Yesterday I mentioned some of the science and weather themes I will be keeping track of in 2012, and I will continue with that today. But before getting into today’s themes, I want to again hearken back to the metrics of “growth” that I have been harping on. Yesterday I mentioned once again that happiness should be a part of what we consider “socio-economic growth”. For example, I would be quite happy with a new medical technology that improved the health of my aging parents or myself.

Huge U.S. Freeway

It would make me a lot more happy than seeing another strip mall and parking lot erected on the outskirts of town. I would consider better health and more happiness to be good metrics of how we are doing as a society. Some researchers have recently found the same thing in regards to happiness. Health seems to correlate most strongly with happiness. I suggest instead of building more 8-lane freeways and expansive cookie-cutter sub-divisions, we should focus more on medical technology that will extend our healthy lives. 

Now on to some other themes continue to appear in the blog.

Coal Power in China

One of the most common themes in my blog entries is the contrast between the possible threat of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and the hopes of technological progress. This subject could be even “hotter” in 2012 as technological progress is not slowing down, and a warm start to the year, potential continuing drought in the southern U.S., and increasing carbon emissions from China and India will drive a lot of angst in the climatology and environmentalist communities. So there should be plenty to talk about. Already this holiday season, there was an record all time high temperature set at the south pole on Christmas Day. The temperature was 9.9 degrees. The records go back to 1957. Besides potential weather machinations driving angst in some quarters, the fact that India is not going to sign any new climate treaties and that China is planning to build one of the biggest coal-fired power plants in the world will give a lot of people reason to worry.

On the positive side of things, even though computing (data centers) continue to take up more of the world’s power, computing efficiency is currently following Moore’s law and we should expect more efficient computer chips to become more prevalent in 2012. Increasing computer presence in cars (while potentially having some downsides) has the potential to dramatically change transportation in the western world, making it more efficient with less pollution. In addition, my favorite alternative energy – solar power – while taking some significant lumps in 2011, is still progressing nicely. Check out the start-up Natcore and their three new technologies that could increase efficiency and reduce manufacturing costs.

No doubt the positive and negative stories will continue to arrive fast and furious in 2012.

I will also continue to follow up on some older stories that continue to evolve or are in need of updates including (but not limited to) a few exciting space exploration milestones coming up this year, LED lighting, and cloaking.

In the coolest new technology category of cloaking, a recent paper has described a way to make it more practical for large scale production. It involves joining many small tiles.

In LED lighting, I expect more $10 or less bulbs to arrive in 2012, but no new news recently in this regard.

In space exploration I will be closely watching the progress and landing of the latest Mars rover Opportunity. It is scheduled to land on Mars in August. I will also continue to provide short updates on commercial/private spaceflight. Companies such as Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Bigelow Aerospace should hit some major milestones this year. Also don’t forget that the Lunar X-prize is still in heated competition.

Have a fine Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Records, Science, Space, Technology

I am very positive on alternative energy for the future. Fossil fuels have been a great energy source for humans for centuries, but it is dirty. It does cause a lot of pollution. It would be great to develop cleaner sources of energy. As I have mentioned in the past, I try to follow developments of many different alternative energy sources but I do play favorites. Biofuels are at the bottom of my list, wind power is in the middle, and solar power is near the top. Solar power is near the top not because it is the cheapest but because it has the greatest potential upside (leaving nuclear power out of the equation for the moment).

Solar power had seen quite a resurgence during the early part of this century. The housing bubble in the U.S. also fueled some investment in new solar technology and manufacturing capacity. As we learned recently, it also fueled profligate spending by governments to support the industry. Many of the government supported solar companies in the U.S. have gone bankrupt.

So is the growth in solar power over? Investors sure have punished solar stocks, which could be a hint of the future. Recall this past blog post about the meteoric rise of First Solar (FSLR). I pointed out how good of an investment the company would have been if you had gotten in at the IPO. After rising to over $160 per share a couple years ago, it is now back down in the $30 to 40 range. In fact, I have blogged about most of the new solar companies over the last few years and thankfully a few of them are still going. I can’t vouch for the revenue or profits, but at least their websites are still up, as is the case for Nanosolar (past blog post about Nanosolar). The latest company to make waves (yes there is still some investment in the industry), is Stion. They have a manufacturing plant in Mississippi and is planning on expanding into Korea with a new $130 million investment.

In addition to some companies surviving, if not thriving, research continues to point to a positive future for solar energy. At the University of Texas, researchers have found new ways to capture more electrons in solar panels (another good review of this research at eetimes). If this process can be commercialized, it could cause a big jump in the efficiency of solar panels. Also 3D solar panel designs (a concept I blogged about in the past) from MIT point toward methods to collect more sunlight per unit of surface area. This is a big development because one of the drawbacks to solar panel deployment is that they take up a lot of space.

Now some bad news. According to this article from James Delingpole, the German solar industry has lost 5,000 companies and 20,000 employees in just the last year. Germany was once one of the leading alternative energy economies in the world. With the onset of the recession and increased competition from China, their internal solar economy has collapse to a great degree. When you hear that 5,000 solar “companies” have gone bust, remember that many of these are “support” businesses like solar panel installers which probably include teams of a small handful of people. These are not 5,000 First Solar’s going bankrupt. Still it is sad to see, but as Delingpole points out, it should not be too surprising. The longer an new industry category (like alternative energy) has to live off of the support of government, the higher the odds that it will collapse. I agree with Delingpole in that I don’t think government subsidies are the best way forward. If the green energy companies cannot survive in the market place, then the support should come from private sources. There are plenty of obscenely rich green energy supporters (like Al Gore) who could make a real sacrifice and pony up some millions to at least keep solar companies and installation crawling along until cost competitiveness improves. Some are probably already doing this, but it could be bigger and more publicized. Couple this German solar story with the fact that Germany wants to ban all nuclear power in the next 10 years, and you come to the realization that Germany will go from a green energy leader to a laggard very soon (unless some of the big solar breakthroughs make it to market soon).

This realization might already be showing up in the angst of European environmentalists as they decried the “failure” of the EU carbon trading market recently. There is also trouble for solar brewing between the U.S. and China. Some are speculating that a new full-blown trade war over solar panel manufacturing will break out between the two countries. It is interesting to note that many people in the U.S. accuse China of heavily subsidizing their solar industry when the U.S. has been doing the same thing (with very poor results, Solyndra). Head of the Energy Department Steven Chu says that it is not so much because of subsidies, but because the Chinese solar plants are more technologically advanced and their labor costs are lower. Whatever the reasons, I think a trade war would be stupid because the economies of the world are so inter-linked nowadays. A trade war will only hurt consumers and often times lead to “real” war.

BP Solar Getting Out of the Biz

And finally on the list of negative trends, even big corporate support cannot keep all solar panel manufacturers up and running. BP solar, a stalwart in the industry for decades, is closing up shop.

Even though there is some bad news for the solar industry, at least it is still faring better than biofuel industry – in which some companies have stopped producing actual fuel (because it is a money losing endeavor) and have started making higher value chemical feed-stocks instead.

Overall, because of the pace of technological progress, I am still positive that we will see a stronger solar market in the near future. Panel prices are low now and should and should stay that way for a while. This means more solar capacity will continue to be installed around the world and every increase should lead to a cleaner planet in the future.

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Later this week I will detail my top ten weather events of 2011 and detail the year in review. Given that above normal temps will continue for the rest of this week, we might end up above normal for the year. For those of you hoping for some significant cold and snow to get going out on the ice skating rinks and snowmobile trails, I have one picture to show you. It is the current 6 to 10 day outlook from the Climate Prediction Center. The only colder than normal air is expected to be in far southern Florida and in Alaska.

 Have a fine Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew

Posted under Alternative Energy

When blogging about anthropogenic global warming (AGW), I often mention the tendency for predictions and warnings to be of the worst-case-scenario variety. This has been going on for over two decades in the case of AGW and for much longer when it comes to general environmental apocalypse scenarios. If the science justifies the warning, then I don’t think you could claim this practice is ”crying wolf”, but so may times in the past the science has been wrong, manipulated, or politically motivated. There are also cases where the theory is highly speculative, but drives headlines as if it were closer to reality.

Lest you think I exaggerate, here is a recent article about how the frozen poles of the earth will become very tropical in 300 years - in a scenario termed “hyper-warming” (one of four scenarios in a recent study). If you don’t read past the headline you will not find out that “hyper-warming” is based on the assumption that every last drop (or chunk) of fossil fuel is going to be burned by humans and that the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere will rise to 2000 ppm by 2300.

This is fine for theoretical speculation among climatologists but I would suggest not for consumption by the general public or policy-makers, because it does lead to the “crying wolf” syndrome. The chance of the hyper-warming scenario coming to pass (due to human emissions) are remote – near infitessimal.

First of all, the world already gets nearly 20% of its energy from cleaner alternative energy sources and this percentage increases every year as fossil fuels become more scarce and expensive. It is highly unlikely that humans would continue to use fossil fuels at a greater rate in the future – not when oil is about $100 per barrel. The economics don’t add up.

Secondly, technology continues to advance. Progress is not slowing down. As sure as the sun rises in the east, we will be able to develop more energy efficient modes of societal operation and better alternatives energy sources. Not only will we be able to live cleaner, if the air has too much carbon dioxide, we will likely develop technologies to take that carbon dioxide (and methane, and other “greenhouse” gasses) out of the air. Nature leads the way in this endeavor, so it is not a pipe-dream. Difficult, perhpas, but not impossible.

Thirdly, population growth has leveled off. The population of the earth is not going to rise to 25 billion any time soon, as was once forecast back in the 1970s and 1980s. Some demographers think that the population will not grow much more than 7 billion (based on current lifespan and technology). As a corrollary, if a couple of degrees warming happens, and the environment is already destroyed by 2100 (as has been forecast many times over), then there are certainly not going to be many people around to keep destroying the bio-sphere all the way through 2300.

Fourthly, even in this extremely extremely unlikely scenario, it is not unprecedented. The earth has seen “hyper-warmth” and carbon dioxide levels up around 2000 ppm in the past, and it was not the end of the world. It would be a tough world for humans to adapt to, no doubt, but life would go on.

New Apple Inc. Data Center in North Carolina

Don’t think I am just a polyanna when it comes to “new-fangled technology” either. A person can find many reasons to be optimistic every day. Take this recent article about how IBM is using a large solar installation to help power a data center in India. The solar panels only provide a small fraction of the data center’s energy needs but it is a step in the right direction and reduces pollution over time. More data centers are also setting up ways to use the waste heat that comes from the computer chips and other electronics (and it is about time). In addition, advances in chip, transistor, and server design continue to increase computing efficiency every single year. Some environmental organizations are upset about the amount of energy that data centers use, but data centers (cloud computing, mobile computing, and information technology in general) are the key to further development of cleaner greener technology for the future. Shutting down data centers would be the equivalent of sending society back to the “dark ages”.

Speaking of solar panel installations, even through the current global depression/recession more solar power comes online every year. Long Island New York just switched on one of the larger solar installations in the eastern U.S.

New Erbium-Doped Material from Arizona State Univ.

Those solar panel installation could become more efficient and cheaper in future years due to developments like this: New manufacturing technique could boost the performance of monocrystalline cells from 16-18 percent up to 22-24 percent. Nanoantennas within solar cells could likewise produce dramatic results. Even low efficiency (but cheap) dye-sensitized solar cells are showing signs of recent improvment. What about thin film solar panels? A new polymer could boost their efficiency up to a little over 6 percent. With the addition of erbium, Arizona State researchers have found many solar and lighting technologies could be improved in the near future.

And these are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to recent progress!! I could write a few more paragraphs, but there is only so much time in the day.

Have a good Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Pollution, Technology

Following up on yesterday’s post about continued positive news in solar energy in the face of a world financial depression (meaning less subsidies for solar panels), here are a couple more technological advances that could pay dividends a couple years down the road:

Researchers in Europe have improved the quantum dots for solar applications to the point where they can get 3 or more electrons to “get moving” from just one photon of light. If this technology can be translated cost-effectively into solar panels, efficiencies could reach as high as 44%. That would be a substantial improvement from commercial panels of the present day.

Solar panels might be coming to a car near you- not for running the engine but for running other functions of the car such as the air conditioner. While this is not a big breakthrough, it is one of those little developments that keeps things moving in the right direction – getting more efficient all the time.

Solar panels might be coming to a mountain near you as well. Solar panel researchers, advocates, and manufacturers have recently explored high elevations as a place for solar panel installations. You might not think that a high mountain top would be ideal for solar energy production, but higher up the air is thinner and more solar radiation will hit the solar panels. The cold air will also help the panels run more efficiently. Electronics typically run better at cold temps (although batteries do not). I foresee a couple obstacles. One being that the weather is quite harsh once you get above 10,000 feet. Any solar installations will have to be hardened against high wind and freezing precipitation. There is also the problem of getting the electricity somewhere useful (large population centers). New transmission infrastructure will have to be built on mountainsides. This is not trivial. It will have to be hardened against extreme environmental conditions as well. That being said, I could see this being useful near the Andes in South America and near the Himalayas in India.

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The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor update brings some good news our way. The area in the state of Wisconsin that is categorized as abnormally dry has shrunk from about 48 percent down to 23 percent this week. What helped was three days of rain last week, otherwise there has been hardly any rain this month. This Fall has been one of extremes with dry conditions in early September, then a very wet period during the second half of the month, then another dry period for the first 10 days of October. A tiny bit of good news for Texas as well, their drought conditions improved slightly in the the week. Unfortunately for Texas, they have to worry about La Nina and the winter outlook.

La Nina has influenced the winter forecast thinking at the Climate Prediction Center. Here is their latest outlook for December, January, and Feburary. They expect a Winter of extremes across the nation – just like last Winter with colder than normal conditions in the far northern plains and warmer than normal temps in the southern third to half of the country. They expect the heaviest precipitation to be focused in the Pacific Northwest and northern mountain states as well as in the Ohio Valley. This is very similar to last Winter when there was a strong La Nina in the central Pacific ocean. The La Nina this year is not expected to be as strong so perhaps the weather conditions will not be exactly the same as last winter (they rarely are, no matter if we have El Nino/La Nina or not). Perhaps Texas will not have as bad of a drought as last Winter. We can only hope.

One thing you will notice for Wisconsin is that we are under “equal chances” for precipitation and temperature, which means it is equally likely that we will have below or above normal conditions (temps and precip.). Since the La Nina is weaker (so far) this year, I think the Winter hinges on early snowfall. If we get a big snowfall early (like late November or early December) then I think we will end up with a bit longer and colder Winter overall, like last year. If we don’t have much snowpack early, I predict temps will be above normal. Even though the last three La Nina Winter’s have produce copious cold and snow, there is no guarantee it will happen every time.

CPC November Temp Outlook

If you want to look at all the monthly predictions through next year, go here. The first thing you will notice is that November has a higher chance of being above normal for our area. That would be nice. You will notice something interesting if you click on the DJF outlook (the Dec-Jan-Feb, or “Winter” outlook). The computer models are indicating a much higher chance of colder temps for our area than what the official NOAA forecast referenced above does. The human forecasters at NOAA must have some reasons (I haven’t found a discussion yet) for altering the raw computer output. If you go further into the outlooks, you will notice a higher chance of colder than normal temps lasting until around April 2012.

CPC Dec-Jan-Feb Temp Outlook

Have a good Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, CPC Outlook, Technology, Winter Weather

Solar power advocates like me have been feeling a bit glum lately. The news is not all that great. Europe - where the most solar power has been installed in recent years – is broke. Since the vast majority of the solar installations in Europe were heavily subsidized by governments, it is unlikely that the pace of solar power increases will continue in coming years. Here in the U.S. three different ”leading lights” of the solar industry have recently gone bankrupt (Evergreen, Spectrawatt, and Solyndra). Solyndra even managed to burn up a half billion dollars of tax-payer money in the process and is an evolving political scandal. Even the biggest U.S. manufacturer of solar panels, First Solar, has seen its stock price drop from $175 to $52 a share. The price of oil has come down a little as well in recent weeks, making solar investments look a little less attractive.

In the face of all this solar companies and researchers continue to innovate. Financial turmoil might produce some headwinds right now but the trend toward higher efficiency and cost competitiveness continues. My interest was recently piqued by a company here in the U.S. that is offering to install solar panels on your rooftop for free, plus you only have to pay for the electricity that is generated by the solar panels. If it is cloudy and the solar panels do not generate any electricity then you don’t pay anything. Even more exciting is that you will pay 20 to 30% less than you do from your regular utility company. Sounds like fantasy-land, doesn’t it? What is the catch, you ask? You have to sign a 20 year contract with the company (and the company might go bankrupt). Having to sign a 20 year contract for your electric bill seems like a big commitment, but if you lock in a rate that is currently 20 to 30% below fossil fuel generated electricity, that would still seem to be a pretty good deal. It seems unlikely that the cost of fossil fuel electricity will drop precipitously over the next decade or two. You pay for nothing except for the electricity that is generated from the solar panels. Another catch is that you have to live in Hawaii, New Jersey, or Utah in order to get the solar panels. Hopefully they will expand into other markets (like Wisconsin) before they go bankrupt. I would sign up for the solar panels in a heart beat.

I keep mentioning bankruptcy because I know how much solar panels and installation cost. If the scheme was obviously and significantly profitable, they would be expanding everywhere right now. The market for “free” solar panels is huge. The company with this bold solar plan is Vivint Solar. For this recent expansion they are partnering with US Bank which will “front a $75 million tax equity”. I am not sure what this is, but I venture to guess that they would not be installing free solar panels without some sort of subsidy. The financial question is, who is taking the loss? Is US Bank doing this out of the goodness of their “heart”? Are they going to leverage that $75 million to defray future losses? Do they get money back from the government? If the scheme collapses before becoming profitable, will the company would take back the solar panels? It will be interesting to follow this development. I hope they succeed. I can’t wait to get my hands on some free solar panels.

Have a nice Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy

It is that time of the month for the latest ENSO (El Nino/La Nina) diagnostic discussion. It was released by the Climate Prediction Center yesterday. While El Nino and La Nina do not usually have much of an effect on our Summer-time weather, it is useful to watch how things are changing because these ocean phenomena do affect our cold season weather to a significant degree.

As expected, surface temperatures in the central Pacific remained neutral during the month of June. Curiously, the weather over the central Pacific still “acted” as if La Nina was still occurring (just like this past winter). The weather in the US also continued to “look” like La Nina was still occurring with cooler and wet conditions in the northern mountain states and drought persisting in the deep south, Texas, and New Mexico (see yesterday’s blog entry).

So is La Nina going to return? The experts at the CPC think it might but the “official” forecast is for neutral conditions to persist into the Fall and Winter. A couple of things that hint toward another La Nina (and perhaps another long, snowy, and cold Winter in Northcentral Wisconsin) are the upper ocean heat content and the computer model forecasts. The graph you see with the orange and blue is the heat content of the upper ocean and it became a little warmer than normal a couple months ago. Just last month, it started to decline a little. This could presage another La Nina, but we will have to see a continued trend for a couple of months before this would constitute a clear signal. The computer model average is neutral for the next few months but a few more of the models have started to predict slightly cooler oceans temps than the last couple runs.

I am kind-of hoping that La Nina stays away. Last winter seemed to last a little too long. Other folks who are more than “kind-of” hoping that La Nina stays away are folks down in Texas. Another La Nina ocean pattern could mean the current exceptional drought turns into an all-time record-breaking drought.

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Now a follow up on a side-story to the Japanese earthquake and that is the fact that many countries are now starting to question the use of fission nuclear power for future energy news (most notably – Germany). Germany wants to phase out nuclear power and replace it with “clean” alternatives but it looks more and more like they will have to up their usage of fossil fuels in order to fill the gap left by the retiring of nuclear power plants. Germany’s predicament (trying to be green but finding tough sledding) is typical of such efforts around the world. The basic fact (in energy and life) is that in the present day there is nothing even remotely close to a “free lunch”. Here is a good article about the challenges of implementing various types of green energy solutions. A warning, it is written from a political viewpoint, but it does highlight many challenges we face. Wind power is the “greenest” solution we have so far but it is probably not scalable to the level we would need to remain prosperous. I still have high hopes for solar power. I think solar has a lot of room for improvement.

Some recent news that give hope for a jump in solar power adoption and usage are:

The Dutch are investing millions of dollars in nanotechnology research with hopes of raising the efficiency of solar photovoltaics up to 65%. That seems like an awfully audacious goal, considering that the record efficiency up until this point has been around 42%.

Speaking of records, one was recently broken with a special type of solar cell manufacturing technique. Previous cells of this type had efficiencies of 18%. The new method (that can use the same manufacturing equipment) can produce cells with an efficiency of 19.4%!

In some very initial and theoretical work, researchers at Stanford have developed materials that can better absorb red and near infrared wavelengths of light. Absorbing more wavelengths of light is a sure way to make solar power more efficient and useful.

Have a good weekend! Meteorologist Justin Loew

Posted under Alternative Energy, ENSO Update, Technology

Something very interesting and unusual happened during the month of June. We started out the month with three different days (the 3rd, 7th, and 8th) with record high temps in the 90s. Temps were also in the 80s from the 4th through 6th. You would think that this very warm start to the month would’ve guaranteed that the average temps for the month would end up above normal. This was not the case. Because of a persistent colder trend from the 9th through the 24th which included one day when the high temperature was only 54 (the 10th), the average temps for the month ended up slightly below normal. This makes June of 2011 the 7th month in a row with below normal temperatures. The last month with above normal temps was November of 2010. The reason for the persistent cool weather? I am pinning it on La Nina. During past decades, La Nina has not always meant colder than normal temps for our area, but the last 3 La Nina episodes, since 2006, have been closely linked with colder than normal temps.

Besides three record high temperatures, what other interesting things happened during the month of June? Good question. Temps were up and down quite a bit and precipitation was near normal. Not much severe weather happened. There was some frost in the Northwoods on the morning of the 12th – pretty late even for Northwoods standards. There were no real interesting trends in the numbers – the most common high temperatures were 73 and 79 which we hit 3 different times. The most “popular” low temperature was 59 which was also marked 3 different times. Without further ado, here are the stats for Wausau:

Average High: 75.6  (normal: 76.7)

Average Low: 54.1  (normal: 54.2)

Precipitation: 4.17″  (normal 4.18″)

Highest Temperature: 94 on the 7th

Lowest Temperature: 40 on the 12th

It looks like we are heading into July the same way we began June, with some heat. A HEAT ADVISORY goes into effect for most of the area (except Oneida, Vilas, Forest, and Florence counties) from noon until 9pm today. High temps will reach the mid 90s in many areas and could touch 100 in the south. The record high in Wausau today is 98 and we will be close to breaking it as more sunshine will develop during the afternoon. The heat index will be in the 105 to 110 range for most of the area which can be a bit dangerous. Just be sure to not over-exert yourself in the heat and find some shade or air conditioning to keep cool. After today the weather will still be warm, but it will be less humid and high temps will only reach the 80s. It will be a nice Summer holiday weekend. There is only a slight chance of thunderstorms tonight and a slight chance of storms late Monday. The next significant chance of more widespread rain will be Tuesday of next week.

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Earlier this week and year I have blogged about some of the drawbacks and difficulties of using alternative energy sources. Grain ethanol uses up some of the food supply and has a very poor EROI. Wind turbines have non-trivial environmental effects on the weather and wildlife. Current nuclear fission reactors are not scalable enough to produce a more significant portion of our energy needs.

What about solar power? I am on the solar and electric vehicle bandwagon lately, and while it does hold a lot of promise without as many drawbacks, it is not perfect either. One thing that does not get discussed too often is all of the land that big solar farms take up. This fact was brought to the forefront in my mind once again when I saw these pictures of recently finished solar farms in Europe. Covering many square miles of landscape – even the desert – with solar panels is certainly going to have an impact on the ecology of the area. It will also remove some natural areas from human recreation. The solution? Rooftops. We have already covered an ungodly amount of the planet with buildings. This space if perfectly suited for solar panel deployment. What else about solar power makes it seem not quite so perfect for the future? It costs money to clean the mirrors. Solar panels in the desert gather dust and need to be cleaned to operate efficiently. This cost was not included in past studies of the viability of large solar farms.

While on the subject, here is an article you might enjoy about all of the new start-up alternative energy/tech companies, which ones are doing well, which one’s are not, and the reasons why.

Have a fine Friday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Heat, Monthly Recap

It turns out my fears of frost were a little overblown, at least in Wausau. The official low in Wausau this morning was only 36. Many locations remained in the mid to upper 30s, while a few did record frost. Stevens Point dropped to 30, Wisconsin Dells bottomed out at 31, and Wisconsin Rapids hit 32. The temperature did not drop as far as expected across more of the area because there was a light wind during the night. If the wind had become calm, then we would have been close to record low temperatures.

It turns out I could have planted a few frost-tolerant things in my garden (like broccoli and cabbage) a few days ago, but I remind myself, it is only May 17th. As long as I get my garden in before the end of May, then the growing season is long enough to produce a good crop. Back when I was growing up, a general rule of thumb was to not plant warm weather plants like tomatoes, sweet corn, and peppers until Memorial Day weekend. Nowadays, with a bit warmer climate, and improved forecasting, we can usually plant a few days earlier in May and be reasonably confident that we will not lose plants to frost.

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Turning to a subject that I touch upon quite frequently, there is more good news on the alternative energy front. Despite worries over political and economic instability around the world, technology continues to advance and promise a cleaner greener future. My current front-runner for the most promising alternative energy – solar – made news multiple times since the last update:

• Sometimes improvements come from the most unexpected corners. A research team at MIT has used viruses to help create more efficient dye-sensitized solar cells. The viruses help align carbon nanotubes in the active layer of the solar cells. Using this method they have boosted the efficiency of this type of cell by a third.
• Another group from MIT has created a solar collection material that absorbs energy in the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths while allowing most visible light to pass through. How could this be useful? It could go over a window, thus harvesting energy but not blocking “light” from getting through for natural interior illumination. The only problem with this technology is that it is organic, which typically has a much shorter useful lifespan than inorganic solar cells.
• Another fruitful area of research is using quantum dots to improve solar conversion efficiency. One team of scientists has found that charging the quantum dots during fabrication of solar cells could improve efficiency by 50%. The process is probably a few years away e mass manufacturing.
• Just today a headline proclaimed a new solar device that converts 95% of incoming solar radiation to useful energy. The invention will apparently use nano-antennae to capture many different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. The inventor says mass production is about 5 years away. I am not holding my breath on this one, because 95% conversion might not be theoretically possible given our current understanding of physics. Details in the article were scant, which makes it look more like a fundraising effort than a coming out party for new technology.

Have a fine Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew

Posted under Alternative Energy, Freeze, Technology

Closing up the review of the state of alternative energy in 2011, I will summarize a few of the points and look at some of the positive things going on in the electrification of the economy.

One of the first points I touched on was how grain ethanol does not seem to be a greatoption for the future (but maybe a short term bridge fuel) because the EROI is barely over 1 even in the most ideal production scenarios and it reduces the available grain for feeding people. Biofuel/Biodiesel would be better because it is theoretically carbon neutral, however, it would still result in air pollution because we would still be burning liquid hydrocarbons. I was reminded of this fact today with the release of a new study detailing how mice suffer brain damage when exposed to freeway air (automobile pollution). While this study is not immediately or directly applicable to human health, the detrimental effects of air pollution on human health is well known and it is just another reason to try harder to clean up the air.

On the subject of wind power, the main point is that while it is probably currently the “greenest” form of alternative energy, there will be significant negative side effects if it is scaled up to provide a significant percentage of human energy needs. These include changes to the weather and climate from taking so much energy directly out of the wind to large numbers of deaths of winged animals. There are also the more aesthetic concerns of blighting the natural landscape and noise pollution.

So what is left that couldbe better? Geothermal could certainly continue to perform a niche role. The more domiciles that use geothermal devices for climate control, the less fossil fuel we need to use. Nuclear power probably does not sound all that great right now after the Fukishima (at least) partial meltdown, however, it still has potential and newer designs are more efficient and safe – so I wouldn’t rule it out.

Solar looks fairly promising at the moment. Even though it is currently not as “green” as wind power, there is a lot of room for improvement. Materials science is opening up a lot of new doors and we should continue to see gains in efficiency and cost for some time to come. The gains are coming from many different areas of research. The use of quantum dots to collect solar energy and convert it to electricity could possibly allow for easier production by roll-to-roll processes or even 3D printing.

Some other research that could bear fruit is mimicking photosynthesis. A new artificial “leaf” developed at MIT is 5 times more efficient that the real thing. Such a “leaf” would be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Adding black nanoparticles to the fluid used in solar-thermal energy production boosts the heat generation capacity of such power plants.

Small percentage gains such as these are happening every year in solar power production. In addition, solar voltaic energy production does not need to take up green space. Roof tops already provide plenty of real estate for their adoption. That is why I am a bit more positive on solar than many other alternative energy options.

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For the present weather, keep your eye on the sky on Sunday. The Storm Prediction Center is currently projecting a moderate risk of severe weather in parts of central and southern Wisconsin on Sunday afternoon and evening. A moderate risk means at least a slight chance of tornadoes. If we do get into the the “warm sector” of the storm system on Sunday, tornadoes are definitely a possibility. Tony and I will keep you up to date throughout the weekend on this emerging threat. Check waow.com, the Stormtrak9 facebook page, and the weather blog for updates. Also remember that we are on a few radio stations in central Wisconsin. If there would happen to be widespread severe weather on Sunday we will also be broadcasting on 106.5 WYTE, Big Cheese 107.9, Mix 96.7, and Classic Rock 103.3.

Have a good weekend! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Severe Weather

Once again we seem to be missing the northern lights. Grrr! Did anyone see them earlier this week when we had clear skies? People in northern latitudes have been seeing the lights and one researcher in Alaska was able to take a nice picture. I wonder if the big solar flare that erupted on the far side of the sun a few days ago did eventually send some energy toward the earth, perhaps indirectly by sparking some activity on the near side of the sun. Unfortunately, we will have mainly cloudy skies for the next few nights so it will not be good viewing for northern lights. Lucky for us, the sun is in an active phase right now and it should last into next years. This means there will be more opportunities in the future.

Speaking of solar activity, more and more of the sun’s energy reaching the earth is being turned into electricity, but installing the solar panels is not always as easy as planned. In the U.S. several big solar projects are in operation or planned for the desert southwest. Of all the possible obstacles to setting them up you wouldn’t think that religion would be one of them. Apparently, some Native American groups are looking to block the constructionof solar arrays in the Mojave desert because it will disturb historic religious sites or unknown burial grounds. These same projects also found resistance last year from of all people – environmental groups. Their claim was that large solar “farms” would disturb the natural habitat. To which I thought “duh!” Most of the alternative energy products, from wind turbine, to solar panels, to tidal generators and biofuels, have some drawbacks. What environmentalists should be asking themselves is if it is worth covering a few acres of desert in order to stop using fossil fuels. To most, this would seem like an easy decision, but maybe it is not. We could spend some time searching for the optimal placement of solar panels, but I think we would still end up in the desert. As far as the religious objections go, I can empathize with the Native American groups, but there has to be multiple ways to build a solar farm without disturbing important religious areas/artifacts. And as far as halting construction because there might be someone buried there, nothing in the world would get built if that were the criteria.

Arnold Schwarzenegger would certainly have a hard time achieving the mandate for California to generate 33% of their energy from alternative sources by 2020, if no new solar plants are built. Arnold gave a speech recently where he said advocates must fight and defeat the enemy (fossil fuel industry), otherwise it will be very slow going. I have to disagree with that a bit. Just last week I highlighted here in the blog that U.S carbon emissions have decreased dramatically in the last 3 years - even without a slew of new laws, taxes, regulations, and mandates. People like clean air. People like saving money. As the price of fossil fuels continues to rise, more people will switch over to alternatives by their own free will.

Have a good Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Environment, Space