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Enjoy this look at two ways to generate green electric energy, one from the earth and the other from space.

River/Tidal Turbines: Wind machines can be designed to work in much denser environments than the wind, like for instance water. Sometimes referred to as river turbines, or even tidal turbines, these machines operate on the flow of water past their rotor blades. Totally submerged, these machines would operate best in rivers that have a steady flow year-round. A large river turbine installation is currently being tested in New York City’s East River. Six 35 kW machines with rotor blades of 16 feet diameter are generating enough power to supply a supermarket and a parking lot, with plans to expand this facility into the megawatt size category. In the Mississippi River, near Hastings, Minnesota, downstream of an existing hydroelectric dam, several 35 kW river turbines are also in operation.

In the future and in large clusters, such machines could be a new alternative to hydroelectric dams, which are hard to license, or even find suitable sites for anymore. Experts believe underwater turbines might be able to generate about 5% of U.S. electric energy production at significantly less cost than traditional hydroelectric dams, and without the long-term environmental concerns and costs. In England, energy aficionados believe as much as 15-20% of that country’s electric energy needs could be met using water turbines. The nice thing about this technology is the power generated is likely to be base load, and not subject to the daily variations of other alternate energy forms like solar and wind.

Space Solar Power: First conceived in the late 1960s and subsequently patented by Peter Glaser of Arthur D. Little, space-based solar power generation involves building truly large structures in earth orbit dedicated to collecting the sun’s energy [via solar-electric photovoltaic panels] and beaming it down to receiving stations on the earth’s surface. Using this concept, great amounts of base load electricity would be available all day long, each station in space able to generate and transmit the power equivalent of 10-20 traditional nuclear power plants.

Microwave energy would be wirelessly transmitted from the orbiting platforms to large ground-based receiving antennas, converted back to traditional electric energy here on “terra firma”, and distributed along existing conventional tower and pole lines. NASA and others have studied this concept, usually agreeing the best way to build such large space platforms would involve using materials from the moon as the basic building blocks.

Certainly some years off in the future, space based solar power systems offer an amazing and exciting option for us. Putting this in perspective, in the 1940s the writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke proposed using satellites in geosynchronous orbit for telecommunications…and look where that went! Space based solar might just surprise all of us. Maybe a future U.S. president will challenge us to reach out to space once more to build orbiting solar power stations—like John Kennedy did to inspire us to land on the moon.

Deep Dive

• http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/4213223
• http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/hydrokinetic/
• http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=turbine-that-rides-the-tide
• http://www.fastcompany.com/1768261/turbines-go-below-the-water-to-provide-next-generation-of-power
• http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/index.htm
• http://www.powersat.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

“If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves….”

Time ® is a registered trademark of Time Inc.

If Thomas Edison were alive he would have been clapping and happily chatting with the contestants at the 2nd annual Thomas Edison Invention Challenge, held on April 22nd at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Sponsored by the Edison Innovation Foundation, and supported by local organizations, this event brings student teams out to compete with inventions designed to address the application of solar and alternate energy technologies. Excited, and a bit nervous, students from middle to high school happily explained their inventions and ideas for a cleaner world. A battery of judges from the engineering and scientific community visited each display to chat with student teams and evaluate their concepts.

Taking top honors this year was High Point Regional High School with a car exhaust charger design. Using a wind turbine as inspiration, students designed a working model of a miniature wind turbine located in a car exhaust system to spin a rotary generator to make electricity for use on-board a vehicle, or to charge batteries in a hybrid vehicle. Nicely designed and displayed, this high school student team effort showed the complete engineering process. An informative tri-fold newsletter accompanied the interesting display.

Second place also went to High Point Regional with a fascinating way to add alternate energy applications to the Lincoln Tunnel [which connects NJ and NYC]. A student team used solar panels and LED lights to provide an alternative to the energy intensive lighting now used in the tunnel.

Taking third place were three students from Heritage Middle School for their design of a methane powered portable toilet that captured the gases given off from the toilet’s fecal waste to generate electricity for low level lighting inside the structure.

The Best Invention Notebook award went to a team from The Marine Academy of Science and Technology that carefully documented their design of a hand-held, solar-powered fan. Keeping accurate invention notebooks and demonstrating good communication skills is an often forgotten aspect of inventing. Clearly this team did a great job, and kudos to their teacher-mentor for emphasizing such important skills!

An honorable mention award was given to New Providence High School for a team that designed and modeled a pest guard energized from alternate energy sources. Such a system would keep animal pests like deer and smaller wild animals from foraging in family gardens and ornamentals.

Apparent from all the team entries, students had a profound sense of making their inventions appropriate to the market. Some of these entries were just a few steps away from being commercially possible. One enthusiastic fashion design team envisioned solar-powered clothing! All teams were encouraged to continue developing their ideas and never be afraid to try new things, as Mr. Edison certainly would have encouraged. Proclaiming all the participants “budding young Thomas Edison’s”, the event was closed…. to await a new round of exciting invention competition next year!

“I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.”

Time ® is a registered trademark of Time Inc.

Photographs by Wonderpug Graphics

Get ready. That indispensable invention known as the car may transform the world yet again. We think of it as the prime reason for importing foreign oil and the chief polluter of our cities, but tomorrow, the car has the potential to clean the urban environment and provide clean electricity. Some engineers are already playing around the fringes of this futuristic and paradigm shifting dream. When battery-powered electric vehicles are sitting there parked, why not use some of that energy stored in their batteries to feed power back into the grid during peak load periods or when an emergency exists? This concept is already edging toward reality. The University of Delaware and the Ford Motor Company were two of the first to experiment with vehicle-to-grid transfer of electric energy. Pacific Gas and Electric and Excel, both electric utilities, are also early experimenters in this technology.

Now the steroids … make cars able to generate electricity all the time! Equip them with clean “engines” like fuel cells and while they are parked, connect them to a source of hydrogen, like natural gas so as they sit in a parking lot, they pump out ultra clean electricity, straight into the electric grid. After they leave work and head home where the electric load shifts to, they can easily provide enough energy from their garage to a home, and still send much more back to the electric grid.

Do the math. The total electric power generation potential from all U.S. electric generating stations is about 900,000 MW [Megawatts - a megawatt is a million watts of power]. A fuel cell-powered car would have a 40 kW “engine”. If 25,000 cars had fuel cells in them, they would generate 1,000 MW of power, about the same electric output as a modern day nuclear reactor. Since there are over 200 million cars on the road, and every 25,000 of them can generate 1000 MW, we then have the result that all these cars equipped with fuel cells can generate 8,000,000 MW of power, or close to 10 times more than we need!

Get the picture? In the future, folks could pay you to park your car in their parking lot, and buy the clean power your car can generate. In the future, anywhere you park your car, you can make money … maybe earn mall dollars at the shopping center that you can trade-in around the holidays for use at the stores there. Teachers’ cars can power the school they work in. Employee cars can power the place they work in … and so on and so on. Think about that car of yours and what it is capable of … Edison would have. Tomorrow’s car companies could merge with existing electric utility companies. Now there is a paradigm shift!

Editor’s Deep Drive

• http://www.smartmeters.com/the-news/1473-vehicle-to-grid-v2g-market-will-grow-to-40-million-by-2020-says-report.html
• http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/07/v2g-vehicle-to-grid-will-change-the-whole-energy-picture/
• http://www.udel.edu/V2G/HowV2Gworks.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/07/22/22climatewire-vehicle-to-grid-technology-gains-some-tracti-50378.html?pagewanted=all
• http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20043071-48.html

“To have a great idea, have a lot of them.”

Time ® is a registered trademark of Time Inc.