Energian tuotanto, kenttägeneraattorit ja muut

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Hybrid Generator Would Cut Military Base Fuel Costs in Half
By Martin LaMonica
Posted 3 Feb 2014 | 20:38 GMT

The phrase "An army marches on its stomach," often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, underscores the importance of logistics in the military. And in the 21st century, keeping up the supply of diesel fuel is one of the most challenging logistical tasks for military forces in the field.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) awarded a contract to a company that says its “hybrid generator” can reduce the amount of fuel used by generators at outposts by more than 50 percent. The company, Earl Energy, uses a rack of batteries coupled to diesel generators—and, if available, solar panels—to optimize fuel consumption. It’s one of a number of projects funded by the Department of Defense to reduce fuel consumption through efficiency and renewable energy.

Today, the U.S. military powers its operating bases with diesel generators that run continuously. The problem is that it’s difficult to match the generating capacity with the actual power load from air conditioners, electronics, and other gear, which fluctuates during the day and in different seasons. And when the demand for power is lower than the generator’s full capacity, the fuel efficiency drops off dramatically and the maintenance increases.

At the same time, the electricity requirements for bases in places such as Afghanistan have gone up substantially. Compared to a Marine battalion a decade ago, bases now have more than twice the number of radios and vehicles and three times the number of computers, according to the Department of Defense.

Earl Energy’s FlexGen “hybrid generator” is wired to a diesel generator running at full capacity, which is how it's most efficient. When there is excess power, the diesel generator charges the batteries. If the batteries have enough stored energy to meet the demand for electricity, then the generator shuts off. In tests in Afghanistan, the Earl Energy system allowed the generators to run three to six hours a day, compared with around the clock before it was installed, says Doug Moorehead, the CEO of Earl Energy.

A former Navy Seal, Moorehead saw first hand the perils of transporting fuel while stationed in Iraq. Fuel and water convoys are frequent targets. For example, in one three-month period in 2010, six marines were wounded during convoys (a rate of one injury for every 50 convoys). The financial cost is great as well; fuel can cost $2.64 to $3.96 per liter ($10-$15 per gallon) by the time fuel is delivered to outposts, says Moorehead. "If you reduce the fuel consumption, you can now cut [the number of fuel convoys] in half,” he says.

After Moorehead’s time in the Navy, the MIT graduate attended Harvard Business School and then went to work at lithium-ion battery company A123 Systems, where he worked in the grid energy storage group.

With funding from a previous Department of Defense program, Earl Energy was able to build prototypes for its energy storage device. It now has about a dozen units in the field, which are partially charged with energy generated by solar panels. The system’s control software can be used to manage multiple generators in order to create a base-wide microgrid.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...or-would-cut-military-base-fuel-costs-in-half

 

[SJ]

Ja jos vielä saisi paranneltua noiden akkujen tehokkuutta, niin olisi vieläkin parempi.

 

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A thermoelectric generator could make army tanks and family minivans more fuel efficient by turning waste heat into electricity, and open up a variety of other uses, says the company that’s developing the generators.

GMZ Energy of Waltham, Mass., says it has demonstrated a module that produces 200 watts of electricity from the heat coming off a diesel-powered tank, a step toward building systems that will produce a kilowatt from such tanks. With the effort involved in transporting fuel to a battle site, diesel can cost the U.S. military upwards of $10.50 per liter ($40 per gallon). So using that fuel more efficiently will save the Department of Defense significant amounts of money, says Scott Rackey, GMZ’s vice president of business development.

The device is based on half-Heusler compounds, mixtures of elements that together have desirable thermoelectric properties. GMZ built its device out of a compound containing hafnium, zirconium, cobalt, nickel, antimony, and tin, although Rackey says the company will eventually replace the hafnium with a less expensive element. They use a long-established technique called ball milling to grind the compound into nanometer-scale bits, then use heat and pressure to form the resulting powder into small disks. The materials used and the nanostructures created by the milling and pressing combine to improve a measure of thermoelectric conversion, called ZT, by 30 percent. That improved conversion rate is enough to make the device capable of converting about 7 percent of waste heat into electricity.

That might not sound significant, but with a new source of electrical power, a vehicle can use its alternator—normally the generator of electricity—less or not at all. That allows the engine to run more efficiently and use less fuel.

Rackey imagines other potential applications such as drilling equipment that uses the temperature difference between the crust it’s drilling into and surrounding seawater to generate electricity. A boiler with a thermoelectric device installed could produce power to run its own burner and circulator pumps, so it keeps working if power to the home goes out. There could also be a USB port to allow homeowners to recharge their electronics from the boiler.

“Because there’s waste heat in so many places, there’s lots of places we can put this functionality,” Rackey says.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...electricity-from-heat-could-power-electronics

 

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Photo: First Solar

First Solar's Series 3 Black, with a conversion efficiency of 16.1 percent, is the world's most efficient cadmium telluride photovoltaic module

Cadmium chloride is filthy stuff. Its cadmium ions are extremely toxic, causing heart disease, kidney disorders, and a host of other health problems. One accidental spill of the water-soluble compound can wipe out fish from a river. So it is both unfortunate and ironic that cadmium chloride should be essential for manufacturing a promising source of clean energy: thin-film cadmium telluride solar cells.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...n-film-solar-cell-freed-from-toxic-processing

 

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Hubert Kang Photography

To reach one of the world's most secretive nuclear-fusion companies, visitors must wind their way through a suburban office park at the foot of the Santa Ana Mountains, just east of Irvine, California, until they pull up outside the large but unmarked headquarters of Tri Alpha Energy.

http://www.nature.com/news/plasma-physics-the-fusion-upstarts-1.15592

 

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A prototype of a new solar panel inspired by origami.

NASA

Twenty years ago Brian Trease was a high school exchange student in Japan. It was there that he first learned the art of paper folding. “I’d be folding subway ticket stubs, baseball game lineups; there’s a picture of me in McDonalds in the city of Kobe holding a big origami crane that I had just folded [out of a hamburger wrapper],” he recalls. “Now it’s come full circle—I’m doing this as my career.”

Trease is a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he works on solving one of NASA’s biggest challenges: How to transport and deploy bulky objects as compactly and lightly as possible. A couple years ago, NASA began exploring ways to launch and deploy increasingly large solar panels without taking up more room and cargo weight. It turned out that Trease’s childhood hobby was a promising way to accomplish that.

Working with students and faculty at Brigham Young University, as well as origami master Robert Lang, the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have come up with a preliminary prototype for a 1 cm-thick solar array that would be able to expand from 8.9 feet in diameter to 82 feet. The foldable material uses a technique Trease and his fellow researchers call “hannaflex,” which looks like a flower when compacted and blossoms out to a flat, circular form. “This is just begging to be deployed with centrifugal force,” says Trease. “We could have it on spacecraft where we just spin it and that force allows the panels to deploy out to their position.”

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/nasa-invents-folding-solar-panel-inspired-origami/

Hieman pienempi kuin puolijoukkueteltta pakattuna kokoon.

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters): Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/sns-rt-us-lockheed-fusion-20141015-story.html

 

[JOKO]

WASHINGTON (Reuters): Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.
Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/sns-rt-us-lockheed-fusion-20141015-story.html

Järisyttävä uutinen, jos pitää paikkansa. Tuskin pitää.

 

[ctg]

Järisyttävä uutinen, jos pitää paikkansa. Tuskin pitää.

Miksi isot mediat julkaisivat sitten uutisen tästä tapahtumasta? Tässä Guardian ensimmäinen para.

Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/15/lockheed-breakthrough-nuclear-fusion-energy

Kyseessä on Skunk Works eikä mikään muu, joten mitä sä luulet että miten he haluavat liata nimensä jos tämä ei ole totta?

 

[JOKO]

Miksi isot mediat julkaisivat sitten uutisen tästä tapahtumasta? Tässä Guardian ensimmäinen para.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/15/lockheed-breakthrough-nuclear-fusion-energy

Kyseessä on Skunk Works eikä mikään muu, joten mitä sä luulet että miten he haluavat liata nimensä jos tämä ei ole totta?

Toivon toki tuon olevan totta, mutta ymmärtääkseni tekniset haasteet ovat melkoisia. Lisäksi Lockheedin osakekurssi ei näytä reagoivan uutiseen. Kuvittelisi kurssin olevan lennossa tämän uutisen myötä.

 

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Toivon toki tuon olevan totta, mutta ymmärtääkseni tekniset haasteet ovat melkoisia. Lisäksi Lockheedin osakekurssi ei näytä reagoivan uutiseen. Kuvittelisi kurssin olevan lennossa tämän uutisen myötä.

Heillä on viisi vuotta aikaa laittaan kokoon rekkaan menevä fuusiomoottori. Ja heidän väittämänsä mukaan tuo kyseessäomainen ei ole heidän ensimmäinen protonsa, eikä varmaan heidän viimeisensä. Kukaan aikaisemmin ei ollut tuottanut stealth väitteen alle pommittajaa, mutta he tekivät sen, joten usko pois että jos he niin sanovat, ovat he myöskin sitä asiaa tutkineet vaikka mitään ole siitä sanoneet. Jos kyseessä on ankka, sorsan sijaan niin tämä likaa heidän maineensa kokonaan.

 

[JOKO]

Heillä on viisi vuotta aikaa laittaan kokoon rekkaan menevä fuusiomoottori. Ja heidän väittämänsä mukaan tuo kyseessäomainen ei ole heidän ensimmäinen protonsa, eikä varmaan heidän viimeisensä. Kukaan aikaisemmin ei ollut tuottanut stealth väitteen alle pommittajaa, mutta he tekivät sen, joten usko pois että jos he niin sanovat, ovat he myöskin sitä asiaa tutkineet vaikka mitään ole siitä sanoneet. Jos kyseessä on ankka, sorsan sijaan niin tämä likaa heidän maineensa kokonaan.

Mukavahan se on jos siitä jotain tulee, mutta heillä on käsittääkseni pohjalla jo muutama rähmätty yritys fuusion saralla. Joku voisi epäillä firman ajoittain tehtailevan näyttäviä uutisia julkisen rahoituksen takaamiseksi. Kapitalismin ihmemaassa julkinen rahoitus on varsin merkittävä tekijä teknoyritysten menestyksen taustalla.

 

[miheikki]

Vuosikymmeniä fuusiovoima on ollut 30-50 vuoden päässä. Nykyisin rahoitus on senverran tiukkaa, että tästä lähtien se on vain kymmenen vuoden päässä.

 

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Vuosikymmeniä fuusiovoima on ollut 30-50 vuoden päässä. Nykyisin rahoitus on senverran tiukkaa, että tästä lähtien se on vain kymmenen vuoden päässä.

Jos luet http://maanpuolustus.net/threads/energian-tuotanto-kenttägeneraattorit-ja-muut.3115/#post-136305 niin huomaat, että a) heillä on ollut useampi proto ja nykyinenkään ei ole paha ja b) he ovat kanssa kymmenen vuoden aikataululla. Ei puolen vuosisadan päässä.

 

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Aquion Energy has unveiled the second generation of AHI technology, delivering energy gains of up to 40 percent. The increased energy is achieved without an increase in the size or weight of either the S-Line Battery Stack or M-Line Battery Module product lines and directly translates into improved performance and delivered value in all of Aquion's target applications.

"We have been hard at work making the world's best long duration battery even better. The improved chemistry of the second generation Aqueous Hybrid Ion battery yields more energy, and will deliver more value for our customers," said Scott A. Pearson, CEO of Aquion Energy.

"We are unveiling the new technology at Solar Power International because Aquion's unmatched long duration batteries enable optimal self-consumption of distributed solar generation and ease the burden of intermittent renewable energy on the grid. These two applications are the key to unlocking broad adoption of clean solar electricity as a mainstream energy source."

Aquion's entire product line will see improvements with the second generation of AHI technology, including both the S-Line Battery Stack and M-Line Battery Modules. At shorter four to eight hour discharge rates, systems will experience an energy increase of up to 40 percent.

At longer 20 hour discharge rates the second generation S-Line Battery Stack will see a 24 percent increase in energy to 2.4 kilowatt-hours, while the new M-Line Battery Module will see a 16 percent increase, now totaling 25.5 kilowatt-hours. The substantial increase in energy was achieved through improved utilization of the active material within the AHI cells.

Aquion AHI batteries are optimized for long charge and discharge cycles making them ideal for solar and other renewable energy storage applications. Aquion batteries paired with a solar array will charge during sunlight hours, then provide consistent clean power overnight, as well as reducing intermittence throughout the day and relieving evening peak load. Aquion batteries enable maximum utilization of renewable generation for self-consumption and reduce reliance on diesel.

Aquion's innovative batteries are made using abundant, nontoxic materials and modern low cost manufacturing techniques. AHI batteries deliver a unique combination of cost, performance, safety, and sustainability and are the best batteries in the world for enabling the broad adoption of solar generation.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A...Generation_of_AHI_Battery_Technology_999.html

 

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Photo: Michelle Ma/University of Washington
Helicity Hero: A trio of “magnetic helicity injectors” are the key to the University of Washington’s HIT-SI3 fusion experiment.

Fusion power has many compelling arguments in its favor. It doesn’t produce dangerous, long-term toxic waste, like nuclear fission. It’s far cleaner than coal, with a supply of fuel that’s virtually unlimited. And unlike with wind and solar, the output of a fusion power plant would be constant and reliable.

The primary argument against fusion power has been that despite decades of work, it still doesn’t exist. But that’s no hindrance to a fresh crop of enthusiasts from academia, government, private industry, and even venture capital firms.

In October, Lockheed Martin Corp. revealed that it’s been working on a type of fusion reactor that could be made small enough to transport by truck. Lawrenceville Plasma Physics raised money through crowdfunding in June to advance its alternative proton-boron fusion. Helion Energy is developing a type of fusion based on magnetic compression, and General Fusion is working toward a power system that involves shock waves inside a vortex of liquid metal.

A particularly promising approach was unveiled recently by a University of Washington research group, led by plasma physicist Tom Jarboe. They’ve been developing a type of fusion reactor called a dynomak.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/inside-the-dynomak-a-fusion-technology-cheaper-than-coal

 

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We just got wind of a major new oil industry campaign to tear down California’s clean energy rules, but we’re thinking these guys are going to be outflanked by the shockingly rapid growth of the energy storage sector. Case in point: the Navy Mobile Utilities Support Equipment facility in Port Hueneme, California, is hosting a new cutting edge smart microgrid project that can go into “island mode” using only solar power, thanks to vanadium flow batteries for solar energy storage.

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/12/01/us-navy-pushes-solar-energy-storage-solution/

 

[Talvela]

Itse luulin keksiineeni jotain uutta kun mietin kevyitä vesivoimaan perustuvia generaattoreita meidän oloihin.

Joku sitäkin jo testailee.

http://heinsdorff.de/en/work/video/rotor-–-mobile-hydropower-station


Eli joku modulaarinen järjestelmä jossa tarpeen ja virtauksen mukaan heitetään tietty määrä tuollaisia jokeen.

 

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CREDIT: Shutterstock

Researchers in Australia have reached a record high in solar conversion efficiency, converting more than 40 percent of the sunlight that hits solar panels into electricity.

In outdoor tests in Sydney and the U.S., University of New South Wales researchers achieved the record efficiency partially by splitting sunlight into four different cells. Traditionally, solar power works by using just one solar cell, a method that can convert up to 33 percent of sunlight into electricity.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/08/3600599/record-high-solar-conversion-efficiency/

 

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The Forgotten History of Small Nuclear Reactors

A tantalizing proposition has taken hold again in the nuclear industry: that small nuclear reactors have economic and other advantages over the standard-size ones being built today. The idea is that by reducing the substantial financial risk of a full-scale nuclear project, small reactors are the best option for kick-starting a much-discussed revival of nuclear power.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors