By Preston Koerner
Eric Corey Freed, architect and principal of Organic Architect, has a new book in stores this month -- Green$ense for the Home -- and Allison Arieff was able to pry a list out of Freed of simple green home projects for renters and homeowners. This is the low-hanging fruit, to use the proverbial phrase, but that doesn't mean there's no impact or benefit. To paraphrase Freed’s responses to Arieff, here are the nine green projects:
1. Change Your Light Bulbs.
Give or take regional differences and preferences, lighting accounts for more than 10% of residential energy use, so swap incandescent lighting for CFLs and LEDs for considerable lighting energy savings.
2. Cause Toilets to Use Less Water.
Water is the next big constrained resource, so even if you’re not changing out your old toilet, use retrofits and other tank tricks to use less water.
3. Use Less Shower Water.
When you shower, you’re using not just water but energy to heat the water. Cutting back on idle moments is one thing, but using a good, pressurized, low-flow shower head will cut water and energy waste, too.
4. Control Vampire Loads.
When equipment is plugged in, it’s probably drawing energy, so use smart strips, power strips, or manual unplugging to cut back on energy draws while equipment is not in use.
5. Install a Programmable Thermostat.
A properly programmed thermostat can save somewhere between 20-30% on annual heating and cooling bills. You can help this process by dressing accordingly, depending on the settings and time of year.
6. Insulate Your Hot Water Heater.
Wrap your tank-type water heater with insulation to minimize costs associated with having to keep water hot in the tank.
7. Weatherize Your Windows.
Seal cracks and leaks around doors and windows with a low- or no-VOC caulk. This can lead to savings from minimizing the heating and cooling losses.
8. Use a Clothesline.
Using a clothesline may be prohibited in certain residential areas, but using one of these can help save the energy required to power an electric or gas dryer.
9. Compost and Recycle Trash.
Recycling and composting leads to less waste in our land fills, but it also generates stock for recycled content products and fertile gardening soil.
Read more detailed information on each of these nine green home projects from Good.
Source: http://www.worldgreen.org/components/com_feedpost/feedpost.php?url=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jetson_green/~3/AR0h8iB5AKI/nine-easy-green-home-projects.html&site=World%20Green%C2%AE%20-%20Sustainability%20Social%20Network
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Will Solar, Wind and New Tech Pave the Way for a DC Renaissance?
High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) lines offer a big opportunity for developers.
The permitting, siting and financing obstacles to the building of new transmission lines in the face of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) activists are familiar. But Aftab Khan, Vice President and General Manager of U.S. Grid Systems for multinational engineering giant ABB, sees a new game afoot.
Khan has watched the old game since starting at ABB 18 years ago. “A lot of what we would do for utility customers or transmission companies was to evaluate what the best solutions were for them,” Khan said, “both AC and DC.”
The late nineteenth-century War of Currents pitted George Westinghouse and alternating current (AC) against Thomas Edison and direct current (DC). Because electricity was then primarily delivered over short distances to consumers from nearby power plants, Westinghouse and AC won.
But DC is the key to the new game. “Power on a DC line is completely controlled. If you say, ‘I want to bring power from point A to point B and I want exactly this many megawatts on that line,” Khan said, “the power goes.” Theoretically, he added, AC lines can do the same. But in an AC system, “you don’t have the ability to manage the power flow from point A to point B directly.”
The new game is possible because transmission systems around the world are adding renewables. Vast renewable resources -- be they North Sea and Texas winds or Saharan and Mohave solar -- are being developed far from population centers and transmission systems. “You have a lot of wind capacity in the Midwest and into Texas, and you have a lot of load going out to the West and to the East,” Khan noted. “DC makes perfect sense. Point A to point B, send X number of megawatts that way. It achieves exactly what you need to do.”
Semiconductors and advances in electronics have also paved the way for high-voltage DC transmission.
ABB built the first 200-mile, 100-kilovolt, 20-megawatt DC line in Sweden in the 1950s. There are now, Khan said, more than 145 working or pending HVDC projects worldwide (and HVDC line manufacturer ABB is involved in more than 70 of those projects). Few are located in the U.S. -- so far.
Meanwhile, others such as Valdius DC Power Systems and Nextek Power Systems are devising equipment that convert AC power to DC for use in data centers or buildings. How popular is the concept? Nextek recently hosted delegations from China, Singapore and Japan, said Lian Downey, director of digital applications for the company. With DC coming straight from HDVC lines, efficiency would be increased even more.
"We are living in a DC world. Everything that uses electricity internally users DC power," she said.
China built a 1,200-megawatt capacity DC project in the late 1980s to deliver remote hydroelectric power to burgeoning urban populations. Earlier this year, ABB and Chinese partners “completed and commissioned” an 800-kilovolt, 6,400-megawatt capacity line in China. The country has really pushed the technology, Khan said. “They’re building more and more of these HVDC lines to access more and more of their remote generation resources.” As a result, Chinese transmission developers have joined ABB, Siemens and Alstom Grid as the most important handlers of HVDC transmission.
The cumbersome U.S. transmission development process allows for more stakeholder input, Khan noted, and the thrashing out of issues such as whether new transmission might be a vehicle for more fossil fuel generation (Khan believes it will not). But delays leave remote renewable resources stranded. The new game, Khan thinks, can resolve the conundrum.
“What Texas is doing, they’re investing 5 billion dollars or so in transmission infrastructure that goes out to where the wind potential is,” Khan said. “The logic is that if the wires are there, then a wind developer will say ‘OK, now I can build a wind farm and get it connected and sell the power.’”
But the Texas solution of pre-identifying Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZs) into which new transmission can be built may not work elsewhere. Texas’ own big population centers consume its wind-generated electricity. Midwestern winds need to be delivered across many state and regional regulatory borders. That’s where the new game comes in.
Two-line HVDC transmission systems are less expensive than three-line AC systems and incur fewer instances of line loss to resistance. There is, however, an added expense due to the need for power converter equipment. Over longer distances, however, the benefits outweigh the costs. “It’s such a complex calculation,” Khan said, but “if you’re going over a couple of hundred miles, you should consider DC.”
Another advantage of HVDC lines, significantly simplifying the siting process, is they can be built underground or underwater over distances with little line loss, whereas “with AC lines, you don’t get much out of the other end” if you use these kind of non-traditional sites.
HVDC systems are now being proposed and initiated by entrepreneurial transmission developers such as Clean Light Energy Partners, Transmission Developers, TransWest Express, and a Google-led consortium, Khan said. “They’re wanting to develop long-haul transmission lines,” despite the necessity of “crossing multiple state lines and multiple jurisdictions,” whereas “there isn’t any existing transmission company that would ever want to do that.”
With the market advantages of HVDC, developers “can actually build a business case around it. Because they have complete control of power on that line, they can sign up wind developers on one end” and “they can sign up a utility on the other end to buy the power.”
Players in the new game have -- for now -- won a major blessing from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). “Traditional transmission is cost-based,” Khan explained. FERC is giving the new transmission entrepreneurs “the right to negotiate rates on their line.”
Khan sees the new game as “really exciting, and something they don’t do in China.” Though controversial and not without hurdles, he said, “DC has opened up an opportunity that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.”
By: HERMAN K. TRABISH: DECEMBER 6, 2010
Source: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/will-solar-wind-and-new-tech-pave-the-way-for-a-dc-renaissance/
The permitting, siting and financing obstacles to the building of new transmission lines in the face of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) activists are familiar. But Aftab Khan, Vice President and General Manager of U.S. Grid Systems for multinational engineering giant ABB, sees a new game afoot.
Khan has watched the old game since starting at ABB 18 years ago. “A lot of what we would do for utility customers or transmission companies was to evaluate what the best solutions were for them,” Khan said, “both AC and DC.”
The late nineteenth-century War of Currents pitted George Westinghouse and alternating current (AC) against Thomas Edison and direct current (DC). Because electricity was then primarily delivered over short distances to consumers from nearby power plants, Westinghouse and AC won.
But DC is the key to the new game. “Power on a DC line is completely controlled. If you say, ‘I want to bring power from point A to point B and I want exactly this many megawatts on that line,” Khan said, “the power goes.” Theoretically, he added, AC lines can do the same. But in an AC system, “you don’t have the ability to manage the power flow from point A to point B directly.”
The new game is possible because transmission systems around the world are adding renewables. Vast renewable resources -- be they North Sea and Texas winds or Saharan and Mohave solar -- are being developed far from population centers and transmission systems. “You have a lot of wind capacity in the Midwest and into Texas, and you have a lot of load going out to the West and to the East,” Khan noted. “DC makes perfect sense. Point A to point B, send X number of megawatts that way. It achieves exactly what you need to do.”
Semiconductors and advances in electronics have also paved the way for high-voltage DC transmission.
ABB built the first 200-mile, 100-kilovolt, 20-megawatt DC line in Sweden in the 1950s. There are now, Khan said, more than 145 working or pending HVDC projects worldwide (and HVDC line manufacturer ABB is involved in more than 70 of those projects). Few are located in the U.S. -- so far.
Meanwhile, others such as Valdius DC Power Systems and Nextek Power Systems are devising equipment that convert AC power to DC for use in data centers or buildings. How popular is the concept? Nextek recently hosted delegations from China, Singapore and Japan, said Lian Downey, director of digital applications for the company. With DC coming straight from HDVC lines, efficiency would be increased even more.
"We are living in a DC world. Everything that uses electricity internally users DC power," she said.
China built a 1,200-megawatt capacity DC project in the late 1980s to deliver remote hydroelectric power to burgeoning urban populations. Earlier this year, ABB and Chinese partners “completed and commissioned” an 800-kilovolt, 6,400-megawatt capacity line in China. The country has really pushed the technology, Khan said. “They’re building more and more of these HVDC lines to access more and more of their remote generation resources.” As a result, Chinese transmission developers have joined ABB, Siemens and Alstom Grid as the most important handlers of HVDC transmission.
The cumbersome U.S. transmission development process allows for more stakeholder input, Khan noted, and the thrashing out of issues such as whether new transmission might be a vehicle for more fossil fuel generation (Khan believes it will not). But delays leave remote renewable resources stranded. The new game, Khan thinks, can resolve the conundrum.
“What Texas is doing, they’re investing 5 billion dollars or so in transmission infrastructure that goes out to where the wind potential is,” Khan said. “The logic is that if the wires are there, then a wind developer will say ‘OK, now I can build a wind farm and get it connected and sell the power.’”
But the Texas solution of pre-identifying Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZs) into which new transmission can be built may not work elsewhere. Texas’ own big population centers consume its wind-generated electricity. Midwestern winds need to be delivered across many state and regional regulatory borders. That’s where the new game comes in.
Two-line HVDC transmission systems are less expensive than three-line AC systems and incur fewer instances of line loss to resistance. There is, however, an added expense due to the need for power converter equipment. Over longer distances, however, the benefits outweigh the costs. “It’s such a complex calculation,” Khan said, but “if you’re going over a couple of hundred miles, you should consider DC.”
Another advantage of HVDC lines, significantly simplifying the siting process, is they can be built underground or underwater over distances with little line loss, whereas “with AC lines, you don’t get much out of the other end” if you use these kind of non-traditional sites.
HVDC systems are now being proposed and initiated by entrepreneurial transmission developers such as Clean Light Energy Partners, Transmission Developers, TransWest Express, and a Google-led consortium, Khan said. “They’re wanting to develop long-haul transmission lines,” despite the necessity of “crossing multiple state lines and multiple jurisdictions,” whereas “there isn’t any existing transmission company that would ever want to do that.”
With the market advantages of HVDC, developers “can actually build a business case around it. Because they have complete control of power on that line, they can sign up wind developers on one end” and “they can sign up a utility on the other end to buy the power.”
Players in the new game have -- for now -- won a major blessing from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). “Traditional transmission is cost-based,” Khan explained. FERC is giving the new transmission entrepreneurs “the right to negotiate rates on their line.”
Khan sees the new game as “really exciting, and something they don’t do in China.” Though controversial and not without hurdles, he said, “DC has opened up an opportunity that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.”
By: HERMAN K. TRABISH: DECEMBER 6, 2010
Source: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/will-solar-wind-and-new-tech-pave-the-way-for-a-dc-renaissance/
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Energy Efficient Homes Are The Stars Of The Future
Energy Star homes save homeowners hundreds of dollars annually on their energy bills and help to protect the environment.
By Ronnie Citron-Fink
Are you in the market for a new home? If you are, you are not alone. Millions of new homes are built every year. The National Association of Home Builders estimates, 1.8 million homes are constructed each year. How will all of the materials needed to build and sustain these new homes accommodate our dwindling and limited natural resources?
Why build energy efficient sustainable homes?
First, we have a moral obligation to make conscious ecological decisions about construction and consumption. Designing sustainable homes will protect the environment for future generations by changing to more energy efficient practices today. Along with securing a safe future, being more efficient and living lighter on the land helps reserve life-supporting systems - plant life and animals.
What is Energy Star?
Energy Star is a voluntary partnership between the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and more than 9,000 organizations, including more than 2,500 of the nation's home builders. In essence, the Energy Star is the EPA government-backed symbol for energy efficiency. It identifies new homes, commercial buildings and more than 40 types of products that are energy efficient.
Products that can earn the Energy Star rating include appliances, lighting, home office equipment, consumer electronics, and heating and cooling equipment.
What are Energy Star qualified homes?
Homes that earn the Energy Star rating are significantly more efficient than standard homes. The Energy Star Homes that adhere to the new guidelines (below) make them at least 20% more efficient. An Energy Star home can save homeowners hundreds of dollars annually on their energy bills and help to protect the environment.
Key elements of the new guidelines for Energy Star qualified homes include:
A Complete Thermal Enclosure System: Comprehensive air sealing, properly insulated assemblies and high-performance windows enhance comfort, improve durability and reduce utility bills.
Quality Installed Complete Heating and Cooling Systems: High-efficiency heating and cooling systems engineered to deliver more comfort, moisture control and quiet operation, and equipped with fresh-air ventilation to improve air quality.
A Complete Water Management System: Because Energy Star homes offer a tightly sealed and insulated building envelope, a comprehensive package of flashing, moisture barriers, and heavy-duty membrane details is critical to help keep water from roofs, walls, and foundations for improved durability and indoor air quality.
Efficient Lighting and Appliances: Look for Energy Star qualified lighting, appliances and fans that can help to further reduce monthly utility bills and provide high-quality performance.
Third-Party Verification: Energy Star qualified homes require verification by independent Home Energy Raters who conduct a comprehensive series of detailed inspections and use specialized diagnostic equipment to test system performance
Source: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/energy-efficient-homes-future.html
By Ronnie Citron-Fink
Are you in the market for a new home? If you are, you are not alone. Millions of new homes are built every year. The National Association of Home Builders estimates, 1.8 million homes are constructed each year. How will all of the materials needed to build and sustain these new homes accommodate our dwindling and limited natural resources?
Why build energy efficient sustainable homes?
First, we have a moral obligation to make conscious ecological decisions about construction and consumption. Designing sustainable homes will protect the environment for future generations by changing to more energy efficient practices today. Along with securing a safe future, being more efficient and living lighter on the land helps reserve life-supporting systems - plant life and animals.
What is Energy Star?
Energy Star is a voluntary partnership between the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and more than 9,000 organizations, including more than 2,500 of the nation's home builders. In essence, the Energy Star is the EPA government-backed symbol for energy efficiency. It identifies new homes, commercial buildings and more than 40 types of products that are energy efficient.
Products that can earn the Energy Star rating include appliances, lighting, home office equipment, consumer electronics, and heating and cooling equipment.
What are Energy Star qualified homes?
Homes that earn the Energy Star rating are significantly more efficient than standard homes. The Energy Star Homes that adhere to the new guidelines (below) make them at least 20% more efficient. An Energy Star home can save homeowners hundreds of dollars annually on their energy bills and help to protect the environment.
Key elements of the new guidelines for Energy Star qualified homes include:
A Complete Thermal Enclosure System: Comprehensive air sealing, properly insulated assemblies and high-performance windows enhance comfort, improve durability and reduce utility bills.
Quality Installed Complete Heating and Cooling Systems: High-efficiency heating and cooling systems engineered to deliver more comfort, moisture control and quiet operation, and equipped with fresh-air ventilation to improve air quality.
A Complete Water Management System: Because Energy Star homes offer a tightly sealed and insulated building envelope, a comprehensive package of flashing, moisture barriers, and heavy-duty membrane details is critical to help keep water from roofs, walls, and foundations for improved durability and indoor air quality.
Efficient Lighting and Appliances: Look for Energy Star qualified lighting, appliances and fans that can help to further reduce monthly utility bills and provide high-quality performance.
Third-Party Verification: Energy Star qualified homes require verification by independent Home Energy Raters who conduct a comprehensive series of detailed inspections and use specialized diagnostic equipment to test system performance
Source: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/energy-efficient-homes-future.html
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