Energy

EVERYONE WINS:

This farmer was skeptical about solar — until he began grazing sheep ( Kari Lydersen,
15 October 2024, Canary Media)

[W}hen the owner of one of those leased parcels decided to work with Acciona Energia to help site its High Point wind and solar farm, Gerlach initially was not enthusiastic.

“The thought of taking productive farm ground out of production with solar panels was not, in my personal opinion, ideal,” he said.

But Gerlach was determined to make the best of the situation.

Ultimately, that meant a win-win arrangement, where Acciona pays him to manage vegetation around the 100 MW array of solar panels that went online in early 2024. Gerlach does that with a herd of 500 sheep.

“We don’t own the land, we don’t get a say — that’s landowners’ rights, and I’m very pro that,” Gerlach recounted. ​“In U.S. agriculture, the biggest thing that gets farmers in trouble is saying ​‘that’s how we’ve always done it so that’s what we’re going to do.’ Renewable energy is probably not going anywhere, whether you’re for or against it, it’s coming, it’s what’s happening. As an agriculture producer, we’re going to adapt with it.”

BUT THEN, YOU KNEW THAT ALREADY…:

Even solar energy’s biggest fans are underestimating it: Solar’s extraordinary forecast-defying growth, explained. (Umair Irfan, Sep 20, 2024, Vox

“Solar does continue to surprise us,” said Gregory Nemet, who wrote How Solar Energy Became Cheap, in an email. “It seems like it shouldn’t at this point. It’s been roughly 30 percent growth each year for 30 years. And costs continue to fall so new users — and new uses — continue to emerge.”

In the past year, solar power has experienced Brobdingnagian growth, even by solar standards. According to a new report from Ember, an energy think tank, the world is on track to install 29 percent more solar energy capacity this year — a total of 593 gigawatts — compared to last year, which was already a record year. This is more than one-quarter of the electricity produced by every operating coal plant in the world combined. In 2020, the whole world had installed just 760 GW of solar in total.

IT’S A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:

Electricity That Costs Nothing—or Even Less? It’s Happening More and More (Matthew Dalton, Sept. 22, 2024, WSJ)

Wholesale prices swing wildly each hour of the day, and even more so as a larger share of electricity flows from wind and solar installations. Because the generation costs of wind or solar farms are negligible, market prices will be near zero when there is enough renewable power to cover most of a region’s electricity demand.

Electricity market dynamics get weirder when renewable-energy producers don’t have an incentive to stop feeding power into the grid, usually because of government subsidies. Then grids can be flooded with excess power, pushing prices into negative territory.

Van Diesen said he’s made 30 euros, equivalent to around $34, over the past five months charging his car, enough to cover the service fee from his power supplier, a Norwegian company called Tibber.

“I’m charging the car for free,” said van Diesen, who is part of a group of clean-energy enthusiasts in the Netherlands who call themselves green nerds. “To me it’s also like a hobby and a game—how far can I go?”

Doing laundry in the evening? The electricity could be free a few hours later when demand dies down and the wind picks up. Likewise, in regions with lots of solar power, charging an electric vehicle in the morning is usually far more expensive than powering up under the midday sun—or whenever the price is right.

In the U.S., most states don’t currently allow such real-time pricing, but many think that will change. Already, in some of the world’s biggest economies from Western Europe to California, the occurrence of zero and negative wholesale power prices is growing fast.

YOUR NEXT PLANE WILL BE A VOLT:

Full-scale demonstrator paves the way for hybrid-electric airliner (Ben Coxworth, September 12, 2024, New Atlas)

What this means is that for flights of up to 200 km (124 miles), the aircraft will just use two electric motors located relatively close in to the fuselage on each wing. For going farther – up to 400 km (249 miles) – two small turboprop engines located farther out on the wings will kick in to extend the aircraft’s range.

One charge of the aircraft’s BAE-Systems-designed batteries should take only 30 minutes.

Like other electric airliners, the ES-30 should produce fewer carbon emissions than its conventional counterparts, while also being quieter, cheaper to operate, and easier to maintain. Additionally, because its electric motors quickly deliver maximum torque, it will be able to take off from runways as short as 1,100 m (3,609 ft) – with its turboprops helping.

Sporting a 32-meter (105-ft) wingspan, the fully-functional new demonstrator aircraft is the planned size of the ES-30.

THAT WAS EASY:

MIT researchers make hydrogen fuel from soda cans, seawater, caffeine (Kapil Kajal, 7/25/24, Interesting Engineering)

MIT engineers have discovered that when pure aluminum from soda cans is exposed to seawater, it creates bubbles and naturally generates hydrogen.

This type of gas can be used to power an engine or fuel cell without producing carbon emissions.

THAT WAS EASY:

U.S. Air Force successfully completes test flights of all-electric aircraft: ‘It’s going to make things faster and simpler’ (Stephen Proctor, August 20, 2024, The Cool Down)

The series of test flights evaluated the plane’s performance in real-world scenarios like resupply, cargo delivery, and personnel transport, including during combat. The plane can carry up to five people or 500 pounds of cargo, has a range of 288 miles, and can be recharged in less than an hour.

THAT WAS EASY:

Scientists make incredible breakthrough with new aircraft technology (Leslie Sattler, August 19, 2024, The Cool Down)

Exciting news for the future of air travel: A groundbreaking study from Swedish scientists suggests that most flights within a 750-mile radius could be powered by hydrogen as soon as 2045.

IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

Are We Thinking Ourselves Sick? (River Page, August 7, 2024, Free Press)

This problem was only made worse in 1980 with the publication of the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a sort of psychiatrists’ bible. Before then, psychiatrists had only a paragraph of descriptions of mental illnesses to rely on. In the DSM-III, more detailed criteria were listed. Dr. Edward Shorter, who studies the history of medicine, and appears in the film, says the thinking went something like this: “Well, we’re going to have a set of operational criteria in order to qualify, for example, depression. There are plenty of symptoms you could have. If you can check five boxes and you’ve had these symptoms for two weeks, then you qualify for the diagnosis of depression.”

“This sounds like science,” Shorter says. “In fact, it’s not really.”

Then, in the early ’90s, the DSM-IV updated its autism criteria, allowing, for the first time, individuals without significant language or intellectual incapacities to be diagnosed. Additionally, it lowered the number of traits required for a diagnosis from eight to six.

Last year, Dr. Allen Frances, a world-renowned-psychiatrist who helped loosen the definition of autism for the DSM-IV, told the New York Post he regretted his decision: “More clinicians began labeling both normal diversity and a variety of other psychological problems as autistic.” Dr. Frances estimated that his changes would triple the rate of autism. According to the CDC, it has more than quadrupled since 2000.

It drives business.

YOUR NEXT PLANE WILL BE A VOLT:

Handles like a go-kart, flies like a heli: Flying car coming to the USA (Loz Blain, July 05, 2024, New Atlas)

Effectively, it’s a small, single-seat helicopter with automatic quick-fold rotor blades, with a bare-bones open-wheel vehicle chassis grafted on, using carbon fiber rods. It’s not precisely clear exactly where the electric part of the hybrid drive system comes in, but the combustion power appears to come from a lightweight, buzzy “Pegasus 800” two-stroke, making around 160 horsepower.