Daylight Saving a Waste of Energy

Study: Daylight saving time a waste of energy
http://www.physorg.com/news187946326.html

The US state of Indiana has 92 counties, but until 2006 only 15 of them adjusted their clocks for daylight saving time, with the remainder keeping standard time all year, at least partly to appease farmers who did not want the change. Then in 2006 the Indiana Legislature decided the entire state should adopt daylight saving time, beginning that spring.
This unique situation enabled professor of economics Matthew Kotchen and his PhD student Laura E. Grant, both from the University of California at Santa Barbara, to study how the adoption of daylight saving affected energy use. They studied over seven million electricity meter readings in southern Indiana every month for three years, and compared the energy consumption before and after the change. The 15 counties that had adopted daylight saving time much earlier were the control group, which allowed them to adjust for the effects of weather extremes over the period.
The result of the study showed that electricity use went up in the counties adopting daylight saving time in 2006, costing $8.6 million more in household electricity bills. The conclusion reached by Kotchen and Grant was that while the lighting costs were reduced in the afternoons by daylight saving, the greater heating costs in the mornings, and more use of air-conditioners on hot afternoons more than offset these savings. Kotchen said the results were more “clear and unambiguous” than results in any other paper he had presented.
Kotchen and Grant's work reinforces the findings of an Australian study in 2007 by economists Ryan Kellogg and Hendrik Wolff, who studied the extension of daylight saving time for two months in New South Wales and Victoria for the 2000 Summer Olympics. They also found an increase in energy use.
Daylight saving was initially introduced, and has been extended, because it was believed to save energy, but the studies upon which this idea was based were conducted in the 1970s. A big difference between then and the present is the massive increase in the take-up of air conditioning. In hot periods daylight saving time means air conditioners tend to be run more when people arrive home from work, while in cooler periods more heating is used.
Professor Kotchen presented the paper at the March National Bureau of Economic Research conference.

Green Plastic - Recycling Plastic

IBM Develops Earth-Friendly Plastic
By Jordan Robertson

March 10, 2010 5:01AM

IBM and Stanford University researchers have created a new recycling method that can reduce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic to its basic building blocks, while retaining its original properties and making it "ridiculously economical" to build it back up again. But a critical question will be the price of the technology.

When you recycle a plastic bottle, it doesn't necessarily become another plastic bottle. Because of limitations in recycling technology, a common type of plastic used in water bottles and food containers weakens so much when it's recycled that it can't be used again for the same purpose. Some small amount of the plastic might make it into another bottle, but more often than not, it instead becomes synthetic carpet or clothing and can't easily be recycled a second time. So when those products are used up, they end up in landfills.
Researchers from IBM Corp. and Stanford University believe they have developed a way to significantly improve the quality of recycled plastic and strip away those limitations.
A new recycling method the researchers are announcing Tuesday involves a way to break the plastic down so that it can be reused again and again in the same form. It is an advancement that could intrigue beverage companies and help cut the environmental damage from making plastic from scratch.
The innovation is a new family of catalysts that can reduce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic to its basic building blocks, while retaining its original properties and making it "ridiculously economical" to build it back up again, said Bob Allen, senior manager of chemistry and functional materials for IBM's Almaden research center in Silicon Valley.
The project is in the laboratory on a small scale. Researchers are planning a bigger pilot at the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, home to Saudi Arabia's national laboratories. Allen said the technology could be commercially available within five years if the pilot goes well.
A critical question will be the price of the technology.
Andrew Williamson, a director with the venture capital firm Physic Ventures who has seen IBM's research, said it could help solve one of the biggest challenges facing food and beverage companies in designing environmentally friendly packaging. His firm invests money on behalf of two major food and beverage companies.
"These commodity plastics like PET are very low cost," Williamson said. "What they've come up with will have to prove to be competitive on cost, and that remains to be seen."

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0220018S0YJK

EADS Astrium develops space power concept

By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News

Europe's biggest space company is seeking partners to fly a demonstration solar power mission in orbit.

EADS Astrium says the satellite system would collect the Sun's energy and transmit it to Earth via an infrared laser, to provide electricity.
Space solar power has been talked about for more than 30 years. However, there have always been question marks over its cost, efficiency and safety.
But Astrium believes the technology is close to proving its maturity.
"Today we are not at an operational stage; it's just a test," said chief executive officer Francois Auque. "In order to implement a solution, of course, we would need to find partnerships and to invest, to develop operational systems," he told BBC News.

Those partnerships could comprise space agencies, the EU or national governments and even power companies, he said.
'Safe' system
Space solar power is an attractive concept because it would be clean, inexhaustible, and available 24 hours a day.
The amount of energy falling on photovoltaic cells placed in orbit is considerably greater than the same solar panels positioned on the Earth's surface. In space, the incidence of light is unaffected by clouds, dust or the filtering effects of atmospheric gases.

Power transmission by laser is being studied in the lab

Critics, though, have always pointed to multiple hurdles - to the cost of launching and assembling large solar stations in orbit, to the losses in efficiency in conversion, and to the safety issues surrounding some wireless transmission methods, particularly those that use microwaves.
Astrium says the latter can be addressed by using infrared lasers which, if misdirected, would not risk "cooking" anyone in their path.
The company has already tested power transmission via laser in its labs, and is now working on improving the efficiencies of the end-to-end system.
Necessary efficiency
Robert Laine, Astrium's chief technology officer, acknowledges however that there are still some big challenges to be overcome.
"Today, we will be limited in power by the size of the laser we can build. That's a prime limitation," he said.

The concept would need to be proven with a demonstration mission

"On the receive side, the conversion of this infrared energy into electricity - that's something which is progressing very fast and we are working with the University of Surrey [in the UK] to develop converters.
"The principle is to get a very high efficiency of conversion of the infrared [laser light] into electricity. If we achieve 80% then it's a real winner."
Dr Laine said a small demonstration of the technology ought to be ready for launch in the coming decade.
"Like any technology, someone has to demonstrate it first before it can become an operational system," he told BBC News.
"We have reached a point where, in the next five years, we could build something which is in the order of 10-20 kW to transmit useful energy to the ground."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8467472.stm

Bloom Box Helps Companies Reduce Electricity Costs

Technology called the Bloom Box is freeing some large corporations, including Google, Federal Express, Wal-Mart and eBay, from the electrical grid. The fuel-cell technology uses NASA technology to create a powerplant in a box. Bloom Energy founder K.R. Sridhar expects costs to drop and eventually put a Bloom Box in every American home.

Your business probably already uses Wi-Fi for wirelessly connecting laptops in your office, and employees' cell phones are replacing landlines. Now a new energy-in-a-box technology could let your business disconnect from the electrical grid as well.
While many new technologies for untangling businesses and consumers from power lines are emerging, one called the Bloom Box has been receiving a lot of attention recently -- including a feature piece on Sunday's 60 Minutes. The fuel-cell technology, from Bloom Energy in Silicon Valley, Calif., adapts NASA technology to create a clean-energy powerplant in a box that is now being used by several large corporations, including Google, Federal Express, Wal-Mart and eBay.
Derived from NASA Technology
The key scientist behind the box is Bloom Energy founder K.R. Sridhar, who created a similar energy box for generating oxygen on Mars when he worked for NASA. For earth-bound use, Sridhar decided to pump oxygen into the box, where it helps create a chemical reaction that produces electricity.
The fuel cells in the Bloom Box are developed from inexpensive, sand-based ceramics coated with special black and green "inks," whose composition is a closely guarded secret. Instead of requiring pure hydrogen, as many fuel cells do, the Bloom Box can use natural gas, bio-gas or other sources as fuel.
According to the company, which will officially announce the technology on Wednesday, one of the fuel-cell discs can provide enough electricity for a single light bulb, while 64 discs can power a Starbucks.
Google reportedly has been powering one of its data centers for about 18 months with four boxes, using about 50 percent the amount of natural gas that otherwise would be required. eBay has said that its five Bloom Boxes, which run on bio-gas, saved the company $100,000 in electrical costs over nine months.
Currently, the pricing for a Bloom Box is steep at about $700,000-$800,000. The California-based companies that purchased them were helped by state and federal subsidies.
A Bloom Box in Every Home?
Sridhar expects the price for the smaller boxes to drop to a few thousand dollars each, which could make them affordable for the average home. Within five to 10 years, he said, there will be one in every American home.
Such projections could be important in turning Bloom Energy from the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and federal research money into a profitable business. Reportedly, the company also has orders from a variety of other companies, including Coca-Cola, Adobe Systems, and the San Francisco Airport.
But some industry observers note that fuel-cell technology is not new, and there are various patents covering the same basic process. The biggest issue with fuel cells has been making a business out of it.
If Bloom Energy can make a business out of it, Information Technology Intelligence Corp.'s Laura DiDio said, then businesses could be interested. "If you showed businesses an alternative energy" that is clean and cheap, she said, "many companies would, at the very least, give it a look and see."
But, she noted, this and other technologies still need to be "commoditized and perfected."

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Bloom-Box-Helps-Cut-Energy-Costs/story.xhtml?story_id=11200CI8HOUO