January 3
Home is where the batteries are
Panasonic recently announced the development and marketing of a home battery system beginning in 2011. The battery reportedly stores enough energy to run an "average home" for a week, presumably including refrigerator, microwave, computers, electric range, lighting and heating.
The advantages of such a distributed system of energy storage are multiple. Our centralized, on-demand model of energy generation and distribution requires overcapacity to manage peak usage while also wasting vast amounts of energy through long-distance transmission. Centralized systems are also vulnerable as single points of failure due to accidents or weather, rely on expensive and environmentally dubious fuel sources (coal, gas, uranium) and are expensive to build and maintain. In contrast, an energy grid based on localized, distributed storage systems could be drawn upon to smooth-out periods of peak demand and reduce loses to transmission. Home batteries would also make micro-generation of wind and solar more attractive, allowing the homeowner to store excess energy when production is good, cover their needs during intermittent periods of non-generation, and thereby encouraging such home systems to be built in the first place -- further reducing demand on centralized energy production systems. Distributed systems of energy storage are also fault tolerant. Neighbourhood grids could be developed to store and share power when transmission is interrupted or unavailable. And finally, home energy production would make consumers sensitive to their energy footprint.
Panasonic intends to sell the storage technology with a home monitoring system allowing users to manage their power consumption. Such technology would help build a "smart grid" where consumers could pre-program their system to sell power back to the grid when prices are high (such as during periods of peak demand) and store power when prices on the grid are low.
Some details are unknown about the system. An "average home" in Japan consumes 448kWh/month (kilo-watt hours per month) while consumers in the United States average 936 kWh/month and Canada 921 kW/h per month (figures from the US Energy Information Administration and the Wikipedia entry on per-capita power consumption).
As well, Panasonic is relying on Lithium-Ion battery technology which a physicist at the University of Louisiana blogs as requiring a 3000lb refrigerator-sized storage unit. Li-Ion technology is also faces a limited number of drain and recharge cycles, perhaps requiring the battery to be replaced (or reconditioned?) every few years and which might inhibit the economic benefits despite the obvious ecological benefit. Nonetheless, a distributed system of home energy generation and storage, coupled with a "smart-gid" for power sharing, is clearly a significant way to encourage micro-generation and reduce reliance on massive and environmentally destructive power plants.
10:14 PM
December 31
2010
"We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic."03:50 AM
-- E. Merrill Root
December 13
Vancouver
Gorgeous 720p footage of Vancouver as seen from a pair of rollerblades and a Canon 7D with high dynamic range.Vancouver - Testing the Canon 7D from brandon moza on Vimeo.
02:29 PM
October 25
Separated Bike Lanes: Two Modest Proposals
Physically separated bike lanes have been used in many cities and substantially improve cycling safety without impeding traffic flow. There are two main proposals.The first is a simple change in streetscape stratification to reduce the turbulence between traffic moving at different speeds. Bike lanes are moved next to the sidewalk, with a car parking "lane" separating cyclists from moving vehicular traffic. So called "complete streets" more closely reflect the variety of social and recreational functions that they are actually used for. The video below demonstrates the use of this approach in New York City.
The second proposal is predominant in Vancouver. Here is what I wrote of this system in a letter published recently in The Star in response to an editorial encouraging heavy regulation of bikes as if they were cars (Sept 19, 2009, Insight section IN7):
As a long-time commuter cyclist who has lived in both Vancouver and Toronto (and who has been hit twice in a bike lane by cars running red lights in this city) I can assure you that excessive regulation is no substitute for good design.
Toronto's approach is flawed compared to Vancouver's. There, major bike routes are not along the main arterial roads where traffic is at its most dense and drivers at their most frustrated. Instead, the major bike routes parallel main thoroughfares on residential side streets that have been fitted with roundabouts at every intersection and cyclist priority crossings at major arterial intersections.
The result is a pleasant bike ride with less exhaust fumes, lots of room for cyclists to pass one another, separated bike and car traffic, no "door jamming," a calmer interaction when cars and cyclists do meet, and a whole network of small businesses that serve the cyclist commuter population. It's a win/win approach for everyone.
Approaching traffic flows as a question of "design" is valuable because it is able to respect traffic flows and street use relative to the nature of both the vehicle and participant. Neither is granted artificial priority over the other. Ontario and Toronto currently approach the problem through a legal framework that regulates bicycles as if they are equal to cars. But it is little more than a legal fiction that the two are commensurate. The legal abstraction ignores the reality that bikes are more vulnerable, less visible, and prefer to maintain their momentum. Bikes can't help but conflict with the stop/go logic of combustion cars. Recently, The Star wrote quite an excellent piece reflecting on the need to think about the problem from outside the "legal abstraction" box (Kenneth Kidd, "Traffic signs can make streets dangerous" Toronto Star Sept. 5 2009):
The North American approach to regulating traffic, rules that are supposed to ensure safety, may do just the opposite because they emphasize rights and diminish individual judgment and any consideration of others.11:22 AM
Compared with most places in Europe, North American cities are crammed with traffic lights and signs telling us what we can and can't do. They confer rights, which we've been conditioned to assert.
That's the subtext every time a driver races through the intersection on a green light and honks loudly at any pedestrian who has lingered too long in crossing.
It's there when a cyclist blocks an entire lane or a pedestrian marches onto a crosswalk without checking to see whether an oncoming car or cyclist can safely stop in time.
John Staddon, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Duke University who's lately been turning his attention to traffic, argues that the plethora of signs is actually the key reason North American roads are more dangerous than European ones. We look to signs to give us instruction – tell us our rights – rather than making decisions based on the actions of other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.
Staddon notes, for instance, that some studies have found drivers actually give cyclists a wider berth in the absence of marked bike lanes. In other words, drivers are using their discretion, rather than looking for a line on the road.
An experiment now sweeping Europe is the removal of as many signs as possible, and sometimes even sidewalks. It seems to be working. In some neighbourhoods that have tried this approach, pedestrian accidents have fallen by 40 per cent and the traffic moves no more slowly than it did before.