Energy in the shopping basket
The 320 outlet B&Q firm is offering take-home-and-install roof mounted windmills and solar panels. They’ll also help you get permission from the government to install them, help you find contractor assistance if you need it, and even tell you if where you live is windy enough to bother with the windmill. The solar panels deliver hot water, and they say don’t worry about cloudy weather – you don’t need direct sunlight to make them operate. A competing firm, Curry, will soon carry electrical generating solar panels under a similar arrangement. Don’t rush out right to pick them up right away though. They are firms in the U.K.

Electric cars
So General Motors isn’t going to bother marketing electric cars. Don’t despair. All is not lost. A Eugene realtor is driving a Xebra electric. It’s a small three wheeler manufactured in China. I don’t know what she payed for it, but I have an idea it wasn’t all that much. It has a distinctly limited range, scarcely suitable for out-of-town trips. But Realtors are forever banging around town, and in a community of modest size like Eugene it works for her.

You prefer a vehicle that will stretch its legs and go far and fast? The Lotus Tesla, a two-seater, is available. Acceleration is rapid indeed, 0-60 in four seconds. And don’t ever let a cop catch you trying its top speed. They’ll go a reported 250 miles before requiring a recharge. Oh, and we might mention they’re pricey little dudes. But as lithium ion batteries are more perfectly developed there should be a significant reduction in price. Popular acceptance would help a lot too. As an adjunct to truly effective public transportation, they could be useful. Take the maglev to the distant city or recreation area and rent one of these things for a run-around. Why not?

Good News Department
To briefly quote the article by Tyler Hamilton, MIT Technology Review as found on energybulletin.net 9/21. “Researchers at a Canadian startup firm say they’ve found a way to make low-cost, white-light LEDs that could one day end our addiction to inefficient incandescent bulbs. They claim to have cracked the cost barrier for solid-state lighting by replacing the expensive semiconductors compounds traditionally used in LEDs with low-cost silicon.”

Let me associate with the news this way: Last winter I considered supplies for an emergency situation. I purchased several effective flashlights. The big mother operates 10 led bulbs on three ‘D’ cells. Good bright light. With fresh alkaline batteries, it can be switched on and tossed into the deep end of a swimming pool. Come back a month later and the thing will still be shining down there. Those LED bulbs are efficient. In light sockets the could keep your house lit up for pennies a month.

Reported energybulletin.net 9/21, Economist (U.K.)
“Maglev trains are expensive; buses are cheap. The Superbus, a high-tech road vehicle, is a compromise between the two

It looks rather like a futuristic stretch limousine, but its actual function is rather more populist: the Superbus is a novel public-transport system being developed in the Netherlands by the Delft University of Technology. It is an electric bus designed to be able to switch seamlessly between ordinary roads and dedicated “supertracks” on which it can reach speeds of 250kph (155mph). It thus presents an alternative to much more expensive magnetic-levitation trains. The Superbus would be driven in the usual way on roads and an autopilot would be engaged when it reached a supertrack.”

Sounds dandy for interim transportation. Steel wheels on steel rail is a good bit more efficient, but it may take a while to get a rail network established that will serve neighborhoods.

Bad News Department
As reported in energybulletin.net 10/4 by Ian Sample, science correspondent of The Guardian (U.K.): “Nearly a third of the world’s land surface may be at risk of extreme drought by the end of the century, wreaking havoc on farmland and water resources and leading to mass migrations of “environmental refugees”, climate experts warned yesterday.

There is a distressing convergence of awful possibilities showing up, rising sea levels, drought and increasingly severe storms. Global warming bears close watching indeed, and quite probably significant action rather soon. We’ll review the Scientific American Special Edition’s report on coal next month. I know what it says and it does nothing to allay my concern.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 8:15 am and is filed under Energy Future, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.