Wind-powered car sets records in a 3,100-mile road test

Two German inventors have created an electric vehicle that recharges the battery through a wind turbine carried in the car. To test the vehicle, the duo recently completed a 3,100-mile trek across Australia.

It is almost like German adventurers Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer saw the latest models of electric cars, and decided to see if they could go out and make the manufacturers feel bad. In a move that will have green aficionados cheering and gearheads gently weeping at the state of the world, a new electric car powered by a wind turbine has just been unleashed into the Australian wilds.


The vehicle, known as the Wind Explorer, uses an electric battery similar to those found in most of the current generation of electric cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, but rather than needing to plug in every night, the Wind Explorer comes standard with a 20-foot retractable bamboo mast that holds a wind turbine to charge the battery. The Wind Runner can also be powered—or perhaps more accurately “dragged”—by a kite, assuming of course that there is ample wind. The result is a lightweight electric car that weighs under 500 pounds and has a top speed of 55 miles an hour, all with close to zero emissions.

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To test their new eco-mobile, the Germans travelled to Australia, where they planned to drive (and sail) the Wind Explorer from the southwestern Australian town of Albany, head east on the southern coast, and arrive in Sydney on the southeastern tip of the continent to the cheers of a handful, and the bewildered stares of most. The entire trip took 18 days, covered 3,100 miles and set a handful of world records, including being the first wind-powered vehicle to cross a continent, the longest overall distance covered for a wind-powered vehicle on land, and the longest distance covered in 36 hours by a wind-powered vehicle, as well as several others in the same vein. The trip across Australia also marks the first nearly emission-free trip across a continent in a vehicle. Even horses, which some might consider green in a sense, emit more pollution from the methane in their waste than the Wind Explorer.




Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer
The Wind Explorer uses an 8kWh lithium-ion battery, similar to what most electric cars are packing; the difference is in the means of charging the battery. Although it has a plug to charge the battery from the power grid, the real focus of the Wind Explorer is the wind turbine. When the car is in need of a charge, the drivers hoist a 20-foot collapsible mast, housed in a special compartment that runs between the driver and passenger seat, and the turbine begins to charge the battery. Once fully charged, the vehicle averaged close to 250 miles before needing to be recharged.

The exact length of time it took to recharge the battery using a wind turbine varies with conditions, but from the grid, it typically recharges at a rate of 20-percent per hour at maximum input.



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Lingering Affects of Gulf Oil Spill

Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Sat Feb 19, 8:53 pm ET


WASHINGTON – Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

"Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

The head of the agency in charge of the health of the Gulf said Saturday that she thought that "most of the oil is gone." And a Department of Energy scientist, doing research with a grant from BP from before the spill, said his examination of oil plumes in the water column show that microbes have done a "fairly fast" job of eating the oil. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientist Terry Hazen said his research differs from Joye's because they looked at different places at different times.

Joye's research was more widespread, but has been slower in being published in scientific literature.

In five different expeditions, the last one in December, Joye and colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and travelled across 2,600 square miles. Some of the locations she had been studying before the oil spill on April 20 and said there was a noticeable change. Much of the oil she found on the sea floor — and in the water column — was chemically fingerprinted, proving it comes from the BP spill. Joye is still waiting for results to show other oil samples she tested are from BP's Macondo well.

She also showed pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling creatures. They included dead crabs and brittle stars — starfish like critters that are normally bright orange and tightly wrapped around coral. These brittle stars were pale, loose and dead. She also saw tube worms so full of oil they suffocated.

"This is Macondo oil on the bottom," Joye said as she showed slides. "This is dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads."

Joye said her research shows that the burning of oil left soot on the sea floor, which still had petroleum products. And even more troublesome was the tremendous amount of methane from the BP well that mixed into the Gulf and was mostly ignored by other researchers.

Joye and three colleagues last week published a study in Nature Geoscience that said the amount of gas injected into the Gulf was the equivalent of between 1.5 and 3 million barrels of oil.

"The gas is an important part of understanding what happened," said Ian MacDonald of Florida State University.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco told reporters Saturday that "it's not a contradiction to say that although most of the oil is gone, there still remains oil out there."

Earlier this month, Kenneth Feinberg, the government's oil compensation fund czar, said based on research he commissioned he figured the Gulf of Mexico would almost fully recover by 2012 — something Joye and Lubchenco said isn't right.

"I've been to the bottom. I've seen what it looks like with my own eyes. It's not going to be fine by 2012," Joye told The Associated Press. "You see what the bottom looks like, you have a different opinion."

NOAA chief Lubchenco said "even though the oil degraded relatively rapidly and is now mostly but not all gone, damage done to a variety of species may not become obvious for years to come."

Lubchenco Saturday also announced the start of a Gulf restoration planning process to get the Gulf back to the condition it was on Apr. 19, the day before the spill. That program would eventually be paid for BP and other parties deemed responsible for the spill. This would be separate from an already begun restoration program that would improve all aspects of the Gulf, not just the oil spill, but has not been funded by the government yet, she said.

The new program, which is part of the Natural Resources Damage Assessment program, is part of the oil spill litigation — or out-of-court settlement — in which the polluters pay for overall damage to the ecosystem and efforts to return it to normal. This is different than paying compensation to people and businesses directly damaged by the spill.

The process will begin with public meetings all over the region.

___

Online:

Joye's website (in new window): http://www.marsci.uga.edu/directory/mjoye.htm

NOAA's restoration site (in new window): http://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov

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Making gas from trash in the office parking lot

WALTHAM, Mass.--Two years after showing off a prototype, IST Energy is ready to ship out the first demo unit of its Green Energy Machine to Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. The machine uses gasification, rather than combustion, to turn garbage into electricity and heat. The gas that it produces can be used in a slightly modified natural gas engine or a diesel generator with some diesel to make electricity. The gas is fed into a boiler to make heat, and heat from the machine can also be captured and used to heat a building.

See related article: Air Force base to gasify waste for energy.


Photo by Martin LaMonica/CNET



Read more (in new window) at: http://news.cnet.com/2300-11128_3-10006438.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz1DBNWu5sJ

Link to article (in new window):
http://news.cnet.com/2300-11128_3-10006438.html?tag=mncol


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Study Sees Obstacles to Reach 1 Million Electric Cars

04 Feb 2011 HEADLINE




SYNOPSIS: Besides assumed lack of consumer demand, carmakers simply don't have capacity to reach goal, Indiana University study finds.

Source: CNN Money
Class: SYNDICATED NEWS Study Sees Obstacles to Reaching 1 Million Electric Car Goal in USA
President Barack Obama's goal of putting 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015 could run into a huge roadblock -- the American consumer.
According to a report released Wednesday by researchers at Indiana University, automakers are unlikely to manufacture enough cars to reach the president's goal because of a potential lack of buyer demand.

Read more (in new window at: http://evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=25137


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T. Boone Pickens Says Less Dependence On Middle East Oil

T. Boone Pickens Says Less Dependence On Middle East Oil

Jill Burcum, Star Tribune
Feb. 03, 2011

The United States has put energy policy on the backburner during the Great Recession.

With unrest boiling over in Egypt, legendary financier and oil man T. Boone Pickens is pointing out just how shortsighted that it is.

Pickens offers a fresh and chilling take on the historic protests sweeping across the Arab world. He has long argued against U.S. dependence on Middle East oil.

In interviews this week, and on his Pickens Plan website, he is pointing out that instability in this region threatens the American oil supply.


“You’re seeing a dry run of sorts with unrest in countries like Tunisia and Egypt that are not big on the oil market,” Pickens said in an interview with Politico’s Darren Goode.

“And you better watch close because the next one may be Algeria or Libya or God forbid Saudi Arabia. And if that happens, you’re really going to have a mess on your hands.”

Saudi Arabia was America’s third largest source for imported crude oil in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Canada and Mexico were the top two.

Other countries rounding out the top 10 are Venezuela, Nigeria, Colombia, Algeria, Iraq, Angola and Ecuador.

Pickens has a financial stake in all this. He has made massive investments in wind energy, so his Pickens Plan for cutting imported oil needs is self-serving.


Read more (in new window) at: http:// www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/115056534.html?elr=KArksi8cyaiUHK:uUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_27EQU


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