solar
gregladen | September 20, 2017Earlier today, Minnesota Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto released her energy transition plan. It an ambitious plan that puts together several elements widely considered necessary to make any such plan work, then puts them on steroids to make it work faster. To my knowledge, this is the first major plan to be proposed since the recent dual revelations that a) the world is going to have to act faster than we had previously assumed* and b) the US Federal government will not be helping.
Here's the elevator speech version: Minnesota residents get around five thousand dollars cash (over…
gregladen | April 27, 2017The Republican line is this: Bring back coal, shut down development, subsidies, any encouragement at all, for solar and wind energy.
There is absolutely no logic to this policy, but it is in fact the policy. The reason for it is generally thought to be that the big rich corporations and individuals that control coal and petroleum resources, and that are fully engaged in delivery of those energy sources (and other materials, such as plastic bags made of petroleum) pay off the politicians to support their businesses. And that is true, they do this. But that does not explain why regular…
pgleick | June 24, 2016 Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, courtesy PG&E
The announcement that Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will close the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant when its current operating licenses expire in 2025 has caused what can only be described as consternation mixed with occasional conniptions among the nuclear industry and some strongly pro-nuclear groups.
That’s understandable. Diablo Canyon is aging, but is not the oldest nuclear plant in the fleet and PG&E could have chosen to push for a renewal of the license to continue operations for many more years. Diablo Canyon’s two reactors…
gregladen | May 25, 2016There is a new technology that can convert both solar and wind energy into electricity in such a way that it is suitable for use on urban rooftops.
Here's the abstract from the paper describing this work:
To realize the sustainable energy supply in a smart city, it is essential to maximize energy scavenging from the city environments for achieving the self-powered functions of some intelligent devices and sensors. Although the solar energy can be well harvested by using existing technologies, the large amounts of wasted wind energy in the city cannot be effectively utilized since…
gregladen | December 4, 2015The big complaint people have about renewable energy, or at least, the big complaint that has some merit, is that renewables, such as wind and solar, are intermittent and to varying degrees, unpredictably intermittent. This makes it hard to match demand for electricity to supply. Some aspects of this argument are overstated. For example, a steady supply (the same potential power all the time, every minute of the day) can be a bug as well as a feature. If every electron of electricity we used came from nuclear power plants, there would be a problem because our demand fluctuates and you can't…
esiegel | June 30, 2012"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." -Mark Twain
So, you've been around a while, seen all sorts of things, and learned an awful lot about the world, solar system and Universe that we live in. But how well do you know it, really?
Image credit: NASA / Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
To scale and in order, these are the eight planets you know so well. There are the four rocky worlds of our inner solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and the four gas giants that dominate the outer solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and…
esiegel | June 22, 2012"Some prophecies are self-fulfilling
But I've had to work for all of mine
Better times will come to me, God willing
Cause I can't leave this world behind" -Josh Ritter
You sure can't leave this world behind. At least, not very easily. The reason for it, of course, is gravity.
Image Credit: Physclips, via the University of New South Wales' School of Physics.
Here on the surface of the Earth, the gravitational potential well is pretty large; large enough that there's no easy way off. Sure, you can pour a huge amount of energy into a rocket to try and overcome this gravitational potential…
esiegel | June 8, 2012"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen." -Larry Niven
Here on the solid ground of the Earth, the Sun and Moon rise and set on a daily basis. During the hours where the Sun is invisible, blocked by the solid Earth, the stars twirl overhead in the great canopy of the night sky.
Image credit: Chris Luckhardt at flickr.
In the northern hemisphere, they appear to rotate around the North Star, while in the southern hemisphere, the stars appear to rotate about the South Celestial Pole. The longer you observe -- or for photography, the longer you…
esiegel | June 1, 2012"The moon shuts off the beams of the sun as it passes across it, and darkens so much of the earth as the breadth of the blue-eyed moon amounts to." -Empedocles, ~450 B.C.
Less than two weeks ago, I saw my first annular eclipse, with some spectacular results at the moment of maximum eclipse.
From my first eclipse expedition, to False Klamath Cove, on the coast in northern California.
This happens, of course, because -- from our point of view -- the Moon appears to pass in front of the Sun, blocking a fraction of the light coming from it.
Image credit: NASA / Solar Dynamics Observatory.
And…
esiegel | May 28, 2012"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there." -Ray Bradbury
Today is Memorial Day here in the United States, where we honor all the soldiers who have fought and fallen for our country. The peace and prosperity that I have enjoyed my entire life is because of a price paid, many times over, mostly by people…
lborkowski | April 6, 2012At an American Public Health Association annual meeting session a couple of years ago, I learned from the panelists that green jobs aren't always safe jobs -- for instance, energy-efficient buildings and wind turbines can be designed without proper consideration for how workers constructing or servicing them will be protected from falls or assured adequate ventilation in confined spaces. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Prevention Through Design program is addressing these issues and others related to green jobs, but there's still a lot of progress to be made.…
lborkowski | November 30, 2011by Mark Pendergrast
This is my second post in a series of three about the state of Japan's renewable energy efforts, which are vital to prevent further climate change and to wean the country from fossil fuel and nuclear power. In the previous post, I covered the public-health impacts of climate change and explained why Japan is a good indicator of whether countries will be able to act quickly enough in the face of these threats. Japan's reliance on imported fossil fuels gives it a good reason to invest in alternatives, and its technological sophistication should help it develop renewable-…
kmcwalsh | November 18, 2011This guest post was written by Pat Looney, chair of the Sustainable Energy Technology Department at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory.
If the sun is shining over Long Island, NY, as you read this article, the Long Island Solar Farm (LISF) is generating enough clean solar energy to power as many as 4,500 homes for the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA).
Construction of the LISF at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) began in the fall of 2010 and officially concluded this month when the array began commercial operation. LIPA hosted a formal commissioning…
stoat | June 29, 2011Don't bother read this post. Watch the video "Earth facing mini-ice age!!" say the media. Now for the science... instead. Or read the RC post.
I ignored this when it first came out, and am only posting now because the Economyth has picked it up. They lose points for not putting a question mark in their headline, but gain points from the byline "Several lines of evidence suggest that the sun is about to go quiet", i.e. not talking rubbish about a new ice age. And similarly, for spending much of the article on what it is actually about, viz solar activity. They lose somewhat for not putting in…
ksnyder | June 9, 2011Brookhaven will soon be home to the largest solar farm in the eastern United States. The Long Island Solar Farm, being constructed by BP Solar and the Long Island Power Authority on Brookhaven Lab's campus, will produce 32 megawatts of power when complete - enough to power about 4,500 homes.
The Long Island Solar Farm
Just about six months after site preparation work began in November, the farm is now more than halfway complete. To date, workers have mounted nearly 90,000 of the 164,000 solar panels that will make up the array and have installed 4,600 of the 6,800 racks that hold the…
stoat | June 3, 2011In the comments to Romm Echoes Groundless Cell Phone/Cancer Fears? we've degenerated into an argument about the safety of nuclear versus solar power ("which do you think has killed more people: radiation from Fukushima, or solar-voltaic installers falling from ladders?" was my question. It is a trick question, of course, because no-one has died from Fukushima as far as I know. But the correct question, of course, is deaths per unit of 'lectric generated). MV, beng something of a spoilsport (just joking, don't worry) pops the bubble by pointing to someone who has actually worked some numbers…
stoat | January 30, 2011The Indian government seems to be making a minor speciality in boosting voodoo science, presumably caring less for their reputations and more for fighting off any restrictions on coal burning. Or it may be all a matter of tedious internal politics and corruption, who knows.
This springs again from an article in the Hindu which is kind enough to destroy its credibility right up front by beginning A key belief of climate science theology.... Before I return to the obvious lies - "Cosmic ray impact ignored" - I'll do the throw-away stuff at the end, viz:
In November 2009, Mr. Ramesh had released…
illconsidered | November 18, 2010Real science is about the gathering of multiple lines of evidence, bulding on previous research that built on research before that. One of the hallmarks of denialism is choosing a single study or dataset out of a multitude simply because it is an outlier that confirms their prefered viewpoint.
On the "It's the sun, stupid" thread, mandas has provided a very nice listing of some of the many different examinations of solar forcing on recent climate change.
As with all robust scientific findings, the methods and datasets are different but the general conclusions are all the same: solar forcing…
lborkowski | November 3, 2010John Perlin has written an interesting Miller-McCune article about how the Pentagon has come to understand some of the problems associated with powering Iraq and Afghanistan operations - and how they're now reducing operations' energy consumption and embracing solar power.
Perlin describes the experience of Lt. Gen. Richard Zilmer, who assumed command of the coalition forces in Iraq's Al Anbar province in 2006 and soon realized that his command's reliance on trucking in liquid fossil fossil fules was contributing to casualties. In today's conflicts, Marine combat brigade uses half a million…
lborkowski | October 5, 2010Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof; Ronald Reagan took them down. Today, at the GreenGov Symposium (taking place here at George Washington University), Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that the Obama administration will install solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the White House roof by the end of this spring. (Visit Adam Werbach's blog for a video of the announcement.)
This doesn't address the problem of Congress being unable to pass the climate legislation we need, but it does show that the Obama administration recognizes the importance of renewable…