Unlocking the infrastructure for the next energy generation
From: Appalachian Voice, Dec. 2009
By Bill Kovarik
If the inventors of the telephone, the adding machine and the light bulb could visit their legacies today, the first two – Alexander Graham Bell and Herman Hollerith – would see enormous change, with satellites, cell phones, computers and more.
But Thomas Edison would scarcely notice a difference. The systems that lit up his incandescent bulbs a century ago run on the same principle today: large central power plants boiling water to turn turbines and feed regional monopolies.
The idea of smaller, distributed, more flexible power systems, with all their environmental and national security benefits, is only beginning [...]
The Changing of the Grid
Her favorite creatures
By Steve Howard
Juliet Nagel has spent the last two months living in a trailer along the shores of Lake Eerie and Lake Ontario.
The small unit contains a pull-out bed along one side where Nagel spends her nights next to her dog Zeus. The opposite wall of the cramped space is lined with computer equipment. Monitors display readings taken from radar sensors outside. Nagel and Zeus have spent long hours in the tailor working well past sunset and into the morning.
Juliet doesn’t mind the long hours though, or the cramped trailer. She gets to share her nights with her favorite animals: bats.
“Bats are awesome,” Nagel says.
Her interest in bats began [...]
Tracking the night creatures
By Brittany Seki
When everyone else is sleeping, Juliet Nagel is out tracking the night’s leathery-winged creatures under the protection of her wiener dog Zeus.
“I quite like the night,” she said. “I have my dog, and even though he’s small, he lets me know when something’s around.”
Nagel, 28, is a bat biologist with EchoTrack Inc., a company that uses radar and acoustic technology to track the night migration of bats and birds. Currently, she is working with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) to measure the affects wind turbines have on the airborne species.
Nagel records migrating birds and bats using radar to reveal the height, speed and direction the animals [...]
Bat migration studies may mitigate wind damage
By Alana Power
Wind turbines in Ontario have the potential to kill thousands of bats every spring and fall.
Bat biologist Juliet Nagal is studying the migration patterns of bats along Ontario’s shores so that she can suggest locations for turbines that would be less harmful to the nocturnal creatures.
Nagal, 28, works for EchoTrack Inc., a company that tracks migrating birds and bats using radar which detects height, speed and direction. Microphones allow for species identification. The focus of Nagal’s research is to find out if bats are migrating in the same pattern as birds along Ontario’s shores.
Wind power: Bat research using human radar
Links to multimedia files
Point Barrow Provincial Park, on a cold and windy fall afternoon … By James Saunders
Protecting bats from offshore wind farms – By Colin Schultz
Her favorite species — By Julliane Hazlewood
Radar Love –By Carrie Simmons
Wind turbines are built as environmentally friendly alternative energy sources — By Andrea Damiano
One woman’s fight to help save the creatures of the night — By Anna Delaney (pdf)
Green energy act details announced
The Ontario provincial government today announced details of the Green Energy Act which boosts wind, solar and biogas production in the province.
“Ontario has taken the lead in Canada and set the ground rules for doing green business,” said Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. “Now investors, renewable energy companies and skilled workers can really move our green economy forward.”
Wind, solar and biogas plants will all qualify for direct payments through a system that is typical in Europe but relatively new to North America.
“Ontario wants green energy business,” said George Smitherman, Deputy Premier and Minister of Energy and Infrastructure. “These regulations will help ensure industry and municipalities that jobs will be created, investment [...]