How to survive a power failure

As I went down to see my little daughter playing in the backyard with the others I was talking with my neighbor about the expensive grey heat we get delivered by the city (hot water through a pipeline) and how we possibly do get the other neighbors along with a partly private energy supply. A lengthy power failure might help a little.

First the place where I live. The house with the red-rimmed 10 ft trampoline is my place. The view on the harbor is a bit different now, since the hilly surrounding which you see on the old Google Map, is now also occupied by may be 40 houses, gardens and children.
You can see that we have all sources available: sun, water and wind (the last one is the hardest to see).

Per household we use - in avarage - about 3500 kWh electricity and 46 GJ heat per year:

3500 kWh : € 960 per year
46 GJ : € 1352 per year

Total : € 2312 per year


Okay, lets lining up two basic alternatives (faeces for gas production is excluded):

1. Heat pump plus wind generator, solar cells or hydro generator. A heat pump uses electricity to gain heat from air, water or soil. About 25% electricity is needed for 100% heat. Eventually by solar collector pre heating we can save heat pump electricity.
   
2. A micro heat and power station uses diesel or geo thermal heat to drive a stirling motor which again drives a generator for electricity. The waste heat is used for hot water and heating. Although this alternative is coming up, the geo thermal variant is still expensive. And of course we want to be eco friendly, so no diesel.

So we are left with the heat pump combined with some sort of electricity source. Since a heat pump produces heat it is best that production and consumption are close together to avoid big heat losses. This means that it might be not very lucrative to make use of one big central heat pump in stead of a couple of smaller heat pumps. This should be calculated in more detail.

Electricity however is very suitable to produce on a centralised place. Which makes the use of hydro energy somewhere in the port, wind energy with one big TransKite or solar energy cells somewhere in space suitable.
Okay okay relax, we of course will use solar cells on roofs.

But in essence that IS the problem with renewable energy sources. The energy concentration of sun light, wind or water is very low, which means that we need a lot of collectors to gain enough energy. Which again means that we need (too) much material (steel, aluminium, plastic (=oil) etcetera), which is for the whole world not available!! Andre Diederen (TNO) wrote a book about this theme, called the global resource depletion, nice theme.

So what source are we going to use to feed our heat pump and of course our fridge too?

Wind: small household wind turbines like the Turby are very expensive, € 50 till € 100 per kWh per year, and not efficient. A wind turbine twice as big needs twice the material but gains four times the energy. So from an ecological and financial perspective not very attractive.

But, but there are other turbines than wind mills like the TransKite said the fool, and Magenn zeppelins.

The Magenn zeppelin

They can gain wind energy on higher levels where the energy concentration is much higher and more constant. On an altitude of 5 kilometer there is always wind and 30 times more per square meter than on 10 meter.
The Magenn Zeppelin operates on 300 meter and costs only € 0,43 per kWh per year, but you need to buy a big one, which delivers about 850.000 kWh per year here at my place, so with 3500+3200 kWh per household we need 127 households to join.

Regarding sun and water: solar cells can be used but are expensive, about € 5 per kWh per year and hydro turbines will cost approximately € 3 per kWh per year. Hydro turbines may also cost a little bit of cooperation of the port authorities which might be not very obvious.

So the best option would be a Magenn zeppelin for 127 households combined with a number of heat pumps. The investment (lifecycle about 15 years) per household would be:

Magenn zeppelin : € 2.880
Heat pump : € 7.500
Total : € 10.380

Lets add 20% maintenance costs, then it would be € 830 per year for both and € 500 for the heat pump alone.

Eeh, of course we could also buy the electricity from the local provider in stead of using the Magenn zeppelin. That would cost about € 1660 per year for 6700 kWh, over a period of 15 years about € 24.880 (prices of 2010) which is eight times more than the zeppelin. Together with the heat pump it would be € 2160 per year.

Lets finally put the yearly costs in a graph :

Well, nothing more to say...

Lately, in 2012, I went to the supermarket...

Going to the supermarket in 2012, on thursday as usual, I take my stabilised citytransportbike (may be I start a bike factory at that time) to get the weekly groceries from our grocery called Jumbo.

I snap my smartphone to the handlebars, start the Jumbo app (may be I start an app factory at that time) and see that the local branch celebrate their 10th anniversary with the announcement of a new order and delivery service. "Finally", I sigh, "finally they see the light". It has cost me more than one year to convince them about a profitable delivery service.

But for now I have to go and get my bread, milk and vegetables (no, I won't start a supermarket at that time). My citybike has an electric support wheel so in a few minutes I cycle the 3 kilometer distance through the city. I park my cycle near the entrance, the wheels locking automatically to the frame when I put my bike on the stand.

I take the transport part from my bike, which is now my grocery cart, and get in. Looking at my iPhone I see the optimal route I should take to come along my usual groceries and along the discounts I might be interested in. Walking through the supermarket I sweep my items along the iPhone camera.

Suddenly after sweeping a bar of chocolate the phone bleebs and shows that the same chocolate is much cheeper at the next door supermarket. That's nice, I get the chocolate for free now and the lower chocolate price is automatically sended to the shop manager so he can approve a price adjustment.

Occasionally my dear asked me to take also a package of darjeeling leaves. At home I'd already looked on my iPhone to be sure that it's there, and indeed the tea was not in the assortment. I had pushed the order button, and now in the shop my phone is showing me by photo where to find it among the dozens of other teas. Sweeping the package along the camera I push the detail button and see that the tea comes from Birma. Mmmm. I use the comment button to ask the shop manager whether the tea is ok or not.

At the coffee corner (with home made chocolate cookies) I greet my elderly neighbor and ask her if she would like to use the new delivery service. She admit because doing the grocery shopping is getting too hard for her. Although she likes cycling now since she has also bought a stabilised bicycle from the bike factory mentioned above.
Then a message comes in from my oldest daughter asking me to bring a package of nuts for them. I say goodbye to my neighbor and go for the nuts touching the ok button to let my daughter know I have them.

After putting the last fridge things like cheese, milk and butter in the isolated fridge part of my cart I get a message back from the manager saying that the tea is ok since they buy it right from the Birmese farmers, without interference from the regime.
More or less relieved I head to the exit. At the exit my phone bleebs again asking me if I want to check out. I touch 'yes' to send a payment order, and then 'no' because I don't need a bill.

I walk to my bike, attach the cart on it, push the unlock button and go back home, where I wake up in 2010.

The TransKite of my early years

Tidying up my room a bit I found my submission of the DSM Dyneema contest of 1999. I have very good memories of this happening, because it was my first contest and I won!

This was the idea, called the TransKite

These were my old days, I just joined the NOVU (Dutch Association of Inventors) and I was still learning everything. May be this is still the case now but I have at least 11 years more of experience at a normal company. Which I left by the way since a few weeks to start making and selling innovative business concepts.

Okay, I would like to share with you my presentation before the jury and other guests in a nice place called Chateau St. Gerlach.

Chateau St. Gerlach

I was number 5 or 6 of in total 7 nominees so had enough time to reach my full nervous potency. I started as follows:

A brief outline of the TransKite

My name is Friedhelm Veldhuijzen and together with mr. Niessen we think our proposal demonstrates the advantages of the Dyneema fibre in a comprehensive way namely the cable and the textile aspect.

We're talking about a kite. In your childhood everybody of you will have played with kites. Small kites of about a halve square meter but you have felt the kite pulling.

Nowadays some adults are still playing with kites. They sit in buggies on the beach and a kite is pulling them from The Hague to Katwijk. A small town 15 km ahead. And if they are lucky the wind turns and pull them back too. They use kites of about 6 square meter. A very popular sport of the last summer is kite surfing. Instead a sail they use the kite to jump on the waves.

Ok, let's imagine a bit bigger kite. A kite as big as a soccer field. This is about 4000 square meter. This huge kite will pull quite strong, about 40 tons. You can pull up a herd of 16 hippos (Nijlpaarden)! [Now they laughed, this must have been the crucial sentence.] But we don't want to pull up hippos but we want energy. How do we get energy with this kite?

To keep it in form we use the wind and some tubes filled with helium, so it can never drop down. The kite which textile should be armed with Dyneema fibres is connected to a ground station with a lightweighted very strong cable, a Dyneema cable. [The story had to be a sort of promo of course.]

This ground station is equipped with two generators which will generate electricity as the kite is moving with the wind for let's say a kilometre. A low estimation of the power is about 250 Watt per square meter. (A big wind turbine has about 600 Watt per square meter). So, with this 250 we get with our soccer field kite a power of 1 MW! This is comparable with the bigger wind turbines. [Yes, it was in the old days.]

The kite is equipped with an apparatus that changes the lift of the kite. In doing so the power to get the kite back after this kilometre is very low, almost zero. In this stage the generators have the function of two electro engines and get their electricity from the net or from a similar machine in the same area.

The ground station is dimensioned to handle this high forces and to discharge them to the soil. In the construction itself there will be no torsions, only forces parallel to the construction part. This enables a lighter and cheaper construction. All forces are discharged to the generators to spin them around and from there to the soil. So the cable will put on the reel with no tensions.

In the cable and textile of this TransKite the application of the Dyneema fibre is of course very suitable because of its strength and weight.

Finally the advantages of the TransKite compared to the usual wind turbines:

1) no mast

2) no sky line pollution (transparent kite)

3) using less turbulent wind currents (higher efficiency)

4) no resulting torsion forces

5) less ground neccessary

6) more power per installation possible

7) safer

8) flexible to wind forces

The TransKite (the transversal movement of the kite) is an idea which should be implemented as soon as possible. Thank you for your attention.

At that time our astronaut Wubbo Ockels was busy with this LadderMill. I was happy to answer one question afterwards with the advantages of our TransKite over Wubbos LadderMill (one single line is much better than two lines because two lines can contort and damage the whole thing). And Wubbo agreed since his current LadderMill is not a laddermill anymore but a normal kite.

Now I am thinking that controlling the kite lift is too critical a thing. A textile wind turbine pulled up by a kite up to 5 km which is just rotating might be a better option. Magenn is already busy with a sort of floating Savonius. And as you know Savonius turbines are not the most efficient turbines. But thats for another blog.

How to get potatoes from flooded land

Because of the heavy rain of the last weeks dutch farmers had big problems to get their potatoes from the land. Potato diggers are usually big and heavy and their wheels would sink in the weak saturated soil.


A farmer talks about his wed potatoes.

Why using large machines at all?
In former times upscaling made the farmer more productive. He could harvest bigger areas in the same time. But in combination with automation technology of today (GPS, smartphones) downscaling is increasing in several branches. So why not in farming?

So, here we have a simple innovation setting:

1. Rain makes the ground weak and therefore the harvest of potatoes difficult if not impossible.
2. If potatoes stay under water for more than two days they are worthless because of rotting.
3. Wed potatoes must be dried before storing to prevent rotting.
4. Potatoes usually grow in clay grounds which permeability is very low (water cannot flow trough it).

The solution can be on several strategy levels:

1. Avoid dependency
1. on the result: eat rice in stead of potatoes, or eat spagetti, or make potatoes resistant against water boarding.
2. on the proces: use something that doesn't need dry ground, e.g. light weight vehicles, flying or hovering vehicles, cableway etcetera.
2. Attack the attacker: make that rainwater doesn't harm anymore e.g. increase permeability, draining capacity or let the rain fall somewhere else etcetera.
3. Remake a disadvantage into an advantage: let the attacker work for you (this one requires creativity): i.e. use the weakness of the soil, or let the rain form a shallow lake and use a boat
4. Of course there are more strategies. As an exercise you can add some if you like.

The first two strategies are more or less straight engineering approaches. And a bit dull. Of course finding the best solution requires still some creativity but you'll get a reasonable solution with only your engineering skills.

I prefer the third strategy. Turning the whole problem upside down is most satisfactory. The solutions coming from this approach are often unexpected and interesting. But if you need the agreement of the users it is best normally not to go to far aside of the meanstream. SIT (systematic inventive thinking) is a good approach for this level of innovation. You will see that the final concept ogf this blog goes also a bit back to normal.

How do we make an advantage from the rain or the saturated ground? Saturated ground means a weak ground. So the potato plants can be pulled out with much less effort as in dry grounds. So why not pulling them out with a machine standing on a solid base on the side of a potato field.

Yes, pulling out would be new but it should be tested before it get accepted. For now I go on with a more traditional digger.

Okay, how do we perform this practically?

Imagine a potato field with the size of 100 m. x 100 m with potato rows. Lets place on both sides, so at the ends of the rows, a tractor with a winch and between those two winches a cable of 100 meter parallel to the potato rows so that the tractors can pull the cable to and fro.

A potato sled (catcher and collector) is connected to the cable. Since the sliding resistance of wed clay is low and since wheels tend to sink in wed clay, a sort of sled is used for suspension.

The picture below shows an example of a concept solution of the potato catcher. A next step would be making some calculations, a drawing and a prototype and have some tests on a potato field.

The potato sled.

The sled in a configuration with two tractors.

Two tractors with a winch each (not visible) on both sides of a potato field, in between potato plants and the potato sled connected to a cable. The conveyor-belt is driven by a wheel rolling over the ground.

What has the farmer to do?

When the potatoes must be harvested during heavy rains each tractor is placed on one side of the field. The cable is connected to the winches of both tractors and the potato sled is connected at one side of the cable. The sled is pulled by the winch of the other tractor over the field harvesting the potatoes of one row. Arrived at the other tractor the potato box of the sled is loaded on a trailer and another box is placed on the sled. The tractors move a bit to the next row and the sled is going the other way.

Voila.