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Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William Marsh who wrote (33)	4/6/2001 6:34:14 PM
From: Copperfield	Respond to of 16955

It is a bit different from a pilot plant that was built about 15 years ago in Nova Scotia on the Bay of Fundy. nspower.ca At the time there was talk about building a 3000 MW project in Nova Scotia.

To: William Marsh who wrote (33)	4/7/2001 8:24:40 PM
From: IndexTrader	Respond to of 16955

William, Thanks for posting the info about Blue Energy. Their technology looks very promising. Here is an article from their site. I bet we will be hearing a lot more about them. Here an excerpt from the article. "There are huge potential energy sites all along the West Coast, in estuaries and inlets," he says. "California has the potential to produce 20,000 megawatts of tidal power. Washington–let’s say 40,000. You are looking at 100,000 megawatts in British Columbia and 300,000 to 400,000 megawatts in Alaska. Here in the Bay Area, I would start with an examination of aqueducts and levees in the Delta. It’s something that’s doable immediately." Men and women in suits and ties busily exchange business cards and take notes. Burger has a presentation set for 11:00 a.m. the next morning and he’s enthusiastic about the response he has already received. The irony is that while Governor Davis is off in Washington, DC striking a deal, the best solution to California’s long-term energy needs may be on display in this San Francisco hotel ballroom. "There was a gentleman here today by the name of Woodrow Clark, the point man for renewable and sustainable energy for Governor Davis, looking for requests for proposals," says a smiling Burger. "We had a nice chat for half an hour and I have to say he was stunned by what we had to say. He claims to have access to a $76 million budget, and our company will be filing a technical submission in a week to ten days. We have also met some interesting venture capital people here. It’s taken quite some time to evolve, but I think there’s finally a tremendously exciting future for alternative energy." eastbayexpress.com

To: William Marsh who wrote (33)	4/7/2001 8:33:29 PM
From: IndexTrader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16955

William, I came across this today. I am going to look into it some more. The gentleman who invented the integrated circuit, Jack Kilby, had been working on a solar energy system that had great promise. I would love to know if anyone has picked up on his research. Here is the part of the article that discusses it: ******* In the early 1970s Kilby left TI to work as an independent inventor. The holder of some 50 patents, his inventions include an electronic check writer and a paging system with "selectively actuable pocket printers." And while Kilby will always be known for his work on the integrated circuit, a lesser-known project he pursued for about seven years, but was forced to abandon, held similar promise. Kilby developed a solar energy system that used panels of spherical solar cells to obtain hydrogen from hydrogen bromide. The hydrogen was then fed into a fuel cell that produced electricity. The bromine was stored in a tank and later reunited with the hydrogen, so it could be reused. The beauty of the design, says Kilby's friend, Skip Porter, the dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, was that rather than "store the energy in a battery, you stored it back in the chemical bonds between the hydrogen and bromine." In 1983, despite the promise of the design and an investment of more than $25 million by the Department of Energy and millions more by TI, the company decided to stop the project, much to the chagrin of Kilby, who was overseeing a team of two dozen engineers. "He had great faith in the commercial feasibility of that product," says Clough. "He was really upset with TI for pulling the plug on it. But TI was going through tough times." Kilby, ever the stoic, doesn't talk much about the solar cell project, saying only he was "disappointed" that TI halted funding. But Clough says the project would have been "a magnitude development like the integrated circuit. It would have really been a mammoth step forward." Had the work continued, he said, "we wouldn't be having problems like the energy problem in California." zdnet.com