nano-constructed cathodes on a lithium ion cell. And several companies have been actively attempting to build cars powered by conpressed air for quite some time. We at EcoGeek have been excited about them. The two biggest of these companies are MDI, a French company and Tata Motors, India’s largest car company.
