It Depends On You

H/T commenter Chris B at Watts Up With That

The New Rallying Cry

I'm visiting places around the 'net and what do I see? Lots of "it is all Bush's fault". Bush's opponents had the Congress and the Presidency since early in 2009. Almost total control. And they still didn't have enough time and power to reverse what ever actions of Bush they wanted. It seems they were impotent.

So their campaign slogan for 2012 seems to be:

There is nothing we can do.

I'm inclined to agree and hope to hasten the day when they do nothing some place else.

Powered Up

Last night around 9:30 PM (local time) we had a heck of a windstorm in Rockford. A large branch of a tree is sitting on our front lawn. Since the tree is on city property I get to haul it out to the street and wait for the city to pick it up. The best part was that the power went out at my place at about ten minutes into the storm while we were in the basement waiting the storm out. There was a mad scramble to get flashlights and candles. Luckily we have lived here long enough to find our way about in the dark. The power didn't come on until 2 PM (local time) this afternoon. As usual, in every dark cloud there is a silver lining. Let me just repeat what my first mate told me, "The power was off and my husband was on." Yes. Indeed. Let me add that the first mate was powered up as well. A very lovely young lady.

This is not the first power outage we have had recently. There was a two hour long outage on July 11th. For no reason I could figure.

Which brings me to my main point. Getting through a power outage. Flashlights, batteries and candles for sure. But what else? A battery backup for your computer is essential. I say this as someone who has run computers for decades without such backup. You can't believe how nice it is to do an orderly shut down when the power goes off. So what do I use? This:

Cyberpower CP600LCD UPS - 600VA/340W LCD Display 8-Outlet RJ11/ Compact Design EMI/RFI

It gets good ratings and reviews. The price is right (currently about $62, I paid $65) and it works well. It has excellent surge protection ( I already had lots of that on the line) and a really neat gadget for your desktop that shows available battery run time and the power your computer is drawing in real time. I love watching the meter go up and down with CPU and disk drive usage. It is totally geeky cool. My computer (a Gateway DX4831-01e), my monitor (A Samsung SyncMaster 710n - donated by a reader), the cable modem and my Cisco router (Linksys WRT54GS V5.0), all together use about 91 watts minimum and about 132 watts maximum. The backup system is rated for 340 watts. So I'm not stressing it much. Which is a good thing for emergency gear.

One thing I changed after the first outage was the items plugged in to the backup supply. I added the cable modem and the wireless router to the backup system. It was so cool having the mate's and the third son's laptops working with all the power out. There is only enough battery to keep the router and modem running for about an hour or two (if you shut the computer and monitor down as soon as you lose power). But that is enough time to find out what is going on.

Which brings me to another item. A second source of information. Radio. I have a Sony ICF-SW7600GR AM/FM Shortwave World Band Receiver with Single Side Band Reception which is a little pricey ($140 with shipping) but is good for TEOTWAWKI because it can get amatueur radio (SSB) and regular short wave (it actually goes from 150 KHz - to 29.999 MHz and also covers an extended FM range). But if you are going to run it without power you are going to need batteries. So why not some good rechageables? The radio takes four AA cells so I went looking. What I found was the Sony Cycle Energy Power Charger with 4 2500 mAh AA Batteries. When I bought them the price was $13. I wanted a second set of batteries so I could be using one set while charging the other set. I found out a second set of batteries was $12. No brainer. I bought a second set of batteries plus a charger for $1 more.

Any way. Think about what you might do to protect yourself and your stuff from power disturbances. Besides regular backups of your hard drive.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

C

Self Control

Michael Gerson is taking Ron Paul to task for his performance in the recent Republican debates.

Paul was the only candidate at the debate to make news, calling for the repeal of laws against prostitution, cocaine and heroin. The freedom to use drugs, he argued, is equivalent to the freedom of people to “practice their religion and say their prayers.” Liberty must be defended “across the board.” “It is amazing that we want freedom to pick our future in a spiritual way,” he said, “but not when it comes to our personal habits.”

This argument is strangely framed: If you tolerate Zoroastrianism, you must be able to buy heroin at the quickie mart. But it is an authentic application of libertarianism, which reduces the whole of political philosophy to a single slogan: Do what you will — pray or inject or turn a trick — as long as no one else gets hurt.

Without self control self government is impossible. Gerson says that self control is impossible (how did we manage for the 30 years heroin was legal over the counter?). Thus we will need minders. Drug minders for sure. Probably sex and food minders as well. Not to mention income minders.

It used to be government was to protect us from each other. Now it is tasked with protecting us from ourselves. A much bigger job. No government ever invented has been equal to that task and you don't even want to live under governments that would make serious efforts at TOTAL Control. Such governments have a bad name. They are called Totalitarian.

Energy Is Wealth

The graph is from Wiki Media based on data from the International Energy Organization [pdf].

I think the graph maker intended that the KW measure be averaged over 24/7/365 which would make sense (which is to say multiply by 24*7*365 to get the KWh total). Leave it to an engineer. In any case that is not the only one out there. Watts Up With That has a nice one with tons of oil equivalent.

What does this mean (generally)? Anything that lowers the supply of energy is a bad thing. Anything that lowers consumption is a bad thing. Efficiency tends to take care of itself. Engineers are always looking for cost effective ways of increasing the efficiency of use. But according to Jevons Paradox increasing efficiency INCREASES consumption. Dang.

Howard T. Odum in his book Environment, Power and Society for the Twenty-First Century: The Hierarchy of Energy discusses what energy flows mean for the bioisphere. I haven't read this edition but the previous edition Environment, Power, and Society, was excellent.

Anther book on the subject is The Second Law of Life: Energy, Technology, and the Future of Earth As We Know It. The product description makes a very good point.

Even actions we take to improve the environment may actually do more damage than good. For example, recycling is considered environmentally, socially and politically correct. Under the influence of entropy, however, it is a prolific waster of energy; we must look at entire systems, not just parts.

A point also well made at Energy, Efficiency, and Technology Magazine.

My friend Terry and I had each finished off a bottle of beer. I looked around for a recycling bin while Terry just pitched his bottle in the trash.

Was Terry indifferent to the environment? Nah. He works at one of the biggest breweries in the U.S. and knows first-hand what happens to recycled glass. “We can’t use recycled glass for making bottles. It’s just too brittle. So glass put in recycling bins generally ends up in landfills anyway,” he explains.

Terry knows what he’s talking about. Canada’s National Post reports that all the glass collected last year by recycling programs in Calgary, Edmonton, and several other Canadian cities ended up landfilled because there were no buyers for it. The situation is similar for plastic. Reports are that Germany has millions of tons of recyclable plastics piled up in fields because nobody wants the stuff. And it is literally more expensive to collect some recyclables than to just pitch them. San Francisco’s Dept. of Waste figures it pays $4,000/ton to recycle plastic bags for which it receives $32/ton.

And it is not just money/wealth that is affected by energy flows. It also affects politics as discussed in A thermodynamic explanation of politics.

There are major evolutionary implications in the ability of a species to distribute itself across space and time, not to mention the curious thermodynamics associated with this distribution. That is, species that can modulate their thermodynamic properties in response to environmental changes dramatically increase their probability of survival. In humans, there is no better example of thermodynamic modulation than conservatism and liberalism.

One of the more prominent biogeographic variations between conservatives and liberals is population density. The conservative-liberal asymmetries in population density are easily seen in the voting patterns of urban, suburban, and rural environments. As a general rule, the greater the population density, the more liberal the population.

Well isn't that interesting. Politics may have more to do with energy consumption habits than right and wrong. Dang. Right and wrong may in fact be defined by energy consumption levels.

So who is correct? No one. It depends on where you live. Now can we all get along?

Update: 6 Myths About Oil.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

An Enemy Of The State

Ted Turner favors a global one child policy in order to (you know what is coming) Save The Planet™.

Mr. Turner – a long-time advocate of population control – said the environmental stress on the Earth requires radical solutions, suggesting countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population over time. He added that fertility rights could be sold so that poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce.

“If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,” Mr. Turner said.

With four children I am right up there in the ranks of future enemies of the State and certainly a current enemy of Mr. Turner.

I wonder if Mr. Turner has given much thought to enforcement? What will be done to children that the parents want and the State doesn't? Of course if the parents don't want them and the State doesn't either I'm sure some mutually acceptable solution can be worked out to keep immediate and future consumption down.

Less Power More Control

The EPA under rules developed during a Republican administration has a plan that will shut down up to 20% of the coal fired electrical plants in the nation.

In March 2005 the federal EPA issued two new rulings that mandate significant reductions in air pollution and mercury pollution. These federal regulatory requirements will have significant impact on utilities in the US. The timeframe for these emission reductions will take place in two phases with the first phase occurring during the next five years and the second phase being completed within the next twelve years.

And the rules for the first phase will do what exactly?

Some plants could have a hard time meeting the proposed cap, which could push domestic cement production into countries with even less stringent environmental standards, said Andy O’Hare, vice president of regulatory affairs with the Portland Cement Association.

The proposal comes at a down time for the cement industry. Three plants in the Great Lakes region shuttered in December 2008 and January 2009, according to Portland Cement Association records. The Alpena plant announced in March a 45-day kiln shutdown.

Ah. So it is just another plan to ship jobs to China.

But wait. It is not just coal fired cement plants. It is also coal fired power plants.

[The rules] would force utilities to invest tens of millions of dollars on technologies to remove the substances. Many of those plants are about 50 years old and are already inefficient. "Those investments are just not going to be justifiable," said Dan Bakal, director of electric power programs at Ceres, a group of environmentalists and institutional investors.

Francois Broquin, a co-author of reports on coal by Bernstein Research, said the combined rules could push as much as 20 percent of U.S. coal-fired electric generation capacity to retire by 2015. "Obviously that will have an impact," he said.

So where are the shut downs going to be concentrated?

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed a new federal plan to reduce the pollution from electric power plants that wafts hundreds of miles across state lines.

The new rule would require pollution reductions in 31 states and the District of Columbia — most of the Eastern half of the U.S., from Texas and Minnesota to the coast.

To make the cuts, power plants would be required to install new equipment or use lower-sulfur fuels.

The plan is one of the most significant steps the EPA has taken toward cleaning the air for millions of Americans who live in areas where the quality of the air doesn't meet national standards.

It comes after many months of planning since a federal court ordered the EPA to revise its 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule . Coincidentally, it was announced in the middle of an Eastern heat wave, when smoggy air was at unhealthy levels from North Carolina to New York state.

So the East Coaster will have no choice. Cleaner air so important to a few (and very important for them) but no air conditioning in the summer for tens of millions. Who ever worked out the political calculations didn't do their homework. Let me add that the East Coast electrical grid infrastructure is not in the best of shape and if the shut downs are concentrated in that area the loss for the area could be much more than 20%. Let me add that with the current grid power does not ship well over distances longer than about 300 or so miles. And if the grid is already congested with power flows from inside the area? Dark energy will be a proven reality.

So how about nuclear power to replace the power that will be lost? Well enviros hate nuke plants. Especially East Coast nukes. They stopped the Shoreham nuke plant. And Vermont Yankee and Indian Point are being targeted.

I wonder what the marginal price of electricity will have to be to make supply and demand come into balance on a hot day on the East Coast? And how are the residents going to feel about it? You would think the California experience would be a cautionary tale for the political classes. You would be wrong.

And in case you hadn't guessed about the title: You get less power. They get more control. All this enviro wackiness is a bubble. And the bubble is going to burst. When it does things are going to get ugly. Attacks on power plants will not go over well.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Forget Global Warming - Nitrogen Is the New Fear

As the CO2 sector of the warming religion dies out a new fear has to be found. And the bright boys of science by fear are on the case. Measurements show that CO2 is only .038% of the atmosphere. Nitrogen is a whopping 78%. Now it is time to be really afraid.

An international group of scientists say there is an immediate need for a global assessment of the nitrogen cycle and its impact on climate.

On a planetary scale, human activities, especially fertiliser application, have more than doubled the amount of reactive nitrogen in circulation on land. This massive alteration of the nitrogen cycle affects climate, food security, energy security, human health and ecosystem health. The long-term consequences of these changes are yet to be fully realised, but the human impact on the nitrogen cycle has so far been largely missed in international environmental assessments.

Nitrogen's role in climate change will be highlighted at an event on 7 December at the COP-15 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Event organisers will be calling for a new assessment of nitrogen and climate, which will identify innovative nitrogen management strategies for global climate change mitigation and associated co-benefits to society.

Dr Cheryl Palm, the chair of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI), which is organising the event, said "Nitrogen and climate interactions are not yet adequately included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment process.

If they can get a hold of nitrogen they can control the world's food supply. Not quite as good as capturing the world's energy supply. But not bad if Power and Control is the true object of the game.

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.Actually misinformation is only part of it. Getting you agitated is the goal - where they want action. Of course if no action is desired you will be told all the soothing words. Or better - no words at all.

Long Lines

Technology Review reports on progress in Making Carbon Nanotubes into Long Fibers

A new method for assembling carbon nanotubes has been used to create fibers hundreds of meters long. Individual carbon nanotubes are strong, lightweight, and electrically conductive, and could be valuable as, among other things, electrical transmission wires. But aligning masses of the nanotubes into well-ordered materials such as fibers has proven challenging at a scale suitable for manufacturing. By processing carbon nanotubes in a solution called a superacid, researchers at Rice University have made long fibers that might be used as lightweight, efficient wires for the electrical grid or as the basis of structural materials and conductive textiles.

Yep. It could be a very good replacement for copper or aluminum wires. And the base material is rather abundant. Coal mines are full of it. On the other hand petroleum or natural gas might be easier to process.

But we are not quite there yet.

So far, the group has made fibers that are highly conductive but not as strong as other carbon materials. Pasquali says the strength of the fibers could probably be improved tenfold by using longer carbon nanotubes. "We're now working on a project for making electrical transmission lines," says Pasquali. "Metallic nanotubes conduct electricity better than copper, they're lighter, and they fail less often."

One important hurdle for large-scale manufacturing of carbon nanotubes remains: Today, there aren't any good methods for making the nanotubes themselves in large, pure batches. In order to make nanotube transmission lines, for example, the Rice group would need to start with a large batch of nanotubes containing all metallic nanotubes and no semiconducting ones. Last month, chemists at the Honda Research Institute published a paper in Science describing a method for making large amounts of metallic nanotubes that Pasquali says is promising. "For transmission lines you need to make tons, and there are no methods now to do that," he says. "We are one miracle away."

And that miracle may have already happened.

What remains to be done after the breakthrough: making enough Carbon Nanotube (CNT) wire to build a test section into the grid. Developing methods for joining the wire to other non CNT segments of the grid. Developing methods for joining CNT segments. Testing it against weather and lightning strikes. And at least 10,000 other details (hand tools among them) will need to be worked out including crew training. Miracles take time to unfold.

And power lines might not be the prime candidate. Lowering the weight of wiring harnesses in automobiles might be a more favorable initial application since weight reduction is worth real money.

H/T GPecchia at Talk Polywell

Warm Sodium Battery

There is some amazing news in the world of high energy batteries. Coors Ceramics thinks they have a way to make Sodium-Sulfur batteries that can operate at 90° C ( 194° F which is below the boiling point of water)and charge-discharge once a day for ten years.

The battery breakthrough comes from a Salt Lake company called Ceramatec, the R&D arm of CoorsTek, a world leader in advanced materials and electrochemical devices. It promises to reduce dependence on the dinosaur by hooking up with the latest generation of personalized power plants that draw from the sun.

Solar energy has been around, of course, but it's been prohibitively expensive. Now the cost is tumbling, driven by new thin-film chemistry and manufacturing techniques. Leaders in the field include companies like Arizona-based First Solar, which can paint solar cells onto glass; and Konarka, an upstart that purchased a defunct Polaroid film factory in New Bedford, Mass., and now plans to print cells onto rolls of flexible plastic.

The convergence of these two key technologies -- solar power and deep-storage batteries -- has profound implications for oil-strapped America.

"These batteries switch the whole dialogue to renewables," said Daniel Nocera, a noted chemist and professor of energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who sits on Ceramatec's science advisory board. "They will turn us away from dumb technology, circa 1900 -- a 110-year-old approach -- and turn us forward."

One small quibble. Unless this technology can be used to make liquid fuels at a lower cost than oil, its uses in transportation will be limited. One drawback is that it needs to be kept around 90C for the battery to deliver juice. It will be hard to maintain that temperature with low losses in a Chicago winter.

Enough of the caveats. How about some more techno porn.

Inside Ceramatec's wonder battery is a chunk of solid sodium metal mated to a sulphur compound by an extraordinary, paper-thin ceramic membrane. The membrane conducts ions -- electrically charged particles -- back and forth to generate a current. The company calculates that the battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator, and operate below 90 degrees C.

This may not startle you, but it should. It's amazing. The most energy-dense batteries available today are huge bottles of super-hot molten sodium, swirling around at 600 degrees or so. At that temperature the material is highly conductive of electricity but it's both toxic and corrosive. You wouldn't want your kids around one of these.

The essence of Ceramatec's breakthrough is that high energy density (a lot of juice) can be achieved safely at normal temperatures and with solid components, not hot liquid.

Ceramatec says its new generation of battery would deliver a continuous flow of 5 kilowatts of electricity over four hours, with 3,650 daily discharge/recharge cycles over 10 years. With the batteries expected to sell in the neighborhood of $2,000, that translates to less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour over the battery's life. Conventional power from the grid typically costs in the neighborhood of 8 cents per kilowatt hour.

Re-read that last paragraph and let the information really sink in. Five kilowatts over four hours -- how much is that? Imagine your trash compactor, food processor, vacuum cleaner, stereo, sewing machine, one surface unit of an electric range and thirty-three 60-watt light bulbs all running nonstop for four hours each day before the house battery runs out. That's a pretty exciting place to live.

And then you recharge. With a projected 3,650 discharge/recharge cycles -- one per day for a decade -- you leave the next-best battery in the dust. Deep-cycling lead/acid batteries like the ones used in RVs are only good for a few hundred cycles, so they're kaput in a year or so.

My favorite caveat in projects like these is logistics. Or in layman's terms "how soon can they ramp up production once they have a working battery.

Grover's brother, John K. Coors, is CEO of CoorsTek, the manufacturing company that applies what the scientists at Ceramatec dream up. Their nephew, Doug Coors, oversees R&D.

With some 21 plants producing advanced ceramic products worldwide, the expectation is that full-scale production of ceramic sheets for the new batteries could be tooled up in short order. In fact, only a handful of CoorsTek facilities would likely be employed.

The order of magnitude pencils out along these lines: a target of 20 gigawatt hours of storage in 20 kilowatt-hour battery increments equals 1 million batteries. Or using a different metric, 1 million square meters of thin ceramic electrolyte would yield 20 gigawatt hours of batteries, equal to California's entire spinning reserve.

Nobody at CoorsTek even blinks at such figures. The company already produces 3 million pounds of ceramic material per month. "Once we have a working prototype battery with all the standards and cost requirements met, it will come up quickly," said Grover Coors. "It would scare people to know how quickly we can bring this up."

They're about about six months away from initial scale-up toward a commercial product, he said.

Lots of sodium will be needed to make the new batteries, and Ceramatec proposes a symbiotic relationship with the federal government to get it. Enormous quantities of sodium metals, the byproducts of nuclear weapons manufacturing, just happen be available for cleanup at Hanford nuclear reservation near Richland, Wash. It's a ready-made source of material that CoorsTek can recycle.

Of course once that source is gone they will have to pay full price for their sodium. Fortunately neither Sodium nor Sulfur are too hard to come by.

And what does all that talk about time to scale up mean? Here are my guesses. About a year and a half to pilot plant production. A year for battery testing and scale up. Another year to get a full production plant operating. So optimistically about 3 and 1/2 years. Realistically 5 years. Pessimistically 7 years. And very pessimistically never.

What would this technology mean? For one thing, besides its uses for wind and solar, it would be very handy for shaving peak loads. It costs the utilities a lot less to deliver steady power than to deliver power that varies a lot over the course of a day. Think of it as having a peaking plant and some backup power (for the refrigerator and furnace) in every home.

Of course superflywheels [pdf] might be a competitive technology capable of even more charge discharge cycles at roughly equivalent energy density.

H/T R. Dave Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Follow The Moon

Google has some ideas on how to lower its electricity bill.

“The ability to seamlessly shift workloads between data centers also creates intriguing long-term energy management possibilities, including a “follow the moon” strategy which takes advantage of lower costs for power and cooling during overnight hours. In this scenario, virtualized workloads are shifted across data centers in different time zones to capture savings from off-peak utility rates.”

A geographically diverse company like Google could shift its computing loads around to follow low night-time power costs. But it also seems likely that utilities could also bid to fill Google’s computing power needs. States would want to have Google crunch its servers using their utilities power so that they would get the extra utilities tax. And utilities would want to bid to get the extra Google business. (Actually, this probably wouldn’t happen in California, where utilities are incentivized to sell less power, not more.)

Well the evidence is in about California. There are some terminally stupid people running that state. Fortunately there are some smart people running Google. As suggested in the article they will probably just bypass California and use Washington State or Oregon State to supply California with bits.

Power Shorts

I'm not talking about some new alpha male summer wear. I'm talking about the future of our electrical grid. And given the insanity of our new administration it is not looking good. Kevin C. (at the linked site) has this to say:

I've been in the utility business for well over twenty years. I was working on company load projections before Obama went to law school. I've seen afternoons when the power was so short that we were within a hair of rolling blackouts - and I helped draw up those plans, too. I've stood in the door of mobile generators the size of tractor trailers, one of many connected to the grid to stretch out power. And I remember a time about years ago when some of us sat in the company break room, wondering if we should install whole house generators because the power supply looked mighty tight that year.

I'm considering a whole house generator again, preferably one with a hospital grade muffler package. It's a toss up between diesel and propane. Maybe you should invest in one, too.

Based on what Obama said on the campaign trail, I wasn't optimistic about his energy policies. It reminded me of some of those feel-good bull sessions by people who know diddly squat about the power industry, by people who don't know a KW from a KVar, who've never heard of line losses, and who've never spent a tense afternoon wondering if there'd be enough power to go around. But ignorance is correctable - if you hire the right people.

Obama hasn't.

In particular is the asinine assumption of Jon Wellinghoff that we may never need new nuclear or coal plants. Jon Wellinghoff, as some may know, is the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. Why? Because he's operating on the delusion that wind and solar can provide all our needs. While such starry-eyed ignorance is endearing in children, it's horrifying in a man who's the head of FERC. It shows an ignorance of the electric power industry and of the main draw-back with solar and wind: We don't have an efficient way to store electricity. Nor is wind power viable everywhere (Google a wind power map from the DOE and see for yourself - it's probably more than the Obama administration's done), and people seem to be taking a NIMBY stance about solar (see the issue of solar panels in the Mohave). Plus there's the annoying problem of getting that power from where the wind does blow to where it's needed. And the laws of physics remain the same regardless of who's in office.

You'd expect someone in the energy sector to know this. You'd expect someone in the energy department to grasp daily load fluctuations, increasing load from growth greater than energy reduction from conservation, and why we need to build more baseline plants right now. Obama's team doesn't.

You would think that some one from a government run by the Smartest President Ever™ would know these things. However, it is also possible that this is all being ruined by the Most Corrupt President Ever™. And surprisingly they are the same guy. Go figure.

In any case I think that regular blackouts will eventually fix the problem. But it will not be cheap. I guess that is where the Most Corrupt President Ever™ comes in. Want power? Buy a politician. If you can't afford that buying a backup generator might be a good alternative investment. Until we start running into fuel shortages.

China And Russia Hooking Up

Yes. It is true. They are hooking up their electrical grids.

AREVA‘s Transmission and Distribution (T&D) division has signed a multi-million Euro contract to supply H400 High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) thyristor valves to interconnect the Chinese and Russian power grids.

The contract, the first of its kind awarded to AREVA T&D in China, is signed with the Xuji Group Corporation and China Electric Power Research Institute for the end customer, State Grid of China Corporation.

The valves will be installed in the Sino-Russian converter station located in China’s Heilongjiang province. To overcome the countries’ grid incompatibility, the station will convert alternate current into direct current and inversely.

AREVA T&D was awarded the contract thanks to its new high profile generation H400 Valve technology developed in collaboration with the China Electric Power Research Institute and the Xuji Group Corporation. The company’s ability to meet both China’s localization policy requirements and a tight installation schedule were also key factors in this success. The installation of the valves will begin in 2008.

HVDC technology is used to connect power networks and to transmit large amounts of electricity over long distances with minimal losses. With plans to transmit more than 130 GW of electricity over the next five to ten years, China’s needs in HVDC are booming. This success will strengthen AREVA T&D’s position on the domestic HVDC market and demonstrates the company’s ability to meet the country’s needs.

I know. It sounds like a press release for the H400 valve. In fact it is a press release for the H400 valve.

It does reinforce my point about new long distance transmission of power in the US. DC is the way to go.

Here is another bit from the company making that same point:

Ultra High Voltage Direct Current (UHVDC) transmission, with voltages of up to 800 kV, is the choice being made by many energy managers around the world for the future network developments.

With generation sites becoming farther and farther away from load centers, HVDC is particularly economical for transmission distances greater than 700 km.

HVDC can transmit three times as much power per tower compared with conventional AC. This means a substantial reduction in land costs and often no new right-of-way (ROW) access permits, particularly difficult in densely populated regions.

UHVDC transmission maintains all the technical advantages associated with HVDC transmission: back-to-back or point-to-point connections for synchronized or asynchronous networks, regardless of voltage or frequency. Fully controllable, all HVDC systems prevent faults from propagating and reduce overall associated transmission losses.

So why isn't DC being pushed in the USA? My guess is that there are no HVDC equipment companies in the US who own enough politicians.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Why hasn't Polywell Fusion been funded by the Obama administration?
Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

We Are Here To Serve

Yes. We are here to serve. But it will cost you.

An article in a recent issue of ieee spectrum reported that today's data center commonly requires 20MW of power while those of the dot-com era consumed 1MW to 2MW. This is because today's largest data center houses many tens of thousands of servers, with some passing the 100,000-server mark.

The article goes on to say that with electricity prices going up, it's extremely expensive to power and cool so much equipment. Market research firm IDC estimates that within the next six years, the companies operating data centers will spend more money per year on energy than on equipment.

And now you know why your internet bill is so high.

Also, the article says that the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has reported that the world's 44 million servers consume one-half percent of all electricity and produce two-tenths percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, or 80 megatons per year, approaching the emissions of entire countries like Argentina or the Netherlands.

One thing the article mentions that could help: going to DC distribution of power inside server farms. And for the same reason DC would be good for long distance power transmission: it is more efficient per unit of materials used.

Interesting Power Supply Company

Commenter windmill at Talk Polywell has brought to my attention an interesting power supply company Diversified Technologies Inc. Here are a couple of short (under 10 pages) papers that explain the technology.

Solid State High Voltage DC Power Distribution & Control [pdf]

Here is the key point from the above [pdf].

The largest cost components in this design are the semiconductors (IGBTs). Because of their widespread use in locomotive engines, subway cars, elevators, and a wide range of electrical motor drive and power supply systems, these devices are evolving at a rapid pace, especially in comparison with vacuum switch tubes. In the last decade, we have seen the switching speed and power handling capability of IGBTs increase by an order of magnitude (200 kVA to 4 MVA), at essentially constant prices. This puts high power electronics, for the first time, on a favorable, long term cost reduction path. This is the equivalent of the computer industry’s Moore’s Law of continually higher performance per unit cost, but applied to power systems.

Today, a 100 kV, 2MW buck regulator, with a series switch, can be built for approximately $500k USD. This cost will decline due to increased semiconductor performance and decreased manufacturing costs. In contrast, estimates for the equivalent conventional approach are $2- 3M USD, and show no trend towards cost reduction.

Quite so. IGBTs with a voltage rating of 6,500 Volts and a 600 Amp current rating are now off the shelf.

A Solid-State Switch for 13.8kV Power Distribution [pdf]

The company claims to be able to make power conversion equipment that costs in the range of 10¢ a watt in production quantities. That is a very good number. Diversified claims specifications for their supply technology that are very not too bad. An adjustable 100 KV DC supply can deliver 1% regulation and .1% ripple. That is just the ticket for Polywell Fusion experiments using D-D. For pB11 at the resonance peak I'd like to see tighter regulation. Say .1% regulation and .01% ripple. I have some ideas.

OK. That gets us past fusion power supplies. What implications does it have for the electrical grid? It means that High Voltage DC distribution of electrical power is now within the realm of economic feasibility. DC distribution is more efficient (per unit of materials used) than AC distribution. It can also cover much larger distances without having to worry about AC phasing problems due to differences of route lengths from different sources. Wind in North Dakota feeding loads in New York city? No problem.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Why hasn't Polywell Fusion been funded by the Obama administration?
IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

EEStor Not Meeting Its Goals

It looks like EEStor is not meeting its goals for a testable prototype.

It’s looking pretty official that EEStor won’t be able to reach two important milestones for its automaker partner ZENN Motors by the end of 2008: delivering a prototype energy storage device and a having a third-party verify the high level of permittivity of the powders it’s using in its technology. Tyler Hamilton of Clean Break quotes a letter that Ian Clifford, the CEO of ZENN Motors, sent out this week to ZENN investors that states EEStor isn’t likely to meet either of those goals in the remaining days of 2008.

That is pretty serious. It means that the super energy density capacitor for energy storage EEStor was promising may just be a mirage or possibly even a high tech hoax.

I have written previously about EEStor at Ceramic Batteries.

According to the wiki there are more than a few sceptics although they are not named in the text.

Three technology experts hired by potential investors to investigate EEStor's technology have stated "it's not possible", "extremely unlikely that it's possible", "there's extreme skepticism", "there's nothing there", "it's ridiculous thinking", "it's beyond science fiction", and "I'm surprised that Kleiner has put money into it".

However links are provided to some of the people that make the quoted statements:

John Miller
Andrew Burke
Technology Review

It remains to be seen if this is a real breakthrough. At this point I'd have to rate it as not very likely. As one sceptic puts it: they are rating the devices they are making at their ultimate voltage. In the real world you have to rate such devices at 1/10th their ultimate voltage for long term reliability. Since power storage is related to the square of the voltage, actual real power storage in a real world application will be 1/100th the touted number. Which is not very exciting.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Room Temperature Superconductors?

We normally think of carbon as a high resistance material. The first practical electric light bulbs produced by Edison had carbon filaments. However, there is a new kid on the block based on carbon and it is not a superconductor, but it is close. Some recent research in nanotube properties shows very high current carrying capacities.

Relatively early in the research of nanotubes, Thess et al. calculated the resistivity of ropes of metallic SWNTs to be in the order of 1E-4 ohm-cm at 300 K. They did this by measuring the resistivity directly with a four-point technique. One of their values they measured was 0.34E-4 ohm-cm, which they noted would indicate that the ropes were the most highly conductive carbon fibers known, even factoring in their error in measurement. In the same study his measurements of the conductivity, Frank et al. was able to have reach a current density in the tube greater than 1E7 A/sq cm. Later, Phaedon Avouris suggested that stable current densities of nanotubes could be pushed as high as 1E13 A/cm2.

A SWNT is a Single Walled Nano Tubes.

So how does that compare to copper? For household wiring typical current density is 500A/sq cm and ultimate current density is maybe 10X that with the wires near the melting point or beyond. In round numbers 1E4 A/sq cm vs 1E7 A/sq cm for carbon nanotubes. In other words 1,000 times the current density. At a weight per unit volume of about 1/4 that of copper. Copper resistivity at room temperature is about 1.7E-4 ohm-cm. So carbon nanotubes can carry about 5X as much current as an equivalent volume of copper for the same losses.

If we can get this stuff into mass production - which is likely to take twenty or thirty years - we can rewire the grid we have for 5X times as much power as it handles now or the same power with 1/5th the losses. Not room temperature superconductors, but a definite improvement.

H/T IntLibber at Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Saving Power

CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lights) are not all they are cracked up to be. Because of certain technical reasons [pdf] they may cut your power use by a factor of four for a given light output but the power company only sees a power of two reduction on their demand. In other words the power companies have to supply power that is not charged to the users. Guess what? Electrical rates will have to go up to compensate. There is also a further technical discussion available. It is possible to fix this problem with more expensive circuits. Look for Congress' new mandate for light manufacturers, as soon as the electric company guys whisper in their ear. This is not a bad thing. Except that Congress has outlawed cheap tungsten lamps even where their low usage, no phantom (reactive) power, and low cost would make sense. Big Brother only has your best interests at heart. Just ask him.

Zilog Gets An Offer

Those of you in at the start of the personal computer revolution will remember Zilog for its Intel 8080 clone, the Z-80, that was a much better performer than the Intel chip. The Intel 8080 and the Zilog Z-80 were both designed by Federico Fagin. The Z-80 didn't require a special clock chip and it had a lot of neat add on instructions that made writing code easier and made the code perform better and take up less space in memory. It also used fewer clock cycles for some instructions. I upgraded my IMSAI 8080 to a Z-80 processor as soon as I could.

The Z-80 was also the heart of the Sinclair ZX-81 a really cute little computer with a very creative hardware design. As I recall memory address lines were used not just for memory access but also to scan the keyboard. I had one of those and had lots of fun with it. It used a TV set as a monitor.

Zilog is now entertaining a buy out offer from power semiconductor maker IXYS.

MILPITAS, Calif. (AP) - Semiconductor maker Ixys Corp. on Friday made an unsolicited offer to buy Zilog Inc. for $4.50 per share, a 9 percent premium over Zilog stock's $4.14 closing price.

Zilog, also a semiconductor maker, in February said a $4.50 per share offer by remote-control maker Universal Electronics Inc. was too low. Zilog's stock closed at $3.62 the day before that offer.

Zilog said it received the offer and is reviewing it.

Last week, San Jose, Calif.-based Zilog said it narrowed its net loss to $1.9 million, or 11 cents per share, from $3.6 million, or 21 cents per share. Revenue fell 13 percent to $16.7 million.

Compare Zilog's revenue to Intel's billions. They were once a contender.

IXYS makes some very good power semiconductors. With those kinds of transistors the heart of hybrid autos and plug in hybrids business must be very good. The control of power is a very important part of electronics these days. It is the area of aerospace I have the most experience with.

A New Wafer Standard For Chip Makers

The chip making industry is planning on increasing the wafer size for chip and power transistor production from the current 300 mm (about 12") to 450 mm (about 17 1/2") by 2012 according to eWeek Magazine.

Intel and Samsung, two of the world’s largest producers of semiconductors, are collaborating on new standards that will produce the world’s first 450-millimeter wafers starting in 2012.

The two companies, along with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), made the announcement on May 5. The switch to the larger wafers, according to a joint statement, will help the entire semiconductor industry move toward a new standard for manufacturing integrated circuits.

Currently, most of the world’s top semiconductor companies produce processors on industry-standard 300-mm wafers. The switch to the lager 450-mm wafers will allow companies such as Intel and Samsung to double the amount of processors they can put on a single wafer.

This should help cut the cost of chip production, while reducing the amount of energy, water and other resources used in creating processors. For example, Intel was able to reduce the cost of its chip production when it switch from 200-mm to 300-mm wafers several years ago. The company achieved further savings when it reduced the individual processors from 65-nanometers to 45-nm.

This will mean a couple or three things. One is lower cost production of computer chips. Another is the possibility of more computing power per chip (more cores most likely). And finally cheaper power transistors or transistors with more power handling capacity (the amount of power a transistor can handle is a direct function of transistor area). The last part could help lower the cost of hybrid cars where power transistors are a critical element in the control of the electric motor that is part of the drive train.