July 18, 2015

BMW Blog: First Hydrogen Station With Two Types of Refuelling Tech Opening in Munich

BMW Blog | July 17th, 2015 | Horatiu Boeriu

It is now possible to drive by fuel cell-powered car all the way from southern Germany to Lake Garda in Italy. The opening of the hydrogen station in Munich’s Detmoldstrasse completes the European HyFIVE project’s South Cluster, which comprises Stuttgart, Munich, Innsbruck and Bolsano. “This new form of mobility, based on hydrogen, offers private and commercial users zero-local-emission long-distance electric mobility with no concessions on comfort, space and refuelling times,” is how Matthias Klietz, head of Research Powertrain at the BMW Group, sums up the advantages of hydrogen.



The TOTAL multi-energy filling station on Detmoldstrasse marks an important milestone. It is the world’s first public filling station where the two pumps dispense hydrogen using two different types of refuelling technology, namely:

Industry-standard 700 bar CGH2 hydrogen storage technology. This refuelling technology for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is already up and running.

Cryo-compressed hydrogen storage technology (CCH2). This technology, developed by the BMW Group, involves storing gaseous hydrogen at low temperature on board the vehicle at a pressure of up to 350 bar. It is currently at the advanced development stage and will only come on stream for general use over the longer time frame. CCH2 tanks offer up to 50% more hydrogen storage capacity than 700 bar tanks and can support a driving range of over 500 kilometres.

snip

...Over the long term, moves are afoot to use power-to-gas electrolysis to store surplus renewable electricity in the form of hydrogen. Production of hydrogen from surplus electricity would offer a realistic long-term prospect of ensuring a cost-efficient supply of green hydrogen for use in fuel cell electric vehicles.

Complete article: http://www.bmwblog.com/2015/07/17/first-hydrogen-station-with-two-types-of-refuelling-technology-opening-in-munich/

Related:

BMW/Toyota vs Tesla: Hydrogen vs Pure EV
BMW Blog | July 7th, 2015 | Nico DeMattia



Ever since the creation of the i Division, BMW has become Tesla’s main competitor. No other company is accelerating its alternative fuel program lately like BMW and Tesla. Until now, that is. Toyota seems to be getting into the mix, and it seems to be siding with BMW. BMW has long been a proponent of plug-in hybrid and hydrogen technology, rather than full on battery-powered EVs.

Tesla, and its eccentric owner, Elon Musk on the other hand have been fighting hard against such vehicles, claiming that pure EV is the only way to go. Well, Toyota seems to agree with BMW’s hydrogen ideas, as it has just developed the Mirai, the world’s longest range zero-emission vehicle, to put its money where its mouth is...
http://www.bmwblog.com/2015/07/07/bmwtoyota-vs-tesla-hydrogen-vs-pure-ev/

Why Elon Musk and John Doerr hate hydrogen more than anything on Earth!
http://www.whengoogleattacks.com/why-elon-musk-and-john-doerr-hate-hydrogen-more-than-anything-on-earth/

July 17, 2015

+1

The US is busy drone bombing suspects at wedding parties, planning the next war with Syria, shoveling $5 Billion Dollars into overthrowing the Ukraine government (hardly anyone even wants an audit for that absurdity...), putting missiles on Russia's border, and trying to convince the rest of the world that Fracking is Good.

How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World
A trove of secret documents details the US government's global push for shale gas
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/hillary-clinton-fracking-shale-state-department-chevron

So the people of the US get what they deserve. A spoiled, ignorant, arrogant, lazy and morally bankrupt bunch of children, gullible to the point of destruction. If it's Bush vs. Clinton in 2016 it's time to give up.

It could have been so much better. Now the next generations will have to fix it- and hopefully they will put the blame where it belongs.

July 16, 2015

Clean energy: Corvallis man hopes to create residential hydrogen production system

July 08, 2015 By Michelle McConnaha

CORVALLIS – The words ‘green energy’ bring to mind solar panels and wind turbines. A local professional engineer is developing and creating access to a new clean way to produce the energy and fuel that we all need – creating a clean-powered future.


Dan Healy, president and founder of Pure Energy, Inc.: “It’s time for us to embrace the new clean way to produce the energy and fuel that we all need,” said Healy.

“The goal is to make a difference by kick-starting the green hydrogen revolution that will allow anyone to produce clean energy and hydrogen fuel at their homes or businesses using nothing but sun, wind and water,” said Healy.

Healy received his bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida in 1990. He worked for Lockheed Space Operations at the Kennedy Space Center on the space shuttle program for nearly three years, then spent over 17 years working in the renewable energy industry in the Bitterroot Valley with three different companies (Sunelco, Oasis Montana, and groSolar - based in Vermont)...snip

...“If you have excess power, instead of just selling it back and lowering your electric bill, you could use that to produce hydrogen which you could store in a tank and it could be used to provide clean, quiet backup power when there is a utility outage – or you can use that to power a fuel cell vehicle, which are becoming more readily available now and next year,” he said. “The main automobile manufacturers are actually producing these vehicles now. They aren’t producing very many, just because there isn’t a big demand for it – like a Catch 22...snip
Complete article: http://ravallirepublic.com/business/local/article_bf9a666e-25c9-11e5-9113-3fecd24dbf2b.html

Dan- meet Mike Strizki, who did this in 2006

Scientific American: Inside the Solar Hydrogen house
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hydrogen-house/

July 14, 2015

Wind power generates 140% of Denmark's electricity demand

Unusually high winds allowed Denmark to meet all of its electricity needs – with plenty to spare for Germany, Norway and Sweden too


Middlegrunden Wind Farm, Copenhagen, Denmark-The large and slow turning turbines of this offshore wind farm take advantage of the moderate yet constant breezes at this location. While the wind is not strong it is very consistent, with the turbines generating substantial power over 97 percent of the time.

The Guardian | Arthur Neslen | Friday 10 July 2015

So much power was produced by Denmark’s windfarms on Thursday that the country was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and export power to Norway, Germany and Sweden.

On an unusually windy day, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines yesterday evening. By 3am on Friday, when electricity demand dropped, that figure had risen to 140%.

Interconnectors allowed 80% of the power surplus to be shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for use later. Sweden took the remaining fifth of excess power.

“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy,” said Oliver Joy, a spokesman for trade body the European Wind Energy Association. “Wind energy and renewables can be a solution to decarbonisation – and also security of supply at times of high demand.”...
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/denmark-wind-windfarm-power-exceed-electricity-demand

Extra wind power? Make free green hydrogen. Heat homes. Fuel cars.

July 10, 2015

Robert Scheer: Foreign Entanglements Derailed the American Experiment

In the eighth installment of an interview series on The Real News Network’s “Reality Asserts Itself,” Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer tells TRNN Senior Editor Paul Jay that over time, American leaders have “lost sight of the essential wisdom of the American experiment,” which was that if you enable prosperity “for your own people, and if it’s good, others will follow it.”

How did the U.S. get into this predicament? “Because of the very thing that George Washington warned about, the impostures of pretended patriotism,” Scheer says. “We get into it because we haven’t avoided foreign entanglements. So we see we get crazed with hysteria—oh, they did that to us. They’re the enemy. They’re going to get us. They’re going to blow us up. They’re going to—you know, irrationality. Nationalism has an irrational side. Warmaking appeals to people. There’s a culture that supports warmaking and stupidity and simplicity.”

The interview is part of a 10-part series conducted after the publication of Scheer’s book, “They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy.” Watch Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven.

A transcript of the discussion provided by The Real News Network appears below.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_robert_scheer_foreign_entanglements_derailed_the_american_20150706

July 9, 2015

Japan is building solar energy plants on abandoned golf courses—and the idea is spreading

a matter of course...

QZ.com | Steve Mollman | July 6, 2015

In Japan, country club memberships famously went for millions of dollars in the late 1980s. Then, too many courses were built in 1990s and 2000s during a real estate boom. Now the nation faces the question of what to do with its abandoned golf courses.

Meanwhile, Japan’s energy strategy in the aftermath of Fukushima calls for roughly doubling the amount of renewable power sources in the country by 2030. It is already building solar power plants that float on water. Perhaps inevitably, then, the nation has turned to building solar plants on old golf courses.


Part of a completed solar project on an old golf course in the Miyazaki prefecture. (Kyocera)

Last week, Kyocera and its partners announced they had started construction on a 23-megawatt solar plant project located on an old golf course in the Kyoto prefecture. Scheduled to go operational in September 2017, it will generate a little over 26,000 megawatt hours per year, or enough electricity to power approximately 8,100 typical local households. The electricity will be sold to a local utility.

In late May, the company announced an even larger project that will begin construction next year in the Kagoshima prefecture on land that had been designated for a golf course more than 30 years ago but subsequently abandoned. The 92-megawatt plant will include more than 340,000 solar modules and is expected to generate nearly 100,000 megawatt hours per year, or enough to power about 30,500 households when it goes operational in 2018...MORE
http://qz.com/445330/japan-is-building-solar-energy-plants-on-abandoned-golf-courses-and-the-idea-is-spreading/

If only there was more open space in the US...

Kyocera: Thinking Energy
(As opposed to Drone Bombs, Ukrainian Intervention, Syria etc...)

July 6, 2015

Nasa satellite images show China's giant solar panel expansion in Gobi Desert

International Business Times | Hannah Osborne | July 2, 2015

Nasa satellite images have shown the huge expansion of China's solar power plant in the Gobi Desert.

The images from Nasa's Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 satellite were taken in 2012 and 2015 – showing how the plant has tripled in size over the past three years.


A Chinese solar power plant in the Gobi desert is shown here in 2012, then in 2015, in images captured by a NASA satellite. Credit:NASA.gov

The Gobi Desert, in north-western Gansu Province is ripe for development of solar energy, with sunlight and land both abundant resources.

Construction began on China's first large-scale solar power station in 2009 and in 2014 it was believed to be producing 5.2 gigawatts of energy. It is thought China's National Energy Administration is aiming to increase the capacity by an additional 0.5 gigawatts by 2015...
Complete article: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-satellite-images-show-chinas-giant-solar-panel-expansion-gobi-desert-1508966

Growth of Solar in the Gobi Desert
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=86060

July 3, 2015

Jessie Jackson does Reddit AMA. Hours later, major subs closed, employee fired

Reddit abruptly fires AMA liason Victoria in the wake of the Jesse Jackson AMA. /r/IAmA mods, left hanging by the admins, have turned the subreddit private.
http://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3bwwb6/reddit_abruptly_fires_ama_liason_victoria_in_the/

Some major closed subs (temporarily)
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/

u/karmanaut explains

Today, we learned that Victoria was unexpectedly let go from her position with Reddt. We all had the rug ripped out from under us and feel betrayed.

Before doing that, the admins really should have at least talked to us (and all the other subs that host AMAs, like /r/Books, /r/Science, /r/Music, etc.) (Edit: not to suggest that we expect to know about Reddit's inner workings. Just that there should have been a transition in place or something worked out to ensure that Victoria's duties would be adequately handled, which they are not) We had a number of AMAs scheduled for today that Victoria was supposed to help with, and they are all left absolutely high and dry (hence taking IAMA private to figure out the situation) She was still willing to help them today (before the sub was shut down, of course) even without being paid or required to do so. Just a sign of how much she is committed to what she does.

The admins didn't realize how much we rely on Victoria. Part of it is proof, of course: we know it's legitimate when she's sitting right there next to the person and can make them provide proof. We've had situations where agents or others have tried to do an AMA as their client, and Victoria shut that shit down immediately. We can't do that anymore...snip
https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_has_riama_been_set_to_private/csq204d

The #1 story on the front page (at time of posting)
75% of reddit going dark means this is probably my best chance of ever getting to the frontpage
https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/3bymfo/75_of_reddit_going_dark_means_this_is_probably_my/

"Chairman Pao" speaks: http://www.reddit.com/user/ekjp

July 2, 2015

German Wind-to-Hydrogen Plant Takes Car-Fuel Battle to Tesla

Alex Webb | Bloomberg Business | July 2 2015

After decades of research, Linde AG says the elements needed to make hydrogen-fuelled cars a viable challenger to Tesla Inc’s battery-driven vehicles are finally falling into place.


A Linde AG truck carrying hydrogen fuel, and a Daimler AG Mercedes-Benz fuel-cell vehicle stand at a fuel station in Berlin. Source: Linde AG via Bloomberg

The world’s largest industrial gas supplier will today open a plant that uses wind power to convert water into the gas. That completes the circle for an almost carbon-free fuel -- from the extraction of the gas to refueling facilities and the vehicles themselves -- and also boosts hydrogen’s green credentials, according to Munich-based Linde.

The research plant on the banks of the River Rhine, dubbed Energiepark Mainz and developed with Siemens AG, adds to two other significant fuel cell developments this year. Toyota Motor Corp., the car industry’s biggest manufacturer, is starting production of its hydrogen-fuelled car, the Mirai, and a group including Linde, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Daimler AG starts the roll-out of a standardized network of hydrogen-friendly refueling stations across Germany...SNIP

...Linde says Energiepark Mainz could help put an end to the criticism that hydrogen fuel cells are only marginally more environmentally friendly than traditional combustion vehicles, and allow the gas to be extracted anywhere there’s wind and water. BMW AG is also starting tests of a vehicle powered by hydrogen this month...snip
Comlete article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-02/german-wind-to-hydrogen-plant-takes-car-fueling-battle-to-tesla

A Hydrogen fueling station can be installed in 48 hours anywhere there is water and electricity

Wasserstoff מימן ?????ό?? hidrógeno водород hidrojen idrogeno hydrogène väte

July 2, 2015

KCCO

Your Courage
Your Cheerfulness
Your Resolution

WILL BRING US VICTORY

Until then, it's Rollerball

In the film, the world of 2018 (referred to in the tagline as "the not too distant future&quot is a global corporate state... corporations controlling access to all transport, luxury, housing, communication, and food on a global basis...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film)