City of Sydney plans recycled water network

Clover Moores Sydney city council seems to be plotting a slow secession from the electricity and water grids. The SMH has a report on an interesting plan for storing recycled water in local aquifers - City of Sydney plans recycled water network.

THE City of Sydney council is finalising plans for a recycled water network to be established throughout much of the city. It will include use of the Botany aquifer which extends from Redfern and Surry Hills, through Centennial Park and on to Botany Bay.

The rethink of the citys water supply comes as the council finalises plans to decouple the electricity network from the statewide supply grid, instead using a new network of power generators throughout the CBD which will provide cheaper and more reliable power to the city. If youre digging up the streets to put in the new trigeneration [electricity, heating and cooling] system, thats the golden opportunity to put in a recycled water network, the councils chief development officer for energy and climate change, Mr Allan Jones, said.

Sixty per cent of the cost of the infrastructure is in the trenching and traffic management. Thats why were also looking at automated waste collection.

The council recently outlined plans for an automated waste collection system, which remains under study. Piping water into the city and only drinking 2 per cent of that is just crackers, Mr Jones said. Taking into account cooking, and any possible way of ingesting water, no more than 20 per cent of the citys water needed to be of drinking quality, he said.

Central to the plan will use of recycled water and stormwater at new developments such as Barangaroo and Green Square.
Barangaroo will generate a surplus of recycled water which is expected to be used in water cooling towers and similar structures in other parts of the CBD.

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GM’s New Plans To Challenge Tesla’s Electric Battery Dominance

Climate Progress has an article on GMs continuing interest in electric vehicles - GM’s New Plans To Challenge Tesla’s Electric Battery Dominance.

General Motors plans to challenge Tesla’s share of the electric vehicle innovation marketplace by doing two things: making a better battery, and putting it in a long-range electric car that’s affordable.

GM announced this week that it’s developing a car that can go 200 miles on a single charge — the same distance that Tesla’s Model S can. But the GM version will cost about $30,000, less than half the $71,000 sticker price of the Model S.

The company is also aiming to do an overhaul of the electric car battery. As Quartz explains, Tesla’s Model S uses Panasonic batteries made of nickel, cobalt and aluminum. GM wants to use a lithium-ion battery made of nickel, cobalt and manganese — a chemical mix that scientists think could create a cheaper and more powerful lithium-ion battery, but that right now has some flaws that GM hopes can be fixed.

Right now, GM sells two battery-powered cars: the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid which costs $35,000 and can go 38 miles on a charge before its gas-powered generator takes over, and the Chevy Spark, an all-electric car that can go 82 miles on a charge and costs $26,685 (both costs are before the $7,500 tax credit that electric car buyers are eligible for in the U.S.). GM is also focusing on making its current cars cheaper — the company has said the next generation of the Volt will cost $7,000 to $10,000 less than the current version.

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India Announces Plans to Produce 33 4 Gigawatts of Solar Energy by 2022

Inhabitat has a post on Indian plans to expand solar power capacity - India Announces Plans to Produce 33.4 Gigawatts of Solar Energy by 2022.

As the world’s second-most populous country and a growing global power, India would do well to think about its energy future, and it seems to be doing just that – according to a report by Bridge to India, the country is aiming to install 33.4 GW of solar power nationwide. That’s much more than the 20 GW previously targeted by India’s National Solar Mission.

To put that in perspective, China, the world’s largest energy consumer, is aiming to have a capacity of 50 GW by 2020. This is to ease its dependency on nuclear energy in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster and also to meet the goal of having 15% of all energy come from renewable resources by the end of the decade. Meanwhile the Desertec Project is planned to generate 100GW of solar energy which is estimated to power most of Europe.

India is currently aiming to have 14.15 GW of solar capacity by 2018, by which time putting solar energy onto the national grid will be much more established and easier. It would also make the market more competitive, not to mention decreasing the country’s emissions.

The Bridge to India report does state that there isn’t currently enough government support for small or off-grid solar power applications. This is not surprising considering how dependent India is on fossil fuels and the general reluctance of developed countries to fully embrace the benefits of alternative energy. However, industry insiders believe that with the increased production of PV cells globally and the possibility of cheap imports from China, solar costs will drop by 40% in the next three years.

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