Recently in Innovation Category

The U.S. Army has contracted two bridges made from a thermoplastic composite and recycled plastic. To demonstrate its strength a 70-ton M1A1 Abrams tank was driven across the bridge at its official unveiling in September.

According to Axion, the company with the contract to build the bridge, its recycled plastic railroad ties are actually longer-lasting that typical creosote-treated wood railroad ties.
news.cnet.com

Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas...An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped in the world's oceans every year... theskinner

Philips has developed, manufactured and will bring to market an LED replacement for the common 60-Watt incandescent light bulb taking first place in a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The L Prize is the first government-sponsored technology competition designed to spur lighting manufacturers to develop high-quality, high-efficiency solid-state lighting products to replace the common light bulb.

I once heard an electrical utility use the marketing phrase, "Electric heat is 100% efficient"

The logic is that 100% of the energy available at a heating element becomes heat. The amount of energy lost to get that heat out of the heating element from the energy source is hard to quantify.

Electrical energy begins as a fuel source or renewable, transformed into heat, then motion or converted (solar cells) and is pushed though wires. The efficiency rapidly deteriorates.

I was looking at the specs of a 1997 all electric Chevy S-10. The system efficiency is 73%.

Electrical energy is converted to chemical storage in batteries and then converted back to the motor. Some electric vehicle motors are liquid cooled. This is because the heat generated in the motor must be carried away and that is energy not going to the wheels.

I came across a conventional thermal electricity production efficiency table for European power plants from 1990-2004 (ims.eionet.europa.eu) The average efficiency was 38%.

Think of your home heating system that is converting heat from fuel (running at 60%-95% efficiency), only you have to heat that water to high temperature steam and push a turbine with it loosing efficiency along the way.

Transmission and distribution losses of electricity in the USA were estimated at 7.2% in 1995 (climatetechnology.gov)

My fat cat is more efficient at gathering sunlight than a thin cat. She is 100% efficient at annoying me to get out on the deck for energy capture.

None of this is really scientific, but if you started with 38% efficiency from the power plant then subtract 7.2% from transmission and distribution, then plug it into a vehicle that is 73% efficient, there isn't much of the original energy of the raw fuel to move the vehicle.

To be fair, the efficiency of a gasoline powered vehicle is about 12%, Much of the energy of gasoline is lost in heat and friction, plus we can't forget the energy exerted to refine the fuel.

The value of an electric vehicle is more determined by the energy source.

If you live in Quebec, where over 90% of your energy is produced by hydro or if you are fueled by a solar grid, inefficiency is irrelevant.

Sunshine and flowing water will release their energy regardless of whether we capture it, waste is irrelevant unless you are trying to catch more.

The efficiency (and value) of electric cars should be graded by how well we use renewable resources before electrical energy ever reaches the vehicle, otherwise we are just wasting fossil fuel by converting, transmitting and storing it's energy.

I have touched on algae biofuel over the past few years, but the recent cross-country trip of the Algaeus brings attention to a biofuel that makes more sense in the long run than ethanol, biodiesel, or purely electric vehicles that burden the power grid.

The biggest problem with producing ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soy is that from the start you have a crop that takes all season to grow and then places a demand on the food stream. It generally takes more energy to produce these fuels than is extracted. Switchgrass, when used to make ethanol, still takes a season to grow.

A promising future:

• Algae grows very quickly (doubling overnight) and can be cultivated in places where crops won't grow.


• It is not a food crop that is currently a traded commodity.


• It has an appetite for carbon dioxide


• Processing and distribution uses existing infrastructure.


• The end product is gasoline that can be burned by older vehicles

About a trillion of our yearly national debt is due to a trade imbalance created by importing fossil fuels.

The U.S. has spent
...
importing fossil fuel.(zfacts.com)

ExxonMobil expects to spend more than $600,000,000 on an algea fuel project.

While some people retire into a motor home built on a bus chassis pulling a Chevy Suburban, George Bombardier has spent the past 11 years touring the country in a golf cart.

The 68-year-old retired roofer even sleeps in the Club Car golf cart powered by a used 300 cc Kawasaki generator engine.

Taking my vacations on a motorcycle over the past nine years, I understand Bombardier's storytelling zest.

"You really get to see the country," he said, "including things you don't want to see, like tornadoes and things like that. You don't want to see one of those, I'll tell you. Not up close."

He has also been through the the Holland Tunnel into New York City, because they wouldn't let him take the cart on the Staten Island Ferry, and to Washington D.C. because he wanted to see where the president lives.

It takes him about 10-20 days to cross the United States mostly on small roads, but that seems to be the point of traveling for Bombardier.

He's had open heart surgery, and he died three times on the table, or at the hospital. And now he has a machine in his chest that powers his heart.

Bombardier will delight in his stories about facing death with the same sense of adventure that he brings to his life.

So if you see a golf cart buzzing around York that looks like a tiny red 57' Chevy that's been through a few too many adventures, its just on the way to the next adventure.

I watched a solar panel installation on a Springfield Township home by ASCOM Electric of Dover, Pa. today.

It's an interesting relationship between industry and home businesses.

To live off the grid using solar power is impractical in Pennsylvania. We don't get enough sun and battery storage is expensive and has a shelf life of about five years.

However, using the existing power grid as your "battery" is a very efficient way to buffer your personal power source and feed back into the grid during times of peak demand.

For the electrical utility, as well as other taxpayers who pay for tax credits, these solar home businesses help add watt by watt to the renewable content of the larger power grid.

After an eight year payoff for this system, the rest of the 25+ year lifespan of the system means a profit for the home solar business.

The system will produce 9.8 kilowatts during peak sunshine.

It started with a man restoring an antique biplane.

With his young son, the man flew that plane across the United States and they shared our national treasures sleeping in fields beneath her wings.

The restoration turned into a niche business and a departure from corporate jobs for the father and son. The dream became sustenance.

The sustenance became a career.

Operating out of a nondescript building in Emigsville, Pa., the pair built perfection and preserved their moment in history for others.

Recently, the pair received a call from a customer that one of their restorations had won international recognition as a grand champion in the antique category at a prestigious show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

It's the ecology of souls - an American dream.

See full story in the York Daily Record "Flying High"

Walter Reed waits for a heart transplant, but he didn't wait any longer to marry his long-time girlfriend Candy Seitz at Sovereign Bank Stadium in York.

There is a strange reflection looking out my mirror, the one I usually reflect on others at an angle so that only I can see and interpret.

York Daily Record correspondent Teresa McMinn recently observed me tweeting.

I looked back to make sure my photographer, Paul Kuehnel, hadn't been gobbled up by a snapping turtle or some other wild beast along the wetlands path while on assignment at a butterfly survey earlier this month.

LED lights for home lighting are appearing everywhere, but mostly packaged in arrays of smaller bulbs that look like an old Tandy science experiment kit.

Coming across a built from scratch, high output (single source) General Electric GU10 track light bulb in Walmart is a sign that the technology is evolving and going mainstream.

My halogen track light bulbs consume 50 watts each. A single GE LED bulb uses 4 watts. Of course, the LED bulb doesn't quite have the light output (it's close). The color temperature is great, almost matching a halogen track light.

An LED bulb is a highly efficient semiconductor as opposed to the simple heated wire in a halogen bulb, so the interaction with dimmers can be unpredictable. I'm surprised it even works at all with the Lutron dimmer.

Using a Lutron Maestro electronic dimmer, I was able to get the GE LED light to dim like a halogen bulb when combined with halogen bulbs. Alone, the LED bulb didn't function properly. It just stayed on during the whole dimming cycle. I would have to guess that the power demand of the bulb is so low that it is below the minimum load of the dimmer to make it function.

@paulkuehnel http://greenmesh.com/ LED bulb dimming experiment cycles interact w/ vid camera fon http://myvid.me/bzII

@paulkuehnel http://greenmesh.com/ LED light falling on a moving fan will reveal the cycling of light http://myvid.me/bzVw

I sent email to GE asking about the ability of a dimmer circuit to handle the bulb and am still waiting for a reply. There isn't any information on the GE lighting website about this bulb, though they appear to refer to components used in the bulb.

The GE LED bulb also cost me $24, so large scale experimenting with LED bulbs and my Lutron dimmer is costly.

It's interesting to note that 12, 4 watt LED bulbs equal the load of one 50 watt halogen track light bulb.

It is also interesting to note that if I were to turn on all 20, 50 watt halogen bulbs in my downstairs track lights, I would be consuming 1000 watts, while 20 LED bulbs would consume only 80 watts.

It's easy to see how multiplying the energy savings power, plus a lifespan eight times the halogen bulb can add up.

It also made me conscious that of a good power spike could possible damage $480 worth of light bulbs. Maybe it's time for a whole house surge protector.

Sharp is introducing a variable color temperature and dimming LED bulb ( via a remote)