Plug-in hybrid cars are far more fuel efficient than internal combustion engine cars, but it turns out that the way the cars' energy management systems balance the energy load between the battery and gas engine isn't always the most efficient.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside looked to nature evolutionary systems for inspiration, particularly how birds flock and fly in formation in order to improve their energy efficiency, and came up with a new technology that improves that balance and reduces fuel consumption of plug-in hybrids by 30 percent.
The university says that while not all plug-in hybrids work the same, many of them have energy management systems (EMS) that first put the car in all-electric mode until the battery is drained and then switch into hybrid mode. Research has found that this split is not the most efficient way to balance the two power sources in the plug-in hybrid, but that blending the two power modes and using the battery throughout a car trip minimizes fuel consumption.
A simple (but not perfect) measure for lighting efficiency is the number of lumens (a measure of light intensity) a lighting source produces per watt. A conventional incandescent bulb gets 13 lumens per watt to light your room, while a replacement LED bulb from Philips that can be bought at Coles or Woolworths achieves 80 lumens per watt (a compact fluorescent globe gets about 60 lumens per watt).
CREE (the industry leader who, it is speculated, may purchase the next best, Philips’ Lumileds division) has successfully demonstrated Light Emitting Diodes running at 300 Lumens per watt in the lab. CREE currently sell a $10, 9.5W bulb (available in the US), which produces 85 Lumens per watt and can directly replace an old style 60W globe.
Other breakthroughs and innovations are contributing to achieving higher efficiency’s in LED lighting, including a breakthrough by German researchers which will not only effect LED lights, but laptop and mobile phone chargers, cutting losses in today’s most efficient power supplies by half from 10% to just 5%.
Taking all this into consideration, according to the US Department of Energy SSL (Solid State Lighting) program http://energy.gov/eere/ssl/solid-state-lighting we should be able to achieve wall plug efficiencies of 250 Lumens per watt by 2020 which means that a conventional bulb replacement in 2020 would be available using only a third of the electricity of today’s LED bulbs.
At that staggering rate of 250 lumens per watt, it will only take 3W to light a room, when it used to be done with 60 Watts of power. This represents a 95% reduction in energy required for lighting.
This will have a profound effect on the world’s requirement for lighting energy. We can expect - on an absolute basis – that 19% of the world’s electricity which is currently used for lighting to dramatically drop by at least 75%. On today’s numbers the reduction is the equivalent of the entire electricity consumption of the European Union.
In developed nations these huge efficiency gains from LEDs in the lighting sector will contribute to the continuing restructure of the electricity supply industry, which is currently facing a death spiral unless it can electrify the remaining residential energy services coming from fossil gas and supply a fast tracked electrification of the world’s vehicle fleet.
In developing countries, rooms that can be lit with 3W and task lights with even lower electricity consumption. This means that almost all the remaining 1.5Billion of the world’s population without an electricity supply will be able to access one at very minimal marginal cost in the next 5 years.
There's a simple question SmartLight addresses: Is there a smarter way to use sunlight? Every day the sun's rays hit Earth with more than enough energy to meet many of society's energy demands, but existing technologies designed to harness that energy, such as photovoltaic cells, aren't very efficient. A typical photovoltaic array loses most of the sun's energy when it gets converted into electricity. But with SmartLight, Harfmann says the sunlight channeled through the system stays, and is used, in its original form. This method is far more efficient than converting light into electricity then back into light. ...
SmartLight could help shift that energy imbalance. It works like this: A narrow grid of electrofluidic cells which is self-powered by embedded photovoltaics is applied near the top of a window. Each tiny cell - only a few millimeters wide - contains fluid with optical properties as good or better than glass. The surface tension of the fluid can be rapidly manipulated into shapes such as lenses or prisms through minimal electrical stimulation - about 10,000 to 100,000 times less power than what's needed to light a traditional incandescent bulb. In this way, sunlight passing through the cell can be controlled.
The grid might direct some light to reflect off the ceiling to provide ambient room lighting. Other light might get focused toward special fixtures for task lighting. Yet another portion of light might be transmitted across the empty, uppermost spaces in a room to an existing or newly installed transom window fitted with its own electrofluidic grid. From there, the process could be repeated to enable sunlight to reach the deepest, most "light-locked" areas of any building. And it's all done without needing to install new wiring, ducts, tubes or cables.
Here’s a scary statistic: In 2007, 87 percent of households in the U.S. used air conditioning, compared to just 11 percent of households in Brazil and a mere 2 percent in India. Another one: By 2025, booming nations like those are projected to account for a billion new consumers worldwide, with a corresponding explosion in demand for air conditioning expected to arrive along with them. Keeping indoor spaces at comfortable temperatures requires a huge amount of electricity–especially in sweltering climates like India and Brazil–and in the U.S. alone it accounts for a full 16.5 percent of energy use.
All of that adds up to a big problem. At a point when humans need to take a sober look at our energy use, we’re poised to use a devastating amount of it keeping our homes and offices at the right temperatures in years to come. A team of students at MIT, however, is busy working on a prototype device that could eliminate much of that demand, and they’re doing it by asking one compelling question: Why not just heat and cool our bodies instead?
Wristify, as they call their device, is a thermoelectric bracelet that regulates the temperature of the person wearing it by subjecting their skin to alternating pulses of hot or cold, depending on what’s needed.
“We’re almost putting a data center on a gas turbine,” Ruh said during a session at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference on Wednesday morning, referencing the hundreds of sensors the company is placing on those machines to capture data. If those sensors, combined with GE’s (or anyone’s) software for managing and analyzing the data, is able to improve efficiency by just 1 percent, that could save nearly $6 billion a year.
Or think about air travel. Forty-one percent of unplanned downtime for airlines is caused by mechanical errors, Ruh explained, so GE wants to be able to predict when its engines or other airline systems will fail. With this knowledge, carriers can fix problems during scheduled downtime and save everyone precious time.
Speaking of jet engines, Ruh noted just how much potentially predictive data they’re generating. If someone captured everything coming off of a jet engine, he said, “We’re talking several hundred terabytes a day.”
However, he acknowledged, the macro effects of the industrial internet — cost savings, carbon-footprint reductions and efficiency gains — will come with shifts in the employment sector that might not be good for everyone involved. “There will be new kinds of jobs that get created that don’t exist today,” Ruh said. But, he added, “Some things people used to do will be done more efficiently through these machines.”
If you’ve had any experience with LED light bulbs, you know they can look pretty odd. Cree today introduced a bulb that mimics the traditional incandescent bulb design in every way–except its inefficiency.
The bulb is the first consumer bulb from Cree, which primarily supplies LED semiconductors to other lamp makers. There are three products: a 40-watt equivalent and two 60-watt equivalents with different color light. They’re available from Home Depot online now and will be made available in stores this month priced between $9.97 and $13.97.
What’s most notable is that bulbs have the same glass dome as incandescent lights and there isn’t a large metal heat sink. The first wave of general-purpose LED products have heavy metal fins to wick away heat from the LED light sources, which helps ensure life. The Cree bulb uses the same glass as an incandescent but has a rubber coating to prevent shattering.
In an incandescent bulb, a tungsten filament in the center of the glass glows to give off an even, warm light. Cree designed a “filament tower” that places a series of pin-hole-shaped LEDs in the same location as the traditional filament. I installed one yesterday and the effect is a similar light output as a traditional bulb and even light distribution.
Having a familiar shape is very important to spur more consumers to consider LEDs as a replacement for incandescent bulbs, says Mike Watson, the vice president of corporate marketing. “Consumers actually love that particular (incandescent bulb) product. It’s the shape they’re used to and it gives off a warm glow they expect, but it’s grossly inefficient and has a short lifetime,” he says. Cree’s bulb uses high-power LEDs which means it can work with a smaller heat sink, which appears like a collar around the base of the bulb.
An incandescent bulb lasts about 1,000 hours, while most LED bulbs are rated to last 25,000 hours, which can be 15 or 20 years depending on usage. The Cree bulb has a 10-year warranty.
Average fuel economy (window-sticker values) of cars, light trucks, minivans and SUVs purchased in August was 23.8 mpg, the fourth-best month on record and an 18 percent increase (3.7 mpg) from October 2007, the first month of monitoring by UMTRI researchers Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle. The improvement from July to August—0.2 mpg—most likely reflects the increased price of gasoline, they say.
In addition to average fuel economy, Sivak and Schoettle issued their monthly update of their national Eco-Driving Index, which estimates the average monthly emissions generated by an individual U.S. driver. The EDI takes into account both vehicle fuel economy and distance driven—the latter relying on data that are published with a two-month lag.
Technology Review has a look at energy efficient advances in chip design - 3-D Transistors.
In an effort to keep squeezing more components onto silicon chips, Intel has begun mass-producing processors based on 3-D transistors. The move not only extends the life of Moore's Law (the prediction that the number of transistors per chip will double roughly every two years) but could help significantly increase the energy efficiency and speed of processors.
The on-and-off flow of current in conventional chips is controlled by an electric field generated by a so-called gate that sits on top of a wide, shallow conducting channel embedded in a silicon substrate. With the 3-D transistors, that current-carrying channel has been flipped upright, rising off the surface of the chip. The channel material can thus be in contact with the gate on both its sides and its top, leaving little of the channel exposed to interference from stray charges in the substrate below. In earlier transistors, these charges interfered with the gate's ability to block current, resulting in a constant flow of leakage current.
With virtually no leakage current, a transistor can switch on and off more cleanly and quickly, and it can be run at lower power, since designers don't have to worry that leakage current could be mistaken for an "on" signal.
Intel claims the new transistors can switch up to 37 percent faster than its previous transistors or consume as little as half as much power. Faster switching means faster chips. In addition, because of their smaller footprint, the transistors can be packed closer together. Signals thus take less time to travel between them, further speeding up the chip.
We put a lot of stock in energy efficiency. It is regarded as the quickest and easiest way to reduce carbon emissions. Al Gore even ended An Inconvenient Truth with a plea for everyone to install low-power lightbulbs and appliances.
But in 1865, British economist William Stanley Jevons offered a skeptical take on efficiency. In The Coal Question, he wrote that energy-efficiency technology has a backlash effect. By increasing efficiency we make energy cheaper, thus spurring people to use more of it. As Jevons pointed out, when steam engines became more efficient, the consumption of coal (for steam production) didn’t decrease—it expanded, because steam engines became cheaper to run and thus attractive for more and more things.
Adherents call this the Jevons paradox, or rebound effect. And the idea is at the heart of David Owen’s new book, The Conundrum, which argues that not only will efficiency fail to solve global warming—it’ll actually make things worse. The good news is that Owen’s analysis is likely off target. But it’s worth hearing him out.
Owen makes a number of grim observations that ring true. Automobile engines have become much more efficient, but we’ve responded by demanding larger cars loaded with more electrical gewgaws. Air-conditioning has become more efficient, but we’ve made it a cultural norm that every room and vehicle nationwide must be cooled in summer.
Or consider lighting. As a source of illumination, light from modern bulbs costs just 0.03 percent of what candles did in 1800. But a recent study funded by the US Department of Energy found that the amount of global GDP spent on lighting has remained at about 0.72 percent over the past three centuries. The astonishing increase in lighting efficiency merely drove an explosion in the number of things we light up—like kids’ sneakers. Efficient power usage has made it “so that there’s almost nothing you can do that doesn’t require power,” as Owen tells me.
But if efficiency will just make things worse, how can we avert climate disaster? Owen says we need to start living smaller, quickly and dramatically—by traveling less and consuming less and taxing energy much more. It is not, he admits, a pleasant message.
Assuming he’s correct. The Jevons paradox has long been controversial, with economists arguing that Jevons got it wrong. Rebound effects are real, they say, but much smaller than he believed.
That’s because we modern folk spend very little on energy—only around 9 percent of GDP in the US. Plus, if we save money through energy efficiency, we don’t immediately spend those savings solely on more energy. We spend it on more food or movies or clothes, where energy accounts for only a small part of creation cost. As a result, economist James Barrett calculates, rebound probably decreases the total amount of energy saved by at most 30 percent—hardly the catastrophe predicted by Jevons and Owen.
There’s also evidence that efficiency standards work. After California imposed them in 1974, per capita electricity consumption stopped growing, even as it rose throughout the rest of the nation. Yes, globally we chew through more power every year, but that’s due to economic growth, argues Amory Lovins, an environmental scientist with the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Owen and other rebound Cassandras “have a critique of growth, which they then blame on energy efficiency,” Lovins tells me. But perhaps we’re buying two air conditioners simply because we’re wealthier, not because air conditioners are more efficient.
After a year of testing in a remote village in India, researchers are ready to scale up production of an ultra-low-power $35 tablet called the I-slate.
The I-slate is designed to teach math and other subjects to students whose schools lack electricity or to students who don't have access to teachers at all. The device will enter full-scale production next year, and will be the first device to apply a low-power technology called probabilistic CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) to achieve a longer battery life.
The probabilistic CMOS approach is simple: run an ordinary microchip less stringently, sacrifice a small amount of precision, and get huge gains in energy efficiency in return. Probabilistic CMOS (CMOS refers to the technology behind most of today's chip technologies) works particularly well in graphics and sound processing, since human vision and hearing aren't perfect, and small errors are therefore undetectable.
Krishna Palem, a professor at Rice University and director of the Institute for Sustainable Nanoelectronics at Nanyang Technological University, first demonstrated probabilistic CMOS in 2006. Palem is now working on getting the technology into applications including a low-power hearing aid. In the educational tablet device, Palem says, probabilistic chips will enable huge power savings: the educational tablet will require just three watts of power, meaning it can be powered entirely by small solar cells like those on a pocket calculator.
The SMH has an article on a smartphone app that could help motorists reduce the amount of fuel wasted in traffic jams - IBM smartphone app predicts traffic jams.
IBM is testing smartphone software designed to predict traffic jams and warn motorists before they even take to the roads.
IBM said that its employees in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas of Northern California have been testing technology that "will ultimately help drivers around the world" avoid fouled traffic.
Those involved in the pilot project agree to have location-sensing capabilities in their smartphones automatically track where they drive and when, according to IBM Smarter Traveler program manager John Day.
The information is fed through the internet to computers that identify patterns such as commutes to and from work.
Meanwhile, data collected from roadway censors commonly used for online traffic maps is analysed to determine conditions that usually lead to trouble.
For example, congestion at a certain off-ramp or bridge entrance may consistently lead to traffic backing up in another area. The results are combined to form personalised predictions of when a motorist is apt to run into highway headaches.
"We wanted to take advantage of analytic tools to provide predictive capabilities; to get correlations with minor slowdowns and major ones that happen after that," Day told AFP. So you can run a query at any point for a journey and predict 35 or 40 minutes in advance what it will look like, then couple that with a personal approach for the individual traveler."
IBM researchers worked with California state highway authorities and a Mobile Millennium Team at the University of Berkeley, California, on the project.
The smartphone application lets people receive customized alerts warning of probable traffic trouble before they set out on commutes or other routine drives.
Dutch drivers might have wondered how it was that speed traps were always in just the right place to catch speeders. It turned out to be simple enough: if they owned a TomTom, their in-car satnav was spying on them, and the aggregated data about cars’ speed was being sold via the government to the police – who used it to set the traps.
The company, which is Europe’s largest satnav manufacturer, was forced this week into an embarrassing apology as the revelation emerged alongside its first-quarter financial earnings, which showed weak demand and let it to forecast growing sales from “service revenues” – including, it said, selling data to governments.
In a public apology (repeated in a video on YouTube), TomTom’s chief executive Harold Goddijn said the company sold the anonymous data believing it would be used to improve safety or relieve traffic bottlenecks.
“We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it,” he wrote, and promised licensing agreements would “prevent this type of use in the future.”
Normally the aggregated data would be used to tell subscribers to TomTom services how to route around traffic conditions and give improved estimates of journey time. The sale of data to the government was intended to help it understand causes of congestion and accidents.
But the police had a simpler idea for how to use the data to offset the cost of buying it, and followed that as well.
The timing of the admission comes just after a wave of concern over data collected by smartphones and passed back to the companies controlling them, such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.
The cloud -- that ubiquitous, invisible home to our email, our photos, our Facebook "Likes" -- is an energy-sucking behemoth the likes of which Planet Earth has never seen. Last I checked, one Google data center in Oregon was expected to consume as much power as every home in a small city combined. And according to Grist, a full third of that juice isn't even used to make your LOLcats searches go faster: it's simply spent on keeping those endless, Matrix-like server racks cool enough not to melt down. What's an eco-conscious internet business to do? According to the geeks at Green Revolution Cooling, you should just plop those babies in a tank of mineral oil. Seriously -- watch:
The company's GreenDEF™ dielectric coolant is an "electrically nonconductive formulation of mineral oil that holds 1200 times more heat by volume than air." Sink your server racks into a bath of this goop, says Green Revolution, and you can radically reduce those cooling-energy margins -- up to 95% in some cases. Plus it'll make your server room look like something out of Battlestar Galactica.
After the mineral oil sops up all that waste heat, it's pumped away to a radiant cooling tower to disperse into the atmosphere. (You didn't think it was going to just magically disappear, did you?) But by slashing those cooling costs -- and the energy costs of running the servers overall -- your data server will be, ideally, less of a burden on Mother Nature.
Should we expect to see Facebook and Google getting on board with this "bobbing for servers" approach to sustainability? Probably not: while Green Revolution's idea and design are ingenious, the physical tradeoffs of cooling enormous distributed data centers this way are probably prohibitive. Then again, if we're going to haul ourselves into the exascale computing era without draining Earth's batteries for good, it might just require kooky-sounding ideas like this.
Your next beef patty may be propelled across the ocean by a kite-powered ship. Cargill, purveyor of grain, livestock, and fats for processed foods, signed an agreement this week with SkySails to install a giant kite on one of its long-term chartered ships.
Cargill's kite-powered vessel comes courtesy of SkySails's patented technology, which involves connecting giant parasail-like kites to ships via rope and allowing them to generate enough propulsion to cut down on fuel use (by 35%, in ideal conditions). The kites are controlled by computers that steer their flight path for maximum wind benefits.
In Cargill's case, a 320-square meter kite will be attached to a ship that carries a load of up to 30,000 deadweight tons. The kite-propelled ship will be the largest of its kind when it is ready to go in early 2012.
Cargill isn't the first major company to take advantage of SkySails's kite technology. Last year, GE chartered a SkySails-powered cargo vessel to transport power-generating equipment.
But now that GE and agricultural giant Cargill are both on board with kite-powered ships, SkySails's business will probably take off. And that's a good thing for the shipping industry, which is set to spew up to 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 if no action is taken.
Danish shipping company Maersk has signed an order for 10 new freighters from Daewoo Shipping that it expects will be the most energy-efficient and environmentally friendly container ships in the world. The so called “Triple-E” vessels will cot $190 million, or which $30 million would be spent on cutting the vessel’s energy consumption and carbon output to around half of the industry average for vessels serving Asia-European trade. The company expects the investment to deliver significant long-term savings, given rising oil prices, and the possibility that shipping will be brought into the ET emissions trading scheme.
Maersk has committed to reducing its overall CO2 emissions per container moved by a quarter by 2020 from 2007 levels. "International trade will continue to play a key role in the development of the global economy, but, for the health of the planet, we must continue to reduce our CO2 emissions," said CEO Kolding. "It is not only a top priority for us, but also for our customers, who depend on us in their supply chain, and also for a growing number of consumers who base their purchasing decisions on this type of information."
A startup in California has developed a manufacturing technique that could substantially cut the cost of LED lightbulbs—a more energy-efficient type of lighting.
LEDs are conventionally made on a relatively costly substrate of silicon carbide or sapphire. Bridgelux has come up a new process takes advantage of existing fabrication machines used to make silicon computer chips, potentially cutting LED production costs by 75 percent, according to the company.
Despite their higher efficiencies and longer life, few homes and businesses use LED lighting—largely because of the initial cost. An LED chip makes up 30 to 60 percent of a commercial LED lightbulb. Electronic control circuits and heat management components take up the rest. So for a 60-watt equivalent bulb that costs $40, Bridgelux's technology could bring the cost down by $9 to $18. Integrating the light chip with the electronics might further reduce costs.
LEDs made with the new technique produce 135 lumens for each watt of power. The U.S. Department of Energy's Lighting Technology Roadmap calls for an efficiency of 150 lumens per watt by 2012. Some LED makers, such as Cree, in Durham, North Carolina, already sell LED lamps with efficiencies in that range. In contrast, incandescent bulbs emit around 15 lumens per watt, and fluorescent lightbulbs emit 50 to 100 lumens per watt.
Transmaterial has a look at a material that can be used to control the amount of light let into buildings, thus making them more energy efficient - Solucent.
Solucent is an energy-saving and daylighting mesh shading system for building exteriors and interiors. It was developed by Cambridge Architectural to meet the ever-increasing energy-saving needs facing architects today, but without sacrificing beauty in design. The system combines the aesthetic qualities of architectural mesh with shading and daylighting capabilities to create a compelling energy and light management solution.
Solucent mesh shading systems reduce solar heat gain, leading to significant savings on cooling costs. Solucent is also a versatile and transparent daylighting material which can allow the desired amount of natural light into a building without obstructing views out of the windows. As a result, Solucent systems seamlessly reduce the need for electric light, which is the number one energy consumer in buildings and a contributor of unwanted heat gain.
Each Solucent system is designed based on a building’s solar orientation. The mesh pattern is also chosen according to these specifications, allowing each piece of the system to fit together precisely and effectively.
Technology Review has an article on Schneider Electric's "Le Hive" HQ in Paris, which serves as a test bed for their energy efficiency concepts - A Test Bed for Smart Buildings.
Traditional techniques such as adding insulation or window caulk can make buildings more energy efficient, but those strategies go only so far in reducing energy bills. Smart building systems linked to the smart grid offer a more comprehensive way to reduce consumption.
Le Hive opened at the end of 2008, and it now holds more than 1,700 employees. There are no special energy-efficiency tricks embedded in the design of the building—it is typical of most new construction in Europe. The company wanted to use building systems to reduce energy consumption and not depend on expensive construction techniques that most building owners couldn't afford.
Schneider's goals for its headquarters were straightforward. The average electricity consumption of an office building in Paris is 400 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year. The European Union has directed that all buildings reduce consumption to 50 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year by 2030. Le Hive was meant to demonstrate that the path toward that goal can be quick and relatively painless. The company has reduced its headquarters' energy consumption from more than 300 kilowatt-hours per square meter to 65.
The Schneider system, dubbed EcoStruxure, started by collecting and analyzing data on the building's energy consumption patterns. Then a series of software and hardware components were installed, all of which can be controlled from a single interface such as a laptop or smart phone. In other words, the heating system, the air-conditioning system, the lighting management system, the security system, the fire control system, the surveillance system, the IT system, and the ventilation system (all of which used to be discrete systems with separate controls and dedicated technicians and managers) are all integrated into a single comprehensive building management system with a single point of control.
Next, RFID cards were distributed to every employee. Each card alerts a sensor system to where the employee is and adjusts the lighting and HVAC systems accordingly. A worker leaves his office for lunch, for instance, and the lights and air-conditioner in that office turn off immediately. He returns and the comfort settings he has requested kick right in. Other sensors turn the artificial lighting up or down in accordance with the available sunlight. Similarly, an automated window shading system adjusts itself in calibration with the cooling, heating, and lighting needs. If the blinds are open and sunlight is streaming in, then the lighting system dims by just the right amount to maintain a consistent environment.
Wireless sensors scattered throughout a building can monitor everything from humidity and temperature to air quality and light levels. This seems like a good idea--until you consider the hassle and cost of replacing the sensors' batteries every couple of years. The problem is that most wireless sensors transmit data in a way that drains battery power.
Researchers at the University of Washington have come up with a way to reduce the amount of power a sensor uses to transmit data by leveraging the electrical wiring in a building's walls as an antenna that propagates the signal. The approach extends a wireless sensor's range, and it means that its battery can last up to five times longer than existing sensors, say the researchers.
The technology, called Sensor Nodes Utilizing Powerline Infrastructure (SNUPI), sends a small trickle of data wirelessly at a frequency that resonates with the copper wiring in a building's walls, says Shwetak Patel, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Washington. The copper wiring, which can be up to 15 feet away from the sensors, picks up the signal and acts as a giant receiving antenna, transmitting the data at 27 megahertz to a base station plugged into an electrical outlet somewhere in the building.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), which runs the transit system in Philadelphia, is piloting a smart electrical grid technology that could cut its electricity bills by up to 40 percent and generate millions of dollars a year.
A massive battery installed at one of the authority's substations will store electricity generated by the braking systems on trains (as the trains slow down the wheels drive generators). The battery will help trains accelerate, cutting power consumption, and will also provide extra power that can be sold back to the regional power grid. The pilot project, which involves one of 38 substations in the transit system, is expected to bring in $500,000 a year. This figure would multiply if the batteries are installed at other substations.
The project shows how cash-strapped public transit agencies that operate major subways and electric rail systems could find a new source of income by tapping into the smart grid. It also highlights one way that the smart grid could save energy, avoid blackouts, and incorporate more renewable power.
Several energy utilities are already experimenting with using large batteries to help smooth out fluctuations in electricity supply, keeping the grid operating at the correct frequency and preventing blackouts. In the new pilot project, this kind of battery technology will be paired with software from a Philadelphia-based smart grid company called Viridity Energy.
The software will decide how to allocate the power stored in the battery, using it to drive trains and smooth out spikes in SEPTA's power distribution network. SEPTA could also sell the excess power to various electricity markets, depending on a number of factors, including what's most profitable.
The pilot project, which Viridity expects to complete by next summer, will make use of the regenerative braking capabilities of Philadelphia's subway trains. These systems convert kinetic energy into electricity as the train slows down.
The world's largest cargo ships are travelling at lower speeds today than sailing clippers such as the Cutty Sark did more than 130 years ago.
A combination of the recession and growing awareness in the shipping industry about climate change emissions encouraged many ship owners to adopt "slow steaming" to save fuel two years ago. This lowered speeds from the standard 25 knots to 20 knots, but many major companies have now taken this a stage further by adopting "super-slow steaming" at speeds of 12 knots (about 14mph).
Travel times between the US and China, or between Australia and Europe, are now comparable to those of the great age of sail in the 19th century. American clippers reached 14 to 17 knots in the 1850s, with the fastest recording speeds of 22 knots or more.
Maersk, the world's largest shipping line, with more than 600 ships, has adapted its giant marine diesel engines to travel at super-slow speeds without suffering damage. This reduces fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. It is believed that the company has saved more than £65m on fuel since it began its go-slow.
Ship engines are traditionally profligate and polluting. Designed to run at high speeds, they burn the cheapest "bunker" oil and are not subject to the same air quality rules as cars. In the boom before 2007, the Emma Maersk, one of the world's largest container ships, would burn around 300 tonnes of fuel a day, emitting as much as 1,000 tonnes of CO2 a day – roughly as much as the 30 lowest emitting countries in the world.
Maersk spokesman Bo Cerup-Simonsen said: "The cost benefits are clear. When speed is reduced by 20%, fuel consumption is reduced by 40% per nautical mile. Slow steaming is here to stay. Its introduction has been the most important factor in reducing our CO2 emissions in recent years, and we have not yet realised the full potential. Our goal is to reducing CO2 emissions by 25%."
The Royal Navy and BP, meanwhile, are among those adopting different ways to reduce fuel use and cut carbon emissions. The Ark Royal light aircraft carrier, the new Queen Mary 2 cruise liner and 350 other large commercial ships have had their hulls coated with special anti-fouling paint. This has been shown to cut around 9% from CO2 emissions by keeping their bottoms free from barnacles and other sea life.
Some ships have been fitted with kite-like "skysails", or systems that force compressed air out of hulls to allow them to "ride" on a cushion of bubbles. These measures can cut fuel consumption by up to 20%.
Environmentalists say that a reduction in speeds makes sense but warn that there is no guarantee that ships would not revert back to full throttle once economic conditions improve.
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