Jobs? Who’s Counting?

The American Solar Energy Association is forecasting an increase of jobs in the alternative energy and energy efficiency markets in the US.  They expect to see an estimated 500,000 new jobs created in calendar year 2009 by the addition of solar manufacturing capacity in the US, increased activity in contracting and installing solar electric systems and a variety of other activities.  I didn’t get the exact methodology of the estimate.  I take their word for it.

The American Wind Energy Association has similar things to say about increased employment as a result of the expanison of wind energy manufacturing capacity, testing, installation, service, etc.  55 new manufacturing facilities have been created in the US.  I know Colorado claims to have added 2500 new jobs in the wind energy industry.

Green jobs are here.  More green jobs are coming.

Let’s do some math.  The Department of Labor Statistics reports the increase in unemployment for August 2009 was 466,000 jobs.  That’s primarily new unemployment filings thoughout the US.  I know Texas announced job losses of 62,000 last month, the highest number of job losses in a long time.

The executive branch has tried to point to the reduced rate of job losses from previous monthly highs in the 600,000+ job losses per month to the current 466,000 of job losses per month as a sign of improvement in the economy.  As if a mere 466,000 jobs lost in August is somehow encouraging.

And similarly, there is a lot of political rhetoric about the green economy creating and replacing the jobs that the US economy is losing and jobs that “are never coming back”.

Let’s say, for the moment, that the new job creation is coming along as claimed and that there are 500,000+ new jobs as a result of all the alternative energy technology, wind and solar combined.  That would only offset one month of the current rate of job losses.

We need a lot more going on to offset where we are today.  Oil and Gas needs to be able to go out and drill for new supplies that we have available, like the BP find in the Gulf of Mexico that is the largest field in their history.  Bringing back refining capacity to this country will involve thousands of jobs.  Even if the use of gasoline declines over time with increasing numbers of electric and hybrid vehicles.

The creation of a new nuclear power industry using the latest reactor technology will require thousands of engineering and construction jobs and will bring new electrical capacity on line that is cleaner and more efficient than outdated coal fired plants.

A wholesale re-invention of the automotive industry to me would be a group of car companies that were serious about building the cars Americans want to buy, so we don’t have to buy from foreign suppliers.  That would bring back a percentage of the huge job losses being experienced in the state of Michigan.  With the trickle effect of glass, carpet, paint and electrical industries that supply to the automotives.

This would be the real complement to the “Green Revolution”.  And part of the solution to the unemployment problem.

The Crisis of Leadership

I would like to take a slight detour from the generally technical and economic posts.  The underlying issue to many of the challenges that we face in energy and technology has to do with how we make decisions as individuals, companies and as a culture.

I submit that the current “energy crisis” is largely self inflicted.  Electric power utilities have not been permitted to build new capacity for 30 years.  Any surprise that we have shortages?  Most of the commentary has to do with environmental studies that prevent the permits to be authorized.

Gasoline prices? The same thing.  We have all the oil and gas we need, we just can’t get permission from the regulatory agencies to go after it.  And refineries are in the same situation.  The management of the oil and gas companies decided years ago that it would be cheaper to simply bring gasoline over from the Middle East instead of making it here.  Fine.  But that strategy can only be used temporarily, as we have found out.  Except now we can’t build any new capacity.

Nuclear energy has advanced substantially in the form of pebble bed reactors which are thermally stable even when the coolant is shut off and cannot go critical mass because the nuclear material is insulated in ceramic.  Wave reactors are being demonstrated whose cores make the nuclear fuel inert, no disposal problem.  But we’ve spent decades making atomic energy “unacceptable”.  So there it would seem unlikely that we’ll see and solutions without a major shift in the political system.

So who’s fault it is anyway?  I don’t know.  There’s enough blame to go around.

Is there any scenario where decision making doesn’t turn into a political process?  In a democracy, a group of people can vote on something, be in agreement and be factually incorrect.  If we all vote that there is no gravity, does it make any difference?  It doesn’t matter how much factual information is presented, if the group controlling the decision making process chooses to ignore it.

Similarly the automobile industry has chosen for many years not to make high mileage cars.  This has been going on for years and Americans have had enough.    It can be part of a decision making process that has been corrupted or a conscious decision to ignore the market information that exists.

So the mis-management of major corporations can follow a similar path.  If senior management chooses to ignore market data, or use it’s authority for personal gain, you can get some very ugly results.  Like Enrom amd others.  Is this a failure of Capitalism as the Michael Moore types would have us believe.  I don’t think so.

It’s a failure of human beings.  It’s an ethical failure in some cases.  And it’s also a failure of the decision making processes.  So many times we get caught in eliminating choices that we fail to apply the most important premise; that a solution has to be found.  We have to have more electricity, for example, so let’s explore a bunch of options and what their impact will be.  And let’s try to make the best decision that insures that the goal of increased electricity at the best cost.

This changes the outcome so that goals can be met instead of paralyzing us with inaction that stalls our economy and short  changes everyone.

Eliminate 40% Costs when Applying Drive Architectures

The technology to network drives into a single, holistic plant or production line configuration has been available for several years, but adoption has not been universal, a fact that still surprises Greg Richards, an automation consultant with Siemens Energy and Automation.

“I’ve gone out to plants and people don’t want to do it and I don’t understand why,” he says, pointing to cost savings in the 40 percent range when electing to go with this approach over traditional analog systems in the areas of engineering, control, system building, assembly and commissioning. “The benefits become clear once you do it.”

The benefits, says Richards, start with improved information. More information means more control over your processes. “In the past you were very limited in what information you could get out of the process. The drive is now an integral part of the hardware configuration for the PLC. Now, when you integrate a drive into the PLC bus you get a tremendous amount of information back from the drive.”

The benefits don’t stop there. In addition to improved control, reduced cost and increased productivity, Richards points to reduced infrastructure requirements – i.e.: less wiring – and a profound impact on the time required to set up or make changes to the production line.

Before joining Siemens, Richards used to work for the drive systems group at Quadrant Engineering Plastic Products, worldwide engineered plastics manufacturer based in Pennsylvania. His last assignment at Quadrant was the set up a system containing 30 drives.

“If you can imagine all the wiring required to connect 30 drives in analog then you can imagine eliminating all of that and just connecting them to a single purple cable. Your start-up time is significantly reduced. Start-up following install went from 4 or 5 days to one. We did it once in six hours.

“The whole Totally Integrated Automation approach really worked. The more we integrated into one project…it got quicker and quicker. It really did.”

What’s more, he adds, you have fewer points of failure meaning better reliability. “When I used to do it the old way I always had more analog failures. Since I started doing it this way I can’t recall one.”

UK-based Marston’s brewery, home of the world famous Pedigree bitter, was an early adopter of networked drive technology and reaped significant benefits from its migration. D. Boothroyd detailed the Brewery’s experience for Computing & Control Engineering Journal.

For instance, wrote Boothroyd, Parameter settings on the variable frequency inverter drives that operate Marston’s bottling lines can be altered dynamically via the network without interrupting the operation of the line. Things like ramp up and ramp down rates, and maximum/minimum speeds, can be altered as the line is running.

Each drive has between 30 and 40 parameters that can be adjusted, from such basics as the voltage it runs at to more sophisticated aspects such as the percentage of torque the drive will generate. “By simply sending a data message on the network it is possible to modify any drive, either permanently or temporarily.

Additionally, networking provided the brewery with other benefits, including more delicate handling of bottles, improved plant integrity, and its inherent scalability provided a platform for flexible future expansion.

Today, it is easier than ever before to network drives into a single control system. All the control system vendors have systems that easily allow you to point and click and drag and drop your way through installation.

“In the Siemens world you have Simatics Manager and Drive ES,” says Richards. “You integrate everything into the software – all its network and configuration info. It’s really easy to set up, configure and control.

“Once you have them installed you go to the hardware configurator – the PLC processor, I/O configurator. Your drives show up as an option. Find the drive and drag and drop it onto your configuration. It’ll attach it to whichever bus technology you are working with – either Profibus or Profinet.

“Your next selection will be the amount of information you want to communicate back and forth to the drive. You can configure from 2 to 14 words each way. These words convey signals and commands such as ready, start, stop, alarm, etc. I usually use around six, but you may need to use more if you are working on a safety system, etc. Finally you program the address of the drive into the network. Once you do that and everything is wired up properly, the drive should be talking to the PLC.”

Mechatronics + NASA = New Lunar Rover

Every year, for two weeks in the Arizona desert at Black Point Lava Flow, NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies group (Desert RATS) conducts technology development tests in anticipation of lunar exploration. Teams of engineers and geologists from several NASA laboratories as well as a variety of private and academic partners participated in this year’s test, including two key members from ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.

New for this year was an intensive simulated mission during which two crew members, an astronaut and a geologist, lived for more than 300 hours inside NASA’s new lunar wheels, the Lunar Electric Rover (LER). The explorers scouted the area for features of geological interest then donned spacesuits and conducted simulated moonwalks to collect samples. The crew also docked to a simulated habitat, drove the rover across difficult terrain, performed a rescue mission and made a four-day traverse across the rough landscape.

“We are continuously working to meet the challenges of a human outpost on the moon,” says James Rice, faculty research associate in the school and principal investigator of one of the study’s geology traverses. “To meet these challenges, scientists and engineers must conduct hands-on field tests and research here on earth to better prepare and understand the complex challenges that will be encountered on the moon.”

Analogs are conducted to test robotics, vehicles, habitats and in-situ resource utilization in realistic environments that will aid astronauts, engineers and scientists as they define ways to combine human and robotic efforts to enhance scientific exploration. The Arizona desert is well suited for testing technologies and procedures for future human-robotic exploration in extreme environments.

“You have to test hardware and concepts in a real-world environment with real geology, slopes, rocks, dust … and the unexpected,” Rice says. “It can’t be done in a controlled laboratory. The terrain of Black Point Lava Flow contains challenging topography for LER operations and also contains lunar and Mars analog geomorphology and geology.”

Rice was in charge of making traverse routes or paths that the rover and crew followed during the simulation. He had to factor in science objectives, rover driving speed, time for the crew to put on and take off spacesuits before and after geology investigations, and the time required to drive to the next station.

“We had a very detailed timeline from Mission Control that we had to work with to make sure we achieved our science goals,” says Rice, who has been involved with the field tests for about six years. “Sometimes we had issues with loss of communications, equipment or the rover and this caused the whole operation to get behind on the timeline. It was very realistic.”

Kip Hodges, founding director of the school in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and science team member of Desert RATS, has been involved with this year’s tests on a number of levels. He was the principal scientist of the K10 robot, which was developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center and deployed prior to the simulated mission to identify areas of interest for the crew, and he served in the science “backroom” for the LER human tests.

“The K10 robot was employed in these tests in order to evaluate the added value of robotic reconnaissance of a planetary landscape prior to sending humans into the field for scientific research,” says Hodges. “While the final field test results are not yet in, I think that my collaborators and I are extremely pleased with the exercise and looking forward to further tests. For example, we are also using K10 for follow-up work after human exploration. In that case, our analogue study site is in a bit farther afield: the high Arctic of Canada. Perhaps we’ll also deploy K10 for this purpose next year at the Desert RATS tests.”

New wheels for a new generation of exploration

LER, the next-generation rover, is an all-electric vehicle with 12 wheels. A little bigger than a Humvee, the LER was built for extreme exploration. The frame of this mobile base camp was developed in conjunction with an off-road race truck team, making it able to travel hundreds of kilometers over rugged terrain. Its wheels can move sideways in a “crabbing” motion, one of many features that make it skilled at scrambling over rocks. During the mission, LER was able to climb slopes on the lava flow that the team’s SUV chase vehicles couldn’t handle. Remarkably, the advanced suspension and drivetrain of the LER allows it to perform such feats using only 20 horsepower, an order of magnitude less than the standard off-road vehicles it left in the dust.

If that isn’t enough to make the Apollo-era astronauts envious, LER is also capable of housing two astronauts for up to two weeks with sleeping and sanitary facilities. It is equipped with a time- and space-saving concept called suit ports, designed to allow astronauts to quickly enter and exit their EVA suits via a rear-entry hatch.

“Unlike during the Apollo Program where the astronauts had to drive their lunar rover wearing space suits,” says Rice, “this new manned lunar rover concept with its pressurized environment will allow the crew to drive wearing more comfortable clothing and not be stuck in a space suit.”

NASA has not yet confirmed the technologies that will be used in future lunar missions, but with the successful testing of analogue systems and procedures in simulated environments here on earth, we move one step closer to a sustainable human presence on the moon.

The Desert RATS tests have been held for more than a decade, as engineers from NASA centers work with representatives from industry and academia to determine what will be needed for human exploration of the moon and other destinations in the solar system. It is the culmination of the various individual science and advanced engineering discipline areas’ year-long efforts. This year’s work built on the investigations of previous years and increased the scope and length of the tests.

Batteries of the Future

Battery technology has been getting a lot of focus in the last couple of years.  After all, you can’t have a decent electric car (or hybrid for that matter) without having the right kind of battery.  And, just one more time, battery technology is what prevented the marketing of the electric car after the oil embargo of the seventies, at least as far as the necessary technology goes.

So it isn’t surprising that almost $2B in cash is being invested to start 4 new manufacturing plants in Michigan to make lithium ion batteries.  The State of Michigan is giving tax incentives totalling over $500 million.  The DOE has put grants and development contracts in the hundreds of millions of dollars in the hands of some of the same companies.  So it looks like we have picked the winner, and we are taking steps to make sure that there is capacity available to make the product.  Or at least assemble it.  Some of the battery supply is supposed to be coming in from Asia.  No surprise there.

There are two major issues in any battery.  The basic chemistry and materials that go into it, and the manufacturing processes that go into making it.  The basic chemistry sets the boundaries for what is possible.  The materials side is important in terms of raw materials cost.  You don’t want to build something that is dependent on strategic metals.  And making sure that the primary materials are readily available.  Recent reports indicate that the lithium needed for the emerging battery market is available in the US, but there is even more in South America.

On the manufacturing side, it’s all over the place.  Mechatronics everywhere.  From manufacture of the primary cell in either a cyclindrical cell or a prismatic shape to the assembly of the final package.  Temperature sensors, fans for air cooling, voltage or current sensors for monitoring charge and output, non-conductive housings, high power density connector terminals.  It’s pretty busy getting it packaged right.

I was involved in the manufacturing processes for the Optima sprial wound lead acid cell.  Great piece of technology.  Really difficult to get the mechatronics right.  Winding multiple 4 foot long layers of lead mesh, separater membranes and stuff that looks like toothpaste into a perfect roll the size of a can of soda isn’t a process that gets worked out overnight.  So there’s probably quite a bit of work to do to get the volume up where it needs to be.

Battery technology, regardless of chemistry, depends on the amount of surface area available.  Same issue for fuel cells, or even combustion of gasoline.  In a sense, when fuel is atomized, the surface area of the fuel is increased.  So it’s not surprising that most of the improvements forecast in battery technology are a result of research in nanoparticles and other unique physical arrangments of the constituent parts.

And unlike the decades that it took to manage lead acid battery recycling, there is already a major effort to manage recycling and disposal of lithium.  The DOE is currently providing funding to a private company to expand it’s disposal capability to include lithium technology.

Mold Develops into Biological Robot

Researchers have received a Leverhulme Trust grant to develop the amorphous non-silicon biological robot, plasmobot, using plasmodium, the vegetative stage of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum, a commonly occurring mould which lives in forests, gardens and most damp places in the UK. The Leverhulme Trust funded research project aims to design the first every fully biological (no silicon components) amorphous massively-parallel robot.

This project is at the forefront of research into unconventional computing. Professor Andy Adamatzky, who is leading the project, says their previous research has already proved the ability of the mould to have computational abilities.

Professor Adamatzky explains, “Most people’s idea of a computer is a piece of hardware with software designed to carry out specific tasks. This mould, or plasmodium, is a naturally occurring substance with its own embedded intelligence. It propagates and searches for sources of nutrients and when it finds such sources it branches out in a series of veins of protoplasm. The plasmodium is capable of solving complex computational tasks, such as the shortest path between points and other logical calculations. Through previous experiments we have already demonstrated the ability of this mould to transport objects. By feeding it oat flakes, it grows tubes which oscillate and make it move in a certain direction carrying objects with it. We can also use light or chemical stimuli to make it grow in a certain direction.

“This new plasmodium robot, called plasmobot, will sense objects, span them in the shortest and best way possible, and transport tiny objects along pre-programmed directions. The robots will have parallel inputs and outputs, a network of sensors and the number crunching power of super computers. The plasmobot will be controlled by spatial gradients of light, electro-magnetic fields and the characteristics of the substrate on which it is placed. It will be a fully controllable and programmable amorphous intelligent robot with an embedded massively parallel computer.”

This research will lay the groundwork for further investigations into the ways in which this mould can be harnessed for its powerful computational abilities.

Professor Adamatzky says that there are long term potential benefits from harnessing this power, “We are at the very early stages of our understanding of how the potential of the plasmodium can be applied, but in years to come we may be able to use the ability of the mould for example to deliver a small quantity of a chemical substance to a target, using light to help to propel it, or the movement could be used to help assemble micro-components of machines. In the very distant future we may be able to harness the power of plasmodia within the human body, for example to enable drugs to be delivered to certain parts of the human body. It might also be possible for thousands of tiny computers made of plasmodia to live on our skin and carry out routine tasks freeing up our brain for other things. Many scientists see this as a potential development of amorphous computing, but it is purely theoretical at the moment.”

The Future of Cars

More musings on everyone’s favorite subject.  Cars.  Cars are the second largest investment you will make.  And since we use them every day, and they are somewhat integral to our lifestyle, they are on our minds.

On a fundamental level, you have to be concerned when the combined auto makers have a production rate of 16 million units a year and sales fall off by, say, 1/3.  Where do you go to make up that volume?  What about the amount of steel, glass, paint and carpet that this volume of production requires?

Let’s face it, the car is an American phenomenon.  Largely the product of Henry Ford’s ingenuity in applying the new discipline of mass production to lower cost and make cars available to a much larger audience, the car has changed the American landscape.  Personal freedom to move around whenever you want, at very low cost.  The Department of Transportation estimates that there are 137 Million passenger cars on the road today.  And that number looks more like 250 Million when you add in trucks, SUV’s, etc.

But things change.  And the cost of personal transportation has gone up as our demand for more sophisticated cars has evolved and the cost of major energy sources has increased.  More cars on the road means more pollution.  More cars also means increased demand for gasoline.  Gasoline, taxes and maintenance have driven the cost of automotive operation to more than 50 cents per mile driven.

So what’s the future of car making likely to be?

There is enormous critical mass around the battery technology.  Lithium chemistry has achieved the major milestone that was foreseen 20 years ago by electric car enthusiasts.  Decreasing the battery mass fraction by a factor of 4 would make practical vehicles with a range of 100 miles or more per charge, a reality.  Next year’s planned release from Th!nk is expect to achieve 120 miles per charge for a 2 seater battery electric vehicle.  And the development curve for lithium battery technology over the next decade is expected to substantially improve the power density even further.

Hybrid technology has been successful, but the recent versions have been incredibly complex.  A drive by wire hybrid is also now a practical reality.  The hybrid vehicle is similarly dependent on the battery mass fraction, but leverages on-board charging from a combustion engine/generator that is far smaller than needed for direct mechanical drive and operates at constant speed.  This allows huge reductions in pollution, and huge increases in efficiency.

So if the first real production hybrid car gets 50 MPG while generating, what’s wrong with that?  That’s more than double the efficiency of the US fleet average..  That also means the true mileage, average of  battery power and generator power, is going to be a lot higher that 50 MPG.  (It was 125 MPG in my estimate)  And if the car saves $5000 per year in operating costs due to increased fuel efficiency and reduced maintenance, would that make it a better investment at $35,000 purchase price.  It would pay for itself in 7 years.

Would that help rebuild the sales of cars in the US?  I think so.  More than 122,000 cash for clunkers did.  A major breakthrough in the absolute value of automobile technology will lead to many more people trading their old cars in for something more efficient and low emission.  That’s what good engineering is all about.

Robotic Technology Transforms the Operating Room

Locally, robotic technology is transforming the OR, with the help of the da Vinci Surgical System. This new surgical technology brings patients less pain, blood loss, scarring and recovery time. At Stamford Hospital, the public can see and touch the da Vinci at an upcoming seminar led by two robotic surgeons.

“Advanced Robotic Techniques – da Vinci Surgical System” will take place at Stamford Hospital’s Whittingham Pavilion, Rooms 1 and 2 on Sept. 14 from 1 – 3 p.m. At the presentation, two hospital surgeons will demonstrate how the da Vinci works and appropriate surgical procedures for the system. Additionally, the pair will explain the long list of benefits to the minimally invasive technology.

The free seminar will be led by Stamford Hospital’s Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology Dr. Lance Bruck and the Director of Stamford Hospital’s Department of Surgery’s robotics program in urology Dr. Ketan K. Badani.

Last year, Stamford Hospital unveiled the da Vinci Surgical System for complex urological and women’s health surgeries. With the da Vinci, the surgeon is at the controls of a sophisticated surgical robot to perform the most complex and delicate procedures. da Vinci offers unmatched precision with the ability to make small incisions through the aid of enhanced 3D optics.

An expert in minimally invasive procedures, Dr. Bruck enlists the aid of the da Vinci system at Stamford Hospital for numerous gynecological surgeries including hysterectomies. He previously developed the Minimally Invasive Surgery Fellowship at Jacobi Medical Center, where he was Vice Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health. Dr. Bruck succeeded in raising the funds to support the Fellowship, primarily through industry support.

Dr. Ketan K. Badani is also the Director of Robotic Surgery at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University, where he leads one of the largest and most comprehensive robotic and oncology programs in the country. He is one of only a few select surgeons in the world who have performed more than 1,000 robotic surgeries. In July, Dr. Badani began performing radical prostatectomies at Stamford Hospital with the da Vinci Surgical System.

Dr. Badani trained at the Vattikuti Urology Institute in Detroit, Mich. and is among the most experienced practitioners of robotic prostatectomies in the world. He is a noted author and lecturer and has published extensively on the subject, including landmark articles in the field of robotic surgery. Dr. Badani’s research in surgical technology continues to improve the quality of life for men after robotic surgery while maintaining the highest cancer cure rates.

Microstepping Step Motor Driver from Lin Engineering

Santa Clara, CA— Lin Engineering announces the release of their new R525 microstepping step motor driver. The R525 is designed to help reduce overall design time and system cost for a wide array of step motor applications needing high torque, power, and smooth motion.

The R525 measures just over 3.3” in length and 1.3” in height making it very easy to accommodate in most systems. The R525 has been extremely competitively priced coming in at almost 20-30% less than similar products. With the R525, you get a lot more than you pay for.

The R525 is capable of outputting up to 5 amps peak current and handling up to 75 volts DC. Not only can it be used with all NEMA 8, 11, and 17 motor motors, it is compatible with the majority of NEMA 23 motors and many NEMA 34 motors as well.

Configuring the R525 unit is simple as well. With built-in RS485 communication, the unit can be easily connected to a computer and configured via Lin Engineering’s graphical user interface (GUI), LinDriver. Configurable settings include, but are not limited to:

1. Step resolution
2. Run current
3. Hold current
4. Damping modes for smoother motion
5. Selection of sensing the step pulses on the rising edge or falling edge

Lin Engineering
www.linengineering.com