Well, it depends who you ask. Some experts believe uranium sources will last another several billion years while other believe it is set to expire in a few hundred years. Now that’s a vast difference! So if we take the median answer, well then we still have a few thousand years to discover renewable energy. But as much as people criticize government policies (we’ll get to that in a minute), and commercialization of the industry, this sector of the market continues to grow.

credit Arizona State University Parking Lot cut 7% in Arizona’s energy bill

The Deslauriers engaged National Solar Tour organizer Krebs and his company Construction Art to identify the fastest and most effective ways to cut energy consumption and reduce their carbon footprint. They wanted to not only reduce their operational costs, but share the benefits of their investments with their customers. Tax credits, rebates and Krebs’s energy saving strategies helped them recoup approximately 70% of their initial investment. The solar energy solution itself has offset 10% of the store’s overall energy consumption.

The rewarding feedback the men are receiving from this project has inspired them to introduce similar solutions at other Dunkin Donuts. And the solar solution on its rooftop makes this quaint little shop the tucked away the cozy Massachusetts community of South Main Attleboro the nation’s first quick-service restaurant to utilize solar energy to cut its costs. In less than 60 days, the men’s Attleboro and two sister stores have generated enough energy to power 40 houses for a day and reduce their carbon footprint by 4,555 pounds of CO2. They’ve also offset emissions equivalent to driving a car for 159 consecutive days. Their solar energy systems alone will reduce 2,221,800 lbs. of CO2 equivalent to energy to power 6000 houses for a day, and reduce pollution equivalent to driving a car for over 4,608,350 miles. In addition, the site’s new water control system will save approximately 36,792 gallons each year.

“These results are the direct effect from only three average size Dunkin Donuts stores,” said Krebs. “Imagine how much more we could achieve if the hundreds of thousands of quick-service restaurants in the country got on board. That is our goal — it dovetails with the National Solar Tour’s Goal of inspiring people to explore their available options to start helping the environment, while serving up a little green for their wallets.”

A California company hopes to store solar power by focusing thousands of mirrors on millions of gallons of liquefied salt. An artist’s rendering of such a solar plant is shown here.

The holy grail of renewable energy is a solar power plant that continues producing electricity after the sun goes down.

A Santa Monica, Calif., company called SolarReserve has taken a step toward making that a reality, filing an application with California regulators to build a 150-megawatt solar farm that will store seven hours’ worth of the sun’s energy in the form of molten salt.

Heat from the salt can be released when it’s cloudy or at night to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.

The Rice Solar Energy Project, to be built in the Sonoran Desert east of Palm Springs, will “generate steady and uninterrupted power during hours of peak electricity demand,” according to SolarReserve’s license application.

So-called dispatchable solar farms would in theory allow utilities to avoid spending billions of dollars building fossil fuel power plants that are fired up only a few times a year when electricity demand spikes, like on a hot day.

SolarReserve is literally run by rocket scientists, many of whom formerly worked at Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of the technology giant United Technologies. Rocketdyne developed the solar salt technology, which was proven viable at the 10-megawatt Solar Two demonstration project near Barstow, Calif., in the 1990s.

United Technologies has licensed the technology to SolarReserve and will guarantee its performance — a crucial advantage for the startup when it seeks financing from skittish bankers to build the Rice solar farm.

As many as 17,500 large mirrors — each one 24 feet by 28 feet — will be attached to 12-foot pedestals. The mirrors, called heliostats, will be arrayed in a circle around a 538-foot concrete tower.

Atop the tower will sit a 100-foot receiver filled with 4.4 million gallons of liquid salt. The heliostats will focus the sun on the receiver, heating the salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. The liquefied salt flows through a steam-generating system to drive the turbine and is returned to the receiver to be heated again.

SolarReserve isn’t the only developer planning to tap molten salt to store solar energy. Abengoa Solar, for instance, intends to use salt storage at its 280-megawatt Solana solar trough plant outside Phoenix.

That project, however, will heat tubes filled with synthetic oil to create steam and transfer some of the heat to salt-filled storage tanks. By using salt for both steam and storage, SolarReserve can generate higher-temperature steam, which will allow the Rice power plant to operate much more efficiently, according to Kevin Smith, SolarReserve’s chief executive.

“Consequently, our system can capture three times the energy for the same pound of salt,” Mr. Smith wrote in an e-mail message. “Plus they have additional ‘bolt on’ equipment, plus multiple heat transfer steps to go from oil to salt to oil and then to steam for electricity generation.”

SolarReserve’s plant will be built on private land — the site of a former World War II-era Army airfield — near the desert ghost town of Rice. The company will air-cool the power plant, avoiding controversies over water use that have dogged other solar projects.

But the height of the solar tower — 653 feet when a maintenance crane is attached to the top — could generate resistance from conservationists worried about the impact of the project on desert vistas. A proposed SolarReserve power plant in Nevada ran into resistance from Air Force officials concerned that the tower would interfere with radar at a nearby military base.

The company said it is negotiating with California utilities to buy the electricity generated from the Rice project and expects the solar farm to go online in October 2013, barring unforeseen delays.

Iosa Ghini Associati has designed the Energy Belt, a sleek solar-powered monorail system for Bologna, Italy that will connect the airport to the city center. The system’s smoothly sculpted lines run above the countryside, providing great views for travelers. The monorail will also provide infrastructure for other uses, namely a pedestrian walkway alongside the tracks and a solar system that runs along the rail’s southern face.

The Energy Belt was designed to speedily move people from the main train station in Bologna out to the airport with only one intermediate stop at Lazzaretto. It crosses over one major highway, spanning the stretch of road in a graceful arc. At each station a metal screen covered in vegetation protects passengers from the elements, and also helps filter the air, provide natural insulation and shade the platform.

The system is designed to operate using solar energy captured by photovoltaic panels placed at each monorail station and along the track’s south-facing side. Since the solar system installed directly on the monorail infrastructure, the landscape below is not disturbed with extra equipment. Running at a height from 7 meters up to 25 meters, the Energy Belt monorail is supported by slender piers, giving the system a very small footprint along its 5,084 meters of track.

Solar powered, direct, convenient, and fast – the monorail system offers an enticing option for travelers looking to take it easy rather than driving to the airport. Its highly probable that a monorail would be more expensive than a ground level light rail system, but where’s the novelty and graceful architecture in that?

For the Shaw brothers, who converted the downtown arts building and community center into a miniature solar power plant two years ago, each reverse rotation subtracts from their monthly electric bill. It also means the building at that moment is producing more electricity from the sun than it needs.

“Backward is good,” said John Shaw, who now runs Shaw Solar and Energy Conservation, a local solar installation company.

Good for whom?

As La Plata County in southwestern Colorado looks to shift to cleaner sources of energy, solar is becoming the power source of choice even though it still produces only a small fraction of the region’s electricity. It’s being nudged along by tax credits and rebates, a growing concern about the gases heating up the planet, and the region’s plentiful sunshine.

The natural gas industry, which produces more gas here than nearly every other county in Colorado, has been relegated to the shadows.

Tougher state environmental regulations and lower natural gas prices have slowed many new drilling permits. As a result, production — and the jobs that come with it — have leveled off.

With the county and city drawing up plans to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming and Congress weighing the first mandatory limits, the industry once again finds itself on the losing side of the debate.

A recent greenhouse-gas inventory of La Plata County found that the thousands of natural gas pumps and processing plants dotting the landscape are the single largest source of heat-trapping pollution locally.

That has the industry bracing for a hit on two fronts if federal legislation passes.

First, it will have to reduce emissions from its production equipment to meet pollution limits, which will drive up costs. Second, as the county’s largest consumer of electricity, gas companies probably will see energy bills rise as the local power cooperative is forced to cut gases released from its coal-fired power plants or purchase credits from other companies that reduce emissions.

“Being able to put solar systems on homes is great, you take something off the grid, it is as good as conserving,” said Christi Zeller, the executive director of the La Plata Energy Council, a trade group representing about two dozen companies that produce the methane gas trapped within coal buried underground.

“But the reality is we still need natural gas, so embrace our industry like you are embracing wind, solar and the renewables,” she said.

It’s a refrain echoed on the national level, where the industry, displeased with the climate bill passed by the House this summer, is trying to raise its profile as the Senate works on its version of the legislation.

In March, about two dozen of the largest independent gas producers started America’s Natural Gas Alliance. In ads in major publications in 32 states, the group has pressed the case that natural gas is a cleaner-burning alternative to coal and can help bridge the transition from fossil fuels to pollution-free sources such as wind and solar.

“Every industry thinks every other industry is getting all the breaks. All of us are concerned that we are not getting any consideration at all from people claiming they are trying to reduce the carbon footprint,” said Bob Zahradnik, the operating director for the Southern Ute tribe’s business arm, which includes the tribes’ gas and oil production companies. None is in the alliance.

Politicians from energy-diverse states such as Colorado are trying to avoid getting caught in the middle. They’re working to make sure that the final bill doesn’t favor some types of energy produced back home over others.

At a town hall meeting in Durango in late August, Sen. Mark Udall, who described himself as one of the biggest proponents of renewable energy, assured the crowd that natural gas wouldn’t be forgotten.

“Renewables are our future … but we also need to continue to invest in natural gas,” said Udall, D-Colo.

Much more than energy is at stake. Local and state governments across the country also depend on taxes paid by natural gas companies to fund schools, repair roads and pay other bills.

In La Plata County alone, the industry is responsible for hundreds of jobs and pays for more than half of the property taxes. In addition, about 6,000 residents who own the mineral rights beneath their property get a monthly royalty check from the companies harvesting oil and gas.

“Solar cannot do that. Wind cannot do that,” said Zeller, whose mother is one of the royalty recipients. In July, she received a check for $458.92, far less than the $1,787.30 she was paid the same month last year, when natural gas prices were much higher.

Solar, by contrast, costs money.

Earlier this year, the city of Durango scaled back the amount of green power it was purchasing from the local electric cooperative because of the price. The additional $65,000 it was paying for power helped the cooperative, which is largely reliant on coal, to invest in solar power and other renewables.

“It is a premium. It is an additional cost,” said Greg Caton, the assistant city manager.

Instead, the city decided to use the money to develop its own solar projects at its water treatment plant and public swimming pool. The effort will reduce the amount of power it gets from sources that contribute to global warming and make the city eligible for a $3,000 rebate from the La Plata Electric Association.

Yes, the power company will pay the city to use less of its power. That’s because the solar will count toward a state mandate to boost renewable energy production.

“In the typical business model, it doesn’t work,” said Greg Munro, the cooperative’s executive director. “Why would I give rebates to somebody buying someone else’s shoes?”

The same upfront costs have prevented homeowners from jumping on the solar bandwagon despite the tax credits, rebates and lower electricity bills.

Most of Shaw’s customers can’t afford to install enough solar to cover 100 percent of their homes’ electricity needs, which is one reason why solar supplies just a fraction of the power the county needs.

The higher fossil-fuel prices that could come with climate legislation would make it more competitive.

“You can’t drive an industry on people doing the right thing. The best thing for this country is if gas were $10 a gallon,” said Shaw, as he watched two of his three full-time workers install the last solar panels on a barn outside town.

The private residence, nestled in a remote canyon, probably will produce more power from the sun than it will use, causing its meter to spin in reverse like the Smiley Building’s. The cost, however, is steep: more than $500,000.

Source

PRLog (Press Release) – Jul 30, 2009 – Solar energy has come a long way from the early days when solar panels were used primarily on satellites orbiting the earth. Now, solar energy has been employed almost everywhere in the world, and usage is projected to increase dramatically in the near future.
Global warming and other environmental issues are at the forefront of more nations all over the world increasingly turning to solar and wind energy as viable methods of producing energy. Our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels has for too long hindered exploring alternative energy sources. But that is rapidly changing, and now more than ever we are discovering the many benefits of solar power to help meet the ever increasing demand for energy.

Solar power is a vastly underused source of energy. The sun provides us with more than enough energy every day to produce all the power we could ever need. The technological walls are rapidly being torn down that in the past has put solar energy out of reach for the average person.

There are two different and distinct ways to utilize solar energy by installing home solar power systems. Most people just assume the only way is to hire a contractor to install a solar power system. This is definitely an option, but only if you are willing to spend several thousand dollars upfront. This is not acceptable to a large number of people who are not willing to realize any significant savings until their initial investment is recovered.

The homeowners of today have a much more viable option. They can build and install their own home solar power systems for far less than most people imagine. Many homeowners have installed solar panels for $200 or less. With electricity rates rising each year, this is by far one of the best ways to reduce your energy costs and help the environment at the same time.

At present, anyone can learn how to build solar panels that will produce enough energy to drastically lower, and in some cases eliminate, their power bill. The advancements in semi-conductor technology now allow solar power systems to absorb and retain more of the energy the sun outputs.

As in any other project or task, knowledge is power. Building home solar power systems is in reality far easier than most people believe, but to build a solar power system that is efficient and reliable, you must have the proper knowledge.

Using solar energy as a reliable means of generating power is now within the reach of everyone. Incredible advancements in technology have provided the means and resources that have made alternative energy production available to anyone.

A company that says it’s done just that — running the full-size SUV on batteries — is showing off its Electric Hummer H3 on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. But whether it really gets 100 mpg depends on just how far and hard it’s driven.

The four-wheel drive vehicle with a top speed of 100 mph has been put together by Raser Technologies, a Utah company that until recently had focused on developing geothermal energy sources. It’s timing is impeccable, just a day after Obama unveiled a program to raise vehicle fuel efficiency, and cut greenhouse gas emissions, by 30 percent.
Raser Chairman Kraig Higginson has said he expects the Electric Hummer to be available in showrooms in 2011, and has no qualms offering it as a silver bullet for the country and consumers.

“We believe this vehicle may hold the key to solving the most important challenges facing the nation by reducing our dependency on foreign oil, addressing climate change, and reinvigorating American manufacturing with American technology,” he said in a statement announcing the Capitol Hill event.

As for consumers, Higginson was just as ambitious. “Americans value the versatility of trucks and SUVs, the number one selling vehicles in America, but we also want to do what’s right for the environment,” he said. “This vehicle demonstrates that through innovation, we can do both.”

Raser has worked with General Motors and its Hummer division on the vehicle, and Wednesday’s ride-and-drive included the patronage of a senior Republican senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, who introduced the model.

“As you can see, with American ingenuity, we do stand ready to lead the world in the electrification of the transportation sector,” Hatch said. “There is no shorter path to adding diversity to our transportation fuels than by shifting the transportation sector to the electric grid.”

Raser says its prototype can go 40 miles in all-electric mode before requiring a boost. At that point, a driver can either stop and plug it in, or allow a small gasoline engine to kick in to recharge the lithium-ion batteries.

As for price, Raser spokesman Richard Stern said it should be around $55,000 when mass produced, or about 20 to 30 percent more than a gasoline H3. And the technology is not limited to Hummers, Stern added, noting that any SUV or pickup truck line could be easily converted.

Is 33 mpg more realistic?
But will the Electric Hummer really get the equivalent of 100 mpg? The figure is based on a driver running the car in electric mode and then with gasoline for 25 miles, Raser says.

In his own statement challenging Raser, Doug Schiller, who runs the Web site alternativeenergy.com, said that’s not a fair comparison, and that a more realistic number is 33 mpg — for two reasons.

First, 33 mpg is what a driver would get on an extended trip where the entire gas tank is used before plugging in for a recharge, he said.

Second, electric vehicles should take into account the energy — usually coal or natural gas — used to produce the electricity in the first place, Schiller contended.

“If you fill up an H3 tank with gas and electricity,” he said, “you can go 100 miles per gallon, but they’re only factoring in the gas it takes to run the Hummer. They’re discounting the whole issue of all the energy that is in that electricity used to power the SUV. If you include that energy, and convert it into the equivalent of gasoline, the H3 would get 33 mpg. That is the formula they should be using. The industry is working toward that definition but what Raser has done is use the most misleading way of reporting the H3’s miles per gallon by ignoring the electricity.”

Schiller acknowledged that the Electric Hummer “represents a significant improvement over the current traditional Hummer models,” which get about 15 mpg. But, he insisted, “it is very misleading to say the H3 gets 100 mpg.”

Schwarzenegger a potential buyer
Gary Rogers, president of FEV, Inc., a company that helped develop the Electric Hummer, disagreed, arguing that most trips would be short commutes. “Because most Americans drive less than 40 miles a day,” he said, “this powertrain technology could have an enormous impact on reducing the amount of gasoline consumed every day.”
A big test will be how well the lithium-ion battery pack, which weighs 600 pounds, will hold up over time.

One likely buyer is Schwarzenegger, who got a close look at the Electric Hummer at an auto technology show last month in Detroit.

He’s already got a Hummer that runs on clean-burning but still-expensive hydrogen, and Stern said the governor’s set up a Sacramento press conference next week to talk up the Electric Hummer.

If you want to find good info on auto recycling you should check-out the portal at www.GreenVehicleNetwork.com

No government aid was required for the project. It was funded entirely by Israeli venture capitalists. The cost of the electricity generated is approximately 8 cents per kilowatt hour. This price is slightly less than the cost for electricity provided by the main power supplier in Israel, the Israeli Electric Corporation.

Zenith Solar provided the technology for the system. They have a patented CSP device which they say can use a great deal of the sun’s energy: “ZenithSolar utilizes the heat generated at the solar cell receiver to provide usable hot water heating, improving overall solar power conversion efficiency to 75% “. Each of the mirrored solar collecting dishes at the site has 110 square feet of surface area.

A vineyard will be planted between the rows of solar cells. Kibbutz Yavne has 1,500 acres of land for growing field crops, fruit, poultry and dairy. It is the site of the largest chicken hatchery in Israel. About 1,100 people live there.

You read that correctly, fellow Net denizens. Coming soon, Mr. Polar Bear and his brethren will be sharing real estate with a ring of floating, self-sustained nuclear power stations. It’s all part of Russia’s—and the world’s—ongoing thirst for energy.

Environmentalists are understandably outraged over the impact said stations could have on an already endangered area of the globe, and if polar bears could talk, I imagine they’d be outraged too.

Said a rep from Bellona, a Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, “[The plan] is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants’ potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle.”

Oh, and there’s this fear that Russia will simply dump the radioactive waste into the Arctic Sea anwyay, which they’ve done before on several occasions. To date at least 12 nuclear reactors from decommissioned Russian submarines have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid waste.

Pretty soon the ocean will be like a 24/7 aurora borealis up there. A wonderful, cancer-causing aurora borealis.

An international team of scientists has determined the structure of the chlorophyll molecules in green bacteria that are responsible for harvesting light energy. The team’s results one day could be used to build artificial photosynthetic systems, such as those that convert solar energy to electrical energy.

The scientists found that the chlorophylls are highly efficient at harvesting light energy. “We found that the orientation of the chlorophyll molecules make green bacteria extremely efficient at harvesting light,” said Donald Bryant, Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology at Penn State and one of the team’s leaders. According to Bryant, green bacteria are a group of organisms that generally live in extremely low-light environments, such as in light-deprived regions of hot springs and at depths of 100 meters in the Black Sea. The bacteria contain structures called chlorosomes, which contain up to 250,000 chlorophylls. “The ability to capture light energy and rapidly deliver it to where it needs to go is essential to these bacteria, some of which see only a few photons of light per chlorophyll per day.”

Because they have been so difficult to study, the chlorosomes in green bacteria are the last class of light-harvesting complexes to be characterized structurally by scientists. Scientists typically characterize molecular structures using X-ray crystallography, a technique that determines the arrangement of atoms in a molecule and ultimately gives information that can be used to create a picture of the molecule; however, X-ray crystallography could not be used to characterize the chlorosomes in green bacteria because the technique only works for molecules that are uniform in size, shape, and structure. “Each chlorosome in a green bacterium has a unique organization,” said Bryant. “They are like little andouille sausages. When you take cross-sections of andouille sausages, you see different patterns of meat and fat; no two sausages are alike in size or content, although there is some structure inside, nevertheless. Chlorosomes in green bacteria are like andouille sausages, and the variability in their compositions had prevented scientists from using X-ray crystallography to characterize the internal structure.”

To get around this problem, the team used a combination of techniques to study the chlorosome. They used genetic techniques to create a mutant bacterium with a more regular internal structure, cryo-electron microscopy to identify the larger distance constraints for the chlorosome, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to determine the structure of the chlorosome’s component chlorophyll molecules, and modeling to bring together all of the pieces and create a final picture of the chlorosome.

First, the team created a mutant bacterium in order to determine why the chlorophyll molecules in green bacteria became increasingly complex over evolutionary time. To create the mutant, they inactivated three genes that green bacteria acquired late in their evolution. The team suspected that the genes were responsible for improving the bacteria’s light-harvesting capabilities. “Essentially, we went backward in evolutionary time to an intermediate state in order to understand, in part, why green bacteria acquired these genes,” Bryant said. The team found that the more evolved, wild-type bacteria grow faster at all light intensities than the mutant form. “Indeed, the reason that chlorophylls became more complex was to increase light-harvesting efficiency,” said Bryant.

Next, the team isolated chlorosomes from the mutant and the wild-type forms of the bacteria and used cryo-electron microscopy — a type of electron microscopy that is performed at super-cold cryogenic temperatures — to take pictures of the chlorosomes. The pictures revealed that chlorophyll molecules inside chlorosomes have a nanotube shape. “They are like Russian dolls, with one concentric tube fitting inside the next,” said Bryant. “The mutant bacterium’s chlorosomes contain only one set of tubes, whereas the wild-type chlorosomes contain many tubes, each arranged in a unique pattern, like those andouille sausages.”

The team then went a step further and used solid-state NMR spectroscopy — a technique in which samples are spun very rapidly and exposed to a magnetic field — to look deep inside the chlorosome. This technique enables researchers to understand the relationships between atomic nuclei in a sample and, ultimately, to acquire structural information about the molecules of interest.

“The NMR data revealed to us that the individual chlorophyll molecules in green bacteria are arranged in dimers — molecules consisting of two identical simpler molecules — with their long hydrophobic, or water-repellent, tails sticking out of either side,” said Bryant. “We also learned precisely how the chlorophyll molecules attach to one another, and we were able to measure the distance between chlorophyll molecules. The cryo-electron microscopy pictures showed gross structural details and distances, and the NMR results allowed us to quantify these distances as well, and confirmed to us that what were were seeing was, in fact, stacks of the chlorophyll molecules all lined up,” he said. The NMR results also enabled the scientists to determine that the chlorophyll molecules in green bacteria are arranged in helical spirals. In the mutant bacteria, the chlorophyll molecules are positioned at a nearly 90-degree angle in relation to the long axis of the nanotubes, whereas the angle is less steep in the wild-type organism. “It’s the orientation of the chlorophyll molecules that is the most important thing here,” said Bryant. The last steps for the team were to pull together all of their data and to create a detailed computer model of the structure.

“At first it seems counterintuitive that green bacteria have managed to evolve a better light-harvesting system by increasing disorder in the chlorosome structure,” said Bryant. “Most people would think that if you make something that is more highly ordered, you’ll end up with something that works better. But this is clearly a case where that isn’t true. If all of the chlorophylls are identically arranged in a chlorosome, then the energy from the photon, once it is absorbed, is going to wander around over all of those chlorophylls, which could take a long time. In the wild-type form, you have these different domains where chlorophyll molecules are located and, therefore, the ability of photon energy to migrate becomes restricted. In other words, the energy in an individual photon visits a smaller number of chlorophylls, and that’s an advantage to the organism because the energy can get to where it needs to go faster. Speed is the name of the game that green bacteria play with light. The organisms have only a couple of nanoseconds for the energy to get someplace useful or else the energy is going to be lost. The speed required can be a problem for bacteria that receive only a few photons of light per chlorophyll per day.”

Bryant said that the team’s results may one day be used to build artificial photosynthetic systems that convert solar energy to electricity. “The interactions that lead to the assembly of the chlorophylls in chlorosomes are rather simple, so they are good models for artificial systems,” he said. “You can make structures out of these chlorophylls in solution just by having the right solution conditions. In fact, people have done this for many years; however, they haven’t really understood the biological rules for building larger structures. I won’t say that we completely understand the rules yet, but at least we know what two of the structures are now and how they relate to the biological system as a whole, which is a huge advance.”

The team also includes researchers from the Leiden Institute of Chemistry and the Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute in the Netherlands, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. This research was supported by the United States Department of Energy.