Finally. About two years after we started – the Nemesis is ‘finished’.
I’ve been meaning to post something before now, but the last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. Here’s a quick heads up, some stuff you might know already from the news, some you probably won’t.
The car arrived in Stroud nearly three weeks ago now (Tuesday the 28th Oct) looking simply awesome. It was the first time I’d seen it in it’s finished form, complete with grey and black union jack paint job and all sorts of other bits and pieces – it really is transformed from the car that was here in the summer of 09 – for a few months.
Hi All, you may remember back in January 09 we had a blade incident at one of our wind parks, one fell off and one got bent. One was reportedly missing from the scene and then ‘returned’ – but that was just the long grass hiding it.
Without an obvious reason, like lightning for example, we were stumped for a few weeks and into that vacuum stepped a number of ideas as to probable cause. And the story grew from there, and flew round the world.
We promised we’d publish the final Health & Safety report as soon as we got it, and this has taken quite an incredible length of time to get – we got it last week. So here it is.
Hopefully you will remember the Greenbird? A project we were involved in with British engineer & adventurer Richard Jenkins, which successfully smashed the world land speed record for wind powered vehicles… Richard just sent me an email about another wind powered vehicle project that is quite a mind boggler. Here’s Richard’s thoughts on it – we’d be interested to hear yours…
So, one night, I was happily drinking my beer and tending to my inbox of endless boring emails that had be answered but were of no real consequence, when Lester, my landsailing buddy texted me a link to fasterthanthewind.org. Lester knows a lot, and if he says this needs my attention, then it gets it. I am not sure if it was how many beers I had had, or simply the inane nature of the quest, but I laughed enough to email all my friends to share the absurdity of their mission. My heart is split between belittling idiots, and saluting eccentrics, and this downwind quest lay somewhere in the middle. These loonies were pursuing a pointless goal, doomed to failure, but there was some genuine merit in the myth and their enthusiasm.
I dismissed it as utterly impossible. Travelling through zero apparent wind, with no stored power? Impossible. Why would you even attempt it? (Though I’m no stranger to that question myself!) But had I been asked to bet at that moment, I would have just lost a lot of money.
A few months later I actually met the idiots in question and, to my surprise and concern we not only have a few mutual friends, but they seemed to be rather technically credible. But, everyone makes mistakes, and I let them off as decent people with a blinkered view of fundamentally flawed engineering….
A few months later they were claiming success and if it was not for another great friend, Bob Dill, advising that they were actually correct, I would have discarded their claim as an April fool. I thought about the possibility that I was wrong, and then considered that as Bob was getting on a bit and had a bit of a shake with his stopwatch finger, maybe it was he who was mistaken. There was, however, a growing momentum of technical people (who should have known better), saying that these idiots have actually proven that it is possible to travel faster than the wind going directly down wind.
Not content, I had to witness this myself. When I heard it was on for the official record at El Mirage, I jumped on a plane and went to check it out.
The video speaks for itself. These guys are not idiots, but sincere, genuine, technical people who took a myth and made it real. It works. It starts from rest, trundles to true wind speed, then powers to a multiple of about 3 times the true wind speed. Bob will confirm the final number I am sure.
To all fellow skeptics, start baking that humble pie, or eat your hat. Your choice
Here’s a video Richard shot on the day he visited.
ETA: Just in case you are wondering at the strange tone in Richard’s post (and references to ‘idiots’ and such) – this story has a lot of history, so Richard is referencing the often heated debates about whether this DDWFTTW idea is actually possible or not. As Wired magazines puts it “The concept known as DWFTTW can cause world-renowned physicists to throw their Nobel Prizes in fits of rage.”
You can check out some of those lengthy & heated discussions in the links below:
OK you could have blinked and missed it – but in a Groundhog Day moment, Green Britain Day happened again – yesterday. Although ‘happened’ might be a bit of a euphemism for something that ever so didn’t (happen).
Guessing that response might be poor, we thought we’d help EDF out. So we asked b3ta (a satirical website) to launch an ‘Image Challenge’ – a challenge to produce some alternative creative concepts for EDF’s Green Britain Day.
And what a hoot that turned out to be. We got an awesome response (OK some are a little rude, OK maybe more than a little).
Some great news today, we’ve been granted planning permission for our new Zero Carbon HQ. More impressively, from our point of view, it didn’t take an appeal…
Only slight bummer is that it’s planning permission for a site we don’t own – not yet anyway.
The site is on the way into Stroud (where we’re based) and it’s known as Tricorn House. It’s an ugly brute of a building that’s stood empty and derelict for a decade or so. Actually in architectural terms it’s style is described as ‘Brutalist‘.
Sorry it’s been a few weeks since I posted anything on the car here, or anything at all on this site in fact, my bad – only excuse is there’s a lot going on. More of that next week I hope.
Meanwhile, on the car front:
The new lightweight rear end and rear diffusers are both fitted and fully functional.
The rear end is now stiffer, lighter and much easier to get on and off. Also we’ve got the new rear lights installed and wiring complete now as you can see from the picture. The back end of this car is def its best side.
The diffuser (the bit that wraps under the car at the back, with the number plate on) has its twin flaps, either side of the number plate, one for normal and one for fast charge connections.
Our guys have been working on something dubbed ‘the Lobster Claw’ which is a cable retract mechanism. Looks rather cool and is about 90% complete. Basically it allows you to pull a three pin plug (or whatever connection we choose) from the back of the car, pull out as much or as little cable as you need, plug in and when you’re done, snatch to retract – like a Hoover (or should I say Dyson these days). Continue reading “Nemesis Latest”
Six months of behind the scenes work came to fruition two weekends ago when our gas systems (for customer registration and billing and so on) went live.
Our first ‘Green Gas’ customers are with us now. Me included I’m pleased to say.
While we shake things down we’re limiting the sign up rate to a few hundred a week. If you want to get in the queue to be among the first you can do that here.
The response from Ecotricity customers and non customers, to this idea, has been fantastic.
Earlier this week EDF (that big Olympic sponsor, and green flag waver……. ) announced (it appears), through the Evening Standard, that they’ve decided to walk away from a Wind turbine project to power the Olympic games in 2012.
To most people that may have been interesting but not such a big deal. To anybody close to this issue it’s something altogether different.
The article runs under the headline:
Energy firm EDF abandons 2012 Olympics turbine due to ‘lack of wind’
The article doesn’t quote EDF directly but it confidently says:
“French-owned EDF Energy are not bidding to run the 393ft-tall turbine on the Games site as they were concerned about a lack of wind.
The company, London’s largest electricity supplier, said it would not be able to sell enough wind energy from the 2012 Olympic site into the national grid in future years to justify the turbine’s £2 million start-up costs.
This blog is about answers to the big questions - how will we keep the lights on, what kind of cars will we drive (will we drive?) and how will we feed ourselves - in a post oil world, and a world where we can't afford to keep burning things and throwing things away. Energy, Transport and Food are the three big issues.
Finally. About two years after we started – the Nemesis is ‘finished’.
Some great news today, we’ve been granted planning permission for our new Zero Carbon HQ. More impressively, from our point of view, it didn’t take an appeal… 
Sorry it’s been a few weeks since I posted anything on the car here, or anything at all on this site in fact, my bad – only excuse is there’s a lot going on. More of that next week I hope.
Earlier this week EDF (that big Olympic sponsor, and green flag waver……. 
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