U.S. Military Researchers Discuss LENR Co-Deposition, “Thermal Runaways”
March 3rd, 2016Background: 2012: Navy Commander Halts SPAWAR LENR Research
Via: Cold Fusion Now:
More: LENR Co-deposition
ARPA-E Batteries to Challenge Tesla?
March 3rd, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar Power systems in New Zealand.
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If you’re interested in energy generation and storage technologies that will actually be for sale in the near to medium term, you can safely ignore most press releases about new energy technologies working only in labs. That stuff might as well be on a different planet when one considers how far away it is from being ready for end users.
So, Ellen Williams doesn’t think what Tesla is doing is so great. Ok. Where’s the ARPA-E product I can offer to my solar customers? What’s the capacity? How much does it cost?
*crickets*
And it would be nice to know what the U.S. Government is actually holding along these lines after decades of black projects and energy research and trillions of missing dollars. You know, before more trillions are spent to supposedly come up with the new new thing.
Yeah, yeah.
*crickets*
Via: Reuters:
A wing of the U.S. Department of Energy focused on breakthrough technologies may soon give billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s most recent foray into energy storage a run for its money, the unit’s director said.
Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, which funds projects meant to transform energy markets, has made huge strides over the last few years on next-generation batteries that could make electric cars and renewable energy cheaper and more accessible, Ellen Williams said in an interview this week.
The battery division of Musk’s Tesla Motors turned a profit in the fourth quarter, after the first shipments of its rechargeable products helped to reduce losses from the company’s auto business. Its Powerwall batteries store energy that homes and small businesses generate with solar panels. The Powerpack model is designed for large commercial facilities.
Williams said her agency has helped kickstart a dozen high-risk projects based on newer technologies that could soon outperform Tesla batteries.
“What Musk has done that is creative and important is drive the learning curve. He’s decided to take an existing, pretty powerful battery technology and start producing it on a very large scale,” she said.
“But it’s not technology innovation in the sense of creating new ways of doing it. We are pretty well convinced that some of our technologies have the potential to be significantly better,” Williams said.
Iraq: Mosul Dam Engineers Warn It Could Fail at Any Time, Killing 1 Million People
March 3rd, 2016Via: Guardian:
Iraqi engineers involved in building the Mosul dam 30 years ago have warned that the risk of its imminent collapse and the consequent death toll could be even worse than reported.
They pointed out that pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir, bringing it up to its maximum capacity, while the sluice gates normally used to relieve that pressure were jammed shut.
The Iraqi engineers also said the failure to replace machinery or assemble a full workforce more than a year after Islamic State temporarily held the dam means that the chasms in the porous rock under the dam were getting bigger and more dangerous every day.
On Wednesday, the Iraqi government announced it had signed a €273m (£210m) contract with an Italian contractor to reinforce and maintain the Mosul dam for 18 months, following talks in New York between the Italian foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni, and US and Iraqi officials. Italy has said it plans to send 450 troops to protect the dam site, but it is unclear how long it will take to replace damaged machinery and reassemble the required workforce.
Chesapeake Energy Chief Executive Dies in Fiery Car Crash, a Day After Indictment
March 2nd, 2016Hmm.
Via: Reuters:
Former Chesapeake Energy Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon, a brash risk-taker who helped transform the U.S. energy industry with shale gas, died when his car slammed into an overpass on Wednesday, one day after being charged with breaking federal antitrust laws, police said. He was 56.
McClendon was alone in his 2013 Chevy Tahoe when it sped into an embankment along a remote two-lane road in Oklahoma City, where it burst into flames, a police spokesman said. The cause of death will be determined later by a medical examiner, the spokesman said.
The crash occurred less than 24 hours after the U.S. Department of Justice announced that McClendon had been indicted for allegedly colluding to rig bids for oil and gas acreage while he was at Chesapeake. He had denied the charges.
At a press briefing in Oklahoma City, Captain Paco Balderrama said McClendon was traveling at “well above” the 40 mile per hour speed limit before he “pretty much drove straight into the wall.” He was not wearing a seat belt.
“There was plenty of opportunity for him to correct or get back on the roadway and that didn’t occur,” Balderrama said.
Industry executives and state officials remembered McClendon as a “visionary” who ushered in a new era of U.S. energy abundance by pursuing the hydraulic fracturing technology that would unlock decades’ worth of domestic natural gas and oil resources.
Justice Dept. Grants Immunity to Staffer Who Set Up Clinton Email Server
March 2nd, 2016Via: Washington Post:
The Justice Department has granted immunity to the former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.
The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.
As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents will likely want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said.
The inquiry comes against a sensitive political backdrop in which Clinton is the favorite to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
So far, there is no indication that prosecutors have convened a grand jury in the email investigation to subpoena testimony or documents, which would require the participation of a U.S. attorney’s office.
“Former Google CEO Schmidt to Head New Pentagon Innovation Board”
March 2nd, 2016Via: Reuters:
Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive officer of Google, has agreed to head a new Pentagon advisory board aimed at bringing Silicon Valley innovation and best practices to the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday.
Carter is due to discuss the new Defense Innovation Advisory Board with Schmidt during the annual RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco. Schmidt is now the executive chairman of Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), the parent company of Google.
The new board is Carter’s latest effort to kick-start innovation across the U.S. military by building bridges to the U.S. technology industry. The U.S. defense chief announced the board’s creation on Wednesday during his third trip to Silicon Valley since taking office just over a year ago.
Carter and Schmidt will select up to l2 individuals to serve on the board, focusing on people who have led large private and public organizations, and excelled at identifying and adopting new technology concepts, the Pentagon said in a statement.
Solar, Wind, Gas Dominate New U.S. Generating Capacity in 2016
March 2nd, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Combined new solar and wind generation (16.3GW) is double that of new gas power plants (8GW).
Via: Ars Technica:
Today, the US Energy Information Administration released data on planned additions to the US power grid this year. The year is notable because it will see the first new nuclear plant brought online in 20 years, contributing 1.1 GigaWatts to the grid. But that contribution will be dwarfed by renewable power sources, which together will account for nearly two-thirds of 2016’s new capacity. And these numbers only count utility-scale solar, ignoring commercial and residential installations.
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Last year saw 8.4GW of distributed solar installed in the US (compared to 3.1GW of utility scale); given the continued slide in solar panel prices, that figure is likely to grow as well. Thus, the actual solar capacity installed next year may be double the EIA’s estimates. California will see the most installations, with 3.9GW of capacity, followed by North Carolina (1.1GW), Nevada (0.9GW), Texas (0.7GW), and Georgia (0.7GW).
Planned additions of wind power will be 6.8GW, largely spread across the Great Plains. This represents a slight drop from last year’s 8.1GW.
Billboards to Track People via Mobile Phones
March 2nd, 2016“All data is anonymous and aggregated, they say, meaning individual consumers cannot be identified.”
Oh sure.
Via: New York Times:
Pass a billboard while driving in the next few months, and there is a good chance the company that owns it will know you were there and what you did afterward.
Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which has tens of thousands of billboards across the United States, will announce on Monday that it has partnered with several companies, including AT&T, to track people’s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones.
By aggregating the trove of data from these companies, Clear Channel Outdoor hopes to provide advertisers with detailed information about the people who pass its billboards to help them plan more effective, targeted campaigns. With the data and analytics, Clear Channel Outdoor could determine the average age and gender of the people who are seeing a particular billboard in, say, Boston at a certain time and whether they subsequently visit a store.
“In aggregate, that data can then tell you information about what the average viewer of that billboard looks like,” said Andy Stevens, senior vice president for research and insights at Clear Channel Outdoor. “Obviously that’s very valuable to an advertiser.”
Clear Channel and its partners — AT&T Data Patterns, a unit of AT&T that collects location data from its subscribers; PlaceIQ, which uses location data collected from other apps to help determine consumer behavior; and Placed, which pays consumers for the right to track their movements and is able to link exposure to ads to in-store visits — all insist that they protect the privacy of consumers. All data is anonymous and aggregated, they say, meaning individual consumers cannot be identified.
Still, Mr. Stevens acknowledged that the company’s new offering “does sound a bit creepy.”
New Consumer-Grade Drone’s Autonomous Flying Modes Include Collision Avoidance
March 2nd, 2016Via: The Verge:
When drones got smart enough to navigate using GPS, and to follow people around, the naysayers pointed out they still couldn’t see anything. It could follow you, sure, but not while avoiding trees.
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That all changes today with the introduction of DJI’s new drone, the Phantom 4. It’s the first consumer unit that can see the world around it and adjust accordingly, the next big step towards a truly autonomous aircraft. Try and drive it into a wall, the Phantom 4 will put on the brakes. If you ask it to fly from your position to a spot across a river, and there is a bridge in between, it will make a judgement call: increase speed to clear the obstacle or, if that isn’t possible, stop and hover in place, awaiting your next command.
The Phantom 4 accomplishes this feat with the help of five cameras: two on the front and two on the bottom, plus the main 4K camera that has always been onboard to capture video. The images captured by these cameras are run through computer vision software which constructs a 3D model of the world around it that the drone can intelligently navigate.
Here’s How Electric Cars Will Cause the Next Oil Crisis
March 1st, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
A shift is under way that will lead to widespread adoption of EVs in the next decade.
Battery prices fell 35 percent last year and are on a trajectory to make unsubsidized electric vehicles as affordable as their gasoline counterparts in the next six years, according to a new analysis of the electric-vehicle market by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). That will be the start of a real mass-market liftoff for electric cars.
More: Another Oil Crash Is Coming, and There May Be No Recovery
