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World's First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Island
Albanach writes "According to this article in The Herald Newspaper, the island of Islay, on the West coast of Scotland is set to become the world's first Hydrogen Fuel Cell powered island. Scientests at Napier University wish to use the existing Wave Power Station to treat sea water and store the resulting hydrogen in fuel cells. The first plan is to power a building, moving on to powering the entire island in a decade."
This is bullshit. Cuba has been hydrogen-fuel-cell powered for decades.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Won't anyone think about the rotation of the Earth?
I have been pwned because my
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is ded.
Fact: *BSD is dying
RTFA
For example, the May issue of Wired magazine had an article entitled Farming EU's Windy Coastlines about using wind turbines planted off the coast of Europe to generate power, some the size of the wing span of a 747. I'd like to see a self sufficient power grid built using this technology. Unlike many other renewable resources, this faces little opposition. Used effectively, it would be far cheaper than hydrogen.
This is a good step; any action that diminishes the powers of the evil oil empires is what I would call a good one. Perhaps it will even lead to more developement of hydrogen powered fuel cells and the like.
You think that is news?
Please! I have a hydregyn powared fuel cell penis, but
you dont see me posting all over slashdot about it,
now do you?
Hello catty catty cat. Stating the obvious again :o)
Here is some karma, go buy yourself some pride, and
get a character while you are at it.
-- Spot idiocy, adopt a KarmaWhore.
OK. Let's understand what they're doing.
1: Seawater is made out of Hydrogen and Oxygen (with lots of energy in the bonds)
2: Solar panels at the sea locations provide the energy, albeit slowly, to electrolyze the water to the gaseous components. H 2 and O2.
3: The H2 is stored until used in Hydrogen Fuel cells. Combining of Hydrogen gas, Oxygen gas and heat give lots of heat. This turns turbines.
First problem. The solar cells are way innefficent. I'm guessing about 10% (10% of sun is turned into usable electric current). Electrolysis would be too slow, not to mention how expensive even 1 solar panel is. However, I've heard of a man at Purdue who has a prototype of a solar panel that is efficent to 35%. Problem is it's too expensive to make, and it takes more energy to make it than you can gather in it's whole lifetime.
Second problem: All that Hydrogen gas has to be stored somewhere, and in air-tight containers. The only feasible way I can see it being stored is in liquid or metal form. Those takes nasty pressures and tempatures. Gasoline is already fairly dense and has a good energy density.
Third problem: You still lose a lot of energy in turning the turbines.
Overall, I'd HATE to see how inefficent it really is. OH well. BTW, isthis sponsored by any eco-freaks?