Among the mainstays of an industrial economy is construction, housing and commercial in particular.  While these industries are incredibly competitive, there is always room for innovation.  Precisely because it is a mature, competitive industry, really ground breaking solutions are sometime hard to find.

Transcon Steel is a small startup company in Georgetown Texas that makes structural steel building systems.  The innovation comes from the fact that Transcon roll forms flat sheet metal into structural shapes that are highly optimized to reduce weight and increase strength.  The steel structural shapes are formed into large panels with compressed foam which results in structures that are super light weight and extremely high strength.

The new structural panels permit construction of buildings in a variety of applications.  So called “temporary housing” for oilfield crews in remote area can be built in hours instead of days.  Heating and cooling costs are a fraction of conventional structures.  All of which leads to increased opportunities to serve unique construction applications with better solutions.

Transcon’s big challenge will be to create the manufacturing resources needed to produce the structural panels in very large numbers.  The enabling technology of the manufacturing processes?  Mechatronics. The roll forming of sheet metal is a classic application requiring high performance drives to de-reel the strip steel rolls and servo actuators to follow the roll throughout the various forming process that take place to make the final product.

The compressed foam requires unique tooling to form large rectangular panels that can be filled with foam, compressed with hydraulic actuators and cured with heat and pressure to form the final super dense structures.  Amazingly, the cores are made from material that is similar to the conventional styrofoam cups we use for coffee, yet, when the basic material is processed correctly, it becomes strong enough to withstand blows from a sledgehammer.  When it is bonded to an already strong steel frame, you have a complete building system that has incredible structural strength and insulation value.

Transon is negotiating enough new business that it will need a new facility 4 times the size of it’s present location and will hire CAD designers and plant personnel to support it’s manufacturing needs.  If they are successful at marketing the technology in other countries, it will be more of the same.  Lots of it.

And that is how job creation is done.  Someone with an idea, willing to work hard, taking risks, finding people to come alongside and help, to deliver a solution.  Making lives better by employing people, and by delivering a product that provides shelter at a lower cost than the traditional products in the building market.

American Entrepreneurship.

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The electric light, for example, which was coveted 100 years ago as the great solution to night time darkness, making obsolete the candle or gas lamp.  Mass production has made the light bulb an inexpensive  commodity on the verge of extinction at about 25 cents per bulb.  The desire to reduce energy consumption is ushering in the age of the light emitting diode (LED) as the replacement technology for electric light.  Every effort is under way to reduce LED costs by any means possible so that illumination will be available that is even cheaper than incandescent lighting when the energy cost over ten years is factored into the new technology.

Even generating and delivering electricity is the result of applying the principles of mass production.  Large generating facilities are able to generate power cost effectively through economy of scale, selling the power profitably at 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour.  Wire, cable, switching systems and other infrastructure are generally costed in at an additional 2 cents per kilowatt hour to deliver the power to your door.  This is an incredible deal, trillion of dollars of resources at your disposal for pennies.

But mass production is not the answer for every aspect of modern society.  Lowering the cost of mass-produced goods implies that there is a requirement for the sufficient numbers of a product to warrant the investment in the necessary processes and tooling to accomplish the task.

Enter 3D printing technology.  Also known as “Maker bots”, this new class of tools is making fabrication a  new American pastime at incredibly low cost.  Where 3D printing equipment has recently been the domain of well-funded large corporations , selling at $10,000 to $20,000 each, 3D printer kits are available at less than $1000.  And lest you think that these are only toys for boys, the additive manufacturing paradigm has taken hold in the metals industry producing high quality parts in various steel alloys and even in titanium.

Why does it matter?  Because anything that lowers the barrier to market entry for new products creates the opportunity for people to enter a market that was previously inaccessible.  The hidden relationship is financial, it is the cost of amortizing the manufacturing resources across a given number of products that makes startup of a new product impractical.  So barriers to entry in new product development are primarily the result of amortization costs.

What happens when a new technology introduces a significant reduction in the amortization cost?  You get the opportunity to experiment with things because the cost of iterating the design is low.  New products can be test marketed and improvements made because there is no major investment in tooling that would have to be modified in order to change the design.  You don’t have to get it right the first time.

And that means that anything is possible.

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In the wind energy arena the biggest change has been the shift to direct drive permanent magnet generators.  By eliminating the gear “increaser” to convert the low RPM of the propeller system to a high RPM for a standard high power generator.  This is crucial step in bringing the cost of wind power down. Current systems are weighing in at 100 tons and have to be suspended above water or land 165 feet in order to pick up sufficient wind currents to be economically practical.

There is no single solution that is ideal for wind applications.  One supplier has a generator that is made up of 4 smaller units on a single large ring gear.  This system seems to have significant advantages in reducing the size and weight of the generator and makes maintenance more simple in the event of a failure.

Among the major mechatronic challenges driving change in the motor industry, electric vehicle applications are continually pushing the boundary for energy density and efficiency.  The performance demands of electric vehicles and other mobility applications make every percentage point of efficiency crucial to the range of the target vehicle.  This has led to a rash of new motor and drivetrain designs with a variety performance capabilities.

Each new innovation seeks to organize the basic materials of the electric motor in a new way to improve some aspect of performance.  Electric motors are copper conductors, “soft” magnetic steels and many times, permanent magnets.  The basic costs for copper wire at $5-6 a pound, commodity strip steel is about $.50 per pound but has to be punched in precise shapes, coated with insulation and stacked into larger assemblies, and $16. per pound for permanent magnets.  Complex processes associated with motor manufacturing make motor costs considerable.

In a recent development teams in academia in Australia and the US have developed simple low RPM motor structures based on polymer actuators referred to as “artificial muscle”.  While this development is in its early phases, the simplicity and low cost are significant and very appealing.  A demonstration of the new technology can be seen on YouTube at;  www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcCPNJR5PCMand it is very much worth the watch.

The only sure thing is that we continue to meet the challenge of new market needs with innovation.

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Considering the possibilities of improved personal transportation, the consequences of a major change in transportation technology are significant and should be carefully considered as we move forward.

The major impact of all the technology being promoted these days is increased efficiency and reduced fuel consumption.  Whether your motivation is reducing emissions and cleaning the air, or you are interested in reducing your cost of transportation, the requirement is the same; get more miles out of a gallon of gasoline or eliminate gasoline usage altogether, as is the case for a pure electric vehicle.

Across the entire population of cars in the US, the average fuel efficiency is around 20 miles per gallon. Despite the demand for higher fuel mileage from consumers, this situation hasn’t improved much in the last few decades.  A dismal thought in contrast to the claims being made these days for the new solutions.

The US consumes 383.25 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel per day.  This all goes into transportation.  The only fuel going into electrical generation is in diesel gen-sets for backup and remote power, just in case anyone is thinking about the barrel- of-oil-to-electricity energy equivalency.

Imagining a future in which gasoline usage declines is not difficult.  I drive a Ford Fusion for work which is averaging 30 mpg combined city and highway.    If the US fleet average is 20 mpg, increasing that average to 30 mpg implies decreasing the amount of gasoline sold by 1/3.  Currently, gasoline retails for $3.25/gallon, or $453 Billion annually at the pump.

So a sharp change in usage due to efficiency or an increase in the number of electric vehicles, is cause for concern from oil & gas exploration companies, gasoline refiners, distributors and dealers.  Unless gasoline prices continue to go up.  In which case there would be less gasoline solid at roughly the same total revenue, which suggests that higher profits might be the side effect if the true cost doesn’t go up.

What about tax revenues?  The direct state and federal tax on gasoline is about 40 cents per gallon.  This does not include large excise taxes collected by the states, taxes paid by refiners and distributors, etc.  In fact, it would be hard to calculate how much of gasoline pricing is taxes and how much is the cost of the product.  Regardless, at 40 cents/gallon, the daily revenues are $153 million and the annual is above $55.8 billion.

Given the current economic picture, is there any level of government that is willing to give up the tax revenue from gasoline?  Probably not.  Is this any different than “Dollars for Oil” at the UN a couple of years ago?  Probably not.  But we thought that was a scandal.

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American buyers will be able to buy American hybrid cars.  The Chevy Volt will be flanked by the Ford Fusion Electric scheduled to be released for sale in 19 US markets in March of 2012.  The Nissan Leaf might be the first production electric, so most commentators will make comparisons regarding driving range, speed and recharge time based on the performance of the Leaf.  At present, the claimed performance of the vehicles is very comparable.

It’s all speculation until there are a few units out there and the actual life cycle of the batteries can be measured.  100′s to 1000′s of vehicles will have to be built and consumer experiences cataloged in order to get a handle on how the batteries really work.  With all due respect to the development and testing efforts, it’s educated guesswork until there is real world experience.

Will the batteries be able to cycle enough times to make them cost effective?  When will they require replacement?  What will the price tag be for the battery pack?  Hopefully less than the $13,000 Tesla battery pack.

EV’s are coming.  But they are, like all the alternative energy technologies, still not cost competitive with Internal Combustion engines.  Most vehicles carry a $39,995 starting price tag with a $7,500 Federal rebate.  The basic purchase price puts EV’s out of the price range for many people, which fundamentally defeats the purpose.  The point of alternative energy technology is that it must become widespread in order for any impact on the environment to take place.  High prices are a major barrier to broad adoption.

Meanwhile the internal combustion engine is seeing some revival.  New approaches are being built and tested that offer dramatic improvements in efficiency and engine weight.  The EcoMotors opposing piston engine has been under DARPA development since 2007.  EcoMotors technology has been demonstrated to 40% efficiency, more than double that of traditional ICE.  In addition, it weighs less, takes up less space and gives of dramatically less heat.

Recently, the University of Michigan announced a new breakthrough called the wave engine that is expected to increase combustion efficiency to 60%.  And the rotor only turns in one direction like a scroll compressor instead of a piston, so there are no reciprocating motions to deal with.  This will also lower vehicle weight substantially, so the engine efficiency improvement leads to further overall efficiency in fuel required per transportation mile.

If these ICE improvements translate directly into miles-per gallon, then based on average 20 mpg cars today, we are talking about 53+ mile per gallon in town and possibly 70 mpg highway for EcoMotors solution.  At these levels, the equivalent energy cost per transportation mile is at parity with electricity.  If the wave engine proves successful, in town ratings of 80 mpg and 100 mpg highway become feasible, making electric options more expensive.

The future is what we make it.  Let’s make it the best we can with choices that make sense economically and environmentally.

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Many of the constraints of the work are environmental.  If work is being done outdoors, then temperature and humidity are a factor.  Felling trees and in the forest requires extremely high forces due to the work needed to cut through a tree and drag it to a truck to be hauled off for processing.  Processing trees, even in a plant environment, requires some serious hardware, 125 horsepower band saws are not unusual.

Doing work on a ship or oil rig has additional constraints because of the presence of explosive fumes and fuels.  Often the need to avoid any possibility of igniting a combustible atmosphere causes engineers to apply pneumatic control systems.  Yes, there is still a compressor somewhere to generate the compressed air supply, but that is usually remote or contained to avoid exposure to the volatile atmosphere.

Environmental constraints come in many forms.  Extremely high temperatures push the limits of what is possible.  Making glass, semiconductors, and primary metal processing are all high temperature environments where engineers have developed whole technologies in order to bring us the materials we use in everyday life.

The simplest action of rolling or sliding becomes a real challenge when environmental constraints are added to the work statement.  Sawdust becomes a potential abrasive in woodworking environments that can introduce severe wear in moving parts.  Corrosive and explosion proof atmospheres as well as food industry applications introduce all sorts of chemical compatibility problems that require special materials and processes in order to meet strict guidelines for safety.

As always, resourceful engineers have worked out solutions for all of these difficult applications.  One family of solutions to rolling applications is the use of all ceramic bearings.  No steel, no lubrication.  None is needed because the ceramics are extremely high purity to start with and have extremely high precision surfaces eliminating the need for lubrication.  No outgassing or contamination to worry about.

Other solutions take the form of air bearings and non-contact material handling devices.  Air bearings have become more readily available for conventional applications, but are particularly compelling in large machinery applications where precision is required.  Large flat screen display glass  presents unique challenges that successfully addressed using a combination of air bearing regions and vacuum regions to move the glass without actual contact and with overall flatness measured in millionths of an inch.

A unique solution in pneumatic material handling takes compressed air driven into a funnel shaped recess and creates a vacuum in the center and an air cushion at the edges where the air is exiting.  This creates a vacuum pickup that never quite comes in contact with the part, leaving no marks.  Perfect for solar cell and some food and beverage applications.

Engineers continue to meet the unique challenges of industry and create commerce at the same time.  And that’s what it should be about.

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Start with the big loads.  Plant air handling, building HVAC and lighting are generally a lot more significant in total Watts or equivalent horsepower.  1 Horsepower is equal to 746 Watts.  If you are located in the northern states, winter heating uses a lot more energy than summer air conditioning.  In the southern states, it’s the opposite.  There is one study that puts the northern thermal cycle at a much higher overall cost, so everybody needs to move their manufacturing to the south.

Check all the integral horsepower motors in the plant.  A recent DOE study shows that over time, many motors get replaced with whatever is readily available in the next larger frame size.  This is in reaction to plant failures where the exact replacement motor is not handy or on the shelf.  The result is that the plant power and power factor can be very poor because there is a lot of excess capacity that is not being used efficiently.

Industrial plants also suffer from peak demand billing practices.  The utility company agrees to provide power, but large users get billed extra when they have peaks above their average usage.  Again, look at the large loads, and see if some or all can be put on soft starters or inverters with longer starting profiles.  AC motors try to get to full running speed and spend several seconds at poor power factor and huge inrush currents during starting.  Most motors require at least 4 seconds to get to speed.  So, is there a savings opportunity if you can get by with a 6 to 10 second starting period?  Yes, there absolutely is.

The smaller loads like individual plant floor machines are a little harder to regulate.  Some production machines consist of dozens of individual motors and sub-systems.  In large conveyor installations, newer control system turns off whole zones of equipment if there is no traffic for that section.  Use the same strategy in production equipment.  If there is nothing coming into the machine, turn off as much stuff as possible.

Again, look for the largest loads.  In CNC machines, the spindle is usually the dominant load.  Turning off a 10kW spindle motor will save lots more money than turning off 400 Watt positioning axes.  However, don’t pass up an opportunity if one exists.  If there are a large number of individual axes of motion that have low duty cycles, it may be cost effective to put brakes on the load and turn the motors off when they are not in use.

Prudent planning can be turned into real cash savings.

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Government is not the answer.  Anytime government gets involved there is a very high risk that money will get spent and nothing will change.  Remember stimulus 1?  We were assured that if this money were spent, unemployment would never go above 8%.  And with unemployment at 9.1%, the administration wants to try stimulus 2.  No thanks.

What are the real unemployment numbers?  No one wants to really talk about that because it would mean having to admit that the real number is much higher.  Quoting from the most recent data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there are 14 million people unemployed, officially, with a labor force that has increased to 153.6 million in August.  That’s where the 9.1% comes from.

But the BLS also reports 2.6 million people “marginally attached to the labor force”.  This category refers to people who have been out of work over the last 12 months, ready and available for work, but had not looked for a job over the last 4 weeks.  I’m still not sure I understand this categorization, certainly someone who has been out of work for 12 months should qualify as unemployed.  The quibbling over details here is clearly designed to hide the real numbers.

2.6 million plus 14 million is 16.6 million which is 10.8% unemployment.  The psychologically dreaded 10% unemployment number could be easily avoided if one can find a way to finesse the reporting categories.   How bad is it really?  Some commentators have said the real unemployment numbers are 16% or higher.  Donald Trump said it was 20%+ in his interview with Greta van Sustern last week.  Personally, I am quite sure its something above 10.8%.

Sadly, this is not the first time employment data has been misrepresented.  Remember how the “Green Economy” would generate 30,000 jobs?  The report that was quoted by many in Colorado State and Federal government used a number of statistical machinations to “fluff up” the numbers.  Workers who put insulation in your home were counted as part of the “Green Economy” as were a fraction of the appliance manufacturers workforce, since effort to reduce energy consumption is a part of that industry.

Attempts by government to increase employment have been mediocre.  The way government creates jobs is by adding more government workers.  Which this administration did like crazy in its first year.  This is not how we grow the economy.  Every dollar spent by government is at the expense of someone who works for a living.    It robs the consumer of discretionary dollars that can be spent in the real economy.  When things get bad enough, government spending robs people of their ability to pay for necessities.  This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

More disturbing is the trend in the number of manufacturing jobs added per month.  The manufacturing sector added 14,000 job per month in the second quarter, compared to 35,000 jobs per month added in the first quarter.  Not a good trend.

There are two big lessons here.  One is that manufacturing is where the jobs are. American jobs and American manufacturing.  Our politicians have been running down the manufacturing sector for the last 20 years.  Second is that government is not the answer.  Americans and American ingenuity are.  So let’s agree to let American’s get about the business of inventing the future and get the roadblocks out of the way.

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Cooking raw sugar and turning it into white sugar, for example, requires incredible amounts of heat and steam.  And generating steam requires a lot of energy.  Steam is very expensive to generate and almost impossible to store.  The cost of steam is so high that plants measure steam loss by the second.

Producing magnesium as a metal is a large scale electrolytic process.  The emphasis is on electrolytic.  The plant I visited measured current in 10′s of thousands of amperes.  There was so much power that the PC screens in the building had to be triple shielded or the magnetic field of the power distribution system would mess with the displays.  Huge annual cost of energy.

Where industry and commerce require significant amounts of energy to operate, these businesses become very sensitive to the cost of energy.  The same is true for individuals.  As the cost of gasoline increases we must individually choose to use less, or since some people don’t have the option to use less, pay more for gasoline and have less income to spend on other things.

Energy policy under the direction of the DOE and Congress has promoted solar power and wind power over coal, natural gas and nuclear energy.  There are two problems with this approach.  First, these technologies are very expensive.  Any time someone promotes technology and won’t talk about cost, you should be suspicious.  And that has been the history of alternative energy.

The second problem is that there is currently no way to store the power that is generated.  So unless you can use the power immediately, you’re in trouble.  A popular solar project is cited that used solar panels to generate peak power during the summer afternoons during periods of increased power demand when high air conditioning loads are required.  This is still a very expensive solution, but where the utility charges 3 or 4 times more for electricity during peak demand periods, this solution makes sense.  But it is a very limited application.

The question is, who decides how much energy will cost in the US?  State governments grant permits to open a utility.  They also decide what the utility companies’ goals will be.  The DOE has created consensus about alternative energy without approval from Congress.

Do the decisions of the government make sense?  That’s where the controversy starts.  If you are trying to run a business, then anything that increases costs is probably bad.  But no one in government appears to be listening.

Many businesses and almost every consumer is impacted by the decisions made by government.  Every extra dollar that is spent on lighting,  heating and cooling, and transportation is a dollar that is no longer discretionary.  So maybe that’s the real question.  Who decides what you and I spend our money on?

To the extent that government Policy causes dollars to be paid as increased energy expense, then the rest of the consumer economy suffers.  Which is part of the current problems that our economy is currently experiencing.

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Sometimes that understanding comes from years of experience.  That experience and expertise is crucial to creating quality design.  Often in today’s culture the qualities of long term experience and expert opinion are omitted or unavailable.  As major new technologies emerge, it takes time for broad experience to accumulate and produce the maximum benefit of the technology.

Anybody remember the brick phone?

Of course, there have been many improvements in network performance and microelectronics packaging, but those improvements are all driven by improving the cellphone experience.  The improvements over time are impressive, we are now carrying portable multi-media computers that can support all major communications services.  And most of those phones (computers) are $100 or less.

This is generally the legacy of the electronics industry.  Extremely high performance with a pace of improvements that is breathtaking.

The “learning curve” that enhances our experience of recent innovations like the cellphone is also present in all our other modern systems.  Only some of them aren’t so modern.  Water treatment and delivery is hundreds of years old technology that has been modernized to the extent of using electric motor pumps and modern control technology to facilitate things, but is largely the same as it has always been.  The electric utility was invented by Thomas Edison for the purpose of delivering dc power to small regions in the early day of the electric light.

In some circumstances the “learning curve” can also represent institutional knowledge and bureaucracy that prevents progress from taking place.  The amount of time necessary to demonstrate new technology in a given field, time to conduct feasibility studies, environmental impact studies, massive costs and effort are expended with no guarantee of return.  This kind of risk can only be borne by large companies with sufficient cash flow to support the investment.  It is certainly not the domain of small entrepreneurial startups.

So things like crude oil from Rocky Mountain shale will not produce the 10,000 good jobs that were planned by Shell Oil because after spending all the required time and money, Ken Salazar denied their permit to build a plant. Even though the all the studies all concluded that the project would be successful.

Is it progress, or what?

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This is a very important consideration that is often not a part of public policy. The cost of electricity is currently going up because alternative energy technology is driving the cost of electricity up.  The impact of pubic policy on industry, and on the consumer, is having a negative effect on all parties concerned.  Utility companies, consumers and industrial users are all experiencing increasing costs.  Utility companies are forced to lay off employees, consumers have less disposable income and industrial users are forced to raise prices.  All bad for the economy.

When gasoline goes up by 25% a couple of things happen that are fundamental to the economy.

One is that consumers pay more money for gasoline and less money for other things. Contrary to how the government seems to operate, consumers can’t arbitrarily increase their spending when a major cost goes up.

At the rate we use gasoline, approximately 137 millions gallons per day, the mainstream economy is losing $137 million per day from the consumer sector.  That calculates out to about $50 Billion a year that isn’t getting spent on other goods and services.  Not a good thing for employment.

The other thing about increased cost of gasoline is that transportation costs for agricultural goods and consumer goods.  So another hit to the disposable income side of the economic equation.

The DOE annual budget has risen from $7B to $27B in 2010. Since the inception of the DOE as proposed by Jimmy Carter in 1977, the mission statement has been to ensure the energy independence of the United States.  Only at the time we were only 25% dependent on oil products from foreign sources.  Now we are 75% dependent on oil products from foreign sources.

The dependence on foreign oil might be acceptable if it were in response to market conditions.  But we have spent $357 billion dollars from 1990 to 2010 (not including the money spent from 1977 to 1990), and we are now more dependent on foreign oil sources.

This situation is also partly in response to the oil industry shift during the 1980′s in which it was considered more cost effective to import than to produce domestically.  At the time, this may have been true, but the situation has changed.

The real problem at the root of this is the permission to drill for oil or natural gas.  Since the Federal government regulates land leases through the Bureau of Land Management, the government has final authority to determine if oil or natural gas will be pumped from the ground or in the ocean.

So talk to your congressman.  He (or she) has the power to directly impact the price of gasoline.  Not the oil and gas company.

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The damage is the result of natural forces that are beyond the ability of designers to engineer against.  And how we take heed of these events, or even if we take heed, may be the real measure of progress in western civilization.  The future of nuclear power plants is going to have include choices and alternative technology.

A nuclear power plant is a complex system, mostly controlled by technology from the process industry because it creates steam to drive a turbine which turns a generator.  The generator is a classic electric motor run in reverse to create electricity from torque.  So there is mechatronic technology involved in the process itself.

Even more mechatronics content is involved in the creation of the fuel and the operation of the control rods in water cooled reactors.  Robots are also frequently used in the processing of the fuel into the final shape for use in a reactor.

But the bigger question is what are the technology choices for nuclear power generated electricity that can survive the forces of natural disasters?  Interestingly, there are a number of mini reactor technologies that because of their small size, are much more likely to withstand the forces of nature.  Just Google mini nuclear reactors and you will find pages of information.  And discussions of numerous technologies that are competing for use in the power industry.

Large water cooled reactor have been producing electricity for 40 years or more.  But these designs are massive and susceptible to failure when the water flow is interrupted.  Which is what we have going on in Japan.

There are wave reactors, Thorium reactors, small water cooled designs and pebble bed reactors.  Each technology working its way through the torturous process of qualification for use by federal regulators.

Some of the technology is unproven and controversial.  But since I have seen the pebble bed reactor demonstrated, for me this is a leading edge technology.  The pebble fuel is a small .5mm diameter pebble of uranium contained in layers of graphite and ceramic.  By spacing the fuel apart in small bits, it cannot reach thermal runaway, and in fact, using helium coolant, the system can reach thermal equilibrium at 800 degrees.  Since the ceramic insulator is designed to withstand temperatures of 3000 degrees, there is little chance of the fuel melting the insulator and creating a runaway chain reaction.  Safe, small.  The American Nuclear Regulatory Commission attended a demonstration of this technology years ago.  I saw the video.

So the question is, when are we going to see some progress?  At the rate our government chooses to do things, it will take years.  At the risk of being redundant, providing electricity shouldn’t be about politics, it should be about free markets, and doing things right.  If the electric power industry is going to be regulated by politicians, then politicians need to be doing the people’s business and getting it done.

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In part, a strategic energy policy should include incentives for people willing to engage in the risk of financing photovoltaic plants and wind power projects.  One of the problems with this is that the technology is not cost effective compared to the established methods of generating electricity.  More on that shortly.

But of great concern is how the “incentive” programs are designed to work.  And are they working as intended?

The creation of a “Feed in Tariff” (FiT) is one mechanism that the state governments use to incentivize investment in photovoltaics.  However, the FiT is limited in how much capacity can be built in the photovoltaic supply of electricity.  It has to be funded at the State government level.  So this is really a transfer payment from a group of taxpayers to a small group of investors to get the PV plant built.

In another frame of reference, when we consider the cost of producing energy, the history of the last hundred years has resulted in a mature industry that delivers power on demand to 300+ million users for pennies per kilowatt hour.  The purchase price of a coal fired power plant to produce energy in the US is in the range of $5.9 million per megawatt of capacity.  And that capacity is available day or night.

By the way, this also means that charging electric cars at night, when demand is generally lower for the power plant, is a great way to make the plant more profitable.

So the remaining question is; if you were really worried about the environment and felt that coal and natural gas were bad for the environment, what are the choices and most of all, how expensive is that going to be?

Well, if you are paying 14 cents a kilowatt hour presently, understand that your utility company is probably paying anywhere from 23 to 30 cents per kilowatt hour to buy the power from photovoltaic sources.   That’s pretty expensive.

And photovoltaic plants suffer from the fact that they only operate during daylight.  In fact, they only operate at peak power 2 to 3 hours a day.  Which is only 1/8 of the 24 hour day.  So the asset is only producing 12.5% of the time.  So they are not very cost effective with out a lot of subsidy money coming in to pay for them.

Nuclear power using wave reactors or pebble bed reactors can be very small, are very safe and they are also very economical.  They operate 24 hours a day and don’t emit any pollution to the atmosphere.  At an estimated $6.8 mil/mW they are the ideal alternative for those who are Eco-conscious without breaking the bank.

So why aren’t we hearing more about this option?

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Since the Second World War, manufacturing employment has dropped steadily from 33% of all employment to about 10% of all employment.  What is really interesting about this trend is that the total output of manufactured goods has remained roughly constant.  What accounts for this is increasing productivity.  And in recent years a lot of that productivity has been from automation.

The same Department of Commerce research shows agricultural employment, typically a very high labor area, dropping from 33% to 2-1/2% from the turn of the century, 1900′s, to the present.  And similarly, agricultural output in the US has remained constant.  The main force behind the reduction in labor has been the mechanization of agriculture, or as I would like to refer to it, the “mechatronic-ization” of agriculture, if that doesn’t butcher the English language too severely.

Mechatronics is that elastic term that takes into account so many disparate technologies.  Putting a hydraulic system on a power take off from the gasoline engine on a tractor in order to power a variety of farm implements is mechatronics at its finest.  And the dawn of factory robotics in the 1980′s has lead to production welding robots that cost less than $50,000.  So people are being freed from some of the more repetitive tasks required at the factory level, and, I suppose, being replaced by automation.

The dilemma becomes, how do we create new jobs.  Many people believe that the “Green Revolution” will create a lot of new employment.  Personally, and after much review of industry studies, there are jobs there, but not enough to turn the economy around anytime soon.  And frankly, most of the green power generation technologies have failed to meet their economic burdens, so it’s a work in progress.

On the other hand, the same ingenuity that led to robots on the assembly line in Detroit has also provided us with 3D solid printers that produce very high quality parts in small batches at very low cost.  Another mechatronic triumph.  Three axes of stepping motors using belt drives and rod bearings to move a print head in 3D that dispenses a variety of hot melt plastic materials into solid shapes following a computer program for a 3D part.

This technology drastically reduces the major hurdle of new product development, which is the cost of prototyping.  Hmmm.  Sounds like an opportunity.  And it is.

So maybe the key to increasing employment is new solutions to old problems.  Reinventing the means of production in every industry should be a powerful stimulus to innovation, invention and economic growth.  Let’s hope so.

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The issue is that you have to convert the kinetic energy of the wind, which is very low depending on where you are, into enough mechanical energy to turn something that will turn a generator.  Sounds simple, and it is, up to a point.

The wind part can be thought of in Watts per Square Meter of energy.  So we have to come up with something that has very large surface area and very light weight.  Sailing technology comes to mind.  And there is a huge range of efficiency based on aerodynamics, which is why there is so much effort around blade design in the current generation of wind turbines.

But at energy levels of 150 W/m**2, it takes a lot of square meters to hit enough energy to be useful.  If you are thinking “small wind” for residential applications 2000-3000 watts peak power would require 20 square meters of surface area. That could be a rotor just over ten feet in diameter by eighteen feet tall.   That is a very large mechanical structure for a residential building.  And not easy to support securely against high winds.

2000  to 3000 Watts of intermittent power might displace half your power bill during the year if the wind blows a lot.  If not, maybe 1/4 of your annual power bill if you don’t get a lot of wind.  So you still need the power company unless you make the turbine 4 times bigger.

And the product cannot cost more than you are paying presently for the electricity. In states like New Jersey, New York or California where electricity costs are high, that might amount to $1500 if the value is for part of the annual power used.  In states where electricity costs are 11 cents/kWh, its really not worth it.

Land based wind farms have not done very well so far.  Think about the complexity of building gearboxes at the megawatt level that have to withstand sudden changes in wind conditions.  It’s nothing like the industrial world.  Historical costs of operation and maintenance (O&M) are being reported at 20 and 30% due to premature failure of gearboxes, electrical systems catching fire, blades breaking due to control system failures.  The list goes on.

So Wind Power still stands as a major mechatronic challenge.

What is the proper role of the government in the wind energy business?  President Obama says he is committed to promoting wind energy in this country.  Wind Energy will bring jobs to America.  Well, maybe for some of the construction guys.  So far, a significant amount of wind turbines sold in the US come from foreign suppliers.  And even for domestic wind turbines, a lot of the parts come from offshore suppliers.

If you look at all the new bureaucracy being created,  well, it will be amazing if anything ever gets done.  The newly formed Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement has been created to oversee the sale of leases of Federal Waters, where offshore wind is expected to migrate. Seems like the only jobs being created are Federal jobs.  By the way, they have 14 openings right now and some of them are Petroleum and Enviromental Engineers, so if you’re not busy, check it out.

The process to get a lease from BOEMRE will take at least 2-3 years before you can even think about putting equipment out.  Can you spell Boondoggle?

Mechatronic Tips