The Electric Delorean Project

Some of you may have seen this before, but I found it interesting and wanted to share, it has
a You Tube video embedded.

Building An Electric DeLorean
By: Dave Delman

Jameco reader Dave Delman thought the Jameco community might appreciate his efforts to pack 1.21 jigawatts of electrical power into a classic DeLorean. While Dave didn’t quite achieve that mark, he most certainly takes us back to the future with his story of converting a DeLorean from gasoline to electric power.

Read Dave's step-by-step story here

Scene on the Energy Road

...on Interstate 76 in Pennsylvania on the way to Toledo, we saw many billboards above ... and a few brave windmills tilting away...

                                                                                                                 

Got Life Support?

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (aka PNAS) has a new section: Sustainability Science which they define as:an emerging field of research dealing with the interactions between natural and social systems, and with how those interactions affect the challenge of sustainability: meeting the needs of present and future generations while substantially reducing poverty and conserving the planet’s life support systems.

Visit http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/sustainability.shtml

Prize for hydrogen storage method

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Initial H-Prize Competition for
Breakthrough Advances in Materials
for Hydrogen Storage
AGENCY: Office of Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy, Department of
Energy (DOE).
ACTION: Notice of Initial H-Prize
Competition for Breakthrough Advances
in Materials for Hydrogen Storage (‘‘HPrize
Competition’’).
SUMMARY: As authorized in Section 654
of the Energy Independence and
Security Act of 2007, DOE is
announcing the Initial H-Prize
Competition which will be a single
award for $1 million in the subject area
of advanced materials for hydrogen
storage—a critical challenge to enable
widespread commercialization of
hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.
Evaluation of entries will begin
approximately 15 months after the date
this announcement appears in the
Federal Register (FR). A single prize of
$1 million will be awarded, unless no
entries are significant enough to merit
an award.

Full text here:
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-20552.pdf

Solar PV cell oversupply

http://www.edn.com/blog/1690000169/post/220047622.html?nid=3351&rid=1584049

Smoky Mountain Solar

You never know where you will find a little sustainable energy gold. My wife and I found a little nugget in the Smoky Mountains at the Sugarlands Visitor Center in the way of a nice solar installation. They are using our same Siemens panels and they look to be in about the same shape as ours. It is a little crazy as they are just preheating water with the electricity but it is a nice installation and we can learn a bit from how they put things together. I have more pictures that I can share.

Audio interview of "Peak Everything: Waking up to a Century of Declines"

From Wendy: if time is short to get educated on sustainability, try listening to this interview on Worldview

Jerome McDonnell, of Chicago Public Radio, revisits a conversation with Richard Heinberg, an American journalist and educator who has written three books on peak oil and is now a Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

McDonnell says that "Heinberg’s not just worried about peak oil…He’s worried about other essentials like water use, coal production, fish harvests and grain production. Those graphs look a lot like the graphs that show oil production declining.

Peak Everything: Waking up to a Century of Declines is Heinberg’s new series of essays contemplating what we might do as demand begins to outstrip supply.

Worldview segment on Transition Towns referenced in interview"

book review: Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate

From Rick: Author William Ruddiman's work was in a recent journal, which referenced this book.  The review below was written by  Glenn Gallagher and pulled from the Internet in the interest of time. It echoes my opinion.  
One of the Best Explanations of how the Planet Warmed Up
Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum is one of the most objective, detailed, excellent discussions of climate change you will read. No politics, no public policy, no annoying preachy undertones - just the facts on how our current global warming is occurring. Actually, the author William F. Ruddiman proposes the radical idea that humans have been changing the planet's climate for at least 8,000 years - ever since we started cutting down the forests, burning the grasslands, and planting crops. He makes a compelling case that small additional inputs of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmospheric system will eventually create large global warming effects. In fact, the author theorizes that if not for human intervention, we would currently be in a glacial building phase (onset of an ice age) right now.

The author discusses all the natural ways the climate can change - planetary orbital changes, change in solar radiance, volcanic activity, ocean currents, Milankovitch cycles, and other natural forcings. He also describes how agricultural activity, then industrial activity leads to global warming. Interestingly, the author does not view global warming as big a threat to human health as the lack of fresh water for our everyday needs.

Written in simple, accessible language, and avoiding unnecessary technical and scientific jargon. Intelligent to the point of brilliant. Refreshing like pure air. The author succeeds where a divisive figure like Al Gore does not - the author studiously avoids any hint of telling us what we should do (there are plenty of books out there for that). He just tells us like it is.

Net Zero Energy Homes

While Washington is looking to trim a little here and a little there, GE has targeted a line of projects for a zero energy home by 2015.

READ ARTICLE

Solar Tracker Links

I ran across a few links that some of you may find interesting.

http://sunenergyworld.blogspot.com/2006/04/knowing-sun-tracker.html

http://solarwebworld.com/blog/

Breaking U.S. Oil Dependence

One area of focus for the club is to understand and critique energy policy.  Review of existing proposals will go a long way towards increasing our level of understanding and maybe leading us to coming out with some good ideas ourselves.  The Rocky Mountain  Institute is always thought provoking and they have recently released a report on how the U.S. can kick the oil habit.  Give this a read and post your comments.

http://move.rmi.org/files/osi/OSI%20Final_April2009.pdf

Blackbody incandescent lamps

New laser process greatly increases the emissivity of tungsten filaments:

http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3385

Lithium-air batteries

They say this battery chemistry could achieve energy densities of 13kWh/kg!

http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/1940045994.html?nid=3351&rid=1584049

Feedback: Dr. Gray's lecture "Sustainable Solutions to Energy, Water & Climate Challenges

Here’s some feedback on the June 4^th ‘09 after-work presentation at Nalco’s Naperville headquarters by Kimberly Gray. Dr. Gray is a Prof. in the Civil & Environmental Engr. Dept. at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engr. and Director of Northwestern’s Inst. of Sustainable Practices.
 
 From Rick:
 I think that the presentation was too long and covered too much material.  It may have been better if it was broken into a couple of different presentations.  Not enough time for a lot of discussion because of this issue.  It was not clear how much time it would take - one hour - 2 hours.
 
She is good speaker and interacts well.  For me she was building a case I already knew, but maybe not a lot of detail.  I think it would have been good to start with a basic notion or vision - build a sustainable community based on behavior changes - show examples of others that are doing it right now.  Then go back and see where we are now and talk about how to get there.  Most of us have heard the CO2 issue and the global warming.   What do we need to do to get there from here.  How do we do it - based on what others have done.  We do not have the density in Naperville, so what can we do in the suburbs to approach vision.  She dismissed that this is possible in the suburbs.  I do not think so.  I believe we can reduce our energy usage, water usage etc to meet the required criteria, even in the suburbs.  Let's think about that.
 
From Allie who studies China and the Asia/Pacific:
Comprehensive overview.  Repeated information learned in Oceanography at Cornell and at Conserve High School (environmentally-oriented high school in Wisconsin).  Concepts were well integrated.  Good examples of sustainable cities.
 
 From Peter:
Good. Wasn’t able to ask her a question about viability of cellulosic ethanol-based cars versus electric cars after the talk as there were too many asking questions.  She had a handle on the water aspects of environmental sustainability, but probably not on cars/electric power.
 
 From Wendy:
Liked the summary charts of energy sources and uses.  Presentation had too much small print in the PowerPoint slides, and needed more time (audience questions during presentation did cut in a little).  Seems to know how to moderate a debate with/between an audience and keep the tone high.   
 
She is at least attempting to get us to address the whole ball of wax (“…We are encouraged to think outside the box, or as Amory Lovins [Rocky Mountain Institute Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist] says, “What box?”) from her page http://www.sustainability.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/Gray.html
 
Re: Brian's suggeston to talk at Fermi: She may enjoy seeing our outdoor environment in the Summer/early Fall and perhaps could get an update on any sustainable industrial practices at Fermi.

Sustainable Energy on Twitter and Facebook

David Greenfield, Control Engineering editorial director, has launched his coverage of
sustainable/efficient technologies and products via Twitter. You can follow his posts
at www.twitter.com/djgreenfield.

"For those interested in keeping up with my reports on sustainability and energy
efficiency-as well as other sources of information on these topics-my updates on Twitter
will make it easy to keep up with the latest news and insights that I run across," said
Greenfield. "I pore over sustainable, efficiency-centered information on a daily basis,
so connecting interested followers to the best of it via Twitter seemed like an
obvious-and helpful-resource to provide."

Greenfield is also the admin of the "Automation & Control" group on Facebook which,
since its launch last January, has attracted over 2,000 members. To access the Facebook
group, create a free account at www.facebook.com, and then follow this direct link
to the group.

World's First Wind Powered Theatre

I drove down to Champaign Friday night during the storm to pick up my two of my sons.  The worst of the storm was to come several hours later with large hail and flash floods, but that is another story.  While on route 47 in Gibson City I caught the sight of a spinning cage out of the corner of my eye.  I turned back to investigate and after turning into the Harvest Moon Twin Drive In I found myself standing in a light rain staring at the power source of the World's First Wind powered Theatre!  Here was a Skystream 3.7,  1.8kW windmill going at full tilt,  beside it spinning in a blur was a 1.2kW Windspire.  This was a very impressive sight! 

 http://www.angelwindenergy.com/

  Visiting the the theatre website, I found that they just had a ribbon cutting on May 2nd for the installation and have some nice pictures, but they don't capture the dynamics seen in my cell phone pictures.   http://www.harvestmoondrivein.com/  

Next time you travel down on 47, make sure you check out this very Green wind powered Drive-in.

Brian

The following is posted on behalf of Wendy Mouche presenting a possible challenge for a club project at the Ledermann Science Center:

I rode an “Energy bike” at the Conservation Foundation/Green Earth Institute’s Fair on Sunday, May 3^rd att the booth for a DuPage NGO called “SCARCE” Learned a lot because:

• It used a familiar object to make power (bike) and,
• Unlike the power from a wall socket, I could control power output with legs and get feedback from the electrical board.
  

See pictures from SCARCE’s newsletter’s first page at http://www.bookrescue.org/Ripples/feb06Ripples.pdf for more info.

The State of Ohio also has this Energy Bike, which "provides an opportunity to demonstrate concepts of energy with a bicycle that is equipped with a generator and attached to an electrical board. The Energy Bike generates electricity to power a variety of light bulbs and small appliances and is one of the most successful teaching tools available .It allows the rider to sense their energy being transformed and trace the energy flow back to the sun. The rider can see how energy changes forms, feel the energy, hear the explanations of energy transformation and understand the measurements of energy - Volts, Amps, Watts” (http://www.ohioenergy.org/energybike.html).

Ohio’s bike and electrical board looks like a copy of the SCARCE setup.

Interesting for teachers: Ohio has a Solar School Curriculum (http://www.ohioenergy.org/energybike.html) with a Teacher Resource Guide that “provides activities and lesson plans that are correlated to Ohio’s Academic Standards for the following: Measurement; Patterns, Functions and Algebra; Data Analysis and Probability; Number, Number Sense and Operations; Mathematical Processes; Physical Sciences; Science and Technology; Scientific Inquiry; Scientific Ways of Knowing; Science and Technology and Earth and Space Stations. (http://www.ohioenergy.org/Solar%20Curriculum/2Introduction.pdf) I wonder if Illinois has compatible Academic Standards, which teachers could use in Fermi program/teacher training course design.

Themes: There are 4 public rooms/areas inside LSEC devoted to hands on High Energy Physics activities based on these themes: Accelerators, Detectors, Methods (how data is analyzed) and Ideas.
The kids really get a kick out of an Accelerator room activity in which they hand crank a bike wheel to faster and faster rpms in order to light up “quarks” attached to the rotating wheel.

Perhaps the challenge is this: Design a hands-on activity incorporating both alternatively generated power and human generated power to complement the above 4 themes.

Transportation Efficiency

By Erik Ramberg

Energy use in the United States is divided roughly equally among 4 sectors:  transportation, residential, industrial and commercial.  To reduce energy demand, it is crucial to understand what kind of efficiency gains can be made in each sector.  This is the first of a series of short articles to discuss what the important issues are in energy usage. Here we summarize transportation efficiency.

What is the most efficient way to transport a person a given distance?  The unit to compare is the amount of energy (MegaJoules) required per person per kilometer.  The numbers below are fuel efficiencies copied or calculated from information in the Wikipedia entry for "Fuel efficiency in transportation", which contains 40 interesting references.  I've assumed 80% occupancy in each of the multi-passenger cases, including the automobile.  Also, the energy needed to deliver the fuel to the vehicle, and to manufacture the vehicle, is not included in these efficiencies.

 1. Bicycle                        0.12
 2. Train                       0.1-0.3   

 3. Walking                        0.33
 4. Transit bus                    0.38
 5. Automobile (4 people)      0.9
 6. Jet airplane                   1.4
 7. Ocean liner                    7.7

There are many lessons to be learned from this ultra-simple tabulation.  First of all, it is hard to beat a person peddling a bicycle - perhaps the most efficient mode of transportation by any animal on planet Earth.  Secondly, the only thing worse than driving your car with just yourself as a passenger, is if you decided to take an ocean liner to work every day.  Intercity travel can be up to 10 times more efficient by train than by airplane.  Once you are in a city, don't hesitate taking a bus for a few blocks - you expend about the same amount of energy (and carbon dioxide) as walking.

One question for policy makers:  for a city of 1 million people, why don't we just buy 100,000 bicycles for free use by the population?  The expenditure is only on the order of $10 million, and the savings in energy would be incredible.

Climate Change Science and Policy

What does 'sustainable energy' production mean? After all, there are enough coal deposits in the United States to power our society for 245 years:


http://www.teachcoal.org/aboutcoal/articles/fastfacts.html


That can 'sustain' us just fine. Why all the fuss? Well, I think most people would agree that the thing we want to sustain is a healthy environment in which to live. And even though mountain top removal of coal can look pretty horrendous:








the amount of land affected is probably similar to what a wind farm or solar installation of equal energy generation would affect.

But there is one aspect of environmental degradation that has serious global, not just local, consequences and could hamper the progress of hundreds of generations of humans: that is, of course, global warming from increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

I'd like this blog post to be a place where club members can critique various aspects of the argument over environmental science and policy and, in particular, the emotional byplay over AGW (anthropogenic global warming).

Here is an interesting topic to start you off. Please read this interesting contribution from the libertarian (and environmentally contrarian) Cato Institute:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9125

It is called "What to do about Climate Change?" by Indur Goklany. Interestingly enough, it does not try to contradict the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) viewpoint on the future of climate change (like many other anti-enviro blogs). Instead, Goklany analyzes the IPCC's own predictions on water stresses given climate change and comes to the conclusion that global warming actually reduces water stress for more people than increases water stress.

Here is Goklany's statement:

"Halting climate change would reduce cumulative mortality from various
climate-sensitive threats, namely, hunger, malaria, and coastal flooding, by
4–10 percent in 2085, while increasing populations at risk from water stress and
possibly worsening matters for biodiversity. But according to cost information
from the UN Millennium Program and the IPCC, measures focused specifically on
reducing vulnerability to these threats would reduce cumulative mortality from
these risks by 50–75 percent at a fraction of the cost of reducing greenhouse
gases (GHGs). Simultaneously, such measures would reduce major hurdles to the
developing world's sustainable economic development, the lack of which is why it
is most vulnerable to climate change."

I'm basically flabbergasted and don't know how to respond to this. Anyone?

Discussion on Electric Cars and ICE Assist

I would like to share this email thread that I started with Bob Flora.  I hope some of you will add to the discussion.

Dear Bob,

Now that full electric vehicles are a growing reality, I would like to return to our discussions from some years ago about the optimal hybrid.  The engineering approach of the current hybrids are to augment a ICE with electric.  I would like to investigate augmenting electric with an ICE.  Please post your thoughts on the club blog.

Dear Brian,

I don't know how to post, nor what you want posted, but here are my random thoughts, feel free to post as you wish;

First, we're not talking about the dozens of IC fossil fuel cars that happen to have a token electric stater motor on steroids used to simply increase the fossil efficiency by some percentage.  (Prius, Insight, Ford Fusion, the list goes on....   Don't get me wrong, these are nice fossil cars, but they're not electric cars!)

I've been accumulating data on electric cars as I learn about them.   The enclosed very informal spread sheet is neither exhaustive nor necessarily accurate, but comes simply from what I have read:

25 electric cars are listed and the first 6 have some form of on-road recharging capability from fossil fuel.   I will give my take on each one in order as listed:

BYD is very serious about the F6 DM and has the money, government and private backing, battery technology, and capability to produce it cheaply, but we really don't have any specs yet.

The Volvo Recharge is very unique (except for the Lightning) in that it uses 4 very high tech (Hi-Pa) in wheel motors from PML.

The Aptera 2h uses only a 9 KW fossil fuel engine...   fantastic body...  0.05 drag!!

The Volt really looks good, but is a little heavy on the fossil fuel with 53 KW and a little weak on performance.   (But I wouldn't dare to actually get inside a Volt...  GM might crush it at any moment!)

The Karma (I sat in one in Geneva...   it's nice but cramped.) really isn't a full electric.   Yes, it's driven solely by 2x150 KW electric motors, but the battery can't deliver the full power without assistance from the 194 KW fossil engine.

The (Swiss) MindSet is the ultimate extreme of a totally electric car with a token fossil engine for on-road recharge.   The one cylinder engine is very small and can be lifted out of the car and left in the garage for typical local use.   You only need to put it in the car for long trips.

BUT, I plan to take this ultimate concept on step further with my Tesla S.   I will also leave the fossil engine in the garage like the MindSet, but I will actually mount it in a second car (the STI) and allow the second car to take the fossil engine on long trips for me.   A sort of hybrid-garage, if you will!

Shalom, Bob

PS Yes, I know all the main stream companies (Chrysler, Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen) are planning something "in the future" like the Volt, but we really don't have any hard facts yet and their track record has been so poor in the past (though not as bad as GM).

Club Project Management

Project organization for loosely coupled organizations is always a challenge, so it is worth some thought on how best to manage projects within the club. Presently I am most attracted to the successful DARPA model. (check out their site) Their ideas distilled down to the scale of our club look like this. Project management and organization is structured around the project manager. To become a project manager, you propose a project to the club leadership or to the club as a whole. If there is enough interest and the project is deemed feasible, the club approves the project. Then the project manager is turned loose to recruit his or her team. Resources are raise by the team or are made available from club sources. Project progress is reported to the club and this team stays together for the duration of the project This approach provides ownership and responsibility and does not create a whole lot of bureaucracy. Please comment on this structure or better yet suggest a project that you would like to lead. Projects may be anything from research,to analysis, to home or lab projects.

Analysis of National Sustainable Energy Plans

Depending on your position on climate and energy issues, your views on the proper timetable and level for actions will vary widely.  We all see this play out on the national scale in our daily newspapers and magazines with energy issues lurking within seemingly unrelated stories.  In fact it is hard to imagine any national or international issue that is not connected in some way to energy policy.  By and large, US energy policy has been left to Adam Smiths invisible guiding hand of the all knowing market.  This is the same hand that gave us real-estate bubblenomics and Credit Default Swaps.  I don't want to get to political here, I just kinda gotta agree with Yogi Berra, "You gotta be careful if you don't know where you are going, otherwise you might not get there."

So where are we going?  I like bold plans, so I am attracted to "Repower America"

www.repoweramerica.org.  

What are your favorite plans?  Is Repower America a crazy idea?  Take a minute and share your thoughts.

FSEC Home Based Projects

Projects, Projects, Projects is one thing that came through on the FSEC survey.  While this is not everyones thing, there is a lot of interest in building cool things.  While the Lederman Science Center Sustainable Energy Exhibit is a big project for us, we probably can't all effectively converge on this one project at once.  Another strong area of interest is in home solar, wind, Ebike or other energy related projects.  One goal we might consider for this type of project is to optimize the designs for ease of construction and low cost and present it to the larger sustainable community  As Norm would say, "we provide measured drawings",  bills of material and complete directions and construction videos on our website for the other do it yourselfers out there.  There are a lot of DIY documents out there now of varying quality.  We could compete with the best.  Please start threads for project ideas.