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January 2015

 

Greetings!    

 

This month marks the release of our newest bioenergy product,  the OsteoPad, with our own naturopathic Dr. Panting showing her design for the flannel zippered cover, which fulfills a long held dream of ours to offer a reasonably priced pulsed EMF device with a pad that will make any elderly person's bones stronger AS THEY SLEEP. We have sold a few of them already ahead of schedule which have customers reporting tingling effects in their legs where the pad was placed, since the OsteoPad produces the proper electromagnetic signal that opens calcium channels in the bone. It takes a few months to restore bones with osteoporosis but one can have a bone densitometer test done before and after a few months. This product finally addresses the serious health problem in America where one out of every two people are getting some degree of osteoporosis as they age without weight-bearing exercise (Time, Oct. 5, 2004, p. 101). Try one out today for 30 days at no risk!

 

As we reported in November's Future Energy eNews, NIST has a house which they report produces "free energy" in a northern climate and Dr. A. Hunter Fanney gave a presentation at the Department of Commerce. Now, here are her  Presentation Slides (pdf format) and you can  Watch a video of the presentation.  During this presentation, you will discover just how many virtual dollars NIST's virtual family of four saved on their energy bills, and what environmentally-friendly technology, building materials, and construction techniques got them there.

 

Another popular topic is how the electric car is becoming more and more attractive. How about 400 miles on a single charge? With most cars giving the owners only about 300 miles per tankful of gas, the reliable estimate of at least 350 miles for a SINGLE electric charge on the newTesla roadster is even better in our Story #1.  We note that both Related Articles are also very interesting, including the GM Volt update and the electrochemical fuel cell Aether Force car from Europe that has too much horsepower for a street car but also about 370 miles for a "tankful" of salt water electrolyte. Certainly, any of these options are more viable than paying $67/barrel cost for crude oil from tar sands in Alberta.

 

Our Story #2 shares an innovative design for a concentrating solar collector named the Sunflower Solar Harvester from  http://www.airlightenergy.com/ developed in Switzerland to supply heat AND electricity. One unit supplies 12 kW of electricity from the 2000 times concentrating reflectors. The company Airlight Energy has also exhibited at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi held in January every year since 2006, which started seven years after IRI had its first Conference on Future Energy in 1999. Obviously, future energy is becoming more and more important to the rest of the world.

 

Story #3 fulfills another long held dream of a carbon free "clean coal" plant. It is hard to believe but it took the Canadian SaskPower at Boundary Dam to beat the U.S. to the goal of such an attractive accomplishment, capable of reactivating the foundering coal industry.  The plant demonstrates that so-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) can work at a large scale-a crucial achievement given that CCS could play a significant role worldwide in reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change. This is especially important given the new temperature record set in 2014 of 60.9F (16C) for the world's oceans average which is 1.03F above the 20th century average

 

Story #4 offers a new service available through the Energy and Environment Studies Institute (EESI) here in DC, listing major clean energy jobs available around the world. This includes renewable energy jobs and energy efficiency positions listed mostly by the energy technology category. Hopefully a few of our readers will benefit from these opportunities.

 

Lastly, with the IRI patented  Wearable Therapeutic  Antioxidant Clothing  design ready to take off in the licensing arena, especially in the sports industry, we have been following this trend with other similar inventions. However, it is surprising how little usefulness is demonstrated in some of the latest electric clothing innovations, such as Story #5 about  Microsoft attempt with a scarf that heats or vibrates on demand. Compare this with Dr. Panting's patent designed to absorb antioxidants and quench free radicals on demand, which increases if the wearer is under stress or creates perspiration.

 

Sincerely,

  

Thomas Valone, PhD, PE.

Editor

 

IN THIS ISSUE
1) NEW TESLA ROADSTER TRAVELS 400 MILES ON SINGLE CHARGE
2) SOLAR SUNFLOWERS BRING CLEAN ENERGY ANYWHERE
3) FIRST COAL PLANT THAT CAPTURES ITS CARBON EMISSIONS
4) CLEAN ENERGY JOBS AROUND THE WORLD
5) MICROSOFT QUEST FOR WEARABLE ELECTRONICS

 

 

 

Osteoporosis? Our Newest Item

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1)  The New Tesla Roadser Travels 400 miles on Single Charge

By Brian Fung, Washington Post, December 29, 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/12/26/elon-musk-the-new-tesla-roadster-can-travel-some-400-miles-on-a-single-charge/?tid=pm_pop

 

 

 

 

Car nerds, you just got an extra present under the tree.

 

Tesla announced Friday an upgrade for its Roadster, the electric car company's convertible model, and said that the new features significantly boost its range -- beyond what many traditional cars can get on a tank of gasoline.

The company is installing three retrofits for the vehicle. First up is a battery upgrade that marks a 31 percent increase in capacity. Next is an "aero kit" that'll alter the car's profile slightly, producing a 15 percent reduction in wind drag. Finally, the Roadster will be getting new, more efficient tires.

 

The result is an electric vehicle that can reliably travel about 350 miles before needing a recharge, and possibly more in ideal conditions. That's pretty similar - or even better - than many conventional gasoline-powered cars. The University of Michigan estimates that the average fuel economy of a new car in 2014 was about 25 miles per gallon. With a 12- or 13-gallon tank, that gets you about 325 miles on a single fill-up.

 

"There is a set of speeds and driving conditions," Tesla said in a blog post, "where we can confidently drive the Roadster 3.0 over 400 miles."


The old Roadster could travel up to 244 miles on a single charge, according to the company. That makes the new Roadster's 400-mile range a nearly 2x improvement.

 

With the Roadster's starting price still hovering at over $100,000, most of us won't be reaping the benefits of this technology upgrade anytime soon. But, said company founder Elon Musk, expect it to arrive eventually in the Model S.

 

"It obviously *will* happen long-term," he tweeted.

 

The announcement came amid predictions of a rough road ahead for the company. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas, who has been an advocate for the company as its stock price has soared, wrote in a note to investors earlier this month that Tesla's prospects will be seriously impacted by lower gasoline prices.

 

Jonas predicted Tesla will only be able to sell 300,000 vehicles by the end of the decade rather than the half million that he originally forecast. He added that the low price of oil won't immediately effect Tesla's current customers, who generally wealthy and pay less attention to gas prices. But as the company tries to sell cars to a broader base, fewer consumers may opt for electric cars.

 

 

RELATED ARTICLES


 
After the Volt, how will GM deliver a 200 Mile Bolt?

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534181/can-gm-go-from-volt-to-bolt/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-weekly-energy&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150119 

 

 

Car Powered by Salt Water?


 
http://aetherforce.com/electric-car-powered-by-salt-water-920-hp-373-milestank/


 

 
 

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2) Solar Sunflowers Can Bring Bring Clean Energy Anywhere

By Peter Shadbolt, CNN   January 2015

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/tech/innovation/sunflower-solar-harvester/index.html

 


 

Imagine a transportable solar power station that tracks the sun like a sunflower and cools itself by pumping water through its veins just like a plant.

 

The Sunflower Solar Harvester, developed by the Swiss company Airlight Energy, can do all that and in the process produce heating, desalinated water, and refrigeration from the 12kW of energy it provides from just 10 hours of sunlight - enough to power several households.

 

Aimed at off-grid communities in remote regions, the all-in-one 10m-high system -- whose components can be transported in a single container and reassembled in situ - has been in development for more than two years and could be on sale as early as mid-2017.

 

Integrated system

 

"It's an integrated system so it supplies both electricity and heat," head of research at Airlight Energy, Gianluca Ambrosetti, told CNN. "You can use this heat to drive a cooling system too, if you need refrigeration."

 

He said the system will appeal to those that have multiple requirement and a lot of sunlight.

"It's not going to work so well if you have a lot of requirements and you have the climate of, say, Germany."

 

Nevertheless, off-grid regions from as disparate and far-flung places as North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Chile and Australia have expressed an interest in the technology.

 

"Then there are those regions that have good solar radiation and high fossil fuel prices such as Japan which is not an obvious place for this sort of system, but where we see a lot of potential," Ambrosetti said.

 

Water-cooled

 

At the core of the technology are IBM-designed water-cooled solar panels whose microchannels carry away the heat produced by the reflector mirrors. The flower-like array of reflectors concentrate the sun's energy more than 2,000 times onto the six panels which each hold 25 photovoltaic chips.

 

The heat is carried away by the water at a rate that keeps the microchips at their optimum temperature, making the Sunflower Solar Harvester one of the most efficient solar energy producers around.

Developers say that it needs just a quarter of the panels to produce the same amount of power as conventional systems.

 

Everything about its design is aimed at bringing down costs; what would normally require large and expensive solar mirrors is achieved with metallised foil of the type found in food packaging like potato chips.

 

The concave shape of the reflectors is kept in place by a light vacuum, a useful failsafe if the cooling system fails. Rather than overheating the solar cells, the operator can simply release the vacuum to diffuse the reflected sunlight.

 

Remote appeal

 

While the company is not claiming the technology will completely replace fuel-powered generator sets -- which can often produce 10 times the power of one solar sunflower -- Ambrosetti said it could be possible to run some remote facilities with an array of the parabolic mirrors.

 

"You would, of course, not have just one Sunflower but several so you can scale it up quite easily," he said. "Hospitals, for instance, are quite energy intensive -- if you needed 1.2mW to run a hospital you'd need 100 sunflowers.

 

"But if you were in a small camp hospital with minimal refrigeration requirements for medicines, it could be set up in a remote location and just one dish could satisfy quite a lot of those needs."

 

The system produces around 20kW of thermal power from 10 hours of sunlight, enough say the developers to power a low-temperature desalinator in coastal regions. Sea water vapor would pass through a polymer membrane and condense in a separate chamber, to produce as much as 2500 liters of fresh water per day.

 

Vascular system

 

Ambrosetti said the cooling system drew its inspiration from nature where vascular systems operate to carry away excess heat.

 

"We are still a long way from commercialization, but what we can do is to tap into its potential. We plan to set up early adopter projects that would be running by 2016," he said. "We aim to have four or five dishes in various locations around the world to show the potential of the system so people can really start to touch it with their hands."

 

Ambrosetti said the system was likely to appeal commercially to green residential and commercial developments.

 

"It's biggest potential is in making integrated systems where you can provide several things at once such as heating, cooling and electricity," he said.

 

The project also recently got nominated as the top "solar wonder" of the world by Greenpeace.

 

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3) First Coal Plant that Captures Its Carbon Emissions  
By Peter Fairley,  MIT Technology Review 
January 2015


Sequestration shows the potential of a crucial technology.

 

Boundary dam, a power plant in Estevan, Saskatchewan, is the first commercial coal-fired plant to capture carbon dioxide from its emissions, compress the gas, and bury it underground. The plant demonstrates that so-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) can work at a large scale-a crucial achievement given that CCS could play a significant role worldwide in reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

 

Right now only two other CCS power-plant projects are under construction, both of them in the United States. That's because CCS carries a hefty price tag: SaskPower invested $1 billion to equip one of the four generators at its Boundary Dam site for carbon capture. What's more, the process reduces the 160-megawatt plant's electricity output by about 20 percent, meaning it may cost SaskPower more per kilowatt-hour to run CCS than the 12 cents it gets for selling the electricity.

 

SaskPower makes up for this in large part by selling much of the captured carbon dioxide to the Calgary-based oil producer Cenovus, which uses it to boost output from its maturing oil wells nearby.

 

CCS should get cheaper over time. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the panel of climate scientists convened by the United Nations, projects that technology upgrades and economies of scale should reduce the price of adding CCS to coal plants to just one-third of what SaskPower spent at Boundary Dam. If so, CCS-equipped coal plants could deliver electricity more cheaply than some other low-carbon sources, including offshore wind power and large solar farms.

 

SaskPower says that with the lessons it's learned so far, it could now build a similar CCS project for $200 million less, and that it may soon go forward with CCS at two other aging coal generators at Boundary Dam. It also hopes to help other power companies develop expertise in the technology.

 

Still, coal plants around the world generally have little incentive to follow suit. In SaskPower's case, Canadian regulations helped force the company's hand; that fact, plus the availability of a local buyer for carbon dioxide, makes SaskPower's effort somewhat unusual. What might be needed elsewhere is a way for utilities to pass along CCS costs to customers, just as many do now to pay for renewable energy sources. Another approach would be to tax carbon dioxide emissions, creating an incentive to bury the gas instead.

 

The technology must also be proven to work over the long term. SaskPower buries some gas in a saline aquifer on its site. To make sure it stays put, the company has installed above-ground gas sensors plus a seismic sensing array to track subsurface movement.

 

The United Nations climate panel says similar technology must be installed at all 7,000 existing coal power plants worldwide by 2050 to keep warming below 2 �C, a widely cited threshold for avoiding severe climate change. Meanwhile, new coal plants are still being built, especially in China and India. With coal plants expected to provide one-quarter of the world's energy supply in 2040, SaskPower could help test the feasibility and safety of burying billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

 

 

4) Clean Energy Jobs Around The World 
By Yi Xu, EESI Journal December 30, 2014





There is no official, global definition of green jobs, but one can adopt the definition used by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in its 2008 report, Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World. The report defines green jobs as jobs "in agricultural, manufacturing, research and development (R&D), administrative, and services activities that contribute substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality." This includes jobs in renewable energy, energy efficiency in buildings, sustainable transportation, sustainable agriculture, and responsible forestry management.

 

The following two sections gather employment figures for energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors globally and in different countries. The figures are sourced from international organizations, including the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), International Labour Organization (ILO), and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

 

The Annual Review on Renewable Energy and Jobs of 2014 report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), showed a total of 6.5 million jobs around the world supported by the renewable energy sectors. Among all the countries, China, Brazil, the United States, India and Germany are the top five largest employers for renewable energy industries. Solar photovoltaic and wind power are the two most dynamic renewable energy sectors, according to IRENA. The solar photovoltaic sector supported 2..3 million jobs; the wind power sector supported 0.8 million jobs.

 

The following are examples of green jobs in the countries and regions with the largest amount of renewable energy employment.

 

China: According to IRENA, China was the largest employer in the renewable energy sector in 2013, employing 2.64 million people. China's solar photovoltaic sector employed 1.6 million people last year (60 percent of total renewable energy employment), with 1.1 to 1.3 million more jobs than 2011 employment estimates. However, the data also showed that employment has decreased in the sectors of solar heating and cooling. IRENA explained that this is due to different methods of calculation.

 

Brazil: In total, Brazil's renewable energy industries supported 894,000 jobs in 2013. IRENA's annual report estimated that bioenergy was the largest renewable energy sector in Brazil, with 539,000 direct jobs in bioethanol and 82,000 biodiesel jobs. Wind power is also growing quickly and supports about 32,000 jobs.

 

European Union (EU): IRENA estimated that the European Union supported around 1.2 million renewable energy jobs in 2013. Sustainlabor estimated in a report, Green Jobs and Related Policy Frameworks, that the major generator of clean jobs in the European Union was solid biomass, which supported 273,000 direct and indirect jobs in 2010. The solar photovoltaic and wind power sectors, which supported an estimated 268,110 and 253,145 jobs respectively in 2010, were also two significant sectors.

 

Germany: According to IRENA, Germany is the largest renewable energy employer in the European Union. Although Germany has seen some job losses, it still supported 371,000 direct and indirect jobs in renewable energy in 2013. The German wind power industry expanded to support a record 138,000 jobs, while the solar photovoltaic industry has lost about 55,000 jobs since 2011, with most of the job losses coming from decreased manufacturing employment.

 

Renewable Energy

Solar: According to Environmental Entrepreneurs, the solar industry was the top performer in 2013 for generating clean energy jobs. The Solar Foundation estimated there were close to 143,000 solar jobs in the United States in 2013, including 24,000 new jobs announced that year. The rate at which jobs were added in 2013 was more than 20 percent over 2012 levels.

 

Wind: In a 2014 report, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) indicated that the wind energy industry directly supported 50,500 full-time-equivalent jobs in 2013. AWEA cited a Navigant Consulting study it commissioned which predicted that if the Federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) were extended for four more years, it would support 54,000 additional jobs over that period, representing a 33 percent growth rate. The study also predicted a 50 percent cut in wind industry jobs in the absence of a PTC.

 

Hydropower: According to a 2014 report from the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE), the hydropower industry supports 200,000 to 300,000 jobs in the United States, as well as a supply chain of more than 2,500 companies. A Navigant Consulting study found the industry could support an additional 230,000 to 700,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2025 and expand its capacity by 23-000-60,000 megawatts (MW) with policies supportive of hydropower development.

 

Geothermal: In a May 2014 report, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) found that the geothermal industry supported 35,000 direct and indirect American jobs from 2012-2013. The Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) estimated in a 2013 report that the geothermal industry is able to generate about 25,000 more jobs than the natural gas industry at a capacity level of 500 MW.

 

Wave & Ocean Power: The Brookings-Battelle Clean Economy Database found 371 people working in the wave and ocean power sector in 2010. The Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, published a roadmap for wave and ocean power in 2011 which found that if the industry grew to a capacity of 15 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, it would support 36,000 direct and indirect jobs.

 

Biomass: According to IRENA, the biomass industry supported an estimated 152,000 direct and indirect jobs in the United States during the 2012-2013 period, including 15,500 direct jobs. According to the Biomass Power Association (BPA), the power section of the biomass industry employs 18,000 people in the United States, mostly in rural areas. BPA estimates biomass power can generate 10 times as many well-paid jobs as a comparable conventional natural gas facility.

 

Waste-to-Energy: A 2014 report from ACORE on renewable energy in America reported that the waste-to-energy industry, defined as "energy generated from the sustainable management of municipal solid waste," directly supported 5,350 jobs and indirectly supported 8,600 jobs - a total of close to 14,000 jobs. Government Advisory Associates estimated that each direct waste-to-energy job supports 1.6 additional jobs.

 

Fuel Cells: Fuel Cells 2000 estimated in 2011 that 10,845 jobs were supported by the fuel cell industry, including 3,615 direct and 7,230 indirect jobs. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated that with the rapid increase in the adoption of fuel cells, 180,000 new domestic jobs could be created by 2020, and 685,000 jobs by 2035.

 

Biogas: The American Biogas Council (ABC) estimated in 2014 that there are currently 2,000 operational biogas systems, with a market potential for 12,000 additional systems. In June 2012, ABC Executive Director Patrick Serfass estimated there were more than 2,200 biogas-producing sites operating, including 186 digesters on farms, 1,500 digesters at wastewater treatment plants, and 576 landfill-based energy projects. Although there is no data available for current employment, ABC estimated in 2014 that the biogas industry could support 300,000 construction jobs and 20,000 permanent jobs.   

 

Renewable Fuels: According to the Fuels America coalition, the renewable fuels industry - which includes biodiesel, conventional and cellulosic ethanol, as well as advanced biofuels and their suppliers - supported 852,056 jobs in 2014. Among these jobs, 292,166 are direct jobs, 226,098 are induced jobs, and 333,792 are jobs in supplier chains. The following is a job breakdown for the three main sectors of renewable fuels.

 

 Ethanol: In a report commissioned by the Renewable Fuels Association, the consulting firm ABF Economics found that in 2013, there were 386,781 jobs in the ethanol industry, including 86,503 direct jobs. Moreover, jobs in the ethanol industry generated more than $44 billion for the U.S. economy.
 
 Biodiesel: In November 2013, LMC International released a study commissioned by the National Biodiesel Board estimating that the U.S. biodiesel industry supported more than 62,000 jobs and $2.6 billion in wages in 2013. The National Biodiesel Board also predicted the industry would likely produce a record 1.7 billion gallons in 2013. However, in a leaked EPA document on potential Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) for 2014, EPA proposed limiting the RFS volume for biodiesel to 1.28 billion gallons. If this limit was implemented, the United States would potentially lose 8,000 jobs.
 
 Advanced Biofuels: According to E2's Advanced Biofuel Market Report of 2013, advanced biofuel companies - companies that focus on cellulosic ethanol, cellulosic butanol, "drop-in" fuels from non-food sources, and biodiesel from non-virgin oil - support about 4,500 direct, full-time jobs (excluding supply chain employment). The number of jobs is expected to increase to 8,000 with 2016 production and expansion plans. The report also said that by 2016, the industry supply chain could reach 12,300 full-time jobs in feedstock production and 33,000 temporary jobs for construction and new facilities related to the advanced biofuel industry.
 

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) did a separate estimate of jobs in the renewable energy industry in the United States, finding a total of 625,000 direct and indirect jobs in the solar, biofuel, wind, biomass, hydropower and geothermal industries.

 

 

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5) Microsoft Quest For Wearable Electronics
By Rachel Metz, MIT Technology Review, January 20, 2015

 

In the quest to make wearable electronics useful, researchers take a close look at the neck. 

 

Microsoft researchers have created a scarf that can be commanded to heat up and vibrate via a smartphone app, part of an exploration of how the accessory could eventually work with emerging biometric- and emotion-sensing devices. It could, perhaps, soothe you if a sensor on your body determines you're down-a function that could be particularly useful for people who have disorders such as autism and have trouble managing their feelings.

 

A paper on the project, called Swarm (Sensing Whether Affect Requires Mediation) was presented on Sunday at the Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction at Stanford University.

Michele Williams, a paper coauthor and graduate student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who worked on the project while she was an intern at Microsoft Research, says the group chose to focus on a scarf in part because it can be a discreet way to house technology, unlike, say, a medical device.

 

The current prototype-which the researchers made after consulting with people with autism and hearing and visual disabilities-is a flexible laser-cut garment made of hexagons of industrial felt overlaid with conductive copper taffeta. Some of the modules can heat up, while others can vibrate.

 

All the modules are controlled by one master module that is also responsible for communicating with the smartphone app over Bluetooth. The modules link together with metal snaps and are interchangeable; if you want a heat-producing module closer to your stomach and a vibrating one on your neck, you can unsnap the chain and reconfigure it, says Asta Roseway, a principal research designer at Microsoft Research and a paper coauthor.

 

Roseway demonstrated for me over a video call how the scarf works. She pulled it off a mannequin and wrapped it around her neck, unsnapping one module and then snapping it on to the end of the chain. She turned it on and paired it with a Swarm app on a smartphone, then turned on the vibration function.

Though the metallic design of the scarf might appeal to some, it's meant to fit inside a sleeve when worn, researchers say. That way, "you don't have to show everyone, 'Hey I've got tech all over me," Roseway says. "It's subtle."

 

Williams would like to add the ability to cool the wearer-potentially useful for calming you down since sweat can be an indicator of stress-and add a music player so people could activate custom playlists based on their moods.

  

For now, though, the project is more concept than creation. Because Swarm was a project undertaken during Williams's internship, it's unclear whether work on it will continue. 

 

 

 

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