Truck and Barter

broadband.google.com?

Google is putting money into the potential of broadband-over-powerlines. Along with Goldman-Sachs, they are sinking about US$100M into the BPL efforts of the Current Communications Group.

Power Outage in Moscow

An explosion of some sort has caused a major blackout throughout Moscow and neighboring areas:

Prosecutors in Russia have opened a criminal case against the country's power monopoly after a major blackout in the capital, Moscow, on Wednesday.

Public transport ground to a halt, Moscow's main stock exchange stopped trading and water supplies were hit.

The electricity outage was caused by a fire and explosion at a substation, the energy minister told parliament.

The first thing the government of Russia has called for is the ouster of the current Chairman. I have no idea what Chairman Chubais' various merits or problems are; but perhaps the government should be reminded that it currently holds the controlling share of UES (the "power monopoly" mentioned in the first sentence of the article). At the time of the writing of this brief from the EIA, that stake stood at 52%, with Gazprom controlling 10%. Of course, Gazprom itself is soon to be effectively a state asset after the recent cash buyback plan put into place by the Kremlin.

No matter what the cause of the explosion (and I am sorry it happened on such a hot day; there are bound to be health issues arising from the power loss for air conditioning), the massive size of the blackout is in some large measure due to poor infrastructure. That is to say, an outdated, problematic grid almost certainly contributed to the scale of the problem. Who, then, was responsible for the grid?

UES, which is 52% owned by the Russian government (Gazprom now has a 10% stake) , controls most of the transmission and distribution in Russia. UES owns 96% of the transmission and distribution system, the central dispatch unit, and the federal wholesale electricity market (FOREM). The grid comprises almost 2 million miles of power lines, 93,000 miles of which are high-voltage cables over 220 kilovolts (Kv). [From the EIA brief linked to above.]

For reference, here is the EIA diagram of the Russian Electricity Sector Structure:

Click for a larger version

This places the transmission process under a heavy amount of regulation from a centralized source, and put it in position unable to respond to growth in demand and use. When a problem arose, massive parts of the grid failed. Does any of this sound familiar at all? (Better bet: Click here and just start reading.)

till going when that annoying pink bunny finally shuts the hell up...

New tritium powered batteries for much longer life.

A battery with a lifespan measured in decades is in development at the University of Rochester, as scientists demonstrate a new fabrication method that in its roughest form is already 10 times more efficient than current nuclear batteries—and has the potential to be nearly 200 times more efficient. The details of the technology, already licensed to BetaBatt Inc., appears in today’s issue of Advanced Materials.

Of course, I have to imagine recycling these things would be a bit more difficult than your average Duracell.

And How Much Did it Cost Us To Get This Amendment Written?

Via Slashdot: Congress is considering making daylight saving time two months longer.

What is behind such a move? Why, energy savings, of course:

"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

Naively using Congress' numbers on this, considering that the projected growth in oil use (at constant dollars, mind you) according to the EIA is from a little over 20 million barrels a day to just about 40 million barrels a day by 2025, that means we're looking at a simple growth of 2380+ more barrels of oil every day in the US. Even if the 10000 bpd figure is net for the new daylight saving period, this gain would be soon swamped*.

Instead of becoming infatuation with being able to "change" time itself, is there any chance we could get Congress to focus on those things that fall a little closer to their purview: government waste.

[* Note that I'm assuming a very simplistic calculation of that savings. That is, I believe they might have said "we use N kilowatt hours of electricity during the average waking dark hour, which requires Q barrels of oil to produce, and there would be R fewer waking dark hours..." Of course, with the price of crude going up, energy will get more expensive, but not as visibly as the price of gas. Might people switch from driving to/from nights out to staying at home and burning more energy during the dark hours? The effect might not seem huge, but Congressmen took time and our money to figure out how to save us around 0.0005% of daily oil use. At that level, minor changes could overwhelm the policy quickly.]

Of course, if two months is good, 12 months should be better, right? How about doing away with the whole thing entirely and get government out of the businesses of setting my watch.

Solar Hampered By Silicon Shortage?

An article on Wired News makes the claim that a shortage of silicon might be getting in the way of a boom in the use of solar energy.

As demand for clean energy continues to grow, the solar industry forecasts millions of photovoltaic systems will dot the landscape by the end of the decade. However, a severe shortage of the silicon used in the systems threatens to dampen solar's growth.

According to a recent solar-energy report from the nonprofit Energy Foundation, the U.S. solar industry could grow by more than $6 billion per year if the technology becomes cost-competitive with electricity from fossil-fuel sources.

(Link in original text.)

That's a mighty big "if" in that last sentence. A lot of things might grow if the underlying technology suddently became easy and cheap to produce.

Despite the repeated calls for government action (new programs, tax breaks, rebates, etc.) by some of the interviewees, industry seems to be doing exactly what one should expect:

Homan said that from 2000 to 2004, silicon manufacturers could not justify capital investments because the price for their products in the solar industry had dropped to less than $30 per kilogram, or below many companies' costs. Demand for silicon from semiconductor manufacturers and the solar industry has increased sharply since then, and the price has nearly doubled, Homan said.

In the short run (before new plants could come online), I would think a sudden spike in demand for silicon as would be occasioned by a new government policy would only exacerbate the problem. Since silicon makes up less of the production costs of a microchip, chip makers' demand are likely to be more inelastic than that of the solar power technology companies.

Known Unknowns

Well, this post is a bit of a stretch, I know, but all I can say is that there is a direct and negative relationship between the amount of work I have and the quality of my posting. Still and all, I think this article at New Scientist is interesting enough to point to: "13 Things That Do Not Make Sense."

Of particular fascination to me was the last one, on the question of cold fusion:

AFTER 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never really went away. Over a 10-year period from 1989, US navy labs ran more than 200 experiments to investigate whether nuclear reactions generating more energy than they consume - supposedly only possible inside stars - can occur at room temperature. Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves believers.

With controllable cold fusion, many of the world's energy problems would melt away: no wonder the US Department of Energy is interested. In December, after a lengthy review of the evidence, it said it was open to receiving proposals for new cold fusion experiments.

Also fascinating, though, are the questions that remain not just "out there", but about the basic functions of the human body:

In her most recent paper, [MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast] describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

My point? Well, mostly that I find this stuff amazing. But also to point out that, amid all the talk about the effects of economics becoming a field that looks more and more like applied math, that even those truly "hard" sciences are still facing plenty of issues for which they simply do not have a good answer, despite libraries full of incredibly hard formulas and institutes full of million dollar experiments. The lack of a perfect answer, I tend to think, isn't indictment of a method. But surely there is room for more than one. At least, that's my hope as I spend my evenings trying to catch up to, well, what feels like most 8th graders in the hopes of soon moving into more rigorous economic study...

Just One Word: Nanotechnology

Not being a long-time watcher of the energy industry, I'm not sure whether this sort of pronouncement comes along routinely, only to fizzle out, or if it might have some serious implications:

Breakthrough in solar photovoltaics

THE HOLY Grail of researchers in the field of solar photovoltaic (SPV) electricity is to generate it at a lower cost than that of grid electricity. The goal now seems to be within reach.

A Palo Alto (California ) start-up, named Nanosolar Inc., founded in 2002, claims that it has developed a commercial scale technology that can deliver solar electricity at 5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Also, I may be guilty of finding those things that support my pet theories. Namely, that the next real shift in energy isn't going to be finding a single, marvelous source of energy to replace coal or oil, but rather we'll see a hodgepodge of other sources made far more economical by breakthroughs in manufacturing as a result of nanotechnology.

No Such Thing as a Free Reactor

A kilometer-high Solar Tower lurched a little closer to reality:

The quest for a new form of green energy has taken a significant step with the purchase of a 25,000-acre sheep farm in the Australian outback. The huge alternative energy project isn't driven by manure, but by a 1-kilometer-high thermal power station called the Solar Tower.

I've only read a bit about these things, but it sounds pretty interesting, massive engineering and construction challenge aside. (What might not be possible with Frank Lloyd Wright's Mile High Skyscraper might be possible for, basically, a turbine-factory that produces energy on a level with some reactors.)

Seems to me this suffers from some of the same issues as wind farms. Namely, the amount of space they take up isn't conducive to having a bunch of them in every town. That said, the video by EnviroMission seems to envision new, 25000-acre spreads cropping up over Australia in a fashion not unlike the rabbit population.

Just one howler in the article, though:

Although expensive to build, solar towers "essentially produce energy for free," said Sherif [a University of Florida professor of mechanial and aerospace engineering].

Free, you say? That's setting aside, I'm assuming, the opportunity costs of using 25000 square acres for each one of these things that get built. Maybe that's not much in the Oz outback, but you try finding that much space around NYC or Chicago that developers won't scream bloody murder over losing access to...

Nuclear Power Coming Back Online?

Not for a while, if it does. But the recent report from a DOE Advisory Board is encouraging it. The recommendations include supports for starting new plants; despite falling price-per-kilowatt hour for nuclear energy, the startup costs remain the biggest stumbling block.

Here's the executive summary.

The bad news is that the report suggest cost-sharing and/or loan guarantees for companies looking to build the newest plant designs. From my reading of this brief summary, it appears that the costs of conforming to construction and safety regulation is between $400-$500 million dollars. And that's just the plans. Of course nuclear power requires stringent security measures, especially given their attractiveness as terrorism targets, but perhaps the committee could have suggested some sort of review of the regulatory process to see if that might not be a driving factor in the prohibatory cost of startup?