I found this video which, although a bit out of the subject of this blog, is nevertheless interesting as it discusses the society of masses we live in, and how the sheer amount of choice we have at our disposal can lead to paralysis. Hope you enjoy it!
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/93
A couple of months ago I had the problem of the mobile phone. The battery of my old and trusty nokia 3310 was letting me down, so I decided to get a new phone, only to spiral in the thoughts of looking for the cheapest and more basic phone and then realizing that I could get a little bit more phone for a little bit more money, and not wanting to feel like I had made the wrong choice. It took me 3 weeks to decide...
In the end I got a spare battery from a friend for my own phone, and I couldn't be happier!
Wednesday 30 April 2008
Monday 14 April 2008
Feeding themselves
The poor may be poor, but they are not stupid, certainly not any stupider than you and me. Here's an interesting note i found:
"You are absolutely correct that it is a mistake to define the main problem of the poor "as massive hunger, and hence the solution as providing food". But the optimum solution to tackle the cause of hunger is to give the poor and hungry that ultimate form of voucher: cash. Except in the rare cases of total market failure (like Darfur and North Korea), cash has huge advantages over food aid. Cash transfers are more than 50% cheaper to administer. They reduce the risk of dependency and disincentives; allow individual choice between consumption and investment; have multiplier effects on income and employment; stimulate markets by increasing purchasing power; and encourage the use of other social services such as health and education. That is why cash is predominantly used to help the poorest in OECD countries in the form of pensions, child benefits, disability grants and so on. Why not in developing countries too?"
by Nicholas Freeland, Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme, Johannesburg, in Economist, 12-04-08
"You are absolutely correct that it is a mistake to define the main problem of the poor "as massive hunger, and hence the solution as providing food". But the optimum solution to tackle the cause of hunger is to give the poor and hungry that ultimate form of voucher: cash. Except in the rare cases of total market failure (like Darfur and North Korea), cash has huge advantages over food aid. Cash transfers are more than 50% cheaper to administer. They reduce the risk of dependency and disincentives; allow individual choice between consumption and investment; have multiplier effects on income and employment; stimulate markets by increasing purchasing power; and encourage the use of other social services such as health and education. That is why cash is predominantly used to help the poorest in OECD countries in the form of pensions, child benefits, disability grants and so on. Why not in developing countries too?"
by Nicholas Freeland, Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme, Johannesburg, in Economist, 12-04-08
Thursday 10 April 2008
Amazon an international patrimony
Every once in a while i get this text in a chain email, i thought i'd translate it, because i like it... i can't really prove its authenticity, nevertheless...
"During a debate in a university in the States (around year 2000), the then Brazilian Minister for Education, Cristóvão Buarque, was questioned about what he thought about internationalizing the Amazons (a topic that reoccurs often in some sectors of American society, and that bothers tremendously the Brazilians). A young American student asked this question, saying that he hoped to get the answer of a humanist and not that of a Brazilian. This was Mr. Buarque's answer:
In fact, as a Brazilian i would simply argue against the internationalization of the Amazons. As much as our governments don't show the proper care for this patrimony, it is ours. As a humanist, and feeling the risk of the environmental degradation the Amazons are suffering, i can well imagine its internationalization, as well as of everything else which is important for humanity.
If the Amazons, under humanistic ethics, should be internationalized, then let us also internationalize the oil reserves of the whole world. Oil is as important to the well-being of humanity as is the Amazons for our future. nevertheless, the owners of these reserves, feel they are entitled to raise or lower its extraction and raise or not its price.
In the same way the financial capital of rich countries should be internationalized. If the Amazons are a reserve for all the human beings, then it cannot be burned by the will of one owner or one country. Burning the Amazons is as serious as the unemployment caused by arbitrary decisions made by global speculators. We cannot allow that the financial reserves are used to burn entire countries by the lust for speculation.
Even before the Amazons, I'd like to see the internationalization of all the great museums in the world. The Louvre should not belong to France alone. Each museum is the guardian of the most beautiful pieces produced by the human genius. We cannot leave this cultural heritage, like the natural heritage of the Amazons, to be manipulated and destroyed by the taste of one owner or one country. Not too long ago, a Japanese millionaire decided he should be buried with a painting of one of the great masters. Before that, that painting should have been internationalized.
During this meeting, the United Nations are holding the Millennium Forum, but some of the presidents of some countries could not attend due to restrictions at the US border. Therefore, i think that New York, as the home of the United Nations, should be internationalized. At least Manhattan should belong to the whole of humanity. As well as Paris, Venice, Rome, London, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Recife, each city, with its specific beauty, its world History, should belong to the entire world.
If the US want to internationalize the Amazons, because of the risk of leaving it at the hands of the Brazilians, let's then internationalize all the nuclear weapons of the US. Even because they have already demonstrated that they are capable of using them, provoking a destruction thousands of times bigger than the regrettable burns made in the Brazilian forests.
In their debates, the current candidates to the US presidency, have defended the idea of internationalizing the Amazons in exchange for the debt. Let's start using this debt to guarantee that each child of the World has the possibility to EAT and go to school. Let's internationalize the children, treating them, all of them, regardless of the country where they were born, as a patrimony of the entire world. Even more than what the Amazons deserve. When the leaders treat the poor children of the world as a Humanity patrimony, they will not let them work when they should be studying, that they die when they should live.
As a humanist, i accept to defend the internationalization of the World. But as long as the World treats me as a Brazilian, i will fight for the Amazons to be ours. Ours alone!"
"During a debate in a university in the States (around year 2000), the then Brazilian Minister for Education, Cristóvão Buarque, was questioned about what he thought about internationalizing the Amazons (a topic that reoccurs often in some sectors of American society, and that bothers tremendously the Brazilians). A young American student asked this question, saying that he hoped to get the answer of a humanist and not that of a Brazilian. This was Mr. Buarque's answer:
In fact, as a Brazilian i would simply argue against the internationalization of the Amazons. As much as our governments don't show the proper care for this patrimony, it is ours. As a humanist, and feeling the risk of the environmental degradation the Amazons are suffering, i can well imagine its internationalization, as well as of everything else which is important for humanity.
If the Amazons, under humanistic ethics, should be internationalized, then let us also internationalize the oil reserves of the whole world. Oil is as important to the well-being of humanity as is the Amazons for our future. nevertheless, the owners of these reserves, feel they are entitled to raise or lower its extraction and raise or not its price.
In the same way the financial capital of rich countries should be internationalized. If the Amazons are a reserve for all the human beings, then it cannot be burned by the will of one owner or one country. Burning the Amazons is as serious as the unemployment caused by arbitrary decisions made by global speculators. We cannot allow that the financial reserves are used to burn entire countries by the lust for speculation.
Even before the Amazons, I'd like to see the internationalization of all the great museums in the world. The Louvre should not belong to France alone. Each museum is the guardian of the most beautiful pieces produced by the human genius. We cannot leave this cultural heritage, like the natural heritage of the Amazons, to be manipulated and destroyed by the taste of one owner or one country. Not too long ago, a Japanese millionaire decided he should be buried with a painting of one of the great masters. Before that, that painting should have been internationalized.
During this meeting, the United Nations are holding the Millennium Forum, but some of the presidents of some countries could not attend due to restrictions at the US border. Therefore, i think that New York, as the home of the United Nations, should be internationalized. At least Manhattan should belong to the whole of humanity. As well as Paris, Venice, Rome, London, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Recife, each city, with its specific beauty, its world History, should belong to the entire world.
If the US want to internationalize the Amazons, because of the risk of leaving it at the hands of the Brazilians, let's then internationalize all the nuclear weapons of the US. Even because they have already demonstrated that they are capable of using them, provoking a destruction thousands of times bigger than the regrettable burns made in the Brazilian forests.
In their debates, the current candidates to the US presidency, have defended the idea of internationalizing the Amazons in exchange for the debt. Let's start using this debt to guarantee that each child of the World has the possibility to EAT and go to school. Let's internationalize the children, treating them, all of them, regardless of the country where they were born, as a patrimony of the entire world. Even more than what the Amazons deserve. When the leaders treat the poor children of the world as a Humanity patrimony, they will not let them work when they should be studying, that they die when they should live.
As a humanist, i accept to defend the internationalization of the World. But as long as the World treats me as a Brazilian, i will fight for the Amazons to be ours. Ours alone!"
Tuesday 8 April 2008
Local storing of energy II - a solution
I've discussed this thing of storing locally energy at each house with my friend and colleague Norbert, and we came up with a nice recommendation for a viable solution.
Use a tank of compressed air!
The air can be compressed mechanically from a wind/water mill, or with a compressor powered by cheap electricity at night. Burying the tank to keep the air cool may increase the tank capacity, and also has the advantage of reinforcing the tank such that it withstands higher pressures.
To use the energy you let the air out through a turbine, which can in turn generate electricity from the same motor of the compressor (or a separate one, whatever). The heat generated by the spinning turbine, or heat collected from solar energy can also be recuperated to warm up the compressed air as it comes out of the tank to increase the pressure.
One just needs to calculate how big a tank is needed, depending on how much energy you want to store...
There already exists a car running on compressed air.
There exists also power plants which use compressed air to compensate the periods of high demand from the power grid.
As clean and renewable as it gets!
Use a tank of compressed air!
The air can be compressed mechanically from a wind/water mill, or with a compressor powered by cheap electricity at night. Burying the tank to keep the air cool may increase the tank capacity, and also has the advantage of reinforcing the tank such that it withstands higher pressures.
To use the energy you let the air out through a turbine, which can in turn generate electricity from the same motor of the compressor (or a separate one, whatever). The heat generated by the spinning turbine, or heat collected from solar energy can also be recuperated to warm up the compressed air as it comes out of the tank to increase the pressure.
One just needs to calculate how big a tank is needed, depending on how much energy you want to store...
There already exists a car running on compressed air.
There exists also power plants which use compressed air to compensate the periods of high demand from the power grid.
As clean and renewable as it gets!
Sunday 6 April 2008
Local storing of energy
How about this? I'm not an expert in high power networks, but here's a typical load profile for an electrical network over a day (there are other seasonal fluctuations as well):
In theory a network needs to be dimensioned to satisfy the highest demand, and eventually to dump or store extra energy which is not used in periods of less demand (for example by pumping water into dams).
The difference between the highest and lowest peak in the load profile is 20GW, for this example, which i got from wikipedia). The problem I see is that the peak control is made at a macro-scale, requiring the network to be over-dimensioned to meet the demand (for example additional gas plants are required which can be fired quickly to meet sudden peaks of demand).
What if every building (including residences) were to consume and simultaneously store part of the energy they require to operate locally? They would store during periods when the overall demand was lowest, and at the time of high peaks they would use that energy, disconnecting from the electrical network, thus reducing the maximum load and the need for an over dimensioned network - resulting in balancing the load at a micro-level. There is clearly an efficiency problem in the losses due to energy conversion for storage and usage, but the benefit could exceed the loss (somebody should do the math...).
Eventually as new storage technology (batteries, hydrogen cells, nano-capacitors...) becomes available this could turn out to be a good solution to reduce the need for more power plants. Also an infrastructure that supports DC rather than AC might also help, to reduce the number of conversions, and the losses in the electrical distribution. Another advantage is that buildings making use of renewable energy collectors, could re-direct the energy from these sources to this storage system to complement the need for usage of network power.
The control of the charge/discharge cycles of the buildings could be done by digital data transferred to/from the network central, via internet, to the circuits on the buildings and each region could be controlled separately to balance the load as required. An intelligent system which knows the overall power demand, the storage capability of each building and acquires in real time rates of consumption could smartly and optimally manage the charge/discharges cycles. As I said, I'm not an expert, it's just a thought...
In theory a network needs to be dimensioned to satisfy the highest demand, and eventually to dump or store extra energy which is not used in periods of less demand (for example by pumping water into dams).
The difference between the highest and lowest peak in the load profile is 20GW, for this example, which i got from wikipedia). The problem I see is that the peak control is made at a macro-scale, requiring the network to be over-dimensioned to meet the demand (for example additional gas plants are required which can be fired quickly to meet sudden peaks of demand).
What if every building (including residences) were to consume and simultaneously store part of the energy they require to operate locally? They would store during periods when the overall demand was lowest, and at the time of high peaks they would use that energy, disconnecting from the electrical network, thus reducing the maximum load and the need for an over dimensioned network - resulting in balancing the load at a micro-level. There is clearly an efficiency problem in the losses due to energy conversion for storage and usage, but the benefit could exceed the loss (somebody should do the math...).
Eventually as new storage technology (batteries, hydrogen cells, nano-capacitors...) becomes available this could turn out to be a good solution to reduce the need for more power plants. Also an infrastructure that supports DC rather than AC might also help, to reduce the number of conversions, and the losses in the electrical distribution. Another advantage is that buildings making use of renewable energy collectors, could re-direct the energy from these sources to this storage system to complement the need for usage of network power.
The control of the charge/discharge cycles of the buildings could be done by digital data transferred to/from the network central, via internet, to the circuits on the buildings and each region could be controlled separately to balance the load as required. An intelligent system which knows the overall power demand, the storage capability of each building and acquires in real time rates of consumption could smartly and optimally manage the charge/discharges cycles. As I said, I'm not an expert, it's just a thought...
Thursday 3 April 2008
Construction Costs of a Power Plant vs. Costs of up-to-date House isolation
I have tried to retrieve information on the actual construction costs of nuclear and thermal power plants and the amount of energy they in average produce per year and to compare them with the costs for up-to-date state house isolations and the Amount of Energy which in average can be saved per year.
The result of this simple comparison was at the first look surprising to me. If the amount of money necessary to construct a power plant would be invested to isolate houses, only 1/10 of the Energy, which would be produced with the power plant, would be saved by the isolation.
Honestly I was a bit disappointed by the result and I found it quite amazing that such sophisticated technology like a nuclear power plant could have such a big advantage in the cost-benefit ratio compared to a quite simple straightforward technology.
But of course there are factors to be considered, which have just not been considered in the comparison and which would probably are in favour to the simpler technology of isolation:
- Maintenance Costs
- CO2 equivalent effort
- Resource consumption on the long term
- Effort for guaranteeing the safety of the technology
- Effective Costs of possible environmental damage due to error in the technology
Especially the last point is difficult to compare as the costs in case of an incident at an nuclear power plant would be very high due to it’s long term impact (long term radio active contamination due to an hazardous incident radioactivity or due to a inadequate final storage).
Let me know what you think!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Below the actual numbers of the comparison and the links, from where I retrieved the information:
1) Construction Costs and Energy Production of Power Plants
Power Plant Construction Costs Energy Production per year
Gundremmingen DE (nuclear) ~4.0 Mrd € (4*10^9 €) ~20 TWh (20*10^12 Watt Hours)
Lippendorf DE (thermal) ~2.3 Mrd € (2.3*10^9 €) ~13 TWh
2) Example Costs for House Isolations and Amount of saved Energy
Isolation Costs for a house with of 160m^2 surface ~29.000 €
Saved Energy per year 103 kWh/m^2 * 160 ~> 16.500 kWh
3) Calculations
a) 4*10^9 / 29.000 € => 138.000 Houses with 160 m^2 could be isolated.
b) 138.000 * 16.500 kWh => 2.2 TWh Energy saved by the isolation
Links:
Bedeutung von Kern- und Fusionskraftwerken
Kernkraftwerk Gundremmingen
Energiesparen im Haushalt
The result of this simple comparison was at the first look surprising to me. If the amount of money necessary to construct a power plant would be invested to isolate houses, only 1/10 of the Energy, which would be produced with the power plant, would be saved by the isolation.
Honestly I was a bit disappointed by the result and I found it quite amazing that such sophisticated technology like a nuclear power plant could have such a big advantage in the cost-benefit ratio compared to a quite simple straightforward technology.
But of course there are factors to be considered, which have just not been considered in the comparison and which would probably are in favour to the simpler technology of isolation:
- Maintenance Costs
- CO2 equivalent effort
- Resource consumption on the long term
- Effort for guaranteeing the safety of the technology
- Effective Costs of possible environmental damage due to error in the technology
Especially the last point is difficult to compare as the costs in case of an incident at an nuclear power plant would be very high due to it’s long term impact (long term radio active contamination due to an hazardous incident radioactivity or due to a inadequate final storage).
Let me know what you think!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Below the actual numbers of the comparison and the links, from where I retrieved the information:
1) Construction Costs and Energy Production of Power Plants
Power Plant Construction Costs Energy Production per year
Gundremmingen DE (nuclear) ~4.0 Mrd € (4*10^9 €) ~20 TWh (20*10^12 Watt Hours)
Lippendorf DE (thermal) ~2.3 Mrd € (2.3*10^9 €) ~13 TWh
2) Example Costs for House Isolations and Amount of saved Energy
Isolation Costs for a house with of 160m^2 surface ~29.000 €
Saved Energy per year 103 kWh/m^2 * 160 ~> 16.500 kWh
3) Calculations
a) 4*10^9 / 29.000 € => 138.000 Houses with 160 m^2 could be isolated.
b) 138.000 * 16.500 kWh => 2.2 TWh Energy saved by the isolation
Links:
Bedeutung von Kern- und Fusionskraftwerken
Kernkraftwerk Gundremmingen
Energiesparen im Haushalt
We can solve it...
Al Gore and his foundation 'Organisation Alliance for Climate Protection' search for people to join:
http://www.wecansolveit.org/
http://www.wecansolveit.org/
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