Alexa Kay

The Solyndra Scandal is a huge issue. Solyndra is a company that produces clean energy by using solar panels and it was put together during the Bush administration in 2006.  Solyndra  is a company that sells solar photovoltaic systems of panels and mounting hardware for large commercial roofs.  This is very beneficial to helping generate more electricity but in 2011 the company filed bankrupcy and had to lay off all its employees.

Solyndra was shocked when FBI agents came knocking on the door with a search warrant. The company received a government loan in 2009 for $535 million dollars.

There were multiple backers in this company as it seemed to be a great idea to produce  ” green jobs” said  Obama who was a big supporter.Another large supporter was the Kaiser family who is a oilman out of oklahoma. This company was a leading light in the Obama campaign. Investors loaned the company another $75 million which was said to be paid back immediantly.

Earlier, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: “There are no guarantees in the business world about success and failure. That is just the way business works, and everyone recognizes that.” He added that “you cannot measure the success based on one company or the other.” Is this why it failed or was it political pressure?

Steven Spinner, the former department of energy official  was at the center of the Solyndra scandal. Spinner signed a waiver saying he would not be involved in the loan but later it was discovered and emails confirmed that he was a heavy promoter for the loan.Overall this is a colossal mess and to resolve this is going to take some more time and some great efforts to fix this issue.

References:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/solyndra-scandal-timeline/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904836104576558763644374614.html

http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/05/key-solyndra-scandal-figure-dodges-cameras-at-dnc/

Natural gas play a huge role in contributing to our nations clean energy. The U.S has large amounts  of natural gas reserves due to drilling horizontally and hydraulic Fracturing technologies which enable us to get large amounts of natural gas. This provides economic safety, energy safety and many environmental benefits.

Natural gas is being used in a lot of the Hydraulic Fracturing to help preserve the environment. The Houston based Apache corp has switched to using natural gas in there drilling. Its a proven process that allows producers to safely recover natural gases and oil. This technology has potential to reduce our foreign fuel imports and reduce Carbon dioxide accelerations.

There is also lots of fear that Hydraulic Fracturing is dangerous to the human population. It is believed that trying to drill out of tightly packed rock may cause too much pollution. This process affects a lot of the water because you have to use so much of it, therefore environmentalist and farmers fear that it will pollute the water source.“Our concern is with maintaining the quality of the water in our streams and preventing groundwater contamination,” said George Jugovic Jr., president of Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, an advocacy group.

High pressure liquid cracks the rock and the sand helps keep the fracture therefore allowing the gas to escape and be contained. Over all so far in Canada there have been over 700 wells cracked and next is the U.S. The oil is being distributed to places such as Shell and Chevron.

Sources:

http://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracture/ 

stream.aljazeera.com

http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/123618/Natural_Gas_Powering_Apache_Hydraulic_Fracturing_Ops

http://www.hydraulicfracturing.com/Pages/information.aspx  Hydroluic fracturing

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/business/energy-environment/race-is-on-to-clean-up-hydraulic-fracturing.html?_r=0

Alexa Kay

The past two weeks we did a lab on building and controlling a robot car. This experiment was beneficial and I learned a lot. First we put together the car,assembling pieces to this car was difficult at first but then we figured it all out. The lego pieces didn’t all seem to fit but once we found the sheet where you look and compare the sizes it was a lot easier. After we assembled the car we programmed it using software we watched a video on prior. We then plugged the car up to the computer and connected the two cords to the correct sources. After programing the car we then unplugged the car and we could control the speed and motion of the car. After we figured out how to control the car we then readjusted the speed of the wheels so we could create a circular motion. We then could make the car go in a circle of two meters. Monday in class we also figured out the wheel rotation and the speed of the robot. We also learned about the percent era so we could figure out the correlation error.

Alexa Kay

Fuel is a precious thing and we are trying to reduce our use of it by using different methods of electricity. The obama administration issued new rules that require automobile manufactures to increase the efficiency of new cars and truck to 55 mpg by the year 2025. Thats still a really long time from now but at least its a start. This new goal will cause automobile makers to have to work harder to produce more fuel efficient ways to make cars. Automobile companies are trying to reach a 35.5 mpg by 2016.

The government has put a massive amount of $60 million dollars into research about this issue.  This has been put to road testing multiple alternative fuel technologies for vehicles. There has been a wide range of ideas for alternative fuel. For example converting body heat or perfecting fuel cells that transform hydrogen into power. These ideas are being prepped to share with U.S carmakers. The military operate under the most harsh conditions so if scientist and automobile makers can make tanks and other military cars run off these ideas then they figure they can make any vehicle function under these terms.

Military researchers are trying to improve parts such as the drain energy,radiators, air filters and mufflers. There are many experiments workers are trying to capture like engine power thats wasted as exhaust heat and make it into electricity that can charge batteries or run the internal computers.  after developing the prototype they will install it in a tank and test everything out.

Obama states in an article on CNN that “In the midst of a deep recession and financial crisis, the collapse of the auto industry would have caused enormous damage to our economy.”  If GM reinvented itself then it would be good for the automobile industry and could help rebuild the industry completely. Treasury department put 19.4 billion into GM and 4 billion into Chrysler.  The estimated cost for each new vehicle is 1,300 in order to reach the 2016 automobile goals.  Automobile goals are high and it will be hard to accomplish but if we keep working at this I think our economy can handle the pressure.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/fuel_efficiency/index.html

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-17/better-gas-mileage-thanks-to-the-pentagon

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/15/obama.autos/index.html