Our Global Future in the 21st Century is based on "The Third Industrial Revolution" which finally connects our new ICT infrastructure with distributed energy sources that are both renewable and sustainable
There’s a lot of talk about smart meters and how they can help communities use power more efficiently, conserving energy and thus reducing costs. However, some claim that smart meters are hazardous to human health, emitting dangerous high frequency radio waves that can cause illness and disease.
Unfortunately, all of this conflicting information can leave consumers very confused about whether they should embrace smart meters or avoid them at all costs (something that is nearly impossible as many utility companies have already made the switch). Before you start crafting your tinfoil hat, take some time to get the facts. The Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC) recently released an informative video and fact sheet designed to help consumers refute the most commonly circulated myths about smart meters.
Modernizing the country's electricity system will take more than upgrading aging equipment, it will also involve engaging electricity consumers by providing services and products that can meet the demands of a modern, technologically-enabled home. This pressing issue will be a key theme at the SmartGrid Canada Conference to be held in Toronto on October 15and 16.
Anchoring the conference will be the release of new consumer research that will delve into the attitudes and behaviours of Canadians relating to smart grids -- digital electricity networks that integrate sensors, meters, digital controls and analytic tools to deliver a more sustainable and efficient electricity service.
Addressing the research findings and other consumer issues in smart grids will be a wide range of speakers from utilities, academia, manufacturers and start-ups who will discuss some of the key questions facing the smart grid sector: Are consumers ready for smart grids? What kinds of benefits do they expect to see from them? How should the industry respond to consumer needs? Speakers include:
Three-dimensional printers are popping up everywhere these days. Some are small enough to fit in a briefcase and others are large enough to build print houses, but scientists at the Vienna University of Technology are going for the microscopic. Earlier this year, the university built a 3D printer that uses lasers to operate on a tiny small scale. Now they're refining the technique to enable precise placement a selected molecule in a three-dimensional material. This process, called “3D-photografting,” can potentially be used to create a “lab on a chip” or artificially grow living tissue.
Developed by material sciences specialist Prof. Jürgen Stampfl macromolecular chemist Prof. Robert Liska, the 3D-photografting technique is based on a sort of super sponge called hydrogel. This is a network of polymer chains that trap water much in the way that proteins in cooked egg whites do. Hydrogels are over 99 percent water and some varieties look like little transparent blobs.
Hydrogels not only trap water, but any other molecules that scientists wish to introduce. If the polymers that make up the hydrogel can be made to coagulate under precise control, they can form a scaffolding for molecules and even living cells.
Click headline to read more and access hot links--
In this new RSA Animate, Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, explores the power of network visualisation to help navigate our complex modern world. Taken from a lecture given by Manuel Lima as part of the RSA's free public events programme.
Click headline to view this RSA Animate of the full talk--
This is an overview of the Obama Energy Plan released in March 2011 as a Blue Print for a Secure Energy Future. A year later, the White House released a progress report highlighting their accomplishments. My commentary is designed to compare and contrast President Obama’s stated energy strategy with the Romney Energy Plan.
Click headline to read Gary Hunt's analysis of the two energy plans--
Strategies of large power companies are being overtaken by events. National power grids are struggling to keep pace with all the innovations that are taking place in electricity generation and power management.
Expect rapid acceleration in green tech innovation, smart grids and related technologies. Here are some insights that I shared at events for clients such as General Electric, European Wind Energy Association, Flame (gas industry), Alstom, Danish Wind Energy Association and utility companies. They are based on core messages in the green technology book SustainAgility.
Expect the $40 trillion green tech boom over the next three decades to be driven by expectation of high energy prices, worries about global warming and concerns about energy security / national security.
When oil prices are above $100 a barrel, even the greatest climate change sceptics become converts to green tech – because it saves costs, and improves corporate image.
1 billion children alive today will soon be adults, and will help drive further pressures on all commodities including oil and gas. Hundreds of millions of their parents will become middle class consumers over the next two decades. 300 million will move from rural areas into cities in China in a decade, and a similar number will drift to cities in Africa. These city dwellers will gradually work their way up the economic ladder, becoming owners of property, cars and hundreds of millions of electrical devices. For all these reasons, expect average oil prices to be at least $130 a barrel over the next decade.
The future will be driven by emotion – how people feel about the science of global warming is more important to corporate strategies in the short term than whether the science is correct. Passions are growing and will continue to influence government policy.
Click headline to read more, access hot links and watch video interviews--
California on Wednesday stepped on the accelerator toward a futuristic highway filled with robot cars as the Legislature sent to Gov. Jerry Brown a bill that would allow driverless vehicles to hit the road later this decade.
If signed by Brown, the legislation would shift technology being mastered at places like Google and Stanford from test courses to public roads. Since 99 percent of all traffic and fatal accidents are caused by some form of human error or imperfection, supporters envision a world of computer-controlled cars that would zip around quickly and safely.
SB 1298 from Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Van Nuys, was passed unanimously by the Senate Wednesday night following the Assembly's 74-2 approval Tuesday. It's among dozens of bills under consideration during a flurry of activity as the Legislature wraps up its session this week.
The bill charges the DMV by January 2015 with determining standards for cars that would essentially operate on autopilot, since such technology is so new that the state's vehicle code never mentions driverless cars.
Automakers would have to get their vehicles approved by the state, and then licensed drivers would apply to become backup operators of approved autonomous cars. The driver would still need to sit behind the wheel in case the robotic functions of the car suddenly fail and a real driver is needed.
As Tropical Storm Isaac roars over Louisiana and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast, it threatens to disrupt a fragile environment that's still recovering from BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the summer of 2010.
By disturbing the sediments in which the spilled oil is buried, near the beach and deeper in the water, the hurricane could release large quantities of oil, several researchers warn.
"This is another disaster on top of the hurricane that we're going to have to deal with," Garret Graves, chairman of Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, told the Huffington Post. "The threat is not insignificant."
So far there have been no reports of oil, but that isn't surprising considering most everybody is taking shelter or has evacuated the area, said Lt. Alyssa Johnson, operation officer at the National Response Center, a federal organization responsible for coordinating a response plan to environmental releases of oil or other hazardous materials.
Isaac's storm surge, expected to reach heights of 6 to 12 feet (about 2 to 3.5 meters), could transport oil inland, where it could further affect marshlands and wildlife or come into contact with people, Graves told the Bloomberg news service. It also could flood areas containing contaminants such as pesticides, fertilizers and septic system bacteria and wash these back out into coastal waters or into groundwater, University of Florida researcher Andrew Zimmerman told OurAmazingPlanet in an email.
But it's unclear how much oil remains in Gulf sediments and along the shoreline — and how much might be stirred up.
"It could be a lot or a little," said University of Florida researcher Andrew Zimmerman.
The power shortages that hit the country following the March 2011 disasters made better energy management an imperative and spawned efforts to create efficient "smart cities.
"Ideas for these environmentally friendly communities that employ cutting-edge technology have been flourishing — especially in the disaster-hit Tohoku region — as the government encourages businesses and municipalities to launch subsidized smart city recovery projects.
In addition to smart city projects nationwide that were under way before the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and subsequent Fukushima nuclear crisis, around 50 such initiatives have emerged in Tohoku.
Among them, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in April selected eight pioneer projects in Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures as candidates for subsidies METI will provide by March 2016 to promote smart communities.
In a fiscal 2011 extra budget, the government earmarked ¥8.06 billion for such subsidies.
President Obama on Thursday signed an executive order outlining the administration's intent to promote and facilitate investments in industrial energy efficiency. The order also underscored the administration's support for combined heat and power (CHP) and noted that investments in
CHP technology as well as industrial energy efficiency overall can save manufacturers as much as tens of billions of dollars over the next decade and strengthen the manufacturing industry, create jobs, and reduce energy consumption and air pollution.
CHP now provides about 12% of U.S. energy capacity, or in other words, 82 gigawatts, according to the U.S. Clean Heat & Power Association (USCHPA). The executive order also announced a national CHP deployment goal of an additional 40 gigawatts by 2020.
Coincidentally, Smart Grid News had reported on the status of CHP and its resurgence Wednesday. The story noted that the technology – which involves using waste heat, a byproduct of generating electricity, for heating and cooling – has become increasingly popular across a variety of manufacturing and other industries and businesses as a way to keep energy costs down and maintain competitiveness.
Click headline to read more and access hot links--
This week, nearly 60 renowned economists and other experts around the country sent a letter to Governor Jerry Brown emphatically voicing their strong support for the design of California’s groundbreaking cap-and-trade program, a key element of the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32).
Sent just days before the expected simulated auction of greenhouse gas allowances, the letter to Brown commended his leadership “in implementing the world’s most comprehensive climate law” and his commitment to auction allowances – rather than give them away free – “as part of the crucial launch phase” of the cap-and-trade program, one of the critical strategies California is pursuing to achieve AB 32’s mandate to reduce California’s carbon pollution to 1990 levels by the year 2020.
“Auctioning allowances generates proceeds for government to redistribute to households, reduce other taxes, or achieve further environmental and equity goals that otherwise may not be achieved if allowances are given for free,” the economists noted in the letter.
As the California Air Resources Board prepares for Thursday’s planned simulation in the run-up to the Nov. 14 auction, there have been 11th hour calls from opponents to modify, delay or outright cancel the auctions, which are an integral component of the overall program .
A number of economists and experts, however, urged that the quarterly auctions proceed as planned, emphasizing that giving away all the allowances could result in windfall profits to industry.
The Indian government has reportedly passed a $4.13 billion plan to boost the production of electric and hybrid vehicles, with a goal to have 6 million green vehicles on its roads by 2020. Reuters reports that 4 to 5 million of these vehicles are expected to be electric and hybrid two-wheelers (scooters, commuter cars, electric bikes).
The proclamation could provide a new market for all our electric and hybrid vehicle-focused entrepreneurs looking to find new markets. However, there are at least 5 things I think you should know about this plan:
As part of the ‘Project Plug-IN’ initiative, Toyota is partnering with Duke Energy and Energy Systems Network (ESN) on a pilot designed to determine the best way to manage plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) charging based on integrated communication between the vehicle and the electric power grid.
The pilot, which will use advanced technologies to give customers the ability to minimize electricity costs by communicating with the utility company to recharge during off-peak periods, will also test and validate the effectiveness of communication standards developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) to provide a simple and affordable smart grid communication protocol between the vehicle, the charging station, and the utility company to effectively manage vehicle charging.
The project is using five Prius Plug-in Hybrid vehicles driven by Duke Energy customers living in the Indianapolis, Indiana, area. These customers will drive the cars regularly during the pilot period, which is scheduled to start in early 2013 and last for at least 12 months.
Recharging mobile devices without plugging them in is becoming more attractive as additional devices support wireless charging technology. On Tuesday, the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) announced that 110 consumer electronic products are supported with a global installed base of 8.5 million. Ranging from phones to tablets to game controllers, the future of wireless charging looks bright as consumers use more devices but don’t want to deal with the hassle of plugging them all in on a regular basis.
According to the WPC, the 8.5 million Qi devices are comprised of 6 million in the U.S., 2 million in Japan, and another half million in Korea. Helping the WPC’s efforts is the Qi standard. Manufactures that integrate wireless charging via Qi specifications allow their devices to be recharged by placing the unit on any charging mat or pad that also uses the Qi standard. This alleviates the hassles of buying a different charging mat for each device, making the solution more attractive to consumers and hardware makers alike. Clearly, this is working because the number of Qi devices has doubled in the last 7 months alone.
For countless city governments, energy efficiency has become the cornerstone of their sustainability efforts. With municipal budgets across the country constrained or even in crisis, finding cost savings has become an imperative. Energy costs are a major component of city budgets, and across the country those costs are increasing every year. You’d be hard pressed to find a local government that hasn’t initiated a major energy efficiency project that saves them money, from insulating government buildings to upgrading HVAC equipment.
The City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is among these local governments. But we’ve recognized that to achieve the biggest energy savings and to integrate this work into our larger sustainability goals, we must take a more systemic and strategic triple-bottom line approach to energy efficiency. Our nationally recognized success relies on four key actions: institutionalizing energy efficiency and sustainability thinking into our organizational culture; dedicating ourselves to detailed measurement and progress reporting; developing a long-term energy efficiency and conservation strategy to guide our work; and empowering our staff to innovate and pursue smart energy projects.
The damage wrought by Hurricane Isaac, coming on the seventh anniversary of the flooding that decimated New Orleans and stunned a nation, serves as a not-so-subtle reminder of how much infrastructure matters to our safety and our economy.
This time the levees held, thanks in part to the $14.5 billion a shamed federal government was forced to invest following the 2005 disaster. But for decades, America has scrimped on taking care of the public furniture, endangering people and weakening the economy as bridges rust, roads crumble, dams weaken, and water mains leak. The sudden collapse of an Interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis in 2007, killing 13, and the cracks that shut down the Sherman Minton Bridge connecting Indiana and Kentucky last year (it reopened in February) are warning signs of widespread, but hidden, dangers lurking all around us.
Even greater threats can be found among the decrepit corporate-owned infrastructure, including high-pressure oil and natural-gas pipelines that can explode without warning, electric power poles long past their replacement dates, and a telecommunications system that is far less reliable today than it was two decades ago—despite customers paying more than a half-trillion dollars for upgrades.
America’s infrastructure gets a grade of “D” from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which recommends that we spend $2.2 trillion on repairs and maintenance.
A troubling event in the July heat foreshadowed what we can expect from continued malign neglect. The electric grid serving more than half of India abruptly failed—twice. Pumps that supply New Delhi with drinking water shut down. Some 300 trains stopped, stranding thousands of passengers. People in elevators found themselves in pitch-black windowless cages with steadily rising temperatures, while 200 miners were trapped underground. Those rich enough to afford air conditioning steamed at the loss of the defining technology of modern life.
Missouri electric cooperatives Co-Mo Electric Cooperative (Co-Mo) and United Electric Cooperative (United) are using Calix's Unified Access portfolio to expand their traditional business models and bring fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) to more than 27,000 homes and businesses.
As a natural extension of grid modernization initiatives underway at many electric cooperatives, existing utility poles and experienced outside plant staff can be readily leveraged to deliver broadband services over fiber.
The coops are deploying Calix's Ethernet service platform and optical network terminals, utilizing gigabit passive optical networking technology for high-speed data and voice services over their fiber access networks that are capable of delivering up to 1 gigabit per second -- faster than many large cities. Co-Mo hopes to continue to expand across its serving area throughout 2012, offering residential broadband packages with speeds up to 35 megabits per second and more advanced packages for business customers.
They may do a lot of things bigger in Texas, but the Pacific Northwest has bragging rights too. SGN reported in June on the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project, the country's largest smart grid initiative. Now the region can boast about the country's largest solar highway and energy efficiency initiatives.
In Oregon, Portland General Electric (PGE) and partner the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) have opened the Baldock Solar Station, a 1.75-megawatt 6,994 solar panel array that spreads over seven acres adjoining farm fields and the Baldock Safety Rest Area south of Wilsonville on Interstate 5. The project broke ground in January and a solar energy interpretive display opened this week to give travelers taking a break the opportunity to learn about solar power and the state's solar highway installations.
All project materials and services, including solar panels and inverters, consulting and construction were provided by Oregon companies. The $10 million solar highway project is the second undertaken by PGE and ODOT and is expected to provide the equivalent of 11% of ODOT's power needs within PGE's service area.
Vermont has been the recipient of $69 million in federal stimulus funds to modernize its electric transmission system to a smart grid. Vermont's investments have already begun to pay dividends.
Case in point: Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC), which already has near-universal smart meter coverage, cut the outage response time in half after Tropical Storm Irene one year ago.
Vermont's near-universal smart meter coverage as part of the smart grid gives utilities a better idea of energy demand, so unnecessary power generation can be avoided.
Vermont has only begun to scratch the surface of the benefits smart grid has to offer.
While many smart grid innovations are technically complex, a renewable energy storage solution from Ontario-based HydroStor is brilliantly simple.
Imagine filling a child's balloon with air, trapping the air, then releasing it slowly and steadily when you need more air.
HydroStor's technology does essentially the same thing, only with energy. Instead of a child's balloon, imagine an array of large-scale marine bags tethered 80 meters underwater. On the surface, compressors driven by excess solar or wind energy fill the bags with air. When the energy is needed, the stored air is released, driving a turbine which returns the energy to the grid at a steady rate.
HydroStor will begin building the world's first 1 MW underwater Compressed Air Energy Storage System demonstration facility this summer in Lake Ontario, near Toronto.
"We think HydroStor has tremendous potential for urban areas where adding more generating and transmission infrastructure is tough," says HydroStor's President Cameron Lewis. "Cities can increase their local energy capacity with HydroStor technology that is low cost, easily scalable and has a low environmental impact. We estimate that 30 to 40 per cent of cities around the world have access to water that is deep enough to operate this efficiently."
The HydroStor solution is based on proven technologies, from marine bags to other components that have been adapted from offshore oil and gas rigs. To develop the system, HydroStor worked with researchers at the University of Windsor whose leading expertise in automotive technologies is being leveraged to explore innovations in underground compressed air systems and other green energy opportunities.
Grid-scale solutions are critical to answering the challenges faced by communities, but private citizens are also key players in the smart grid.
Batteries fail — its ‘s certain as death and taxes. Rechargeable batteries at least offer the possibility of repeating the cycle. But alas, the story cannot repeat indefinitely. One cheerful thought after the other, yes?
But wait, there’s more . . . Add to their inevitable demise an overall lackluster performance in battery storage technology, and we have ourselves the makings of a blog post on the failure of batteries to live up to their promises.
To set the stage, the specific energy of gasoline — measured in kWh per kg, for instance — is about 400 times higher than that of a lead-acid battery, and about 200 times better than the Lithium-ion battery in the Chevrolet Volt. We should not expect batteries to rival the energy density delivered by our beloved fossil fuels — ever.
A recent article in APS News reported on an emerging view that batteries are failing to live up to our dreams in the electric car realm:
From Guam to India to New Zealand - and from Florida to California and points in between - the smart grid build-out has definitely not run out of steam if our weekly list of smart grid project wins is any indication (and we think it is).
Click headline to see who's been tapped for metering projects, transmission work, efficiency programs, solar R&D – and much more.
The Romney Energy Planhit my desk last week and I've been thinking about it since. The reality is that the plan is a political document, heavy on grand principles and light on specifics. It sets a goal of achieving energy independence by 2020 through tapping our abundant natural resources, giving states more power over permitting and regulation, and opening public lands and offshore regions to to energy development.
The plan is clearly constructed to endear Romney to the oil and gas industry. It notes the now obvious fact that new drilling techniques have enriched the U.S. with accessible fossil resources. The text is salted with "drill, baby drill" crowd pleasers such as removing barriers to drilling on public lands, approving the XL pipeline, and opening offshore regions for more exploration. It's hard to feign surprise about this stance from a political perspective. These positions enable Romney to appeal to the right wing of the Republican party and simultaneously open the wallets of a deep-pocketed lobby.
Car Charging Group, Inc. now provides EV charging services at three locations at University Park at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This is done through the company’s partnership with Forest City Enterprises, Inc.
Charging services are now available at parking garages located at 30 Pilgrim Street, 55 Pilgrim Street, and 80 Landsdowne Street on the University Park campus.
"We are excited to support Forest City's green initiatives at their properties and provide electric vehicle charging services at MIT," said Michael D. Farkas, CEO of CarCharging. "As our first EV charging services at a university related project, we believe that placing stations at MIT, a leader in the advancement of scientific and engineering research, perfectly complements the vision of our company."
One of the worldwide challenges in relation to the development of national broadband networks is equality.
Broadband is critical for the digital infrastructure and it is essential that everybody enjoys the same level of quality and affordability. This is a major challenge and as a rough measuring stick approximately one-third of the people in developed economies would miss out if there were not a requirement for equality.
We see some of the problems related to this issue arising in other countries. The digital infrastructure is essential for commerce, healthcare, education, government services and M2M services such as smart grids. Governments would find it hard to sell their e-health, e-government and e-education programs just to those who enjoy access to good quality infrastructure. Nevertheless this is exactly what is happening in countries with a patchwork of broadband islands. A structure of this kind severely impedes the development of the digital economy.
Furthermore, if there is no broadband equality people who are missing out on good quality broadband would be greatly disadvantaged economically – for example, the people living in regional towns and communities on the outskirts of larger cities. Lack of affordability would severely affect the more vulnerable sections of society.
The major new inflection point in the digital industry is that from now on more devices than people will be connected to that infrastructure – internationally we are talking about trillions of devices and sensors. The infrastructure needs to be sufficiently robust to handle this gigantic computer network, which must be able to process and analyse massive volumes of data in real time. This includes monitoring, data gathering and real time analyses of the environment, sustainability, biodiversity, traffic, infrastructure, weather, people movements, national health (epidemic monitoring) and so on. Many of these ICT systems need to be nationwide and require nationwide networks with a minimum level of quality and capacity.
These requirement have very little to do with the speed of the network. Far more important for such services are capacity, robustness, affordability, security, privacy and low latency.
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