Today we went to the Ecole Polytechnique, the most prestigious technical university in France, although it's under the administration of the Ministry of Defense for some reason, which means the students wear funny little admiral outfits. I restrained from making Naopoleon-based delusions-of-grandeur jokes, because I'm a good guest that way (I just broadcast them later on the internet for all the world to see. And by 'world,' I mean my mom and the one other person who will probably read this). Anyways, we will be here all this week running different workshops. My team did a solar power workshop today, where we had a theoretical lecture and then took some panels outside and measured their energy output. One was the 'control' panel and just laid flat on the ground in direct sun, and the other a) was placed at various angles, b) was placed partially in the shade, and c) had a reflective white piece of foamcore aimed at it. We increased output by 16% by using the foamcore and tilting the angle towards the sun, although the tilt was an average increase of several different angles, so the optimal angle would have been a higher improvement (5-year data from Ecole shows that at that location, output can increase 50% in the winter and 30% in the summer by properly tracking the sun. The difference is because in the winter, a flat panel is at even more of an angle to the sun, which is low on the horizon, and so there are even larger potential gains (panel production peaks when the sun is hitting at a right angle)). Placing a panel half in the shade decreased energy production by 80% (the cells function in serial, so the output of one affects the output of another farther down). At the end of the day, the team which had learned about climate modeling gave us a presentation, followed by climate modeling lecture and Q&A from a panel of distinguished climate scientists: Jean Jouzel and Herve le Treut. They mostly talked about uncertainties in the model (clouds are a bitch) and the nature of communicating science to the public (it's hard). Maybe I sound like an ingrate, but I thought the climate lecture I got as part of my environmental science class at Delft was a lot more comprehensive in terms of explaining feedback and the forcing effects of individual agents. But then I guess that means I'm getting pretty good stuff in my program, which is great! I actually watched a video from Rocky Mountain Institute about integrated building design, and a lot of the things they talked about, like collaborative processes, which are so essential to designing a good building, I thought, "hey, I do that! We do that in the industrial ecology program!" That was pretty cool, and makes me feel like I'm getting a unique education that will be really significant to the world after I graduate. I still wonder how to convince others of that though.
I think it's hard to design a program for people from many different acadmeic backgrounds that presents information which is basic enough for everyone to understand, yet complex enough to keep people interested. Today erred on the side of the former. I mean, I think we all know the basics of climate modeling (and if we don't, we probably should, since we're the top 20% of applicants to a program about climate change). In my lecture on wind and solar energy, I found the information to be pretty basic, and I'm not particularly technical. To be fair, I took a pretty comprehensive class on this stuff at the beginning of the year, but some of the information was just damn obvious (e.g. there's more sun in the Sahara than in France), and other information presented dropped off at points that would allow for pretty innacurate assumptions to be made. For example, we learned about how to calculate the electrical output from a wind turbine, then we saw a graph that showed wind speed distribution at a given location in France. The implication was that you would want to design your turbine to capture the most common wind speeds, but since you cube the speed to find the energy output, you actually want to capture the less common, but higher speeds. I asked about this and the lecturer said something like "well, you have to find a trade-off." But there's a pretty simple way to predict where to design your cut-in and cut-out speeds. There was also a severe disconnect between academic theory and application (as in there wasn't one), although maybe we're just expected to be smart kids and figure it out ourselves. But it's funny just how disconnected academics are from the practical world sometimes; the lecturer showed us how innaccurate wind forecasts can be, and I asked if that would be an area for innovation and entrepreneurship, which he answered by saying that wind modeling was really difficult (literally that's what he said. Does that mean we shouldn't try or something, or its just above our particular group?). The thing is, wind energy companies have to tell system operators at the beginning of the day how much energy they'll deliver each hour. If they're off, they pay a penalty. This means that predicting wind is big business. I knew this, but I wanted to ask a question that would raise the subject so other students could know too, and think about that in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship, but the effort fell flat.
So I wasn't super impressed with Ecole today, but we'll see how the next few days go. Tomorrow my group is doing 'spatial and terrestrial monitoring of the environment.'
By "the one other person who will probably read this" you mean me, most likely.
ReplyDeleteDespite initial doubts/qualms with your program, I still wish I had access to something similar. Especially after Andy's climate change class, I was ready to go -- but it is disturbing that so few people understand the mechanisms of climate change. No wonder most Americans don't "believe in it" (as if it were something to put belief in). Furthermore, the lack of education - even at Western - about renewable tech is quite horrifying.
P.S. you look quite handsome holding solar panels. Gotta love photovoltaics.