Understanding The Deregulation of Energy Providers

With some states' energy providers being deregulated in the United States, people are now given a choice on what energy company will serve their needs. This results in better service quality and lower energy costs for the consumer.

It is believed that fewer and simpler regulations, with minimal government intervention, will result in an open market with a high level of competitiveness, higher productivity, more efficiency and lower prices overall. The energy quality and method of transport stays the same, it's just that the consumer has a choice on the energy company and energy plan.

There are downsides to energy regulation such as less monitoring on environmental pollution and quality standards, financial uncertainty, and constraining monopolies but these are minimal. There are consumer groups and environmentalists that monitor and report any infractions or shortcomings such as these.

Energy deregulation, albeit in its early stages, have empowered the consumer to control and manage their energy needs without being sidelined by a monopoly.

Thermoelectric Clathrate Material and the Kondo Effect Turns Industrial Waste Heat into Electricity

Clathrates: Tiny cages enclosing single atoms are shown.
Credit: TU Vienna

Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have developed a material that can turn waste heat generated by machines into electricity using the Kondo effect and clathrates.

Researchers have designed a material that traps cesium atoms inside a lattice structure (clathrate). When the material is exposed to heat, the trapped atoms start vibrating within its lattice 'cage' and electricity is generated. This is due to the Kondo effect.

Named after Jun Kondo, a theoretical physicist from Japan, the Kondo effect describes how the electrical resistance of a metal increases when the temperature is lowered up to a certain point, known as the Kondo temperature.

The current research shows that the Kondo effect can also apply to very high temperatures.

What this means is that applications can be developed that will take advantage of waste heat produced by machines that can turn it into useful electrical energy rather than it being dissipated into the environment.

Cable Bacteria Capable of Generating A Network of Electrical Current Under the Seabed Discovered

Three years ago, Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark discovered the presence of electric currents in the seabed. They suspect at the time bacteria joined together in a network is responsible for this phenomenon. After three years, they have discovered proof to their theory: the actual bacteria.

The image shows cable bacteria in the mud of the sea bottom.
Credit: Mingdong Dong, Jie Song and Nils Risgaard-Petersen

While studying the phenomenon, the researchers noted that drawing a horizontal wire through the seabed cut off the current flow, similar to cutting power cables in real life. They also noted the presence of the bacteria whenever they studied the ocean floor.

The whole thing came together when they studied and observed the bacteria and noticed wire-like strings enclosed by a membrane.

“Such unique insulated biological wires seem simple but with incredible complexity at nanoscale,” says PhD student Jie Song, Aarhus University, who used nanotools to map the electrical properties of the cable bacteria.

Magnetic Topological Insulator Eliminate Loss In Electrical Power Transmission

This is a depiction of the quantum Hall effect (left) and the quantum anomalous Hall effect (right).
Credit: RIKEN

The quantum Hall effect (QHE) describes the quantized transport in two dimensional electron gases placed in a transverse magnetic field: the longitudinal resistance vanishes while the Hall resistance is quantized to a rational multiple of h/e2.

The effect was discovered in 1879 by Edwin Hall. But since the electron has not yet been experimentally discovered, application and understanding of the effect had to wait.

In 1985, Klaus von Klitzing won the Noble Prize in Physics for discovering that the Hall conductivity was exactly quantized. This phenomenon, referred to as "exact quantization", has allowed for the definition of a new practical standard for electrical resistance.

The quantum Hall effect also provides an extremely precise independent determination of the fine structure constant, a quantity of fundamental importance in quantum electrodynamics.

A new route to dissipationless electronics

Realization of a new type of magnetic phase in devices opens the door to electronics based on topologically non-trivial materials

A team of researchers at RIKEN and the University of Tokyo has demonstrated a new material that promises to eliminate loss in electrical power transmission. The surprise is that their methodology for solving this classic energy problem is based upon the first realization of a highly exotic type of magnetic semiconductor first theorized less than a decade ago - a magnetic topological insulator.

Development of energy saving technologies is one of the central pursuits of modern science. From advancing alternative energy resources like wind and solar power to improving the infrastructure of the electrical power grid, this pursuit by scientists and engineers takes on a variety of forms. One focus in recent years has been eliminating energy loss in the transmission of power itself, which by some estimates consumes more than 10% of all energy being produced. The research team has demonstrated a new material - a magnetic topological insulator - that can eliminate this loss.

Polarization and Iron Terbium Oxide (TbFeO3)

Polarization is the process of separating the opposing positive and negative charges within an object.

The positive and negative charges of a polarized object are redistributed with one end possessing more protons than electrons and the other end having more electrons than protons. While there are the same number of protons and electrons within the object, these protons and electrons are not distributed in the same proportion across the object's surface.

It is comparable to having a basket of apples and oranges and having the apples on one side of the basket and the oranges on the other. Polarization then does not mean adding or having an imbalance of positive or negative charge in the object. They are simply redistributed.

This occurs when an electric field distorts the negative cloud of electrons around the positive atomic nuclei in a direction opposite the field. The charges are then separated which results in having one side of the atom more positive and the opposite side more negative.

One of the measures of polarization is electric dipole moment, which equals the distance between the slightly shifted centres of positive and negative charge multiplied by the amount of one of the charges. Polarization (P) in its quantitative meaning is the amount of dipole moment (p) per unit volume (V) of a polarized material, P = p/V.

Discovery of material with amazing properties

Normally a material can be either magnetically or electrically polarized, but not both. Now researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have studied a material that is simultaneously magnetically and electrically polarizable. This opens up new possibilities, for example, for sensors in technology of the future. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Nature Materials.

Materials that can be both magnetically and electrically polarized and also have additional properties are called multiferroics and were previously discovered by Russian researchers in the 1960s. But the technology to examine the materials did not exist at that time. It is only now, in recent years, that researchers have once again focused on analyzing the properties of such materials. Now you have research facilities that can analyze the materials down to the atomic level.

In the image,