Green means green

Go to any grocery store these days and the organic food area, which used to be contained to one shelf hidden in the produce area, now covers a good chunk of the floor space in the entire store. In the grocery business, green is good for profits.
How about in the automation industry, does green mean more green?
Ask Toyota. Their Prius just went over 1 million sold across the world. First off the assembly line in Japan 10 years ago, Toyota said the Prius has resulted in 4.5 million metric tons less of global warming gases compared to a standard vehicle.
While it has taken 10 years to reach this mark, Toyota has plans to sell a million hybrids annually shortly after 2010.
Of the more than one million Prius sales worldwide, nearly 592,000 sold in North America and 315,000 in Japan, Toyota said.
The latest Prius gets 48 miles a gallon (20 kilometers per liter) in city driving and 45 miles a gallon (19 kilometers per liter) on highways. Unlike standard cars, hybrids generally provide better mileage in stop-and-go city driving.
Toyota, though, is not the only automaker on the green front.
Nissan Motor Co. now plans to charge up its effort to sell an electric car in the United States and Japan by 2010. Nissan’s chief executive, Carlos Ghosn said the car company decided to accelerate development of battery-powered vehicles because of high gasoline prices and environmental concerns, not just because of the need to meet stricter fuel-economy standards.
Mitsubishi Motors and Fuji Heavy Industries are testing versions of electric cars, and General Motors and Toyota are working on battery-powered vehicles that have small gasoline engines for recharging. G.M. plans to start producing the Chevrolet Volt in 2010, while Toyota expects to offer a plug-in hybrid around the same time.

Wind power an answer, but no one solution for energy needs

Ever wonder where the next great solution is going to come from when you talk about generating power?
Some say nuclear solves all your problems. Others say the answer lies in the wind, or from the sun, or maybe even coal.
The real answer is the solution lies everywhere. There is no one real solution. Rather, the answer will come with a multitude of innovations.
Take wind powere. Oil mega star, T. Boone Pickens' Mesa Power LLP ordered 667 wind turbines from General Electric Co. as part of a $2 billion first phase of a planned Texas wind farm.
The 667 turbines are capable of generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 300,000 average U.S. homes, Mesa said in a release.
The four-phase Pampa Wind Project would be the world's largest wind energy generator, with more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity, enough for 1.3 million homes, when completed in 2014, Mesa said.
This news comes after a government report saying Americans could get as much electricity from windmills as from nuclear power plants.
The report, a collaboration between the Energy Department research labs and industry, concludes wind energy could generate 20% of the nation's electricity by 2030, about the same share now produced by nuclear reactors. Mind you, it said could generate, not will generate.
As it is with most things, powerful lobbies surely will get involved and potentially muck up the whole thing because they say their solution is the end all and they deserve a bigger piece of the profit pie.
The whole catch with wind power is the technology is ready to go. Sure there will be challenges, but it can happen now versus waiting for a huge technology breakthrough.
''The report indicates that we can do this nationally for less than half a cent per kilowatt hour if we have the vision,'' said Andrew Karsner, the Energy Department's assistant secretary for efficiency and renewable energy.
The key word there is vision. Do we have the vision?
Talk to me.

On golden pond

With gas hitting the $3.69 a gallon, you can hear the moans at every gas station. Listen to the teen filling up his car, or the gent filling his mini van. Ouch.
The world needs a better solution than being held hostage by the oil barons of the Middle East and the oil refiners across the globe.
What is the solution? Who knows really, but if you listen to the National Algae Association, it is all about the slimy green stuff you find in a pond. The association will conduct its Algae Commercialization Business Plan, Research, and Networking Forum July 17 in The Woodlands, Texas.
The conference is everything algae. Algae oil production companies and algae researchers will strut their stuff and try to get the message out there that algae is the new form of Texas tea.
With oil hitting $126 a barrel, and corn prices soaring, algae can hit the market as one of the lowest cost feedstocks for biofuels. Algae could be a source of renewable oil to process and refine into transportation fuels.
Breakthroughs in pond development and closed end loop systems put algae oil production companies on the leading-edge of the renewable oil industry.
Challenges for algae:
-- Identifying the best suitable algae strains
-- Standardizing photobioreactor (PBR) technologies
-- Developing new CO2 injection methods
-- Monitoring nutrient levels for efficient algae growth rates
-- Finding cost effective oil extraction methodologies
The experts say they can refine algae to make biofuel, jet fuel, bio-gasoline and cellulosic materials such as pharmacueticals, cosmetics, plastics and green packaging.
So, what do you think of that green slime right now?
Talk to me.

Wärtsilä, Emerson sign global offshore pact

Wärtsilä and Emerson Process Management Tuesday extended their offshore partnership by inking a global alliance pact at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.
As a part of the expansion, the companies will further integrate energy and automation systems for Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels and semi submersible oil and gas drilling rigs.
“This alliance offers a comprehensive range of control technologies,” said Magnus Miemois, vice president, offshore, at Wärtsilä Ship Power. “The core is two major industrial players in the field getting together. Products are the starting point, but the knowledge is also key to take it to market.”
“The good part of the alliance is we are there at the beginning design phase to the end. Truly cradle to grave,” said David Reif, vice president, Global Hydrocarbon Business Development at Emerson Process Management.
The companies partnered a few years ago and it seemed like a good fit.
“We started working with Wärtsilä years ago mainly in Europe. Now it is a global alliance,” Reif said.
“Our relationship with Emerson has been around for a while,” said Jaakko Eskola, group vice president, Wärtsilä Ship Power. “We feel it has performed extremely well. That is why we want to expand it.
The alliance will take Emerson’s process knowledge with the power-generation, power-distribution and vessel-automation systems Wärtsilä. The two companies will combine a single point for serving FPSO arena.
“With oil prices the way they are know, time to first oil is critical,” said Tom Snead, president of Emerson's process systems and solutions division. “Also, like many other companies, there is a labor shortage and this alliance can help with that. In a global environment, we try to help our customers from global to local.”

IT, automation closer than you think

There is no doubt about it, the IT world and the plant floor is getting closer and closer.
“The convergence is moving in from the office, but we must industrialize the equipment,” said Roland Bent, executive vice president of marketing and development and a member of the board at Phoenix Contact during Monday night’s gathering commemorating the company’s one year anniversary of the opening of its Houston Technology Center.
“The idea is to make Ethernet easier for customers; to use Ethernet and make it as easy as fieldbus,” he said. The technology is out there, Bent said, but it is a matter of bringing it together and adopting it for the manufacturing environment.
One case is wireless.
“There will not be one wireless standard,” Bent said. “There will be many different standards to fit various applications.”
“No single wireless technology solution meets all requirements of all applications,” said Harry Forbes, an analyst at Dedham, Mass.-based ARC Advisory Group and a guest speaker at the event.
He added the wireless market for process control was at $300 million in 2007 and will jump to $1.1 billion by 2012.
Wireless, Forbes said, is a perfect example of multidisciplinary areas working together for the greater good. With wireless local area networks (WLAN), IT and manufacturing have to work together, along with automation experts and the enterprise.

A new wave of offshore technology

If you want to talk automation, it is not limited to downstream enterprises. You can also look at drilling and exploration like at the Offshore Technology Conference held in Houston this week.
Filling the Reliant Center, a good chunk of a parking lot and the Reliant Stadium, over 70,000 attendees are crowding the floor learning about everything about the oil and gas industry.
The industry is booming right now, but as it is downstream, show goers and exhibitors are talking about strained personnel issues that will be hitting the industry in the coming years.
That is where some of the technology is coming in.
Allen Chasey, marketing manager at Dynapar, said they are working on getting out a new class of encoders to handle the need for more data.
“It used to be that encoders were very fragile and people would worry they could break easily. The difference now is these are more rugged encoders to handle a rough environment,” he said.
An encoder is just one small example of the changes hitting the market. Other new technologies include contamination monitors, subsea production valves, among others.

“We’re not there yet,” economist to CSIA

Alan Beaulieu was right on regarding the economic slow down in the U.S. when he said that oil price pressures would filter down to the general economy late in 2007.
He predicted that fact back in 2006, as well as a move into a recession in late 2008 resulting in the election of a Democratic president to take over in January 2009.
Now he says that recession will more likely transpire in 2009 and continue into 2010.
Beaulieu is principal, Institute for Trend Research in New Hampshire and has been since 1990. He keynoted Thursday at the 15th Annual Control System Integrators Association Executive Conference in Savannah, Ga.
Two thirds of the economists say we are in a recession now, the media says we’ve been in a recession since back when. “Well guess what? The numbers came out this week and the U.S. had positive growth in the first quarter of 2008,” Beaulieu said.
“The definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We haven’t had even one yet.” Nevertheless, it’s on the way and Beaulieu was in Savannah to point out how to prepare one’s business for the impending contraction.
“We’re going to have a harder landing than I thought last year. It’s going to be more painful than we originally predicted and it’s going to last through 2010. This is according to our numbers,” he said.
He blamed a lot on the ineffectiveness of the government who he sees as “institutionalizing risk-free investment” by bailing out banks and mortgage holders who make bad decisions and poor investments. “This isn’t capitalism, it’s socialism.”
He also pointed to the present administration’s spending habits. “During the Clinton years we had something called “pay go” which meant Congress couldn’t budget something without providing for a way to pay for it. We now have “no pay go.”
Beaulieu joked, “I have kids like that. They’ve never had jobs either.”
He was optimistic about the U.S. fundamentals and pointed to the great demographics of America. “We’ve got everything in order here to continue to be the greatest economy. We have rule of law and a fertility rate over 2.1.”
He sees the demographics of the USA, India, Indonesia, and Australia as admirable and worthy of a sound economic future. Negative demographics persist and don’t bode well for China, Europe, Japan, and Russia.
‑ Nicholas Sheble

A global necessity

Wondering if your company is going to be global or not is not an option today as the world has opened up and brought in a greater potential for reward, but also stronger competition, said Ravi Uppal, president of global markets at ABB during this morning’s keynote at 2008 ABB Automation World Conference & Exhibition.
For ABB to gain the greater reward and fend off existing and new competitors, it all comes down to collaboration with partners and end users.
“We have to learn to share with other companies as we move forward,” Uppal said. “For us collaboration is a critical competency. It is not an option.”
“It is not a situation where we develop product and then just hand them over to customers,” he said. Rather, Uppal added, it is about working with end users and other partners to come up with a smart and cost effective solution.
The catch about entering into a collaborative situation is everyone has to be on the same page.
“The entire organization has to be around it,” Uppal said. “It is not about two individuals agreeing to do it.”
One other aspect about a collaborative relationship is to have an open mind. No one solution fits with all end users. Each has their own issues to deal with.