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AVIATION REGULATORS TODAY grounded most of the world’s 787 Dreamliner fleet until a fire risk linked to the plane’s batteries is fixed, deepening a crisis for its US manufacturer Boeing.
Regulators in Japan, India and Chile followed the lead of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in ordering an indefinite halt to all operations, after a Japanese Dreamliner on Wednesday was forced into an emergency landing.
The FAA, which sets the benchmark for aviation standards, highlighted “a potential battery fire risk in the 787″ after a suspected battery leak emerged as the focus of inquiries into the aborted All Nippon Airways flight.
Series of safety scares
Analysts said the ANA incident, following a series of safety scares involving the Dreamliner over the past week, needed careful crisis management from Boeing, which is staking its future on the next-generation plane.
The aircraft relies on battery-powered electronics rather than the hydraulics used in older planes, and Boeing says its use of lightweight composite materials is a breakthrough for airlines anxious to cut their fuel bills.
Boeing chief executive Jim McNerney said the company “deeply regrets” the impact of recent events on airlines and passengers, and vowed to take “every necessary step” in concert with the FAA to resolve the problems.
However, he stressed: “We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity.”
But as a result of the mishap on the domestic ANA flight, 39 out of the 50 Dreamliners in operation by airlines around the world have now been grounded.
United Airlines, the only US carrier to fly the Dreamliner, joined ANA and Japan Airlines (JAL) in withdrawing the model from service. Air India and Chile’s LAN Airlines followed suit.
“We will track the FAA enquiry into the Dreamliner. We can’t say when we will allow it to fly again, it depends on when Boeing gives us satisfaction over safety concerns,” Arun Mishra, India’s civil aviation chief, told AFP.
Japan is home to 24 of all the Dreamliners in operation, and the government in Tokyo said it was taking no chances pending an investigation into whether the lithium-ion battery on the ANA flight had overheated and caught fire.
“Following the FAA decision, Boeing 787s will not be allowed to fly until their battery safety is assured,” Japan’s vice transport minister Hiroshi Kajiyama said.
Lithium-ion batteries
Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in consumer electronics such as laptops and mobile phones, and airlines worldwide warn passengers against carrying too many in their checked or hand baggage because of the risk of overheating.
The powerful lithium-ion batteries used on the Dreamliner have emerged as the focus of concern in light of the ANA incident and another one on a JAL flight in the United States last week, with smoke reported on both planes.
Electrolyte leaks and burn marks have been found on the battery’s metal casing, ANA said. Kyodo News reported that officials from the Japan Transport Safety Board were working on the principle that it overheated.
“Liquid leaked through the (forward battery compartment) room floor to the inside of the outer wall of the aircraft,” Kyodo quoted investigator Hideyo Kosugi as saying.
Kajiyama told reporters: “Just by observing with the naked eye, the battery showed abnormalities, but electricity-linked equipment is complex so we need more investigation.”
The batteries are made by Japan’s GS Yuasa, one of a host of contractors hired by Boeing to build the Dreamliner in a complex web of global outsourcing that led to years of delays before ANA took delivery of the first plane in 2011.
GS Yuasa said it supplies its batteries first to France’s Thales Group, which then assembles a system with other electronics for shipping to Boeing.
“So far, it is not clear whether the cause of the problem was the batteries or the electronic system,” a GS Yuasa spokeswoman said, defending the Japanese company’s “substantial experience and technologies”.
GS Yuasa stock was down more than five percent in Tokyo trading Thursday, while JAL and ANA stock was down a lesser amount. Boeing shares finished Wednesday 3.4 percent lower on Wall Street, even before the FAA announcement.
“Boeing engineers, aircraft experts and several Wall Street analysts have defended problems with the jet as routine for a new airplane. The power of those defences is now over,” Douglas McIntyre of 24/7WallSt.com wrote in a report.
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We should build one in Cork – covering the whole county….
Breasts.
Could cover cork, would be an improvement
“Firing” homes with “juice”. Apple are so street.
Wouldn’t it better if they developed more power for their iPhone batteries?
This is good news and hopefullly more big rich companies will follow their example. Saw a progamme on tv last night about wind turbines in countries like Germany where locals are given a share in the wind farms unlike in Ireland where the locals are barely consulted let alone given a share.
Resistance to wind power in Germany is snowballing. And it needs to be noted that this resistance is grass roots and sustained almost entirely by volunteers and privately donated time and effort.
In the latest wind energy critical site http://www.vernunftkraft.de here has a report summarizing the performance of Germany’s wind turbines in 2014. Again the result is so ugly that the wind industry does not want anyone to see it.
Vernunftkraft.de writes in response to the wind industry’s recent boastings of yet another successful “record” year:
Rolf Schuster finalized the evaluation of the actual wind energy feed-in data in order to counter the propaganda with honest figures.
The most important result: 14.8 percent.
The program was very one sided. They didn’t mention the reason we use peat is for energy security, it’s the only fuel we have in the country that we can be self sufficient on. Yesterday we only had 12 MW of wind that’s less than 1% of our demand.
How do you think the other 99% came from. Wind isn’t as green as it appears and doesn’t reduce energy costs
Second time today you trot out you anti green energy guff. You post a link that to a hoax story about windmills that you don’t deny two weeks ago, Then you decry solar power because a 32 year old obsolete technology solar array was decommissioned in the US as evidence that modern solar power is useless. Now you are here trying to convince us that one of the smartest and richest tech company on earth have got it wrong. If I remember you are also an ardent fan of nuclear….Agenda?Lobby much?
Make your mind up about which comment you are having trouble with or is the subject all too much for you?
Gosh, Apple are about to spend even more than Solyndra, the bankrupted Northern California solar-panel maker that burned through $535 million in federal guaranteed loans just to prove than solar Pv is a flop. But then roughly 80% of the Department of Energy’s $20.5 billion in loans granted “went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers–individualswho were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, orlarge donors to the Democratic Party.”
In 2008, Mr. Obama promised his policies would create 5 million “green collar” jobs but failed , will Apple have the same success ?
We should copy Germany and plaster the place with 27000 wind towers. The low capacity factor of German wind turbines makes wind electricity expensive. Driven by increased costs from renewables, household electricity rates almost doubled from 13.9 eurocents per kilowatt-hour to 26.0 eurocents per kilowatt-hour from 2000 to 2013. Today, Germany has the second highest electricity rates in Europe, more than triple U.S. electricity prices. The story is even worse 2 years on
My mind is made up Mort but I have a day job and don’t have time to spend my day blogging here pretending to be an ordinary Joe, so I don’t always have the time to counter your one man propaganda machine.
Let’s see, any article on the environment and you are poo-pooing renewables and see nothing of any merit in them, even when Apple endorses solar you try to deflect by pointing to some article about Germany.Now when it is nuclear you see no wrong and even Fukuyama can be reasonably explained away, as if it could. Facts and figures always to hand. Any dissent and you cry luddite.
All Muslins are bad. All Muslims. All Israelis are good. All. Anyone who questions this is a,- what’s that stock phrase you use? Oh yes, ‘Islamofacist apparatchik’. In other word, someone who disagree with you.
You were a cheer leader when Ghaddaffi was overthrown & Libya descended into chaos. When people try to escape this hell by getting to Italy, there you are on the shore shouting, go home you are not wanted.
Now you have the neck to tell me I am muddled?
For anyone in doubt, read Uncle Mort’s exchanges with Charlie Carlisle. Caught right out there Mort. http://www.thejournal.ie/athea-wind-farm-1915304-Feb2015/#comments
Germany may have higher electricity price than the US but the don’t have the US reputation of being one of the world’s dirties economy per capita either. Germany is twenty years ahead in that sense. But the fossil fuel and nuclear industry will try everything to keep it down. No trick too sneaky.
http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=340&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=1679&cHash=a6ffbf36a98ab3ba82069d2486ebd7ae
So there not really gonna blow €850M, had it been a wind farm they were building different story, just saying.
Thank you!! My thought precisely! What a biased headline.
€750 million is roughly $850 million.
“The farm will cost $850 million to build and will provide enough juice to fire 60,000 homes.
Despite the enormous cost Cook insists that the farm will be more than enough to power Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino and will save the tech giant money in the long run.”
What’s not clear about the article?
What is wrong with solar panels ? Fail to understand your criticism
What the hell is biased about the headline ?
The headline originally said “Apply blow €750 million….” which implies they’re wasting the money. My point was related to that. There headline made it sound like investing in solar energy was a waste. They’ve since changed the headline.
Blow? It’s not oil or booze it’s solar. INVEST is the word you dummies
The Chinese marquee is notoriously tough to enter ;)
Sugarcoated bullsh*t..
There is nothing noble about what they are doing, they just want to enter the electricity market and cut costs to their own consumption, are they planning to give away the electricity they generate?
What good have apple really done? If they wanted to make the world a better place why not start with their workforce, the only company I know of that has to install suicide prevention nets around their factory.. Provide your workers with a decent living wage! You can afford it! You are a $700billion company! Also stop ripping off the consumer with your iShite which is only made to last a couple of years…
You mean Foxconn? Who made the laptop/phone you’re commenting here on? It was probably made there too. Apple have been the only company that I’ve read about actually push for change in those places, doing checks on them and working to get them to a higher standard. The media obsession with Apple means only Apple gets mentioned when something bad happens at Foxconn, even though your laptop, phone, games consoles, tablet, e-reader, smart watch, all probably made there.
And regarding suicide levels, apparently they’re in line with the average rates in China, there’s just so many people working for Foxconn it happens a lot. Not great that ANYONE feels the need to take their own life, but nothing seems to point to Foxconn leading to any more than anywhere else in China.
Why would they give away the energy they’re generating? They’re reducing their dependence on fossil fuels, which is a good thing. I feel like Apple could provide every man, woman and child with free electricity and you’d complain that they’re doing the energy employees out of work.
No they want to harvest subsidies from poor people
Dumb, ill informed trolllike comment. Check your facts first before spouting such rubbish
“and will provide enough to juice to fire 60,000 homes.” Balleaux. May I repeat “Not forgetting the scam of solar power which gets frequent mention by greenies here on the Journal. Hawaii and California would seem to be ideal for solar compared to rainy Ireland and look what happened to them.
http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/4686/Hawaiirsquos-Future-Abandoned-Solar-Farms-Clutter-California-Desert.aspx
At 9 p.m. on July 16 2014 total wind power output was a mere 0.334 gigawatts and the day’s last rays of sunlight were delivering only 0.103 gigawatts of power. That means the two sources of wind and solar combined were putting out only [(0.334 + 0.103)/65]100 = 0.7% of their rated capacity. That in turn means the remaining 99.3% had to come in large part from the conventional coal, nuclear and gas power plants.
Germany’s installed wind/solar systems on average operate roughly at about 15% of their capacity.
solar PV is even worse than wind :
http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2015/01/wind-energy-wasteful-use-of-resources.html
As Charlie Carlisle said to you last Saturday.
That’s the nature of wind energy. It’s budgeted for before the farm goes up (bear in mind that this tech isn’t exactly new).
Think of it more like a company that has one emoployee and hires six contractors for the busy days.
Check out the EirGrid dashboard to see how it’s actually quite economical, as when the wind blows we cut down on our natural gas consumption and imported electricity. If it’s blowing overnight, we even manage a few exports to the UK.
http://www.eirgrid.com/media/All-Island_Wind_and_Fuel_Mix_Report_Summary_2013.pdf (2013 summary, as the 2014 summary has not yet been compiled)
You’ll never get the same reliability or energy density with wind as with fossil fuels, however it isn’t intended to get that. It’s a supplemental source (and if it’s economical, then it’s probably quite productive).
We need everything we can get if we’re going to continue to run our fridges and our computers and our 400 inch tvs and our endless street lighting and our washing machines and our tumble driers.
the savings are tiny relative to the cost.
the main problem now is that there is an energy bubble because nobody bothered to check whether wind could actually replace conventional plant which is driving industry out
An apple a day keeps the end of the world at bay.
Hey FRANK. Numbers for ya to terrorise us with…
That explains why they’re head hunting Tesla engineers.
Typical, spending millions to throw precious resources and fossil fuels down the drain, What a Waste, people in future will curse us for wasting these resources
http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2015/01/wind-energy-wasteful-use-of-resources.html
I wonder how much Co2 will be produced just manufacturing all those solar panels? It’ll be a long time before that solar farm balances it’s Co2 books alone!
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