Magic Balls & the US Power Grid

High-voltage power lines in the United States will soon be monitored by “magic balls” from Norway.

Heimdall Power is rolling out unique technology in the form of sphere-shaped sensors that have increased power-line capacity by 30% in Europe, according to a story on the tech from Electrek.

Better yet, early users of the sensors are reporting that they are saving money because transmission lines are better utilized in their networks.

“This summer … We were able to disconnect one of two parallel lines and ‘overload’ the other because we had full control of the temperature,” Trond Are Bjørnvold, department manager of Network Development at Arva in Norway, said in a Heimdall press release.  READ MORE...

Oceans Release Microplastics into Atmosphere

During stormy weather, sea spray can carry microplastics into the air. The photo was taken during a trip of the research vessel Heincke off the Norwegian coast in June 2021. Credit: Alvise Vianello



New research identifies the composition and origins of the microplastics.

Microplastic particles can be found in the marine atmosphere, even in the world’s most isolated regions. These minuscule particles originate from land but are also released back into the atmosphere from the ocean, according to a study led by Dr. Barbara Scholz-Böttcher of the University of Oldenburg, with collaboration from German and Norwegian researchers. The team studied air samples from several locations on the Norwegian coast extending to the Arctic. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

“With our study, we present data on the mass load of different types of plastic in the marine atmosphere for the first time,” said Isabel Goßmann, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oldenburg’s Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) and first author of the paper. The research team collected the samples during an expedition with the Research Vessel Heincke in 2021.

The northernmost destination was Bear Island, the most southerly island of the Svalbard archipelago which lies halfway between the mainland and the archipelago’s largest island, Spitsbergen. The team used two different devices to collect air samples. The devices actively pumped in the air and were mounted on the bow of the research vessel at a height of twelve meters.

Different types of plastics identified
The scientists analyzed the air samples using pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. With this method, they were able to identify and quantify the different types of plastics in the atmosphere through thermal degradation and selective analysis. They then performed model calculations and reconstructed the sources and distribution paths of the particles, each of which is just a few thousandths of a millimeter in size.

The analysis revealed the omnipresence of polyester particles. Polyethylene terephthalate particles, which presumably entered the atmosphere in the form of textile fibers, were detected in all samples. Other plastic types were also present, including polypropylene polycarbonate and polystyrene.    READ MORE...

Tesla's Supercharger Network

After recently expanding its Supercharger pilot program for non-Tesla EV owners, the Supercharger network became the ‘largest 150 kW+ public fast-charging network’ in Europe overnight. It’s quite impressive that Tesla did that basically by just flipping a switch.

Tesla was early in investing in charging infrastructure, which led to the Supercharger becoming the largest global fast-charging network.

The company has been criticized for only providing charging for its own customers when most other networks are for all electric vehicles, but there basically wasn’t any other electric vehicle when Tesla started working on the Supercharger network.

Only lately has the automaker started to work on opening up the network to other EVs.

In November 2021, we saw Tesla take its first step with a pilot program running at 10 Supercharger stations in the Netherlands where non-Tesla EV owners can charge using the Tesla app.

When announcing the new pilot program, Tesla said that it planned to slowly expand it as it tests the user experience for both new non-Tesla EV owners being onboarded on the network and current Tesla owners who are going to see more traffic at those charging stations.

In January, the automaker announced that the program was expanding to more stations in Norway and France, and a month later, the program was expanded to all Supercharger stations in the Netherlands.

Finally, Tesla made its biggest expansion of the pilot program last week by opening many more Supercharger stations in the UK, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and Austria to all EV owners.

Jeroen van Tilburg, Tesla’s Head of Supercharging in EMEA, had an interesting note about the pilot program. Following the latest expansion, he said that the network of Supercharger stations opened to non-Tesla EV owners in Europe has become the largest network of 150 kW+ public fast-charging stations.  READ MORE...

Germany Roadblock for Russian Sanctions

WARSAW, April 4 (Reuters) - Germany is the main roadblock to imposing tougher sanctions on Russia, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday during a news conference, adding that Hungary was not blocking them.

His comment comes after Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a national election on Sunday after facing criticism over an insufficiently tough stance on Russian aggression in Ukraine.

"We have to see that, regardless of how we approach Hungary, this is the fourth such win and we have to respect democratic elections ... it's Germany that is the main roadblock on sanctions. Hungary is for the sanctions," Morawiecki said.

FRANKFURT/BRUSSELS, March 8 (Reuters) - Russia has warned it may shut off its main Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany after Berlin halted approval of a second line across the Baltic Sea in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. read more

The comment, from Russian deputy prime minister Alexander Novak, reflects escalating tensions that have already sent European gas prices to record levels.

Russia is Germany's top supplier, delivering Europe's largest economy with just under a third of its gas.

Here are key details about Germany's gas sector.

GAS IMPORTS

Germany imported 142 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in 2021, down 6.4% from 2020, according to foreign trade statistics office BAFA, which does not identify the origin of imports.

Domestic gas usage was 100 bcm in 2021, utility industry group BDEW said.

Russian piped gas led imports in December at 32% of supply followed by Norway at 20% and Netherlands at 12%, data from Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS) showed.  READ MORE...

Northern Lights

Iceland and Norway may dazzle with northern-lights displays, but you don’t have to go abroad to enjoy a night beneath auroras. These kaleidoscopic swirls dance above the U.S.’s northernmost states—and we’re not just talking about northern-lights hunting in Alaska.

If and when the conditions are right, you can catch auroras in most northern-border states such as Maine or Montana. And catching the lights here isn’t merely a pipe dream: In early October 2021, northern lights painted the skies from New Hampshire to Glacier National Park. One month before that, aurora hunters caught them in North Dakota. And they danced as low as Muskegon, Michigan, in the spring.

Aurora experts say there’s more where that came from. The sun sparks northern lights during solar storms, when it emits charged particles that collide with Earth’s atmosphere, creating the glowing green, purple, and even red displays that top travelers’ bucket lists. In December 2019, the sun entered a new cycle of solar activity—and this transition bodes well for those eager to spot auroras.

“The solar cycle is associated with an increase in solar activity,” says Mike Shaw, an astrophotographer and co-founder of the annual Aurora Summit. Each solar cycle is roughly 11 years long; the mid-point, roughly five years in, is the peak of northern-lights activity, known as solar maximum. “A new cycle correspondingly increases aurora activity, so the next several years will be much better than the last several years,” Shaw says.
How (and where) to find U.S. northern lights

Whether it’s Norway or North Dakota, the same aurora-hunting guidelines apply: Look for a place with dark, clear skies and minimal obstructions to the north, where auroras appear. And unlike high-latitude locales like Iceland, the lower 48 enjoys nighttime darkness all year—that means aurora sightings can happen year-round. READ MORE...

The Norwegian Krone

Why the Norwegian krone could be the 

world’s first global currency

The value of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, fed on its oil and gas receipts, is growing so much faster than the country’s GDP that the Norwegian krone may well become the world’s first global currency. Not the world’s most important currency or a reserve currency like the US dollar, but the first currency whose value is determined largely by the movement of global markets and only minimally by its country’s economic activity.

This won’t make the krone itself a target for investors overseas. It isn’t liquid enough for that; there aren’t enough krone to go around. Nor will it become a bellwether; observing the krone and deducing which aspect of the world’s financial markets is influencing its fluctuations won’t be easy. But the expansion of the fund will make it into an investor of immense means, with a singular capacity to transform green energy, infrastructure, and other causes Norway cares about.

Since 1996, Norway’s oil fund—formally called the Government Pension Fund Global—has been investing fossil fuel revenues in fixed-income assets, equities, and real estate overseas, trying to build a financial reserve for its citizens in a post-oil future. On its website, the fund hosts a live ticker of its value, which now hovers around $1.3 trillion—making it the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

The oil fund owns more than 1.5% of all the listed stocks worldwide, and its returns alone were worth a third of Norway’s GDP in 2020—even amidst the pandemic. “It’s as if every Norwegian has a personal offshore investment portfolio of $240,000,” said Tor Vollalokken, a senior advisor at the New York-based investment analysis firm Exante Data.

Vollalokken, who has tracked the krone for decades, recently extrapolated both the oil fund and Norway’s GDP forward over 30 years, using past rates of growth as a guide. At the moment, the fund’s value is roughly three times that of the GDP. By 2030, the fund will near $9 trillion—more than 14 times the value of the GDP. By that point, the krone will undergo a dramatic shift.  SOURCE:  QZ.com

Underwater Highway