AQUA-CSP is one of three conceptual studies which explored different parts of the DESERTEC project, a concept which relies on solar power from the world’s desserts as a major energy source for Europe. In previous posts I already talked about the two other studies MED-CSP andTRANS-CSP, the first focused on generation, the second on transportation of the generated electricity. This article deals with the third, often overlooked, aspect if this undertaking: desalination of huge quantities of sea water.

Water crisis

It might not be apparent yet, but growing world population, incresing per-capita consumption of usable water plus global warming will most probably lead to a severe shortage of fresh water in the aride regions of the world. This so-called water crisis has many unsettling implications. So we better think about ways to alleviate or even prevent the crisis.

Desalination

Desalination is an energy-intensive process to remove salt from sea water. Coupled with filtering it can supply fresh water. This is where the local benefit of having huge CSP (concentrating solar power) plants in desert regions. Continuous, carbon-neutral electricity plus a reliable water source are things I definitely would like to have in my country when facing a water crisis in the foreseeable future.

Further reading

• AQUA-CSP at the homepage of the German Aerospace Center
• Water crisis on Wikipedia

For my diploma thesis I needed an easy-to-use optimisation algorithm which could minimise a given function. I had access to Matlab, but surprisingly, none of the supplied optimisation functions seemed to satisfy my needs: I wanted to globally minimise a non-linear function within boundaries without using gradients.

So I did a little research and found a Globalized Nelder-Mead method, which is a tuned version of the good old downhill simplex algorithm. Then I implemented it as a Matlab function. By the way: the function also works fine with Octave.

What does it do?

The Nelder-Mead algorithm, sometimes also called downhill simplex method, was originally published in 1965. It is an iterative algorithm for local, unconstrained minimisation of a non-linear function . In contrast to most other iterative algorithms, it does not rely on the derivative of the target function but only evaluates the function itself. This makes it extremely well suited for cases when the target function is not an algebraic term, but a simulation model which cannot be derived directly. It also does not approximate the function’s gradient but is based on geometrical projections of an n+1-point polygon—the simplex—in the n-dimensional parameter space of the target function. A simplex in two dimensions is a triangle, one in three dimensions is a tetrahedron. In general, the simplex can be represented as a matrix of its points.

The basic idea behind the simplex algorithm is that the worst point of is replaced by a better one with a smaller function value and to repeat this operation iteratively until a local optimum has been found. To achieve this, three different transformations are applied to the simplex which let it move in directions of descent and shrink around a local minimum. These transformations are called reflection, expansion and contraction.

In each iteration, first the worst point is reflected at the centroid of the remaining points. Depending on the quality (good or bad) it then replaces the worst point in the simplex. If the reflected point is not better, it is withdrawn and the other fallback operations are executed.

The globalized Nelder-Mead method just generalizes this idea to find a global minimum. Instead of initialising the simplex once, multiple simplices are initialised and each one finds one local minimum. There are some tweaks to make the location of these simplices better than random, but principally they are spread randomly within the allowed boundaries.

How do I use it?

Just copy the file gbnm.m from the download below into a directory where Matlab or Octave can find it. Then just call the function gbnm. A typical usage might look like this:

% Define test function and optimisation boundaries
f = @(x) norm(x).^2 - cos(norm(x));
xmin = [-10;-10];
xmax = -xmin;

xoptim = gbnm(f,xmin,xmax)
% Expected output: xoptim = [0.00.. ; 0.00..]

The function does not only return the found minimum and has an optional argument for tweaking the algorithm parameters:

[x, fval, output, options] = gbnm(fun,xmin,xmax[, options])

Refer to the output of help gbnm and the research paper for further detail. If something remains unclear or you have found a bug, feel free to comment!

Download

• gbnm.zip (v0.1 [2010-07-19] initial release)

But there is another, almost perfectly hidden feature which allows to typeset easy formulas as real text which respects text formatting styles: Equation fields.

Equation fields

Hit Ctrl+F9 and add the following construct: { EQ \f(a;b) }. Then place the cursor on or before this field and hit Shift+F9. You should see a fraction like this: .

The advantage of this technique over Word’s built-in formula editor is that these formulas are styled according to their surround text automatically. The omits much of the hassle involved in placement and handling of the formula objects.

There is just one thing you should not do: Don’t double click on them because they are converted to formula objects this way. If this happens by accident, use Undo (Ctrl+Z) to repair the damage. To edit an equation field, place the cursor on it and hit Shift+F9 again to unveil its code.

Commands

An equation field can contain any sequence of the following commands, mixed with plain text. Nesting is supported. Each command I find useful is presented with a short example of typical use.

	Description	Example
\a	Matrix. Available options: con determines number of columns, hs and vs horizontal and vertical spacing (in pt), the command \al, \ac and \ar allow to determine the horizontal alignment within the cells (\al is default). Example code: \a \co2 \hs3 (a;b;c;d)
\b	Braces. Places automatically sized braces around big expressions like fractions or roots. Example code: \b(\f(•;•))
\d	Positioning. Creates spaces and indentation. I don’t use it.
\f	Fraction. Example code: \f(a;b)
\i	Integral. Example code: \i(a;b;f(x)dx)
\l	List. I don’t use it.
\o	Overwrite. Places text in the second argument over the text in the first argument. Options \al, \ac and \ar determine their alignment. Example code: \o\ac(n;\s\up4(•))
\r	Root. Example code: \r(n;a)
\s	Super- and subscript. Available options are \don and upn. The first one creates subscripts, the second one superscripts. Example code: a\s\up4(n) b\s\do4(i)
\x	Frame. Places a framed box around its argument. Example code: \x(a)

Golden path

If you have to write a longer document, like a thesis, which contains vast amounts of formulas, get LaTeX! (Technical remark: the examples above are rendered using a server-based LaTeX-Renderer.)

In a previous post I wrote about MED-CSP, a study being part of the DESERTEC project which outlines a scenario for generating huge amounts of electricity by means of Concentrating Solar Power applied in the Mediterranean region. CSP stands for solar thermal power plants which do not operate with the photovoltaic effect used in solar cells, but for using the solar radiation to directly heat a medium—typically a fluid—which then is used to propel an ordinary steam turbine like used in fossil fuel or nuclear power plants.

While the last post focused on the MED-CSP study which explores the technical potential for generating electricity, this article deals with the transmission of a part of this energy to Middle and Northern Europe where it can substitute fossil fuels.

TRANS-CSP

The study begins with a chapter comparing three technologies that could be used to transfer solar Electricity from MENA to the Northern states. Those options are hydrogen, the conventional alternating current (AC) grid and a high voltage direct current (HVDC) infrastructure.

Hydrogen quickly drops out in such an application as two conversion steps, long transport and storage lead to an efficiency of the whole process below 30%. Also the conventional AC grid has not a sufficient efficiency. For 3000 km, only about 55% energy efficiency can be reached.

A HVDC line is significantly better with about 90% efficiency over 3000 km. That is why the study proposes to construct 20 transmission lines all over Europe until 2050, each with a transfer capacity of 5 GW. Such an infrastructure could then deliver 15 % of the projected electricity demand of Europe. Figure 1 summarises this scenario for 30 European countries from Scandinavia to South-Eastern Europe.

Image 1: TRANS-CSP scenario of gross electricity production and import for the analysed European countries until 2050. The import of other than solar electricity to the region is negligible. Diagram reproduced from the TRANS-CSP summary

The projected development includes three main trends:

1. Until 2020 the declining nuclear power plants and rising electricity demand are compensated mainly through natural gas and coal plants.
2. Starting in 2020, solar imports begin. Growing shares of wind energy and biomass usage begin to substitute coal and gas.
3. In 2050, natural gas usage has fallen back to a year 2000 level. Coal use for electricity production is less than half compared to the year 2000.

Concerning replacement of base load: the study projects that renewable energies will primarily reduce fuel consumption until 2020, but hardly substitute power capacities. Another interesting fact concerns the dependency from energy imports, an argument that is often brought against the DESERTEC project. Figure 2 outlines the amount of energy imported from foreign countries to the EU.

Image 2: Import dependency inclusive CSP import in the TRANS-CSP scenario compared to the current trend of import dependency in the EU. Diagram reproduced from the TRANS-CSP summary

By strengthening renewable energies within the European Union, import dependency can be dramatically reduced. The solar import of 15% of our electricity from MENA countries then are peanuts compared to the energy that today is imported in form of coal, oil, gas and uranium.

Technical difficulties

If the scenario becomes reality, Europe would have a share of 80% renewable energies for electricity production in 2050. This requires a efficient backup structure to compensate fluctuating feed-ins from renewable energies in form of natural gas peaking plants. The local electricity grid will have to be consolidated to redistribute electricity from the centres of production (offshore wind, rural biomass) to locations of demand (cities).

Subsidies and external costs

One argument against the further financial support of renewable energies with premium feed-in tariffs as realised in Germany is that this money could be spend wiser to improve the efficiency of traditional (i.e. fossil and nuclear) technologies. This arguments forgets that those technologies itself are heavily subsidised already. These subsidies are direct or indirect and include:

• Grants or low-interest loans to energy producers
• Quota, technical restrictions and trade embargoes
• Direct investment in energy infrastructure
• Public research and development
• Demand guarantees and mandated deployment rates
• Price controls and market-access restrictions

and last, but especially not least:

• Environmental external costs

External costs were and are a current research topic. In Europe, the ExternE project group investigates external costs caused from energy production. They have a short definition of external costs:

An external cost [...] arises when the social or economic activities of one group of persons have an impact on another group and when that impact is not fully accounted, or compensated for, by the first group. Thus, a power station that generates emissions of SO2, causing damage to building materials or human health, imposes an external cost.

When those costs are assessed, they can be re-internalised. Ways to do this are either taxes on technologies that cause the costs or by financially supporting alternative technologies which avoid those costs. External costs which have not yet been fully assessed are nuclear costs caused by nuclear waste disposal and transport. Other unquantified costs are political costs for wars on finite resources or military presence in general to secure access to them.

So support for renewable energies is not only fair but rather necessary to neutralise an otherwise unbalanced situation.

What’s next

In the next and final DESERTEC studies article I will cover AQUA-CSP, a study estimating the potential for providing water by desalination of sea water, powered by abundant energy from CSP plants in desert countries in Northern Africa.

Further reading

• TRANS-CSP at the German Aerospace Center. It features the full study report (190 pages), a shorter summary (18 pages) as well as an excel sheet with raw data of projected energy transfers, productions, …
• Homepage of the ExternE project, an effort to quantify external costs of energy production technologies.
• DESERTEC Foundation with up-to-date news on the realisation progress of the concept.

This article originates from a presentation given by Hani El Nokraschy, one of the leading persons of the DESERTEC foundation. He presented the foundation’s vision towards a sustainable generation of electrical energy and drinking water around the Mediterranean Sea for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. His presentation covered the three main studies called MED-CSP, TRANS-CSP and AQUA-CSP. CSP stands for Concentrating Solar Power and is the key technology for exploiting the huge potential of solar energy that shines on Africa’s deserts.

I split the presentation to three articles, each presenting one of the studies. So this article deals with the idea from which DESERTEC originated and the first study MED-CSP.

The idea

According to an interview with Jörn Aldag, one of DESERTEC’s founding fathers, the idea originate at the physician Gerhard Knies who worked at the research centre Desy in Hamburg. After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 he realised that nuclear energy could not be a solution to mankind’s energy problems. His second thought was the simple fact that world’s deserts together receive energy equivalent to the annual global energy consumption — in 6 hours.

So even when just the technically and ecologically exploitable potential is used, it should be easy to cover our energy demand without having to burn fossil fuels. To estimate this potential and to show a possible strategy for its exploitation until 2050 in the Mediterranean area was the task of the study MED-CSP.

MED-CSP

The study’s name is an abbreviation for Concentrating Solar Power for the Mediterranean Region. It investigated the potential for electricity supply from renewable sources in countries around and near the Mediterranean Sea. The region is described as EU-MENA which stands for Middle East and Northern Africa. This includes — amongst others — Spain, Italy in Europe; Algeria, Morocco and Egypt in Africa and Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia in Middle East. From this potential it then develops a scenario which demonstrates that it is possible not only to meet the energy demand of future growth in developing countries, but also export excess energy to central Europe for mutual benefit.

Before I get into the details, first some numbers from the EU for comparison: As of 2006, EU27 consumed about 3400 TWh of electric energy. About 55% of this energy is delivered by thermal power (mainly from coal, gas and oil), another 30% by nuclear power and 14% by renewable sources. The missing 1% comes from pumped storage power plants. (Source: Eurostat)

Now to the EU-MENA area: in 2002 the 25 countries had an energy production of 1400 TWh/a, almost completely provided by oil, gas and coal. This isn’t very surprising as states like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia have huge reserves of them.

The scenario

The following image shows the development of electrical energy production in the EU-MENA states for the years 2000, 2010, 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050.

Image 1: Scenario for electric energy production in EU-MENA countries from 2000 to 2050 in TWh per year, separated by energy source. Diagram reproduced from the original numerical data.

The two remarkable points are obvious: First, the reign of fossil fuels ends. The role of coal and gas rises its peak probably somewhere between 2020 and 2030 and then their importance begins to diminish. Second: At the same time concentrated solar power plants begin to rise in importance. Their enormous potential becomes obvious when realising that they might generate 2000 TWh/a in 2050. That is more than 50% of today’s electrical consumption of EU27. While a lot of the produced energy will be used to power their own economies, a huge share will also be left in order to be exported to the “colder” parts of Europe where it can help replacing fossil fuels burnt there.

Energy production by country

The following diagram gives an idea of the contributions to the proposed future energy production in the Mediterranean area.

Image 2: Projected energy production in 2050 divided by country. Data is from the same source as image 1. 100% are equal to 4020 TWh/a.

I have no striking interpretation for this image. Slice size largely depends on the population and expected state of development in 2050. It just gives an idea of the roles of single countries. Italy and Spain will have exploited nearly all their CSP potential while other countries would still have huge reserves left to grow their energy output.

What’s next

The next article on this topic will be about TRANS-CSP dealing with the infrastructure needed for energy transports from MENA to Europe. It will also focus on the economics (read: price) of production and transport of electricity. The third article will present the study AQUA-CSP which investigated the potential for production of drinking water based on desalination powered by renewable energies.

Deskmodding is the art or the act of customizing the appearance of the graphical user interface. Usually this is done on the level of the operating system, but there are also single applications that allow to modify their appearance by so-called skins. For the operating system Windows it is not possible to easily change the default appearance as the selection of themes that can be selected is limited to a handful of designs like the classic Windows interface, Luna for Windows XP and Aero since Vista. Windows Media Center Edition brought a revamped version of Luna which became very popular.

But apart from those designs, Windows does not permit to select user-made themes. This is due to a check in the file uxtheme.dll in the system32 folder. There are dozens of downloads of patches that promise to replace the file with a patched version that permits so select whatever style one prefers. But it is easy to download the wrong patch or even get a virus on one’s computer this way. But there is an alternative: UxStyle.

UxStyle is an application that installs a small service under Windows that deactivates blocking of custom made themes on-the-fly. No changing of uxtheme.dll is necessary. Final information: A great repository for themes is the section Visual Styles on deviantART. Downloaded themes have to be placed in the folder Resources\Themes in the Windows installation folder.

One disadvantage of my how-to is that the data which is synchronised is transmitted without encryption. However, it is possible to somehow use SSL encryption for the data transfer, but so far I am afraid of the effort to reconfigure all again now that it works. Another disadvantage concerns the fact that currently only one calendar and one address book can be synchronised. While this restriction does not bother me now, it might render this solution useless for you.

1. Setting up the server

The first part of this how-to is setting up the funambol server. First download the latest version of the installer, then follow the instructions of the setup process. After the installation, the server should have been started (visible by the tray icon). If not, start it manually using the links in the start menu. If you want the server to be started automatically when you launch the computer after each reboot, copy the link into the “Startup” folder of your start menu.

Then launch the Administration Tool, click onFile > Login and enter the user “admin” with the default password “sa”. The first thing to do is to change it: Select the $Hostname > Users in the tree on the left. Then click the Search button on the right side to display all users in the list below. Double-click on the entry of the user “admin” and enter a new password (two times). Save.

To make your server reachable from other machines it is necessary to setup the URI from which it will be reached. You need to setup a port forwarding on port 8080 from your router to the local IP address of your server computer. In the Administration tool, you then have to enter Server settings the string “http://%your_ip%:8080/funambol/ds” while replacing %your_ip% with your external IP address or a domain provided by a service like DynDNS.

One last addition has to be done before Thunderbird calendars can be synched: Under Modules > foundation > FunambolFoundationConnector > PIM Calendar SyncSource you have to add a new SyncSource. Double click the entry PIM Calendar SyncSource on the left, then enter “ical” for both the source URI and the name and select “iCalendar” as the default type. All settings are also shown in this image:

Then click “Add” and check that your entry got also added to the tree on the left. Now your server should be ready for its first synchronisation. You can close the Administration Tool now.

2. Setting up a Thunderbird client

Just download the Funambol Mozilla Sync Client Experimental Funambol Mozilla Sync Client for Thunderbird 8 and install it as an add-on from within Thunderbird. The add-on can be accessed in the menu Tools > Funambol sync. Open it and select Tools > Options from the menu:

In the Account pane, enter exactly the URI you entered in your server before. For the username and password you can choose one arbitrarily for the first client you setup. For each new client you want to synchronise with you have to use the same username and password, of course.

In the pane Sync you have to select the address book and the calendar to be synchronised with the server and how often you want the synchronisation to be performed automatically. I chose 15 minutes and deactivated the synchronisation on startup. During setup (read: hunt for wrong settings) I stuck to manual synchronisation.

Close the configuration window and bravely click on Synch all. On the first synch, simply all your client’s data is transmitted to the server. On subsequent runs only changes will be transmitted.

On the second PC you just have to repeat the add-on installation, provide the same username and the synchronisation works.

3. Setting up the Windows Mobile client

Get the client *.cab file from the download page and transmit it to your phone. Execute it there to install it. The configuration is analogous to the Thunderbird client. I chose manual synchronisation for my mobile phone as I only run it when I have wireless LAN access. I only activated synchronisation of contacts, calendar and tasks — e-mail is taken care off by the IMAP servers.

Remarks

At first Thunderbird froze during each synchronisation. The cause for me was that I had used an *.cal-file for my private calendar. For the synchronisation to work I had to convert it to a calendar that is stored in Thunderbird’s profile folder (i.e. one with “moz-profile-calendar://?id=X” in the address field).

Update: there is one issue with my setup concerning the synchronisation between both Thunderbird clients: Reminders of events keep popping up on one client after having been confirmed on the other and vice versa. The problem is known to the developers and discussed in the developers’ board. As far as I understand the subject, a clean solution would require changes to the server itself which would take a long time to take effect. A “dirty fix” in the Thunderbird client could be possible, but so far no one with enough knowledge to do it wrote one. I keep you updated here if a fix is published.

Thunderbird 8 update: While the official source for the plugin has not released a new version in years, I found a working port for the latest version of Thunderbird on maurus.net.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell states in an article written (but not published) for a magazine in 1952:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.

How do we know that the assumption of a undetectable teapot in the orbit round the sun is just made up? In a strict sense we can not. There is no mean to disprove the existence of anything. On the other hand, this does not imply that we have to believe in anyone’s assumptions about the world. What would it take to make you believe in the teapot? With high probability your answer will contain the request for evidence of any sort, a clue that increases the credibility of its existence. This approach, to first demand evidence for a claim before one accepts it, is called scepticism.

Why do I write about this? Quite easy: our world is full of concepts and believes which are not backed by evidence at all. Take astrology, homoeopathy and all sorts of paranormal activities, just to name a few examples. I struggle to accept that e.g. a spiritual healer tells that he or she could cure grave diseases like tumours only using “natural energy” without having to conduct a comprehensive study that indicates whether his method has a reproducible effect. Things can become very dangerous when a credulous patient neglects effective therapies in favour of unproven woo woo. The page What’s the harm? has collected over 100,000 cases of people who got harmed from using of energy medicine. It also contains sections about the consequences vaccine denial, acupuncture and even ear candling.

I confess that there lacks this special magic feeling about “conventional” medicine. Of course it cannot (yet) cure any disease, but unlike “alternative” medicine, it is involved in a process of self-improvement in which new findings are collected and used to enhance existing and develop new treatments. Each new claim and theory is tested in double-blinded studies to ensure that a perceived effect is not just placebo or made up.

To come back to the original quote from Russell. It originally was intended as a critique to religion and I took only the first part to start my rant about woo woo medicine as an outstanding example of irrationality. Here now the second part of the quote:

If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. It is customary to suppose that, if a belief is widespread, there must be something reasonable about it.

There is much to say about religious believes, but this belongs to future posts…

I usually don’t post plain links to stuff I found on the internet. But this is an exception. This web comic on the right is just so true. The author of this (and 626 other) comic strip(s) is Randall Munroe. On his homepage xkcd he publishes new comics three times a week.

Other episodes I find worth to be mentioned are: Geohashing because of its originality and the idea of creating this “random adventure generator”. Height, a logarithmic overview from the border of the observable universe down to us. Random number: simplistic and funny. Other motives are quite romantic with a mathematical flavour, like in Useless. A final hint: read the tooltips which appear when you place the mouse over the comic image. The tooltip for the comic I included here says:

‘Hey Megan, it’s your father. How do I print out a flowchart?’

Fossil resources, i.e. coal, oil and gas, are finite. This fact is not surprising, but is worth to be mentioned. Its direct consequence is that in near future we will have to be able to generate (more precisely: convert) all energy we consume from renewable sources. This need is independent from any consequences that arise from the combustion of fossil fuels (i.e. greenhouse effect). The climate change just adds another “incentive” to realise that necessary shift more quickly. This article tries to give a non-exhaustive overview over the current dependency on fossil fuels and scenarios of possible replacements.

Current state

In 2006, about 86% of the world’s primary energy usage was covered by fossil fuels. This is indeed a strong dependence on resources which won’t be available indefinitely. Furthermore the annual consumption of fossil fuels is increasing. This increasing demand soon might be confronted with Peak Oil, an event which probably marks the end of the era of cheap fossil energy. Peak oil is defined as the instant when the global oil production no longer increases. It is predicted to occur somewhere in the near future, perhaps in the next decade. With high confidence it can be said that we’d better look for replacements now:

Nuclear alternatives?

Some experts and politicians see nuclear power as a feasible source to replace fossil fuels. Nuclear power can mean two options: the first one is nuclear fission as present in all existing nuclear power plants in which uranium is fissioned in a controlled chain reaction to heat water that propels an electric generator. In my opinion their use is irresponsible due to the difficulty—if not impossibility—of safely storing the nuclear waste for thousands of years. Another counter-argument is that uranium is a finite resource, too. The second option still takes at least 50 years of research: nuclear fusion. It is to be like fission, but without the risks of a reactor meltdown and no long-term radioactive waste. I would embrace this source of energy, but it will basically come too late. We need to reduce the use of fossil fuels now, not starting in 2060 or even later.

Solar power

The only reliable source of energy that won’t deplete as long as earth exists is the sun. Already with today’s technology it would be possible to supply the vast majority of our energy consumption by solar plants. Here I am not primarily referring to the prominent photovoltaic cells. I rather think of much simpler solar-thermal power plants, which concentrate the sun’s rays in order to directly heat water that is used for the generation of electricity. This type of power plant only makes sense in constantly hot, sunny regions like deserts.

And indeed this idea is not new: the Solar Grand Plan in the USA and the initiative DESERTEC for around the Mediterranean Sea are concepts to construct a huge amount of solar power plants that could provide the better part of the needed electric energy.

What else

Now I talked about a possible substitute for fossil fuels, but only for the generation of electric energy. However, mobility and heating are dependent on fossil fuels, too. So other things have to happen, too:

• Modernise buildings to save energy otherwise wasted for heating or cooling. Passive and zero-energy houses exist.
• Develop and—especially—apply new concepts for individual mobility. Perhaps the future belongs to electric vehicles, perhaps other ideas will emerge.
• Increase research for small and large scale energy storage technologies. This could enable the construction of electric vehicles with higher range.

So all in all there will be a life “beyond petroleum”…