Compressed air is another means of storing wind energy that is getting looked at again. The CAES schemes need large geological structures such as salt mines or depleted gas fields, but there are quite a lot of viable structures in places like Texas and Ontario where there is also interest in wind energy. It is not economical on a small scale since a large part of the compression cost is independent of the reservoir size.
According to the US Department of Energy "nearly two-thirds of the natural gas in a conventional power plant is consumed by a typical natural gas turbine because the gas is used to drive the machine's compressor. In contrast, a compressed-air storage plant uses low-cost heated compressed air to power the turbines and create off-peak electricity, conserving some natural gas."
In the last 20 years only two facilities have ever been built - a 110-megawatt plant in Alabama and a 290-megawatt plant in Germany. Iowa is building a new plant "expected to cost $200 million and operate by 2011 with the capacity to store 200 megawatts of power, enough for several days. Both the Iowa and Alabama installations can draw air to make power within 15 minutes and make a gas turbine roughly 40 percent more efficient. "
I think it was the early Dr Who series that created the biggest impression. I'm 43 and can remember viewing Dr Who from behind the sofa when I was about 5 or 6 years old. The Cybermen seemed scary then ! I've discussed Dr Who with people of my generation a few times, with work colleagues, school friends and relatives and everyone my age could remember hiding behind the sofa when Dr Who was on, so no wonder it left an impression on us.
I can imagine later generations had other sci-fi to compare Dr Who and would not be as innocent as we were then. I also think the later Dr Who's were much more jokey and less serious, rather like what happened with the James Bonds !
The movie studios claim they need regional coding to allow them to see which movies are successful in the US, before promoting and launching them elsewhere.
Outside of the US though, all we see is that we are paying higher prices to get movies long after they have been released in the US. It just feels anticompetitive to us as we could often import them more cheaply or buy them on holiday in the US.
Now the music companies are also trying to make music CD's you can't play/copy onto computers. I was interested to read that, Philips who licences the CD formats to other companies, isn't going along with this. Apparently if the music companies modify CD's not to play on computers, they mustn't use the standard "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo, as their modifications fall outside of this standard according to Philips. Philips is even looking at making CD writers that could cope with the modified CDs anyway.
Anonymous Coward wrote: Why's that interesting? ARM sold out to Intel long ago.
I find ARM interesting. It is well on its way to be the worlds leading processor architecture. It is already used in 70-80% of mobile phones. Recently Microsoft stopped supporting Hitachi, MIPS chips for Pocket PC2002 and only supports ARM chips now. Palm already announced they would be using ARM in future.
ARM is an intellectual property company that licences it's processor architecture to semiconductor manufacturers. Intel pay an initial licence fee for the ARM architecture and pay royalties to ARM. Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments (for Digital Signal Processors) are unique in having architecture licences from ARM which allow them to add their own value through modifications to the basic ARM architecture, whilst other manufacturers can only produce the original ARM designs.
Intel originally purchased StrongARM from Digital, which had the first architecture licence from ARM, but Intel has been buying new architecture licences as well as normal licences from ARM. Intel's new ARM architecture is called Xscale which which will replace StrongARM.
trash eighty wrote: i thought they still owned 45% of ARM
No way does Apple own 45% of ARM, though they were one of the original investors. From Hemscott, the largest shareholder owns 4.74%. If they still own any it seems less than 3% as they don't appear to have to declare it.
http://www.hemscott.com/equities/company/cd03606.h tm
Major Shareholders:
( 1 Nov 01) 1011.84m 0.05p Ords - Capital Group Co's 4.74%, Fidelity Investments 3.06%, Barclays PLC 3.01%, R K Saxby 2.61%, Other Dirs 0.53
The market capitalisation of ARM is currently 3.6 billion pounds.
Slashdot Mirror
Compressed air is another means of storing wind energy that is getting looked at again. The CAES schemes need large geological structures such as salt mines or depleted gas fields, but there are quite a lot of viable structures in places like Texas and Ontario where there is also interest in wind energy. It is not economical on a small scale since a large part of the compression cost is independent of the reservoir size.
According to the US Department of Energy "nearly two-thirds of the natural gas in a conventional power plant is consumed by a typical natural gas turbine because the gas is used to drive the machine's compressor. In contrast, a compressed-air storage plant uses low-cost heated compressed air to power the turbines and create off-peak electricity, conserving some natural gas."
In the last 20 years only two facilities have ever been built - a 110-megawatt plant in Alabama and a 290-megawatt plant in Germany. Iowa is building a new plant "expected to cost $200 million and operate by 2011 with the capacity to store 200 megawatts of power, enough for several days. Both the Iowa and Alabama installations can draw air to make power within 15 minutes and make a gas turbine roughly 40 percent more efficient. "
http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/compressed_air.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081224-full-of-powerful-wind-bury-it-in-the-ground-for-later.html
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/553702
http://www.isepa.com/index.asp Iowa Stored Energy Park
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-178929.html
I think it was the early Dr Who series that created the biggest impression. I'm 43 and can remember viewing Dr Who from behind the sofa when I was about 5 or 6 years old. The Cybermen seemed scary then ! I've discussed Dr Who with people of my generation a few times, with work colleagues, school friends and relatives and everyone my age could remember hiding behind the sofa when Dr Who was on, so no wonder it left an impression on us.
I can imagine later generations had other sci-fi to compare Dr Who and would not be as innocent as we were then. I also think the later Dr Who's were much more jokey and less serious, rather like what happened with the James Bonds !
Outside of the US though, all we see is that we are paying higher prices to get movies long after they have been released in the US. It just feels anticompetitive to us as we could often import them more cheaply or buy them on holiday in the US.
Now the music companies are also trying to make music CD's you can't play/copy onto computers. I was interested to read that, Philips who licences the CD formats to other companies, isn't going along with this. Apparently if the music companies modify CD's not to play on computers, they mustn't use the standard "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo, as their modifications fall outside of this standard according to Philips. Philips is even looking at making CD writers that could cope with the modified CDs anyway.
See the article: Philips, the co-creator of the CD, is refusing to play along with music CDs that are designed to prevent playback on PCs
I find ARM interesting. It is well on its way to be the worlds leading processor architecture. It is already used in 70-80% of mobile phones. Recently Microsoft stopped supporting Hitachi, MIPS chips for Pocket PC2002 and only supports ARM chips now. Palm already announced they would be using ARM in future.
ARM is an intellectual property company that licences it's processor architecture to semiconductor manufacturers. Intel pay an initial licence fee for the ARM architecture and pay royalties to ARM. Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments (for Digital Signal Processors) are unique in having architecture licences from ARM which allow them to add their own value through modifications to the basic ARM architecture, whilst other manufacturers can only produce the original ARM designs.
Intel originally purchased StrongARM from Digital, which had the first architecture licence from ARM, but Intel has been buying new architecture licences as well as normal licences from ARM. Intel's new ARM architecture is called Xscale which which will replace StrongARM.
trash eighty wrote: i thought they still owned 45% of ARM No way does Apple own 45% of ARM, though they were one of the original investors. From Hemscott, the largest shareholder owns 4.74%. If they still own any it seems less than 3% as they don't appear to have to declare it. http://www.hemscott.com/equities/company/cd03606.h tm
Major Shareholders:
( 1 Nov 01) 1011.84m 0.05p Ords - Capital Group Co's 4.74%, Fidelity Investments 3.06%, Barclays PLC 3.01%, R K Saxby 2.61%, Other Dirs 0.53
The market capitalisation of ARM is currently 3.6 billion pounds.