If you watch the winning videos for the so-called “Crazy Green Idea” video contest, developed by the X-Prize foundation to find topics for a new X-Prize contest, you’ll quickly realize that the ideas are not — in any way, shape or form — wild and crazy at all. No geoengineering plots to re-ice the Arctic, blueprints for massive space mirrors to reflect sunlight, or plans to tweak trees to suck up more CO2. Yep, they’re all proposals for serious, slightly geeky, and very important energy problems.
And the winner…is rightly so, the most reasonable of all — the capacitor challenge. The team asks the audience to solve the problem of energy storage by creating an advanced, cheap capacitor that has no toxic chemicals. The device has to exceed the energy density of lead acid batteries, fully recharge in under one minute and for up to 500,000 cycles, and cost less than two times the price of average lead acid batteries. Wow, inventors who could enter that contest would already have a revolutionary device that could transform handheld gadgets and vehicles. Check out the pitch that won $25,000 via the most YouTube votes.
I know a few folks already crazy about capacitors. Including – come to think of it – a few who work for National Laboratories. This could end up being a contest that changes everything about energy use.
# 15 Ron Larson said, “(3) The problem with using capacitors as energy storage devices is the controlling the rate of discharge.”
This is the hurdle that needs to be overcome before capacitors can any meaningful use in electric and the like.
Sorry Paddy, using the capacitor as a battery — that problem has already been solved. Here’s some interesting news on nanotubes enhancing capacitor capability. And, it’s 2 years old. So, where’s the product?
#19 –Paddy-Zero== What you SAID at #5 was: “The gov’t has never been the major driving force of invention.” What you post at #19 is irrelevant to your initial posting.
It hardly matters whatever the point is you might be trying to make.
Our government is CURRENTLY failing to provide quality services in its mandatory educational programs==the heart of science innovation, everything else is of secondary importance.
# 23 bobbo said, “What you SAID at #5 was: “The gov’t has never been the major driving force of invention.””
Correct. And you were only able to name ONE invention that the gov’t created.
Thanks for making my point.
Paddy-Zero==able to be difficult on all posts—AT THE VERY SAME TIME. So, in your mind, to be “the major driving force of invention” you have to actually be the entity making inventions?
Why not say it more directly, as in, not something else?
Heh, heh.
#24, Cow-Patty,
Geeze, I am quite sure you even believe what you write.
If the government hires someone to work on a project, I suppose you would say the government didn’t have anything to do with “inventing” it.
Well, the government had nothing to do with developing large, high speed turbines. I understand that Wes Ting developed nuclear energy at his own house. Along with General A.C. Electric. All those projects to develop jet and rocket propulsion were just fronts so people wouldn’t be looking elsewhere. Digital imaging all came about because someone wanted to count their pictures. The first electronic computers weren’t developed by the Navy, that is a lie told over and over. And lasers?
Wait !!! The electric Chair !!! Didn’t the government invent the electric chair? And the gas chamber. Ya, the government also invented the gas chamber.
But hey, you are the expert.
My dad knew a guy that invented the A-bomb in a garage outside Detroit. Some say it happened somewhere in New Mexico, but we know better.
And GPS? Not military, rather it came from TI as an offshoot of the Speak & Spell project.
but plants crave electrolytes
# 26 Mr. Fusion said, “blah, blah,”
Interesting how much garbage you spew when you don’t have any actual data. Kinda fun to watch, in petri dish sort of way. Let me know when you are done with grade school and have some facts to enlighten us with.
#29 – Paddy-RAMBO
Paddy-RAMBO, OWNED by Fusion yet again.
You’re persistent, I’ll grant you that. Some might say you don’t have the sense God gave a rock, and don’t know when to just STFU. Being of the glass-half-full persuasion myself, I prefer to adopt the more positive stance.
#29, Cow-Patty, Ignorant Troll,
Interesting how much garbage you spew when you don’t have any actual data.
????? And what data was I supposed to have? Oh, that’s right. Deflect the issue when you are shown to be just a trolling idiot. Make the opponent look guilty in order that others won’t see you are covered in crap.
Although I truly hate the terms “owned” and “pwned”, you have been. You lie worse than a throw rug in a dog’s bed. And the most amazing thing? You just keep coming back for more.
I don’t know how many times other posters have called you out. Never have I seen you win. Why that hasn’t stopped you or given you any thoughts about “maybe you should think a little before hitting the send button” is beyond me.
But please, show me what garbage I posted. This is a challenge. Like all those other challenges you ignored, just show us the garbage.
Oh goody a prize to realize liberals’ crazy dream of having cars put energy back on the grid.
As I’ve implied around here before:
I simply WILL NOT be satisfied until I own an anti-matter powered cordless drill, which only needs to be recharged once every 10,000 years.
#32, Lyin’ Mike,
Another post too complicated for you.
Just think if there had been such a contest held back in Edison’s day, about creating an electric light. Instead of a bunch of yahoos saying it couldn’t be done. Then we might not have had to rely on just the Carbonized Thread filament. And Tungsten might have been discovered sooner. The super-bright LEDs will probably replace mostly all filament use. And that only got going because truckers were getting tickets for burned out marker and tail lights. So those were replaced with brighter, multiple LED arrays. But the elements that make them, existed a hundred years ago. Just not the engineering, or know how. So if they had really put their brains to work, back then, the LED might have preceded the light bulb.
#35–Glenn==you raise a good question about “framing.” I’m sure Edison was thinking about “How can I get an electric light buld to work?” Whereas, he should have been thinking “How can I make an electrical light source?”
I last had that thought reading about solutions for green energy. The range of consideration/options is directly framed by what question you set out to answer. You can get orders of magnitude different solutions based on that framing. Corn biofuel?===bah!!! Algae Based===100X better. Better Still==what can grow in a vat without sunshine?