Maniacal Energy Storage Schemes

A common complaint about renewable energy is that it’s intermittent – the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing.  One rarely hears the opposite charge against nuclear power – it’s generating electricity even when no one wants it in the middle of the night – but renewable intermittency is a real problem.  [...]

Electric Vans Already Win

Update 5/13/11 – Smith will soon start using A123 batteries.  See bottom. I wrote here about how electric cars were just better pieces of machinery than gas-powered ones, since they were quieter, handled better, and were more reliable.  This article, “Doing Delivery Rounds in an Electric Smith Newton” by Nick Kurczewski, talks about exactly this [...]

The Long View

At a time when the US Congress is divided on whether climate change even exists, the Massachusetts Audubon Society is making plans on how to adapt to it.   Their problem is that climate change emperils their nature sanctuaries.   They own 34,000 acres of land in the state, about 0.5% of the total, making them one [...]

Anti-Romantic Lighting

If you’re ever taken out to dinner to a restaurant with fluorescent lighting, you can be pretty sure that your date is an idiot.   That’s the least flattering kind of light known.  Well, maybe it’s not as bad as yellow sodium street lights, but truck yards are not exactly places for romance either.   Fluorescents are [...]

Electric Cars Are Just Better

Last month I attended the New England Auto Show, and had a chance to see the three mass-market high-electric cars: The Nissan Leaf: 100 mi all-electric range, 24 kWh battery, 80 kW motors, no gas engine, $33K. The Chevy Volt: 40 mi all-electric range, 16 kWh battery, 110 kW motors, 1.4L gas engine, $42K. Toyota [...]

Russians Throw at the Basket From Mid-Court

Just this week a Russian mogul, Mikhail Prokorhov, showed off the design of an all-Russian gas-electric hybrid car, the Yo.  It’s an unfortunate name in English (it’s the letter ‘e’ in Russian), but they’re claiming 67 mpg and $14,500 when it goes on sale in 18 months. Well!  Unlike the conservative Soviet-era engineering on the [...]

Plating the Planet With PV

So I see from this report from GreenTech Media that the worldwide production of photovoltaic (PV) cells is due to pass 10 GW this year.   That’s a kind of random milestone, but to put it in perspective, that’s about 2 GW worth of baseload power, like that from nuclear plants.  Nukes run about 90% of [...]

The Awesome, Yet Easily Controlled, Power of Nature

io9.com recently posted a nice set of pictures here, of Niagara Falls being shut off for maintenance  in 1969 by the Army Corps of Engineers.  Here’s what they looked like from Prospect Point when off: And here’s what they look like when on: The pix originally came from Rob Glasson’s Flickr Photostream.  The Corps was [...]

Bike MPG

It being officially spring (albeit with so much rain that even the ducks get depressed), I broke out the bike and bopped around a bit.  There’s a nice rail trail near me (the Minuteman Bikeway) that covers about 2/3 of the way to work, so I often commute that way in the summer.  Google’s new [...]

The Inevitability of Zeppelins

The consistently interesting magazine “American Scientist” has a good article this month on energy issues and transportation, “The Other Climate Threat” by Andreas Schäfer, Henry D. Jacoby, John B. Heywood, and Ian A. Waitz. It’s behind a pay wall, unfortunately, but can be found at better newstands.  A more technical version of it is also [...]