Category Archives: green cars

Beyond Extreme Energy – I rarely endorse organizations

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But today I do. This a great organization and a great idea as well. Join today.

info@beyondextremeenergy.org

Beyond Extreme Energy

Get involved in BXE’s work

Take Action!

Stay Connected!

Support our work!

  • Make a financial contribution.
  • Write to Actions@BeyondExtremeEnergy.org if you’re interested in being on one of our organizing working groups.

Questions? Need to contact us? Email info@beyondextremeenergy.org

picsart_02-19-12-34-54

 

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Go there and join, read and protest. More next week.

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Modern Whole House Fans – This was news to me

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A friend of mine, Nelson Oller, lives in Mason City Illinois and is in Ameren’s service territory. They have a whole house approach to reducing their residential customers electricity consumption. This program is great. They are helping with insulation and state-of-the-art equipment. He has to spent 2 grand for 10 thousand dollars worth of stuff. One of the thinks he was telling me about was a vent fan for the bathroom that could act as a whole house plan. I had never herd of such a thing, but according to this article it has been around for several years now.

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/bathroom-exhaust-fans

 

musingsheader image

Bathroom Exhaust Fans

Bath fans help remove odors and moisture — and can be used in some homes to satisfy whole-house ventilation requirements

Posted on Aug 7 2014 by Martin Holladay
Older homes often lack bathroom exhaust fans. In the old days, if the bathroom was smelly or steamy, you were supposed to open a window to air it out.

This isn’t a very logical ventilation method, especially when temperatures are below zero, or when the weather is 90°F and humid. Yet this time-honored method of bathroom ventilation is still enshrined in our building codes. According to the 2009 International Residential Code (sections R303.3 and M1507.3), a bathroom with an operable window does not need to have a bath exhaust fan.

Why do we need exhaust fans?

In spite of the code’s archaic loophole, builders should install an exhaust fan in every bathroom or toilet room — even when the bathroom has a window.

A bath exhaust fan can perform several functions:

  • It can exhaust smelly air, allowing fresher air to enter the bathroom.
  • It can exhaust humid air, allowing dryer air to enter the bathroom.
  • When operated for 24 hours per day or when controlled by a timer, it can act (in some cases) as the most important component of a whole-house ventilation system.
Designing an exhaust-only ventilation system is a topic unto itself, and is beyond the scope of this article. For more information on exhaust-only ventilation systems, see Designing a Good Ventilation System.

Where does the makeup air come from?

When the bathroom door is closed and the fan is operating, where is the makeup air coming from?

If the bathroom has an exterior wall, some of the makeup air is coming from the exterior — for example, through leaks around the window or baseboard.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Green Car Reports – I am posting this as a resource

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I used to spend a lot of time posting articles here about Green Cars. They popped up on really divergent sites and sources. At one level, this made for honest reporting, because cars that weren’t very good got reported that way. But now there is a good source for reviewing all those green cars and here it is.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1105219_tesla-battery-gigafactory-opens-as-pace-ramps-up-to-ludicrous

 

Tesla battery gigafactory opens as pace ramps up to ludicrous

If it’s built out to the full size in the original plans, the Tesla gigafactory outside Reno, Nevada, will cover 10 million square feet.

That’s the equivalent of more than 260 U.S. football fields, which would make it one of the largest buildings in the world.

Yesterday, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk officially opened the gigafactory building, which today is 14 percent of that size on a 3,000-acre site.

Owners of Tesla electric cars have been invited to an event to be held at the plant on Friday, but Musk spoke to the press yesterday from the site and declared it officially open.

The factory’s main mission is to produce lithium-ion cells at a far lower cost than any today, which will make the battery cost of the company’s upcoming Model 3 sedan low enough for a starting price of $35,000.

The Tesla Model 3 is supposed to go into production just 12 to 18 months from now, and ensuring the supply of cells and battery packs in sufficient volumes is what made the huge building necessary in the first place.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Tesla Tries To Buy SolarCity – This could be a very good thing

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This could be a huge boost for both the solar panel and the automobile industry. It could finally show a way to wean the world off gasoline as a fuel and on to clean electricity. Then again it could just crash and burn. I think it is a good thing. I hope for the best.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/musk-tesla-solarcity-energy-electric-car-solar

Tesla

Musk’s Tesla makes a bid for Musk’s SolarCity energy company

Electric car company attempts to acquire solar panel seller to create a Silicon Valley one-stop-shop for clean energy for car and home

and agencies

Elon Musk’s Tesla electric car company has made an offer to buy Musk’s solar power company, SolarCity, for as much as $2.8bn in stock in an attempt to make a one-stop-shop for cleaner energy.

SolarCity, for which Musk is both chairman and its largest shareholder, is the market leader in residential solar panel installations in the US, but has about $6.24bn in liabilities, including debt.

Musk described the deal as a “no-brainer”, saying: “Instead of making three trips to a house to put in a car charger and solar panels and battery pack, you can integrate that into a single visit. It’s an obvious thing to do.”

If the deal goes through, SolarCity will adopt the Tesla brand and sell its solar panels alongside Tesla’s PowerWall home batteries to store electricity created during the day for when it is needed at night.

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Car Helps You Drive – Instead of driving you

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I never really thought about cars this way before. It seems the more they HELP you drive the more expensive and complicated they are. If the car drives you, it will have a very complicated electronics system but a pretty simple structure. This would mean a much cheaper car and a radically restructured automobile industry.

http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/bosch-active-gas-pedal/

 

Bosch is developing a connected gas pedal with haptic feedback

This pedal promises to use haptic feedback toward helping you save fuel while driving.

Andrew Krok mugshot
Andrew Krok

 See full bio

Would you be okay with your car bossing you around if it saved you fuel, and therefore money? Bosch is hoping that you won’t mind a few extra pointers on the road with its new active gas pedal, which the company believes can decrease fuel consumption by 7 percent.

Of course, creating a smart gas pedal is a complicated endeavor. By connecting to a vehicle’s various electronic systems, it can use haptic feedback (Bosch mentions vibration, knocking and variable pedal resistance) to tell the driver when to shift, when to cut back on wasteful acceleration and even when a hybrid vehicle is about to switch from electric- to gas-based propulsion.

While going green is a big part of this new pedal, there’s also a safety angle to it. Not only can the pedal be linked to active safety systems like forward collision warning or parking sensors, but it could also connect to the navigation system to prevent drivers from taking corners with too much chutzpah. And once vehicle-to-vehicle technology becomes common, the pedal can be used to warn drivers of upcoming hazards like potholes or stopped vehicles.

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Go there and ponder. More next week.

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Electric Car Triumphs – Fitting award for the President’s re-election

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Finally someone made a car that is better than one powered by gasoline. Really that is all they have to do.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/1113/Tesla-Model-S-wins-Motor-Trend-s-Car-of-the-Year.-Are-electric-cars-here-to-stay

Tesla Model S wins Motor Trend’s Car of the Year. Are electric cars here to stay?

Tesla Motors made history Tuesday when the Tesla Model S became the first all-electric vehicle to win Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award. Will Tesla’s honor silence critics of the electric car industry?

By David J. Unger, Correspondent / November 13, 2012

he Tesla Model S nabbed one of the auto industry’s most coveted awards this week when Motor Trend named the electric vehicle as their 2013 Car of the Year.

It is the first time in Motor Trend’s 64-year history that the award has gone to a vehicle not powered by an internal combustion engine.

“It drives like a sports car, eager and agile and instantly responsive,” wrote Angus MacKenzie, editor-at-large of Motor Trend Magazine. “But it’s also as smoothly effortless as a Rolls-Royce, can carry almost as much stuff as a Chevy Equinox, and is more efficient than a Toyota Prius.”

The announcement is a boost for an EV industry labeled a failure by some analysts and politicians.

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Most Diesel Engines Will Switch To Natural Gas – It is cheaper and cleaner

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This has been so needed for so long. America pivots from gasoline to natural gas. When will we get over that to something that makes sense?

http://www.chron.com/business/article/Natural-gas-wins-place-as-oil-field-fuel-3900742.php

Natural gas wins place as oil field fuel

By Zain Shauk | Thursday, September 27, 2012

The biggest, baddest engines in the world, long chained to diesel fuel, are on the verge of a mass transformation because of cheap natural gas – with oil field equipment holding particular potential, executives said Thursday during a summit of heavy fuel users and producers.

“Here’s the first reason that large engines are going gas,” said JoelFeucht, director of gas engine strategy for Caterpillar’s energy and power systems division. “Large engines burn the most fuel. I could try to make it harder, but that’s pretty straightforward.”

Oil companies alone use nearly 1.2 billion gallons of diesel fuel a year just for pressure pumping equipment that supports hydraulic fracturing, said David Hill, vice president of natural gas economy operations for Encana Corp. Adding the diesel used to power drilling rigs themselves, the total is more than 2.8 billion gallons annually, said Pierce Dehring, a project engineer for Baker Hughes.

 

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Electric Refueling In California – New fuels spreading all along the highway

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And it is not just Tesla who is getting into the game. Tomorrow I will post about natural gas refueling stations in Northern Florida. This could be the wave of the future. A battle between electricity and natural gas.

http://peakoil.com/consumption/tesla-motors-launches-revolutionary-supercharger-enabling-convenient-long-distance-driving/

Page added on September 25, 2012

Tesla Motors Launches Revolutionary Supercharger Enabling Convenient Long Distance Driving

Tesla Motors( NASDAQ : TSLA ) today unveiled its highly anticipated Supercharger network. Constructed in secret, Tesla revealed the locations of the first six Supercharger stations, which will allow the Model S to travel long distances with ultra fast charging throughout California, parts of Nevada and Arizona.

The technology at the heart of the Supercharger was developed internally and leverages the economies of scale of existing charging technology already used by the Model S, enabling Tesla to create the Supercharger device at minimal cost. The electricity used by the Supercharger comes from a solar carport system provided by SolarCity, which results in almost zero marginal energy cost after installation. Combining these two factors, Tesla is able to provide Model S owners1 free long distance travel indefinitely.

Each solar power system is designed to generate more energy from the sun over the course of a year than is consumed by Tesla vehicles using the Supercharger. This results in a slight net positive transfer of sunlight generated power back to the electricity grid. In addition to lowering the cost of electricity, this addresses a commonly held misunderstanding that charging an electric car simply pushes carbon emissions to the power plant. The Supercharger system will always generate more power from sunlight than Model S customers use for driving. By adding even a small solar system at their home, electric car owners can extend this same principle to local city driving too.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Cool Green Cars – I haven’t done any car posts this year

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I usually do a series of car posts every year, and maybe this is the time to do it. I know starting on a Friday is kind of obtuse but heh it gives me a couple of days to look at cools sites and cars before I do another post. These are hybrids but the real moves have been in all electric.

Five Hybrid Concept Cars We REALLY Want To Drive

Jun 22, 2012

Every now and then, we allow our thoughts to drift here at GreenCarReports.

Naturally, we’re thinking forward rather than back, and often to the cars we might be driving around in five or ten years time.

We’ve compiled a list of five concept cars seen at auto shows over the last year or so. All are hybrids, and all showcase exciting new visions of styling and technology that could well hit the roads in the near future.

Hyundai i-Oniq

Given the meteoric rise of Korean brands Hyundai and Kia over the last few decades, it’s only right that they should play a part in our future too. The i-Oniq concept car, revealed at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show back in March, is a sleek, two-door range-extended hybrid.

Though the styling evokes images of a huge engine under the hood, the concept uses a tiny 1.0-liter 3-cylinder unit, supplying power to a 107-horsepower electric motor when its 75-mile battery range is depleted. We’re pretty confident that 75 miles would cover most of our day-to-day driving, but that little gasoline engine would provide a useful extra 360 miles.

And you know what? It looks pretty good too.

 

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That is one of 5. Go there and read. Pretty pictures too. More next week.

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Oh If This Were True – Humans voluntarily give up fossil fuels

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How cool would the world be if we actually stopped raping the Earth and started responsible stewardship instead. But I am suspicious around humans, so we will just have to see.

http://www.wheels.ca/news/peak-oil-are-we-looking-at-it-all-wrong/

Peak oil: Are we looking at it all wrong?

By as early as 2015, global demand for oil will begin to decline, some scientists say. Not because we’ll have run out of the fossil fuel, but because we just won’t need as much of it.

Published May 31, 2012

I don’t know about you, but when I’m skimming around on the Web and I catch sight of the phrase “Scientists now say” or “Some analysts find” I usually just click right on by. Because that article is going to be a bummer. Those analysts will find that the U.S. educational system is actually removing knowledge from children’s minds, and those scientists will turn out to say that pizza consumption is related to early-onset dementia. So I keep going until I find something about psychic twins or a baby raised by goats.

But it’s a good thing I broke with tradition when I came to the New Scientist article “Dump the pump: When oil will lose its luster.” Guess what these scientists and analysts now find? You know that whole problem with oil, how eventually it’s going to run out and trigger a global depression and maybe a breakdown of civilization and is it really such a good idea to bring children into this crazy world? Well don’t sweat it, everything’s going to be totally fine. It’s all going to be one hundred percent a-okay.

All right, that might be a somewhat simplistic rendering of the argument. What the scientists and analysts are arguing – and presenting evidence for – is that although we’ve been worrying this whole time about peak oil supply, the operative force will actually be peak oil demand. Due to a variety of factors – the article focuses mainly on advances in automotive fuel efficiency – global demand for oil is only going to keep increasing for a few more years, after which it will begin to decline and will continue on a downward path.

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I just printed the premise. Go there and read the rest. More Next week.

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