| UserName | Title | Description | Post Date |
| Shabaresh kumar.p | Substation automation with the use of micro controller | By making the use of the microcontroler or embedded system technology we can make the substation working as automation in this v can make any of the type of substation as automatad this reduces the power loss while switching and others |
Monday, February 20, 2012
2:23 AM
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| TDietrich2010 | Does technology destroy or create jobs? | I’ve been hearing a lot lately that part of the unemployment problem, in the US and worldwide, is that technology is replacing workers with automation. It’s really a moot point because the development of technology isn’t going to end. Labor saving inventions go back centuries, so it’s certainly not a new problem either. Robotics and automation have eliminated the need for many manual labor jobs, but those industries have also created many new ones – millions in fact. |
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
2:21 PM
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| eng58 | Prediction of powering homes with the physical activity of the residents isn’t feasible | At the Niagara Falls Power Project visitor center they have an exhibit with an exercise bike, alternator, and 100 watt light bulb. If you peddle as hard as you can you can just get the bulb to full brightness. It’s hard work though, and you can’t keep up the pace for more than about a minute. Even a small energy efficient house uses many more times the energy of a 100 watt bulb. Any amount of energy harvested from physical activity is going to impede that activity and make it more difficult. You can’t generate energy without a cost. Just to generate a tiny fraction of what your house would require would make daily life in the house difficult and tiring. You could save yourself that by purchasing that same amount of energy from your utility for about a buck or two per month. |
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
11:43 AM
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| Bill_J62 | How “smart” should a smart grid be? | The concept of a smart grid makes perfect sense: better coordination, better load balance and utilization of transmission lines, etc. The human element is important, however, and too much reliance on computer technology could be a mistake. In just the past year some of the best tech companies have suffered hacks, crashes, network outages, and issues that couldn’t be diagnosed and explained. I don’t want to see a whole city go dark because the smart grid turned out to be not so smart. |
Friday, October 28, 2011
4:40 PM
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| P_Stephens | Paul Allen vs. Ray Kurzweil on the human/machine 'singularity' | The singularity is defined as a tipping point where machine intelligence catches up with human intelligence. Ray Kurzweil believes that the rate of technological advancement is increasing exponentially and that we may reach the singularity somewhere around 2045. Paul Allen, Bill Gates’ co-founder in Microsoft, disagrees and thinks it’s a very long way off. He believes that the more we learn about the human mind the more vast and complex that knowledge will become, and the more difficult it will be to comprehend in its entirety and emulate. He refers to this as the “complexity brake”. I agree with Paul Allen completely. The reality of computer advancement is much slower than the perception of that advancement. Computers still process in simple binary bits, there’s just a lot more transistors now. Quantum computers promise a quantum leap in power but most of that promise is still just in the theoretical stage. Just look at how frustratingly slow progress in fusion energy has been. I think Ray Kurzweil underestimates the complexity of the human mind and overestimates the rate of technological progress. |
Sunday, October 16, 2011
11:28 AM
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| DigitalHead | The PC is dead? I don’t think so! | I’ve been hearing ‘the PC is dead’ for about 10 years but I think that statement looks at it the wrong way. PC is an acronym for ‘personal computer’. Laptops, tablets, and smart phones are all personal computers, or PCs. The issue is really just an evolution of the form factor. Better screen, processor, and battery technology has allowed personal computer power in a much smaller and portable form factor than the original desktop tower. From that perspective I can’t imagine a day when the PC will be dead. |
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
9:23 PM
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| Bob S | BMW’s laser headlights | This is really cool technology! It would be even better if they had a high-power pulse button on the dashboard for those times when there’s a very annoying driver ahead of you. :-) |
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
9:14 PM
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| BSimmons | The Higgs boson – a.k.a. “god particle” – looks pretty elusive and maybe not what they thought it would be. | I’m completely in favor of big science and the Large Hadron Collider. It would be really sad if humanity said, “We’ve learned enough, let’s just stop here.” I can’t help wondering that a single particle might not be an oversimplification of the answer to mass that they’re looking for. Maybe the Higgs isn’t a particle but a vastly complex system of some kind. We’re in a realm that’s so small that our best instrument may never be able to reveal a true defining signal from the background noise. |
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
3:30 PM
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| Sam_T_76 | Reliability of spintronic computer processors. | I understand the theoretical benefits of spintronic devices. I’m curious about the reliability though. It seems the operating process is pretty delicate and has some statistical unpredictability to it. I also wonder how easily a device could be effected by environmental magnetic fields or EMF. I’m thinking you might not want something like a manned spacecraft to be a first-adopter. Maybe start out with a video game console chip, where the consequence of errata would be minimal. |
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
10:24 PM
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| GeoDoc | Electron charge in ionosphere before Japanese earthquake | When I read the MIT article about this (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26773/?p1=blogs) it sounded like something you’d hear on “Coast to Coast AM”, where the guest links it to some ultra-secret military project. The science of it is pretty interesting though, and seems plausible. If the correlation proves to be true this effect could serve as a valuable warning method to give populations enough time to prepare. |
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
7:55 PM
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| GreenMachine | Nuclear power plant safety and procedures | There’s a lot of “news fog” about what’s happening with the Japanese nuclear power plants. It’s uncertain whether their safety systems are operating exactly as they should or if there are some problems. I hope it proves that the contingency plans and safety systems worked properly. Nuclear has a downside but the other renewable methods aren’t enough to significantly reduce fossil fuel use in the near future. |
Friday, March 11, 2011
4:28 PM
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| Slick1122 | AC vs DC voltage | We have a heater that operates on either AC or DC current at 90W to 120W. DC current flows in one direction. AC current flows in two directions. During operation the heaters work perfectly using AC or DC voltage. We know that a heater must be in contact with another surface to transfer energy or it will eventually burn itself out. Our operators occasionally will have to disengage the heater and do not always turn them off immediately. When running on AC voltage the heater may fail during this production stoppage, however when we wire the heaters in DC voltage we rarely or never see a heater failure during this same production stoppage. Can someone help explain why the difference? |
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
7:12 AM
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| DMcFarland | Inductor energy storage vs. capacitor energy storage | I just read the article on DC power supplies. It explains the fundamental differences between linear and switch-mode power supplies. It explains that switch-mode PSs rely on inductors for temporary energy storage in the circuit. I know that capacitors and inductors can store energy in different ways and I’m wondering why switch-mode uses inductors. |
Saturday, January 29, 2011
11:46 AM
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| Aurora | Thorium reactors – “One ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium and 3.5 million tons of coal.” | This is really exciting potential, in my opinion. I’d like to see them expedite a pilot reactor then work to get public opinion behind it. I just hope environmentalists who are warning us about global warming don’t become an obstacle because they also don’t like nuclear. |
Thursday, September 02, 2010
9:39 PM
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| AdminPaulh | International Linear Collider – “The next machine to look deeper into the atom” | There’s a lot of controversy over whether or not to invest large amounts of money into these major science projects. There’s no guarantee of return on investment but it’s the opinion of this site that these projects are very valuable and worthwhile. |
Friday, August 20, 2010
4:18 PM
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| Bill_J62 | How much more generation and distribution capacity would be needed in the US if drivers start switching to electric vehicles? | If just 20% of gasoline powered autos were switched to electric that would represent a lot of horsepower. I wonder how that would effect the power grid. I doubt there’s that much spare capacity now and I wonder how the utility industry plans to scale up. |
Friday, July 30, 2010
1:55 PM
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| P_Stephens | Ignoring engineers’ warnings almost always turns out to be a bad idea. | It seems like every time a major technological problem or disaster occurs you find out that there were engineers warning earlier about a potential problem. With the iPhone 4, Steve Jobs was supposedly warned about the antenna vulnerability but disregarded the warning because he wanted the sleek design of the external metallic strip. With the BP oil disaster, engineers warned of troublesome pressures and urged caution and a more robust well construction. They were supposedly overridden by managers who wanted to minimize costs. There are countless more examples. |
Monday, July 19, 2010
11:10 AM
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| JohnK | Parallels between Apple’s iPhone 4 flaw and Intel’s Pentium flaw | It seems like Apple is repeating the same PR mistakes that Intel made with its Pentium floating point flaw in 1994. Steve Jobs should know better. Those who forget the lessons of the past… |
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
1:57 PM
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| BlueCorona | Wireless transmission of electrical power is both incredibly fascinating and impractical | The fact that we still use Nikola Tesla’s alternating current and induction motor designs, with little modification, proves his forward-looking genius. Even geniuses can have intellectual blind spots, however, and I think his plan for the wireless transmission of electrical power was one of them. It would be insanely inefficient, because you’d be sending out power in all directions, and the electromagnetic exposure to surrounding humans and animal life would be immense. |
Thursday, July 01, 2010
2:33 PM
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| P_Stephens | I thought the “nuclear bomb” solution to the Gulf oil leak was crazy until I heard it explained | I was listening to a radio talk show and a guy called in and said they should use a nuclear bomb to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. I thought he was crazy and so did the host. A couple weeks ago I was at a wedding reception and mentioned it to the guy I was sitting next to. He knew about the idea and told me that they would drill down alongside the well casing and insert the device underground in that hole. The idea was to melt the surrounding rock with a low-yield, slow-burn device, which would then seal the leak as the rock solidified. Maybe it’s still a crazy idea but it also makes a little sense for a desperate situation. |
Friday, June 11, 2010
12:32 PM
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