When I realized we were going to the Museum of Science for a class field trip, I was so excited because I haven’t been to there since I was a little kid. Approaching the entrance and seeing the massive T-Rex statue made the arrival even more exciting.

When we got their, everyone split off into their groups and went into different exhibits that targeted the ideas of our experiments. “Catching the Wind” was one of the exhibits that I looked through to learn more about wind turbines and wind energy in general. Even though my group is focusing our experiment on solar energy, I still thought it was interesting to learn more about wind energy.

“Cahner’s Computer Place” was another exhibit that I looked at and got more informed on how robots are build and the way they interact with computer technology. Even though putting the robots together was a very basic process, I was still able to learn more about putting together a robot and how it works, and whether or not our group wanted to use any form of a robot in our experiment for our final project.

The final exhibit that I toured to get ideas for our final experiment was the “Energized” exhibit. This exhibit was perfect for my group to tour and get ideas from because it had a lot of information on sunlight/solar energy. This whole exhibit was informative because it focused on the overall idea of what our class is about: sustainable energy. It had videos, hands-on activities, and models to represent the different forms of energies and how they each work and benefit our environment. One of the models that we played with was the solar panels that acted as a rooftop on different models and we experimented with them with different amounts of light and filters to see how solar energy works. Our group got a lot more ideas on how we wanted to conduct our solar panel car and it confirmed that our experiment will work.

Demand Response by definition is end-use customers reducing their use of electricity in response to power grid needs, economic signals from a competitive wholesale market or special retail rates. (“PJM”). In simpler terms, Demand response rewards people who consume less electricity by reimbursing them with money and rewarding them for their efforts to reduce their electricity consumption.

Demand response allows energy users of all kinds to act as “virtual power plants,” adding stability to the grid by voluntarily lowering their demand for electricity. (“Enernoc”). They work with individuals, as well as big businesses and corporations to customize how they can use less electricity and alternative ways to consume less electricity. Depending on the type of program that is set up, the participants may be dispatched only 1-2 times a year for a few hours, or up to 100 hours per year. The more frequently dispatched programs get offered higher payouts.

Demand Response is a great way for businesses and individuals to feel good about themselves and be rewarded for helping our economy by using less electricity. There are so many positives to using Demand Response, with the main one being that you get rewarded with money. Who isn’t looking to save money and make money for participating in something good? That is ultimately what Demand Response does for their participants. Also, it is a more clean, cheaper, environment-friendly alternative with no disadvantages.

I think Demand Response is a really positive way for our economy to start saving electrical energy and to help our environment become cleaner, while costing the economy less money.

The image below is an example of how Demand Response works:

“The Benefits of Demand Response.” Buildings . 04 Dec 2006: n. page. Web. 30 Mar. 2013. <http://www.buildings.com/article-details/articleid/3462/title/the benefits of demand response.asp&xgt;.

Sources: 

“Demand Response.” PJM. n.d. n. page. Web. 30 Mar. 2013. <http://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations/demand-response.aspx

“The Benefits of Demand Response.” Buildings . 04 Dec 2006: n. page. Web. 30 Mar. 2013. <http://www.buildings.com/article-details/articleid/3462/title/the benefits of demand response.aspx

“What is Demand Response?.” Enernoc. n.d. n. page. Web. 30 Mar. 2013. <http://www.enernoc.com/our-resources/term-pages/704-what-is-demand-response>.

After being assigned our final project/experiment guidelines, we all broke into our groups to have a brainstorming session of what we would like our experiment to be.

I am on Rebecca Bernardo’s team and we decided that we are going to base our experiment around solar energy power and how it is more sustainable and a better choice of energy.

The purpose of this experiment is to teach our other classmates what we have learned in class in relation to energy and sustainability and put all our knowledge into an experiment that can demonstrate what we have learned.

We started out our brainstorming session by logging onto a few different websites to see what ideas we could get on how to start putting the details together to put an experiment together. We looked into wind power experiments and solar power energy experiments. We ended up decided that we wanted to put together an experiment that showed how well solar power energy works and how sustainable it is. Initially we thought of having a regular NXT motor run and then a solar panel car run against it and see which got the furtherest and how powerful solar power energy would be, but they don’t have the same properties and it would end up having a lot of error in the final numbers of the experiment. Since this would not work well, we decided to just put together an experiment on solar powered energy with a solar panel car model and show how well it runs and compare different distances and tests with it.

We are hoping to gain more knowledge on how to perfect the idea of our experiment when we go to the Museum of Science next week.

In this lab, we separated into groups to test solar power energy. In order to perform this lab we needed:

• one sollar cell
• one voltage probe
• an NXT adaptor
• NXT with light sensor
• light source (flashlights)
• ruler
• different colored film filters

The purpose of this lab was to understand the relationship between light intensity and the voltage output of the solar cell, and the relationship between the wavelength of light and the voltage output of the solar cell. In order to change the light intensity, we varied the distance from the flashlight and the solar cell and measured the distance with the ruler. 

The closer the flashlight was to the solar cell, the higher the voltage was and more powerful it was.

The second part of the lab was experimenting with different light filters to see how different colored filters affect the voltage output. The filter colors we used were purple, red, clear green, orange, and no filter.

Unfortunately my colors did not show up when I e-mailed the excel sheet to myself, but the Purple filter measured 0.38 cm, the Red filter measured 0.37 cm, the Clear-Green filter measured 0.47 cm, the Orange measured 0.45 cm, and No filter measured 0.45 cm as well.

As you can see after reading these graphs, that the light colored filters and no filters produced the most solar power (voltage output) and proves that solar powered energy will work very productively during the sunny hours of the day.

In this lab the purpose was to experiment and learn more about

• 1- Newton’s 2nd Law F=ma
• 2- The law of conservation of energy
• 3- Velocity and acceleration
• 4- Power

We performed this experiment with the Lego Mindstorm Motor to life weights with a pully and recorded the data with Labview. The goal was to understand how acceleration, power, and battery discharge are affected by mass, and power level. This was tested in two ways: keeping the mass consistent and varying the power level, and then the opposite, keeping the power level consistent and varying the mass.

The first two graphs below demonstrates a consistent mass and a varied power level.  ( the line did not show up in any of my graphs when I opened them on my own computer).

The next two graphs represent a consistent power level and a varied mass.

A few weeks ago in class we grouped up as a class to conduct an experiment to test if Faraday’s Law was true.

Faraday’s Law states that when changing magnetic fluxes through coiled wires, it generates electricity. The greater the magnetic flux, the greater the currents and voltages are.

To test this law, we shook a tube containing a magnet, that will be traveling back and forth through a coil of wires during each shake that occurs. The point of the experiment was to prove that the faster you shook the tube, the greater the voltage and currents were that were generated. We used a generator, voltage probe, NXT adaptor, NXT machine, the Labview program, and we recorded the data on an excel worksheet. This experiment was conducted while everything was connected to the computer as Labview ran and helped collect the data. We started collecting data by shaking the tube for a 30 second period and counting how many shakes we had. The lab instructions were to perform this 5 different times at different rates. After collecting the data, we calculated the sum of the squares of the voltages (SSQV).

These were the results:

# of shakes      SSQV
0                       0.038293053
23                     71.9893744
44                     78.87098803
77                     201.4616799
88                     161.2575894

The Fukushima Daiichi Disaster was devastating for the region of Fukushima, Japan, after a horrific earthquake, followed by a tsunami destroyed the area of Fukushima.

The earthquake, followed by an immediate tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three major Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a massive nuclear accident in March of 2011. It was rated at a 7 on the INES scale because there were such high radioactive releases within the first few days. Over 100,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes. (SITE).

Sadly, 20,000 people died as a result of the tsunami and more are predicted to come due to this disaster. This tsunami was such a horrific disaster because it destroyed one of Fukushima’s cooling systems, which caused the nuclear reactors to melt.

Below is an image demonstrating the evacuation that occurred after the disaster.

The Japanese government gets a lot of bad publicity and feedback for the way they handled the disaster but it took up to a month to discover that this disaster was at a level 7 and how bad the effects really were going to be. People have continued to die since the disaster due to the land being contaminated with caesium-134 and caesium-137, which can cause cancer years later after initial exposure.

Sources:

– http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/01/reassessing-health-effects-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident

– http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Fukushima-Accident-2011/#.UVHsmY5peSI

– http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21737910

Since our class has been learning about new types of energy, while conducting a lot of labs and experiments within the VI and NXT labs, it only made perfect sense to have Suffolk University’s Tom Vale come into class to conduct a presentation to further our knowledge on different types of machines.

He showed us a few different machines, starting with the Stirling Engine that is 80% effective and runs from the bottom of the machine and is powered by heat. Tom then placed his machine over a hot cup of water, 7 degrees F. Any of the heat that rose and was trapped between the machine and the cup created power for the machine.

Stirling Engine

The second thing that Tom showed us was the Peltier Junction, created by John Peltier. John Peltier was the one who discovered that you can heat and cool one side and get electricity. The Peltier Junction is made of metal and copper and generates electric currents. It uses a thermoelectric effect so it can produce colder temperatures.

Peltier Junction

Tom also showed us the Mendocino Motor. This motor is very interesting because it is able to float on it’s own magnetic field that it produces. It is able to do this because it is made up of 4 rotating solar cell magnets that generate the power for it to float. The solar cell magnets convert light into electricity and power the motor to run. Tom Vales referred to this as the DC Theory, which is the input of the motor/voltage and the output is the speed.

Mendocino Motor

I thought that Tom’s presentation was very interesting, informative, and fun to watch and learn from and helped further my knowledge on machines and why we conduct the experiments that we do in class.

In efforts to start having a cleaner, greener environment, Germany has decided to gear away from using coal to power their energy sources and started using wind power instead.

It has not been as successful as Germany has hoped as they changed their energy policy to be more green and clean. The new wind turbines that have three 61.5-meter blades, which can make one revolution every 5 seconds, producing 5 megawatts of electric power, sit alongside the older power plants and incinerators, which Germany had hoped would have been gone by now. (Fairley). It has been a lot harder than Germany expected to get rid of their old power plants and start using solely wind turbines to power their energy.

Even though Germany has had good intentions of converting to greener energy sources, it has unfortunately had more negatives than positives. Not only has it been harder to eliminate their old sources of energy, such as the power plants and incinerators, but they have also now caused instability to it’s own electric grid. “The intermittent power is causing destabilization of the electric grids causing potential blackouts, weakening voltage and causing damage to industrial equipment.” (Institute For Energy Research).

“This year German electricity rates are about to increase by over 10 percent due mainly to a surcharge for using more renewable energy and a further 30 to 50 percent price increase is expected in the next ten years. These changes in the electricity generation market have caused about 800,000 German households to no longer be able to afford their energy bills.” (Institute For Energy Research). Even though Germany hoped to help out the environment by creating a green energy policy, it has done nothing but cost them a lot of money and has let down hundreds of thousands of families that have depending on the electricity in Germany.

As if there aren’t enough problems with the green energy policy, Germany has also hurt the environment, while trying to save it at the same time. “Increased production of biogas, in particular, has intensified corn monoculture… noting that this has harmed numerous plant and animal species. Wind turbines also kill birds and bats,” says Kathrin Ammermann, head of the renewable energy department for Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. Nature has not been an issue that the minister of the Green Energy Policy has even thought about and it has really upset all of the people that work to save nature and save the environment. The Policy is only looking at how wind power is a better, cleaner option, while disregarding the negative affects it will have on nature and the electric grid.

An idea that once started out on the top, has unfortunately sunk to the bottom, as Germany faces much more issues in hopes of having a more green energy policy.

Sources:

– Fairley, Peter. “German’ys Green Energy Gap.” Spectrum Ieee. Jul 2009: n. page. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. <http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/germanys-green-energy-gap>.

– “German’ys Green Energy Destabilizing Electric Grids.” Institute for Energy Research. 23 Jan 2013: n. page. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. <http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/01/23/germanys-green-energy-destabilizing-electric-grids/>.

– http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/bild-850419-389683.html

– “The Price of Green Energy: Is Germany Killing the Environment to Save It?.” Spiegel International. 12 Mar 2013: n. page. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. <http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-renewable-energy-policy-takes-toll-on-nature-conservation-a-888094.html>.

Mixing politics and ways to help our environment usually seems like a good pairing, but unfortunately when it came to the Solyndra company, it was not.

Solyndra is a leading company in clean and economical solar power panels for rooftops. They separate themselves from other solar power companies because they design their panels so they can cover all shapes of rooftops and cover more of the rooftops. The scandal of Solyndra started lasted for 5 years, starting in 2006 when Solyndra applied for a government applied loan under the Bush administration. (“The Washington Post”). The scandal started when there was miscommunication with the company and with the government confirming the loan had gone throug, when in fact it had not. In 2009, once the loan was actually confirmed by the government, the Obama administration started working with Solyndra and believed that they were a great company to be producing these solar panels.

As time progressed, Solyndra declared bankruptcy after receiving almost $600 Million from the government loans. ” Americans lost jobs. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill. And members of Congress are now in high dudgeon and making speeches.” (Kass). Obama had been warned that giving out such a big loan was very risky and not a good idea, but Obama believed in working with Solyndra in his hopes of our economy becoming more “green”.

“Republican staffers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have been sifting through tens of thousands of pages of internal emails, trying to find evidence Solyndra got special treatment from the White House despite a number of warning signs.” (Kass). The scandal has become a big burden on the Obama Administration as they deal with losing almost $600 Million to a company that could not live up to their capability. Many people believe that Obama and Biden were in on this because they wanted to look like the “good guys” by helping our economy go “green” but there is still much deliberation amongst government officials and the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Unfortunately due to this scandal, Solyndra has made it very difficult for other green companies to apply and receive loans. “Solyndra’s failure will make it more difficult for wind and solar companies looking for tax credit extensions and new federal mandates”. (Samuelsohn).

Even though this scandal of Solyndra has become a very negative issue, it has helped to expose our government to clean energy subsidies and renewable power. These subsidies for renewable power are becoming so popular compared to subsidies for fossil fuels because they are better for our environment and they are cheaper.  “Subsidies to fossil fuels—a mature, developed industry that has enjoyed government support for many years—totaled approximately $72 billion over the study period, representing a direct cost to taxpayers. Subsidies for renewable fuels, a relatively young and developing industry, totaled $29 billion over the same period,” reported by the Environmental Law Institute. (Morgan).

These subsidies are very smart for our government to start funding and using because they are better for the environment, they are more efficient, and they are cheaper.

Peter Lehner, a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council, states; “Moreover, ending oil and other dirty energy giveaways would do more than reduce taxpayer’s burden. It would also begin to address a much bigger drag on our economy—the hidden costs of our dirty energy infrastructure. By choosing to invest in clean energy and stopping oil subsidies, Congress can start building an economy that is cleaner, healthier, and made to last.”

Hopefully as time continues on the government will start to only invest in clean energy subsidies and stop all of our oil subsidies, so the government can save money and make a healthy environment for our society to live in.

References:

– Kass, John. “Obama’s Solyndra scandal reeks of the Chicago Way.” Chicago Tribune News. (2011): n. page. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-09-18/news/ct-met-kass-0918-20110918_1_solyndra-loan-guarantee-obama-fundraisers-obama-white-house>.

– Lehner, Peter. “Costly Oil Subsidies Drag Us Down; Clean Energy Investments Will Build a Healthier Economy.” Switchboard: Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog. 13 Dec 2012: n. page. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/plehner/costly_oil_subsidies_drag_us_d.html>.

– Morgan, Jack. “Should the U.S. Shift More Energy Subsidies to Renewable Power?.” Scientific American. 06 Aug 2012: n. page. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=making-renewable-energies-competitive>.

– Samuelsohn, Darren. “Making Sense of Solyndra.” Politico. (2011): n. page. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63654.html>.

– “Solyndra Scandal Timeline.” The Washington Post. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Mar 2013. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/solyndra-scandal-timeline/>.