Sustainable Technologies

Although lorries only account for 1.5% of all vehicles on UK roads, they in fact contribute to 20% of transport emissions, which is why the government has introduced a deadline of 2040 for a ban on Diesel lorries, however, what is currently the best alternative – Batteries or Hydrogen? There is a lot of talk about EVs being the future, but currently, they have several disadvantages over the petrol engine, namely the range, time to recharge and infrastructure, in fact, this is being talked about in this forum, so is Hydrogen the natural alternative? Sky News has recently published an article about a Scottish company, HVS who have designed and are in trials with a Hydrogen Powered truck, which from first look solves some of the problems mentioned earlier, in that it can be refuelled in 15 to 20 minutes (which is a lot more acceptable than charging an EV) and has a range of 600Km. In contrast, an electric equivalent would currently need to be several tonnes, so impacting the load it can pull. However, creating Green Hydrogen from green electricity is much more expensive than charging an EV and we would need many more turbines (more infrastructure).  So, is Hydrogen the way – What are your thoughts.? 

If like me you live in a terraced house with no roadside access, are you concerned with the target to stop the sale of Petrol / Diesel cars by 2030? With no possibility to install charging points on my property, I'm relying on public charging points to be in place if I want to continue driving beyond my last time purchase of a Petrol / Diesel car. The alternative is obviously to sell up and move if I want home charging. But will the national infrastructure be in place by 2030 to allow the same level of driving that we currently have today? Or do we all need to face up to the fact that change is coming?  From the Governments own document Taking charge: the electric vehicle infrastructure strategy we can see that by 2030 the number of charge point installations needs to increase significantly from its current rate. The pace of rollout across the country is too slow for some charge point types, particularlypublic on-street charging. The current pace of rollout is too slow to match our projected 2030 needs. In 2021,around 600 charge points were added to the public charging network every month. If this rate continued, only 58,000 more public charge points would be available by2030, to add to the 29,600 available today. In September 2022 within the UK there were 33.2 million cars, 4.6 million LGVs, 0.5 million HGVs, and 0.15 million buses and coaches. For perspective, to keep up with predicted demand for 2030, the UK needs 2.3 million charge points. Infrastructure on this level within 7 years seems a long way off. What opinions do you have?   

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Hello, I just had this idea to make a solar bank. Did a research and I found someone's project that's similar to what I plan to do but I don't know what modifications to make to the whole thing. Here's it. I want to increase the power output so I can use it to charge a device numerous times before I try to recharge. Don't know if I'm to use a different IC and a different battery or just stick to the initial design. I noticed that this was the second version for this solar bank design. So, I need someone that can point me in the right direction on what to do and what not to do. Thank you.

In light of the most recent IPCC report and the effects of the escalating climate crisis seen around the world, the urgency to invest in sustainable technologies and practices has never been higher. The positive shift in demand for more environmentally conscious products and services has seen many industries move to accommodate these new economies but transparency is becoming an increasingly key issue in these sectors as market value gives rise to greenwashing culture. In this regard, I am interested to hear from engineers, entrepreneurs and people within industry about their experience in trying to make products and services more sustainable. How accessible are the alternatives in industry? What frameworks exist to help make the change? What technologies have enabled any progress? How do you design supply chains to be sustainable? What are the challenges you have faced with implementation and how could it be better? Has it actually made a difference?

The price of energy is set to keep rising around the world as demand for fuel surges in the wake of lockdown and in the interest of fast economic recovery. It has been fascinating to observe the response of each nation as they attempt to manage the subsequent backlog and supply chain issues that has shown the level of weakness in the global energy market when access to fossil fuels is cut short. These observations, while somewhat concerning, have reignited an interest in sustainable technologies from friends and family which include air-source heat-pumps, solar and wind as well as off-grid storage. The latter has been of particular interest, given the low-cost of high capacity, deep-cycle batteries, especially where they could be used to avoid high energy rates over the winter by going off-grid. This raises the question of whether it would be possible to build a standalone off-grid storage system that operates alongside, but independently of the mains electrical supply which could save households a lot of money while helping the planet by recharging through local renewable sources. My question is, has anyone ever built, or considered building a hybrid on/off-grid domestic electrical system, what factors are there to consider and is it feasible?