Monday, January 31, 2011

CNOOC to buy 33 pct of a Chesapeake Energy project

The Chinese rush to western gas
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/1310ap_us_chesapeake_china.html

Such a great availability and so many drilling projects won't likely let gas price rise in the future.
Companies that build service, tools and technologies around gas applications likely will.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Solar fades as shale gas flares by

Shale gas supplies may last 250 years and make renewables uneconomic

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/20/peter-foster-solar-fades-as-shale-gas-flares/#ixzz1BhrwCbrJ
by Peter Foster at Financial Post January 20, 2011

"...the U.S. shale gas boom had already contributed to a sharp drop in U.S. renewable investment, but the wind and solar fandango was already imploding"

Monday, January 3, 2011

Flywheel Batteries - Extreme Hybrid™ drive train

ASF TRINITY power corporation
http://afstrinity.com/company/index.htm

American Flywheel Systems, Inc (AFS) is a private company that received the first patent ever given for a flywheel battery in 1992.
Although AFS Trinity is not currently using flywheels in systems that are designed for consumer cars, it is actively engaged in developing flywheel power systems for Formula One Racing (F1) and is currently developing such a system for one of the world's top F1 teams.
Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS)

AFS Trinity/Ricardo Technology Partnership Agreement
On May 2, 2008, AFS Trinity and Ricardo announced a joint Extreme Fleet™ program that will slash gasoline and diesel use by car, SUV and truck fleets. 
http://www.ricardo.com/

Flywheel Batteries - A new spin on energy storage

It’s fascinating to watch a good old-fashioned spinning wheel emerge as the battery of the future
http://itotd.com/articles/332/flywheel-batteries/

A flywheel is simply a heavy spinning wheel that stores kinetic energy and then releases it as needed.
Now people are turning flywheels into batteries. Conceptually, a flywheel battery is very simple. Hook up a motor to a flywheel to spin it when electricity is supplied (storing the energy as kinetic energy). When you want to retrieve energy from the flywheel, hook it up to a generator. (In fact, the motor and the generator can be one and the same.) So you put electricity in and get electricity out, and in the meantime it’s “stored” as the motion of a spinning wheel.