Energy – Page 77 – Things Are Good

Keep it Cool with no Energy

The other day in Vancouver I was discussing the inefficiencies of refrigeration and now it seems kinda freaky that the headline “MAGNETIC REFRIGERATOR NEEDS NO ELECTRICITY” appeared on my monitor the next day. To get straight to the meat of the matter:

The new method uses opposing magnetic fields to increase the temperature of the materials employed. The heat energy is transported through a non-volatile fluid, such as water, and then thermodynamically reversed to a cold temperature. The scientists have already been able to cool a 20Â° C room to 11Â°C using the new technology.

Solar is Hot in Germany

A german co-worker told me how it rains practically everyday in his native town. So how does the country become the world’s top solar power producer?

Apparently, what’s good for the planet is also good for the German economy:

There are now 250,000 jobs in Germany in the renewables energy sector… jobs in solar power alone to double to 90,000 over the next five years and hit 200,000 in 2020.

As with any new development, there are critics who want to slow down government incentives for solar power use, but the government has other plans:

So far just 3 percent of Germany’s electricity comes from the sun, but the government wants to raise the share of renewables to 27 percent of all energy by 2020 from 13 percent.

But why in Germany and not anywhere else in the world? Frank Asbeck of SolarWorld AG explains:

Germans have a fondness for inventing and developing technologies — especially when it might lead to big export rates. Helping fight climate change is a bonus.

European Plan to Create a Vast Wind Power Network

The Economist reports that a continent-wide DC power network to transmit wind power could be built in Europe. Power could even be stored hydrodynamically by pumping water into reservoirs during times of low power use.

Link to the article

Hybrid Highlights

The United States’ Department of Energy has concluded that hybrids save a LOT of gas:

The lab crunched all the statistics — number of hybrids on the road, new and old EPA mileage ratings, user-reported mileage figures, and the same mileage numbers for vehicles that most closely matched hybrids in terms of size, weight, and performance — and produced the following figure: To date, hybrids have saved 230 million gallons, or 5.5 million barrels, of fuel.

In Japan, Toyota has received approval to test their plugin hybrid:

While the car is still in testing phase, with eight plug-in OEM vehicles being manufactured and released for testing in Japan, hopes are high that Toyota will soon release this car to the general public.

From the It’s-About-Time-Department

Good things happen every day a zillion times a day, sometimes people get to experience those good things before others. Today I found out about two such things:

1. Women’s rights in Sierra Leone have improved thanks to new laws that protect women. Other countries already have such laws in place and it’s great to see yet another country support equality.

2. Taiwan is going to replace their streetlights with LEDs in a US $7 million initiative to cut power consumption of the lights by 85%. LED streetlights are nothing new, but I have no idea if this is the first time that there has been a LED replacement program that is this big.