Thursday 18 February 2010

Plug-in hybrids

Here the link to the video

Why electric cars?

1.Energy supplies – peak oil
2.Climate change
3.Energy security – fighting wars for oil
4.Money – it will become cheaper to use electric vehicles.

Electricity production

Sustainable energy is free & unlimited? Remember nothing is for free...

One thing is for sure: The Sun will shine tomorrow!

Hydropower – reserviors and dams. Large hydro is not sustainable.
Pumped storage is useful.

Demand profile over 24 hours. - the graph of demand and supply.

How is it possible to reduce peak demand?

When demand is low at night power stations must keep running, to provide a spinning reserve.

How is it possible to know if a car is fully charged or not?

What did GE present? Smart grids. An intelligent communication network.

What is a smart meter?

A special meter is needed to control demand. The latest are called smart meters.

Peak demand usually occurs in the afternoon.

Flexible pricing is currently only available to larger consumers, but it must be available to all.

Demand management uses stored energy from batteries by employing intelligent controls. Communication is set up between the provider and the consumer via the grid (see Gridwise). Smart meters in the buildings make it possible to control the devices in that building.

Electric supply issues:
Black outs - a complete loss of power.
Brown outs – a serious reduction of supply.

UPS systems – uninterruptable power supplies help avoid this problem by using batteries, but they are expensive and limited in capacity.

84% refers to what figure?

ROI – return on investment = the time needed to get your money back. Break even point. After that you make a profit.

Monday 8 February 2010

The Energy Crisis

Firstly define the term.

Wikipedia*, an encylcopedia, Encarta, Google, blogs, newspapers? Reliable information. Books

It is Web 2.0 – anyone can edit it.

Science journals. Are they reliable? A journal

Peer review.

E = mc2

An example with food

A farmer plants a seed and in the earth. The plants are watered by rain and the plant grows.At some point it's ready for harvesting. Tractors are involved. No chemicals are involved if it is organic (Bio). Chemicals include pesticides and fertilisers.

Fertilisers come from the oil industry.

The food is then harvested, processed and then transported to a warehouse.


Energy issues:

Energy supply – supplies from nuclear power, the sun (solar power), wind, oil, coal & gas.

Demand & supply. Demand is high and increasing while the supply is leveling off and now diminishing. Peak oil

Energy security – Energy in Germany. War.

Electrical energy comes from power stations. They run on nuclear power, brown coal (it's full of sulphur and produces a lot of CO2).

Fuels – oil, mostly the middle East especially Saudi Arabia & Iraq. Peak oil.

Climate change – GHG's, mostly CO2, but also include CH4, but also unburnt hydrocarbons, etc.

Sustainable energy – energy cannot be created, or destroyed (laws of thermodynamics).Entropy.

Links:

International Energy Agency
http://iea.org/

Guardian article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/07/branson-warns-peak-oil-close

Interesting comment on the above article

Monday 1 February 2010

Improved pigs

Improved:

A CD containing information about people who haven't paid their taxes has been offered to the German government. But a government spokesperson said today that they haven't decided whether they are going to pay the 2.5 million euros for this CD yet.

The total value of the tax reportedly amounts to 100 million euros. Is the CD genuine? Does it contain useful data? Five names from the CD have been provided in order to prove its value, each owing at least half a million euros in unpaid taxes.

The legal situation has not yet been made clear, with Germany's defence minister, Karl zu Guttenberg stating that he was ''uncomfortable with the use of stolen data'' but that his opinion did not necessarily reflect that of the government.

The leaked data has raised a moral dilemma within Germany. The question of whether it is right, or wrong for German citizens to avoid paying tax while other role models such as Boris Becker simply take advantage of tax loopholes.

People are now asking themselves if this is a crime, what should be the punishment? One thing for sure is that a long hard examination is needed of the financial system that has allowed this to happen in the first place.

Pigs

A CD containing information about people who haven't paid their taxes has been offered to the German government.

They haven't decided whether they are going to pay the 2. 5 million euros for this CD yet.

The total value of the tax reportedly amounts to 100 million euros. Is the CD genuine? Does it contain useful data? Five names from the CD have been provided in order to prove the value of the data, each owing at least half a million euros.

Blackmail?

legal?

Leak

Moral dilemma

Is it right, or wrong?

Role models

Tax loopholes and tax policy

Is it a crime? And what is the punishment?

Greedy, fat pigs.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/87410d26-0e8d-11df-bd79-00144feabdc0.html