Tag Archives: Kyle Vanhemert

It takes more than research to change energy sources and use

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Much of the talk about reducing or eliminating dependency on fossil fuels is focused on research to accomplish these goals or policies to support and promote new patterns of energy use as opposed to the details needed to implement a change in the infrastructures. For example, one frequently sees news about various energy research efforts such as this one at the University of Texas at Dallas featured in a Feb. 14, 2013 news item on Azonano,

University of Texas at Dallas researchers and their colleagues at other institutions are investigating ways to harvest energy from such diverse sources as mechanical vibrations, wasted heat, radio waves, light and even movements of the human body.

The goal is to develop ways to convert this unused energy into a form that can self-power the next generation of electronics, eliminating or reducing the need for bulky, limited-life batteries.

Beyond the more familiar wind and solar power, energy harvesting has a wide range of potential applications. These include: powering wireless sensor networks placed in “intelligent” buildings, or in hard-to-reach or dangerous areas; monitoring the structural health of aircraft; and biomedical implants that might transmit health data to your doctor or treat a chronic condition.

The Feb. 14, 2013 University of Texas at Dallas news release, which originated the news item, describes a recent energy research event and highlights some of the work being performed by the Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems (CEHMS) consortium (Note: A link has been removed),

At a recent scientific conference held at UT Dallas, experts from academia, industry and government labs gathered to share their latest research on energy harvesting. Energy Summit 2013 focused on research initiatives at UT Dallas, Virginia Tech and Leibniz University in Germany, which form a consortium called the Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems (CEHMS).

Founded in 2010, CEHMS is an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center funded in part by the National Science Foundation. It includes not only academic institutions, but also corporate members who collaborate on research projects and also provide funding for the center.  Roger Nessen, manager of sales and marketing at Exelis Inc. is chairman of the CEHMS advisory board.

Here are some examples of the research,

For example, Dr. Mario Rotea, the Erik Jonsson Chair and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UT Dallas, discussed some of his work aimed at advancing the development of wind energy systems. He represents UT Dallas in a proposed new consortium of universities and companies called WindSTAR that would collaborate with CEHMS on wind energy science and technology issues.

On the chemistry front, Smith’s [Dennis Smith, co-director of CEHMS and the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at UT Dallas] synthetic chemistry lab is working with advanced materials that use piezoelectrics. If a piezoelectric material is deformed by a mechanical stress – such as stepping on it or subjecting it to vibrations – it produces an electric current. Smith’s lab is investigating whether the addition of nanoparticles to certain piezoelectric materials can boost this so-called piezoelectric effect.

CEHMS co-director Dr. Shashank Priya, professor of mechanical engineering and the James and Elizabeth Turner Fellow of Engineering at Virginia Tech, collaborates with Smith on piezoelectric research. Among many projects, researchers at Virginia Tech are incorporating piezoelectrics into “smart” tiles that produce electricity when stepped upon, as well as into materials that might be applied like wallpaper to gather light and vibrational energy from walls.

Other university and industry projects include:

  • Investigating how to redesign systems to require less power.
  • An intelligent tire system that harvests energy from the vibrations in a rotating tire, powering embedded sensors that gather and report data on tire pressure, tire conditions and road conditions.
  • A new class of magnetoelectric materials that can simultaneously convert magnetic fields and vibrations into energy.
  • A textile-type material that converts wasted thermal energy into electricity, which could be wrapped around hot pipes or auto exhaust pipes to generate power.
  • Flexible solar cells that could be integrated into textiles, and worn by hikers or soldiers to power portable electronic devices far away from an electric socket.

It’s exciting to talk about research, startups, and policies but at some point one needs to develop an infrastructure to support these efforts as Kyle Vanhemert points out (in an elliptical fashion) in his Feb.14, 2013 article, A Deeply Thought-Out Plan for EV [electric vehicle] Charging Stations, on the Fast Company website,

Currently, the best estimates suggest that upwards of 80% of electric vehicle charging happens at home. … If we want to see wider adoption of EVs, however, one thing is obvious: We need to make it possible for drivers to charge in places other than their garage. It’s a more complex problem than it might seem, but a series of reports by the New York-based architecture and design studio WXY will at least give urban planners and prospective charging station entrepreneurs a place to start.

The studies, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, address a major obstacle standing in the way of more ubiquitous charging–namely, that no one knows exactly what ubiquitous charging looks like. And in fairness, that’s because it doesn’t look like any one thing.  …

The WXY design studio has developed guidelines for these hypothetical EV charging stations,

The study identifies 22 design elements in all, divided into three categories: installation, access, and operation. The first looks at the infrastructural nuts and bolts of the site, including factors like physical dimensions of the station and its proximity to the power grid. Access deals with the factors that shape the basic user experience, things like proximity to traffic and building entrances, lighting, and signage. …

Vanhemert’s article includes some design diagrams, more details about these charging stations, and links to the design studio’s report and other reports that have been commissioned for the US Northeast Electric Vehicle Network.

Thank you to Kyle Vanhemert for a thought-provoking article, which raises questions about what kinds of changes will need to be made to infrastructure and everyday gadgets as we transition to new energy sources.

A Study of Who (and of lighting technology and dance)

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Kyle Vanhemert’s Dec. 14, 2012 article for Fast Company’s Co-Design website features a collaboration (‘A Study of Who’, a piece about grief) between choreographer Heather Eddington, Anna Mae Selby, poet and playwright, and Nocte, a troop of lighting designers. From the article (Note: I have removed a link),

A Study of Who, a collaboration between director Heather Eddington and poet Anna Mae Selby, is an intimate dance performance that depicts the five stages of grief. Heavy stuff, to be sure. To help her represent that elemental human experience, Eddington tapped the interdisciplinary light designers at Nocte, who came back with a bold proposal: Filling the stage with 30 anglepoise lamps, custom-built to serve as scenery, establish ambiance, and respond to the performer dynamically throughout the piece, like a sort of Greek chorus of light.

Nocte has a webpage titled Woods (a selection from ‘A Study of Who’?) which features information about ‘A Study’,

In September 2012 we have been commissioned by artistic director Heather Eddington of State of Flux DanceFilm Company for their Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Awards 2013 finalist performance A Study of Who, organised in collaboration with Create and the Barbican.

A Study of Who is a collaboration between State of Flux and the poet Anna Mae Selby depicting the five stages of grief in a scenography inherently designed and implemented by Nocte.
By using different lighting setups and dispositions for each consecutively revealed element, every scene of the choreography is accentuated in its various settings.

The installation, comprising 30 unique handmade redwood anglepoise lamps with classic tungsten lightbulbs, is eventually emerging from the ground building a structured landscape of responsiveness and light, taking the spectator through the emotional and physical journey of the performer’s flowing display of grief.

The degree of the hanging light bulbs and the crossed placing of the lamps in a curved position, directing the visual impression of the scenery, create an interplay between light and shade.
The sequenced installation building the setting and following the motion of the story is providing a consistent spatial response for the viewer.

The Woods webpage also features a video selection from ‘A Study’. Note: This copy has been sized for this blog, you may want to see a larger version on the Woods’ webpage,

Stunning, eh? It also gives one pause to consider ‘old’ technology and ‘new’ technology.

Unfortunately, there’s no information on the Nocte website about the technology (other than the fact that these are old-fashioned tungsten lights) used to create the effects. It would have been interesting to know if and how they used sensors and/or a timing mechanism to coordinate with the dancers. It has to be wireless otherwise the dancers could be prone to tripping especially if one lighting piece isn’t placed exactly as it was during the last performance.

This piece in common with Martha Graham’s Lamentation expresses and explores grief. Graham is a legendary American choreographer who broke new ground in modern dance creating her own dance vocabulary which was much admired and copied. From the Martha Graham webpage on the University of Pittsburgh website,

Martha Graham was born in 1894 in a small city outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father was an “alienist,” the term then used to describe a physician who specialized in human psychology. Dr. Graham was particularly interested in the way people used their bodies, an interest that he passed on to his eldest daughter. In later years, Martha Graham often repeated her father’s dictum: “movement never lies.”

…

… Based on her own interpretation of the Delsartean principle of tension and relaxation, Graham identified a method of breathing and impulse control she called “contraction and release.” For her, movement originated in the tension of a contracted muscle, and continued in the flow of energy released from the body as the muscle relaxed. This method of muscle control gave Graham’s dances and dancers a hard, angular look, one that was very unfamiliar to dance audiences used to the smooth, lyrical bodily motions of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis. In her first reviews, as a result, Graham was often accused of dancing in an “ugly” way.

…

But critics and audiences soon became accustomed to Graham’s innovative style of movement and she developed a following among serious dance patrons, scholars and critics. During the early 1930s, her work was focused on emotional themes. Her famous solo, “Lamentation,” for example, was a portrait of a grieving women, sitting alone on a bench and moving to an anguished Kodaly piano score. The scholar Elizabeth Kendall has written that “Lamentation (image)” is both a piece about the emotion of grief and a visual homage to contemporary architecture, most notably the new skyscrapers that were beginning to fill the New York skyline. She describes Graham’s figure in the dance as “a skyscraper reeling,” making a connection between the two impulses of Graham’s aesthetic vision.

Two versions of grief, choreographed roughly eighty years apart.