Posts Tagged ‘electricity’

Back from Costa Rica

Monday, August 17th, 2009

I have just returned from my windmill building expedition to Costa Rica and have great news to report!  The wind is strong, the windmills are (hopefully) stronger, and after another trip in December they should be producing more than enough power to suit their needs.

I’ll be posting  a full how-to article on Instructables.com and here, pictures and Youtube videos as well in the near future… but for now here are those beautiful windmills!

It was fun and hard work.  And inspiring.  There are so many more ideas in the works!  Stay tuned!

greentheo with the turbines

greentheo with the turbines

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Greenest Transportation

Monday, July 6th, 2009

I’ve recently changed my thoughts on the greenest form of transportation.   The best and most economical transportation in the future will be Natural Gas or biodiesel powered busses, complimented by electric grid powered trains (or just biodiesel-electric) and natural gas powered vehicles.

The advantages of using Natural Gas and biodiesel is that any existing gasoline powered vehicle can be converted to run on Natural Gas and any existing diesel vehicle can be run on biodiesel.   Natural Gas burns cleaner than gasoline too.  A further bonus is that no highly toxic battery packs will be needed.

More importantly though, Natural Gas can be manufactured in anyone’s backyard or can be piped directly to our house.  Most neighborhoods in the US have natural gas infrastructure.   Bioreactors utilize common strains of bacteria to take biomaterial including fecal waste and turn it into compost and fuel under anaerobic conditions.  Biodiesel is made simply from vegetable oil.  A Natural Gas and biodiesel based economy will be more efficient, less polluting and less dependent on foreign oil.

Mass transportation like buses and trains will continue to help green transportation but only as cities develop in more controlled and planned ways.

My prediction… if oil climbs like it did in 2008 and keeps going up we will see the emergence of not electric or hydrogen cars, but natrual gas conversion kits and more diesel based vehicles.  It’s simply cheaper and more robust.

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Miscellany

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

A few miscellaneous items.

Rain Barrels
A few weeks ago I built this rain catching and redistribution system to make use of an otherwise wasted resource.  I managed to install a nice drip system on it and after the last couple of weeks I can gladly report that it works well.  And all in, it has cost me about $30 (not including the drip lines).

To my surprise, I saw that Home Depot also offers a rain barrel (even though they are technically illegal) with 57 gallon capacity, but a slightly more asthetic appearance…. for $98!  1/3 the capacity, 5 times the price! (I’m definitely sticking it to the man!)

hd_rainbarrel.jpg

Seeds are sprouting

The seeds are definitely starting to pop up!  Underneath the greenhouses at least.  If you haven’t started already, it’s time to get the garden into shape!

The cost of going solar

I’ve been working on helping my cousin get a Mission Center off the grid in Costa Rica where Electricity can be very expensive (more than 2 times as expensive at the top tier).

In our research I found a formula for determing the cost of PV solar panels to take your home off grid (in Colorado).

Cost of PV solar panels = Avg. Monthly Electric Bill *10,000 (watts-per-$) / 30 (days-per-month) /5.5 (sun-hours-per-day)*3 ($-per-watt)

For my little house here in the Boulder area I would need a 4.3 kW  system… costing about $12k (for the panels) + other needed accessories.  And I’d still have to purchase a large battery bank to make up for cloudy days.

Hmm… where am I going to get that kind of dough?

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Kill-a-watt

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Greenies are known for being penny pinchers and energy misers.  But how to go about it in a scientific way?  And can you even really save that much money/energy consumption?

Recently I purchased a Kill-a-watt (~$20 on Amazon.com).  The kill-a-watt is a simple device that plugs into the wall.  To measure your energy usage, you simply plug in the appliance or a power strip with several appliances.  It has an LCD and several functions to help you monitor your device(s) energy usage… both when they are on and when they are off.

But when my coffee maker is off, it’s off right?

No!

Surprisingly (to me at least) most modern appliances still consume a fair bit of electricity when turned off!  Commonly this phenomenon is known as “Vampire” electronics.

So how much money will I be saving by utilizing my kill-a-watt and a trusty ol’ on/off power strip?

My work desk includes the following items:

  • speakers – 25 watts on
  • laptop – 20 watts on, 1 watt off
  • cable modem and wireless router – 25 watts on
  • Xbox – 90 watts on , 1 watts off
  • Monitor – 30 watts on, 1 watts off
  • Desk aggregate consumption during work hours (while not playing video games) – 100 watts
  • Desk aggregate (laptop, Xbox and monitor off) – 50 watts !

Summing up, I can see that for the 16 hours a day that I don’t use my desk, it’s still drawing 50 watts.  Over 1 year’s time this consumes $33.28 of electricity.  Call me a penny pincher but by using a power strip for the whole system, and spending the 2 seconds per day to turn the strip on and off I can squeeze out just a little bit of savings (making the equivalent of $230/hour… just to flip a switch on and off).

I can’t wait to find more ways to kill my watts!

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Bailout + electric cars + power grid = free fuel

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

It looks like the auto industry will get the bailout that they’ve been looking for in the amount of about $18 Billion.

I didn’t write the bill but if I had I would have made following changes.  Once implimented we could literally be seeing nearly free transportation (once the electric car has been paid for).

  1.  Condition the bailout on the introduction of at least 5 electric vehicles by GM and Chrysler.  The vehicles would be lead-acid battery powered, have a minimum range of 50 miles and a minimum top speed of 65 mph.   When better/cheaper electrical storage than lead-acid becomes available we’ll all switch to it.  With a huge market available many more companies would jump on the battery development bandwagon… batteries are the single sticking point in electrical car design.
  2. While we’re up to bailing people out why not just add in a few more dollars and improve the nations electrical grid such that they are smarter and have the capability to withdraw power from electric cars.
  3. Use the electric cars as a giant battery.  Wind power is cheap and way more abundant at night.  Furthermore, running a coal plant at the same power output 24/7 produces greater efficiency than trying to adjust the output to varying and somewhat unpredictable demand.
  4. Currently night time electricity is cheaper than day time and peak electricity so….
  5. The electric car owner charges at night with cheap energy, drives to work using a small fraction of the battery and plugs into a station at work hooked to the grid.  When energy demand peaks occur during the day, the power company pays to take some electricity from the car batteries to meet the demand.  Then a bit later it replaces the used electrity.
  6. As a bonus, replacing the roof of your car with a flexible PV would further reduce overall energy cost for the electric car.

No solid figures for the reader, but since electricity is cheaper as a fuel for an automobile and the difference between peak and night time energy is about the same price as the cheap energy one could likely offset all of the fuel costs.

Wouldn’t that be a boon to the economy?  Imagine if instead of paying $1k-2k a year for fuel each citizen had no fuel costs.  If President Bush’s tax rebates were an economic stimulus then having no fuel costs would have a double or triple net effect.

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