Category Archives: Uncategorized

Demand Responce

3 Replies

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.

1 Reply

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.

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

2 Replies

2011 was a year very unfortunate for humanity full of natural disasters, especially for Japan where a series of earthquakes and tsunamis occurred and caused mass destruction. Fukushima nuclear plant was not an excpetion which only made things much worse. A series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials have occured which caused panic and chaos everywhere across Japan: cities and towns were evacuated. It was the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, and only the second disaster (along with Chernobyl) to measure Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

When the earthquake occurred the Reactor 4 had been defueled. Immediately after the earthquake, the remaining reactors 1-3 shut down automatically, and emergency generators came online to power electronics and coolant systems. Even though the tsunami following the earthquake quickly flooded the low-lying rooms in which the emergency generators were housed. The flooded generators failed, cutting power to the critical pumps that must continuously circulate coolant water through a nuclear reactor for several days in order to keep it from melting down after being shut down. As the pumps stopped, the reactors overheated and stopped working. As the water went away the reactor fuel rods began to overheat rapidly. In the hours and days that followed, Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced full meltdown.

Fukushima-meltdown-prevailing-winds1

The Japanese government concluded that the total amount of radiation released into the atmosphere was approximately one-tenth which was released during the Chernobyl disaster. Significant amounts of radioactive material have also been released into ground and ocean waters around Japan.

Sources used:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718486
http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/blueprint.html
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/japanquake/index.html

 

 

 

Solyndra scandal and the wisdom of clean energy subsidies.

3 Replies

“Solar panel manufacturing — a potential source of middle-class jobs, and an important reason the White House was so high on Solyndra, which made its panels in Fremont, Calif. — is another story” – States NY times article.

We can not get away from politics in our modern life, politics are everywhere, we live in civilized countries, we have our leaders but sometimes the games which politicians play are not always clean and Environmental friendly energy and technology is not an exception. Back in August 31, 2011 Solyndra filed for bankruptcy the bankruptcy which the Republicans are now rabidly “investigating” because Solyndra had the misfortune to receive a $535 million federally guaranteed loan from the Obama administration. Moreover the solar panels which the company produced were very high-priced to begin with. This factor made Solyndra co. uncompetitive in the marketplace. Solyndra didn’t have enough influential and prosperous customers to create the necessary economies of scale. Also the executives of the company failed to dedicate additional money that would have allowed the company to stay in business.

On other hand, “The Obama Administration betrayed American taxpayers when it dumped hundreds of millions of public dollars into Solyndra while ignoring clear warnings about the company’s dire financial situation,” Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement. Before receiving the loan from the Obama administration in 2010, Solyndra had been singled out by both Republicans and Democrats as a promising government investment. If there is another version of the bankruptcy of Solyndra, it’s the theory that the White House gave the company a loan guarantee, and then turned a back to its problems, because “its largest investors were funds linked to Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama donor.”

These sources clearly show us that the bankruptcy could have been prevented if the government payed more attention to the problems of Solyndra and helped them at the right time, but politics never change.

Sources used:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/opinion/the-phony-solyndra-scandal.html?_r=0
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/obama-fundraises-with-players-in-solyndra-scandal/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/08/09/the_dregs_of_the_solyndra_scandal.html

 

 

 

 

Hurricane Sandy and how global warming may have contributed to its destructiveness.

3 Replies

Hurricane Sandy approaching The Statue of Liberty.

For the past several centuries humanity has experienced a lot of natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis and even earthquakes. Millions of people died because of such events but nothing changed ever since. In the 21st century the amount of natural disasters seems to grow and the recent events which have occurred in the  Caribbean and the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States during late October 2012 have shown that we’re not protected by the modern technology and that we need to start thinking about the reasons behind such disasters. “Preliminary estimates of losses due to damage and business interruption are estimated at $65.6 billion (2012 USD), which would make it the second-costliest Atlantic hurricane, behind only Hurricane Katrina. At least 253 people were killed along the path of the storm in seven countries. The severe and widespread damage the storm caused in the United States, as well as its unusual merge with a frontal system, led the media and several government agencies to nickname the hurricane Superstorm Sandy.” – Article by Wikipedia clearly shows us how dangerous can such disasters be for humanity, but the most important question is if the hurricane could be caused by the Global Warming effect. For now, it is already clear that the climate change may have contributed a lot to Sandy’s impacts worse than it could have been.

Hurricane Sandy in NY.

There are several ways how the climate changes might have changed the impacts: sea level rise; anomalous warm sea surface temperatures; and possibly because of an unusual weather environment that some scientists think started the rapid disappearing Arctic sea ice. Let’s have a detailed look on these possible cases.

Firstly, “Water temperatures off the East Coast were unusually warm this summer — so much so that New England fisheries officials observed significant shifts northward in cold water fish such as cod” – Mentions huffingtonpost.com. This leads us to a conclusion that Hurricane Sandy might have used such environment because it is the ideal energy source for the hurricane.  Secondly,  an anomalous weather pattern in the northern hemisphere made Hurricane Sandy much more worse as well as for many other people on the East coast. Thirdly, scientists came to conclusion that the recent frequent events might be related to the loss of Arctic ice, which could be one of the most visible consequences of modern global warming. “Global warming heated the water of the Gulf and Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in greatly increased energy and water vapor in the air above the water. When that happens, extremely energetic and wet storms occur more frequently and ferociously. These systemic effects of global warming came together to produce the ferocity and magnitude of Hurricane Sandy.” – States George Lakoff, professor of linguistics in his blog(http://blogs.berkeley.edu).

 

These conclusions clearly show us that recent man-made Global Waming has contributed quite a lot to Hurricane Sandy and if we still keep not caring about this problem – the disasters which might occur in future might be fatal for everyone on the Earth.

Germany’s green energy policy.

3 Replies

Nowadays the problem of pollution and global warning is infestating more and more countries. Such problem is taken very seriously in Germany. Billions and billions of Euros are invested into ecologically clean plants and other industrial projects. The “Institute for Energy Research” shows us that “by 2030, Germany will have spent more than 300 billion Euros on green electricity. And consumer groups are complaining that about 800,000 German households can no longer pay for their energy bills”. If this rise in energy prices continues, household energy bills could exceed the rent that German citizens pay for housing in parts of the country and this analysis is not very promising. All of us know that renewable technologies are not economic compared to traditional fossil fuel technologies. Spiegel.de noticed that “Germany’s four leading electrical grid operators — RWE, E.ON, Vattenfall and EnBW — announced on Monday that they would be hiking by 47 percent the charge to consumers that goes into financing subsidies for producers of renewable energy”. This clearly means that more and more people will have trouble and disbalance with their financial status and overall income and as a result the economical situation might get worse if the switch to the clean technology will be rapid. Electricity prices are expected to increase by over 10 percent next year—the largest increase in a decade. Germany is building one of the world’s most ambitious clean-energy strategies. It supports and advertises renewable energy by granting fixed prices for the electricity that facilities such as wind- and solar-power plants produce. “Germany already produces more than 25% of its electricity from renewables such as wind and solar power, but is planning a complete exit from another low-carbon energy source, nuclear power, over the next 10 years because of safety concerns. It plans a further, even more radical expansion of renewable energy to replace nuclear energy and fossil-fueled power plants, with the aim of sourcing 35% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and more than 80% by the middle of the century” – states the Wall Street Journal. Overall we can say that the Green energy policy in Germany is very successful and promising but the prices on it are way too high for most German people, but if the changes to the new green energy technology in the country will be slow and planned – the country will definitely benefit both economically and ecologically.