In relation to Christian’s note on banks looking for higher payback on their loans to account for the present value of money, here is a novel idea from Ireland.
Monthly Archive for October, 2007
The weibull distribution is commonly used to approximate wind speed frequency distribution. Here is a good site explaining how to calculate the mean, mode and median for a Weibull distribution.
http://www.weibull.com/AccelTestWeb/weibull_distribution.htm
A few of us were fortunate enough to join John at the Lincoln after class tonight for a few drinks. The talk got around to how the notion of Sustainability seems to oppose with the overwhelming economic paradigm of Growth.
This reminded me of something I had read recently that seemed to tie in with what we were discussing. Its a transcript of a lecture by Dr Albert Bartlett who is professor of Physics at the University of Colorado in the USA. His lecture concerns energy consumption and resource depletion and how it all ties together with the growth of human civilization. Despite its length (~10,000 words) most people find it enlightening, engaging and easy to absorb. Dr Bartlett has a light touch and his lecture is peppered with interesting anecdotes and a wry sense of humour.
-Christian
For those people that would rather watch or listen to the lecture it is available here:
Sorry, could have interpreted it wrong, but still I guess, logging at the current rate would be detrimental to all the efforts to counterbalance that….would be interesting to know what you guys think about it….
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/gunns-tasmania-agree-on-logging/2007/10/19/1192301045759.html
The German PV industry is booming, employing over 54,000 people and it is largely based on Australian technology developed at UNSW. Once again it seems like a case of missed opportunity for the renewables industry in Australia.
A recent report from CSIRO encourages farmers to look to renewables and carbon offsetting as a source of future income:
Riches in energy harvesting, farmers told - National - theage.com.au
An article in the Age describing research by our own John Andrews into Solar Ponds and their application for desalination and salt production.
A heads up for anyone thinking of heading in to Uni in the next few days. Apparently the asbestos dust is circulating in building 11 which is on Latrobe Street so hopefully will not affect us too much.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22574041-661,00.html
Trying to get back on topic here is an interesting Website about Energy Storage Systems. It covers Dams, Compressed Air and Thermal Underground storage as well as capacitors, fuel cells and a few others.
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~matti/ise2grp/energystorage_report/storage.html
This latest report by MMA explores the significance of early action towards a greener electricity regime inorder to avoid drastic economic impact in the near future. The Emissions trading scheme for Australian economy is scheduled to be put in place in the next 4 - 5 year period. The carbon price is alleged to be set low in the intial stages to prevent an economic imbalance. After the intial stages the carbon price is to be increased. In the current scenario, the logical response would be to invest in strategies that offer solution rather than strategies that offer mitigation.
With 65% of its energy already coming from renewables, New Zealand is in a much better starting position than Australia. That said they are now planning an agressive strategy to cut their dependance on fossil fuels even more.
Biofuels push to make more Kiwis fly - World - theage.com.au
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