Energy on demand for Africa

I was writing earlier about the damage done by the hurricane Maria to Puerto Rico.
Another natural disaster hit Africa. Cyclone Idai flooded huge areas in Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Thousands of injured, exhausted, traumatized people need shelter, food and medical attention.

Even with the aid available, one thing which is and will be holding any efforts for a long time is lack of infrastructure. Roads, bridges, power lines, pump stations are destroyed.

Danger of epidemic diseases is practically inevitable. Delivering food and medical supplies is possible almost exclusively by helicopter.

Field hospitals need power and hot water. Portable diesel generators are noisy, dirty but most importantly require constant re-supply of fuel. With roads destroyed this is a huge challenge, delay often cost lives.

What if there was a portable source of energy which would not require constant re-supply of fuel? There is no doubt that would be a huge relief. Shelters could get heating (or cooling when needed),  hospitals would get hot water, equipment get power. There is such source of energy - Autonomous Mobile Energy Station (AMES - watch video), developed by Ascent Systems Technologies.

AMES is a complete solution for uninterrupted clean energy on demand, combining advantages of the state of the art solar technology, smart energy storage and energy booster. The system configuration is optimized for providing thermal and electrical energy in real conditions. Adaptive control with real-time inputs from built-in sensors uses machine learning algorithm for the most efficient performance in a specific environment with a particular energy demand. The module fits into a small shipping container, can be delivered to any geographical location in the world, rapidly deployed and operate in a totally autonomous mode without requiring any fuel supply or connection to the power grid! Multiple modules can be combined into an array for increased capacity. Modules deployed in different geographical locations are connected via intelligent network for remote environment parameters and system performance monitoring. AMES is an ideal solution for remote areas, seasonal or temporary camps, military and disaster relief operations and for many regions in developing countries.
If interested, send inquiries to ascent at ascentsystems.ca

Energy Mini-Video Series

Today I am launching a series of mini video-lectures about energy - the role it plays in our life, the challenges we face accessing it, and about technologies which are going to change the way we generate, deliver and use energy.
This is the first - introductory - installment of the series. Enjoy!

Also available on YouTube: Energy - Introduction

The Small and the Many

The title for this post was borrowed from the article in one of the recent issues of The Economist.  The timing of the article about satellites was fitting in few days before the anniversary of the first satellite, Sputnik, on October 4. But the concept discussed in it is also relevant to a number of other areas including energy and energy policies.
The concept is using a large number of small satellites instead of one or few large ones. The reasons for doing it this way are many. The article gives an example of two companies, both in business of making satellites, both not too surprisingly located in California. One called Space Systems Loral (SSL) from Palo Alto, currently owned by MacDonald Dettwiller (MDA), a Canadian aerospace company, is a veteran of the industry. It manufactures communication satellites intended to transmit radio and television signals over the high-altitude orbit. The first satellites (and most scientific spacecraft still, such as Hubble telescope or Juno interplanetary probe) were one of a kind, large and expensive. The SSL designed 1300 series platform based on modular architecture. Each satellite uses the same structure: a cylinder 1.2 meters across enclosed in a square box.

The more more the satellite has to do, the taller the box it is built on, the longer its solar PV panels and the larger and more complex the array of antennae and reflectors through which it sends data to its earthbound clients. Few days ago SSL has delivered one of the biggest, Sky Muster II, designed to provide broadband communications to remote areas of Australia. It stands nine meters tall, with a complex array of reflectors attached to it. Despite the modular design, intended to bring the cost down, these satellites are very expensive. The smallest of them may sell for $100 million, while the biggest can approach half a billion. Add on another $100M for the launch, and the satellite may not start showing a profit for a decade.
There is another consideration. The industry which is supposed to be innovative, must be very risk-averse. Because of the need for a long lifetime in a hostile environment and already a high sticker price, a new advanced technology will not be flown.
      
The example of a totally different company and a different approach is Planet Labs from San Francisco. While the SSL's clean room for the satellite assembly could be compared in size with a cathedral, the Planet's assembly is of the size of Starbucks. The satellites it manufactures are 30-cm long and weigh about 5 kg. Their design is based on the so called "1U" standard. Making one of them utilizing many of the smartphone components takes about a week. "This is the new face of space: small objects, large numbers".
What makes this approach extremely attractive is several reasons. One is pretty obvious - cost. Small satellites are much-much cheaper than the large ones (an additional advantage, they do not require a dedicated launcher but are flown - often in batches - as a secondary payload utilizing the room left after a primary payload). Second, as noted above it does not take much time to make them which is a very important consideration in a highly competitive market. Now, because of the large number of the satellites, they are not indispensable - the reliability of the service they provide does not depend on any one of them. Related to that, because of the short time, low cost and relatively high frequency of the launches, the company can afford consistent improvement of their products!

Let's look at another area, energy generation and transmission. Be it electricity used for lighting and numerous other needs, or some fuel such as natural gas, delivered to homes and businesses for heating, energy structure is based on large facilities such as power plants, oil refineries etc. These facilities are expensive, take long time to build and often have a large environmental impact - such as area flooded by the hydro power plants. They are also vulnerable to all sorts of risks - from technical glitches to natural disasters and targeted attacks (more often recently, cyber-attacks which are easier to perform than physical attacks). The examples of such events are well known, from Chernobyl to Fukushima, and from BP oil spill in Mexico Gulf to disruption in Ukrainian energy network. These risks may lead not only to significant costs to restore the operation of the large facility but typically affect a large number of end-users. Also, because energy has to be delivered from generation facility to end-users, additional expenses, more environmental impact and more risks are involved. Large number of users can cut off the energy by a disruption in transmission lines or pipelines.         
        
By analogy, an alternative "the small and the many" approach can be successfully applied to the energy infrastructure. Instead of large centralized power plants, small-scale integrated on-site energy generation offers numerous advantages. Yes, I am talking of course about solar and other clean energy technologies. Firstly, energy conservation/efficiency measures should be implemented. Then solar thermal or geoexchange system can provide entire heating, cooling and hot water needs. Then the remaining electrical load for lighting, electronic equipment etc. can be addressed by a small solar photo-voltaic array and/or small wind turbine (where appropriate) with an on-site energy storage.    
Such a system would be much cheaper (per installation), quicker to implement, less expensive to maintain and repair, plus have smaller to none environmental impact comparing to large centralized energy generation. This would also eliminate the need for expensive and unreliable means of energy transmission. Such distributed energy generation will be much more reliable as a whole because the problem in one location will not affect anyone else. Every system can be attended and serviced and even its generation optimized on an individual basis. Finally, every subsequent deployment can be improved based on the performance monitoring of the previous installations and due to the constant technology evolution. 

So, should we continue building gigantic power plants, refineries and pipelines or move to an agile and intelligent distributed energy network? The choice is ours.
 

    

Transportable Solar Power Station

Sorry for not appearing online more often. I keep reminding myself of the need to write about the new connecting technologies. This time I can't ignore it.

 Transportable clean energy plant is the bridge between the current centralized grid - someone called it "the biggest machine ever built by humankind" - to a decentralized distributed efficient energy generation. More often than anything else the subject is electrical power.

However, where thermal energy is needed - from heating to cooling and hot water for domestic or commercial needs - it can be produced much more efficiently bypassing the conversion to and from electricity. Modern solar thermal systems combined with state-of the art thermal storage and/or auxiliary source (small heat pump or other) cam provide 4-5 times more thermal energy than PV -based system of the similar size could. Connecting them in the Integrated Energy Module would result in the best of both worlds and could be made in a size of a small trailer.    

AST and UBC enter into a Collaborative Research Agreement

Ascent Systems Technologies (AST) and University of British Columbia (UBC) entered into a 4-year Collaborative Research & Development (CRD) Agreement to develop Integrated Thermal Hydronic System (ITHS) with Adaptive Control. The project is funded in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.

Despite significant advances in efficiency of solar technologies in the past years however, all of them suffer from the same disadvantage - sun energy is only available during the day and is also affected by weather conditions. A system consisting of a solar thermal collector (STC) as an energy generator, thermal energy storage unit, and an air-to-water heat pump as a thermal energy booster, can overcome this disadvantage. Optimally configured and combined with adaptive control it constitutes a core of the Integrated Thermal Hydronic System (ITHS). Generally, ITHS is only one of the "incarnations" of the integrated Onsite Energy Generation (OEG) system. Others can include PV+Battery+Fuel cell generator for instance, as well as combined or hybrid systems.

In developing control for integrated onsite energy generation, AST uses iterative methods and adaptive control algorithm with real-time feedback loop drawn from the space guidance & navigation which have not been applied to renewable energy systems yet. Resulting optimal control produces precise response to both the external environment and the energy demand. The learning algorithm utilizes predictive capability. These all will result in significantly smaller and more compact physical implementation of the system which also means it would require less materials and labor to produce but also will open up a much wider range of applications that could not have been possible otherwise. Those can range from providing sustainable energy for remote Northern communities and First Nations to temporary or seasonal operations such as exploration camps, and rapid deployment applications such as military or disaster relief operations. 

Tesla Powerwall a Breakthrough?

In a Steve Jobs style presentation Elon Musk announced a "revolution" in energy storage - Tesla's Powerwall.

There is no question about the need of efficient, affordable and reliable batteries. Is his Powerwall a breakthrough? I don't know, time will tell. At least it is a push.

The following is an extract from Bloomberg:

The new Tesla Powerwall home batteries come in two sizes - 7 and 10 kWh - but the differences extend beyond capacity to the chemistry of the batteries. The 7kWh version is made for daily use, while its larger counterpart is only intended to be used as occasional backup when the electricity goes out. The bigger Tesla battery isn't designed to go through more than about 50 charging cycles a year...

Here’s where things get interesting. SolarCity, with Musk as its chairman, has decided not to install the 7kWh Powerwall that’s optimized for daily use. Bass said that battery "doesn't really make financial sense"...

But if its sole purpose is to provide backup power to a home, the juice it offers is but a sip. The model puts out just 2 kilowatts of continuous power, which could be pretty much maxed out by a single vacuum cleaner, hair drier, microwave oven or a clothes iron. The battery isn’t powerful enough to operate a pair of space heaters; an entire home facing a winter power outage would need much more.. 

But I would also be interested to know what kind of battery it is: lithium-ion or some other, Musk didn't mention it in his presentation. What is weight, and what are the dimensions? Do they require rare elements and their manufacturing is highly energy consuming as most of them? If yes, then their environmental benefits might be questionable. 

The part about the day-night gap between demand and supply of solar energy is very similar to what I discuss in my presentations. Ascent Systems Technologies addresses it differently however. It uses vacuum tube solar thermal collectors which are more efficient then even the best PV modules, a thermal storage as a battery, and an air-to-water heat pump as a booster. The resulting integrated system is much more cost-effective comparing to a PV-battery system.
 

Ukraine's Best Defense

Ukraine's economy as the rest of Europe's is heavily relies on the natural gas supplied from Russia. In addition to that Ukraine is also dependent on the Donbass coal mines. But it doesn't have to be. Ukraine has the higher solar irradiation potential than Germany - the country with the highest density of the solar generated power in the world.

Ukraine could have much bigger energy potential with solar and other alternative technologies properly configured and installed. They could have completely replace the need for natural gas and coal in the country. 

The best defense for Ukraine and the best "weapons" to be sent there would be renewable technology - to make it energy independent of fossil fuels and of Russia's economic pressure. Same is true for the rest of Europe.

#giveukrainepower

Wake up Canada - part 2

Ban Ki-moon, in an exclusive interview with CBC News, says Canada needs to stop stalling on setting climate change goals, and instead become "ambitious and visionary."
The UN Secretary General, while acknowledging the Stephen Harper government pledged $300 million dollars to the UN's Green Climate Fund that helps developing countries fight climate change, said there's more to be done by Canada at home.

• Canada's climate inaction leaves it 'increasingly isolated' ahead of COP 20

"It's only natural that Canada as one of the G7 countries should take a leadership role," he said in an interview with CBC News chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge on The National.
Part of that change would involve moving away from a reliance on fossil fuels.
"There are ways to make a transformative change from a fossil fuel-based economy to a climate-resilient economy by investing wisely in renewable energy choices," he said.
According to the recent 2014 Climate Change Performance Index, a report from European groups Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch, only Australia rivals Canada in terms of its poor climate change record, among 34 countries analyzed.
Ban said there's additional pressure for Canada to act in the wake of the recent deal between the U.S. and China to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

UN Climate Change Conference talks are ongoing in Lima.

QUEST 2014

Back from Vancouver where attended QUEST 2014 Conference and Trade Show. I will share more when process all the information which was a lot. Here are some of the impressions from the conference.  

Wake up call for Canada

Dear Gerald,

I read with interest your article in the SPIN. May I offer my two cents of opinion on the subject?   

First I must admit I agree with many points you made. For example, there is no need in 21st century to fly over the world to demonstrate support for climate change action. I totally agree that televised video-conference would be not only more efficient but also more effective. A great example of this approach I witnessed at the Green Buildings Council Conference in Vancouver last year where Cisco technology (which was one of the sponsors of the Conference) allowed to connect live audiences from Portland Oregon, Germany (forgot the city) and Shanghai China with Vancouver over the gigantic wall screens. 
  

I would leave the discussion of the level of urgency on the climate change aside for time being – but I hope we agree that both so called “green” side and its opponents (should we call it “black” for oil?) have their agenda and political lobbies. Either side is supported and promoted by various sectors of industry and because of that they have more in common than different. They all want to build mega-gigantic projects – economy of scale of course – be it a wind farm, a solar power plant the kind you mention in your article, a hydroelectric dam nuclear power plant or any other. 
   

Any technology has its hurdles. And any large-scale projects create large-scale problems. Wind turbines kill birds and bats (by the way, encasing them in the “housing” will significantly reduce turbine's efficiency so this is not a good option). Solar plants expropriate large areas of land and contribute to the grid instability. Hydro dams flood huge areas and disturb regional ecosystems (Site C comes to mind). Fukushima disaster reminded again of potential dangers of nuclear meltdown. 
   

But keep being reliant on fossil fuels – be it oil or natural gas - is not an alternative. “Business as usual” is an equivalent of stagnation at best, and in a world moving forward with a fast pace it is a guarantee to be left behind. The statement that fossil fuels are “wonderfully efficient, abundant throughout the world’s crust and will not go away” is extremely misleading. If a definition of efficiency is simply "being cheap” in a short run, then I want to know a long-term cost. "Abundance" is a very relative notion. Distribution of fossil fuels around the planet is very uneven – this is why some parts of it have to bring them from the other side of the globe spending lots of the same fossil fuel on the way. “Will not go away” doesn’t even fit common sense. All natural resources are finite, and in the case of fossil fuels the rate of their extraction exceeds the rate of their natural generation by thousands times - this is the fact which will not go away. Don’t forget oil is used not only for fuel – all plastics, paints, a lot of cosmetics and number of other products are derived from oil. While we may change our estimates of when the so called “oil peak” occurs, new methods of the natural resources extraction can only accelerate the rate of their depletion. They are also becoming more costly, which eats into the so called “efficiency” of fossil fuels. Alternative technologies, particularly solar PV and solar thermal, at the same time are becoming less expensive and more efficient in terms of their performance. 
  

Cost of one alternative versus another deserves more discussion. Even if one would wave away an indirect cost of a long-term consequences of a greenhouse effect and global warming - which although would be not wise but it is in the human nature to think what would happen later - he or she can hardly do the same about the health affecting air, ground and water pollution. And what about after-cost of unavoidable equipment failures and human errors? Shall we recount events like oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, derailment in Lac-Megantic, an explosion at pump station in Saskatchewan and barely avoided another disaster with the Russian cargo ship which lost power near the British Columbia coast? 

Risking of falling victim of the overused (and may be over-politicized) term “sustainability” I need to say few words about it. Any system – technical, economical, biological or social – consists of a number of components. In very general terms, sustainability is a system’s ability to remain in balance over extended period of time without need for external resources or energy. In other word’s it is a measure of a system’s stability. It is a lesson of generations of engineers that the more complex system is – i.e. consisting of a larger number of components – the less stable it is.

One of the most familiar and relevant examples of a complex system is a power grid, consisting of a large number of energy producers (typically power plants), even a bigger number of all sorts and sizes energy consumers (from residential homes to institutions and industry) and an extremely tight and interconnected energy transmission and distribution network including under and above ground power lines, substations and many other. In a centralized grid all components are highly inter-dependent, which on numerous occasions was demonstrated by big blackouts, recently in Calgary. Residents of Sun Peaks are very well familiar with the consequences of a drunk driver hitting a power pole. Several hours in darkness, and often in cold during the winter is not fun to say the least!

Take another example, from a subject which became touchy recently – distribution of oil and natural gas over pipelines. Complex, expensive, subject of environmental concerns and political disagreements, their short-term benefits are unstable. As with any resources, demand for Canadian oil is highly dependent on an unpredictable international business and political environment. Pipeline like the Northern Gateway is an easy target for terrorists’ attacks and political manipulation. Take example of Russia using its natural gas supply as a tool for political pressure on Ukraine and not too subtly - on Western Europe. Bet on China is a very risky gamble. For one, Russia will easily and happily overflow it with much cheaper oil and gas than Canada can ever afford to offer. US is already resisting Canadian oil – not only they have enough of its own but they are steadily moving away from oil dependency. 
     

I hear you asking - what is the alternative? Glad to oblige. I am not a supporter of government mandated or subsidized technologies, but I strongly think we need a long-term sustainable national energy strategy based on the System Approach and Real Options methodology.

Decentralized energy system should be very seriously considered. Continuous progress in solar, particularly solar thermal technologies in combination with air and ground source active heat exchange, as well as in in energy storage technologies including fuel cells and phase-change thermal accumulators, makes a self-sufficient house or a building a real possibility. We are talking about more than “net-zero” building where more energy produced than consumed at some periods of time but it needs to draw energy from the grid at other times averaging to about zero over the year. We are talking about a building as a self-sufficient system. Passive design, energy conservation measures and new highly thermoresistant materials in combination with ultra-efficient lights, appliances and electronic equipment significantly lower energy demand. Equipped with on-site renewable energy generation, heat recovery, water recycling. No more blackouts or freezing while waiting for a power to be restored. Individual houses are connected in an “intelligent network”. A further evolution of a “smart grid”, it is a sort of an “energy cloud” in which all nodes are independent from each other but can combine the power when needed.  
     

The projects like Northern Gateway and alike take an enormous amount of financial and intellectual resources which could not be used elsewhere. The more we invested in these the more difficult it will be to change the course later. It is more than likely that much higher return on investment in 30 to 50 years of projected lifetime would be achieved if invested in the research of new technologies. This would have more than economical and environmental benefits but also decide on which way Canada would be moving in the future – slide to a backward resource dependent state or move toward the advanced technological society. And if the government still wants to build something large across the country I have a proposal - high-speed train connecting Canadian West and East Coast. It works for Japan, Taiwan and Korea - why it shouldn't in Canada? 
  

Calgary - Lessons To Learn

In one of the previous posts I made a point which I have been trying to emphasize for quite some time already. We do not need gigantic power grids with all their complexity and stability problems. Another confirmation of it was the latest incident in Calgary where underground fire left thousands of people struggling without a power for several days, disrupting traffic and businesses and will be certainly costing many millions for the city.

What if each building had its own power generated in sufficient volume on-site? This would give each individual unit (building, facility, business operation etc.) an independence from the grid preventing such blackout incidents. It would also remove a problem of power fluctuations in the grid which is a subject of such a many problems. There is technology which makes it possible today. Note that examples of the so-called "net-zero" or even "net-positive" buildings although a move in the right direction are not totally autonomous self-sufficient systems. They are still dependent on the grid in that they draw from it when there is not enough energy produced on-site to satisfy the building's demand, while sending energy to the grid when they have excess of it (e.g. solar PV in the middle of the day during summer).

Fully autonomous building would not depend on the grid at any time! It however does not have to be completely "off-grid". On the contrary, all independent on-site generation systems should be connected in the "intelligent network" which would utilize its resources most efficiently, while never leaving any of the nodes starving without energy. Intelligent energy network built on the Systems Architecture principles of modularity, re-usability and scalability, is actually much more than what is usually known as a "smart grid" although it can certainly be considered its evolution.   

Connecting Technologies - Conecting the World, part 2

Technology has certainly advanced dramatically in any areas since 90-s but not that much in the area of offshore wireless communication which I was talked about tn the post about Techwest Startrack system.

Imagine you are on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles from land, and want to make a phone call or access the Internet. Did you ever wonder how your wireless device works when there are no cell towers or traditional infrastructure available like at home?  And more importantly why it does not work better, faster or cheaper for voice and data applications?

The ability to communicate while at sea is incredibly complex and has only been possible and reliable within the past ten years. Unfortunately, the connectivity comes at a steep price because of the high investment required by the cruise lines and satellite carriers who must price access by the amount of bandwidth that is used. It turns out that this is a highly inefficient and costly method to allow passengers and crew to communicate, and the formula is about to change.
While the state-of-the-art has dramatically improved there are still many technical obstacles to achieving the same level of interconnectivity that we experience on land through wired or wireless networks. Cruise ships are seeing dramatic increases in traveler demand for communications services caused by the use of smartphones, laptops and tablets as part of their vacation experience. The bottom line for the consumer is that current cruise communications networks aren’t designed to meet these voracious demands for mobile connectivity.
Consider the following statistics from MTN Communications, one of the biggest sellers of telecom equipment to the cruise ship industry:

• Internet Logins – In the past five years, Internet logins on the MTN network almost doubled from approximately 15 million to 27 million per year;
• Voice Usage – Based on revenue data over the past five years, voice usage increased approximately 50 percent;
• VSAT Bandwidth – In the past five years, bandwidth demand among MTN VSAT (high-speed) customers increased six-fold from 75 Mbps to 475 Mbps per year

Limited bandwidth is still the main reason network speeds, quality of service and data rates are better on land than at sea, coupled with the failure to integrate other technologies that could optimize the transport of large amounts of data by using different networks.
Virtually all of the fleet has WiFi throughout their ships but it is painfully slow at times which is due to the number of users and available bandwidth. There are also severe limitations on the types of files that can be accessed in order to protect the network and compensate for the bandwidth limitations. Internet access costs between $.25 and $.75 per minute, depending on the selected plan.
Cellular voice and data is available on all ships but is very costly, up to about five dollars a minute through your local carrier, or up to ten dollars a minute if you use Intelsat satellite links through the ship’s voice network. Data connections through cellular can also be very pricy unless you have a data plan. Verizon is the only American carrier that offers a good deal for their customers that use tablets or smartphones on ships. They have a monthly cost of $25 for each 100 Mbytes.
While AT&T has a similar plan it doesn’t allow for data access at sea, which means you can pay around $20 per megabyte. That translates to a high cost for using email and sending pictures, to say nothing of downloading documents. If you try to save money by using a VoIP service such as Skype to make and receive calls you will have limited success because of the latency issues with voice transmission through a satellite, whether you establish a WiFi or cellular connection.

Every cruise ship has one or more satellite dishes and complex antenna arrays to provide the primary communications link to other ships and land for passengers and crew. MTN is the primary provider of such facilities for almost thirty years.

When you are on a ship, all telephone, data, and video traffic is carried through a complement of large satellite dishes found on the top deck.
One global company based in Florida, MTN has for the past thirty years pioneered and developed satellite-based services for virtually all of the cruise ships and cargo carriers in the world. The Maritime Telecommunications Network began offering services when the Intelsat  constellation was launched in 1965. The introduction of these orbiting repeaters changed the way the world communicated and four years later we watched the result during the first lunar landing that was relayed through Intelsat.
There is no simple technical solution to improve the passenger experience in connecting with the outside world while at sea. Provisioning more bandwidth from the satellites is not the answer without also considering land-based services and on-ship clouds for caching of data. As reported by the Wireless Broadband Alliance, smartphone sales have overtaken PC sales in 2012 and in the future will dwarf the amount of data used by laptops. This is also true for ship passengers and has caused the industry to respond.
Consumer demand, economics, and technological advancements have driven MTN to launch its next-generation platform to serve the cruise ship industry. It is called NEXUS, and it will ultimately change the way we communicate to fellow passengers and to the rest of the world.
One deficiency in the way communications facilities are presently configured is the lack of interoperability between onboard WiFi systems and those on shore when the ship docks. That means that cruise lines cannot take advantage of the newest technology to handoff high-volume traffic and to cache large files. To solve this problem MTN is building a seamless network to tie onboard and on-shore systems together as part of a larger plan to enhance connectivity, regardless of where the passengers wishes to talk, text, or transfer data.
MTN has invested in the design and launch of special-purpose satellite payloads that will ride on the next generation Intelsat EPIC platform  which will offer at-sea communications experience which is presently impossible to achieve.
There are three essential components to NEXUS: network, applications, and storage. In simplified terms the system will be a hybrid network of satellite and terrestrial facilities tied to a ship cloud to transfer very large amounts of data and store it onboard. Client applications, Internet café, cellular Mobile at Sea, TV, social media and other applications will all be merged and seamless for passengers.
This is accomplished by sophisticated control and manipulation of satellite spot-beams, on-the-fly bandwidth allocation from the satellites, and data compression. A large part of the equation is WiFi for data transport which is why MTN is building an infrastructure to tie WiFi on land to ships when they are within a few miles from shore. This will allow them to optimize expensive bandwidth from Intelsat to route all other traffic to land-based systems.
If you have wondered why connections are so slow it is because presently there are only a few megabytes of bandwidth that must be shared among all passengers and facilities on any ship. In the future it will not be megabytes but terabytes that will be available.
The next generation system will also offer a unique application called Connect at Sea. This will fill a needed gap in ship-to-shore communications and also provide for friends and family to be able to communicate onboard without high cost by giving direct dial capability between smartphones. Connect at Sea will eliminate this problem and allow voice, text, and messaging between smartphones, just like Skype and other applications can accomplish on land. This is a WiFi-based service that can be used onboard, in port, or anywhere there is a suitable WiFi connection. It will go a long way to reduce the high cost of communications for passengers on a global basis.
In the near future whether you are in the middle of the ocean or docked at a foreign port, your personal communications device (whether smartphone, Blackberry, laptop or tablet) will provide equivalent communications that we have all come to expect at home. It will all be possible because of sophisticated networks, powerful computing, low cost bandwidth terrestrial integration, and seamless switching. No more $5.00/minute phone calls and no delays in transmitting or receiving emails or access to websites.
A short half-century ago when the first Sputnik satellite was launched by the Soviet Union it is fair to say that nobody could have foreseen the results today. Today, we expect and demand such services whether we are on a mountain top or in the middle of an ocean.


From Forbes.

Is 3D-printing a Disruptive Innovation, part 2

Connecting Technologies in action: 3d Printing and Renewable energy - a crowd-sourced project AirEnergy3D

... to a 3d printed jet engine (well, turbine blades for now)

Bullitt Centre - Connecting technologies and 90 percent rule

 
Another example of connecting technologies - Bullitt Centre in Seattle - has been called the world’s greenest office building.

The 52,000-square-foot building outfitted with cutting-edge environmental technologies, such as insulation and energy-saving heating and cooling systems, aims at meeting the rigorous standards of the Living Building Challenge. It is supposed to be completely powered by the 575 photovoltaic solar panels on the over sized roof. Completed in 2013 (a year behind the schedule), the US$18.5 million, 6-storey building, designed by Miller Hull Partnerships, is built to be “zero-energy”.

To make enough room for 14,000 square feet array of solar panels the roof had to be made projected as much as 20 feet beyond the building's perimeter. According to the designers, the solar array delivers 242 kilowatts of power in total. In the summer, it will produce more electricity than it uses, and in the winter it will produce less. The surplus power will be sold into the Seattle electric grid. The building then draws electricity from the grid in the winter months when production is low. To achieve its “net zero energy” goal, the summer production surplus must meet or exceed the winter production deficit. While strictly speaking it is not a 100% efficiency, this is a way around the 90 percent barrier.

Connecting Technologies case

Connecting different technologies can create a new synergetic quality.  

One notable example from the area which is familiar to me. The advent of aviation began with the first brave attempts of winged flight.

But only the connecting these flying machines with a propeller attached to a piston engine and finding a way to control it made it possible its evolution to the point of aviation becoming widely used both in commercial and military applications. 
By the end of World War II however the piston-engine propeller driven aircraft have reached their limit of efficiency and hit the speed barrier.

From the ancient times people knew there was another way of propelling the craft, which would allow reach practically any speed - rocket flight. It had one significant flow though - the thirsty rocket would quickly run out of fuel, limiting its application and preventing from commercial use.     

Neither propeller-driven nor rocket-driven aircraft could do more without a breakthrough.
New breakthrough came n the form of integration of both in one - turbofan engine! Exhaust gas from the jet is used to rotate the turbine, and the fan coaxial with turbine compresses the air improving the combustion. A portion of the incoming air goes into the combustion chamber. The remainder passes through a fan, or low-pressure compressor, and is ejected directly as a "cold" jet or mixed with the gas-generator exhaust to produce a "hot" jet. The objective of this sort of bypass system is to increase thrust without increasing fuel consumption.

Thus the integration of a propeller (fan) and a jet produced a completely new quality - the engine which is both fuel efficient and allows to achieve much higher speed. Most of commercial aircraft today use turbofan engines.

90 Percent Rule

I read a news about Tesla Working On 90% Autonomous Car.

It attracted my attention not only because Tesla makes very nice cars, and I also write about future mobility.
I liked Elon Musk's rule of 90 percent. It is very close to my rule which I apply to Performance Homes and integrated energy technology. I insist that we should strive to achieve 90% of efficiency. This is the most cost-effective target. If we want to move from 90% to 99%, we need to be prepared to spend the same amount of effort on top of it, i.e. double it. And what about the 100% efficiency (so called "net-zero" approach) ? You will likely need to triple or even quadruple the effort.