Hybrid Living

In 2013 the world will see the real future of solar technology.  That’s when the world’s largest dispatchable power plant, the 290 MW Starwood 1 will start producing power day and night, on cloudy or sunny days.

Starwood 1 will showcase two critical future technologies. The first is power storage. Without storage, you will only have power when the sun is shining. And while that can work to a point, it will never power the whole world. We’ll still need something to take care of the base-load, and that something, as of right now, is coal.

Different ideas have been cooked up for storing the power created by solar power plants – batteries, ultracapacitors, hydrogen generation, flywheels – but all of these are far from being affordable enough for large scale power needs. The alternative is to store power as heat before it’s converted to thermal energy.

Fortunately, there is a fairly good and relatively inexpensive solution to thermal storage, one which Starwood 1 implements. Starwood 1’s concentrating troughs feed heated liquid in large insulated molten salt tanks at 734 degrees Fahrenheit. When needed, these tanks will release steam, driving turbines at night or during cloudy weather.

The second big technology featured in Starwood 1 is concentrated solar power (CSP). CSP has seen commercial deployments since the 1980s, but has failed to dominate the industry. However, expect that to change as the maximum theoretical efficiencies of concentrated power designs are much higher than those of standard photovoltaics. CSP can be used to enhance thermal (as is done here) or to enhance photovoltaic technologies.

When completed Starwood 1 will cover 1900 acres of desert land. Unlike wind turbines there’s a low risk of bird strikes, and the construction team is working to minimize the impact on ground-based local wildlife. Flash from the plant (burst of bright light when viewed from certain angles) is a concern, but given the remote location, this shouldn’t prove a problem.

Locate approximately 75 miles west of Phoenix, the plant will produce enough power for 73,000 customers. The construction will also create 7700 jobs. The construction won’t be cheap – the plant will cost $2.7B USD, but it should pay for itself and then some. If it can live up to its promise, which seems likely, expect more CSP plants and thermal storage installations to pop up across sunny remote areas of the U.S. southwest in the near future.

Via Green-Energy-News

In 2013 the world will see the real future of solar technology.  That’s when the world’s largest dispatchable power plant, the 290 MW Starwood 1 will start producing power day and night, on cloudy or sunny days.

Starwood 1 will showcase two critical future technologies. The first is power storage. Without storage, you will only have power when the sun is shining. And while that can work to a point, it will never power the whole world. We’ll still need something to take care of the base-load, and that something, as of right now, is coal.

Different ideas have been cooked up for storing the power created by solar power plants – batteries, ultracapacitors, hydrogen generation, flywheels – but all of these are far from being affordable enough for large scale power needs. The alternative is to store power as heat before it’s converted to thermal energy.

Fortunately, there is a fairly good and relatively inexpensive solution to thermal storage, one which Starwood 1 implements. Starwood 1’s concentrating troughs feed heated liquid in large insulated molten salt tanks at 734 degrees Fahrenheit. When needed, these tanks will release steam, driving turbines at night or during cloudy weather.

The second big technology featured in Starwood 1 is concentrated solar power (CSP). CSP has seen commercial deployments since the 1980s, but has failed to dominate the industry. However, expect that to change as the maximum theoretical efficiencies of concentrated power designs are much higher than those of standard photovoltaics. CSP can be used to enhance thermal (as is done here) or to enhance photovoltaic technologies.

When completed Starwood 1 will cover 1900 acres of desert land. Unlike wind turbines there’s a low risk of bird strikes, and the construction team is working to minimize the impact on ground-based local wildlife. Flash from the plant (burst of bright light when viewed from certain angles) is a concern, but given the remote location, this shouldn’t prove a problem.

Locate approximately 75 miles west of Phoenix, the plant will produce enough power for 73,000 customers. The construction will also create 7700 jobs. The construction won’t be cheap – the plant will cost $2.7B USD, but it should pay for itself and then some. If it can live up to its promise, which seems likely, expect more CSP plants and thermal storage installations to pop up across sunny remote areas of the U.S. southwest in the near future.

Via Green-Energy-News

What’s green and leafy and full of solar energy? If you guessed a tree, you’re right, but this tree isn’t quite like any you’ve seen before.

Solar Botanic Ltd., a London company, founded last year from an idea first conceptualized in 2002, aims to create fake plastic trees (no comment on if they received inspiration from Radiohead) that can generate real solar power. The company looks to create more attractive solar power, laying to rest complaints concerning the aesthetic shortcomings of wind turbines or traditional solar panels.

It’s worth noting that Solar Botanics is not the first to come up with the concept “solar trees” — UC San Diego created “trees” – solar panels with trunks. However, Solar Botanics aims to take biomimicry to new heights, actually making solar-generating trees actually look like trees, complete with leaves.

The ambitious design places three power generating devices in each “nanoleaf”. In the leaf’s petioles (the stalk attaching the leaf blade to the stem) rest tiny piezoelectric nanogenerators, capable of capturing the wind’s kinetic energy and transforming it into electricity. A second device, a layer in the leaf, consists of thermoelectrics to convert solar heat into electricity. Finally, a third device, a photovoltaic layer in the leaf, transforms light from the sun into electricity.

Solar Botanic claims that a single solar tree with a 20 feet (appr. 6 meter) canopy could generate enough power to satisfy the needs of an average home. Further, the company claims the tree could produce 120,000 kilowatt-hours over a two decade lifespan. The envision a scenario where city streets are lined with the trees, powering electric vehicles.

These are big claims and a bit hard to believe without seeing a finished product. However, Solar Botanic can’t be faulted on their enthusiasm and innovative approach. If they can create a production version of their solar tree at a reasonable price, they just might change the solar industry.

Tires are among the shining success stories of the recycling industry. They have been ground up and recycled to produce items such as shoe soles, synthetic turf for sports fields, and even cell phone accessories.

Now a New York-based company has come up with a new use for recycled tires – building material for earthquake resistant structures. Re-Tread Products’ Tire Logs made their grand debut last week at the Greener By Design conference in San Francisco.

The logs are arguably the best recycled tire application yet, as they require the least power to create. They are produced by a commercially available sidewall removing machines. Rather than grinding, which is more energetically intensive, the machines slice tires up. An inner core of tire strips is wrapped in helical fashion with other tire strips. The end result is a tire log.

Re-Tread CEO Tom Hanson says the logs have a variety of uses, including retaining walls, highway noise barriers, sandbag replacements for erosion control and security barricades, and as an earthquake-resistant home building material. He states, “It can withstand deformations that would crack or break conventional building materials.”

Re-Tread hopes to turn the 300 million tires discarded every year into a flexible and useful product. It has applied for a federal stimulus grant, which would allow it to open a full manufacturing facility this fall.

The Wall Street Journal offered an intriguing challenge to four top architectural firms — Mouzon Design House, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, Cook + Fox, and William McDonough + Parnters — design the green house of the future. The teams cooked up some intriguing designs full of eye-catching concept art and all the right hot topics — solar power, heat pumps, carbon nanotubes and more.

So why are some environmentalists complaining about the competition and the concept of a "green suburbia"?

Roger Lewis of the Washington Post offers an intelligent and considered rebuttal to the WSJ piece, writing, "Focusing on hypothetical designs of free-standing houses can even be a distraction. It can mask a more serious aspect of the challenge: the diminished sustainability of low-density, residential subdivisions in suburbia where most free-standing houses of the future are likely to be situated."

He states, "No matter how green individual homes are, suburban sprawl is intrinsically anti-green. It generates infrastructure inefficiency; car dependency and rising fossil fuel demand; carbon-emitting, time-wasting road congestion; and, despite availability of inexpensive land at ever-greater distances from jobs, escalating development, construction and public service costs."

The article provides an intriguing reminder that green architecture isn’t always as green as it seems. And cities, often associated with pollution, are potentially the greenest societal direction of them all.

Here at Ecogeek we often cover green architecture and building technology, both in the city setting and in suburbia. As there will always be some people who yearn for suburban or rural settings, both design approaches have merit. However, when it comes to the greater good, or greater green perhaps, cities arguably present the most environmentally friendly, lowest impact, living opportunity.

From electric vehicles to urban agriculture, the city has arguably the greater potential for green communities, with minimum land use, greatest energy efficiency, and lowest environmental impact. And with the U.S. population’s exodus from cities to surburbia reversing for the first time in five decades, the timing is ideal for green city architecture. So let’s move the focus onto greening cities, but let’s not blindly throw out suburban efforts wholesale, either.

With a grinning grill, the Peapod "car" awaits customer orders, starting April 22. The Peapod is a member of the growing class of Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs), handy for packed city traffic, college campus jaunts, or for short neighborhood treks. The quirky ride tops out at 25 mph — the official speed limit for NEVs.

The car is a product of a Peapod Mobility, a spun-off division of Chrysler subsidiary GEM, which has been producing small electric vehicles for 10 years. GEM has had strong sales in retirement communities and college campuses.

Peter E. Arnell, who designed the new Pepsi logo (which purportedly is supposed to represent a grinning face), is the company’s director and brand guru, which perhaps explains the weirdness attached to the vehicle. Not only bulbous, the car is a real eye catcher with a clear smile complete with headlights on the vehicle’s bumper. The smiling theme is repeated inside the car.

The car, according to Mr. Arnell was inspired by "Japanese bullet trains, storm troopers from the film Star Wars, space helmets and turtles."

The car retails for $12,500. It comes with some cool computerized perks — it reports the carbon and gas money savings from each trip, once you arrive home.

Interestingly, Mr. Arnell defiantly refuses to have his vehicle referred to as a NEV, despite that being what the National Highway Transportation Safety board calls it. He calls it a "Mobi", a new brand name he dreamed up. He imagines the brand replacing the term NEV, much as "SUVs" replaced the term 4×4.

Interestingly, the WIRED story reported that the Peapod will “require” an iPod to start up. This, understandably, caused some confusion and prompted angry retorts in the comments below. However, this post from Engadget makes it clear that you certainly have the option of just using a plain old key.
The vehicle will be heavily marketed to urban green commuters and to college students. Pod pickers will see their little Peapods arrive in October… just in time for Halloween.

Though it seems a dangerous proposition to come between people and their TVs, California’s Energy Commission is looking to do exactly that; for a good cause. According to the Commission, consumer electronics – including TVs – use 10 percent of the average household electricity.

The state is proposing rules that would require all television sets sold in California to use 50 percent less energy by 2013. If approved, they would start regulating TVs in January, 2011.

The Commission is facing strong opposition from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), which is afraid of the dent the regulations might put in plasma TV sales. Plasma displays can use up to 30 percent more energy per square inch than liquid crystal displays. Fortunately, plasma sets are a dying breed — their dwindling numbers only account today for 10 percent of the market versus 77 percent for LCD sets. CRT sets are generally less efficient than LCD models as well.

Adam Gottlieb, a spokesman for the California Energy Commission, says that the new regulations won’t ban any specific sales. He states, "You’re still able to buy the 60-inch that you want and it’s not affecting what’s in your house."

While it expected that such a move would be met with hesitance, the industry appears technologically prepared for the shift. Some LCD-heavy companies like Vizio are actually cheering the move, as is the LCD TV Association. Laggard companies will simply have to get their act together, or lose business, it seems.

With 4 million sets sold in California annually the savings in carbon and other pollutants by even minor efficiency increases will be big. The new regulations will also call for more power efficient digital video recorders, DVD players, and cable boxes. The Commission says that by 2013, enough power could be saved by the regulations to power 864,000 homes for a year.

The regulations will be voted on by the Commission at the summer’s end.

California’s Energy Commission recently received a go ahead from President Obama to enact higher fuel economy standards, as well. It is waiting on the EPA to review its petition and allow it to take another impressive step in its expansive efforts to cut the state’s carbon footprint

The X-Prize Foundation is a prestigious nonprofit that looks to help mankind achieve greatness in many ways. It already has helped to launch the first commercial space company, Virgin Galactic, and now it looks to bring its pioneering spirit to the automotive field. The only problem is that major automotive companies just aren’t interested.

The goal of the Automotive X Prize is to create sports cars, which are not only fast and stylish, but get at least 100 mpg fuel efficiency and meet strict emissions standards. Oh, one more thing – the vehicles have to be commercially viable.

The project has drawn substantial support from small start-ups and universities. Over 50 teams have signed up to compete. Meanwhile, despite being personally contacted by the X-Prize Foundation, every major auto company, including the ones that have gotten closest to 100 mpg (Honda, Toyota and GM) have decided to completely ignore the competition. X-Prize organizer Donald Foley says it’s because they’re chicken – they’re afraid of image damage if their vehicle loses to a small start-up.

An old adage goes that no one achieves greatness by playing it safe. Unfortunately, auto companies seem content to snub the X-Prize and stick to their current less risky projects. It’s a shame too, because many automakers have shown what seems to be an earnest commitment to environmental progress over the last few years and their deep pockets could help bring the project significantly closer to realization. Foley is disappointed, but resigned. He states simply, “We would very much like them to participate…”, but he concludes, “We also understand that this is a decision for many of them that will involve a degree of risk.”

As painful as it is to imagine a major corporation reaping even more profits, a recent financial analysis shows that Exxon could actually become more profitable by reducing their carbon emissions and selling the carbon credits under the Kyoto protocol. Exxon already made record profits and revenue — $40.6B USD and $404B USD, respectively. These profits are equal to the GDP of 120 countries! So why not make a little more profit, for a good cause?

Exxon current produces 138 million tons of CO₂ equivalent yearly. According to most estimates, it only needs to abate 9 million tons (6.9%), either by purchasing carbon credits or reducing emissions. Purchasing credits would cost the company about $1B USD, an easily absorbable loss. So why aren’t they cleaning up their act?

Yet another take on the problem illustrated is Exxon’s options for its other 129 million tons of CO₂. Rather than sitting pat, the company could use its massive global infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions through such easily implementable techniques as reduced flaring, co-generation, heat recuperation, and carbon capture and sequestration. Exxon’s reductions would become carbon credits. Carbon credits can be sold as assets and are actually very valuable. The analysis concludes that Exxon could stand a good chance of turning a large profit merely by reducing carbon emissions and selling the created carbon credits in nations that approved the Kyoto protocol.

The financial analysis was conducted by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. Their conclusion – it would be both logical and financially sound for Exxon to aggressively cut emissions. Here’s to hoping they follow this savvy advice.

Via Solve Climate

Jets are big, polluting, noisy, right? Not necessarily! EcoGeek recently covered the European Union’s Clean Skies initiative, which mandated carbon emissions cuts. Now, some firms are embracing these cuts, worldwide calls for reduced emissions, and the reality that it can be profitable to simply design better instead of purchasing expensive carbon credits.

These aerospace firms are looking to cut carbon in different ingenious and outlandish ways. Reaction Engines got a lot of attention from ecogeeks when they announced their hypersonic, hydrogen fueled super-jet. Now another enterprising firm – German non-profit Bauhaus Luftfahrt – is making some waves of its own, promising emissions cuts of 35 percent by 2035, with many clever steps.

One basic step they outline is the adoption of geared turbofan technology in conventional engines, resulting in a 15 percent reduction CO2 emissions. Next they recommend equipping these same engines with counter fans, upping the reduction by an another 5 percent. Finally by incorporating waste recuperation, another 15 percent efficiency could be squeezed out. And that’s not all – Bauhaus is also working on an exotic looking box-winged aircraft to further cut into reductions.

The only downside is that the global aircraft fleet is expected to double by 2020, due to increased demand. Still this certainly doesn’t detract from the excitement of work such as Bauhaus’s – it simply shows how much more essential it is.