A West Virginia legislator recently called for the use of Google Glass – a new consumer electronic device about to be launched by Google – to be banned while driving cars. The politician claims it is an attempt to avoid distracted driving. Unfortunately, he’s got it backwards. The use of Google Glass while driving should be encouraged, not forbidden. It offers a safer and more efficient user interface than we have today.  It also opens up possibilities for better control of the car, which means better mileage and less consumption of gasoline society-wide.

The fact is that the current practice of looking down to scan instrument panels or change the radio station is inherently unsafe. The Air Forces of the world realized that long ago and now the use of the head-up-display (HUD) is widely used by fighter pilots. HUDs were first developed for fighter pilots as a means to keep their line of sight pointed straight ahead while still being able to scan their instruments. The first HUD’s projected instrument displays onto the cockpit glass. Unfortunately, researchers found that this led to the pilots’ committing the sin of cognitive tunneling – the act of focusing on an item in the near field of vision instead of keeping their eyes focused at infinity on the wide field of vision (a good thing to do when you’re in the middle of a dogfight). Subsequently, HUDs were redesigned to give basic information in as visually simple a fashion as possible. By keeping only a few key readings on the windshield and displaying the data in simple geometric forms, the pilots soon found themselves permanently focusing on the wide field while subconsciously absorbing the information that was being presented to them – the ideal way to use an HUD.

A Google Glass-type device, likewise, is an ideal form factor for presenting limited but crucial information to a driver without interrupting their line-of-sight. The limitation of data is key: the answer to cognitive tunneling is limiting the amount of data being presented. The driver isn’t there to read a book, after all. By using an intelligent device like Google Glass, the car can present only the information the driver needs to see at the present moment (an unsafe speed warning, an upcoming turn to be made, an empty gas tank, etc.). The device can also bring advanced safety systems into play by broadcasting lane drifting warnings or other cars approaching that might warrant defensive maneuvers. Google Glass, all in all, has the potential to significantly add to the safety of the driver and riders.

Another key element that Google Glass can deliver is useful voice control. Although voice control is improving in automobiles, it is far more difficult to yell a perceptible command at a device that is 2-feet away from the driver’s mouth (ask anyone who has used Ford Sync about this issue) than it is for a device that the driver is wearing. Additionally, Google Glass is rumored to have bone conduction capabilities, meaning that it always detects when the wearer (and not an inconsiderate passenger in the backseat) is speaking.

The utility of Google Glass doesn’t have to end there. If a driver wants to save more fuel, a Google Glass app could provide an icon that provides persistent feedback on their driving habits. Simple changes to driving habits can easily lead to significant fuel savings. Too hard on the brakes? The icon could vibrate. Accelerating too quickly? The icon could glow yellow. That sort of persistent feedback is not possible from a smartphone or an instrument panel on the dashboard, but it could be easily processed by the wearer of a Google Glass device. This kind of driving would be especially advantageous for drivers of hybrids and pure electric vehicles, since optimization of regenerative braking habits is one of the easiest ways to improve mileage.

With all of the good things that Google Glass can do, it needs to be emphasized that it, like any consumer electronics device, must be limited while the user is driving. There needs to be a “Drive Mode” that shuts off visual text alerts, emails, and movie streaming while the wearer is driving. If that happens, and if the price drops considerably from its current $1,500 peak, it will be the norm for drivers to buckle in, adjust their seatbelts, and turn on Google Glass.

According to a New York Times report, Japan has successfully mined natural gas from the sea.  While this sounds like major news, the feat is neither all that new nor all that significant.

The availability of methane hydrates as a hydrocarbon resource has been known for centuries, and several other Japanese and Canadian experiments have successfully brought up methane from hydrate beds.  An enormous amount of methane lies beneath the floors of the world’s oceans.  The Japanese research project is a small step towards the economical and safe exploitation of methane hydrates; but a number of advances still remain to be achieved:

1).  Environmental containment: Methane hydrates are essentially ice crystals with a few molecules of methane trapped inside.  But the crystals aren’t blocks of ice like the cubes in your freezer.  They are fragile, lattice-like frames.  Any disturbance to a methane hydrate bed can lead to a cascade of collapsing crystals, followed by one gigantic belch of methane gas from the seabed.

This is bad for two reasons.  The gas you want to mine escapes, and that bubble of valuable hydrocarbons now enters the atmosphere, where it traps heat at nearly twenty times the rate of carbon dioxide.  Some even speculate that methane burps from the seabed caused prehistoric global warming incidents.

How do you stick a drill-pipe into sediment that has the consistency of cobwebs, without disturbing it?  There’s probably an answer out there waiting to be discovered — but nobody knows how to do it today.  And there’s no sign that the Japanese project has succeeded in doing so.

2).  Economics: Most methane hydrate deposits exist underneath dozens or hundreds of feet of mud and gravel.  Where the mud stops and the methane starts is a very blurry line.  Thus the fluid that’s brought to the surface will include an enormous amount of extraneous material.  That problem can be solved relatively easily, but not cheaply.

Separating the methane from everything else will be an enormously expensive task that far exceeds the separation requirements of other “tight” natural gas resources (such as coal-seam methane and shale gas).  There’s no simple way around that cost, which means the extraction costs of seabed methane will always be higher than any other gas deposits.  At the current natural gas prices of $3.64 per million metric BTU, there’s no economic rationale for investing in methane hydrate projects.

3).  Infrastructure: There is no industrial infrastructure currently built to mine, process and deliver methane from seabed deposits.  Unlike traditional underground formations that are highly concentrated, seabed methane beds spread over vast areas.

To eventually extract that methane will probably require specialized floating infrastructure that can follow the resource.  The creation of an entirely new infrastructure to gather the hydrates and turn them into usable fuel, will require tens of billions of dollars worth of all-new, untested equipment.

While some of the breathless reports about the Japanese “discovery” claim that a brand new fossil fuel resource has been stumbled upon, the facts are a little less sensational.

What is the proper mythological metaphor for A123 Systems? Some might conjure up Icarus for the venture capital highflier whose business model melted in the heat of competition.  Or maybe Sisyphus, for being asked to perform a series of impossible tasks, each ending in failure.

Now, however, the most apt myth would be the phoenix—the bird that regenerates from its own ashes.  A123 is now officially a subsidiary of Wanxiang America, an Illinois-based auto parts supplier and the American arm of the Wanxiang Group of China, and has officially risen from the ashes of bankruptcy.

What will the new A123 look like? The company hasn’t declared any official moves yet, but here are a few of the things I’ve heard from industry participants about the strategic directions that a re-born A123 will likely take:

More cash.  Wanxiang isn’t just giving A123 a lifeline.  It is injecting a significant amount of capital into its new U.S. subsidiary.  That capital will go toward qualifying for new projects (sometimes vendors have to show a certain amount of financial health to be able to bid on large capital-intensive projects).  It will also help to underwrite a new research and development project.

New chemistries.  A123 will work on developing the next generation battery chemistry, though its nano-engineered lithium iron phosphate chemistry will continue to be produced and supported for the applications it is best suited for.

Emphasis on systems integration.  A123 will continue to be a player in the automotive sector, where its batteries are already scheduled to go into several Chinese models and the Chevy Spark EV, as well as developing a technology solution for the microhybrid segment.  On the grid storage side, the company will emphasize its systems integration capabilities.  Rather than just be a manufacturer of cells, the company wants to provide complete systems, including controls, inverters, voltage regulators, fire suppression systems, and transformers.  It’s a smart move considering that cells are quickly becoming a low-margin commodity.

So where does the new A123 Systems fit into the newly transformed energy storage landscape? Actually, it fits pretty well.  During the bubble years of the energy storage  industry (2010 to 2012), many companies crashed and burned— literally.  A spate of fire events spelled doom for a handful of startups that had otherwise promising technologies, and the expected flood of utility orders never arrived.  Batteries are still too expensive to make sense for most applications.  Now the lineup of vendors active in the area has been winnowed while at the same time manufacturing capacity has been dramatically enlarged, leading to cheaper batteries thanks to economies of scale.  A123 is re-entering a market that appears to be opening up, and it is doing so in an environment with fewer competitors.  A123 couldn’t have picked a better time for its mythic rebirth.

It’s safe to say that the electrical systems supervisor is not the person that Superdome officials wanted the world’s media to be talking about the morning after the Super Bowl.  For 34 dimly lit minutes, starting early in the third quarter, that person’s competence was one of the many things that the more than 1 billion people watching the game were discussing.

There’s a lot we don’t know about exactly what happened when the lights went out on the Super Bowl.  But here’s what we do know:

Not all the lights went out: One-third of the lights stayed on throughout that excruciating half hour.  That probably means that the uninterruptable power supply system worked as planned.  The only problem was that the UPS system was sized to one-third the necessary power needs of the stadium.

The lights weren’t the only things going out: The CBS announcers lost power, as apparently did the top-level cameras and the coaches’ communications systems.  This points to a failure in wiring the building’s critical circuits.  By far the most important thing to keep going in the case of an emergency (after emergency lighting and the PA system, both of which worked) is the power to the television operations.  Television is what pays everyone’s bills, so that should have priority over other systems.  It did not.  Likewise, the fact that one team’s communications systems continued to work (the 49ers) and the other’s didn’t (the Ravens), showed that someone didn’t think very clearly when designing the critical circuit design.

LEDs still shone: If you looked carefully at the scenes of the blackened sections of the stadium seating, you could see that the emergency stair lights were all still lit.  Likewise, the exterior colored lighting that bathes the outside walls of the stadium in light was still working.  That’s because it’s made up of LEDs, which consume a fraction of a percentage of the power required by the sodium high intensity discharge (HID) lamps used for the rest of the stadium lighting.  Additionally, the sodium HIDs, once they went out, took another 20 minutes to regain their full luminosity.  LEDs, on the other hand, require no warm-up time and sip so little electricity that managing the current for them is a much less complex task.

Engineers and Repairmen

Based on this knowledge, here are three important lessons learned from the power management debacle that was Super Bowl XLVII:

• Right-sizing a UPS backup microgrid is about more than just installing a bunch of generators.  The art of designing a backup microgrid is about balancing the maximum number of diesel gensets with the minimal amount of load.  Physical space for backup gensets is almost always limited (especially in a flood plain like New Orleans, where generators have to be placed – at a minimum – on the second floor).  Thus, keeping the blackout from happening was more of a failure of critical circuit design than of generator management.
• Energy efficiency counts more than backup power in times of emergency.  The failure of the sodium HID lights and the long warm-up time they require would have been solved by energy efficient LED lights, which also would have reduced the load on the UPS system.
• Electrical design engineers are always more valuable than electric repairmen.  Designing the critical circuits to be prioritized during a power failure is a job worth doing right, as we saw on Sunday evening.  The designers of the Superdome’s UPS circuitry got some things very right: the success of the emergency lighting system kept the crowd from panicking.  But the problems with the broadcasting and team communications systems showed that not everything was so well-planned.