|
|
Madison Section NewsletterNewsletters are archived online at http://ieee-msn.truenym.net/news.html. |
| Vol. 17, No. 4 | Serving IEEE Members of South Central Wisconsin | May 2014 |
The primary fuels for the Charter Street Heating Plant are natural gas and fuel oil. Fuel oil is used as a back up fuel source. The Charter Plant is capable of producing steam at 800,000#/hr, 26,000 tons of chilled water, 9.8 megawatts of electricity and 7080scfm of compressed air. In an effort to maximize the fuel efficiency, a portion of the steam load at the Charter Plant is used to produce up to 9.8 megawatts of electricity. The tour will also include a talk on the difficulty of upgrading the plant given the changing political climate and elimination of the biofuels component for the plant. The Wisconsin Energy Initiative (WEI) program was utilized to upgrade and maximize the electric and chilled water production capacity of the Charter Plant.
Chris Meyer is a local expert on 3D printing and all things related to Hacker Spaces. He will give a brief presentation on the Sector67 3D printing technology and demonstrate how it is done. If you are not familiar with Sector67, check out their web site here. You will be amazed at the things that are happening at Sector67.
Justin Reed presented an interesting talk on use of an "old"
concept with a new twist. The "old" concept is
capacitive couplers. The new twist, is fluid dynamic air
bearings to maintain precise separation of capacitive
plates. He also brought along demonstration devices to
illustrate the concepts and in the process, generated a lot of
discussion. C-Motive has developed a core concept of a
rotating, self aligning, capacitor that can be used to
transfer power, both electrical or mechanical. The
C-Motive power coupler maintains a very precise and tight gap
using fluid dynamics to hold the precise spacing needed for
high capacitance. The rotary capacitor can be
used to either couple power or to act as an arc suppressor for
induced high frequency currents that erode motor
bearings. The motor bearing protection device is a
low-cost, but potentially very high volume market.
It is needed where Variable Frequency Drives are applied to
motors, causing high-frequency leakage induced arcing.
C-Motive is also working on a high-torque capacitive
motor/generator that uses the fact that you can vary a plate
pattern and change the capacitance of the plates as they rotate,
causing a current to rush in or out when attached to a fixed
voltage bus. It requires force to rotate the capacitor
plates -- applying mechanical input produces electrical energy
output. Applying electrical energy in changes the
force, producing mechanical work.
The IEEE Madison Section has
partially funded a proposal from the University of Wisconsin
Student Chapter that the Executive Committee determined to be a
worthwhile project. We helped secure additional money from
the IEEE Technical Activities Board to fund a the rest of of
the work. See IEEE UW Student Chapter web
site for information on the student chapter's current
activities.
The Madison Section Affinity Group EMB18 has no recent recorded activity and will be dissolved at the November 2014 meeting of the Member and Geographic Activities Board unless someone steps forward to re-vitalize it. Please contact Tom Kaminski at tjkaminski-at-ieee.org if you are interested.