Pinning energy

A wheel inside a wheel, or energy from energy! That kind of sums up plans by UK’s National Grid and a startup 2OC to tap energy from the gas grid in additional ways. By installing mini turbines inside the gas pipeline grid later this year, the set-up will be tested in east London and should produce 20MW by 2010.

If successful, future installations across the country could produce up to 1GW. That’s the same amount of power produced by a coal or nuclear power station. The turbo expanders will generate electricity by expanding when gas pressure is reduced. Going along, the turbo expander will be used with a combined heat and power (CHP) engine to boost its efficiency to over 70 percent.

As we have spoken of in the blog, there is a rush to tap energy from any kind of movement, like the swivelling doors at a mall or that of rushing feet on a pavement! Capturing energy even as we spend it!

Nothing complex about the concept. Drawing energy from flowing gas is just another dimension of say, tidal energy. Right? That's the beauty of concepts, they can be applied anywhere.

Going one step further would be to generate energy from virtual movements on cyberspace. (Reminds one of the scifi tales spun from taking chaos theory across time domains!) Wouldn’t Google love that? The innovator company stands accused of drawing as much power for two searches on its search engine as used to boil water in a kettle!

The power consumption of a Google search-query is so high because the company’s process sends data to numerous competing servers, sometimes thousands of miles away, in order to bring back the result as fast as possible. Is there a way to provide results at a slightly slower speed at certain times of day when search volume is lowest?

A later piece in techcrunch.com puts the whole thing in perspective by comparing emissions from a single book or a hamburger. This is the kind of pitfall when emissions alone are considered without placing it in context. What is a search on google equivalent to, in terms of a ride to the library for a book? Should emissions per se be sacrosanct? What do you think?

Meanwhile send in your suggestions for generating energy in simple ways, and we will feature them here in our blog.