According to the head of the European Space Agency (ESA), Europe is exploring the development of space-based solar power to boost its energy independence and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

"It will be up to Europe, ESA and its Member States to push the envelope of technology to solve one of the most pressing problems for people on Earth of this generation," said Josef Aschbacher, director general of the space agency, an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states.

In the past, the space agency hired British and German consultancy companies to do studies on the costs and advantages of creating space-based solar power. To give European policymakers technical and programmatic knowledge, the ESA published the studies this past August.

Aschbacher will propose his Solaris Program to the ESA Council in November. Aschbacher has been trying to increase support for solar energy from space in Europe as a route to energy de-carbonization. This council determines the budget and priorities for ESA. The construction of the solar power system would start in 2025, according to Aschbacher's proposals.

The Positives. Space-based solar energy is simple to understand conceptually. Solar energy is captured by satellites orbiting high above the Earth's atmosphere. The satellites would then transform that energy into current and transmit it back to Earth via microwaves, where it is captured by photovoltaic cells or antennas and transformed into electricity for homes or businesses. There is no night or cloud cover to impede collection, and the solar incidence is significantly higher than in northern latitudes of the European continent, which are the main advantages of collecting solar energy from space as opposed to the ground.

The program proposes enormous installations in geostationary orbit that could supply between 25% and 30% of the yearly electricity demand for Europe, which is now estimated to be over 3,000 TWh. These technologies would be expensive to develop and implement, costing hundreds of billions of euros.

Why will it cost so much? Because it would take a constellation of many enormous satellites situated 36,000 kilometers from Earth to enable space-based solar power. Each of these satellites would be 10 or more times heavier than the 450 metric ton International Space Station, which took over a decade to build in low Earth orbit. The final launch of these satellites' components would need hundreds or, more likely, thousands of heavy lift rocket missions.

"Using projected near-term space lift capability, such as SpaceX’s Starship, and current launch constraints, delivering one satellite into orbit would take between 4 and 6 years," Frazer-Nash, the British Firm involved in the study states. "Providing the number of satellites to satisfy the maximum contribution… to the energy mix in 2050 would require a 200-fold increase over current space-lift capacity."

The Negatives. Although the idea of solar energy generated in space is intriguing, it is not without its detractors. Elon Musk, who one might expect supporting a system that is in space and produces solar energy, is one of the biggest opponents.

"It's the stupidest thing ever," he said, several years ago. "If anyone should like space solar power, it should be me. I've got a rocket company, and a solar company. I should be really on it. But it's super obviously not going to work. It has to be better than having solar panels on Earth. With a solar panel in orbit, you get twice the solar energy, but you've got to do a double conversion: Photon to electron to photon, back to electron. What's your conversion efficiency? All in, you're going to have a real hard time even getting to 50%. So just put that solar cell on Earth."

He is not alone either. Physicist Casey Handmer identified four cost drivers in an online analysis that will render space-based solar power unaffordable: transmission losses, heat losses, logistics expenses, and a space technology penalty. According to Handmer, the cost of space-based solar energy is at least "three orders of magnitude" more than energy sources on Earth.

"I can relax assumptions all day," Handmer wrote. "I can grant 100 percent transmission efficiency, $10/kg orbital launch costs, complete development and procurement cost parity, and a crippling land shortage on Earth. Even then, space-based solar power still won’t be able to compete. I can grant a post-scarcity fully automated luxury communist space economy with self-replicating robots processing asteroids into solar panels, and even then, people will still prefer solar panels on their roof."

Perhaps the conflict in Ukraine and the dearth of Russian natural gas will spur this project along. A major space agency trying out a technique that has been considered science fantasy for literally decades would be good. But there are many obstacles to overcome and a lengthy time frame.
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The Earth will probably get its energy from space in the future. But will that happen in the next century or even later? Without a doubt, the most comprehensive and ambitious project the European Space Agency has ever done would be space-based solar power. It would undoubtedly be the Apollo program of the twenty-first century. Only much bigger.

One of the most plentiful elements on Earth, silicon has been used as the basis for most contemporary technology, including solar cells and computer chips. The characteristics of silicon as a semiconductor, however, are not perfect.

One reason is that while silicon allows electrons to flow easily through its structure, it is far less tolerant of "holes," which are positively charged electrons' opposites, and harnessing both is crucial for particular types of devices. Silicon also does a poor job of transporting heat, which contributes to the frequent overheating problems and pricey cooling systems in computers.

Now, research conducted by a group of scientists at MIT, the University of Houston, and other institutions has been published in Science and it shows that a substance known as cubic boron arsenide overcomes both of the negatives of silicon. It has great thermal conductivity and gives both electrons and holes high mobility. According to the experts, it is the best semiconductor material that has ever been discovered and might be the best one.
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Until now, cubic boron arsenide has only been produced and examined in small, uneven lab batches. To examine specific small portions of the material, the researchers had to apply unique techniques that were initially created by former MIT postdoc Bai Song. If cubic boron arsenide can be produced in an efficient, practical form, much less take the place of silicon, more research will be required. However, the researchers think that soon, the material might find some applications where its special features would make a big impact.

In the decarbonization era, solar power is, by far, the leading technology both in scale and in cost. Lunar energy is taking a lot longer. One only needs to walk into the surf on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, to understand the enormous power in the ocean. One of the biggest differences in wave technology is the harsh and punishing environment in which this new energy generation will have to operate.

Even though it’s a tough place to extract energy, several research start-ups have tried over the past decade to harness the immense lunar power of the oceans.

Wave Swell Energy's unusual UniWave 200 is an on-shore sea platform that uses an artificial blowhole formation to create air pressure changes that drive a turbine and feed energy back to shore. In July, after a year of testing, the company reported excellent results. 

Sweden-based Eco Wave Power announced in February, that the first of 10 floats has been successfully installed on the sea wall at Jaffa Port in Israel, marking an important milestone for the company's second grid-connected wave energy harvesting project.

In late August, another startup has announced the results of a 10-year set of tests on wave energy generation. The company, Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL), is making some amazing claims as to the cost and scaling of their invention—Waveline Magnet. 

In the simplest terms, the Waveline Magnet is a long, modular chain of plastic floats designed to sit on top of the water, lined up pointing directly into the waves.

These chains of floats move in a serpentine motion when waves pass through, following the movement of the water. The floats are connected by lever arms to inflexible, non-buoyant spine parts rather than directly to one another. The spine is relatively stationary while the floats move with the waves, and the lever arms move the electrical generators inside the spine units both upward and downward.

As a wave first hits the Waveline Magnet, the system gets a read on the size and speed of the wave, allowing it to fine-tune the power extraction at each generator as the wave moves down the line. SWEL says this machine can work in "all wave heights," and that "harsh wave conditions do not negatively affect the device's performance, but in contrast, enhance it, without survivability complications."

Over the past ten years, SWEL has built prototypes both in wave tanks (University of Plymouth and University of Cyprus) and also open ocean deployments. Now comes the company’s claim of energy generation volume and cost. Much of this information will have to be proven over the next year or two, but if they are right, we could be in for some revolutionary developments in the carbonless generation of energy.

The CEO of SWEL, Adam Zakheos, is quoted in a press release as saying "... we can show how a commercial-sized device using our technology will achieve a Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) less than 1c€(US$0.01)/kWh, crushing today's wave energy industry reference value of 85c€(US$0.84)/kWh." SWEL claims that "one single Waveline Magnet will be rated at over 100 MW in energetic environments." The company has produced a video to show how the Waveline Magnet works.

LCoE, of course, is a financial statistic that takes into account all initial capital and continuous operating costs throughout the project's duration. It would be utterly revolutionary if these devices had an LCoE of one penny per kWh (US$10/MWh). They would create power for less than half the price of solar and wind. If that LCoE is accurate, according to Lazard's statistics, it'd even outperform gas, coal, nuclear, geothermal, or pretty much any other known energy generation source.

If SWEL lives up to its promises, the world is in for nothing less than a clean energy revolution. However, there are plenty of bad-faith operators, wishful thinking, and unrealistic expectations in the market as investors line up to take part in green energy moonshots. And if the many tests conducted by SWEL had produced the kinds of results that could have predicted some of the cheapest and cleanest energy in the world, then, yeah, we'd expect to see some Gates-level investment coming in, and many more people working on projects of increasing scale.
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So, for now, we'll remain skeptical, hoping that this is the one that surprises us, and inviting SWEL to make us eat our words as soon, and as hard as possible. We’d love this to be one of the good news stories of the 21st century.

On September 1, the USB Promoter Group announced USB4 V2.0, a specification that will double the current max speed of USB-C from 40Gbps to 80Gbps. This spec will work with existing USB-C passive cables and new 80Gbps USB-C “active cables”.

USB4 will be backwards compatible with USB4 Version 1.0, USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and Thunderbolt 3. It will also align with the latest versions of DisplayPort and PCIe.

Most home users might be perplexed as to why they've never heard of USB 4, the standard that USB 4.0 version 2.0 seeks to replace. The widely used USB 3.2 standard was intended to be doubled in performance by the August 2019 announcement of USB 4. The minimum throughput requirement for USB 4 devices is 20 Gbit/s, which is the same as the maximum throughput that USB 3.2 offers, even though the standard does permit up to 40 Gbit/s.

Although there are USB 4 cables and goods like docking stations and external hard drives available, most items still use USB 3.2 or even older standards.
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It will be up to phone, laptop, PC and USB cable manufacturers to implement the technology. It's another win for USB-C, which Europe has decided to standardize on for all phones and gadgets.

How many people do you know who use the same password for everything and it isn’t even something hard to guess, like a birthday, anniversary, address or just “password” or “123456”? There are a lot and even with today’s excellent password managers, users have to be proactive to be sure they have rock solid passwords, change them regularly and protect them by not using them more than once.

Standards. A group of technology giants, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, have banded together to form the FIDO Alliance. This is an open industry association with a focused mission: authentication standards to help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords. FIDO promotes the development of, use of, and compliance with standards for authentication and device attestation. 

Apple is the first of the major players in FIDO to bring out their standards compliant solution to removing passwords from online security. The new technology is called Passkeys and will debut this fall on all of Apple’s operating systems: macOS Ventura, iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and Apple TV.

How do Passkeys Work? Passkeys are unique digital keys that are easy to use, more secure, never stored on a web server, and stay on your device. Hackers can’t steal Passkeys in a data breach or trick users into sharing them. Passkeys use Touch ID or Face ID for biometric verification, and iCloud Keychain to sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV with end-to-end encryption.

When you create an online account on a website, you will use a Passkey instead of a password. “To create a Passkey, just use Touch ID or Face ID to authenticate, and you’re done,” said Darin Adler, Apple’s P of internet technologies.

When you go to log in to that website again, Passkeys allow you to prove who you are by using your biometrics rather than typing in a pass phrase (or having your password manager enter it for you). When signing in to a website on a Mac, a prompt will appear on your iPhone or iPad to verify your identity. Apple says its Passkeys will sync across your devices using iCloud’s Keychain, and the Passkeys are stored on your devices rather than on servers. (Using iCloud Keychain should also solve the problem of losing or breaking your linked devices.) Under the hood, Apple’s Passkeys are based on the Web Authentication API (Within) and are end-to-end encrypted so nobody can read them, including Apple. The system for creating Passkeys uses public-private key authentication to prove you are who you say you are.

A password-less system would be a significant step forward for most people’s online security. As well as eliminating guessable passwords, removing passwords reduces the likelihood of successful phishing attacks. And passwords can’t be stolen in data breaches if they don't exist in the first place. (Some apps and websites already allow people to log in using their fingerprints or using face recognition, but these usually require you to first create an account with a password.)
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When all the tech companies have rolled out their version of passkeys, it should be possible for the system to work across different devices—in theory, you could use your iPhone to log in to a Windows laptop, or an Android tablet to log in to a website in Microsoft’s Edge Browser. “All of FIDO’s specs have been developed collaboratively, with inputs from hundreds of companies,” says Andrew Shikiar, the executive director of the FIDO Alliance. Shikiar confirms Apple is the first company to roll out passkey-style technology and says this shows “how tangible this approach will soon be for consumers worldwide.”

Record heat all over the globe is now a potentially bigger threat to ongoing data center operations than cybercrime. In late July, Google Cloud’s data centers in London went offline for a day because of cooling failures. Oracle’s cloud-based data center, also in London, was hit and went offline, causing outages for US clients.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says there’s a 93% change that one year between 2022 and 2026 will be the hottest on record. “For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” says Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary general. “And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise, and our weather will become more extreme.”

A survey conducted by the Uptime Institute, a digital services standards agency, found that 45% of all US data centers have experienced an extreme weather event that threatened their ability to provide uninterrupted service.

The problem with both US-based and European centers is that their cooling systems were designed for a cooler planet than we have today. Newer data centers are now being constructed with a forecasted weather scenario to better plan for much higher temperatures.

Most data centers don’t operate at full capacity, but recent Cushman & Wakefield research shows that eight data center markets worldwide out of 55 they investigated operate at 95% or higher capacity. These centers are only strained by high temperatures a few days a year and they have been able to adjust loads to compensate for the heat. 

As climate change alters our temperatures permanently, data centers will have to improve their cooling systems so that continuous service can be assured.

“There are a deceptively large number of legacy data center sites built by banks and financial services companies needing to be refreshed and refitted,” says Simon Harris, head of critical infrastructure at data center consultancy Business Critical Solutions. As part of that rethink, Harris advises companies to look at design criteria that can cope with climate change, rather than solely minimizing its effects. “It’ll be bigger chiller machines, machines with bigger condensers, and looking more at machines that use evaporative cooling to achieve the performance criteria needed to ensure that for those days things are still in a good place,” he says.

Companies are trying novel approaches to dealing with the climate issues. Microsoft ran a three-year trial of a data center set 117 feet below the sea offshore of Scotland to insulate it from temperature fluctuations. Other companies are building centers in even more northern climates, but that probably won’t be a viable solution for those organizations who use edge computing and need their centers close to where data is consumed, often in hotter, urban areas.
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We all have to do everything we can to reduce the impact of climate change, but now is the time for all data center management personnel to better plan for the increased temperatures we will experience for the foreseeable future.

It’s summertime and we’re out at the beach, by the pool or at the amusement park. We bring our smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and even laptops with us and, unfortunately, some of us will experience that terrifying moment when our piece of electronics ends up underwater. It could even be as simple as a drink overturning onto your keyboard for your laptop. 

You need to know what to do and NOT to do and react quickly to save your device.

Be Prepared. You should have at home an electronics first-aid kit. You can get all the items from Amazon and you’ll be ready. Get a tub of silica gel (DampRid). 

You should also have one or two rescue packs (Kensington 39723 EVAP Wet Electronics Rescue Pouch) that you can pack with your other stuff to take with you when you’re out and about. This will work well for a smartphone or an iPod.

There’s a chance (about 70%) that you’ll be able to dry the device completely and put it back to work. In most cases, it won’t be quick, and you’ll have to make a bit of a mess. But you could save yourself a trip to the electronics store for a replacement.

Steps:

1. Get it out of the water as soon as possible — An unprotected device has less than 30 seconds before water leaks into the hardware.

2. Turn it off completely — If the device is still on when you fish it out of the water, turn it completely off. Even if the device is still functioning, turning it completely off may prevent any circuits from shorting out. This is NOT simply putting the device to sleep or turning off the display. Shut the device completely down.

3. Remove the battery, if possible — As the power source, this is more likely to be damaged by water than the actual device, especially if the item was on when contact was made with the water. If the device is a smartphone, skip this step. Opening the device will void the warranty and you probably don’t have the right tools to open it, anyway.

4. Remove the memory and SIM cards if possible — Because in many cases your data is stored on these instead of the actual computer or phone, you’ll probably want to protect them as much as possible. Fortunately, they’re fairly durable, so you’ll be able to dry them initially with a cloth towel, then let them air dry for a day before reinserting.

5. Remove any cables or peripherals and set them aside to air-dry — This is especially true for smaller devices, as there’s not a lot you can do beyond this. Headphones, in particular, are tiny, but extremely water resistant, even capable of surviving multiple trips through a washing machine and dryer.

6. Remove any covers and external connectors — This will open up as many gaps, slots and crevices as possible for drying, and help ensure that no moisture is trapped inside the device.

7. Get rid of all the water — This is where things get difficult. You may need to wipe it with a cloth or gently shake the water out. The following are other ways to remove water and completely dry your device.

Can of compressed air – You’ll need to be careful here, as compressed air likes to blow VERY cold and can momentarily freeze the surface of items it’s sprayed on. Any way you approach this, the device needs to be as water-free as you can get it before going to the next step.

Hair Dryer –   If you don’t have compressed air, a hair dryer can help speed up the drying process, but ONLY with cool air settings. Do not bombard your device with hot air. This can be better than the compressed air, as a constant stream of swift blowing room-temperature air can be directed at your device without the worry of quick-freezing parts of it.

Alcohol – Using a cotton swab, wipe small amounts of alcohol on the affected areas and then blow on them again to evaporate the alcohol. Use this sparingly, but because alcohol evaporates faster than water, mixing the two may help remove water from stubborn places.

Cover the device with a drying agent – Here’s where the silica gel pellets come in handy. Some people use white rice, but that can cause many more problems than it solves. Get an airtight container and completely cover your device in the drying agent. Leave the device in the container for AT LEAST 48 full hours. Your device may require more time in the drying agent, depending on how long and how completely submerged it was. In some cases, the device may need to sit for multiple days or up to a week – WITHOUT trying to see if it will turn on again.

Waterproof Your Technology. There’s a high-tech and a low-tech way to do this.

The high-tech way is to buy a waterproof case or bag designed for your device. Check the submersion factor, a gauge of how many feet underwater the case will stay waterproof for at least 10 minutes. 

The low-tech way is to use zippered plastic storage bags. This will work for smaller devices like music players, e-readers, and tablets. If you’re listening to music, keep the device in the plastic bag and use wireless ear buds.
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Preparation is the best defense for summer water catastrophes. Set up your first-aid kit, get a couple of rescue pouches and BE CAREFUL when you get close to any water!

Large data centers need power backup to operate without interruption. They rely on large banks of lithium-ion batteries to provide the instantaneous power when the normal power supplied by the local grid fails. Those lithium-ion batteries could soon be used to help local power grids manage energy demand.

Any city or region that gets its power from renewables is subject to the whim of the weather. Unlike fossil-based energy, renewable energy sources ebb and flow. The battery systems these grids use provide power when the renewable sources ebb and recharge when they flow.

Microsoft realized it could partner with local power grids where its data centers are located around the world and offer to store that renewable power in their battery backup systems. Today, sophisticated data centers operate with what are known as “uninterruptible power supply systems.” These systems include a bank of batteries which kick in the instant the power goes out and may operate for only a few minutes until the backup generators are up and running.

Microsoft’s newest data center in Dublin, Ireland, is due to come online in 2023 and it is planned as the first center to partner with a local power grid. The plan would be to have the data center’s large battery installation provide backup for when the grid sees more energy demand than it can supply. But, instead of only responding to outages, it might actually prevent them.

The company isn’t publicly sharing how much energy its Dublin battery installation will prove to the grid. But, from information provided by Microsoft’s Datacenter Advanced Development Group, we know that a typical center uses “tens of megawatts of power.”

To put the battery’s size into perspective, a single megawatt generated by a power plant can provide electricity for several hundred homes.

Microsoft has tested the concept on a small scale in Chicago, IL and Quincy, Washington in the past. But because almost 35% of all of Ireland’s electricity come from wind farms, this was one of the best places to set up a full commercial partnership.
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The company currently operates over 200 data centers worldwide and has plans to build between 50 and 100 new centers a year through the rest of this decade. Given Microsoft’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, it needs more renewable energy for its data centers. The partnerships they plan with local power grids should be real win-win scenarios.

On June 30th, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorized SpaceX and a second commercial satellite company—Kepler Communications— to use their satellite internet system on vehicles in motion, including cars, trucks, boats, and aircraft.

Starlink is SpaceX’s network of satellites in low Earth orbit, designed to deliver high-speed internet anywhere on the globe. There are currently about 2,700 Starlite satellites to support the global network. As of May, SpaceX told the FCC that Starlink had over 400,000 subscribers.

The FCC states that approving the new capability is in the public’s interest. “We agree with SpaceX and Kepler that the public interest would benefit by granting with conditions their applications,” the FCC wrote in its authorization. “Authorizing a new class of terminals for SpaceX’s satellite system will expand the range of broadband capabilities to meet the growing user demands that now require connectivity while on the move, whether driving an RV across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a U.S. port, or while on a domestic or international flight.”

For some time, SpaceX has been very vocal in its desire to expand Starlink service beyond residential consumer use. SpaceX has signed an early deal with Hawaiian Airlines and one with semiprivate charter provider JSX to provide Wi-Fi on planes.

SpaceX has already deployed a version of its satellite service called “Starlink for RVs.” It requires an additional “portability” fee. But portability is not the same as mobility, which the new FCC decision now allows. It will also apply to ships at sea and even long-haul semi-tractor trailers.

Customers who want the Starlink service must purchase a user terminal for $599 and then pay $110/month for usage.
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It’s clear that this decision opens new worlds of connectivity literally all over the world.

At the end of May, Walmart announced an expansion of its drone-delivery service. By the end of the year, the retail giant plans to offer the service from 34 locations in six states. When the service started, it was only offered from a single store in Arkansas and with this expansion; they hope to reach up to 4 million households.

The service will operate between 8AM and 8PM and deliver packages weighing less than 10 pounds. The service will be operated by a company Walmart has invested in--DroneUp. There will be a charge of $3.99 for the delivery. The order is packed into a box and a DroneUp pilot flies the drone to the customer’s location, easing the box gently down on the front lawn with a claw-like device at the end of a sturdy cable.
This program expansion is forecasted to take hundreds of deliveries within a few months to more than a million drone deliveries a year. Walmart is clearly targeting the one or two items that are purchased with quick last-minute trips. The press release stated that the top-selling item at one of the early hubs is Hamburger Helper.

The Wall Street Journal reported that both UPS and FedEx are experimenting with drones but aren’t offering an actual service yet. Alphabet (Google’s parent) has its own drone service called Wing with limited offerings in Virginia and Texas. Wing is also operating in Australia and through the first quarter of 2022, they claim deliveries of over 200,000 parcels.
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And we can’t forget Amazon. As we wrote in Technology This Week Issue 8-49, the company is still experiencing problems with its drone efforts. The big difference for Amazon’s program is that they want the drones to be autonomous rather than piloted. Because of their commitment to “certified pilots,” Walmart will have a tougher time scaling up their efforts. Drone flights, by regulation, must be ‘line-of-sight’ flights. Stores will have to have control towers in their parking lots and are limited to a 1.5-mile radius for deliveries.
We will all keep our eyes on Walmart during the rest of 2022 to see if they will be successful in their new drone efforts. It could be a chance for Walmart to surpass Amazon in a critical technology area in the new retail arena!