Oct

5

The Weekend Link List

October 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Do you believe the argument about wind energy that it’s only useful when the wind blows? Don’t count on it not being there when its still. Those hardy folks in Iowa and their neighbors have started investing their money in saving wind energy for later use. It’s really interesting. See:

http://www.isepa.com/ and http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/reinsider/story?id=50123

If you want a skewed look at renewable energy and fuel supplies and one of the most sophisticated responses possible look at Robert Rapiers take from his post of October 1st. While it has waited all week for me to respond I will say in my defense that this is a topic that has little for excitement about timeliness and a huge negative potential over the course of months. I also have little to ad as Mr. Rapier has it covered and we will need some free time to soak it up, and it needs some soaking as the topic Robert picks to run a critical assessment is rather threatening in its, well . . . we’re using polite words around here. Its well known that solar direct to voltaic or thermal is much more efficient than photosynthesis, but they get killed in transportation because of the density problems. See the original on Mr. Rapier’s site on the October 1 date:

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/ which is hard to follow as blogging software can have its difficulties or see it in a more convenient layout at with the astonishing quality of comments at: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3033#more

To get to the future economy of hydrogen or electric or however it plays out we need to get through a transition that needs high density fuels like what we use now such as gasoline diesel and jet fuel. Although Mr. Rapier and Berkeley Professor Tad Patzek look at biofuels with a skew that ignores the next decade or so the rest of us are not likely to buy an electric car with hundreds of miles of range from batteries and super capacitors all within the next few years. Thus cellulosic butanol is a near sure bet and if the corn farmer and ethanol folks catch on we’ll be much more likely to afford personal transportation devises like cars minivans and light trucks for a long time to come. The easiest read and highly informative article on the cellulosic problem is a good read:

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/15-10/ff_plant

Speaking of wind there is money out there from, well John Deere. See the news bit:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/05/news/companies/deere_wind/index.htm

Scientific American has a good rep and when they publish a story about someone and the facts the character is showing I tend to look closely. In this article a fellow named David Mills purports that his company’s technology of thermal solar can displace the generating capacity of the US, which would put the coal and gas generation facilities out of production. Well, the numbers he uses look OK, but we’re a long way from putting up enough solar concentrating collectors to make much of a dent. But I suspect there is enough “right” about this to give it serious consideration especially out west. Just note he has a caveat, “with storage and new transmission structure” so it looks like the Iowans are ahead for now. But when you get to page two and see that he’s claiming 8 cent per kWh stored electricity its time to look pretty closely. So before I spoil the read – See:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=1FC8E87E-

E7F2-99DF-3253ADDFDBEC8D41&ref=rss

Have a good weekend!


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