The Future of Wind

I’m working an application to RES, and I have to say that their application form is a lot more enjoyable to write than those of many large energy companies. One of the questions was so interesting that I completely went over the word limit: I’ve decided to write an answer to that question here in more detail. The question is:

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES FACING THE WIND INDUSTRY IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS?  

I'm going to split my answer to this question into offshore and onshore wind, as I think that they have different challenges facing them.

The Future of Energy

Yesterday, I went to a fascinating series of talks as part of "One World Week" here at Warwick. The event was called "The Future of Energy: A Power Struggle". The speakers  included heads of large energy companies, a lawyer specialising in energy and an American researcher into energy systems.

It was really interesting to see where the emphasis was put in the different talks, in terms of the "future energy mix". For example, Kevin McCollough (NPower) thought that nuclear was an inevitable part of our future, whereas David Hone (Shell) focussed on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as a technology to push, so that we can keep using the current fossil fuels that we do currently. Adrian Gault (Committee for Climate Change) suggested that it would be very difficult to meet our emissions targets for 2050 without significant bioenergy and CCS contribution, with all the new cars sold in 2030 being electrically driven. Mark Jacobson (Stanford) put forward an ambitious model based on Wind, Water and Sun (WWS) which the rest of the panel thought was too lofty a goal.

Electric cars: now come in desirable?

There seems to be a new breed of electric cars (or at least concepts) that are around at various motor shows at the moment. Instead of looking like a child's car, they are starting to look absolutely amazing- to the point where I really want one. This is a step in the right direction for getting electric cars into the mainstream: not many people would claim to own a G-wiz but I for one would brag about owning something that looks like this.


The example I am particularly thinking of is the BMW i-series. As well as all the clever work that has been done in reducing weight and improving the drivetrain/battery, the design guys have done a fantastic job. The i8 in particular is just jaw-dropping. BMW are not the only ones doing this- the Tesla Roadster was the first to go down this route, and there are many others making electric supercars or just well-designed (aesthetically) electric cars. Obviously the G-wiz and the Tesla (for example) are in different price ranges and for different purposes, but the fact that people are making electric cars that could replace the Ferraris and Lamborghinis on young boys' bedroom walls is a good sign.

Hopefully, when I start looking at getting myself an electric car in a few years, I will have plenty of choice of desirable ones!

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.

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?