PV Potential ~ Mapping Sunpower Worldwide...

The Sun is a giant thermonuclear reactor in the sky powerbeaming 24x7. A tiny sliver hits the daily rotating Earth and then you have to discount for angles and overcasts. When all's accounted for, here's the resulting worldmap of terrestrial potential for PV or photovoltaic sunpower... Curiously enough, most maps like this only show land incidence. But surely we could float massive solar panels out on swathes of ocean? In fact, perhaps we should hoover up the massive ocean gyres of waste plastic and convert these into floatation for PV paneling.

Power Barges ~ Flexible Floating Infrastructure

Thanks to gCaptain for spotting an improved Power Barge system...

"A new modular medium speed engine power barge design [...] This radiator-cooled modular power barge design permits the same hull to be utilized with a range of power outputs from 80 MW to 180 MW. [...] The new design is presently being modified for dual fuel and natural gas operations to suit combined operations with LNG […] and combined cycle systems for specific market opportunities."

Power barges are the fastest way to ramp up electricity (and cogen + water desal) infrastructure in coastal or navigable river areas. By floating in and being modular, they can be incrementally added to (with more barges) or floated out and moved to new or better location (and/or refurbished). See also my previous posts on this topic!

Powering US ~ Electricity Generation Sources...

WashPo shares Map of how the US generates electricity...

Religion is Bullshit ~ Carlin, Gervais, Maher, et al

Comedians on how and why Religion is Bullshit...

Faraday ~ Working-Class Scientist-Inventor!

One of my favorite Barron's columns is The Long View by historian and author John Steele Gordon. This week he spotlights Michael Faraday: Working-Class Hero...

"Faraday would be the first great man of science to have a working-class background. Because the family had little money, Faraday received only the most rudimentary formal education. Indeed, he never mastered mathematics beyond simple algebra, an astonishing fact for someone who would become one of the world's greatest physicists. But if he had little formal education, he was a voracious autodidact. [The Danish scientist] Ørsted discovered that an electric current running through a wire induces a magnetic field around the wire. This was the first indication that electricity and magnetism, long thought to be completely different forces, must have a connection. [To explore this, Faraday] hung a copper wire, able to rotate freely, from a metal support. The wire reached into a vessel below containing a magnet in a pool of mercury. When he attached a battery to the support, the copper wire began to rotate around the magnet, following the lines of the magnetic field (a term Faraday coined) in the mercury. Faraday had converted electrical energy into mechanical, work-doing energy. In other words, he had invented an electric motor [...] One of the attributes of great scientists is a knack for asking the right question. And Faraday wondered, since an electric current could induce a magnetic field, whether a magnetic field could induce an electric current. [...] in 1829, Faraday found the answer to his question. He wrapped two copper coils on opposite sides of an iron ring. He found that when he attached a battery to one coil, there was a momentary electric current generated in the other coil. And when he disconnected the battery, there was a second momentary current. He soon found that it was changes in the magnetic field that induced the current. By simply keeping the magnetic field in continuous motion, he was able to generate a steady current. Faraday had invented the generator, a device that turns mechanical energy into electrical energy -- the opposite of the electric motor. It was the means of providing a bottomless supply of electric power, and the modern world could be born."

Truly one of the heroes of progress and civilization! See more in this Great Moments in Science and Technology video...

Epic Swiss Build ~ Pumped-Storage Gigaproject

My MIT colleague Jonas Brunschwig spotted this really epic Swiss engineering project Linthal 2015!

"A new underground pumped-storage power plant will be used to pump water from Lake Limmern back up to Lake Mutt, which is 630 m higher. When needed, it can then be used to generate electricity again. The new facility will boast pump and turbine capacities of 1,000 MW each. This will boost the output of Kraftwerke Linth-Limmern AG (KLL) from the current 480 MW or so to 1,480 MW. In terms of performance, this will put it on a par with the Leibstadt nuclear power plant or the Cleuson Dixence hydroelectric power plant. This will serve to safeguard the future security of electricity supply for northeastern and central Switzerland. Construction is expected to take about five years, and the plant should go into operation in 2015/2016."

Check out build video (in German, but spectacular graphics!-)

Beneath Cities ~ Decaying Infrastructure & Death

In NYTimes, Patrick McGeehan, Russ Buettner, and David Chen share scandal: Beneath Cities, a Decaying Tangle of Gas Pipes...

"It is a danger hidden beneath the streets of New York City, unseen and rarely noticed: 6,302 miles of pipes transporting natural gas. [...] The perilous state of New York City’s underground network, one of the oldest in the country [is] a glaring example of America’s crumbling infrastructure. [...] Communities across the country have been struggling to replace thousands of miles of these old, metal pipes with pipes made of plastic or specially coated steel that are less prone to leakage. Few, however, face as daunting a challenge as New York City. To replace all of the old mains in its network right now would cost as much as $10 billion, Con Edison estimates. Much of that expense would fall on the residents and businesses that use the gas for heating and cooking. [...] “Some of this aging infrastructure has reached the end of its useful life” [...] “It’s a major ordeal in a city like New York to just start digging things up.”

Yikes, surely there's a better way to design, build, and maintain cities?! Here's the mess below as visualized by Larry Buchanan's infographic and Robert Stolarik's photos...

WiTricity ~ Wireless Power Transfer on CNN

CNN's Ponsford and Glass spot Wireless electricity? It's here...

"In the house of the future, wire-free energy transfer could be as easy as wireless internet. If all goes to WiTricity's plans, smartphones will charge in your pocket as you wander around, televisions will flicker with no wires attached, and electric cars will refuel while sitting on the driveway. WiTricity have already demonstrated their ability to power laptops, cell-phones, and TVs by attaching resonator coils to batteries -- and an electric car refueller is reportedly in the works."

Building Turbofans ~ Rolls-Royce's Trent Engine!

Epic engineering masterpiece, the Rolls-Royce Trent turbofan engine!

African Infrastructure ~ Visualizing Improvements

Excellent to see infrastructure blossoming in and around the African continent. Rapidly changing is broadband internet access... Existing and planned power pool connections... And planned power plants... Plus, see my earlier Maximizing Progress posts here with maps of African Seaports, Bollore's ports, rail and waterlinks, the planned roadway and current rails, and proposed African Rail Corridors, including special focus on Rail West Africa.

Wireless Tramways ~ Alstom's APS Power...

Alstom's APS in-ground power enables wireless tramways... Here operating in beautiful Bordeaux... And the plan for Dubai...

Wilder's Tiny V12 ~ Beautiful Miniature Motor!

Yesus Wilder's Tiny V12 engine, the world's smallest! P.S. Here's the real thing, courtesy Ferrari!

GrassRootsMobile ~ Pay-Per-Use Electricity...

MIT Media Lab's Pragun Goyal is in Nairobi, Kenya prototyping his GrassRootsMobile powerstrip that turns electricity on (or off) with the messaging of M-Pesa currency on pay-per-use basis...

Bad Seeds ~ AlJaz on People & Power in Pampas

AlJaz spots People & Power politics in the Pampas revealing what filmmakers Glenn Ellis and Guido Bilbao call Bad Seeds...

"For much of the past decade Argentina has seen a commodities-driven export boom, built largely on genetically-modified soy bean crops and the aggressive use of pesticides. Argentina's leaders say it has turned the country's economy around, while others say the consequences are a dramatic surge in cancer rates, birth defects and land theft. People & Power investigates if Argentina's booming soy industry is a disaster in the making."

I'm not sure this is GMO fear-mongering and unscientific sensationalizing of the root-causes of real ailments or something more sinister and deeper. The bullying and fire-starting and land-grabbing I'm afraid is an age-old story in modern guise.

GravityLight ~ Deciwatt's Cheap Lamp Solution!

Thanks to tywkiwdbi for spotting Deciwatt's GravityLight on Indiegogo...

"There are currently over 1.5 billion people in the World who have no reliable access to mains electricity. These people rely, instead, on biomass fuels (mostly kerosene) for lighting once the sun goes down. We propose a sustainable lighting solution powered by gravity."

Energy Flows ~ Tech Review Infographs US...

Nice infographic in Tech Review on US Energy Flows...

See also The man behind Sankey diagrams @ LLNL. Plus DOE's diagram Tracking US Energy Flows (thanks to Mimi for spotting!)

Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C ~ Massive Motive Power

Continuing the theme of big vehicles is today's spotlight on the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C...

"...the largest reciprocating engine in the world, designed for large container ships, running on heavy fuel oil. It stands at 13.5 metres (44 ft) high, is 27.3 m (90 ft) long, and weighs over 2300 tonnes in its largest 14-cylinder version -- producing 80080 kW."

Finnish motive power champion Wärtsilä builds these!

gCaptain spots a few images of this Emma Maersk engine...

And gives some sense of inner workings...

Plus another perspective on just how big it is!

History Channel gets close up view...

ABB Azipods ~ Flexi Propulsion & Steer Controls

Maritime industry supersite gCaptain spots new ABB Azipod video explaining this flexible ship propulsion and steering system. ABB describes it as an...

"...electric propulsion unit where the variable speed electric motor driving the fixed pitch propeller is in a submerged pod outside the ship hull, and the pod can be rotated around its vertical axis to give the propulsion thrust freely to any direction. Thus the ship does not need rudders, stern transversal thrusters or long shaftlines inside the ship hull."