February 2003 Newsletter
February 18th Meeting:
Topic:
Rate
Engineering for Cogeneration & Direct Generation
Con-Ed's New Proposed Cogen/DG Rate - Update & Issues
Where: Cornell
Cooperative Extension
16 East 34th Street, 8th floor
Time: 5:30 (networking over sandwiches),
6:00 (presentation and
discussion)
The
Tab: $10 members, $15 non-members
Speaker: E-Cubed’s Chris Young, MALD, has recently
negotiated assignments that include technical and governance issues in the PJM
Office of the Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic ISO), primarily focusing on
changing market rules for demand response, capacity, reserves, and PJM
West. He also participates in negotiation of the PJM generator cost
development manual. Mr. Young has helped develop energy policy and
regulatory issues in New York State, including various ISO activities and regulatory
cases, such as the aborted Con Edison / Northeast Utilities merger and the
Provider of Last Resort and Generic Unbundling case. Currently he is
helping to represent various distributed generation interests in several of the
ongoing utility rate cases
CONTENTS:
Belly-Button Lint and
Beer-Bubble Decay Are Among
Subjects Studied by 2002 Ig
Nobel Winners
[from
http://chronicle.com/daily/2002/10/2002100708n.htm Oct. 7 2002]
Karl Kruszelnicki of the University of
Sydney surveyed more than 4,500 people and determined that "you're more
likely to have BBL [belly-button lint] if you're male, older, hairy, and have
an innie."
Arnd
Leike of the University of Munich demonstrated that beer bubbles evaporate at a
rate that follows the mathematical law of exponential decay.
Those achievements -- along with a
British study of the possible sexual arousal of ostriches in the presence of
humans and a Japanese invention that translates dog barks into human language
-- were honored last week as the 2002 Ig Nobel Prizes were presented in a
ceremony at Harvard University.
The "Igs," as the
10-year-old awards are known, honor achievements that "cannot or should
not be reproduced," according to the Web site of the journal that
presents them, the Annals of Improbable Research.
While
the awards are partly in jest -- prizes this year included a set of wind-up,
chattering teeth -- editors of the journal insist that the winners and their
achievements are not being judged as "good" or "bad." The
journal's Web site notes more than once that "the winners have all done
things that first make people laugh, then make them think,"
and it adds that about half of the 10 prizes each year "are awarded for
things that most people would say are commendable -- if perhaps goofy."
The other half, it says, "go for things that are, in some people's eyes,
less commendable."
The Harvard-Radcliffe Science
Fiction Association, the Harvard Computer Society, and the Harvard-Radcliffe
Society of Physics Students sponsored the awards ceremony. The 2002 prizes and
their honorees are as follow:
Biology: Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton,
Phil Bowers, and D. Charles Deeming of Britain, for their report
"Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions
in Britain."
Chemistry: Theo Gray of Wolfram Research, in
Champaign, Ill., for gathering many elements of the periodic table and
assembling them into the form of a four-legged periodic-table table.
Economics: The executives, corporate directors, and
auditors of the Enron Corporation and nearly two dozen other American
businesses -- including Adelphia Communications, Arthur Andersen LLP, Qwest
Communications International, Tyco International, and WorldCom -- as well as
the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (Pakistan), Gazprom (Russia), HIH
Insurance (Australia), Lernaut & Hauspie (Belgium), and Maxwell
Communications (Britain), for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary
numbers for use in the business world.
Hygiene: Eduardo Segura, of Lavakan de Aste, in
Tarragona, Spain, for inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs.
Interdisciplinary
research: Karl
Kruszelnicki of the University of Sydney, for performing a comprehensive survey
of human belly-button lint -- who gets it, when, what color, and how much.
Literature: Vicki L. Silvers of the University of
Nevada at Reno and David S. Kreiner of Central Missouri State University, for
their colorful report "The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate
Highlighting on Reading Comprehension."
Mathematics: K.P. Sreekumar and the late G. Nirmalan
of Kerala Agricultural University, in India, for their analytical report
"Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants."
Medicine: Chris McManus of University College London,
for his excruciatingly balanced report "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in
Ancient Sculpture."
Peace: Keita Sato, president of the Takara
Company; Matsumi Suzuki, president of Japan Acoustic Lab; and Norio Kogure,
executive director of Kogure Veterinary Hospital, for promoting peace and
harmony between the species by inventing Bow-Lingual, a computer-based
automatic dog-to-human language-translation device.
Physics: Arnd Leike of the University of Munich,
for demonstrating that beer froth obeys the mathematical law of exponential
decay.
Wind Turbines
Are Sprouting Off Europe's Shores
The New York Times, 12/8/02, by Marlise Simons
ELYSTAD, the Netherlands —
When the telephone rings in this Dutchman's car, chances are that it is a
windmill calling. A windmill?
"It's telling me there's a problem, maybe it has
stopped," said Herre van der Meulen, a technician at Nuon, a Dutch
utility.
He searches through his laptop, checks the disturbance
and sends a telephone signal back to the computer aboard the windmill. Moments
later, the blades are spinning again, yielding electricity. "Usually I can
fix most problems from a distance," he said.
That he can do his job from afar is a good thing — soon
technicians may have little choice. Across wind-swept Northern Europe, hundreds
of high-powered turbines are being planned or are under construction offshore,
beyond the easy reach of engineers.
"Going offshore is the new trend, and it's
huge," said Bruce Douglas of the European Wind Energy Association, an
industry group based in Brussels. "The demonstration projects out at sea
have been a success. Now people are going for full-scale marine wind parks.
Some are close to land, some are so far you can't see them."
In the business, the talk is of a veritable rush offshore.
Power companies are staking out suitable tracts of sandbanks, reefs and shallow
open waters from the shores of Ireland to the Baltic Sea. They are joining with
traditional offshore oil and gas companies, including giants like Shell, that
have the capability to drill and rig up the 100-ton towers at sea.
Engineers say that wind parks at sea have two main
advantages: the wind blows harder and more steadily than on land and there are
no residents protesting against great wind parks marring the landscape.
On the Dutch coast near Lelystad, 28 windmills stand in a
perfect lineup near the shore, anchored in about 20 feet of water. The swoosh
of the wind going over the blades is barely audible, even drowned out by the
squawking of the sea gulls.
"It's new, it's clean, it's high tech," said
Henk Kouwenhoven, a manager of Nuon, who watched the towers go up in 1996.
"The offshore potential is enormous. Here we never run out of wind. It
blows 90 percent of the time. The main issue is making it cost-efficient."
Europe's wind-driven energy has been growing at 40
percent a year. With a capacity of more than 20,000 megawatts installed on
land, it now represents three-fourths of the world's total wind-power output.
Europe hopes to raise this to 60,000 megawatts in the next six years. Much of
that growth is expected to come from sea-based turbines.
"It's going so fast now because there is a race to
go offshore, with manufacturers and utilities competing for the jobs,"
said Corin Millais of the European Wind Energy Association. "Companies are
now talking of wind fields, like oil reserves or coal reserves, waiting to be
tapped. The beauty of it is that it is inexhaustible."
Advocates see the move offshore as an impressive rite of
passage in the history of an ancient technology. For centuries, tapping the
wind was the domain of the miller, his family and his hand-set sails. Even
modern wind energy had humble beginnings in Europe. In the 1970's, it was
started by grass-roots groups of often politically motivated investors putting
up one or two private windmills. There are still thousands of private owners in
Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.
But wind power is no longer a cottage industry, and the
windmills of today are not the charming, stubby kind that once pumped much of
this country dry and became a national emblem. These are the modern variety,
called turbines, that are becoming sleeker, taller and more powerful by the
year.
"The largest turbines now produce 250 times more
electricity than the ones built 20 years ago," Mr. Millais said. Today
wind provides some 28 million Europeans with electricity, he said, about half
of them in Germany, Europe's largest producer.
The European Union has been pushing to develop
alternatives to fossil fuels, which are widely believed to contribute to global
warming. It wants 22 percent of its electricity — and 12 percent of all energy
— to come from renewable sources by 2010, to meet its commitment under the
Kyoto treaty to reduce greenhouse gases. In the United States, wind energy has
stalled at about one-fifth of Europe's capacity.
Here, wind projects have been encouraged with incentives
like tax credits and guaranteed rates, and the emphasis is now shifting
offshore. About 100 sea-based turbines are already operating. This year,
Britain, Denmark, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands have all earmarked large
offshore sites and issued licenses. Some of the projects are scheduled to be
ready next year.
The new endeavors are not without problems or critics.
Environmental groups are divided. Some defend the wind turbines as a renewable
source of pollution-free energy, while others fear the offshore turbines will
disturb fishing and spawning grounds and endanger flocks of birds that migrate
at night.
In Britain and Norway, the military has objected to some
designated coastal sites, saying that wind parks can produce false radar echoes
and disturb telecommunications.
There are other hurdles as well. Offshore turbines may be
more productive, but building costs are 50 percent higher than on land and
maintenance is difficult in a region where winters bring Atlantic gales.
"When waves are up and your boat sways back and forth, it's unsafe to try
and get onto the landing platform," said Mr. van der Meulen, the
technician who monitors about 200 windmills scattered over a large area,
including some at sea. "You can do maintenance work really only in the
summer."
Then there is the issue of price. Industry spokesmen
contend that, strictly speaking, the price of wind-driven energy is close to
being competitive with other sources. They argue that traditional fossil fuels
and nuclear energy get enormous hidden or indirect subsidies, to the tune of
billions of dollars a year. For example, in some European countries,
governments pay for the insurance of nuclear power plants.
While no one expects wind to become more important than
traditional power sources, enthusiasts are undeterred, and the growth of
wind-powered turbines is likely to continue. Denmark already uses wind to
produce 18 percent of its electricity, the world's highest per capita
consumption. Britain intends to catch up.
The British have designated 12 offshore turbine sites.
Brian Wilson, the energy minister, said studies had shown there is enough wind
to provide electricity for the whole country. He said he expected the global
market for offshore energy to be worth $12 billion by 2007. Most of that, he
said, will be in Europe.
"I don't see anything stopping offshore electricity
now," said Mr. Kouwenhoven, of Nuon, which has teamed up with Royal Dutch
Shell in a joint venture. "Shell knows the offshore business, we know the
wind business. It's just a matter of moving ahead."
Warmth, Power, Blood and Smoke
Excerpted from the NY Times
December 8, 2002 - By Alison Leigh Cowan
(Last)
summer, Americans were moved by the bravery of nine men trapped in a watery
coal mine and the rescuers who finally freed them. Their ordeal was a fresh
reminder of
the price that some people
pay for our collective dependence on coal.
A new book, "Coal: A Human History" (Perseus
Publishing; $25), aims to further raise awareness of this dependence.
The book looks at how coal transformed England and then
the United States into an industrial superpower and how coal is reshaping
developing giants like China.
"The industrial age emerged literally in a haze of
coal smoke," writes the author, Barbara Freese, "and in that smoke we
can read much of the history of the modern world."
SAVE
THESE DATES!
DATE
|
TOPIC
|
SPEAKER
|
|
January
21 |
GE
lighting seminar (CANCELLED) |
|
|
February
18 |
Rate
engineering for cogeneration and direct generation
|
Tba |
|
March
18 |
LI
Power Authority’s photovoltaic commuter plan |
Tba |
|
April
2,3 |
GLOBALCOM
2003, Hynes Convention Ctr., Boston |
|
|
April
10 (NJ) |
Energy
Futures Forum (NJ Chapter, AEE) |
|
|
April15 |
Advances
in energy management & building automation |
Port
Authority of NY & NJ |
|
May
20 |
Re-connecting
Downtown |
Tba |
|
June17 |
Gala:
dinner and awards at NY Academy of Sciences |
Keynoter
tba |
Corporate Sponsor
Program
The New York Chapter of the
Association of Energy Engineers (NY-AEE) invites companies to participate in
our Corporate Sponsor Program, which offers opportunities for its corporate
sponsors to become active players in promoting the Association's goals of
energy and environmental conservation and cost savings.
We invite corporate involvement in the future of our
Chapter, one of the largest among thirty-six state chapters of the Association
of Energy Engineers, the world's leading society of energy and environmental
professionals.
Chapter membership is approximately 500 throughout New
York State and represents some of the nations top energy and environmental
experts and leaders.
As a Corporate Sponsor,
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program and,
Perhaps the most valuable
benefit of all, recognition and respect that the firm earns by assisting our
chapter to continue its critical role in the changing energy environment of New
York.
Initial annual Corporate
Sponsor membership dues are $275. Renewal is $250.
Current Sponsors:
Association for Energy Affordbility
1st Rochdale Cooperative
Keyspan Energy,
Con Edison Energy
EBM Consulting Service,
Imagineers Unlimited, J
Jamaica Hospital Medical Center,
PB Power,
Sempra Energy Services,
Trystate Mechanical Inc.
ADVERTISEMENTS
HEATING –
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TRYSTATE
Mechanical
Inc.
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Colella, V.P. Operations
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PO Box 911, Millbrook, NY 12545
845.877.6030 845.877.9875
fax
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ENGINEER, 1990, AEE
CONSULTING ENGINEERS:
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11545
Tel: 516-656-0220¨Fax: 516-656-0474¨www.belzona.com
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