Energy We Can Use

First of all, thanks Konstantin for asking me why I haven't posted in a while. The reason is that I don't know that many people were actually reading this! I'm not narcissistic enough to post for my own amusement so please do leave comments so that I know there is interest in this endeavour :)

I hope that you are all pleasantly amused by the picture above which brings up a great dillema with green energy. We need to be careful that the solutions we invest in provide relaible sources of electricity that can be applied in a useful manner. Powering toy trains with fusion power may be great, but shouldn't we be spending our hard earned cash elsewhere?

There is a company in Hong Kong called MotorWave who have created effective micro-turbines.

These turbines can be strung out on apartment baclonies and even placed in exercise machinery. There is one such gym in Hong Kong which uses this technology to power a percentage of the gym's electricity needs. Now that is putting otherwise wasted energy to good use.


Although the technology may not be as flashy as fusion, it's here and a bird in the hand counts for two in the bush.

The Prius Pwns

While driving back from Toronto in the Prius today, I marvelled at the technical enginuity of the hybrid car. As traffic was stop and go on the Queen'sway in Ottawa, the Prius (and most other hybrids for that matter) had two distinct advantages:

1. No idling when stopped, which means the gasoline engine turns off entirely when the vehicle is stopped, gas is not being burned in "standby" mode like in a conventional vehicle. Merely Google idling and countless articles will elaborate on the indelible wastage of gas due idling in standard vehicles
   
2. Regenerative braking, so when you take your foot off the gas and coast or brake, mechanisms in the vehicle harvest the braking/slowing power to recharge the battery

I have immense admiration for these two features as they minimize gas wastage (as they do not idle) and more exitingly, make use of wasted energy with the regeneration system. In standard cars, when you brake, your brake pads heat up due to friction. In the hybrid, all of this otherwise wasted energy is put to work charging the battery which drives the electric motor saving gas. What a beautiful system! Thus as traffic was stop and go, and despite more time lived in still life than in motion, my car was sipping gas only when needed, unlike the sea of standards surging around me. I look forward to the day when hybrids become the new standard, or even better, full electric vehicles.

I doubt this vehicle has regenerative braking, but it is powered by biofuel!