Category Archives: advanced energy structures

Energy Neutral Homes Are Not That Hard To Create – Here is one step

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To Think At One Time: I did not even think I would get requests for guest posts. Then: I questioned whether to allow guest posts. Now I am getting a request about every month for someone to share this space…And you know what I love it.

It’s not necessary to become a nerd to find out how wind power works

Wind is the result of the uneven heating of the Earth by the sun and the fact that temperatures will always be attempting to reach an equilibrium (heat is always moving to a cooler area). With the rising price of energy and the damage to the environment from classic fuels, it is increasingly equitable to harvest this renewable resource.

The benefits of wind energy are that it’s virtually free (after you purchase the equipment) and there’s no pollution. The disadvantages include the fact it is not a constant source (the speed varies and many times it is insufficient to make electricity) and it typically requires about one acre of land.

How Wind Energy Works

The volume of power that can be found varies by wind speed. The amount available is named it’s power density which is measured in watts per square meter. Due to this, the U.S. Department of Energy has separated wind energy into classes from 1 to 7. The typical wind speed for class 1 is 9.8 mph or less while the average for a class 7 is 21.1 or more. For effective power production, class 2 winds (11.5 mph average speed) are usually required.

In general, wind speeds increase as you get higher above the Earth. Due to this, the typical wind mill comes with a tower no less than 30 feet above obstructions. That there are two basic different types of towers employed for residential wind power systems (free standing and guyed). Free standing towers are self supporting and are usually heavier which means they take special equipment (cranes) to erect them. Guyed towers are supported on a concrete base and anchored by wires for support. They typically are not as heavy and most manufacturer’s produce tilt down models which may be easily raised and lowered for maintenance.

The kinetic (moving energy) from the winds is harnessed by a device called a turbine. This turbine contains airfoils (blades) that capture the energy of the wind and use it to turn the shaft of an alternator (like you have on a car only bigger).

There are two basic types of blades (drag style and lifting style). We all have seen pictures of old-fashioned windmills with the large flat blades which are an example of the drag style of airfoil. Lifting style blades are twisted instead of flat and resemble the propellor of a small airplane.

A turbine is classified as to whether it is built to be installed with the rotor in a horizontal or vertical position and whether the wind strikes the blades or the tower first. A vertical turbine typically requires less land for it’s installation and is a better option for the more urban areas of the world. An upwind turbine is designed for the wind to impact the airfoils before it does the tower.

http://www.residentialwindturbines.org/residential-wind-turbine.jpg

These units ordinarily have a tail on the turbine which is needed to keep the unit pointed into the wind. A downwind turbine doesn’t need a tail as the wind acting on the blades tends to maintain it oriented properly.

These turbine systems would be damaged if they were to be permitted to turn at excessive speeds. Therefore, units will need to have automatic over-speed governing systems. Some systems use electrical braking systems although some use mechanical type brakes.

The output electricity from the alternator is sent to a controller which conditions it for use in the home. The use of residential wind power systems requires the home to either remain linked with the utility grid or store electricity in a battery for use when the wind doesn’t blow sufficiently.

When the home is tied to the grid, the surplus electricity that is produced by the residential wind power system can be sold to the utility company to lower and sometimes even eliminate your electric bill. During times with not enough wind, the home is supplied power from the utility company.

http://www.residentialwindturbines.org/wind-scheme-grid-tied.gif

The Cost of Wind Energy

Small residential wind power turbines can be an attractive alternative, or addition, to those people needing over 100-200 watts of power for their home, business, or remote facility. Unlike PV’s, which stay at basically the same cost per watt independent of array size, wind turbines get more affordable with increasing system size. At the 50 watt size level, for instance, a small residential power turbine would cost about $8.00/watt in comparison to approximately $6.00/watt for a PV module.

This is the reason, all things being equal, Photo voltaic is less expensive for very small loads. As the system size gets larger, however, this “rule-of-thumb” reverses itself.

At 300 watts the wind generator costs are down to $2.50/watt, while the PV costs are still at $6.00/watt. For a 1,500 watt wind system the cost is down to $2.00/watt and at 10,000 watts the price of a wind generator (excluding electronics) is down to $1.50/watt.

The author – Mary Jones writes for the

http://www.residentialwindturbines.org/”>residential wind generators

website, her personal hobby blog centered on ways to reduce CO2 and lower energy costs using alternative power sources.

If you wish to read my complete Bio:

http://www.residentialwindturbines.org/about

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More tomorrow

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Carbon Neutral Houses – They be real cool

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http://www.2people.org/pub/page/show/article/10596

Carbon neutral homes by 2016

The British government has recently opened the comment period on a major plan to revise the building code. The revisions phase in regulations ensuring that all new homes are built carbon-neutral by 2016. Other elements of the plan include:

  • Code for Sustainable Homes: national standard to inform home buyers about the environmental performance of homes offered for sale.
  • Energy Performance Certificates: national standard to inform home buyers about the energy efficiency and running costs of homes offered for sale.
  • Urban planning policy to support lower carbon emissions and resiliency in the face of climate change.
  • Water Efficiency standards
  • Review of Existing Buildings: While the new regulations cover new construction, the government looking at ways to upgrade existing homes and buildings.

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http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dcs_first_carbon_neutral_home_hits_the_market/1652

DC’s First Carbon Neutral Home Hits the Market

by Mark Wellborn

image

Back in September, we reported that DC’s first carbon neutral home was being built in Capitol Hill. Yesterday, the much-anticipated property hit the market.

The three-bedroom, 3.5-bath home at 19 4th Street NE (map) was gutted and renovated by GreenSpur, Inc., a DC-based building and design firm that uses sustainability techniques to deliver homes that are energy efficient as well as cost effective.

After overcoming a labyrinth of regulatory hurdles and permitting nightmares given the property’s location four blocks from the Capitol, GreenSpur enlarged the home (from 1,000 to 2,100 square feet), hand dug the basement and, in keeping with their mission statement, made it completely green but priced comparably to other (non-carbon neutral) homes in the area.

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Then there is this. Wiki makes a political statement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_neutrality

Carbon neutrality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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“Carbon neutral” redirects here. For other uses, see Carbon neutral (disambiguation).
Unbalanced scales.svg
 The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (May 2010)

Carbon neutrality, or having a net zero carbon footprint, refers to achieving net zero carbon emissions by balancing a measured amount of carbon released with an equivalent amount sequestered or offset, or buying enough carbon credits to make up the difference. It is used in the context of carbon dioxide releasing processes, associated with transportation, energy production and industrial processes.

The carbon neutral concept may be extended to include other greenhouse gases (GHG) measured in terms of their carbon dioxide equivalence—the impact a GHG has on the atmosphere expressed in the equivalent amount of CO2. The term climate neutral is used to reflect the fact that it is not just carbon dioxide (CO2), that is driving climate change, even if it is the most abundant, but also encompasses other greenhouse gases regulated by the Kyoto Protocol, namely: methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). Both terms are used interchangeably throughout this article.

Best practice for organizations and individuals seeking carbon neutral status entails reducing and/or avoiding carbon emissions first so that only unavoidable emissions are offset. The term has two common uses:

  • It can refer to the practice of balancing carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, with renewable energy that creates a similar amount of useful energy, so that the carbon emissions are compensated, or alternatively using only renewable energies that don’t produce any carbon dioxide (this last is called a post-carbon economy).[1]
  • It is also used to describe the practice, criticized by some,[2] of carbon offsetting, by paying others to remove or sequester 100% of the carbon dioxide emitted from the atmosphere[3] – for example by planting trees – or by funding ‘carbon projects‘ that should lead to the prevention of future greenhouse gas emissions, or by buying carbon credits to remove (or ‘retire’) them through carbon trading. These practices are often used in parallel, together with energy conservation measures to minimize energy use.

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Climate neutral. Who is zooming who here. Did somebody just make up a phrase to create the new denier strawman. Yah think.

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Energy Neutral Homes Continues – The Building Council’s site

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Not much to say…great site …great articles…please see:

http://greenhomeguide.com/

Get Optimal Performance from a Tankless Water Heater

September 4, 2009 By Willem Maas

Tankless water heaters have caught the eye of many homeowners lately—as a way to reduce the 19 percent of total home energy use consumed by water heating. According to research sponsored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), heating water with a tankless system is 12 to 34 percent more energy efficient than using a conventional storage tank system. And when tankless systems are installed at each water outlet, gains in efficiency can range from 28 to 50 percent.

Others are impressed by the ability of tankless systems to deliver hot water “endlessly” in a busy household, as well as the space saved because a storage tank is no longer needed.

These factors, combined with rising energy bills, a federal tax credit for 30 percent of the total cost (up to $1,500, including installation), and greater availability, make tankless a technology well worth considering.

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More tomorrow

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Living In A Cave Or The Next Best Thing – They have nearly zero energy use

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People all over the world live in caves. I am not talking about subsistence living either. Downtown Minneapolis is pretty much underground or connected by underground walkways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal

Montreal’s Underground City (officially RÉSO or La Ville Souterraine in French) is the set of interconnected complexes (both above and below ground) in and around Downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is also known as the indoor city (ville intérieure), and is the largest underground complex in the world.[1]

The lower floors of the Eaton Centre between the McGill and Peel metro stations.

Not all portions of the indoor city (ville intérieure) are underground. The connections are considered tunnels architecturally and technically, but have conditioned air and good lighting as any building’s liveable space does. Many tunnels are large enough to have shops on both sides of the passage. With over 32 km (20 mi) of tunnels spread over more than 12 km2 (4.6 sq mi), connected areas include shopping malls, apartment buildings, hotels, condominiums, banks, offices, museums, universities, seven metro stations, two commuter train stations, a regional bus terminal and the Bell Centre amphitheatre and arena.[citation needed] There are more than 120 exterior access points to the underground city. Each access point is an entry point to one of 60 residential or commercial complexes comprising 3.6 km2 (1.4 sq mi) of floor space, including 80% of all office space and 35% of all commercial space in downtown Montreal.[citation needed] In winter, some 500,000 people use the underground city every day. Because of its Underground City, Montreal is often referred to [by whom?] as the “Double-Decker City” or “Two Cities in One”.

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OK so it is really really cold in Montreal. The point is caves do not really need heating and cooling. Hot water can be supplied by solar or geothermal and that just leaves your electrical needs. They also do it where it is really really hot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy

Coober Pedy is a very small town, roughly halfway between Adelaide and Alice Springs, that has become a popular stopover point and tourist destination, especially since the completion of the sealing of the Stuart Highway in 1987.

Interesting attractions in Coober Pedy include the mines, the graveyard, and the underground churches. The first tree ever seen in the town was welded together from scrap iron. It still sits on a hilltop overlooking the town. The local golf course – mostly played at night with glowing balls, to avoid daytime temperatures – is completely free of grass, and golfers take a small piece of “turf” around to use for teeing off. As a result of correspondence between the two clubs, the Coober Pedy golf club is the only club in the world to enjoy reciprocal rights at The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.[4]

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http://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/coober-pedy-underground-homes.html

Coober Pedy Underground Homes
Think A Dugout Is A Hole In The Ground? Think Again!

Coober Pedy underground homes are not what you expect.

The idea of living underground usually triggers thoughts of dark, damp and cramped spaces.

It doesn’t help that those underground homes are called “dugouts” in Coober Pedy… Or that people are told that they are abandoned mine shafts…

But as I said, Coober Pedy dugouts are not what you think.

You really have to go and have a look at some of those homes yourself, or stay in underground accommodation in Coober Pedy. You’ll probably end up dreaming of an underground home yourself. I certainly did.

Historic Coober Pedy Dugouts | Modern Coober Pedy Underground Homes

Historic Coober Pedy Dugouts

Coober Pedy Dugout

The early Coober Pedy dugouts were indeed the holes that had been dug in search for opal.

Back then opal mining was back breaking manual labour, so the earliest Coober Pedy homes were no bigger than they absolutely needed to be.

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Tomorrow more on Energy Neutral Houses.

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Carrington’s Flare – While we wait to see how well the cap works in BP’s Oil Gusher

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I will try to post more green wash meditations but let us consider how bad things can get here at times. This is an event I was actually unaware of and it’s coolness is pretty high.

Authors: Trudy E. Bell & Dr. Tony Phillips | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/

A Super Solar Flare

May 6, 2008: At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington—widely acknowledged to be one of England’s foremost solar astronomers—was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.

Right: Sunspots sketched by Richard Carrington on Sept. 1, 1859. Copyright: Royal Astronomical Society: more.

On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and “being somewhat flurried by the surprise,” Carrington later wrote, “I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled.” He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.

It was 11:23 AM. Only five minutes had passed.

Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.

Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.

“What Carrington saw was a white-light solar flare—a magnetic explosion on the sun,” explains David Hathaway, solar physics team lead at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Now we know that solar flares happen frequently, especially during solar sunspot maximum. Most betray their existence by releasing X-rays (recorded by X-ray telescopes in space) and radio noise (recorded by radio telescopes in space and on Earth). In Carrington’s day, however, there were no X-ray satellites or radio telescopes. No one knew flares existed until that September morning when one super-flare produced enough light to rival the brightness of the sun itself.

“It’s rare that one can actually see the brightening of the solar surface,” says Hathaway. “It takes a lot of energy to heat up the surface of the sun!”

Above: A modern solar flare recorded Dec. 5, 2006, by the X-ray Imager onboard NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite. The flare was so intense, it actually damaged the instrument that took the picture. Researchers believe Carrington’s flare was much more energetic than this one.

The explosion produced not only a surge of visible light but also a mammoth cloud of charged particles and detached magnetic loops—a “CME”—and hurled that cloud directly toward Earth. The next morning when the CME arrived, it crashed into Earth’s magnetic field, causing the global bubble of magnetism that surrounds our planet to shake and quiver. Researchers call this a “geomagnetic storm.” Rapidly moving fields induced enormous electric currents that surged through telegraph lines and disrupted communications.

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Here is a really good article on it. I am posting a chunk of it not covered above.

http://passingstrangeness.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/the-carrington-flare/

The Carrington Flare

April 15, 2009

As it happened, a second member of the Royal Astronomical society (another Richard, this one the otherwise-obscure Richard Hodgson in London), also saw the flare and so proved conclusively that there was nothing wrong with Carrington’s equipment. By the time this was realized, though, it was already pretty clear that something truly odd had happened—something rattled the Earth’s atmosphere the next day, as described above.

The connections between light, magnetism, and electricity were still incompletely understood in 1859 (James Clerk Maxwell would not entirely coincidentally publish his tour de force on the subject over the next few years), but Michael Faraday had already discovered the Law of Induction. Shorn of mathematics, it provided for the creation of electricity if a piece of metal cuts across a magnetic field or the field instead cuts over the metal. That was the connection between the strange readings at Kew and the telegraphic events around the world. The enormous auroras were symptomatic of huge fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field, and those fluctuations were playing across the world’s 200,000 kilometers of telegraph wire. By analyzing the directions followed by wires and comparing them to the effects that occurred at their stations, it was even possible to develop a rough idea of how the fluctuations had flowed around the planet.

Though the correlation between sunspots and the fluctuations of Earth’s magnetic field had already been discovered by Edward Sabine, this was the first really solid evidence that the Sun could reach out to the Earth with something other than light or gravity. Conservative by nature, Carrington himself didn’t commit to a connection between his flare and the electromagnetic storm, but now we know that the Sun throws off coronal mass ejections consisting of protons and electrons (the first having been observed in 1971). We even know for sure that the 1859 event was caused by one, despite the more than a century since it occurred; protons and electrons expelled by the Sun move quickly, but not anything like the speed of light, so that accounts for the delay between Carrington seeing his flare and the beginning of the auroras.

The clincher can be found on one of the charts linked to previously. There’s a “fishhook” shape (marked with an arrow labeled “D: Solar Flare Effect”) in the bottom trace. That’s called a magnetic crochet, and it’s the characteristic bump in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by X-rays from the coronal mass ejection ionizing part of our atmosphere. X-rays move at the speed of light, outpacing the charged particles following them—and it takes eight minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth at that speed. As closely as can be told from the relatively crude instrumentation that drew the track (hours are listed at the top of the same chart), the crochet occurred within the same time frame as Carrington’s closely timed 11:18 observation of the flare. So we have both a delayed effect from the slow stream of charged particles and a high-speed effect moving at light speed; a coronal mass ejection fits the bill exactly.

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The Wikki article is kinda lame:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Christopher_Carrington

Richard Christopher Carrington

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to:navigation, search

Richard Christopher Carrington
Born 26 May 1826
Chelsea, London, England
Died 27 November 1875 (aged 49)
Churt, England
Nationality English
Fields Astronomy
Known for Solar observations
Notable awards Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1859

Richard Christopher Carrington (26 May 1826 – 27 November 1875) was an English amateur astronomer whose 1859 astronomical observations first corroborated the existence of solar flares as well as their electrical influence upon the Earth and its aurorae; and whose 1863 records of sunspot observations demonstrated differential rotation in the Sun.

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It’s amazing how far we have come…but the Oil Gusher shows how far we have to go..

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Oil Wash, Green Wash and Night Wash – I know I promised a meditation on Green Wash

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OIL Wash

http://www.leanweb.org/

BP Tells Fishermen Working On The Oil Spill That They Will Be Fired For Wearing A Respirator

We have had numerous fisherman, that have been hired through BP’s Master Vessel Charter Agreement to work on the oil spill response, tell us that their BP “bosses” have told them that if they use a respirator or any safety equipment not provided by BP that they would be fired.

http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-01/efforts-to-end-oil-flow-from-bp-s-leaking-well-are-over-coast-guard-says.html

Efforts to End Oil Flow From BP Well Over Until Relief Wells Are Finished

By Jim Polson – Jun 1, 2010

BP Plc has decided not to attach a second blowout preventer on its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico and efforts to end the flow are over until the relief wells are finished, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Thad Allen, who spoke at a press conference today.

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GREEN Wash

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash

Greenwash

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Greenwashing (green whitewash) is the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.[1] It is a deceptive use of green PR or green marketing. The term green sheen has similarly been used to describe organizations that attempt to show that they are adopting practices beneficial to the environment.[2]

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Usage

Greenwashing was coined by New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld[3][4][5] in a 1986 essay regarding the hotel industry’s practice of placing green placards in each room, promoting reuse of guest-towels, ostensibly to “save the environment”. Westerveld noted that, in most cases, little or no effort toward waste recycling was being implemented by these institutions, due in part to the lack of cost-cutting affected by such practice. Westerveld opined that the actual objective of this “green campaign” on the part of many hoteliers was, in fact, increased profit. Westerveld hence monitored this and other outwardly environmentally conscientious acts with a greater, underlying purpose of profit increase as greenwashing.

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NIGHT Wash – This is just too cool not to post it and ask people to pass it around…A new and improved Night View of planet Earth.

http://benhennig.postgrad.shef.ac.uk/?p=507

26

The night view of the earth has become a very popular depiction of this planet. Although the NASA itself says that “The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated” many people mistake this view as a representation of the inhabited places on the globe. Our gridded population cartogram can help to get a better understanding of the relation of people and light. The following map is a reprojection of the earth at night that shows the nightview in relation to the population distribution. The gridlines are kept in a light colour and thus allow to identify those areas where the lines converge (representing the unpopulated regions). In contrast, the populated areas are given the most space, so that one can easily see which populated areas are literally illuminated at night – and where there are people living in darkness. The resulting map is an impressive picture of an unequal world, with large parts of Africa living in darkness, and the affluent countries in Europe and North America glowing in the dark:The Earth at Night projected on a gridded population cartogram

(click for large image)

This map has recently been used by Danny Dorling in the Monday night lecture at the Royal Geographical Society. The following link leads to an online version of the lecture which allowes you to watch and listen to this lecture about inequality and the environment.

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Jevons’ Paradox – Truth or intellectual masterbation

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I vote for intellectual masterbation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conservation

Energy conservation refers to efforts made to reduce energy consumption in order to preserve resources for the future and reduce environmental pollution. It can be achieved through efficient energy use (when energy use is decreased while achieving a similar outcome), or by reduced consumption of energy services. Energy conservation may result in increase of financial capital, environmental value, national security, personal security, and human comfort. Individuals and organizations that are direct consumers of energy may want to conserve energy in order to reduce energy costs and promote economic security. Industrial and commercial users may want to increase efficiency and thus maximize profit.

Electrical energy conservation is an important element of energy policy. Energy conservation reduces the energy consumption and energy demand per capita and thus offsets some of the growth in energy supply needed to keep up with population growth. This reduces the rise in energy costs, and can reduce the need for new power plants, and energy imports. The reduced energy demand can provide more flexibility in choosing the most preferred methods of energy production.

By reducing emissions, energy conservation is an important part of lessening climate change. Energy conservation facilitates the replacement of non-renewable resources with renewable energy. Energy conservation is often the most economical solution to energy shortages, and is a more environmentally benign alternative to increased energy production. Another method is switchingto the user friendly SM energy. This is produced at Swan Energy Savers, envirmental helpers.[1]

dot dot dot as they say…

Issues with energy conservation

Critics and advocates of some forms of energy conservation make the following arguments:

  • Standard economic theory suggests that technological improvements increase energy efficiency, rather than reduce energy use. This is called the Jevons Paradox and it is said to occur in two ways. Firstly, increased energy efficiency makes the use of energy relatively cheaper, thus encouraging increased use. Secondly, increased energy efficiency leads to increased economic growth, which pulls up energy use in the whole economy. This does not imply that increased fuel efficiency is worthless, increased fuel efficiency enables greater production and a higher quality of life. However, in order to reduce energy consumption, efficiency gains must be paired with a government intervention that reduces demand (a green tax, cap and trade).[6][7]

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Just the shear arrogance of this guy makes me vote for the truth side.

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2005/12/180-jevons-paradox-refuted.html

Well… the doomers love Jevons Paradox. For them it is, above all, a reason not to conserve (or a reason why conservation “won’t help”). After all, why should anybody conserve gasoline? If they do so, it will (by Jevons Paradox) just cause consumption of gasoline to increase.

Now, we may not be able to refute Jevons Paradox as an empirical fact, but we certainly can refute the way doomers are using it. We can do it with a single example:
In a vast parking lot ruled by cars and low-slung superstores, Stacey Harper delivers the unlikeliest of travel alternatives: mass transit.

The 41-year-old nurse wheels a white minivan into a rain-dappled parking spot to pick up a couple more co-workers. It is 6 a.m. on a Wednesday in South Hill, and Harper is driving a van pool to work at Western State Hospital.

A year ago, Harper thought nothing of driving 36 miles from home to work alone. That was before the price of a gallon of gasoline began its steady march upward, ultimately costing her $180 to $200 per month.

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Please see the rest of the blog AND comments, but his point is that people that conserve energy make money. Once they do that they will rarely ever go back to wasting money. That is Jevons failed to take true consumer behavior into account.

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Healthcare And Alternative Energy – If a Bank can do it why not a Hospital

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it’s jam band friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om2EQ7YXork

Way to go Farmers Bank. They put up a Wind Turbine in Mt. Pulaski. When you think about it, Hospitals manytimes have some of the tallest buildings in town and the most financial muscle around. So why don’t they all sprout wind turbines and solar panels? Please see yesterdays Post.

http://www.lincolncourier.com/homepage/x1499086608/Wind-blows-energy-to-area-bank

Wind blows energy to area bank

Mount Pulaski wind
By Justin L. Fowler/GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Crews work to install the blades on a 10,000-watt wind turbine being installed to help power the Farmers Bank of Mount Pulaski on the city square in Mount Pulask Wednesday.
By John Reynolds
GateHouse News Service
Thu Mar 25, 2010, 06:05 AM CDT

Mount Pulaski, Ill. –

A high-tech wind turbine that can generate 10,000 watts of power was installed near Logan County’s oldest bank Wednesday.

The turbine, which sits atop a 120-foot tower, will supply about half, or possibly more than half, of the electricity used by Farmers Bank of Mount Pulaski.

The apparatus cost about $65,000, some of which will be offset by tax credits, said Rick Volle, president of Farmers Bank, which was established in 1872.

“There’s a lot of these going up on a larger scale. We think it’s something worth doing,” Volle said. “…We are figuring about a 12-year payoff on it, and it has a life of about 30 years.”

Installation of the turbine on the square in Mount Pulaski drew a crowd of about two-dozen people. They watched as a crane lifted the tower into the air and workmen slowly moved the base over to a concrete pad. The turbine, complete with blades, was already installed on top.

By 12:15 p.m., the tower and turbine were in place. It now stands across the street from the historic Mount Pulaski Courthouse where Abraham Lincoln argued cases.

“I guess it’s progress for our town, and the bank in particular,” said Mike Cyrulik, who watched the work from across the street. “I think it’s going to be a great addition to town.”

Cyrulik was one of the first people to stop and watch. When the big crane took over, more people came out from downtown shops to see the tower rise into the air.

“It’s pretty interesting for a little town,” Cyrulik said.

Mount Pulaski, about 25 miles northeast of Springfield, sits on a hill that rises above the surrounding farmland.

John Wyss, owner of Central Illinois Wind and Solar, the company that installed the turbine, said downtown Mount Pulaski is a good spot for the new technology.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVtCdZLtCj4 )

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Some progressive hospitals are catching on.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tFX51imvQ )

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2008/12/ann_arbor_veteran_affairs_hosp.html

Ann Arbor Veteran Affairs hospital gets wind turbine

By Steve Pepple

December 02, 2008, 7:06AM
Eliyahu Gurfinkel | The Ann Arbor NewsDarryl Snabes, left, and Jeff Means are responsible for the installation of a wind turbine on the roof of the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System building. Snabes is the local project manager and Means the regional energy manager at the VA.

A small wind turbine now spins atop the Ann Arbor Veteran Affairs hospital, contributing to the hospital’s utility needs while satisfying a new federal requirement for renewable energy.

Hospital administrators installed the vertical turbine last month as part of an ongoing plan to generate about 7.5 percent of the hospital’s energy needs from renewable energy, including wind and solar, by 2012.

“It’s a baby step, but we’re optimistic,” said Jeff Means, energy manager for VA hospitals in Michigan and nearby states.

The turbine and its installation cost about $100,000. If it is successful in generating enough energy, the hospital could install additional turbines and solar panels to generate energy, Means said.

The turbine, which weighs about 1,000 pounds, is 16 feet tall and 3 feet wide. As the wind spins the vertical turbine, a generator in its base sends direct electrical current through several boxes to transform the power into alternating current to be used by the hospital.

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There’s a strong wind agona blow.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tFX51imvQ )

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Cutting Healthcare’s Enormous Energy Waste – This article is not on topic BUT

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I had originally planned on taking a look at how much an X-Ray costs in energy terms. The Healthcare industry sucks up huge amounts of energy. Another thing I planned on looking at is their huge computer usage. Like utility companies, hospitals are nothing but giant billing agencies, add to that all of the data they must store and a hospital has got to be gulping the juice. This articles points out that ALL BURNING Behavior is much like most medical behavior, just plain sloppy living.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907514,00.html

The Key to Fixing Health Care and Energy: Use Less

Our health-care crisis and our energy crisis are complex dilemmas made of many complex problems. But our biggest problem in both health care and energy is essentially the same simple problem: we use too much. And in both cases, there’s a simple explanation for much of the problem: our providers get paid more when we use more.

Undoing these waste-promoting incentives — the “fee-for-service” payment system that awards more fees to doctors and hospitals for providing more services, and the regulated electricity rates that reward utilities for selling more power and building more plants — would not solve all our health-care and energy problems. But it would be a major step in the right direction. President Obama has pledged to pass massive overhauls of both sectors this year, but if Congress lacks the stomach for comprehensive reforms — and these days it’s looking like Kate Moss in the stomach department — a more modest effort to realign perverse incentives could take a serious bite out of both crises. (See pictures of Cleveland’s smart approach to health care.)

Everyone knows we use too much energy. Our addiction to fossil fuels is torching the planet, empowering hostile petro-states and straining our wallets. Meanwhile, studies by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and elsewhere suggest that more than half of our energy is lost through inefficiencies, calculations that don’t even include the energy we fritter away through wasteful behavior like leaving lights on or idling cars. We’re on course to increase electricity usage an extra 30% by 2030, which could require trillions of dollars’ worth of new emissions-belching power plants, so it would be much better to eliminate the usage that doesn’t add to our quality of life.

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Please read the rest of the brief article. It is thought provoking.

More on Green Medical Technology tomorrow.

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Healthcare Bill PASSES – But does it save energy

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Yes I know I am a google whore. It’s been said before. Here is the deal however. If the Healthcare Industry…and that is what it is, an Industry, cut their energy cost tomorrow, they could pass that savings on to you and “bend the healthcare curve down”.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/consumptionbriefs/cbecs/pbawebsite/health/health_howuseenergy.htm

EALTH CARE BUILDINGS

How do they use energy and how much does it cost?

Total Energy Use by Fuel Type

Reference 1:  What is a Btu?

Health care buildings account for 11 percent of all commercial energy consumption, using a total of 561 trillion Btu of combined site electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, and district steam or hot water.  They are the fourth highest consumer of total energy of all the building types (see total energy figure on home page).

Natural gas and electricity are the predominant fuels used in health care buildings, with natural gas used a bit more than electricity.  Health care buildings are more likely to use district heat than most building types.

Site electricity is the amount of electricity consumed within the building; electricity use can also be expressed as primary electricity, which includes the energy consumed in generating and transmitting electricity.  Health care buildings used 637 trillion Btu of primary electricity, which brings the total energy consumption for health care buildings up to 987 trillion Btu, or 9 percent of total primary consumption for all commercial buildings.

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Some estimates put it as low as 9%, but that would be real savings.

http://managedhealthcareexecutive.modernmedicine.com/mhe/Exclusives/Healthcare-facilities-account-for-9-of-energy-cons/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/569619

Employees and executives are being called upon to assist as organizations implement “green” systems within healthcare facilities. The term “green building” or “sustainability” can mean a variety of things. Commonly, however, “green” design and construction includes:

  • promoting a healthier, more productive build environment;
  • increasing energy efficiency;
  • increasing efficiency in the use of water and other scarce resources;
  • reducing the project’s impact on the surrounding environment; and
  • decreasing liquid and solid wastes, building emissions, and other adverse impacts of the building’s operation on the broader environment.

Sustainability has particular resonance for healthcare facilities because improved indoor environmental quality demonstrably improves the health of patients, professionals, staff and visitors. Further, healthcare facilities are major generators of waste and are substantial consumers of increasingly energy and water.

Healthcare facilities generate more than 2 million tons of solid waste annually, which accounts for the majority of hospital waste disposal cost. Given a likely increase in waste disposal costs, designing or renovating a facility to more efficiently handle waste is an economic necessity.

Additionally, equipment-intensive facilities use several times more energy than office buildings, while hospitals typically use 90 to150 gallons of water per bed per day. In fact, healthcare facilities account for 9% of all commercial energy consumption in America, according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.

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Physician heal thyself

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