The Alternative Energy Thread

Lanzman · Dec 15, 2017

Tesla seems to have licked the cold weather problem, or at least as far as temperatures that also don't affect ICE vehicles. You get down in to some of those arctic temperatures - thirty, forty below F - and any vehicle needs TLC to work.

Next generation solid-state LI batteries take care of the charge/discharge problem. And again, Tesla is throwing a shit-ton of money at battery technology.

Tuckerfan · Jun 8, 2018

Gasoline from air?

Climate Change Can Be Stopped by Turning Air Into Gasoline

A team of scientists from Harvard University and the company Carbon Engineering announced on Thursday that they have found a method to cheaply and directly pull carbon-dioxide pollution out of the atmosphere.

If their technique is successfully implemented at scale, it could transform how humanity thinks about the problem of climate change. It could give people a decisive new tool in the race against a warming planet, but could also unsettle the issue’s delicate politics, making it all the harder for society to adapt.

Their research seems almost to smuggle technologies out of the realm of science fiction and into the real. It suggests that people will soon be able to produce gasoline and jet fuel from little more than limestone, hydrogen, and air. It hints at the eventual construction of a vast, industrial-scale network of carbon scrubbers, capable of removing greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere.

Above all, the new technique is noteworthy because it promises to remove carbon dioxide cheaply. As recently as 2011, a panel of experts estimated that it would cost at least $600 to remove a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The new paper says it can remove the same ton for as little as $94, and for no more than $232. At those rates, it would cost between $1 and $2.50 to remove the carbon dioxide released by burning a gallon of gasoline in a modern car.

“If these costs are real, it is an important result,” said Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or changing everyone’s behavior.”

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The team published their results Thursday morning in Joule, a new American scientific journal printed by the same publisher behind the biology journal Cell.

“What we’ve done is build a [direct-air capture] process that is—as much as possible—built on existing processes and technologies that are widespread in the world,” said David Keith, a professor of applied physics at Harvard and the lead author of the new study. “That’s why we think we have a reasonable possibility of scaling up.”

Keith is also a founder and executive chairman of Carbon Engineering, a Bill Gates–funded company that has studied how to directly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Carbon Engineering says the technique unveiled today has already been implemented at its small, pilot plant in Squamish, British Columbia. It is currently seeking funding to build an industrial-scale version of the plant, which Keith says it can complete by 2021.

Their technique, while chemically complicated, does not rely on unprecedented science. In effect, Keith and his colleagues have grafted a cooling tower onto a paper mill. It has three major steps.

First, outside air is sucked into the factory’s “contactors” and exposed to an alkaline liquid. These contactors resemble industrial cooling towers: They have large fans to inhale air from the outside world, and they’re lined with corrugated plastic structures that allow as much air as possible to come into contact with the liquid. In a cooling tower, the air is meant to cool the liquid; but in this design, the air is meant to come into contact with the strong base. “CO2 is a weak acid, so it wants to be in the base,” said Keith.

Second, the now-watery liquid (containing carbon dioxide) is brought into the factory, where it undergoes a series of chemical reactions to separate the base from the acid. The liquid is frozen into solid pellets, slowly heated, and converted into a slurry. Again, these techniques have been borrowed from elsewhere in chemical industry: “Taking CO2 out of a carbonate solution is what almost every paper mill in the world does,” Keith told me.

Finally, the carbon dioxide is combined with hydrogen and converted into liquid fuels, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. This is in some ways the most conventional aspect of the process: Oil companies convert hydrocarbon gases into liquid fuels every day, using a set of chemical reactions called the Fischer-Tropsch process. But it’s key to Carbon Engineering’s business: It means the company can produce carbon-neutral hydrocarbons.

What does that mean? Consider an example: If you were to burn Carbon Engineering’s gas in your car, you would release carbon-dioxide pollution out of your tailpipe and into Earth’s atmosphere. But as this carbon dioxide came from the air in the first place, these emissions would not introduce any new CO2 to the atmosphere. Nor would any new oil have to be mined to power your car.

Eventually, a similar process could be used to sequester greenhouse gases. Instead of converting carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel, Carbon Engineering could pump it deep into the ground, reducing the amount of heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. But such a technique wouldn’t give Carbon Engineering any product to sell, and there are no buyers stepping up to front the effort, for now.

“The main, near-term market is making carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels,” Keith told me. “We see this as a technology for decarbonizing transportation.”

Speaking from Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, Keith said he was “pretty optimistic” about climate change. “The reason is that the market for these low-carbon fuels is much, much better than they were a few years ago. At the same time, low-carbon power—electricity generated by solar and wind—has just gotten much cheaper.”

Outside experts said they were encouraged by Keith and his colleagues’ approach, but cautioned that it would take time to examine every cost estimate and engineering advance in the paper. The consensus response was something like: Hmm! I hope this works!

“I don’t question that the range of costs they report are valid. I think the lower end of $100 per ton of CO2 produced through their approach is probably doable in five years or so and that their higher end of $250 per [ton of] CO2 is more doable with their technology today,” says Jennifer Wilcox, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines.

“The improvements that Carbon Engineering have made all seem appropriate, and I am comfortable that their estimated costs are within the window of what I would expect from such improvements,” says Roger Aines, a senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s energy program.

“The strongest part of this paper, in my opinion, is the fact that they’ve actually tested the technology in a prototype plant for a few years. That’s a big deal, and offers a proof of principle that’s way stronger than simple calculations or computational models,” says Scott Hersey, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Olin College.

Caldeira said that the paper offered hope for the trickiest parts of the economy to adapt to climate change. “This suggests that the hardest-to-decarbonize parts of the economy (e.g. steel, cement manufacture, long-distance air travel, etc.) might continue just as they are now, and we just pay for CO2 removal,” he told me.

He continued: “Depending on how you count things, global GDP is somewhere in the neighborhood of $75 to $110 trillion. So, to remove all of this CO2 would be something like 3 to 5 percent of global GDP (if the $100 a ton number is right). This puts an upper bound on how expensive it could be to solve the climate problem, because there are lots of ways to reduce emissions for less than $100 a ton.”

Keith said it was important to still stop emitting carbon-dioxide pollution where feasible. “My view is we should stick to trying to cut emissions first. As a voter, my view is it’s cheaper not to emit a ton of [carbon dioxide] than it is to emit it and recapture it.”

“But once emissions are heading downhill and we’re heading back down to zero—which maybe could be 10 or 15 years from now—then I’m happy to see more large-scale removal of carbon dioxide.”
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Tuckerfan · Jul 15, 2018

Tuckerfan · Jan 7, 2019

This is interesting. Assuming that 60 Minutes hasn't gotten themselves snowed, it looks like someone's finally cracked how to cheaply turn biomass into fuel.

Paladin · Jan 7, 2019

Tuckerfan said: ↑

This is interesting. Assuming that 60 Minutes hasn't gotten themselves snowed, it looks like someone's finally cracked how to cheaply turn biomass into fuel.
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As with all bio-fuel endeavors, it's a matter of (1) whether the technology economically scales and (2) if it comes with the trade-off of making food more expensive.

I'm much more intrigued by the biodegradable plastics and sugar that doesn't promote tooth decay.

Tuttle · Jan 14, 2019

Probably not technically on topic, but from source that referred to Bloomberg, on the outlook of developing commercially viable fusion energy:

[re Paul Allen] He was among a growing number of ultra-rich clean-energy advocates pouring money into startups that are rushing to produce the first commercially viable fusion reactor long before the $23 billion ITER program's mid-century forecast. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Peter Thiel are just three of the billionaires chasing what the late physicist Stephen Hawking called humankind's most promising technology.

Scientists have long known that fusion has the potential to revolutionize the energy industry, but development costs have been too high for all but a handful of governments and investors. Recent advances in exotic materials, 3D printing, machine learning and data processing are all changing that. "It's the SpaceX moment for fusion," said Christofer Mowry, who runs the Bezos-backed General Fusion Inc. near Vancouver, Canada. He was referring to Elon Musk's reusable-rocket maker. "If you care about climate change you have to care about the timescale and not just the ultimate solution. Governments aren't working with the urgency needed."

The company Allen supported, TAE Technologies, stood alone when it was incorporated as Tri-Alpha Energy two decades ago. Now it has at least two dozen rivals, many funded by investors with a track record of disruption. As a result, there's been an explosion of discoveries that are driving the kind of competition needed for a transformational breakthrough, according to Mowry.

The article reports one fusion company founded last year by six MIT professors is "confident they'll be able to produce a prototype of a so-called net energy reactor by 2025."
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One of the cable business channels had a guest who referred to around ten startups in the pipeline for this year (or vc funded last year, I forget), but it seems unlikely that this many smart people (at least a few really smart ones per company) would spend such time and resources on a pipe dream.

Tuckerfan · May 9, 2019

steve2^4 · May 10, 2019

These solar panels recharge my car (for free!) while I'm at work. Each car uses 3.3 to 6.6KW depending on state and how many are plugged in. I charge it at home rarely.

There are 480 panels which on a sunny day produce about 320watts each for a total of 153KW. At 3.3KW that's enough for 46 charging positions. We have 40 stations of which 30 are typically in use during the day. I use about 10KW/h to drive round trip to work, so it charges for 2-4 hours per day while I'm playing on the internet.

Tuckerfan · Jul 31, 2019

Tuckerfan said: ↑

Georgia (the state, not the country) gets a solar road.

First Wattway solar road pilot in US pops up in rural Georgia
The first Wattway solar road pilot in America has popped up in rural west Georgia. The Ray C. Anderson Foundation, named for sustainable manufacturing pioneer Ray Anderson, is testing renewable technologies along an 18-mile stretch of road, and recently installed 538 square feet of Colas‘ Wattway solar road system near the border between Georgia and Alabama.

Part of Georgia’s Interstate 85 was named for Anderson, but as over five million tons of carbon dioxide are emitted yearly on that road portion alone, Anderson’s family felt placing his name there didn’t honor his legacy, and began to look into renewable technologies to clear the air – so to speak. Thus began The Ray, an 18-mile living laboratory for clean technologies, including not only the solar roads, but also a solar-powered electric vehicle charging station, and WheelRight, a system people can drive over to test their tire pressure, which could lead to improved fuel inefficiency.

The first Wattway solar panel pilot is part of The Ray near a Georgia Visitor Information Center in West Point, Georgia. According to Wattway by Colas, the average expected output for the 538-square-meter pilot is anticipated to be 7,000 kilowatt-hours per year, which will help power the center.

And these technologies are just the beginning. The foundation will also construct bioswales, or shallow drainage ditches filled with native Georgia plants to capture pollutants during rain. In a right-of-way space, they’ll build a one megawatt solar installation. They’re working with the Georgia Department of Transportation to bring such ideas to life along the 18-mile road stretch. Not only will several of their projects beautify the highway, but will generate clean energy and bring in money for investors. And other parts of the state have shown interest in building their own Wattway roads.

The Ray executive director Allie Kelly dreams of a day when highways will “serve as a power grid for the future,” but she believes that day is coming sooner than we may think. She told Curbed, “We’re at a tipping point in transportation. In five to ten years, we won’t remember a time when we invested a dime in infrastructure spending for a road that only did one thing.”
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The French are claiming they have the first.

Bailey · Jul 31, 2019

Solar is great, there should be more of it everywhere.

Solar roadways are madness.

Bickendan · Aug 2, 2019

Bailey said: ↑

Solar is great, there should be more of it everywhere.

Solar roadways are madness.
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But... but...
Solar freakin' roadways!!!

Tuckerfan · Aug 16, 2019

Bailey said: ↑

Solar is great, there should be more of it everywhere.

Solar roadways are madness.
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And broken, it seems.

The World's First Solar Road Has Officially Crumbled Into a Total Failure

In July, the French daily newspaper Le Monde reported that the 0.6-mile (1 kilometre) solar road was a fiasco.

In December 2016, when the trial road was unveiled, the French Ministry of the Environment called it "unprecedented". French officials said the road, made of photovoltaic panels, would generate electricity to power streetlights in Tourouvre, a local town.

But less than three years later, a report published by Global Construction Review says France's road dream may be over. Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.

Even at its peak, the road was only producing half of the expected energy, because engineers didn't take into consideration rotting leaves falling on the road.

Here what the road looked like in all of its former glory, and how it got to this point.

It was all smiles and high hopes in 2016, when the world's first solar panel road, called Wattway, opened. France spent US$5.2 million on 0.6 miles (1 kilometre) of road, and 30,000 square feet (3,000 square metres) of solar panels. It was hailed as the longest solar road in the world.

Media gathered around to take a walk down what was thought to be the road of the future. The French minister for energy said she wanted to have solar panels on one mile of road every 621 miles in the country within the next five years.

Despite grey skies on the day of the inauguration, France was leading the world for solar transportation.

But the brake was never removed, and the wheels never started rolling - so to speak.

It was a bold move beginning a solar panel trial in Normandy, France, since the region doesn't have the most sunshine. Caen, a city in Normandy, only has 44 days of strong sunshine in a year. Thunderstorms also reportedly broke solar panels on the road.

The trial road was meant to produce about 150,000 kWh a year, which is enough power to provide light for up to 5,000 people, every day. Instead, it was making just under 80,000 in 2018, and fewer than 40,000 by July 2019.

Colas, the company that built the road, said in 2016 that the solar panels were covered with resin containing sheets of silicon to make them capable of withstanding all traffic. But since the opening, panels have come loose or broken into little pieces.

In May 2018, 300 feet (90 metres) of the road had to be demolished since it wasn't salvageable.

The engineers also didn't take into account the effects of leaves, which caused damage and limited the amount of electricity the panels could produce. They also didn't think about the pressure and weight from tractors, two locals told Le Monde.

And now the trial looks like it's all over. Wattway's managing director Etienne Gaudin told Le Monde that it would not be going to market.

"Our system is not mature on long distance traffic," he said. The company would focus on creating electricity for smaller things, like CCTV cameras and lighting bus shelters.
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Tuckerfan · Aug 18, 2019

Electric dump truck seems to do the impossible.

World's largest EV never has to be recharged
A quarry in Biel, Switzerland, is operating the world's largest electric vehicle, a 110-ton dump truck, to haul lime and marl off the side of a mountain to a cement factory. Perhaps best of all, it consumes no energy doing it.

How is that possible, you ask?

The dump truck, at 45 tons, ascends the 13-percent grade and takes on 65 tons of ore. With more than double the weight going back down the hill, the beast's regenerative braking system recaptures more than enough energy to refill the charge the eDumper used going up.

The Elektro Dumper—eDumper for short—made by Kuhn Schweitz, is based on a Komatsu HB 605-7: 30 feet long, 14 feet wide, and 14 feet tall. The tires are six feet high, and the dump bed reaches to more than 28 feet, fully raised.

Kuhn Schweitz adds a 600 kilowatt-hour battery pack—big enough for six, long-range Tesla Model Ses—from Lithium Storage that weighs 9,000 pounds.

CNN recently brought Formula 1 driver Lucas DiGrassi along to test drive the machine, owned by Swiss cement company Ciments Vigier SA. He reported reaching the top of the grade with 80 percent, then recovering battery charge to 88 percent on the way down (not unlike our writer's experience with a Chevrolet Bolt EV in the Rockies.)

Marking that trip around 20 times a day, Kuhn Schweitz says the eDumper produces 200 kwh of surplus energy every day, or 77 megawatt-hours a year. A typical dump truck uses between 11,000 and 22,000 gallons of diesel fuel a year. That saves up to 196 metric tons of global-warming carbon-dioxide gas a year.
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garamet · Aug 18, 2019

@Tracker should see this. Big trucks are his thing.

Dayton Kitchens · Aug 18, 2019

garamet said: ↑

@Tracker should see this. Big trucks are his thing.
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To quote Donald Sutherland from The Dirty Dozen "Pretty, very pretty".

It's only a 65 ton capacity dump truck. I copied the video but I'll take it seriously when it can move at least four times that much.

garamet · Aug 18, 2019

Tracker said: ↑

garamet said: ↑

@Tracker should see this. Big trucks are his thing.
Click to expand...

To quote Donald Sutherland from The Dirty Dozen "Pretty, very pretty".

It's only a 65 ton capacity dump truck. I copied the video but I'll take it seriously when it can move at least four times that much.
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So the energy savings are of no interest to you.

Tuckerfan · Aug 18, 2019

Windpower now cheaper than natural gas. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/wind-power-prices-now-lower-than-the-cost-of-natural-gas/

Dayton Kitchens · Aug 18, 2019

garamet said: ↑

Tracker said: ↑

garamet said: ↑

@Tracker should see this. Big trucks are his thing.
Click to expand...

To quote Donald Sutherland from The Dirty Dozen "Pretty, very pretty".

It's only a 65 ton capacity dump truck. I copied the video but I'll take it seriously when it can move at least four times that much.
Click to expand...

So the energy savings are of no interest to you.
Click to expand...

very little.

garamet · Aug 19, 2019

Dayton Kitchens said: ↑

garamet said: ↑

Tracker said: ↑

garamet said: ↑

@Tracker should see this. Big trucks are his thing.
Click to expand...

To quote Donald Sutherland from The Dirty Dozen "Pretty, very pretty".

It's only a 65 ton capacity dump truck. I copied the video but I'll take it seriously when it can move at least four times that much.
Click to expand...

So the energy savings are of no interest to you.
Click to expand...

very little.
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Unless it's bigger than your house and impresses the neighbors, nothing else matters. Got it.

Tuckerfan · Aug 24, 2019

Fusion may have just inched closer.

Streamlined nuclear fusion reactors now possible with major breakthrough

Efforts to produce a working nuclear fusion reactor have led one scientist to create a formula to make them more cost-effective to build.

While some researchers theorise that nuclear fusion is just around the corner, we have yet to see a reactor that can successfully recreate the power of the sun for any useful length of time. However, a physicist at the US Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has developed a mathematical technique that simplifies the design of complex magnetic coils within the twisty machines that house fusion reactions.

Using this new technique, these machines, referred to as stellarators, could be made significantly cheaper, which would potentially bring nuclear fusion within closer reach.

Caoxiang Zhu, lead author of the research published to Nuclear Fusion, said the breakthrough can let physicists know in advance when coil shapes and placements could harm the plasma’s magnetic confinement. Aside from reducing costs, he added, it would also shorten a reactor’s construction time.

Complex alternative
Twisted, cruller-shaped stellarators are an alternative to the doughnut-shaped tokamaks that are more commonly used by scientists seeking to replicate fusion on Earth for a virtually inexhaustible supply of power to generate electricity.

What gives stellarators an advantage is that their production of highly stable plasmas is less liable to the damaging disruptions that tokamaks can incur. However, their complex design has made them trickier to work, until now.

For example, the coils of a stellarator must be constructed and arranged around a vacuum chamber with great precision. Otherwise, the resulting bumps and wiggles in the magnetic field could allow the plasma to escape and ruin the reactor.

In the past, scientists have used computer simulations to best determine coil placements. However, according to Zhu, this approach requires “massive computation resources and man-hours”.

The technique proposed by Zhu relies on something called a Hessian matrix, a mathematical tool that allows researchers to figure out which perturbations you have to control or avoid, and which you can ignore.

The new technique could help scientists design better stellarators, Zhu added. It could make possible ways to identify an optimal coil arrangement that no one had considered before.[/b][/size]
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Tuckerfan · Sep 7, 2019

Solar panels are good for 'maters.

Crops under solar panels can be a win-win

Solar panels might seem like they’re in direct competition with plants. One is catching sunlight to do photosynthesis, the other wants to take it to push electrons. Surely Highlander rules apply, and there can be only one on a plot of land, right?

In reality, it’s not a zero-sum game. Some plants will burn in direct sun, after all, and so there are plenty of food crops that would be happy to share their space with panels. And as a new study led by the University of Arizona’s Greg Barron-Gafford shows, the combination isn’t even necessarily a compromise—there are some synergies that can bring significant benefits to a solar-agriculture.

Everybody wins
Prof. Barron-Gafford et al. focused on dry areas like the American Southwest, where water for crops is limiting and things are projected to get drier. The shade provided by solar panels could lower soil surface temperatures and evaporation, the researchers thought, and vegetation could similarly keep the panels themselves a little cooler than a bare ground installation. Since solar panel efficiency drops at high temperature, that could mean more electricity generated.

To test this, the researchers set up three plots for the summer months: one only solar panels, one with only crops, and one with both. The solar panels, in this case, were built to stand a little over 3 meters off the ground—higher than a typical solar array. All three plots were irrigated the same, and temperatures, humidity, and soil moisture were tracked. Cherry tomatoes, jalapeños, and chiltepin peppers were chosen as the crops to test.

The results showed that combining things did alter temperatures, as expected. Air temperatures stayed a little over 1°C cooler during the day, on average, but they also stayed about 0.5°C warmer overnight. The temperature of the solar panels, though, was about 9°C cooler during the day because of the growth beneath them. The air was also a little less dry under the solar panels, and the soil dried out more slowly between waterings.

Top tomatoes
As for the crops, there were some significant differences. As the chiltepin peppers are shade-adapted, they were considerably happier with some solar panels overhead. Growth was calculated in terms of CO2 uptake, and this was 33% higher in the combined plot. The water-use efficiency of the plants didn’t change, so they also used more soil moisture as they grew. The mass of peppers they produced, however, tripled under the solar panels.

The jalapeños, on the other hand, took up 11% less CO2 under the panels, showing that they missed the extra sunlight. Even so, their water efficiency increased in a big way, and they used 65% less water. The amount of peppers produced dropped slightly, but not beyond the error bars.

Finally, the cherry tomatoes saw a 65% increase in CO2 uptake and a 65% increase in water-use efficiency. They produced twice as much fruit while using the same amount of water.

Based on the temperature-efficiency curves of these solar panels, the researchers calculated that the cooler temperatures should increase electricity generation by about 3% over the summer months, averaging out to a 1% gain for the whole year.

The researchers see potential here (and in similar “agrivoltaics” experiments elsewhere) that is worth investigating and optimizing. Solar panel installations may not be compatible with the machinery used to harvest many crops, and boosting the panels higher off the ground costs extra. But there are configurations for certain crops in certain areas that can make a lot of sense. Farmers could save water, make money from a solar lease, and might even find that workers are much more comfortable and safe working under some shade—all while allowing solar arrays to expand in those areas without competing for land with agriculture.
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Tuckerfan · Sep 14, 2019

If we replaced dams with solar panels we'd have more energy.

Scientists 'Tantalised' by Draining Every Hydropower Dam in The US For Solar Panels

If all the hydro-power dams in the United States were removed and replaced with solar panels, it would take up a fraction of the land and produce substantially more electricity, according to a new analysis.

The idea is ambitious, and for now, it's really just a thought experiment. Today, hydropower is a significant source of renewable energy in the US, accounting for roughly six percent of the country's total electricity output.

Removing all 2,603 hydro dams in America would leave a huge energy void behind, but it could also provide room for greener opportunities.

While it's true that hydropower dams are a renewable source of energy, they still produce large amounts of greenhouse gases and can be environmentally destructive and costly to maintain in the long term.

In recent years, these criticisms have led to a growing dam removal movement. And although it's theoretical, a massive investment in solar power might be able to cushion that loss.

To cover for all the hydro dams currently in use, scientists estimate we would need nearly 530,000 hectares of photovoltaics (PV). While this sounds like a lot, it's a "surprisingly modest" amount compared to the combined size of most reservoirs, which cover nearly 4 million hectares nationwide.

In fact, the new analysis suggests that substitute solar panels could match the total energy output from hydro dams while using just 13 percent of the same land.

"I think that's pretty astonishing and tantalising too," John Waldman, an aquatic conservation biologist from the City University of New York, told Carbon Brief.

"I'm hoping this presents a different mindset for people who think about our energy futures."

The potential land sitting under reservoirs right now is immense, and if only 50 percent of that surface is drained and used for solar panels, it could greatly improve energy efficiency, producing nearly three-and-a-half times the amount of energy hydropower currently generates.

Even in a more conservative hypothetical, where only a quarter of that drained land is used for solar farms, Waldman and his colleagues calculate energy production could increase 1.7 fold.

In some states, this has the potential to free up huge swathes of land for other purposes, including wildlife habitat, recreation, and agriculture. In Florida, for instance, scientists calculated a solar farm the size of New York's Central Park (341 hectares) could replace 26,520 hectares of the state's hydro dams.

The new analysis focused on solar power because it is easily scalable, but the authors argue the same logic can also be applied to wind power on a reservoir's surrounding ridges and hydrokinetic turbines in a newly-flowing river.

"Also, potentially expensive and difficult-to-permit electrical lines that transmitted the hydropower already exist at these locations and could potentially be repurposed to carry electricity from alternative sources," the authors argue.

Using existing infrastructure, Waldman ultimately hopes to create an "energy park" in these reservoirs that he says will be "more resilient and more productive than hydropower alone".

The cost of this major transition is not evaluated in the new analysis, and in all likelihood the price would fluctuate quite dramatically depending on the particular hydropower site.

But there's also a cost to hydropower that is rarely considered, especially in the developing world where the technology is taking off. Hydro dams can not only disrupt river ecology, they can also lead to deforestation, a loss of biodiversity, substantial emissions, the displacement of thousands of people, and harms to nearby food and water quality.

Of course, dam removal also needs to be assessed in terms of potential damage to the local ecosystem or even unanticipated downstream impacts, although generally the effect of river restoration has been positive.

The authors of the new analysis admit that their calculations are not exactly "realistic" and their hypothetical is more about potential than anything else. Nowadays, we still can't figure out how to efficiently store and deploy vast amounts of solar power when we need it, so battery storage would need to improve for this idea to come to fruition.

Nevertheless, solar technology is moving quick and Waldman and his colleagues see this as an important avenue to explore in the coming years. So far, most of the dams that have closed down in the US do not produce electricity, and in many ways, that's because we don't have another alternative.

"Today, recognition of decades of unsuccessful restorations predicated on engineered fishways, the rapid ageing of our dams and the inevitable need for their removal for safety reasons in the years ahead, and the advent of other, increasingly cost-effective forms of alternative energy all suggest that there is a way to both reopen our rivers and to replace the energy production they so long provided," Waldman argues in an accompanying editorial.

If solar technology can meet the demands of the 21st century, it could provide considerable environmental and ecological benefits, especially when compared to hydropower. Even better, it has the potential to do this without sacrificing our current energy output.

"The thought experiment proposed by Waldman and colleagues is provocative and contributes to outside-the-box thinking about how society can address pressing issues surrounding freshwater sustainability and energy use," writes political scientist Jeffrey Dudas in a review of the study.

"However, the next steps will be immensely more complex and require additional, more nuanced analyses and technological innovation to help strike the right balance."

Waldman's hypothetical may be extreme, but so are the times we live in.

The findings were published in Nature Sustainability.
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Bickendan · Sep 16, 2019

Counterpoint, possibly specific to the Columbia: the Columbia River dams (Bonneville, The Dalles, McNary, Grand Cooley) also function as flood control dams.
That's not to say that removing the would ultimately be better, but they are protecting Portland and Vancouver from seasonal flooding (like which wiped out Vanport).

Tuckerfan · Dec 20, 2019

IBM's developed a better battery.

IBM Research Created a New Battery That Outperforms Lithium-Ion—No Problematic Heavy Metals Required

With everything from cars, to trucks, to even airplanes going electric, the demand for batteries is going to continue to skyrocket in the coming years—but the availability of the materials currently used to make them is limited. So scientists at IBM Research have developed a new battery whose unique ingredients can be extracted from seawater instead of mining.

The problems with the design of current battery technologies like lithium-ion are well known, we just tend to turn a blind eye when it means our smartphones can run for a full day without a charge. In addition to lithium, they require heavy metals like cobalt, manganese, and nickel which come from giant mines that present hazards to the environment, and often to those doing the actual mining. These metals are also a finite resource, and as more and more devices and vehicles switch to battery power, their availability is going to decrease at a staggering pace.

As a potential solution, scientists at IBM Research’s Battery Lab came up with a new design that replaces the need for cobalt and nickel in the cathode, and also uses a new liquid electrolyte (the material in a battery that helps ions move from one end to the other) with a high flash point. The combination of the new cathode and the electrolyte materials was also found to limit the creation of lithium dendrites which are spiky structures that often develop in lithium-ion batteries that can lead to short circuits. So not only would this new battery have less of an impact on the environment to manufacture, but it would also be considerably safer to use, with a drastically reduced risk of fire or explosions.

But the benefits of IBM Research’s design don’t stop there. The researchers believe the new battery would have a larger capacity than existing lithium-ion batteries, could potentially charge to about 80 percent of its full capacity in just five minutes, would be more energy-efficient, and, on top of it all, it would be cheaper to manufacture which in turn means they could help reduce the cost of gadgets and electric vehicles. These results are estimations based on how the battery has performed in the lab so far, but IBM Research is teaming up with companies like Mercedes-Benz Research and Development to further explore this technology, so it will be quite a few years before you’re able to feel a little less guilty about your smartphone addiction.
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Tuckerfan · Feb 26, 2020

Tuckerfan · May 2, 2020

Not the first time that I've seen a method for powering things using aluminum, but I've not seen anyone claiming this kind of performance.

Penn Engineering’s New Scavenger Technology Allows Robots to ‘Eat’ Metal for Energy

When electronics need their own power sources, there are two basic options: batteries and harvesters. Batteries store energy internally, but are therefore heavy and have a limited supply. Harvesters, such as solar panels, collect energy from their environments. This gets around some of the downsides of batteries but introduces new ones, in that they can only operate in certain conditions and can’t turn that energy into useful power very quickly.

New research from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science is bridging the gap between these two fundamental technologies for the first time in the form of a “metal-air scavenger” that gets the best of both worlds.

This metal-air scavenger works like a battery, in that it provides power by repeatedly breaking and forming a series of chemical bonds. But it also works like a harvester, in that power is supplied by energy in its environment: specifically, the chemical bonds in metal and air surrounding the metal-air scavenger.

The result is a power source that has 10 times more power density than the best energy harvesters and 13 times more energy density than lithium-ion batteries.

In the long term, this type of energy source could be the basis for a new paradigm in robotics, where machines keep themselves powered by seeking out and “eating” metal, breaking down its chemical bonds for energy like humans do with food.

In the near term, this technology is already powering a pair of spin-off companies. The winners of Penn’s annual Y-Prize Competition are planning to use metal-air scavengers to power low-cost lights for off-grid homes in the developing world and long-lasting sensors for shipping containers that could alert to theft, damage or even human trafficking.

The researchers, James Pikul, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, along with Min Wang and Unnati Joshi, members of his lab, published a study demonstrating their scavenger’s capabilities in the journal ACS Energy Letters.

The motivation for developing their metal-air scavenger, or MAS, stemmed from the fact that the technologies that make up robots’ brains and the technologies that power them are fundamentally mismatched when it comes to miniaturization.

As the size of individual transistors shrink, chips provide more computing power in smaller and lighter packages. But batteries don’t benefit the same way when getting smaller; the density of chemical bonds in a material are fixed, so smaller batteries necessarily mean fewer bonds to break.

“This inverted relationship between computing performance and energy storage makes it very difficult for small-scale devices and robots to operate for long periods of time,” Pikul says. “There are robots the size of insects, but they can only operate for a minute before their battery runs out of energy.”

Worse still, adding a bigger battery won’t allow a robot to last longer; the added mass takes more energy to move, negating the extra energy provided by the bigger battery. The only way to break this frustrating inverted relationship is to forage for chemical bonds, rather than to pack them along.

“Harvesters, like those that collect solar, thermal or vibrational energy, are getting better,” Pikul says. “They’re often used to power sensors and electronics that are off the grid and where you might not have anyone around to swap out batteries. The problem is that they have low power density, meaning they can’t take energy out of the environment as fast as a battery can deliver it.”

“Our MAS has a power density that’s ten times better than the best harvesters, to the point that we can compete against batteries,” he says, “It’s using battery chemistry, but doesn’t have the associated weight, because it’s taking those chemicals from the environment.”

Like a traditional battery, the researchers’ MAS starts with a cathode that’s wired to the device it’s powering. Underneath the cathode is a slab of hydrogel, a spongy network of polymer chains that conducts electrons between the metal surface and the cathode via the water molecules it carries. With the hydrogel acting as an electrolyte, any metal surface it touches functions as the anode of a battery, allowing electrons to flow to the cathode and power the connected device.

For the purposes of their study, the researchers connected a small motorized vehicle to the MAS. Dragging the hydrogel behind it, the MAS vehicle oxidized metallic surfaces it traveled over, leaving a microscopic layer of rust in its wake.

To demonstrate the efficiency of this approach, the researchers had their MAS vehicle drive in circles on an aluminum surface. The vehicle was outfitted with a small reservoir that continuously wicked water into the hydrogel to prevent it from drying out.

“Energy density is the ratio of available energy to the weight that has to be carried,” Pikul says. “Even factoring in the weight of the extra water, the MAS had 13 times the energy density of a lithium ion battery because the vehicle only has to carry the hydrogel and cathode, and not the metal or oxygen which provide the energy.”

The researchers also tested the MAS vehicles on zinc and stainless steel. Different metals give the MAS different energy densities, depending on their potential for oxidation.

This oxidation reaction takes place only within 100 microns of the surface, so while the MAS may use up all the readily available bonds with repeated trips, there’s little risk of it doing significant structural damage to the metal it’s scavenging.

With so many possible uses, the researchers’ MAS system was a natural fit for Penn’s annual Y-Prize, a business plan competition that challenges teams to build companies around nascent technologies developed at Penn Engineering. This year’s first-place team, Metal Light, earned $10,000 for their proposal to use MAS technology in low-cost lighting for off-grid homes in the developing world. M-Squared, which earned $4,000 in second place, intends to use MAS-powered sensors in shipping containers.

“In the near term, we see our MAS powering internet-of-things technologies, like what Metal Light and M-Squared propose,” Pikul says. “But what was really compelling to us, and the motivation behind this work, is how it changes the way we think about designing robots.”

Much of Pikul’s other research involves improving technology by taking cues from the natural world. For example, his lab’s high-strength, low-density “metallic wood” was inspired by the cellular structure of trees, and his work on a robotic lionfish involved giving it a liquid battery circulatory system that also pneumatically actuated its fins.

The researchers see their MAS as drawing on an even more fundamental biological concept: food.

“As we get robots that are more intelligent and more capable, we no longer have to restrict ourselves to plugging them into a wall. They can now find energy sources for themselves, just like humans do,” Pikul says. “One day, a robot that needs to recharge its batteries will just need to find some aluminum to ‘eat’ with a MAS, which would give it enough power to for it work until its next meal.”

This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research, grant N00014–19–1–2353. It was carried out in part at the Singh Center for Nanotechnology, which is supported by the NSF National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Program under grant NNCI-1542153.
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Tuckerfan · May 21, 2020

Electric Car Charging Posts That Telescope Out of the Sidewalk

Bickendan · May 25, 2020

Plot twist: You were parked on top of it and it punched a hole your gas tank.

Tuckerfan · Aug 12, 2020

Hydrogen powered supercar gets 1K miles to the tank.

This hydrogen-powered supercar can drive 1,000 miles on a single tank

Hyperion, a California-based company, has unveiled a hydrogen-powered supercar the company hopes will change the way people view hydrogen fuel cell technology.

The Hyperion XP-1 will be able to drive for up to 1,000 miles on one tank of compressed hydrogen gas and its electric motors will generate more than 1,000 horsepower, according to the company. The all-wheel-drive car can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in a little over two seconds, the company said.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are electric cars that use hydrogen to generate power inside the car rather than using batteries to store energy. The XP-1 doesn't combust hydrogen but uses it in fuel cells that combine hydrogen with oxygen from the air in a process that creates water, the vehicle's only emission, and a stream of electricity to power the car.

The XP-1 has much longer range than a battery-powered electric car because compressed hydrogen has much more power per liter than a battery, Hyperion CEO Angelo Kafantaris explained. Also, because hydrogen gas is very light, the overall vehicle weighs much less than one packed with heavy batteries. That, in turn, makes the car more energy efficient so that it can go farther and faster.
Many car companies, including Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and General Motors, have produced hydrogen fuel vehicles for research purposes or for sale in small numbers.
But the technology is starting to gain more support. Start up truck maker, Nikola, for example, plans to sell hydrogen-powered semis and pickup trucks. Other companies haven't yet created an exciting car that will capture the public's attention, though, said Kafantaris.
The biggest challenge facing hydrogen-powered cars has been fueling them. Compared to gasoline or electricity, there's little hydrogen infrastructure in America. Public charging stations for electric cars are much more plentiful than hydrogen filling stations A Department of Energy map of publicly accessible hydrogen filling stations shows clusters of dots around major California cities and no dots at all throughout nearly all the rest of the country.

Hydrogen is the first and simplest element on the periodic table. Colorless and odorless, it has only a single proton at its center with one electron around it.
While it is the most plentiful element in the universe, hydrogen doesn't naturally exist by itself. Before it can be used as a fuel, hydrogen has to be broken out of molecules of water, natural gas or other substances. That's usually done by using electricity to split those larger molecules apart. Energy is then released inside the car when the hydrogen combines again with oxygen.
The main advantage of hydrogen is that pumping a tank full of hydrogen takes much less time than charging a battery. It only takes three to five minutes to fill the tank on the XP-1 for a 1,000 mile trip, for instance.
Hydrogen gas also isn't subject to wear and degradation as batteries are, especially when fast-charged, said Kafantaris. The XP-1 does have a battery that acts as a buffer to store electricity generated by the fuel cell, but it's much smaller than the battery packs used in electric cars.

Hyperion already has several operational prototype cars, said Kafantaris. The first production cars are expected to be delivered to customers by the end of next year. Kafantaris did not detail pricing for the car, but indicated that prices will vary depending on the level of performance. The highest-performing versions, ones capable of producing 1,000 horsepower, could cost in the millions. The company is capping production at 300 examples.
The company is hoping to manufacture the XP-1 somewhere in the Midwest, Kafantaris said. Following the XP-1, the company hopes to make more practical hydrogen-fueled cars for a broader range of customers.
The company also hopes to popularize the idea of hydrogen as an energy medium for vehicles, as well as for other uses, he said. Hyperion has been working with NASA to commercialize various hydrogen technologies that the space agency currently uses and to develop new uses, he said.
The space agency confirmed to CNN Business that Hyperion has agreements to license a number of NASA technologies.
"Part of what we're aiming to do is to give a sense of pride for what America has done in the past, through NASA technology, and kind of brings people together around something that everybody can look at and say 'That's American, I'm proud of that," Kafantaris said.
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Bickendan · Aug 17, 2020

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