Racism in Arizona, Advamces on Solar and Wind Power, Trivia Troubles
Stafford Williamson
May 19, 2010
SB1070
To the uninitiated, or perhaps I should say the "un-inundated" because discussion of this issue seems to be everywhere, but in case you don´t know that´s the Arizona law that allows (even demands) that State law enforcement to enforce the federal laws against illegal immigration. The claim, by opponents, is that it is racist.
SB1070 is not racist. It is not against "Mexican" (or Hispanic, or any other ethnic group) (BTW, there are only 4 Races, Caucasian, Asian, Negro and Australian Aboriginal, as I mentioned last week) it is against ILLEGAL immigration, Croatian, Indonesian, Chinese, Norwegian or any other kind of persons who do not enter the country legally. It does have some stupid provisions like allowing citizens to sue law enforcement individuals for failing to enforce this law, but it is not racist or anti- any ethnicity.
Spawned with the Wind
I spent a little time recently browsing a trade magazine aimed at alternative power industry generally. Naturally enough it included a segment on Wind power turbines. What I found that I didn´t expect was the variety of advertisers trying to reach people in this field. Apparently there is a whole sub-industry that has been generated around the technical issues of raising and running wind turbines, and the specialty devices, mechanisms and enhancements that go with that elaborate set of engineering problems.
A truly remarkable array of "bolt tensioning" devices seems to have come to prominence as a result of the stringent demands of the stresses placed on bolts in certain parts of a wind turbine tower. Of course there are some interesting "window washer" type platforms that have found new homes for maintaining the pylons themselves, but that was to be expected. After all, you can´t just hang a guy out there on a rope ladder with a paint brush and a 5 gallon plastic bucket from Home Depot, can you? (Well, actually you can, and doubtless in places that have less stringent rules than those from OSHA, and paranoid lawyers in the insurance underwriters´ offices, I expect that they do. But then, let´s not get into the "fair labor" issues of globalization for the moment.)
I rather imagine that those who ordinarily need such things are well aware of companies like Hytorc, but their arrangement of 7 different models of bolt tensioning devices in the display ad I saw was impressive. So was the claim that they can do what was considered a 9 hour bolting job in just ONE hour. Nor were they the only ones on display this particular week.
TorcUp Industrial Bolting Tools also had a small article of copy announcing a whole new series of tools for bolt tensioning specifically for the wind power industry. Obviously the opportunities are huge, especially if no one slows down T. Boone Pickens.
CHP
"Co-generation" is what it is called in most places except when it is abbreviated CHP, which stands for Combined Heat and Power (or more formally, Co-generation of Heat and Power). It only makes sense that if more than 40% of the energy that goes into powering a light bulb comes out as (usually undesirable) heat instead of brighter lighting, that there ought to be processes that recover that kind of "wasted" energy to put them to good use. Indeed, one of the ways that CFL (compact fluorescent lights) use so much less power is that they are not wasting all their power making something so hot that it glows with visible light coming from its surfaces as conventional light bulbs do with a tungsten filament. Instead the electricity stimulates a gas that then emits photons, or more particularly, gives off electrons that stimulate the fluorescing coating on the inside of the fluorescent tube to emit photons. But nothing is heated to the point where it is "glowing white hot".
Photovoltaic cells ("solar cells") work in a similar manner, sunlight "knocks" electrons off of a substance thus starting a cascade of other atoms to gain and lose electrons in a somewhat organized manner that results in a flow of electrons in a circuit. Again, nothing is being heated to a "glowing white hot" temperature, so the process if a lot more efficient than burning a fossil fuel to heat water into steam to drive a turbine which turns the shaft of a generator to make electricity. It seems like that would be an ideally efficient way to convert sunlight into electric power, and it might be, except that the photovoltaic (PV) cells are still pretty expensive. Less expensive version that are essentially "painted" on, or "printed on" (even on paper according to recent reports) These paper PV cells are only 1.5% efficient, not exactly the model of perfect conversion we were hoping for in this instance. On the other hand NASA reports that printing cells on "paper thin plastic" developed 20 years ago as a result of the Small Business Innovative Research program of grants using amorphous silicon have a much higher degree of efficiency, but still few products have been developed using this technology yet.
But take heart, one company has begun delivering viable heat recovery electricity generating systems which use "low heat" waste energy to create power, Electratherm. The process is fairly simple, use a heat exchanger to extract waste heat, use that heat to evaporate a volatile fluid and use the vapor to drive a turbine. The innovative part of their system is a high efficiency twin screw design that turns the generator shaft. The design won awards over the past couple of years, and the system has been proven in practical use at the Southern Methodist University in 2008, the same year it won an award from Popular Science Magazine in its "Best Of What's New" category.
The system can convert wasted heat from any heating process, and has been used on geothermal systems, and is even being suggested as a means whereby solar thermal can heat large reservoirs during the day, in effect storing the BTU´s for the Electratherm system to extract all night to continue generating electricity in a more traditional baseline profile too.
I have asked for, but not received some technical specs, but the SMU unit was a 5kW capacity.
Happy Thoughts
I used to get a gather sense of doom as the days of December grew so short that I got out of bed in the dark to get to school on time, and leaving the school, also "on time" after a band rehearsal, also happened in the dark, long past the sunset, and well into night despite the time being still, officially, "afternoon". It was more than occasionally that my mood soured as January dragged on, February crept slowly toward March, whose entry, "like a lion" was more often than not in those northern Canadian latitudes, a lazy lion, yawning more than roaring, and lingering well into May before it was warm enough to make the journey to school without a jacket and rubber boots.
If all of that seems a little overly morose for a segment entitled "Happy Thoughts", I suppose you are right, but these days, without the winter to complain about, I feel just a twinge of the same impending doom as I watch the ads proclaiming "final episode of the season" for all my favorite televisions shows. I can´t help it. I have very few friends who ACTUALLY come into my home and tell me witty tales of derring do, of an evening, so I certainly welcome my "imaginary" friends from my favorite shows.
Now, all of that is not really sadness because despite their impending absence, I know that the send offs will be something a little special, if not outright spectacular, and I end up looking forward to those final episodes along with "May Sweeps" (which mess with the schedule and annoy me more than the end of my favorite shows). So, "happy" thoughts, this week have an altitude/attitude limit on their "soaring", but when you consider how trivial a thing it is that disturbs my day, I am TRULY APPRECIATIVE of the fact that this is the microscopic scale on which my troubles are measured. Now THAT is a happy thought, indeed.
Love and warm wishes,
Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com
To the uninitiated, or perhaps I should say the "un-inundated" because discussion of this issue seems to be everywhere, but in case you don´t know that´s the Arizona law that allows (even demands) that State law enforcement to enforce the federal laws against illegal immigration. The claim, by opponents, is that it is racist.
SB1070 is not racist. It is not against "Mexican" (or Hispanic, or any other ethnic group) (BTW, there are only 4 Races, Caucasian, Asian, Negro and Australian Aboriginal, as I mentioned last week) it is against ILLEGAL immigration, Croatian, Indonesian, Chinese, Norwegian or any other kind of persons who do not enter the country legally. It does have some stupid provisions like allowing citizens to sue law enforcement individuals for failing to enforce this law, but it is not racist or anti- any ethnicity.
Spawned with the Wind
I spent a little time recently browsing a trade magazine aimed at alternative power industry generally. Naturally enough it included a segment on Wind power turbines. What I found that I didn´t expect was the variety of advertisers trying to reach people in this field. Apparently there is a whole sub-industry that has been generated around the technical issues of raising and running wind turbines, and the specialty devices, mechanisms and enhancements that go with that elaborate set of engineering problems.
A truly remarkable array of "bolt tensioning" devices seems to have come to prominence as a result of the stringent demands of the stresses placed on bolts in certain parts of a wind turbine tower. Of course there are some interesting "window washer" type platforms that have found new homes for maintaining the pylons themselves, but that was to be expected. After all, you can´t just hang a guy out there on a rope ladder with a paint brush and a 5 gallon plastic bucket from Home Depot, can you? (Well, actually you can, and doubtless in places that have less stringent rules than those from OSHA, and paranoid lawyers in the insurance underwriters´ offices, I expect that they do. But then, let´s not get into the "fair labor" issues of globalization for the moment.)
I rather imagine that those who ordinarily need such things are well aware of companies like Hytorc, but their arrangement of 7 different models of bolt tensioning devices in the display ad I saw was impressive. So was the claim that they can do what was considered a 9 hour bolting job in just ONE hour. Nor were they the only ones on display this particular week.
TorcUp Industrial Bolting Tools also had a small article of copy announcing a whole new series of tools for bolt tensioning specifically for the wind power industry. Obviously the opportunities are huge, especially if no one slows down T. Boone Pickens.
CHP
"Co-generation" is what it is called in most places except when it is abbreviated CHP, which stands for Combined Heat and Power (or more formally, Co-generation of Heat and Power). It only makes sense that if more than 40% of the energy that goes into powering a light bulb comes out as (usually undesirable) heat instead of brighter lighting, that there ought to be processes that recover that kind of "wasted" energy to put them to good use. Indeed, one of the ways that CFL (compact fluorescent lights) use so much less power is that they are not wasting all their power making something so hot that it glows with visible light coming from its surfaces as conventional light bulbs do with a tungsten filament. Instead the electricity stimulates a gas that then emits photons, or more particularly, gives off electrons that stimulate the fluorescing coating on the inside of the fluorescent tube to emit photons. But nothing is heated to the point where it is "glowing white hot".
Photovoltaic cells ("solar cells") work in a similar manner, sunlight "knocks" electrons off of a substance thus starting a cascade of other atoms to gain and lose electrons in a somewhat organized manner that results in a flow of electrons in a circuit. Again, nothing is being heated to a "glowing white hot" temperature, so the process if a lot more efficient than burning a fossil fuel to heat water into steam to drive a turbine which turns the shaft of a generator to make electricity. It seems like that would be an ideally efficient way to convert sunlight into electric power, and it might be, except that the photovoltaic (PV) cells are still pretty expensive. Less expensive version that are essentially "painted" on, or "printed on" (even on paper according to recent reports) These paper PV cells are only 1.5% efficient, not exactly the model of perfect conversion we were hoping for in this instance. On the other hand NASA reports that printing cells on "paper thin plastic" developed 20 years ago as a result of the Small Business Innovative Research program of grants using amorphous silicon have a much higher degree of efficiency, but still few products have been developed using this technology yet.
But take heart, one company has begun delivering viable heat recovery electricity generating systems which use "low heat" waste energy to create power, Electratherm. The process is fairly simple, use a heat exchanger to extract waste heat, use that heat to evaporate a volatile fluid and use the vapor to drive a turbine. The innovative part of their system is a high efficiency twin screw design that turns the generator shaft. The design won awards over the past couple of years, and the system has been proven in practical use at the Southern Methodist University in 2008, the same year it won an award from Popular Science Magazine in its "Best Of What's New" category.
The system can convert wasted heat from any heating process, and has been used on geothermal systems, and is even being suggested as a means whereby solar thermal can heat large reservoirs during the day, in effect storing the BTU´s for the Electratherm system to extract all night to continue generating electricity in a more traditional baseline profile too.
I have asked for, but not received some technical specs, but the SMU unit was a 5kW capacity.
Happy Thoughts
I used to get a gather sense of doom as the days of December grew so short that I got out of bed in the dark to get to school on time, and leaving the school, also "on time" after a band rehearsal, also happened in the dark, long past the sunset, and well into night despite the time being still, officially, "afternoon". It was more than occasionally that my mood soured as January dragged on, February crept slowly toward March, whose entry, "like a lion" was more often than not in those northern Canadian latitudes, a lazy lion, yawning more than roaring, and lingering well into May before it was warm enough to make the journey to school without a jacket and rubber boots.
If all of that seems a little overly morose for a segment entitled "Happy Thoughts", I suppose you are right, but these days, without the winter to complain about, I feel just a twinge of the same impending doom as I watch the ads proclaiming "final episode of the season" for all my favorite televisions shows. I can´t help it. I have very few friends who ACTUALLY come into my home and tell me witty tales of derring do, of an evening, so I certainly welcome my "imaginary" friends from my favorite shows.
Now, all of that is not really sadness because despite their impending absence, I know that the send offs will be something a little special, if not outright spectacular, and I end up looking forward to those final episodes along with "May Sweeps" (which mess with the schedule and annoy me more than the end of my favorite shows). So, "happy" thoughts, this week have an altitude/attitude limit on their "soaring", but when you consider how trivial a thing it is that disturbs my day, I am TRULY APPRECIATIVE of the fact that this is the microscopic scale on which my troubles are measured. Now THAT is a happy thought, indeed.
Love and warm wishes,
Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com
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