Month: January 2013

The United States has a vast majority of power plants and transmission lines creating what we call the US electric grid. It’s made up of sources like power plants, solar power, and wind. Recently with certain elements changing, it has forced the experts to take a look at their system and decide if something needs to be changed. With this change in mind, people are beginning to create new technology, for example, smart grid.

Smart grid is a new technology that involves computers and remotes to control. According to the information of SGIC.com, “The “grid” amounts to the networks that carry electricity from the plants where it is generated to consumers. The grid includes wires, substations, transformers, switches and much more.” Whats good about this new grid is that it can locate when something has failed and it will know instantly. Unlike when we lose power during a storm and we have to call to inform someone. The improved efficiency of the new technology will help save money. If something is fixed around the utilities grid, everything else around it will work more

There are so many great advantages to using smart grids. Better quality with digital technology, and has a better reaction rate to natural disasters. I hope this works for our future energy systems.

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

http://www.sgiclearinghouse.org/LearnMore

http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/united-states-of-america/americannationalelectricitygrid.shtml

 

Map of The United States Electricity Grid

Last friday we all continued with our Lego mindstorm experiment. My partner and I were able to complete the required tasks and play around with the car a bit.

	Our Data	Computer Data	% Error	Rotation
1st	.27m	.268m	.7%	1.55
2nd	.27m	.27m	0%	1.56
3rd	.18m	.177m	1.6%	1.02

We did our first two recordings with the power of the car at 75. Our last recording was done with the car at a power of 50. We knew the circumference of the wheel was 0.1728m, and to find how many rotations the wheels did we just took the distance and divided it by the circumference. Once we were done collecting our data and writing it down we decided to change the power again, but this time have the wheels be at two different powers. Once changing that, the car would end up in a scattered spin on the table.

Is germany now in a “energy poverty”? Is their new technique for lowering carbon emission jeopardizing the home owners of Germany? According to an online article from the Canada Free Press “Germany, Poland and Great Britain were responsible for 56% of the greenhouse gas emission increase in 2010 (a 2.4% jump from 2009)” (http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/47243) Is Germany trying to have their economy drop to decrease emissions? Raising prices on things is a great way for people to stop using them or decrease the damage that’s being done, but sometimes that leads to other issues, like having your power shut off because you couldn’t pay the bills. Germany’s homes are being hit hard, but what about their businesses’? These new policies that the German government is putting out could start to really put a toll on other German industries. Hans Heinrich Driftmann, president of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) said in an article that the energy supply is now “the top risk for Germany as a location for business.”(http://reason.org/blog/show/germanys-green-subsidies-shutting-d) Do you think that Germany is doing the right thing by raising those prices? Maybe it will be better in the long run. But what if the path they’re trying to take gets disturbed by the reality of the energy crisis within the homes and businesses? In the Book Beyond Smoke and Mirrors by Burton Richter, he talks about the issue at hand with greenhouse gas and how the turn it has taken in the past decades. If you’ve read the first few chapters, you might applaud germany for their effort but I don’t think it’s quite the right step to fixing the problem. From my knowledge of the German Green Energy Policy, I think it’s doing more harm than good at this point.

 

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