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.
MotorWave's work is truly impressive, both as a marvel of engineering and in terms of environmental friendliness. I would also love to see more MotorWaves in coastal areas worldwide; it's definitely a step in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteThe approach to developing new technologies is often disjointed from start to finish. One team comes up with a concept without much thought to how the next is going to try and apply it at the next step - to quote a researcher I recently spoke with, "That's their problem". And that's too bad, because too often we seem to be spinning our wheels with nothing but a pretty miniature model to show for it.
I certainly check back every once in a while as I am wading my way through the same confusion.
ReplyDeletevery cool. they should have those at the ARC.
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