Two updates for the home page:

1. The fuel economy section has been edited and expanded due to popular demand (it might have something to do with the price of gasoline going through the roof). It includes new information about tires and trip planning as well as an answer to the age old question “to turn off the engine or NOT to turn off the engine“.

2. The home page “blog” has not been updated regularly while instead we work on a major revision in format. It ought to be interesting when it’s ready: please stay tuned….

The biggest energy news of the decade, of the century, or the millenium?

MIT researchers have figured out how to use inexpensive ingredients, cobalt, potassium, and phosphate, rather than pricey platinum, to create anodes for electrolysis — the process whereby electricity can be used to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen. This could bring about the biggest ever revolution in energy production because this might make it economically feasible to use water as a battery for solar power. The hydrogen produced in this process can be re-combined with oxygen from the air in a fuel cell to re-release the solar energy on demand.

In theory, anywhere you can mount a solar panel, electrodes, some wiring, and tanks for water and hydrogen, you can have a battery that charges itself from sunlight. Which means that power can be produced locally throughout daylight hours — assuming adequate water and sunlight, of course — rather than being pumped from the ground, shipped or piped to refineries, and trucked to gas stations (as with gasoline, for example). The entire energy cycle involves no waste heat from combustion and virtually no pollution (except the byproducts of making and disposing of the solar panels, anodes, wiring, and tanks, of course).

Wind and other sources of electrical power could also be stored in this fashion.

However, hydrogen storage still presents certain obstacles that must be overcome.

Interesting news about about power storage: first, Li-ion (Lithium-ion) batteries like those used in laptop computers are on the verge of drastic improvement, like batteries that wear out after 10 years instead of the current 3, and charge to 90% in 5 minutes instead of taking hours. Could be a game-changer for making electric vehicles, etc., more practical.

Also, a more exotic sounding power storage technology — a weight spinning in a vacuum riding on magnetic levitation cushion (I’d probably call this a “flywheel,” but perhaps that isn’t accurate). Putting power in means it spins faster, taking power out means it spins slower. Apparently setting up a bank of these provides a commercially viable solution on an enterprise scale, for example I imagine it being used to store solar or wind power for release during peak demand or off-peak generation hours of the day….

First the good news: I’ve discovered my new favorite blog (besides this one, of course), at Grist.org: http://gristmill.grist.org.

The bad new (hard to call it good news) is that published there I found the best commentary yet written on climate change, Beyond the point of no return, written by Ross Gelbspan. Ross is a journalist whose resume includes 30 years at publications like the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.

Ross runs down what I’ve started overhearing through the shared walls of our culture but have been trying to block out because it’s too awful to eavesdrop on: that whether or not humans were the only cause, or the primary cause, of global warming, and regardless of what our governments might agree to in the next 50 years, radical climate change is now unstoppable.

The questions that now race towards each of us like a concrete wall are: what will you and I do? And next: who else are you and I responsible to? What will we do for our loved ones, our children, our families, our history, our culture, our nation, our people (the human race) — what do you and I do now out of respect, obligation, and affection for them?

Most of us are prepared for anything but this. But we can change…. Here’s to living in interesting times.

A new Stanford University study concludes that wind farms off the coast of California would ultimately produce between 25 and 100% of California’s energy needs.
http://www.physorg.com/news116519900.html
However, little power transmission capacity currently exists in the parts of Northern California where the winds are most suitable (where the population is less dense), and a number of hurdles must be overcome such as adapting wind turbines for deeper water and mitigating the environmental and aesthetic impact of offshore wind farms.

Wave farms are being prototyped off the Oregon coast. The motion of the waves can be converted via turbines into electricity and piped back on shore.

Capital markets financed the industrial revolution and the technological revolution (not to mention a few wars — read the House Of Morgan if you want to find out who wound up financing BOTH sides of the arms build up in WWI and WWII).

Now capital markets are funding the green revolution in energy production. MMA Renerwable Ventures raises money from institutional investors to finance solar panel installations. End users (like Estee Lauder) arrange for MMA to construct solar installations for them, then buy the power generated at below-market rates, but don’t have to pay for construction.

GREAT packaging, spreading the risk and benefits around where they are the most palatable — you gotta love capitalism when it works out this way.

HP has just joined Google (although on a smaller scale) on the solar power bandwagon. Both companies are turning  corporate campuses into 1-megawatt + solar power installations, saving money while reducing greenhouse gas emissions — which is appropriate considering each consumes massive amounts of electricity during the ordinary course of business.

Now how do we get more major power consumers to do this?

The Aptera Typ-1, which looks sort of like a Cessna without the wings, is a hybrid gasoline electric vehicle that its makers claim gets 300 miles to the gallon. It has a tricycle design that gets listed as a motorcycle when you register with the department of motor vehicles, apparently. I’d like to see the crash tests first, of course, but I’m really liking the sound of this as a commuter vehicle.

UPDATE: check out this Popular Mechanics Test Drive of the Aptera Type-1e….

I’m amazed to realize that we don’t see more of such simple solutions as solar trough power, which essentially involves setting up a back-yard scale set of parabolic troughs which use focused sunlight to heat liquid that spins a turbine and generates power. At present these are simple and effective for generating small quantities of power, like enough to run a commercial refrigerator, although larger scale installations are contemplated: http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9816886-54.html?tag=nefd.blgs

ADDENDUM (November 20): Similarly, solar concentrators are being used get more effeciency out of solar cells: http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9820924-54.html?tag=nefd.top

(Thanks again to the News.com Green Tech Blog!)