Category Archives: Web/Tech

Google invests in wind and solar

While Southern Company and Georgia Power pour money
down that nuclear pit by the Savannah River and Progress Energy can’t
afford to fix its Crystal River nuke, Google’s
wind and solar projects are already online on time,
all for less than the cost overruns so far at Vogtle
or the fix-it price at Crystal River.

David Goldman wrote for CNN Money 10 January 2013,

Google invests $200 million in Texas wind farm,



“We look for projects like Spinning Spur because, in addition to
creating more renewable energy and strengthening the local economy,
they also make for smart investments,” Kojo Ako-Asare, Google’s
senior manager of corporate finance, said in a

blog post.

Ako-Asare added that wind farms offer “attractive returns relative
to the risks.”

Which is the opposite of nuclear’s

huge risks relative to the

apparently negative returns.
So how much wind and solar energy does Google generate?

Continue reading →

2012 solar deployments driven by Moore’s Law price reductions


Moore's Law in solar Watts/$100

Moore’s Law for solar is about decreasing price per Watt,
or more Watts per dollar.
Here’s an example of a common confusion, to think it’s about efficiency:

“The curve will obviously become asymptotic at some point, ie,. the rate
of improvement will flatten out, so we end up with a sort of squashed
“S” shape curve, because you can’t get more than 100% efficiency —
36 watts/m2 or so.”

And indeed efficiency probably will flatten out soon.
But it’s not solar
efficiency that’s improving by Moore’s Law: it’s price per watt.
That can keep improving for a long time.

Here’s an example of decreasing price.
Scott Detrow wrote for NPR 23 December 2012,

Forget Fracking: 2012 Was A Powerful Year For Renewables,


Rhone Resch
“Just to give you perspective,” Resh said, “in Washington, D.C.,
where I live, when I installed solar on my house six years ago, the
average install cost was about $14 a watt. Today it’s about $4 a
watt.”

Here’s another comparison, this one just for solar panels.

KC 170 solar panels, purchased 2005
In 2005 the first set of solar panels we got cost $670 each
and produced 170 Watts DC each, or $4.94/Watt.
In 2011 our second set of solar panels cost $562 each
for 235 Watts DC each, or $2.39/Watt.
That’s more than 50% price decrease for solar panels in six years.
(I can’t compare inverters or support structures directly,
because those were sized so differently, but those have also
come down in price, helping lower the overall install cost).

Year price /Watt price /panel Watts /panel Dimens. square inches Watts /100 sq in. Model
2005 $4.94 $670 170W 50×39″ 1950 8.7 KC 170
2011 $2.39 $562 235W 39.1×64.6″ 2525 9.3 Sharp ND 235 QCJ
2012 $1.32 $310 235W 39.1×64.6″ 2525 9.3 Sharp ND 235 QCJ

Meanwhile, the Watts per surface area hardly changed, from about

Continue reading →

What is Moore’s Law for solar power?

Many people are unfamiliar with Moore’s Law, and

how it affects solar power.
Moore’s Law doesn’t occur
in many technologies or industries,
but it’s there in solar photovoltaic (PV).
For those of us whose whole working lives have been
affected by Moore’s Law, seeing it turn up in another field
is like a flashing neon sign pointing to the future.
A future of distributed solar power sunrise
over the crumbling industrial relics of coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants.
A future with much less control by monopoly utilities,
which is why they fight it.
If they even see it coming; Bill Gates didn’t, back in the day,
but Jeff Bezos of Amazon did.
They both surfed that tide,
and Moore’s Law made both of them among the richest humans on the planet
while changing the world for all of us.
Steve Jobs even used it to put a computer in your pocket
more powerful than big companies could buy a few decades ago.
What does Moore’s Law for solar power mean for electric power?

This chart shows the telltale symptom of Moore’s Law in solar electricity:
65% compound annual growth rate in solar power plants
deployed for the past 5 years:


Source:
Solar Power Graphs to Make You Smile
by Zachary Shahan for CleanTechnica 10 June 2011.

As SunPower’s Dinwoodie puts it:

That 17 GW installed in 2010 is the equivalent of 17 nuclear power
plants — manufactured, shipped and installed in one year. It
can take decades just to install a nuclear plant. Think about that.
I heard Bill Gates recently call solar “cute.” Well,
that’s 17 GW of “cute” adding up at an astonishing pace.



Bill Gates should recall that Moore’s Law made formerly “cute” PCs with his
“cute” operating system Windows expand into every company in the world
and made him the second richest human on the planet.
Growth of computer software markets,

like for the U.S. as shown in the graph on the right,
is a symptom of the original Moore’s Law.
Software runs on hardware, and these hardware market curves
are driven more directly by Moore’s Law:

Continue reading →

Augusta high tech job growth: second in the country

What is Augusta doing that attracts so many high tech jobs?

Orlando Montoya wrote for GPB News 7 December 2012,

Augusta High Tech Ranks Nationally,


A national group working to promote entrepreneurship says Augusta
has the second highest growth rate of high tech jobs in the past
five years.

Only Boise, Idaho grew tech jobs faster.

San Francisco based Engine Advocacy says between 2006 and 2011,
Augusta increased its technology sector jobs by 81%.

City officials credit the area’s low cost of living.

If that was the only key,
Lowndes County and Valdosta MSA would lead the country….
What else?

Continue reading →

Valdosta-Lowndes Prospector website @ VLCIA 2012-06-19

Lots of interesting detail; room for improvement in marketing and high level presentation: Valdosta-Lowndes Prospector website.

S. Meghan Duke gave a lengthy presentation of the GIS website Valdosta-Lowndes Prospector, at the 19 June 2012 VLCIA meeting. Chairman Roy Copeland wanted to know (5:21) whether it showed at the top the industrial parks VLCIA has spent so much time and effort developing, maybe by age, size, in alphabetical order? She indicated you could do all those things, but they didn’t necessarily crop up without somebody selecting filters that caused them to crop up. However they are featured properties, and whenever they are updated, updates show up. Project Manager Allan Ricketts said he’d heard good reactions so far. Executive Director Andrea Schruijer said they could feature parks or whatever through facebook and twitter, too. And yes, they have a floodplain overlay, among many other overlays.

Here’s the video:

Continue reading →

Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman @ LCC 2012-05-08


At a recent Lowndes County Commission meeting, I said:

I was interested to learn two weeks ago that my neighbor

Timothy Nessmith was interested in getting DSL on Hambrick Road.

He said you can get it as close to him as Quarterman Road.
I can attest to that because I have 3 megabit per second DSL,
due to being just close enough to Bellsouth’s DSL box on Cat Creek Road,
but most of Quarterman Road can’t get DSL due to distance.
There are some other land-line possibilties, involving cables in the ground
or wires on poles.



Then there are wireless possibilities, including EVDO, available from Verizon,
with 750 kilobit per second (0.75 Mbps) wide area access from cell phone towers.

Verizon’s towers could also be used for WIFI antennas,
for up to 8 Mbps Internet access, over a wide scale.

Then there’s metropolitan-area Internet.

Chattanooga has the fastest such network, with 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps).
But

hundreds of communities around the country have such networks,
including (continued after

the video)…


Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman

Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

…Lafayette, Louisiana,
Bowling Green, Kentucky,
Lagrange, Georgia,
and

Thomasville, Georgia.
They use it for
public safety,
education (Wiregrass Tech, VSU),
and

It attracts new industry.
If you want knowledge-based industry,
they’re going to be expecting Internet access not just at work,
but at home, whereever they live.

Other uses include

Continue reading →

Leon County Commission agenda packets and videos

Apparently the same day Tallahassee and Leon County Florida Commissioners met together,
the Leon County Board of Commissioners had its Regular Public Meeting. I know this because they publish on the web agendas with board packet details for each item plus video. They already have video on the web after yesterday’s meeting.

Do you prefer just to listen, without having to look at them?

View Live or Previously Recorded Commission Meetings on Real Audio

They’ve even got a trouble ticket system for tracking requests from citizens!

Maybe the Lowndes County Commission and the various local city councils could ask Leon County, Florida how they do it.

-jsq

Industrial Authority board meets Tuesday @ VLCIA 2012 04 17

Industrial Authority board meets about something or other Tuesday; hard to tell what. Maybe this will reveal some sort of strategy:

  • Target Market Study Update

VLCIA’s website is restored enough to say:

The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority will hold a Regular Board Meeting on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 5:30pm in the Industrial Authority Conference room.

They’ve also posted a notice on their facebook page.

The agenda doesn’t say much. I guess that one time they put a lot of information in it was a one-shot. And if you want to see any old agendas, you’ll need to wait until they finish fixing their website. Or look in the LAKE blog….

Now, let’s see, where are those minutes?

Here’s the agenda.

-jsq

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street

Continue reading →

Industrial Authority held unannounced meeting last night

The VDT has a story this morning about an Industrial Authority meeting
last night,

Two new industries announced
by Kay Harris.
That’s a bit of a surprise, since they didn’t have that date on their


own web page and they didn’t post an agenda.
Also, I saw both VLCIA Executive Director Andrea Schruijer
and their Chairman Roy Copeland speak Monday night, and neither
of them said a word about their meeting date being changed to the
next night.

Here’s some irony in the VDT’s story:

Schruijer also discussed the Authority’s plans to move ahead with the


Strategic Planning Process right after the first of the year. Following
the Community Assessment which was conducted over the summer, the next
phase is a full fledged commitment to begin the planning process.

The intention, according to Schruijer and Copeland, is to include
community partners in the process as the assessment showed that many
in the community think that the various entities work at odds with
each other, rather than on the same page, when it comes to economic
development.

Why ever would people think that?

According to

VLCIA’s website:

Continue reading →

You like blogs, facebook, twitter, etc.? Oppose the “PROTECT IP” Act

If you like facebook, twitter, eBay, blogs, other social media, or even
Google or Yahoo,
you won’t like the so-called “PROTECT IP” Act, which is coming up to
a vote in the Senate any day now.


It would let big corporate copyright holders impose monitoring,
take down websites, and cut off funding, all without need for a court order.
There’s still time to oppose it.

Parker Higgins wrote for EFF Monday,

The PROTECT IP Act Is Very Real and Very Bad — Call Now to Block It

The

PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)
is the evil step-sister of the

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA),
the much-criticized Internet blacklist bill introduced
in the House last month. They’ve got a lot in common — both bills
would allow the government and private rightsholders to

censor the Internet for Americans,
and both bills have faced

strong opposition
from regular citizens, business leaders, and public interest groups.

In one way, though, PIPA is much worse: while SOPA is still in the
House committee stage and has been the target of extraordinary public
opposition, PIPA is already out of committee and poised for consideration
of the full Senate. That means PIPA is a few dangerous steps further
along in the process of becoming law. And with only a few weeks to go
in this legislative session, the Senate may try to rush the bill through
before the public has a chance to respond.

Here’s one way to contact your elected representatives.
Or call them on the
telephone.
See also

LAKE’s contact information for national elected officials.

-jsq