Mom Goes Blind So Her Daughters Can See (VIDEO): "As part of the Huffington Post's efforts to bear witness to the effects of the current economic environment on ordinary Americans, we're rounding up some of the most compelling stories reported by local news organizations around the country.
Monique Zimmerman-Stein has been nearly blind for the last two years from Stickler syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. She recently decided to forego her own treatment to save funds to treat her two daughters, who also suffer from the condition, reports Lane DeGregory of the St. Petersburg Times."
Monday, September 28, 2009
World's First Floating Wind Turbine Swtiches On
World's First Floating Wind Turbine Swtiches On: "The energy company Statoil has begun operation of the first full-size Hywind floating wind turbine at a location 10 kilometers off the Norwegian coast. What is remarkable about this turbine is that is is floating in the water, rather than being rigidly attached to the ocean floor.
Everyone who has paid attention to the issues of off-shore wind turbines knows that there are advantages to having constant, unobstructed winds to drive the turbines. But shorelines are prized for more than their energy potential. The numerous delays and lawsuits that sought to stop the Cape Wind project in the US show just how contentious the issue can be. But the Hywind turbine offers a new potential for offshore wind.
For a couple of years, EcoGeek been following the development of deep-water off-shore wind turbines which can avoid the largest problems typically associated with off-shore turbines. The Norwegian utility company StatoilHydro has been at the forefront of developing this with their Hywind project.
Statoil has decades of experience with operating deep sea drilling platforms for North Sea oil production, and is using that technology to support a wind turbine in deep water."
Everyone who has paid attention to the issues of off-shore wind turbines knows that there are advantages to having constant, unobstructed winds to drive the turbines. But shorelines are prized for more than their energy potential. The numerous delays and lawsuits that sought to stop the Cape Wind project in the US show just how contentious the issue can be. But the Hywind turbine offers a new potential for offshore wind.
For a couple of years, EcoGeek been following the development of deep-water off-shore wind turbines which can avoid the largest problems typically associated with off-shore turbines. The Norwegian utility company StatoilHydro has been at the forefront of developing this with their Hywind project.
Statoil has decades of experience with operating deep sea drilling platforms for North Sea oil production, and is using that technology to support a wind turbine in deep water."
Soon to Be Made In China: Electric Vehicle Charge Points
Soon to Be Made In China: Electric Vehicle Charge Points: "Nearly half of the electric car charging equipment installed worldwide by 2015 will be heading to China, according to a recent report from Pike Research. Today an announcement from Scottsdale, Ariz.-based charging infrastructure company ECOtality indicates that China’s role in the electric car charging boom will encompass not only installing the equipment domestically, but also building it for international deployment. Down the road, when you pull up to a charge point, there’s a good chance it could have been made in China.
ecotality-china-factory
ECOtality, whose subsidiary eTec snagged a nearly $100 million federal stimulus grant last month to support what the company describes as “the largest deployment of EV chargers and vehicles ever” (12,750 charging systems in five states for 5,000 Nissan LEAF electric vehicles), says this morning that it has formed two joint ventures with China’s Shenzhen Goch Investment, or SGI, in order to manufacture, assemble and sell EV charging equipment in China."
ecotality-china-factory
ECOtality, whose subsidiary eTec snagged a nearly $100 million federal stimulus grant last month to support what the company describes as “the largest deployment of EV chargers and vehicles ever” (12,750 charging systems in five states for 5,000 Nissan LEAF electric vehicles), says this morning that it has formed two joint ventures with China’s Shenzhen Goch Investment, or SGI, in order to manufacture, assemble and sell EV charging equipment in China."
Greentech Media: A Car Powered By Zinc?
Greentech Media: A Car Powered By Zinc?: "APET, a small Taiwanese company, says forget lithium. Zinc is where it’s at.
FRANKFURT, Germany -- It's a very long shot, but someday there may be cars and buses whose main chemical byproduct is sunscreen.
APET, or Advanced Power and Energy Sources Transportation, is touting the idea of using a zinc-air fuel cell to power vehicles. Oxygen and water would be mixed with zinc in a fuel cell stack to produce electrons to charge a battery. The main byproduct of the reaction would be zinc oxide, which could then be converted back into zinc fuel or sold as a chemical. Converting zinc oxide back to zinc could be accomplished with solar thermal concentrators.
APET's key technology is a pouch filled with zinc that slides in and out of the fuel cell stack, said Andrew Huang, the CEO whose has worked for various battery companies.
'You can tell when the zinc has been used because it turns white,' he said during an impromptu interview at the International Auto Show taking place this week in Frankfurt.
APET has created several fuel cells and built a car that it will show off later this year in Taipei. The picture with this article is one of its zinc fuel cells powering three 75 watt light bulbs. The initial target market will be buses in China and delivery vehicles.
A small, but growing number of companies say that the 30th element on the Periodic Table could go a long way toward solving the vexing problem of electrical storage. Switzerland's ReVolt Technologies raised 10 million euros earlier this year and 24 million euros in all to develop zinc air batteries. Other zinc companies include PowerAir, a zinc air spun out of Lawrence Berkeley Labs, PowerGenix (nickel zinc) and ZPower (silver zinc.) Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institut are looked at ways to use zinc as a way to store heat at solar thermal power plants.
Zinc does not have the same energy density as lithium. Lithium-air batteries (which store energy by combining lithium with oxygen) can store 3,400 watt hours of energy per liter, said Jeff Dahn, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada during a recent presentation at IBM's Almaden Lab. Lithium-cobalt batteries can store 1,450 watt hours per liter. Zinc batteries hold 830 watt hours per kilogram.
But zinc is far safer than lithium and not prone to 'thermal runaway reactions,' say advocates.
It's also cheap: Pennies consist of 97.5 zinc. The fuel cell stack will cost around $3,600, way less than the estimated $15,000 to $20,000 cost of a lithium-ion battery for a compact electrical car.
A car with one of the zinc fuel cells will effectively run on 288 pouches and a fully-stocked fuel cell will take a car 300 to 350 kilometers. The zinc fuel cell also weighs far less, improving mileage and giving designers more freedom.
'It is more realistic than lithium air,' Huang said. 'We've done it.'
Another knock against zinc batteries have been that they wear out after a few charges. APET gets around that with its removable pouch.
The challenge now? Moving from the fringe."
FRANKFURT, Germany -- It's a very long shot, but someday there may be cars and buses whose main chemical byproduct is sunscreen.
APET, or Advanced Power and Energy Sources Transportation, is touting the idea of using a zinc-air fuel cell to power vehicles. Oxygen and water would be mixed with zinc in a fuel cell stack to produce electrons to charge a battery. The main byproduct of the reaction would be zinc oxide, which could then be converted back into zinc fuel or sold as a chemical. Converting zinc oxide back to zinc could be accomplished with solar thermal concentrators.
APET's key technology is a pouch filled with zinc that slides in and out of the fuel cell stack, said Andrew Huang, the CEO whose has worked for various battery companies.
'You can tell when the zinc has been used because it turns white,' he said during an impromptu interview at the International Auto Show taking place this week in Frankfurt.
APET has created several fuel cells and built a car that it will show off later this year in Taipei. The picture with this article is one of its zinc fuel cells powering three 75 watt light bulbs. The initial target market will be buses in China and delivery vehicles.
A small, but growing number of companies say that the 30th element on the Periodic Table could go a long way toward solving the vexing problem of electrical storage. Switzerland's ReVolt Technologies raised 10 million euros earlier this year and 24 million euros in all to develop zinc air batteries. Other zinc companies include PowerAir, a zinc air spun out of Lawrence Berkeley Labs, PowerGenix (nickel zinc) and ZPower (silver zinc.) Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institut are looked at ways to use zinc as a way to store heat at solar thermal power plants.
Zinc does not have the same energy density as lithium. Lithium-air batteries (which store energy by combining lithium with oxygen) can store 3,400 watt hours of energy per liter, said Jeff Dahn, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada during a recent presentation at IBM's Almaden Lab. Lithium-cobalt batteries can store 1,450 watt hours per liter. Zinc batteries hold 830 watt hours per kilogram.
But zinc is far safer than lithium and not prone to 'thermal runaway reactions,' say advocates.
It's also cheap: Pennies consist of 97.5 zinc. The fuel cell stack will cost around $3,600, way less than the estimated $15,000 to $20,000 cost of a lithium-ion battery for a compact electrical car.
A car with one of the zinc fuel cells will effectively run on 288 pouches and a fully-stocked fuel cell will take a car 300 to 350 kilometers. The zinc fuel cell also weighs far less, improving mileage and giving designers more freedom.
'It is more realistic than lithium air,' Huang said. 'We've done it.'
Another knock against zinc batteries have been that they wear out after a few charges. APET gets around that with its removable pouch.
The challenge now? Moving from the fringe."
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The Future of Cars Was Hydrogen, Once - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com
The Future of Cars Was Hydrogen, Once - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com: "The enthusiasm for electric vehicles keeps growing, but only few years ago the auto industry was betting on hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars.
That led to some sleepless nights for early backers of electric cars — including Alan E. Salzman, the chief executive officer of VantagePoint, a pioneer in green capital venture and an early believer in Tesla, the electric car company.
“We were afraid this was going to be our Segway,” Mr Salzman said, referring to the funky personal transportation device that has failed to achieve much commercial success. “You’re putting how many hundreds of millions of dollars into a golf cart?”
But enthusiasm for hydrogen has ebbed, while the electric vehicle industry is looking increasingly healthy.
“In the span of four years,” Mr. Salzman continued, “we’ve gone from skepticism to the other extreme. From hydrogen to electric vehicles. These are big sea changes.”
Mr. Salzman was speaking at an energy conference hosted by The Financial Times on Thursday in New York City, the same day a Boston-based battery maker, A123, had its initial public offering. The sale was the second-most successful so far this year, with shares surging 50 percent.
Also speaking on the panel were Neil S. Suslak, a managing director at Braemar Energy Ventures, an investor in A123, and David Lincoln, the founder of MD Element Partners, a clean technology venture firm.
Mr. Lincoln said that venture capital funds had about $20 billion to $24 billion to invest in clean technology this year. That amount is dwarfed by government funds, which could reach $200 billion in the clean energy field 2009, thanks to the administration’s push for renewable power.
“Over all, the stimulus is very good, but I do worry about the government skewing the market, picking winners and losers,” Mr. Lincoln said.
One of these winners has been A123, which received $249 million from Department of Energy."
That led to some sleepless nights for early backers of electric cars — including Alan E. Salzman, the chief executive officer of VantagePoint, a pioneer in green capital venture and an early believer in Tesla, the electric car company.
“We were afraid this was going to be our Segway,” Mr Salzman said, referring to the funky personal transportation device that has failed to achieve much commercial success. “You’re putting how many hundreds of millions of dollars into a golf cart?”
But enthusiasm for hydrogen has ebbed, while the electric vehicle industry is looking increasingly healthy.
“In the span of four years,” Mr. Salzman continued, “we’ve gone from skepticism to the other extreme. From hydrogen to electric vehicles. These are big sea changes.”
Mr. Salzman was speaking at an energy conference hosted by The Financial Times on Thursday in New York City, the same day a Boston-based battery maker, A123, had its initial public offering. The sale was the second-most successful so far this year, with shares surging 50 percent.
Also speaking on the panel were Neil S. Suslak, a managing director at Braemar Energy Ventures, an investor in A123, and David Lincoln, the founder of MD Element Partners, a clean technology venture firm.
Mr. Lincoln said that venture capital funds had about $20 billion to $24 billion to invest in clean technology this year. That amount is dwarfed by government funds, which could reach $200 billion in the clean energy field 2009, thanks to the administration’s push for renewable power.
“Over all, the stimulus is very good, but I do worry about the government skewing the market, picking winners and losers,” Mr. Lincoln said.
One of these winners has been A123, which received $249 million from Department of Energy."
Book Review - 'Crude World - The Violent Twilight of Oil,' by Peter Maass - Review - NYTimes.com
Book Review - 'Crude World - The Violent Twilight of Oil,' by Peter Maass - Review - NYTimes.com: "The End of Oil?
By MICHAEL HIRSH
Published: September 25, 2009
Oil is the curse of the modern world; it is “the devil’s excrement,” in the words of the former Venezuelan oil minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, who is considered to be the father of OPEC and should know. Our insatiable need for oil has brought us global warming, Islamic fundamentalism and environmental depredation. It has turned the United States and China, the world’s biggest consumers of petroleum, into greedy, irresponsible addicts that can’t see beyond their next fix. With a few exceptions, like Norway and the United Arab Emirates, oil doesn’t even benefit the nations from which it is extracted. On the contrary: Most oil-rich states have been doomed to a seemingly permanent condition of kleptocracy by a few, poverty for the rest, chronic backwardness and, worst of all, the loss of a national soul.
Skip to next paragraph
CRUDE WORLD
The Violent Twilight of Oil
By Peter Maass
Illustrated. 276 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27
Related
Times Topics: Oil and Gasoline
We can’t be rid of the stuff soon enough.
Such is the message of Peter Maass’s slender but powerfully written new book, “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.” Unquestionably, by fueling better and faster transportation and powering cities and factories, oil has been critical to modern economies. But oil has also made possible the most destructive wars in history, and it has left human society in a historical cul-de-sac. Despite much hue and cry today, Maass argues, we seem unable to move beyond an oil-based global economy, and we are going to hit a wall soon.
Maass, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, tends to endorse the predictions of industry skeptics like Matthew Simmons, who argues the earth is about to surpass “peak oil” supplies. Even with the recent fallback in prices, the petroleum that’s left to discover will be harder and more expensive to extract. Last year’s $147-a-barrel oil was just a “foretaste of what awaits us,” Maass writes.
Maass is less interested in crunching oil-supply numbers, however, than in exposing the cruelty and soullessness of humankind’s lust for this “violence-inducing intoxicant,” as he calls it. His book teaches us an old lesson anew: that the true wealth of nations is not discovered in the ground, but created by the ingenuity and sweat of citizens. It’s the same lesson the Spanish learned centuries ago when they discovered gold, the oil of their time, in the New World. They piled up bullion but squandered it on imperial fantasies and failed to build enduring prosperity, while destroying the civilizations from which they seized it.
Destruction, or at least a lack of progress, has been the fate of most of the nations unlucky enough to sit on top of large pools of “black gold” today. They have grown corrupted by it, their leaders relieved of the need to show accountability as long as they can buy off well-connected foreigners and pay for the security and protection they need from their own angry, disenfranchised citizens. In starkly titled chapters — “Fear,” “Greed,” “Empire,” “Alienation” and so on — Maass shows how each oil state has found its own way to failure. “Just as every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, every dysfunctional oil country is dysfunctional in its own way,” he writes."
By MICHAEL HIRSH
Published: September 25, 2009
Oil is the curse of the modern world; it is “the devil’s excrement,” in the words of the former Venezuelan oil minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, who is considered to be the father of OPEC and should know. Our insatiable need for oil has brought us global warming, Islamic fundamentalism and environmental depredation. It has turned the United States and China, the world’s biggest consumers of petroleum, into greedy, irresponsible addicts that can’t see beyond their next fix. With a few exceptions, like Norway and the United Arab Emirates, oil doesn’t even benefit the nations from which it is extracted. On the contrary: Most oil-rich states have been doomed to a seemingly permanent condition of kleptocracy by a few, poverty for the rest, chronic backwardness and, worst of all, the loss of a national soul.
Skip to next paragraph
CRUDE WORLD
The Violent Twilight of Oil
By Peter Maass
Illustrated. 276 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27
Related
Times Topics: Oil and Gasoline
We can’t be rid of the stuff soon enough.
Such is the message of Peter Maass’s slender but powerfully written new book, “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.” Unquestionably, by fueling better and faster transportation and powering cities and factories, oil has been critical to modern economies. But oil has also made possible the most destructive wars in history, and it has left human society in a historical cul-de-sac. Despite much hue and cry today, Maass argues, we seem unable to move beyond an oil-based global economy, and we are going to hit a wall soon.
Maass, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, tends to endorse the predictions of industry skeptics like Matthew Simmons, who argues the earth is about to surpass “peak oil” supplies. Even with the recent fallback in prices, the petroleum that’s left to discover will be harder and more expensive to extract. Last year’s $147-a-barrel oil was just a “foretaste of what awaits us,” Maass writes.
Maass is less interested in crunching oil-supply numbers, however, than in exposing the cruelty and soullessness of humankind’s lust for this “violence-inducing intoxicant,” as he calls it. His book teaches us an old lesson anew: that the true wealth of nations is not discovered in the ground, but created by the ingenuity and sweat of citizens. It’s the same lesson the Spanish learned centuries ago when they discovered gold, the oil of their time, in the New World. They piled up bullion but squandered it on imperial fantasies and failed to build enduring prosperity, while destroying the civilizations from which they seized it.
Destruction, or at least a lack of progress, has been the fate of most of the nations unlucky enough to sit on top of large pools of “black gold” today. They have grown corrupted by it, their leaders relieved of the need to show accountability as long as they can buy off well-connected foreigners and pay for the security and protection they need from their own angry, disenfranchised citizens. In starkly titled chapters — “Fear,” “Greed,” “Empire,” “Alienation” and so on — Maass shows how each oil state has found its own way to failure. “Just as every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, every dysfunctional oil country is dysfunctional in its own way,” he writes."
REPORT: Tesla Model S was designed with battery swaps in mind — Autoblog Green
REPORT: Tesla Model S was designed with battery swaps in mind — Autoblog Green: "Recently-resigned Tesla Motors engineering chief Michael Donoughe revealed an interesting tidbit of information on his way out the door. Speaking to Green Car Advisor, Donoughe said that the Model S has been designed to accommodate fast (sub-five minutes) battery swaps. While a quick battery exchange has implications for how the car would be received and used in the real world, Donoughe said that it also helps at the factory when the car is assembled. 'As long as you're designing for manufacturing and assembly you can also design for manufacturing, assembly and swap. That's basically what we're looking to do,' he told GCA.
Tesla's design 'is not at all wedded to Better Place,' Donoughe said, referring to the biggest proponent of battery swap technology. The two companies' technologies could work together, he said, but don't have to. Considering that Tesla is planning on selling the Model S, due in late 2011, with different battery options (a base model with 160-mile range pack; and then more expensive packs with 230-mile and 300-mile ranges), figuring out how to swap these different batteries in random locations seems like a logistics problems of tremendous proportions."
Tesla's design 'is not at all wedded to Better Place,' Donoughe said, referring to the biggest proponent of battery swap technology. The two companies' technologies could work together, he said, but don't have to. Considering that Tesla is planning on selling the Model S, due in late 2011, with different battery options (a base model with 160-mile range pack; and then more expensive packs with 230-mile and 300-mile ranges), figuring out how to swap these different batteries in random locations seems like a logistics problems of tremendous proportions."
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