Sun cells running a Japanese city

Sun power is the absolute largest known source of continous free power on earth, but we are currently quite bad at harvesting it.

The Danish news channel, Politiken, presented a news reel today (by Clavs Sylvest) on the Japanese Ota City that is being fully self sufficient in sun powered electricity.

This is a goverment sponsored program including about 500 homes. Each home has been given sun cells. The project is a national experiment testing how to avoid power cuts with the use of sun power. The house owners are allowed to sell the electricity back to the power compagny when producing excess electricity. This amounts to about 50 US dollars/month per house, on top of the electricity saved. However, sun cells are still expensive to produce and buy, and not using the electricity optimally due to reflection.

Good news though, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (US, also source of foto) has figured out how to coat the sun cells with tiny hairs that capture the otherwise reflected sunlight, much like hairs on a polar bear. The improvement allows the cells to harvest close to 100% of incoming rays, in contrast to about 67% now. So let us hope this will arrive on the market one day, that goverments will support people buying them, and that power compagnies will buy surpluss energy.

The video on Ota City can be watched here: http://politiken.tv/nyheder/udland/article597272.ece (in Danish)
The article on the new sun cells: http://ing.dk/artikel/92983-beklaed-nutidens-solceller-med-nanohaar-og-faa-50-procent-ekstra-energi (in Danish)

The Back Shed - Open Science in use

Looking for sources of information on initiatives that involved other people I entered The Back Shed. This website is very close to my idea of Open Science in practice. I will try to break down into parts how.

Summary: The Back Shed is a channel for "publishing" how a few windmill enthusiasts building effective windmills, improvements, and expansions, mostly from spare parts. But not only that - they involve others in projects through their website, and allow them to give ideas to solving problems - returning the result on the website.

Economy: The website use Goggles AdSense and thus gives a little project money in return for people using the listed suggestions for windmill parts by Google.

Blue prints: the site offer detailed, step by step instructions how to replicate their results.

Forum: An open forum for discussing various projects and concepts is present.

Control: The site is run and maintained by the group.

Alchemist or Scientists: These are enthusiasts, making improvements to industrial designs as well as from scrap. They supply technical information and prints, but the method is trail and error, not so much scientific. So though they are not green stamped representatives of intellectual property But they do make things work - cheap, easy, and better for anyone it seems.

Interactivity: The linkage to a global idea network is lacking.

Ultraviolet light in the environment of domestic animals as method of limiting infection with parasites eggs (a defensive publication)

What is a defensive publication? It is a publication of an idea, or method, that prevents other from claiming the intellectual rights to it (such as a patent), because the idea no longer is "original".

Background: Ultraviolet light (UV) is harmful to living organisms. Our atmosphere and clouds, protects us from the major exposure produced by the sun. Besides being burned by the rays, the light can also penetrate tissue, enter cells, and damage DNA ("nicking" it), making survival of organisms difficult (eg. skin-cancer). Basically, what it takes to kill or weaken an organism with UV-light depends on the intensity, exposure time, and the spectrum used of the light. The smaller the organism, the less UV-exposure necessary to kill it. This is well known, and is widely used in many fields as a sterilizing procedures. It is also applied to water borne parasites such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium with great success. UV-light is a natural limiting factor of egg shedding parasites, who in most cases require shade, moisture, and normal temperatures to develop and survive.

Parasite eggs: Many parasites, both protozoan (one celled) and helminths (worms), have a part of their life cycle outside the animal, either as a worm or egg. The success of a parasite depends on whether new animals pick up these eggs and get infected. Good hygiene can limit these eggs in the environment, but it is often difficult or neglected, especially in animal production.

Method: The novelty of this idea is to use UV-light directly on the environment (in the farm) of the animals (not on the animals), either killing or weakening the infection potential of parasites picked up from surfaces. The tool is simply identical to a flashlight with UV-light bulb of the right intensity, held over the surfaces the animal comes in contact with.

Limitations: UV-light does not penetrate deeply into for example faces on the ground. The effect is therefore limited to surfaces.

Extra benefits: Parasites with damaged DNA, will cause a weaker infection than normal, and possibly increase the chance of the animal acquiring immunity to it. Works on other free living pathogens too such as fungus, virus, and bacteria.

Warnings: UV-light is harmful to the eyes, and skin under longer exposures! Small amounts of ozone (O3) is created when using UV-light, but quickly (minutes) reconverts to oxygen (O2). Ozone creates radicals that could act on the environment. Realistically, in a place like a farm, with air flow, this most likely will not cause any problems.

Economic Logic of Open Science

In my search for fellow thinkers in the line of Open Science I might have hit the jackpot with Professor Paul A. David at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Prof. David apparently has been working with the concept of Open Science, not as an invention, but as a real factor in the scientific and commercial sphere of economics. From what I can read in his references the concept is hatched around 1998. The report brings forth (in Davids words) similar arguments in how Open Science works in favor of both scientific/commercial interests.

The paper has many eloquently phrased points, and I will not give them here except one on intellectual property rights: "...it can be said that a good bit of intellectual ingenuity and entrepreneurial energy is being directed towards the goal of neutralizing the achievements of information scientists and engineers by creating new legally sanctioned monopolies."

The Economic Logic of "Open Science" and the Balance between Private Property Rights and the Public Domain in Scientific Data and Information. SIEPR Discussion Paper No. 02-30, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Further reading:

Sterling Denmark - but why the biofules?

One of the machines with greatest potential for supplying electrical power is the 200 year old invention of the Sterling Engine. It is basically a closed bicycle pump that moves a piston, turning a wheel or generator, when being heated or cooled. The clever part is that it is one of the engines that can work at moderate temperatures and make it into power. And another attempt of putting it to use is made in Denmark.

Stirling Denmark has announced the launch of their working Sterling Engine for biofuel producing an impressive 9 kW and 35 kW of power. The 9 kW model is however not for purchase before 2009. Cogratulations to the inventors who spent 15 years on making a commercial model! I sincerely hope you will succeed in selling it!

At first I was wondering why someone would use biofuels to power a Sterling engine when other cheaper options were available (sun, ground heat, composting, and potentially cooling sources as well...). There are no doubt technical reasons to the choice, but putting things in to context, biofuels do make sense. Biofuel is a hot new buzz-word that politicians love, and love to throw funding at. And scientists must adapt the science to what a handful of people with the money think are important. Biofuels currently seems to be the transition phase from fossil fuels to the better existing technologies (at continental pace), allowing a dilution of the fossil fuels into something renewable.

I also noticed in the product synopsis on Sterling Denmark’s website that the product description had a clever "Designed for biofuels etc." It is probably clever not to state too much of the actual potential of a working Sterling Engine in producing electricity from various sources to avoid too hard opposition. Clever, very clever Sterling Denmark! Keep going.

Economical Blocks - Tiny Steps Max the Income

When you look at your coffee machine and wonder why it is spending energy to keep the coffee warm, instead of just entering a thermo canister directly, one may wonder what went wrong in the evolution. Actually, we (the consumers) can already buy a better model that waste less energy (and undrinkable coffee), but do not buy it, or do not see it in the shop.

It is painfully common to find clever designs on the shelves, or abroad, but only to see them disappear again next year, or never reach Europe. Another ridiculously simple and ingenious design by the Japanese company Toto is the combination of a water tap on the cistern of a toilet. Beautifully, the space of a sink is taken away, the main water line and the cistern is even better separated, and you save about a deciliter of water (if you wash hands) every time a person flushes. The catch? You can't buy it if you are not living in Asia or US!

So why do we as consumers invest fortunes in cappuccino machines, but leave the strangely intelligent design (not to confuse with fancy design by the same name)? I have come to the belief that xenophobia could be part of the answer - better take the safe choice (my wife strongly opposes me for not doing the latter).This off course is not very progressive in an evolutionary process.

Engineers still allow heat conducting pot handles in the 21st century, apparently ignoring common sense. I am not an engineer, so I hope the otherwise (assumingly) bright engineers parry orders rather than try to push the limit in their work.

So lastly, but most importantly, I think it could distill down to the mindset that if you can produce infinite variations on the same design until the demand for something better is too great you release the next model; it will maximize the company income. We all know Microsofts bad rumor of fixing deliberate program bugs. It is a logical capitalist approach, and not wrong for the dominating market powers. A tiny step ("now with enzyme X", "upgrade 2.3.4.1", "innovative design") keeps you buying the same product, because you know it will do the same (at least), but a totally different approach (and perhaps better) to solving your daily needs, gets less room in the consumers home.

CO2 free electricity in 2010?

My stomach turns when I read these news about the coming of the CO2 free car driving on electricity as announced in Politikken today. Is the electricity produced by the electricity company CO2-free when the car us due to launch in 2010? I think it is a vulgar management trick to claim a car propelled by electricity CO2-free, when only a tiny fraction of the energy provided by power companies produce is just that!

If the electric car is producing the electricity itself (eg. by sun, water or other), the story is different. But when I read Shai Agassis (promoter of the car) blog, his vision for Denmark is that windmills nightly output could, and would, supply the energy to power the cars in Denmark. Now that is visionary! However the article by Poltikken does not mention this.

So, cars driven by electricity - no thank you! Cars driven by continuous and pollutant free energy sources - yes thank you!