Brown Progress Initiative: BLOGRESS.

BPI Electric Fitness: Project Update

2009-02-18T07:56:00.000-08:00

This semester, BPI has organized a group independent study project to design and build energy-generating weight-training equipment. The project, which consists of 15 Brown students and a mechanical engineer from Toronto, is another step in the larger effort to harness the mechanical energy that gym-goers produce into electrical output, all while maintaining the same functionality or even improving it for the user. We are working with our advisor, Professor of Engineering Chris Bull, to get acquainted with currently available technology and what might suit our system best.

Having decided on the type of system we will pursue for the energy translation, we are currently in the design phase and are awaiting funding and materials to begin building thereafter. For more about our project, check out bpi.betterxdesign.org, our page in the Better x Design organization's projects section.

MIT knows PROGRESS

2009-02-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

More power from bumps in the road

MIT students develop energy-harvesting shock absorbers

David Chandler, MIT News Office
February 9, 2009

A team of MIT undergraduate students has invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smoothes the ride more effectively than conventional shocks. The students hope to initially find customers among companies that operate large fleets of heavy vehicles. They have already drawn interest from the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers.

Senior Shakeel Avadhany and his teammates say they can produce up to a 10 percent improvement in overall vehicle fuel efficiency by using the regenerative shock absorbers. The company that produces Humvees for the army, and is currently working on development of the next-generation version of the all-purpose vehicle, is interested enough to have loaned them a vehicle for testing purposes.

The project came about because "we wanted to figure out where energy is being wasted in a vehicle," senior Zack Anderson explains. Some hybrid cars already do a good job of recovering the energy from braking, so the team looked elsewhere, and quickly homed in on the suspension.

They began by renting a variety of different car models, outfitting the suspension with sensors to determine the energy potential, and driving around with a laptop computer recording the sensor data. Their tests showed "a significant amount of energy" was being wasted in conventional suspension systems, Anderson says, "especially for heavy vehicles."

Once they realized the possibilities, the students set about building a prototype system to harness the wasted power. Their prototype shock absorbers use a hydraulic system that forces fluid through a turbine attached to a generator. The system is controlled by an active electronic system that optimizes the damping, providing a smoother ride than conventional shocks while generating electricity to recharge the batteries or operate electrical equipment.

In their testing so far, the students found that in a 6-shock heavy truck, each shock absorber could generate up to an average of 1 kW on a standard road -- enough power to completely displace the large alternator load in heavy trucks and military vehicles, and in some cases even run accessory devices such as hybrid trailer refrigeration units.

They filed for a patent last year and formed a company, called Levant Power Corp., to develop and commercialize the product. They are currently doing a series of tests with their converted Humvee to optimize the system's efficiency. They hope their technology will help give an edge to the military vehicle company in securing the expected $40 billion contract for the new army vehicle called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV.

"They see it as something that's going to be a differentiator" in the quest for that lucrative contract, says Avadhany. He adds, "it is a completely new paradigm of damping."

"This is a disruptive technology," Anderson says. "It's a game-changer."

"Simply put -- we want this technology on every heavy-truck, military vehicle and consumer hybrid on the road," Avadhany says.

The team has received help from MIT's Venture Mentoring Service, and has been advised by Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and founder of A123 Systems, a supplier of high-power lithium-ion batteries.

Not only would improved fuel efficiency be a big plus for the army by requiring less stockpiling and transportation of fuel into the war zone, but the better ride produced by the actively controlled shock absorbers make for safer handling, the students say. "If it's a smoother ride, you can go over the terrain faster," says Anderson.

The new shocks also have a fail-safe feature: If the electronics fail for any reason, the system simply acts like a regular shock absorber.

The group, which also includes senior Zachary Jackowski and alumni Paul Abel '08, Ryan Bavetta '07 and Vladimir Tarasov '08, plans to have a final, fine-tuned version of the device ready this summer. Then they will start talking to potential big customers. For example, they have calculated that a company such as Wal-Mart could save $13 million a year in fuel costs by converting its fleet of trucks."

The Green Microgym

2009-01-02T13:56:00.001-08:00

Here is an article from the BBC featuring pioneers of the green fitness movement. The article discusses the Green Microgym in Portland, Oregon, and its founder Adam Boesel, and the inventor of the Human Dynamo system, Mike Taggett. I have been in touch with both men regarding our project for the upcoming semester. The article sheds some more insight on what success in this arena looks like. See the article and accompanying videos here: BBC News - The Green Microgym

"We waste so much energy and by starting this gym and really being focused on energy conservation, there are so many things that I've found that are very easy for people to do to save energy."

The goal is to have the gym run solely on the energy it generates.

"Especially in these times, the ability to at least make some small impact on improving the future of not only this country or the community, but really the world…is a really motivating factor for people right now."

"I think in 20 years it's going to be standard for all gyms,' adds Mr Boesel.

Power-Generating Revolving Door!

2008-12-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

So this has been a topic of discussion for BPI all semester. We thought this would be a great idea, but the project hit some snags while still in the idea phase. Looks like the Dutch were able to get it working. Thanks to Zindzi McCormick for pointing us to Inhabitat.com:

Harvesting the kinetic energy generated by crowds of people is one of our favorite approaches to renewable energy. Recently Netherlands-based Natuurcafé La Port installed an energy generator in a rotating door, so every time someone walks in for a cup of coffee, they give just a little bit of their energy back to the coffee shop. We keep saying that solving the problem of global warming will require that we open up new doors in the field of renewable energy, but we must admit that we never expected to mean it literally!

The door was part of the refurbishment of the Driebergen-Zeist railway station designed out by architecture firm RAU and built by Boon Edam. The door is expected to generate around 4600 kwh of energy each year, which may not sound like much - but every little bit helps. To enhance the design, the team decided to include a transparent ceiling to show how the system works, and LEDs display the amount of energy that it is generated each time someone walks in the door.

Paper Water Bottle

2008-12-10T12:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to GWB3 for the link:

Extremely innovative new packaging from Brandimage, who was responsible for everything including concept development, branding, prototyping, engineering, and product design. The 360 Paper Bottle is the first of its kind in the world, and a true environmentally-friendly solution to the problem of plastic water bottles:

CHALLENGE
Each day, Americans throw out 60 million plastic bottles. Only 14% actually get recycled—
meaning 86% become garbage or litter. We looked at this as a radical problem requiring an
equally radical solution. Could we design a container that would leverage sustainability, be
easy to transport, and enhance the consumer’s drinking experience?

SOLUTION
The 360 Paper Bottle is a sustainable vision of the future. It is the first totally recyclable
paper container made from 100% renewable resources. Versatile in its range of consumer
applications and made from food-safe and fully recyclable materials, it decreases energy
consumed throughout the product life cycle without sacrificing functionality. It is paper
packaging that stands up to all liquid categories.

Cool Concept for an Energy-Use Monitor

2008-12-01T20:54:00.000-08:00

Wilting flower dies as energy use blooms

(Credit: Carl Smith)

If powering up your amp and monster TV leaves your neighbors in blackout misery, this new energy monitor could be for you. Dubbed the Wilting Flower, it's a visual reminder of how much electricity you're guzzling at any one moment. When you're using very little juice, it's a perky little flower with its petals open, but as you use more energy it goes red and--if you maintain your prolifigate ways--eventually wilts and closes up. Subtle? No. Quirky? Yes.

Designed by Carl Smith of Doncaster, England, the Wilting Flower is essentially a fancy-looking version of the Wattson, Efergy Meter, and OWL. It works by chatting wirelessly to a clip that you DIY install onto your electricity meter (if it's as easy as the Wattson, you won't electrocute yourself). We like Smith's graphic approach to reminding us of our energy use, since most of today's energy monitors employ a rather boring screen that shows how many watts or pounds you're burning.

Sadly the flower's just a prototype right now, but there are hopes for a production version that would sell for ?60 (about $92). Watch this space; Smith's portfolio has more details and photos.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10110799-1.html

The Ecological Effects of Wind Energy on Bats

2008-11-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

As you likely already know, some (two) of us went down to lovely Kingston, RI on Wednesday to attend a talk at URI. The talk was put on by the Rhode Island Natural History Survey, and was given by Professor Thomas Kunz of Boston University.

A foremost expert in bat ecology and biology, Dr. Kunz took us through the ecological effects that the preponderance of wind energy is having on bat habitats throughout the continent. Here's some of what we learned from Dr. Kunz:

1. The diameter of a standard 1.5 megawatt (MW) wind turbine is 70 meters, approximately the length of a Boeing 747 airliner. This large area increases the incidence of animal casualties.
2. Wind infrastructure is projected to supply 20% of U.S. power demand by 2030, so there will only be more proliferation of the turbines causing ecological problems - even in offshore wind farms.
3. 4 to 6 acres is cleared per new turbine built in forest areas, and the clearing produces large tracks of new forest-edge habitat used by migratory tree bat populations.
4. Bats are not just cut down in flight by the blades, but are actually attracted by the sight, heat, and noise of the blades.
5. Bats do not die exclusively from direct contact with turbine blades; rather, they experience fatal respiratory trauma from the decompression of air that occurs in the space near the spinning blades (i.e. their lungs simply explode without any contact).
6. Most bat fatalities that result from wind energy occur in the late summer or early fall, and when wind velocity is below 6 meters/second.

So should we be looking to implement wind energy? YES. The key is finding better solutions that are sensitive to ecology, and to the conditions that exist in Providence. Rhode Island Governer Donald Carcieri has made a serious commitment to wind energy, and we can and should still be a part of his pledge.

The answer could rest in a different type of turbine. Smaller and cheaper, these "Windspire" turbines by Mariah Industries provide a less unsightly and new packaging for wind technology. It is a different design, deemed less dangerous for wildlife. Minimal clearing, far less noise pollution, and aesthetic appeal means that this is something to consider. Read about the Windspire here.

Because This Needs to be Seen...

2008-11-20T12:37:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know the infamous Youtube classic simply known as "The Grape Lady." For my money, it's the funniest thing in the world. If you haven't seen it, you certainly should and definitely before you watch the following. Regardless of how awful Family Guy has gotten the past few years, this is hilarious. Not exactly "Blogress", but we have a blog and this must be seen:

See more funny videos and Funny Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Non-motorized Treadmill

2008-11-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

This is an area we had almost given up on: there wasn't believed to be any energy-generating potential for treadmills because they operate using a motor. However, using just gravity and one's body weight, a treadmill now goes without a motor! The product is called the Speedboard from Speedfit, check out the introductory video here.

The following video is a bit ridiculous, but it shows a possible application of the man-made energy created by using the Speedboard, called the Treadmobil. Think of it more as food for thought for capturing the energy: Treadmobil.

Thanks to Bergamus for the tip.

How Parked Cars Could Power the Future

2008-11-15T13:10:00.000-08:00

Imagine running a parking meter backwards and actually being paid to park your car. Along those lines, electric vehicles might one day make money for their owners by providing electrical storage for the nation's power grid.

The monthly income could add up to a lot more than what you pay for a big-city parking ticket and many moving violations.

The concept, called vehicle to grid (V2G), is based on the fact that your car is typically not being used 90 percent of the time. "What if it could work for you while it sits there?" said Jeff Stein from the University of Michigan.

Of course the car has to plug into a socket, so that electricity can flow both into and back out of the battery. Renting out electrical storage in this way could make electric vehicles more affordable, while also removing the need for backup electricity generators.

Stein and his colleagues have just received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the possibility of V2G technology using plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

"We want to show that it doesn't have to be a one-way street between vehicles and the grid," Stein told LiveScience. "Utility companies could benefit from having a million batteries for storing electricity."

Grid operations
A network of little batteries spread throughout the grid has certain advantages over a single centralized electrical storage facility. If you can get some of the juice to run your appliances from your neighbor's electric vehicle, then that electricity doesn't have to travel as far.

"Electricity consumption is widely distributed, so it makes sense to inject electricity at multiple sites," explained Tom Gage, CEO of AC Propulsion, a California company that manufactures electric vehicles.

A number of small V2G demonstrations have taken place with cars from AC Propulsion and other companies, but the amount of electricity drawn was insignificant. Even as larger projects come on line, the goal is not to have these batteries on wheels provide the grid's primary (baseload) power, but only extra power to smooth out fluctuations.

Fluctuations can occur in the outlet frequency (60 Hertz in the United States) if supply does not match demand. For this reason, grid operators pay to have extra electricity generators that can respond to any sudden changes in electricity consumption.
This so-called "regulation" power is purchased in blocks of 1 megawatt each. One megawatt could be supplied by 100 or so pure electric vehicles (EVs) or 1,000 or so PHEVs, Gage said. It takes more PHEVs because they have a smaller battery, which is supplemented by a gas-powered engine.

(Typically, an EV can store roughly 30 kilowatt-hours on its battery from which it can supply around 10 kilowatts of electric power, while a PHEV can store about 5 kilowatt-hours and supply around 1 kilowatt, Gage said.)

Because not all the electric vehicles will be plugged in at the same time, studies are currently looking into just how many EVs or PHEVs need to be grouped together to ensure that there will always be 1 megawatt of power available to the grid from the ensemble of vehicles.

Can I charge that?
Simulations have shown that an EV owner could get $300 per month as part of a group of cars that offer their batteries for regulation power, Gage said. A PHEV would presumably earn about a tenth of this rate.

Even with that extra dough, though, no one is going to want to come out to their car and have their battery dead. This is unlikely, Gage said, because the grid operator would only be shuffling power in and out of vehicles, so the net effect would be at most a 20 percent drop.

However, a lot of the details have yet to be worked out for V2G. Gage said there will need to be some long-term field trials to see whether battery life is shortened by the constant ebb and flow of charge between grid and vehicle. And work continues on how best to keep track of which cars are supplying power to the grid and for how long.

Gage thinks it might take five to 10 years for enough electric cars to be on the road and for V2G to be truly viable.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/081029-pf-vehicle-grid.html

Wind/Solar Powered Billboard

2008-11-14T17:35:00.000-08:00

November 15, 2008
Billboard Going Green on the Great White Way

By GLENN COLLINS
The first eco-friendly billboard is coming to Times Square, entirely powered by the sun and the wind — but there is one small catch.

When there’s no sun, and no wind? The $3 million billboard goes dark: there is no backup generator.

“We think if that happens, it’s just fine,” said Ron Potesky, a senior marketing vice president for Ricoh Americas Corporation, the office equipment and document-storage supplier that owns the sign.

The billboard — traditionally called a “spectacular” on the Great White Way — weighs in at 35,000 pounds. It will be 55 feet off the ground at 3 Times Square, wrapping around the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.

Fitted with 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels, the sign will be “a first for Times Square,” said Barry E. Winston, a Times Square billboard consultant not involved in the Ricoh project, who has been a sign expert for more than 50 years.

Wind turbines for the vast sign, which is 126 feet wide and 47 feet high, have arrived in a warehouse in Deer Park, N.Y., where preliminary testing is being done. Construction will begin this month, for a lighting ceremony on Dec. 4.

Ricoh would not say how much it was paying for its three-year lease, but based on recent deals, the lease would most likely cost in the low six figures, as much as $200,000 a month, according to sign rental experts who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are contractually forbidden to make public statements.

Such a cost would not be unusual for a sign across the avenue from 1 Times Square, where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

By generating its own electricity — enough to light six homes for a year — the sign could save as much as $12,000 to $15,000 per month, according to Ricoh, which estimated that the sign would prevent 18 tons of carbon from being spewed into the air yearly.

The “passive” sign is not studded with light-emitting diodes like so many others in Times Square, but will be lighted by 16 300-watt floodlights. It will feature custom-printed opaque vinyl sheeting bearing the red-and-white Ricoh logo. The sign will be green, nevertheless, a message “to customers, other companies and the world that resources and energy can be used creatively,” Mr. Potesky said. “The point is that there are ways of being environmentally friendly to the planet, even on a billboard.”

Unlike the tall propellers in a typical wind farm, the cylindrical Ricoh drum turbines have no sharp blades. They will provide 90 percent of the sign’s power; the rest will come from the solar panels on the sign, feeding electricity to eight collection batteries up in the sign. The drums are so perfectly balanced, Ricoh says, that their rotors could be turned by the wind from a single household electric fan.

Mr. Potesky said the turbines would most likely generate enough power to keep the sign lighted even after four days without wind or sun. But the company is prepared for the sign to go dark. Mr. Potesky said the only other such sign in the world is one Ricoh put up in 2003 in Osaka, Japan, “using somewhat less advanced technology,” he said, referring to its 26 small propellers and 39 solar panels.

“On dark and rainy days, that sign went dark during the night,” he said.

Passers-by will be able to see the 26 blades spinning in each of the sign’s 16 turbine drums, piled in four 45-foot-high vertical stacks. When operating at their average speed of 10 miles an hour, they put out 22 kilowatts.

Stalklike propeller turbines require unidirectional, or “clean,” wind to function. But the revolving drums on the Ricoh sign can use turbulent, multidirectional winds common to Midtown, said Mary S. Watkins, chief executive of PacWind Inc. in Torrance, Calif., which makes the custom turbine arrays.

PacWind studied meteorological records and did a wind analysis, she said, determining that Times Square has 10-mile-an-hour winds, on average, ranging from no wind to gusts of 85 m.p.h. The turbines provide usable power from winds as weak as 5 m.p.h. and rotate safely in winds up to 100 m.p.h., she said, because the aluminum blades are aerodynamically designed to regulate themselves, slowing automatically in high winds.

The company has designed wind turbines for applications ranging from the sublime to the seemingly ridiculous — including a turbine created for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to capture 400-mile-an-hour winds for a lander on Mars, and a turbine that powers the 20,000-square-foot garage of Jay Leno in Los Angeles.

Ms. Watkins said the Times Square turbines were designed to keep ice from forming on the blades in winter. Birds have not proved to be a problem as the company has installed 50 of its drum turbines across the country, she said, “because they see the turbines not as spinning blades, but as a solid object.”

Solar Power Game-changer: 'Near Perfect' Absorption Of Sunlight, From All Angles

2008-11-14T07:23:00.000-08:00

Great news on the Solar PV cell front, from ScienceDaily.com:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2008) — Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.

An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent of sunlight shone upon it — meaning that nearly one-third of that sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of solar power.

After a silicon surface was treated with Lin’s new nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight shone upon it — meaning that only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant step forward toward economic viability.

An Interesting Take on Recycling

2008-11-13T10:24:00.001-08:00

A Buddhist temple in Thailand has been constructed entirely from recycled beer bottles, about half of which are Heineken bottles.

Courtesy of treehugger.com:

Fifty years ago the Heineken Beer company looked at reshaping its beer bottle to be useful as a building block. It never happened, so Buddhist monks from Thailand's Sisaket province took matters into their own hands and collected a million bottles to build the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple. It puts every other bottle building we have shown to shame.

Even the washrooms and the crematorium are built of bottles, a mix of green Heineken and brown local Chang beer.

Bat Expert to Speak on Ecological Effects of Wind Energy Development on Bats and Birds

2008-11-12T20:28:00.000-08:00

Well-known bat expert Tom Kunz will speak Wednesday, November 19, at 7:30 p.m., on the ecological impacts of wind energy development on birds and bats, including his ground breaking use of infra-red imaging technology to study bat mortality around wind turbines. The lecture will be held in Swan Hall, Upper College Road, URI Kingston campus. It is free and open to the public. The lecture is presented by the Rhode Island Natural History Survey and sponsored by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan (Ocean SAMP). It will be preceded, at 6:30, by RINHS's third annual used natural history book sale.

Kunz is Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology at Boston University, where he has been on the faculty for the past 37 years. His research focuses on the ecology, behavior, evolution, and conservation biology of bats. He is the author or co-author of over 200 publications.

The lecture is part of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey's Mark Gould Memorial Lecture Series. This year's lecture series theme is the ecological impact of energy installations. Other speakers addressed birds and oil development in Alaska (in October), marine fisheries and off-shore wind power (coming February 5), and the challenges of evaluating the environmental effects of wind energy facilities (coming April 23).

For more information or directions, contact RINHS at 401-874-5800 or info@rinhs.org or visit www.rinhs.org.

The Rhode Island Natural History Survey is a non-profit organization founded in 1994 to facilitate communication among those interested in the ecology of Rhode Island, and to gather and disseminate information on Rhode Island's animals and plants, geology, and ecosystems. RINHS manages the most authoritative database of Rhode Island's biodiversity and hosts public events to highlight biodiversity and the work of researchers and naturalists. It undertakes research and inventory projects with partners including The Nature Conservancy and local land trusts. Membership is open to anyone with an interest in Rhode Island's plants, animals, geology, or ecosystems. For more information, visit www.rinhs.org

Testing, testing 1-2-3

2008-11-12T19:30:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the long-awaited BPI blog! This blog provides another avenue of communication for members of BPI and those who want to contribute any other innovative revelations, questions, or concepts. Hopefully as people bat ideas back and forth we can develop old ideas and also breed new ones! Feel free to post about events, speakers, or news articles that you feel might be relevant or helpful. Happy blogging!