Not all countries have their own carbon-fuel sources to rely on, but some European countries are finding ways to become less reliant on importing oil and gas by tapping into their own renewable resources. Portugal is investing in wind and solar energies at a rapid rate and has even become an energy exporter. Projects using hydropower and ocean waves are also providing clean energy that is cost-effective to many industries.

Over the past five years, Portugal has multiplied its land-based wind power by a factor of seven. They are expected to roll out a national network of charging stations for electric cars as early as next year. These are very impressive timescales that have been made possible by a great amount of political will.

Meanwhile, President Obama relies on BP’s oil spill to push his meager goal of 20 to 25 percent of electricity generated by renewable sources by 2025. Ireland, Britain, Denmark, Canada, and Brazil are all scheduled to be receiving 40 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by that time. Incentives to pursue renewable energy sources are powerful motivators that haven’t really been implemented in the United States.

America is so concerned with keeping electricity prices low – much lower than Portugal has been paying for some time – that it has slowed the movement for much-needed restructuring of the power grid. Politicians will not be favored for increasing people’s electricity bills if they are not presented with significant long-term benefits. Well, how’s this? Portugal will be able to shut down at least two fossil fuel power plants by 2014 as well as slow the operation of others.

A recent paper published by a Dutch physicist received a lot of scientific and media attention (“A Scientist Takes on Gravity”, The New York Times) for claiming gravity may not be a fundamental force. Instead, the author suggests it is merely another manifestation of the famous second law of thermodynamics, which says that things tend toward disorder. Or, in layman’s terms, the planets orbit the sun and apples fall to the ground for roughly the same reason that milk tends to spill rather than unspill, and my desk tends to clutter rather than keep itself clean.

A new proposal says gravity may be an illusion. Right or wrong, the idea is a breath of fresh air for a field in need of new insights.

The details of the argument are interesting, and are best understood by further analogy. The essential idea is similar to that of diffusion. If you release a perfume into the air, it will slowly spread across the room, eventually filling the space. We can understand this as the result of the random motions of gas particles resulting in increasing disorder (the particles just go everywhere, which is a lot messier than perfume bottled up in a container). Or, if we weren’t so clever, we might mistake this behavior as the result of some kind of repulsive force that causes perfume particles to push each other away. It may be that gravitational attraction is something like this. There are a few extra levels of abstraction to it, but that’s the proposal in a nutshell: gravity isn’t real.

But the details aren’t what most interest me about the article. What does is the attention the article received. After all, this is theoretical physics we’re talking about, a field where “crazy” ideas like parallel universes, teleportation, and extra dimensions are taken seriously, and where cats can be both dead and alive at the same time. Gravity isn’t real, you say? Big deal. (Read more…)

Current solar technologies are split between using the light or heat from the sun’s rays to produce electricity. Now, Stanford has developed a device that can use both, boost efficiency by 200%, and cost less than oil.

Named “photon enhanced thermionic emission,” PETE harvests more energy than photovoltaic and thermal conversion technologies. Nick Melosh, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and his research group have shown that this revolutionary solar advancement really can work, and he says the materials used in this new device are inexpensive and readily available.

This is critical to making the product cost-effective enough to compete with oil. Photovoltaic cells are usually made of silicon, which can only use a fraction of the light spectrum it receives, resulting in efficiencies under 25%. The rest of that light energy is lost to heat, making the solar panel even less efficient. In fact, at 100 degrees Celsius, they are completely useless.

However, this new technology increases in efficiency as temperatures rise. This affinity for heat makes them ideal for solar-concentrating parabolic dishes. Efficiency is predicted to reach 50% under solar concentration, and the amount of semiconducting material needed is very small. Cesium is the key to taking advantage of both light and heat to produce electricity. A thin coat of this metal over a semiconducting material is enough to do the trick. One  next step is to find the right semiconductor.

Dialing in to existing systems, the ability to add this device to solar designs already in use recognizes huge cost benefits. The excess heat hitting the PETE device would simply be dumped directly into the thermal conversion system already in place. Anything to decrease cost is an advancement of the solar industry, as this is the biggest hurdle for adoption.

Sand dunes on Earth (top) and dunes on Titan (bottom)

Are tides a peculiarity of our planet? Often, other bodies in our solar system are thought of as static, somewhat boring large rocks that sit around doing nothing. (Ok – they orbit. But what else?)

And yet, when we look at what causes tides, there is no real reason to believe that other planets or satellites should not experience the same phenomenon. Tides on Earth are caused by the Moon’s gravitational pull. Because the Moon is a decent fraction of the Earth’s mass, it is capable of varying the gravitational field we “feel” from the Sun enough to actually make a difference. Water feels the Moon’s field differently than the rest of the crust beneath it, and therefore it is either pulled closer to, or pushed farther away from the Moon, thus creating the effect called tides. Therefore, all that is needed is something that will slightly but significantly alter the main gravitational field on a planet, as well as some sort of fluid that can move around more easily than the  surface beneath it.

So let’s take a look around us. Mars has two satellites, but they are very small and can’t do much of anything. Furthermore, Mars doesn’t really have fluids floating around, there is no atmosphere, and, at least on the surface, no liquid water. One is then inclined to look at the giant gas planets like Saturn and Jupiter—they practically are balls of fluid, and have very large moons. The problem here is that these planets are so large that the moons are minuscule in comparison, and the gravitational field’s variation is minuscule.

Now it’s time to think out of the box: what if a moon, and not a planet, experienced tidal effects? Out of all moons, the one where conditions are perfect for tides is Titan, one of Saturn’s more famous satellites. In fact, when compared to Earth, it’s an even better place to find tides. Titan’s atmosphere is extremely rich and even heavier than Earth’s. Furthermore, even though it does not have a moon of its own, Titan has something better—Saturn. Think of it as the Moon having tides because of effects from the Earth, rather than vice-versa.

The one tricky thing is that Titan, just like our own Moon, is in a locked orbit with Saturn—it is always showing its host planet the same face. (Read more…)

As another reminder of the need to reconstruct America’s power grid in order to move forward with renewable energy sources, wind surges in Oregon are forcing grid managers to shut off the wind farms.  Storms can cause production to spike so much that the power lines just can’t transport it all out fast enough.  When it’s more than customers are using, and hydro-power from federal dams can’t be slowed any further, the grid manager has to make the call on behalf of reliability, and cut wind output.

Wind farmers, who depend on producing energy whenever possible for their investment to be economical, aren’t happy about receiving that call.  Over the past three years, the amount of power produced by wind farms supplying Oregon, Washington, and California has doubled, and it will double again in the next three years.  The extreme growth in this region is outpacing the grid’s ability to transport that power where it’s needed.  Efforts to better coordinate the distribution of this power are being stalled by risk adversity and not wanting utility rates to increase.

California is buying lots of wind energy from the region because of its aggressive push on renewable energy standards.  The state is also having issues with receiving its share over interstate power lines, making them a major advocate for restructuring the grid.  Building new power lines is a big project, though, and it could take five to ten years, not to mention coordinating the financial backing.  It just isn’t going to happen fast enough.