Monthly Archives: April 2013

Brainstorming with my team.

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Last week me and my team started to come up with the ideas for the final project. We have researched numerous of experiments online and payed attention to what our classmates were doing. We did not have any good ideas until we all remembered our trip to the Museum Of Science. There we all had a chance to see how the windmill works and that’s when the evrika striked our minds. We decided that building a simple windmill with solar panels would be a great idea and will show us how they work in real life.

(Final version of our upcoming windmill)

That’s when our group leader found all the necessary work materials and assigned every member each task. Me and Marina are focusing on outline, for instance while the rest of the team is focusing on the presentation itself. I am lucky to have such an organized team which takes responsibility. It will be an awesome experience when the final presentation comes.

Thanks Eric Kebschull, An Duong, Jose Honold and Marina Sidenko for being a great team members to work with!

Demand Responce

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We use electricity every day. It is impossible to imagine a life of a modern person without electricity.  Computers, Cell Phones, even light bulbs, everything requires electricity today. When we turn on a any source which requires the usage of electricity like a TV or an air conditioner – it’s called a demand. Our demand for electricity is growing from day to day and scientists predict that demand will rise at least 40 percent by 2030

By saying demand resp­onse we mean the abi­lity to voluntarily trim our electricity usage at specific times of the day (such as peak hours) during high electricity prices, or during emergencies (such as preventing a blackout). Electricity blackouts, such as the one that hit the both Europe and the eastern United States and Canada in 2003, happen when the power supply is lost, usually caused by a malfunctioning electrical grid or component or by a supply-demand discrepancy. Blackouts aren’t just inconvenient, they’re also money pits. It’s been estimated the 2003 blackout cost New York City alone up to $750 million in lost revenue – States an article from the “USA today“.

Currently, huge industrial companies are looking at demand response solutions as an important piece to the infrastructure solution. These solutions also have the potential to help both the providers and consumers to save money, because such solutions could eliminate the need to build extra power plants and delivery systems which results in saving lots of money.

It was determined by The U.S. Department of Energy that “the average home uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours annually. Consumers spend 8.3 cents per kWh, so that adds up to each household spending about $900 on electricity every year”.

In conclusion we can say that Demand response is indeed a great a way for people who consume lots of energy to make smarter decisions about the energy consumption. A smart grid which can be developed could also be a green energy grid which will have the ability to balance the energy output from fossil fuel-driven power generators and renewable energy sources.

 

 

 

A Trip to the Museum Of Science.

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Recently, we were given a unique opportunity to visit the Museum of Science in Boston. While in my class we have been studying the sources of energy and different approaches to get rid of the Global warming, in the Museum of Science we had a chance to see how each of the energy sources which people use nowadays work.

There were several exhibitions in the museum. Each represented the usage and the affection of the resource on ecology and the global warming itself. At first I decided to visit the Windmill section in the museum. The brief information about the windmill usage was provided as well as its efficiency. Pictures helped me to understand how they work better.

Then I decided to visit the solar energy section. This section was very interesting. There, you could even make your own experiment. You were give a small house and the amount of solar panels to manage. This exhibition also showed how much it would cost to own the needed amount of solar  panels and it also compared its affection on Global warming with the fossil fuels.

The last exhibit which I visited in the MOC was an interactive one where I was given a few power blocks of the each energy type which could be used to supply the electricity in Boston. There also was a special power panel with indicators showing the amount of energy which is used and its affection on the ecology as well.

Going to this exhibition was an amazing experience. The interactive experiments which were present really helped me to understand how badly fossil fuels affect the ecology and it also lead me to the conclusion that clean energy should be the one which must be used in future in order to reduce the Global Warming for sure.