Wind Turbine at University of Warwick

This post is a continuation of sorts of my post yesterday about how "green" the University of Warwick is.
I found out that a friend from school of mine, Andrew Wooldridge, was involved in the setup of a 1kW wind turbine on campus, only a few minutes away from my room!

I went to go have a look at it just now, and took a few photos. It's quite a still day so it wasn't spinning, but it was interesting to see. It really isn't that big, I was slightly surprised- but then, 1kW is not a huge amount of energy to produce.
Photos below!

University of Warwick: Green?

The other day, I went shopping in a hired car (we had hired it to go to a 1-day X-ray workshop in Didcot), and I realised how much I missed having a car, just for the convenience of going to the shops and back;  I wouldn't really need it for much more than that. I appreciate that my situation of living on campus is not normal, as I essentially live at my workplace and within walking distance of shops and so on. Still, even if I did live a few miles from where I worked, an electric car commute would be entirely possible.

The Planet Zero

I just stumbled upon this website, which is run by Nissan. It's quite a childlike introduction to some basic stuff about Electric vehicles, and other things related to it. It does seem to be a good visualisation of the ideas that Nissan have: I've been playing about with it for a while, it's quite fun!

http://the-planet-zero.com/


I've just started my masters at Warwick, and am hoping to plan time to keep updating the blog regularly, especially as it looks like I will have quite a bit of downtime waiting for calculations to run.
Enjoy the site!

Macro- vs micro-generation

I was thinking the other day about how the electricity-generating landscape will be different in the future. There seem to be two sides to this: large power plants, generating a large amount of power for a large number of people (macro), or households and businesses generating their own electricity (micro).

There are many good arguments for both sides, and clearly as both exist as markets (there are both large offshore wind farms and small-scale solar systems being built, for example). However, I thought I would have a look at the arguments for both and see which I think is a more realistic option, if we had to pick just one.

I must apologise that this post may be lacking in numerical backup: I am writing this in a (rare) break from revision, and wish only to give an indication of the pros and cons for each, without concrete numerical evidence.

Essay on Human-Powered Gym

What follows is another assignment: this time a 1,700 word discussion of the human-powered gym concept. It's basically a formal writeup of the two posts I made on this back in August. Enjoy!

Human powered gyms

As we increasingly look for alternative sources of energy, could there be an untapped potential power plant within each of us? David Pickup examines the possibility and economics of a human-powered gym.

25% Renewable Energy is Achievable

First, an apology. I have been ridiculously busy with uni work over the last month or so, so haven't done any posts- sorry for that.
I recently wrote a persuasive writing article for one of my modules on "25% Renewable Energy is Achievable" (I'm arguing that it is achievable) and so here it is, in all of its 1,500 word glory! Enjoy.

Personal Transport: Different Types

  I drove back from uni the other day, and on the way I thought about different types of transportation. On this trip, for example, I only took back a few bags, but on the trip up, I had a carful of stuff. I also saw many different sizes and shapes of 'cars'- vans, lorries, little hatchbacks (like mine), family saloons, campervans and big 4x4s. These varied vehicle designs are made to do different things: a small hatchback is not designed to carry the same volume of stuff as a big 4x4, for example, but it is more fuel-efficient (as the 4x4 engine is bigger to cart around a bigger car). Most cars built nowadays are multipurpose.
In this post I'm going to talk about the different needs of the varied vehicles on the road today. These needs include range, top speed, and acceleration. Obviously, a city runabout doesn't need to have the range or top speed of a long range cruiser.

The most important part of the 'car' is the engine: what makes it go. Pretty much all engines out there on the roads are internal combustion engines, which use petrol or diesel to explode a gaseous mixture of the oil fumes and air, pushing down a piston, turning a crankshank, which turns the wheels. I'm not going to go into detail into how these car engines work, but see here if you are interested. This is all very well, and has been working around the world for over 100 years. However, these engines are very inefficient, by modern standards: 20-30% (from wikipedia). Compare this to a electric engine, for example, which has an efficiency of around 90% from batteries (source- this excellent page by the Tesla Motors Company, which has a lot of other information about efficiency as well) or about 60%  from a hydrogen fuel cell (source) [*]. Add this to the fact that the fossil fuels used in the internal combustion engine are both producing greenhouse gases (CO2) and are running out, and you can see why it's worth considering other options for our transport.

[*]- Note that both battery-powered and fuel cell-powered cars use electric motors, but different methods to store the electricity (in the battery or hydrogen).

 So what different types of vehicle are there? What designs do we need to use, and which type of power would be best for each?