9.21.2010

Hydrogen-Powered Personal Helicopter

September 21st, 2010 - What do you think?

A personal helicopter weighing just 230 lb created sizzling news when it flew on hydrogen with zero emission. With an ability to carry payloads up to 800 lbs, this pocket Hercules can fly for 90 minutes. Fitted with easy controls, this reaches a speed of 100 knots thanks to a pair of small yet powerful motors mounted on it. Two common and easily available things – Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and a catalyst – combined to bring about a milestone in personal aviation history with attention to the environmental issues as well! Avimech has combined these two to power engine in to an innovative machine.

YouTube: Avimech Dragonfly | More Videos

A unique combination:
Avimech has combined two ideas – a rocket and a helicopter – to create this cute little personal aviation machine baptizing it as 'Dragonfly.' Actually this idea to utilize H2O2 and a catalyst has been around for some time. But to use them to power this hybrid version of a rocket in a helicopter is the brain child of Avimech.

Motors at rotor tips:
There are two powerful small motors fitted at rotor tips which resemble rocket nozzles. These nozzles propel the rotors getting power from the reaction of H2O2 with the catalyst. There is no gearbox. There are two fuel tanks to store H2O2. The H2O2 reacts with the catalyst in the rocket nozzles and the reaction powers the rotor nozzles which sets the rotor tips in high-speed motion.

Common ingredients:
Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is very safe environmentally and easily available chemical. Usually printing presses are cleaned with H2O2. This commercial-grade H2O2 is diluted and used in the rotor nozzles. The reaction of H2O2 with the catalyst produces the high pressure which sets the blades into motion.

A simple but great machine:
The motors are 8-inch long and they can generate 102 hp which helps the aircraft peak a speed of 100 knots. The H2O2 is diluted to about 50-70%. And when the catalyst reacts with the H2O2, only water vapor gets released and no other harmful emission occurs.

"(ERA) helicopter:"
Acclaimed as the first ever created environmentally responsible aviation (ERA) helicopter, Dragonfly certainly deserves this epithet. Emitting nothing but water vapor and running on only hydrogen- an environmentally safe fuel, this helicopter does not pollute the space with harmful emissions like carbon.

Future plans?
This hydrogen-powered, zero-carbon-emission environmentally friendly but expensive helicopter has been the brainchild of Ricardo Cavalcanti of Avimech. Though at present the engines are not fuel-efficient – guzzling 11 gallons of fuel per hour, the day may not be far off when this is also rectified and a perfect eco-friendly personal aviation machine may be available.

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Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

Fed Ponders Bolder Action on Economic Growth

Fed to ponder whether bolder action needed

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AP – FILE - In a Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010 photo, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies on Capitol …

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By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa, Ap Economics Writer – 2 hrs 5 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve policymakers are wrestling with what additional steps — if any — should be taken to strengthen the plodding economy and drive down near double-digit unemployment.

Lots of lively debate is expected at Tuesday's meeting. But few expect any major programs to be unveiled. Instead, many will be looking to see if the Fed offers new clues about the timing of any new aid and what changes in the economy would trigger such a move. To give the Fed extra time for discussions, Tuesday's meeting is scheduled to start around 8 a.m. — earlier than when it has two-day sessions.

There are differing views on the Fed's main policymaking group — the Federal Open Markets Committee — about what should be done. And some pressure is off after a few mildly positive economic reports showed the pace of layoffs has slowed, shoppers' appetites to spend has picked up and factory production is growing.

The reports have helped to ease concerns about the economy slipping back into a new recession, giving the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues a little breathing room.

"We may be emerging from a soft patch," said Chris Rupkey, economist at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, of the recent batch of encouraging reports. "This should allay the concerns of Fed officials."

Even without action, the Fed could send a stronger signal that it is prepared to act if it appears the economy is in danger of heading into another recession. Doing so would be aimed at boosting public and investor confidence that the Fed will come to the rescue to keep the economic recovery alive. That would reinforce a message Bernanke delivered in late August: the Fed still has some tools to help the economy and will use them if needed.

Investors appeared hopeful Monday that the Fed policymakers would offer some hints. The Dow Jones industrial average closed 145 points up and broader indexes closed higher, extending the September rally into its fourth week.

Policymakers' discussions on Tuesday — the last session before the Nov. 2 elections — are likely to focus on what specifically would trigger the Fed to take bolder action to help the economy, as well as what the action would be. Those discussions could tee-up a decision later this year, at the Fed's Nov. 2-3 meeting or at its last regularly scheduled session of the year on Dec. 14.

For his own part, Bernanke laid out some important markers in his Aug. 27 speech at an economics conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. He said the Fed would take action if the economic outlook were to "deteriorate significantly" and if the country seemed headed for a bout of deflation — a destabilizing drop in wages, prices of goods and services, and the value of stocks, homes and other assets.

Bernanke didn't spell out what would constitute a significant deterioration, in terms of unemployment, economic growth or other key barometers. Those are some of the things he and his colleagues will be examining at Tuesday's session.

The Fed's meeting comes one day after the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of academic economists, declared that the recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009. It marked the longest and most severe downturn since the Great Depression. The decision won't affect the Fed's deliberations on Tuesday. That's because the Fed makes policy decisions based on where it thinks the economy is heading, say six months from now. Not where it has been.

Economic growth slowed to a crawl in the second quarter — advancing at a pace of just 1.6 percent, compared with 3.7 percent growth in the first three months of the year. Growth in the July-September period is expected to be similarly weak. That raises the odds that the unemployment rate, already high at 9.6 percent, could climb even higher in the months ahead.

The risk is that this could trap the economy into another vicious circle: High unemployment could make consumers and businesses even more cautious in their spending, and that in turn weakens the economy further.

As to options for juicing up economic growth, Bernanke indicated a preference to launch a new program to buy large amounts of government debt. Such a move would be designed to lower already low rates on mortgages, corporate loans and other debt. The idea behind that is to entice people and businesses to spend more, which would strengthen the economy and lower unemployment.

In monetary policy circles, that's known as "quantitative easing." That's when the Fed — as it did during the recession and financial crises — takes unconventional steps to inject massive amounts of money into the economy. The Fed does this to lower interest rates and to help banks lend more. As a result, the Fed's balance sheet has ballooned to $2.3 trillion, nearly triple since before the crisis.

At its last meeting in August, the Fed, worried about the loss of economic momentum, took a small step to aid the recovery: It decided to use proceeds from its huge mortgage portfolio and buy government debt. The small amount involved helped nudge down mortgage rates. But it would take a bigger buying binge to really push rates push rates down.

But even that wouldn't guarantee that Americans would rush out and buy homes, cars and other things. The Fed's key interest rate is already at a record low near zero. It's been there since December 2008. And, the economy is still only plodding along.

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Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
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scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

Poll finds voters' mood on economy is grim -- for both parties

– 1 hr 55 mins ago

By JANE SASSEEN
Yahoo! News

With the economy clearly the big issue on voters' minds, Democrats and Republicans alike are ramping up the rhetoric with only six weeks to go before critical midterm elections that will determine who controls Congress.

Yet Americans surveyed in the first of a series of ABC News/Yahoo! News polls, released early Tuesday, have a message for both sides: Many respondents — including a clear majority of independents, who have provided the critical swing votes in many recent elections — have little confidence in either party's ability to do more for the economy.

Since Labor Day, President Barack Obama has focused intently on the economy, proposing a host of stimulus measures and warning in a series of combative speeches that a win for Republicans will mean returning to the Bush-era economic policies that the president says caused the economy to tank in the first place. (Read an ABC News story on Obama's new plan to create jobs.)

"Something that took 10 years to create is going to take a little more time to solve," Obama said at a Sept. 20 town-hall-style meeting broadcast by cable channel CNBC. Later, he said that "the most important thing we can do" to address the deficit and high unemployment is to spur growth in the economy. "What we can't do is go back to the same old things we were doing."

Republican leaders, meanwhile, continue to hammer home the message that two years of Democratic efforts to bolster the economy have failed, with little to show for the hundreds of billions of dollars spent but a soaring deficit, stagnant growth and still-sky-high joblessness.

"The American people are clamoring for a focus on jobs and righting our economy," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a Sept. 16 statement. "Instead, for two years the president and the majority in Congress have veered off to the far left and pursued their own liberal wish-list agenda." (Watch ABC News video profile of Mitch McConnell.)

Neither side has convinced a majority of Americans. Fully 47% of those surveyed in the ABC/Yahoo! News poll say it won't make a difference to the economy whether Democrats or Republicans are in control of Congress.

That dissatisfaction was on full display during the CNBC town hall, when Velma R. Hart described herself as "one of your middle-class Americans" took the microphone to confront the president. Saying that she is a wife, a mother, a veteran and the chief financial officer of a veterans service organization, Hart told the president: "Quite frankly, I'm exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the man for change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now."

The question drew a long response from the president, who ticked off a list of his administration's moves to help such families: lowered student loan costs, protections against abusive credit card and mortgage practices, expanded health insurance for children. "And so my goal here is not to try to convince you that everything's where it needs to be. It's not. That's why I ran for president. But what I am saying is that we're moving in the right direction."

Video courtesy of CNBC. For more visit CNBC.com

The exchange became an immediate Internet sensation, as right-of-center websites turned the questioner into a viral star.

And no matter how often Obama makes the argument, his message appears far from sinking in. The unhappiness with Washington's efforts on the economy is even more stark among independents, according to the ABC News/Yahoo! News poll. A whopping 65% of them say it won't matter one way or the other which party is running the show.

The results of the poll, a national, random-sample survey conducted by Langer Research Associates, reflects widespread pessimism over Washington's ability to heal the economy.

The poll also may reflect a realization that the government, for all its influence and massive spending, has only limited control over the $14.6 trillion U.S. economy.

"Maybe independents have the more realistic view," says Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "They may recognize most of what they hear from both parties as rhetoric."

Still, those numbers appear to represent a sharp shift among independents, who made up a key bloc that helped lift Obama into the presidency and helped give the Democrats some of the strongest congressional majorities in years. After independents backed George W. Bush and congressional Republicans in 2000 and 2004, the bloc's disillusionment with the Iraq war and the weakening economy led to a heavy shift into the Democratic camp. Obama won independents by 52% to 44%, says Sabato.

Many are now clearly disillusioned with the administration's performance. Only 11% of independents surveyed said they believe the economy will have a better chance of improving if the Democrats remain in charge after November.

Unhappy as many independents are with the current regime, however, that's hardly translating into a strong belief that Republicans will do any better. Only 21% of independents think the economy has a better chance of improving if Republicans gain control of Congress.

Analysts say those trends reflect a widespread sense that neither side has succeeded at coming up with effective policies to jumpstart the economy or job growth — and that much of what's being put on the table now is just more of the same. (ABC News video interview: Why are Democrats running from the president?)

"The Republicans left office on bad terms. Then the Democrats came in, spent a trillion dollars and said, 'Trust us.' Independent voters did trust them, and two years later they're seeing few results," says Daniel Clifton, a policy analyst with investment firm Strategas Research Partners in Washington. "They are disillusioned; they don't believe anyone is going to fix the problems."

Taylor Griffin, a former economic spokesman for John McCain who is now a partner in Hamilton Place Strategies, agrees. "Right now, the polling doesn't represent a swing towards Republicans; it's more a rejection of Democratic policies. It's more 'a plague on both your houses.'"

With their majorities in the House and possibly the Senate under threat, Democrats are sharpening their efforts to highlight the contrast between the two parties. The president has argued repeatedly in recent speeches that a vote to hand control of Congress back to the Republicans will mean a return to the Bush-era economic policies.

Will it work? For all Americans' current unhappiness over the economy, 52% say they still would prefer to have Obama in charge of economic policy rather than his predecessor. Only 35% of the survey respondents said they would prefer for Bush to still be in charge.

While that's a healthy margin, Obama's numbers don't reflect strong confidence in his oversight of the economy. A host of recent polls have shown broad dissatisfaction with his overall performance on the economy. An ABC/Washington Post poll completed Sept. 2, for example, showed that just 41% of Americans approved of how he's handling things. Only when compared with Bush does he poll well. (Revisit Minnesota's "Miss Me Yet?" Bush billboard.)

Those numbers contain a warning for Obama and his party as well. The percentage of Americans wishing Bush were still in charge of the economy is considerably higher than might be expected, given that Bush's approval ratings for handling the economy were at just 22 percent in an ABC/Washington Post poll in September 2008.

At least some Americans now appear to view Bush's economic tenure more favorably than they did two years ago — a tendency that appears far sharper among independents. Some 76% of Republicans would prefer Bush on the economy, while 90% of Democrats prefer Obama, as do 49% of independents. But 33% of independents now say they'd rather Bush were running the economic show.

Americans older than 35 are also more inclined to wish for Bush. While roughly 46% of them prefer Obama, some 38% say they would rather that Bush were in charge of economic policy again. That's a far cry from Americans ages 18 to 34, who prefer Obama over Bush on the economy by 64% to 28%.

As a result, there's a risk in focusing too much on the backward-looking message. Efforts by Obama and other Democrats to raise the specter of the "bad old days" under Bush may be of limited and declining value in drawing voters.

Analysts and strategists say independents will be particularly difficult to win over with that message.

"Voters don't cut anyone any slack," says Griffin. "At this point, they're saying to the president: The buck stops with you."

But Democratic strategist Robert Shrum, who ran John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, argues that Obama has a shot at turning the tides of the election back in Democrats' favor if he focuses far more on the specific differences between how the two parties would handle key issues such as the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts.

"That is a big opening for Obama," he says. "The conventional wisdom is that the die is cast. But if he has a clear, simply defined message, things can move fast."

Much, of course, will depend on who actually shows up at the polls come November. At the moment, with the Republican base far more charged up than Democratic voters, most analysts believe the GOP will probably see much stronger turnout.

Independents will again play a key role, but Sabato points out another critical factor: Though recent polls have shown that the independents who show up in November are more likely to vote Republican than Democratic, this year's group of self-identified "independents" will be a different group than those who turned up in 2008.

Turnout in November is expected to be roughly 20 percentage points lower than it was two years ago, Sabato says. Many of those who are dropping out are the "Democratically inclined" independents such as those from minority groups or younger voters.

"The independents turning up at the polls will be more conservative and more Republican-leaning in 2010," Sabato says. It isn't so much that millions of independents have swung from one party to the other over the last two years. But many of the independents who supported Obama two years ago may be so unhappy with what they've seen on the economy and elsewhere that they will simply stay home.

Jane Sasseen is the editor-in-chief of politics and opinion at Yahoo! News.

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Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

The Illusion of a Level Playing Field

Most people expect and hope that PV will become cost-effective so that it can compete without government subsidies. They see this as the societal end game, an end to subsidies and the starting flag for the private sector to work its magic. Even PV people want this, and they will say they expect it soon, when in their hearts they may think it's unfair – who pays for all those externalities the other energy sources don't pay for?

Most traditional market-oriented people can't even see the reason why society should pay even temporary subsidies. They see subsidies as violating the level playing field ideal. No one should have any advantage over anyone else, they say.

They believe there is a level playing field, and they want to preserve it. Most people do. It seems utterly natural.

It is a remarkable fact that humans rapidly adapt to change. Soon they hardly even notice a change, as they naturally adapt, as if they had sea legs. Change a level playing field, and most people just change with it. Soon they think it's level again - when it was never level in the first place. Just tilted the way they were used to, the way they liked.

Our drive for stability seems to demand that as soon as a new way of doing things is established, much to the chagrin and pain of the previous way, it becomes "level." The King is dead; long live the King!

There are few markets where society's thumbprint is more marked than in the energy market. Put bluntly, past societal preferences and investments have defined today's energy market; and future ones will redefine it, no matter how much anyone says otherwise.

Forget the level playing field. There's no such thing. Let's look at the facts:

1. The nuclear industry would not exist without the Price Anderson Act, which allows nuclear power plants to operate without accident liability. Without that Act, lenders would charge double today's interest rates to cover their risks, and nuclear would be uneconomical. Why do you think the first thing any President does to awaken the nuclear industry is promise it loan guarantees? Is it even necessary to add worries about terrorism and spent nuclear fuel to see how much society buries its anxieties about nuclear in extra, but hidden support?

2. The coal industry kills people underground, kills them above ground with particulates, and is the biggest source of carbon dioxide. The people who work in the mines are being replaced by machines and explosives, and those machines and explosives remove mountain tops or strip mine the West. Coal ash is the spent fuel of coal power plants, buried under golf courses and erupting from rupturing ash ponds. Where in the price of coal are those costs?

3. Natural gas is the great white hope of traditionalists, and our confidence in it depends on an overnight doubling of reserves created for a desperate audience by calling shale gas safe and clean. Even without shale gas, pipeline leaks and explosions in Michigan and California form the backdrop to drilling platform explosions in the Gulf. Natural gas is not a dependable solution, even if we wish otherwise. But it has a tremendous hidden subsidy - if its price goes up, the Public Utility Commission will automatically pass it along to you. Do you know this? Do you consider it a subsidy? Has it melted into the woodwork, along with all the other weirdness we call a level playing field?

4. Three dollar a gallon gasoline may be something Joe six pack has gotten used to, but it's equivalent to 36 ¢/kWh electricity in terms of energy content for moving a car. PV and wind are half that price, if only we had the cheap batteries to go with them. Persian Gulf blackmail and Gulf of Mexico explosions top off the list of offenses of this essential component of today's level playing field.

Society has made choices and continues to make choices that favor traditional energy sources. When we have a series of accidents in the Gulf, our Southern politicians call for more drilling not more safety. Long ago, they were co-opted by the tilt of that playing field, necessitating they ignore accidents and environmental degradation. The same is true of Appalachian politicians. This is the power of the tilted level playing field in action, and we hardly notice it. We think it's "normal and rational."

What will happen to the level playing field? As alternatives like PV, CSP, and wind become more and more convincing and familiar, the level playing field will shift again and deprive the traditional fuels of their favors. Instead, the favors will become foundations for solar, wind, and electric transport. That will become the new level playing field, and no one will call it otherwise.

Those being marginalized will complain, but their voices will fade. The rest of us will either enjoy the change or look the other way, if we even notice it. When the transition is over, we won't even remember the process. We'll say solar, wind and electric transport became cost effective.

It isn't fair or right to expect PV to become cost-effective without any societal help. But, shhhhh…we don't need to say anything about it. Soon, once society likes PV enough, it will help it in such a way that no one notices anymore, like it does now for coal, nuclear, oil, and gas.

Ken Zweibel

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Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com