Category Archives: Alternative Energy

A mobile phone mast in a box

It’s that time of the year again when the great and the good of the world’s mobile technology industry gather in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress . So far this year, there have been plenty of images of Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop getting cosy (rather fitting that the first day of this year’s event falls on Valentine’s Day perhaps) as well as the usual parade of the latest and greatest smartphone technologies.

As in previous years however, there are other less glamorous announcements but ones that could make significant differences. In a couple of previous posts going back to 2009, I made comments about the impact of molecular level electronics and how the really useful innovations in energy reduction were happening within the very power-hungry networks themselves. Continue reading →

Having fun with the sun

Saturday in the Hoskins household was Dad and youngest Daughter day as Mum and eldest Daughter went off to the cinema and shopping. It was a nice sunny winter’s day for a change, after several weeks of rain and a great opportunity to play with a toy I bought her for Christmas. As I have daughters and not sons, the usual tradition of fathers buying toys for their sons that they can play with themselves hasn’t really applied in our household to date, as I grew out of playing with dolls when I was about five 😉

The toy is an interesting kit that I spotted a while back that enables you to experiment with solar power. Although it is designed for the 10+ age category, my daughter, who is close to 9, had no problems following the assembly instructions and building the various components from the ‘Airfix’ style kit. That process was a useful lesson in how an electric motor and gears work and also the basic elements of a solar panel. The only fiddly bit was attaching the wires and when I finally twigged that I was making it more complicated than it needed to be, even that was pretty simple.

Continue reading →

Finding a new mountain to climb

“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.”

My Niece very bravely played hostess to the family over New Year at her place in Crystal Palace – a hilltop suburb of London that gives excellent views of the city skyline.

The NTL/Arqiva transmitter near Croydon - one of a number of amazing structures and facilities I was privileged to visit and, on a few occasions climb, when I worked for the company in the 1990s

I know the area quite well from my time in the broadcast industry in the early 1990s as it is home to two significant structures that have played key roles in broadcasting history – not just in the UK, but worldwide too. On the site of the original Crystal Palace stands the Crystal Palace transmitting station and a few miles down the road stands the Croydon transmitting station. I visited these stations quite a bit during my early days with NTL as they were often a focal point for the demonstration and launch of new digital broadcasting and telecommunication services . It was always fascinating to get an inside view of these amazing structures and the operations centres that sat beneath them and also to talk with the engineers who maintained the analogue services and were key to developing and implementing the new digital ones.

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, my experiences working for Lucent’s mobile/3G operations at the beginning of the century echoed those in the broadcast industry as it was during those pioneering days when there were many possibilities with what the technology could achieve but some very big mountains to climb to get there .

So, sitting in my Niece’s front room after the New Year’s celebrations were done and dusted, thoughts turned to what all those activities had led to 20 years on in broadcasting and 10 years on in the mobile web. Continue reading →

2020 Visions – Automotive innovations

I feel very fortunate and grateful to have followed a career path that has enabled me to work on a wide variety of projects across many different organisation types and markets. In the past, I’ve described myself as a bit of a ‘corporate gypsy’ which has taken on more significance recently after some research into part of my family does in fact show I share some Romany heritage with the actor Bob Hoskins – so maybe my desire to roam around in different places, soaking up new experiences and ideas is in the blood. Anyway, in the last few years I’ve roamed from software to cookware and from household appliances to automotive electronics. At any point I have been equally fascinated by the application of agile versus waterfall product development techniques, the material sciences that go into making a superior frying pan to how the design of a kitchen machine blade can make all the difference in mixing a smoothie. Right now, I am immersed in how smartphone technologies can be integrated safely into vehicle control and audio systems – a current growing concern in road safety. This last year working in the automotive industry has confirmed my earlier beliefs that it is ripe for some very fundamental invention and innovation. Our transport infrastructure continues to creak and groan under relentlessly growing demands and our over-reliance on fossil fuels looks more and more precarious as these resources become harder and harder to find, extract and process. In a flight of fancy that took off around this time last year I started to explore 3 potential routes of innovation that could help to address growing issues…

  • Making single person journeys less wasteful and more efficient
  • Modular and integrated transport solutions
  • Harvesting and trading energy through the transport infrastructure

A year on, I’ve spent some time looking at the concepts and innovations that are being explored in these areas and it’s clear that a great deal of thinking and experimentation is happenning, which hopefully will lead to some significant breakthroughs and fundamental changes. (note:– here is an interesting video from January 2011 illustrating some of the ideas of future transportation being explored) The established automotive giants keep playing with ideas…

Audi’s Snook Concept
General Motors City Car concept
Suzuki Mobility Concept

Most of the major car manufacturers have conceptual programmes underway for ‘city car’ designs.  With the US car manufacturers trying to regain some kudos for innovative, energy conscious thinking, GM has been pushing it’s experimental partnership with Segway with its development of the PUMA a semi-autonomous low footprint city vehicle. This side of the pond, another GM (F1 designer Gordon Murray) opened a few eyes earlier in the year with the T25/27 city car designs which rather unbelievably are said to be able to carry up to 3 people in a space that is 1/3rd the size of conventional cars. It was good to see Gordon Murray’s ideas win the 2010 SMMT innovation award and awards at the very successful Future Car Challenge. Although these unconventional ideas and experiments are often knocked by commentators I think it is encouraging that they are gaining coverage and recognition. Town planners dream of less congestion…

Integrated transport in Melbourne GM/Segway’s City Car Vision The GM stackable car concept

A couple of city engineering concepts I have seen recently have been pursuing the idea of integrating smaller transport units into other infrastructure. Some illustrations of an Australian concept show a tram type system that incorporates single wheeled/single person units that can join and leave the main vehicle at various points. Discovery Channel’s Mega Engineering, which looks at the potential massive build projects of the future, has examined personal pod projects underway at Heathrow Airport and an ambitious conceptual idea for Washington DC – described here in this Death of the Automobile clip. Mega Engineering shows an excellent example of potential transport robotics with amazing clips of Kiva Robots in action. Saving valuable space on roads and in parking areas…

The Mo Du Lo concept The EU ‘HOST’ Concept of modular vehicle systems

Projections of population growth, vehicle ownership and land restraints illustrate that the way we currently travel by personal transport is increasingly unsustainable. If we think traffic congestion is bad in the UK, particularly in the south – it’s nothing compared to the massive traffic jams that have been experienced in China this year.  So… it is understandable that concepts designed to automate traffic flows and reduce the physical footprint of vehicles on the road and in parking environments are gathering pace. Exploiting renewable energy resources in the transport infrastructure

An MX5 Solar Conversion Project Solar Collection Concept

The many millions of acres of car parking space and many hours that cars are parked in them seems like a criminally wasted opportunity to harness renewable energy. And because these vehicles then move from location to location there must be many an opportunity to trade the energy they collect in an ecosystem that rewards the generation of low carbon power. The Open Source Concept The most inspiring idea I have come across in the last year is Riversimple’s ‘Open Source’ Hydrogen Powered car project. The statement they have made on their FAQ’s about the importance of taking an ‘Open Source’ approach to their ideas I believe is fundamental to how we will address the challenges currently presented by the triple whammy of climate change, energy demands and population growth. It is encapsulated very well in this quote…

A window of opportunity has opened now that the flaws in our current model are self-evident and the need for a step change in our transport technology is widely recognised. We must seize this opportunity to establish new vehicle technology standards that are designed to optimise energy efficiency, because if zero emission but energy intensive vehicles establish themselves, it will be much harder ever again to question the basic architecture of cars.