so this showed up

solar energy technology and Moore's Law

I've been trying to understand theoretical maximums, etc.. for solar energy.  This article by Ramez Naam in O'Reilly Radar captures a lot of what I am in interested in learning.

See: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/solar-power-moores-law.html  Apparently this article was originally in Scientific American.

Valuable snippet:

The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space. Seven hundred watts of power, on average, reaches Earth's surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. By comparison, all of human civilization uses around 15 terrawatts of power, or one six-thousandth as much. In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.

I'd like to understand more about the impact of latitude and weather on the theoretical maximum in any particular location.   Latitude changes mean changes in angle of sunlight, affecting energy density I suppose.  Also,  average cloud cover in a particular location obviously makes a big difference.

Anyone really good with maps mashups?  Given a Google map of a particular location, calculate and display theoretical max energy from sunlight.   Maybe, given appropriate weather table data this would be an application for Fusion Tables.  Any takers?  Or perhaps someone has already done this.   If only I had any free time at all....

efficient, but fun

Like we said, who says great mileage can't be fun?  The CR-Z looks good...

MIT report on future of transportation

with comprehensive focus on automotive technology choices.   very helpful in understanding the different characteristics of different types of engine technologies.

report here:  Fueling our Transportation Future

money quote from the summary:

"We have concluded that a 30–50% reduction in fuel consumption is feasible over the next
30 years. In the short-term, this will come as a result of improved gasoline and diesel engines
and transmissions, gasoline hybrids, and reductions in vehicle weight and drag. If these
improvements are achieved, we estimate a $1,500–$4,500 increase in vehicle costs. Over the
longer term, plug-in hybrids and later still, hydrogen fuel cells may enter the fleet in numbers
sufficient to have significant an impact on fuel use and emissions."

Pickens on energy independence

The Speculist embeds this video outlining T. Boone Pickens plan for US energy independence.  I'm not so sure independance is the key factor, but developing multiple scalable alternatives to oil and other caron-based energy sources is nothing but a good idea.

ethanol

Is ethanol the answer? I think not, and not just because of the food vs fuel dynamic, as described here in the Washington Post: Siphoning Off Corn to Fuel Our Cars.

This column in the New York Sun by Harold Furchtgott-Roth offers useful links explaining why ethanol is not the answer.

So, probably corn-based ethanol is not the direction we should be taking for fuel diversity and supply.

We can talk about corn monoculture in another post...