Between 1978 and 1986, in an international experiment ini­tiated by Japan, an OWC system was tested for the first time on a large scale: The ship Kamai’ carried out three series of tests in the Japan Sea in which turbines with up to a megawatt of power output were installed. Only in 1998 was the […]

The question arises as to whether setting up a whole new infrastructure for using hydrogen as a motor fuel does not represent a serious obstacle to its widespread use. The an­swer is given by a study which was commissioned by the German Federal government to evaluate the marketability of fuel-cell powered vehicles, and thus paid […]

In designing the electrical drive components of a hybrid or all-electric vehicle, the drive power and the weight of the on-board battery must be optimized. One of the great ad­vantages of an all-electric drive is the possibility of operat­ing the drive motor for a short time at a multiple of its av­erage maximum power. The […]

Why does wave power not yet come “out of the wall socket“? As we have already described, the installation of the power plants in the rough loca­tions where they must be operated is difficult. Their design must guarantee a long operating life. A further hurdle is the developement of turbines which are suitable for OWCs. […]

Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of sources. The environmental-political requirement that it be produced from renewable sources limits the choice, and eliminates the current industrial production methods. Possible re- FIG. 2 A FUTURE PIPELINE NETWORK newable energy sources for hydrogen production are wind power and photovoltaics; they would provide power for the production […]

These large high-power batteries require a battery man­agement system with refined monitoring and protection functions for the battery (Figure 4 [5]). In normal operation, only the monitoring functions are active; their principal tasks are: • Voltage, current and temperature monitoring: These primary data are used to derive other values. These in­clude for example the internal […]

As mentioned at the beginning, there are numerous differ­ent ideas for extracting energy from ocean waves. Two of them are distinguished by their special designs. Their de­velopers are trying to take the bull by the horns and solve the main economic problem of wave energy plants: the re­quirement that the plant be able to survive […]

by Silke Kohler | Frank Kabus | Ernst Huenges In energy-supply systems with combined heat and power (CHP) generation, or also in con­nection with sustainable energy sources, especially solar energy, the question often arises as to how to store the thermal energy. This can involve short storage times such as hours or days, but it […]