Bodo's Current Issue

Editorial

This Fall's Events

The days of Summer have been nice so far in my area and I've been protecting my head and recharging my batteries for the upcoming marathon of events this Fall.

What happens when we do not respect Mother Nature has become all to apparent.
Fires in Russia, flooding in Poland and eastern Germany and, in Asia, China, Pakistan and India are the headlines of our day. Not to mention the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the, as yet unknown, consequences of this environmental disaster. We only have this one Earth and we need to handle it carefully before we turn it over to the next generation. It is up to the engineers to help the world recover. We must investigate how many of these disasters are man-made and what corrective action is needed.

A good start would be to focus on generating energy through natural, renewable sources such as water, wind and solar. The next step is to distribute it through smart grids. Modern electronics can control the grid but what we need is a standard to communicate the need for controlling the power. The imec Institute suggested what could be included in the smart grid in an article in January 2010 but did not include high-voltage DC link applications like the one from ABB in my July issue. These are, however, necessary for transporting electrical energy efficiently over long distances. Energy from off-shore wind parks and solar power are generated far away from the consumers for whom they are meant. Efficient links can make it attractive to transport this power over significant distances.The EPE conference in Macedonia will provide a university platform to review technological progress for the next generation of design. HusumWind in Germany will highlight where wind power will be the next years. Where wind is we have the potential for harvesting energy – we only have to build the windmills. Distributing and storing electrical energy is a challenging area that we need to explore more but another monumental challenge is to reduce wasted energy in order to reduce the overall demand. Here less is more for our environment.

Innotrans in Berlin will display design and innovation for locomotives and transportation. Power semiconductors including high power switches like the IGBT contribute significantly to the development of variable speed driven electric drives.

The Solar Energy conference in Valencia is another milestone in paving the way for more environmentally friendly solutions for generating electrical power. Spain has plenty of sun just like California and it would be a shame not to take advantage of it.

Including this September issue - delivered, as always, on time – we will have produced a total of 530 pages this year: strong performance due to strong support.

My Green Power Tip for September:
If the temperature is still good enough you could walk about without your socks and save soap and a lot of energy for running your washing machine and dryer. Take advantage of September, in October we may have cold days.

So now it's almost show time and I hope to see you at one of the Fall's exciting events!

Best regards
Bodo

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