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Electronic violin turns laser signals into sound
TECHNOLOGY Electronic violin gets you into the groove
–No longer needed?–
Going with the flow Long in development, flow batteries could soon power our future THE future of energy storage has address those concerns, opening the taken root on an onion farm in door to the possibility that battery southern California. backups for renewables could one day Seeking to offset its electricity bills, form a constellation of self-sufficient Gills Onions in Oxnard has installed a microgrids far more resilient than the flow battery. When electricity prices present electrical infrastructure. from the grid peak, the farm can tap Primus Power, based in Hayward, stores of energy created by processing California, has designed a zinc-bromine agricultural waste. The battery can flow battery that does away with supply 600 kilowatts of electricity the membrane in favour of a porous over six hours to run farm machinery metal electrode onto which zinc is for a fraction of the usual cost. plated when the battery discharges. Flow batteries are centred around EnerVault, in Sunnyvale, has cut costs two aqueous electrolytes, which are “The batteries can deliver held in separate tanks when the battery is idle. To get electricity from it, large amounts of energy, the liquids are pumped into a chamber making them suited to separated by a membrane, sparking an smoothing renewables” electron-producing chemical reaction across the membrane. To store energy, by improving the electrolyte pumping an external current is applied across system and using iron chromium rather the membrane and the process works than the more expensive vanadium in reverse. present in older designs, says Bret The batteries’ size – they can be as Adams of the company. big as shipping containers – and ability Flow batteries are also considered to store large amounts of energy make to be very safe, because unlike some them well suited to smoothing out lithium-ion designs, they are not prone the variable supply of wind, solar and to thermal runaway, which can cause other renewable energies. But they battery fires. There have been growing are expensive, and their pumps and pains, though, including anode failures, tubes make them difficult to maintain. short membrane life and electrolyte Several firms are now coming to leakage, says Steve Minnihan, an market with designs that they say analyst at technology market research 22 | NewScientist | 23 March 2013
firm Lux Research. “It indicates to the market that flow batteries need a few more years in the lab before they can rival lithium-ion or lead-acid in high-volume deployment,” he says. Nevertheless, they are finding their way into the field. In 2011 the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California, learned the hard way how brittle today’s centralised grid is. When a massive blackout took out much of San Diego’s power, the base ground to a halt. There is a 230-kilowatt solar array on site, but it wasn’t designed to provide backup power. So they had to rely on fossil fuel generators that took hours to bring online. A microgrid like the one at Gills Onions is now being built on the base that will use a 250-kilowatt battery to store spare power generated by the solar panels. Flow batteries could back up neighbourhoods, too. The Modesto irrigation district in central California is planning to put flow batteries at 45 electrical substations throughout the municipality so they provide power even if a transmission line is knocked out. “Power reliability – and microgrids are one example of that – will really be one of our killer apps,” says Primus Power CEO Tom Stepien. Martin LaMonica n
THE sound of a violin bow across strings can be exquisite. But bowing well is hard to master. Now that smooth grace is encapsulated in a new kind of electronic instrument. Developed by Dylan Menzies at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, the O-Bow uses optical sensors to track the movement of a real violin bow across a groove in a metal instrument. The sensor detects the bow’s angle and speed to drive the production of digital music in a connected computer. Notes are created using a separate keyboard. The instrument’s body is a smooth copper cylinder and the groove holding the sensors is shaped to ensure that the bow doesn’t skid off. It is easier to play than a real violin because the musician does not have to moderate the downward pressure of the bow onto the string, one of the trickiest elements of playing a violin. Many different sound effects can be created and manipulated, while rotating the bow also creates a vibrato effect, a technique that novice violin players find difficult to master. Menzies demonstrated the instrument at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction conference in Barcelona, Spain, last month and plans to commercialise it. Listen to the O-Bow at bit.ly/ electrobow. Hal Hodson n
dylan menzies
ed freeman/getty
Insight Energy storage
–No longer needed?–
Going with the flow Long in development, flow batteries could soon power our future THE future of energy storage has address those concerns, opening the taken root on an onion farm in door to the possibility that battery southern California. backups for renewables could one day Seeking to offset its electricity bills, form a constellation of self-sufficient Gills Onions in Oxnard has installed a microgrids far more resilient than the flow battery. When electricity prices present electrical infrastructure. from the grid peak, the farm can tap Primus Power, based in Hayward, stores of energy created by processing California, has designed a zinc-bromine agricultural waste. The battery can flow battery that does away with supply 600 kilowatts of electricity the membrane in favour of a porous over six hours to run farm machinery metal electrode onto which zinc is for a fraction of the usual cost. plated when the battery discharges. Flow batteries are centred around EnerVault, in Sunnyvale, has cut costs two aqueous electrolytes, which are “The batteries can deliver held in separate tanks when the battery is idle. To get electricity from it, large amounts of energy, the liquids are pumped into a chamber making them suited to separated by a membrane, sparking an smoothing renewables” electron-producing chemical reaction across the membrane. To store energy, by improving the electrolyte pumping an external current is applied across system and using iron chromium rather the membrane and the process works than the more expensive vanadium in reverse. present in older designs, says Bret The batteries’ size – they can be as Adams of the company. big as shipping containers – and ability Flow batteries are also considered to store large amounts of energy make to be very safe, because unlike some them well suited to smoothing out lithium-ion designs, they are not prone the variable supply of wind, solar and to thermal runaway, which can cause other renewable energies. But they battery fires. There have been growing are expensive, and their pumps and pains, though, including anode failures, tubes make them difficult to maintain. short membrane life and electrolyte Several firms are now coming to leakage, says Steve Minnihan, an market with designs that they say analyst at technology market research 22 | NewScientist | 23 March 2013
firm Lux Research. “It indicates to the market that flow batteries need a few more years in the lab before they can rival lithium-ion or lead-acid in high-volume deployment,” he says. Nevertheless, they are finding their way into the field. In 2011 the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California, learned the hard way how brittle today’s centralised grid is. When a massive blackout took out much of San Diego’s power, the base ground to a halt. There is a 230-kilowatt solar array on site, but it wasn’t designed to provide backup power. So they had to rely on fossil fuel generators that took hours to bring online. A microgrid like the one at Gills Onions is now being built on the base that will use a 250-kilowatt battery to store spare power generated by the solar panels. Flow batteries could back up neighbourhoods, too. The Modesto irrigation district in central California is planning to put flow batteries at 45 electrical substations throughout the municipality so they provide power even if a transmission line is knocked out. “Power reliability – and microgrids are one example of that – will really be one of our killer apps,” says Primus Power CEO Tom Stepien. Martin LaMonica n
THE sound of a violin bow across strings can be exquisite. But bowing well is hard to master. Now that smooth grace is encapsulated in a new kind of electronic instrument. Developed by Dylan Menzies at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, the O-Bow uses optical sensors to track the movement of a real violin bow across a groove in a metal instrument. The sensor detects the bow’s angle and speed to drive the production of digital music in a connected computer. Notes are created using a separate keyboard. The instrument’s body is a smooth copper cylinder and the groove holding the sensors is shaped to ensure that the bow doesn’t skid off. It is easier to play than a real violin because the musician does not have to moderate the downward pressure of the bow onto the string, one of the trickiest elements of playing a violin. Many different sound effects can be created and manipulated, while rotating the bow also creates a vibrato effect, a technique that novice violin players find difficult to master. Menzies demonstrated the instrument at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction conference in Barcelona, Spain, last month and plans to commercialise it. Listen to the O-Bow at bit.ly/ electrobow. Hal Hodson n
dylan menzies
ed freeman/getty
Insight Energy storage