Jessie's Blog

What is Solyndra? Solyndra is a green energy company that is based in Fremont, California. The company was struggling to stay alive, which lead them to turning to President Obama.

Why is it considered a scandal? The president signed a check for $535 million to help the company do what they had to do. Obama said that by doing this the company would help create jobs, provide to the economy, and help the idea of going green continue. After the loan went through and everything was said and done, the $535 million dollars that was loaned to Solyndra was a bust. The company filed for chapter 11 and laid off 1,000 workers.

The effects on people: Not only did the company lay off 1,000 people from their jobs, but the loan left the tax payers hanging. Some reporters think that tax payers may never be able to recover from losing all this money. With less money and not receiving anything they were promised caused the people to go in an uproar.

In conclusion Obama had bigger intentions for this company, but unfortunately his good intentions turned into one big mess. Tax payers are stuck paying crazy prices, thousands of people are out of a job, and the going green image is starting to make people, well, sick. Maybe this should have been looked into further before investing $535 million dollars into it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/15/jon-stewart-obama-solyndra-scandal-video_n_965474.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/solyndra–explained/2012/06/01/gJQAig2g6U_blog.html

http://www.solyndra.com

What is demand response:

Demand response is a program that pays consumer to cut down their usage of energy. This means that instead of adding generation to a system, they can keep everything the same since consumers agreed to use less energy within a certain time period. Utilities usually pay for demand response capacity because its is generally cheaper and easier to obtain than traditionally generation. Participants in demand response programs are paid because they provide to demand response capacities. It is simple things that are used to help in these programs. For example shutting off lights, air conditioners, pumps, and any other non-essential equipment.

Demand response programs:

Price-based demand response: This gives costumers time-varying rates that reflect the value and cost of electricity in different time periods. Costumers tend to use less energy during times when electricity prices are higher.

Incentive-based demand response: This program pays participants to reduce their energy use when the program tells them to. It is usually triggered when electricity is high in prices and/or during a peak in demand.

Benefits of demand response:

• Price/cost
• Efficiency
• Decrease peak demand
• Reliability

sources:

http://www.pge.com/mybusiness/energysavingsrebates/demandresponse/

http://www.enernoc.com/our-resources/term-pages/704-what-is-demand-response

https://suffolku.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_11657783_1%26url%3D

Although I was unable to go to the Museum Of Science with the class, I took an opportunity to stop by with my family to check out some exhibits. The exhibit that I am choosing to blog about is The Catching Wind Exhibit. This exhibit shows people how wind is transformed into green energy when going through a wind turbine. There are nine turbines on top of the building and the museum’s Wind Lab tracks the amount of energy that is produced. It also teaches the visitors the process of how energy is made with wind turbines and the pros and cons to having/getting a wind turbine. I think it is important to inform people about these things because finding alternate ways of energy is important today and if wind energy is efficient people should know that it is a possibility.

An image of one of the wind turbines

During our class last Thursday my group and I (Jeanie, Jonah, and James) got together to come up with an experiment to do in a high school classroom. After spending almost the entire class looking for an experiment we came across something that all of us agreed on. We decided that we were going to make a battery using coins to see how much electricity it would conduct. We thought this would be a fun experiment because its not too long and its not super complicated and you get to see something so simple do something great.

This is the diagram of the battery that will be made.

we got our idea from:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Energy_p015.shtml#summary

Objective: The objective of this lab was to show the way light intensity is seen with a solar cell. The point of the lab was to show us the relationship between light intensity and the voltage output.

Step 1: We started the lab by having no light on the solar cell and the average my group came up with was .12.

Step 2: We then added light with a flashlight and we shined it on the solar cell for a certain amount of time. The average that we came up with was .33172.

Step 3: Then we moved the flashlight back to see if we would get a different result. We did this from different distances to see if we would get other averages. First we had the flashlight 4 inches away from the solar cell and got an average .115943. We moved it back 4 more inches, 8 inches, and the average we got was .118742. We moved the flashlight back 4 more inches, 12 inches, and we came up with .03663 as the average.

Results:

The next graph shows how we used color filters on the solar cell (green, black, and blue). We also included no filter in this graph as well.

Objective: In class we did an experiment that measured the voltage that was produced by a hand generator after a specific number of shakes.

Purpose: The whole idea of this experiment was to compare the voltage measured to the number of shakes applied to the hand  generator, so we could determine the relationship between the two.

Data: 

Since we used the Labview program we were able to come up with the measurement of voltage for each amount of shakes in the certain amount of time. This graph shows that the more shakes done to the hand generator, the more voltage that is produced.

Conclusion: The experiment helped prove Faraday’s law that states changing in magnetic flux through a coil of conductive wire induces voltage.

Friday March 11th, 2011 an earthquake hits off the Eastern coast of Japan causing the automatic shut down of units 1, 2, and 3. Units 4, 5, and 6 had been shut down previously due to outages, but the emergency diesel generators are activated to provide power to the emergency cooling systems. Soon after a tsunami hits the plant and the EDGs stop working and an evacuation is ordered for people within 3km of the plant. The knock out of the cooling systems and reactors caused meltdowns and the release of radioactivity. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from an exclusion zone around the plant as the workers struggled to to bring the reactors back to a normal level.

The release of radioactive materials raised not only environmental concerns, but health concerns as well. Monitoring posts to the north-west recorded radiation levels at 680 microSieverts per hour the following Monday, which is equivalent to four months of natural background radiation. The people caught in the evacuation zone were given potassium iodide pills to protect against thyroid cancer. Radioactive iodine is easily absorbed through the thyroid causing tumors, but the pills help saturate the gland and obstruct the absorption of anything harmful. Workers who were exposed to the highest amount of radiation may experience radiation sickness which can damage tissue, prevent bone marrow from created new blood cells, and result in death. Doctors do believe that people who were not in direct contact with the Fukushima Plant or in the surrounding area that they would not suffer a great deal of illness. They do say that radiation can spread by the particles being on people’s clothes and obviously breathing it in.

Tepco published at 6-9 month plan on April 17th, 2011 for dealing with the disabled reactors. At the end of August 2011 they announced their general plan with removing fuel from the four units. They are doing everything they can to rebuild and remediate any more problems caused by the explosion. The most important thing they did was to find the location of the leaks, so they can fix them and shield them from any future leaks. In the next 30-40 years the damaged reactors will be removed, although that sounds long time, its the normal amount of time of a nuclear plant. They are making sure they take the necessary steps to ensure safety and make sure the workers are not afraid to come back to work. The explosion has changed a lot of people’s minds on the idea of nuclear plants, like Germany. Germany is on a green movement to make sure they never experience the same thing.

http://www.oecd-nea.org/press/2011/NEWS-04.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718057

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/fukushima_accident_inf129.html

summary: The class preformed an experiment that measure the amount of weight the robot could lift using a pully. All the information was determined by Labview.

objective: The idea of the experiment was to compare measurements of the different factors included to life weights.

Information:

Potential energy was calculated using the formula Potential energy= mgh. M stands for mass, G stands for acceleration due to gravity, and H stands for the height measurement of distance that the mass was lifted. Power used by the robot was calculated by dividing potential energy by time.

Conclusion: The experiment allowed the students to see that there are relationships between different factors. Since the we did different things to one factor, we were able to observe another factor as well.

What is hydraulic fracturing? Hydraulic Fracturing is a stimulation process used to maximize the extraction of underground resources (oil, natural gas, geothermal energy, and water).

Who uses hydraulic fracturing? Gas and oil industries use this process to enhance subsurface fracture systems to allow natural gas or oils to move more freely through rock pores to bring the oil/natural gases to the surface.