The Light Controller That Works Like an MP3

What do MP3s and light bulbs have in common? Quite a lot, it turns out, when the light bulbs are attached to a LumiSmart Intelligent Lighting Controller. The shoebox-sized solid state controller, developed by Cavet Technologies, costs $2,000, takes 20 minutes to install (with help from an electrician), and cuts electricity consumption by 30% to 40%.
The controller works by cutting off power to light bulbs for nanoseconds at a time--faster than a light or ballast can figure out. It's similar to compression algorithms used in MP3s, where cutting out select bits to decrease file size still maintains the file as a whole.
Cavet's controller is easy to use, too. "You plug it in, turn the circuit breaker panel on, and the configure level of light savings. There are 7 programs on it, optimized for different types of lights," explains David Berg, EVP of engineering at Cavet. The box doesn't discriminate by geographical difference, either--it will work on everything from 100-volt light fixtures in Japan all the way up to the 347-volt systems found in Canada and the U.S.
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The LumiSmart has already launched in 21 countries. Now Cavet is taking the technology to the U.S., where it will presumably find eager customers in big businesses and utilities that need easy retrofit solutions. "We take the existing infrastructure and don't change it. We don't interrupt your business," Berg says.

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POO POWER: Chicken Manure to Power UK Homes

by Timon Singh

Chicken manure is becoming a renewable energy source of choice for many countries. The UK has a plan to convert a local Alfagy biogas station so that it uses agricultural waste, such as feedstock waste and manure, to create electricity.

The power plant, which is located on the southern outskirts of Cirencester, is scheduled to be opened on November 1. Its location in Cirencester was selected due to the area’s large chicken population and its proximity to other agricultural industries.

Various UK projects have looked at plans to use animal waste to create energy, including one that would have utilised cow manure as an energy source. this Alfagy plant will use the manure of smaller farm animals, as well as agricultural feedstock. Local farmers will deliver any agricultural plant waste, chicken litter, and pig manure that they have to the station, for which they will be paid for. They will also receive free heat for their animal barns, grain-drying bins, and homes. It is a fantastic opportunity for farmers, and it is hoped that many will join the endeavour.

Once delivered to the power plant, the agricultural waste will be converted into biogas via an anaerobic digester. According to Alfagy, the station will then use a combined heat and power (CHP) system in which one 260-kilowatt CHP unit can perform at a 42.9 percent electrical efficiency. When the plant is operating at full capacity, it is expected to produce about 1 megawatt of electricity per year — enough to power about 350 Cotswolds homes (Cirencester’s population is about 19,000). The station will also create digestate fertilizer.

In a statement, Alfagy said, “This ‘digestate’ is a powerful fertilizer that decreases the average fertilizer costs by up to 100 percent, which is a major cost to farmers and the environment. Normal fertilizer production uses large amounts of fossil fuel [and emits] significant quantities of carbon dioxide, and the finished product is transported over great distances to farmers. Whereas [if] the fertilizer is produced locally at the power plant, there is no necessity in importing it from the U.S.”

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Solar Cells from Donuts

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Fueling Cars with Feces

By Dan Schank

A microbe has been found that can break down anything that contains cellulose and turn it into ethanol.

In 1996, Thomas Warnick was exploring the Quabbin Reservoir in Belchertown, Massachusetts, when he came across a tiny microbe with a big name—Clostridium phytofermentans. Warnick, a microbiology research assistant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was sent to the reservoir to find micro-organisms that could break down plant cellulose. His boss, Susan Leschine, had searched areas as diverse as Brazil, France and Hawaii for these organisms, but she’d never seen anything quite like what Warnick brought back.

The “Q microbe,” as it came to be known, is no ordinary bug. It can ingest—and produce ethanol from—virtually anything that contains cellulose, including human and animal sewage waste. So Qteros, the company Leschine founded to exploit the microbe’s abilities commercially, struck up a partnership with Applied CleanTech (ACT), an Israeli firm that generates alternative energy from wastewater solids. ACT’s sewage-recycling system transforms solids into “recyllose.” It turns out the Q microbe has a sweet tooth for recyllose, converting the cotton-like substance into ethanol for use in automobiles.

Jeff Hausthor, Qteros’ lead researcher, imagines a uniquely local market for this new biofuel. Obviously, waste materials are a burden to farms and municipalities, both financially and ecologically. But by putting the Q microbe to work, small-scale ethanol plants situated around sewage processing plants could become a reality.

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Biogas in Rural Costa Rica with the Santa Fe Women's Group

While the cost of carbon-based fuel is rising, people in rural areas across the world are experiencing financial hardships due to the price and inaccesibility of energy. People in rural Costa Rica are no exception. Before implementing the biogas project(what is biogas?), the majority of the people in Santa Fe de Guatuso purchased gas to power its gas ranges. As a result of the town's remote location, the price of a tank of gas had cost over $15 USD. Although this is a cost that many people in the developed world could afford, a family in Santa Fe that used more than one tank per month could not likely pay for the fuel to cook its food. Consequently, many families were forced to supplement their gas with firewood. Although this fuel source had no perceived monetary cost to the family, the practice of cutting trees for firewood was a long-term liability for the region of Guatuso as a whole. Such a practice was also harmful in the short-term, as the firewood was burned in the kitchen and often ignited with plastics and rubbers, which when burned give off carcinogenic dioxins. As a result, the people in Santa Fe were torn between financial, environmental, and health concerns.

While faced with this dilemma, the Santa Fe Women's Group decided to seize an opportunity that conquered this threat to their financial, environmental, and physical well-being. The group chose to use the animal waste from their cattle to make biogas for cooking. Not only would the project take care of the environmental threat from the burning of firewood, but it would also solve the problem of animal waste management in the dairy-producing town.

In order to utilize cow manure for this alternative cooking fuel, the group needed to build biodigesters, which are tanks that process the manure to produce a biogas that is mostly comprised of methane. (Learn about biodigester design and construction) The biogas is producedin the tank through the anaerobic (which means 'in the absence of oxygen') digestion of the manure by bacteria. These bacteria, which thrive in underwater, oxygen-free environments, consume the animal waste, reproduce, and give off a methane-rich waste. This biogas bubbles up from the depths of the manure/water mixture and escapes through the surface above. the biogas is then trapped by a large plastic balloon that hovers over the tank. Then, in the middle of the plastic, PCV tubing connects the biogas source to the kitchen, where the gas range (see picture at top of page) is ready to supply the alternative energy for cooking.

With the aid of a donation from the UN Women's Group in Vienna, Austria and the technical assistance of the Agriculture Ministry office in Guatuso, the Santa Fe Women's Group was able to build 16 biodigesters in 2006. The women of Santa Fe, however, are not finished with this important biogas project. They are still dedicated to increasing energy independence through biogas by extending the privilege of a biodigester to other deserving families in Santa Fe and the greater Guatuso area.

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New Definition for Biofuels: Using Urine to Produce Hydrogen

Hydrogen seems like a logical choice for fuel - it's energy dense and emits only water upon combustion - but upon closer examination we see that it's extremely expensive to make from water, so all the hydrogen in production today is made from fossil fuels. But Gerardine Botte at Ohio University has figured out an easy and efficient way to break the bonds in urea to produce hydrogen. The process consumes roughly one quarter of the energy needed to electrolyze water. And, yes, the world has a fairly plentiful (and renewable) supply of urea. Maybe not enough to power all our cars, but it's a start.

Very simply, an inexpensive electrode oxidizes the urea creating two H2 molecules, nitrogen gas and potassium carbonate. Success! None of these chemicals are bad for the environment, and, indeed, are useful, saleable byproducts. The urea doesn't need to be pure or anything either, the process works with human urine, meaning that port-o-johns could someday become useful hydrogen-generation stations.

Of course, we don't have oceans or rivers or lakes of urea (good thing) so it is a more limited feedstock than water. The good news is, what we do have of it is a waste product, and (especially in the case of livestock) already needs to be managed more effectively for environmental reasons. So it certainly wouldn't hurt to have an extra source of hydrogen gas while giving the world a reason to more effectively manage its waste.

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New DIY Renewable Energy Club in Roanoke

The Renewable Energy and Electric Vehicle Association (REEVA) is a Do-It-Yourself club to help members do solar/wind installations and build electric vehicles at project homes thus cutting the cost by removing labor.

How REEVA Began

When REEVA President, Mark Hanson, went on the Solar Home tours and spoke with renewable energy folk's the main conversation topic was, "Gee the energy (solar/wind) is free but the equipment is expensive."

A typical solar grid tie installation is $10 per watt or $50k for a standard 5kw system (without incentives). The total parts run about $5 - $6 per watt.

I was told that someone should start a club where group member's help each other to build solar/wind systems and electric cars (that charge on such systems). Thus REEVA was born where volunteers do the labor and others can see finished projects. (There are also excellent local installers, some are REEVA members who do turnkey projects for folk's who don't want to go the DIY route.)

We also promote renewable energy through legislation and local events.

To Visit the Web Site Click Here

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Underwater Kite Harnesses Ocean Energy

A completely new concept of underwater wave energy using a simple 7 ton kite turbine design has been developed by Minesto; which is a spinoff from the Swedish military and aircraft design firm Saab. The Deep Green underwater turbine captures the power of the ocean just like a kite in wind.


The system could generate 18 terawatthours of energy annually, enough to provide nearly 4 million British households with reliably green electricity every year. UK households now use about a third of what average US households use in energy.

Originally Saab was working on a kite design for a wind turbine, but found that the concept would actually work better in water, which is 832 times more dense than air.

The kite twirls in a repeating figure eight pattern (video) that increases the ocean velocity ten-fold. The first stage increases the relative flow speed entering a turbine. When the tide hits the wing it turns down, which creates a lift force. The kite is mounted to the ocean bed with a tether and is controlled by a rudder to gently nudge it in the desired trajectory.

According to Minesto’s website, each megawatt-worth of kite(s) would weigh 14 tons, so it would seem that each 7 ton kite is a 500 KW unit. According to CEO Anders Jansson’s estimate, these could probably produce power for somewhere between $0.09 cents and $0.20 cents per kwh.

Certainly because these are such extremely simple-tech structures they would be cost effective - costing less in materials per power produced, and costing less in transporting them to the site, in installing them and even in ongoing maintenance costs.

Almost half the potential in Europe is in British waters, with the ocean moving an average of 1 to 2 metres per second between 60 and 120 metres below the surface.

The Carbon Trust based in the UK gave early development support. Minesto’s Deep Green is now funded in part by the UK and Swedish governments, and has nearly $3 million in additional capital from parent company Saab Group, Midroc New Technology, Verdane Capital and Encubator.

With these kinds of serious investors, and such a simple and cost effective design, this could be what gets wave power to the world.

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Metal-Air Battery Could Store 11 Times More Energy than Lithium-Ion

A spinoff company from Arizona State University plans to build a new battery with an energy density 11 times greater than that of lithium-ion batteries for just one-third the cost. With a $5.13 million research grant from the US Department of Energy awarded last week, Fluidic Energy hopes to turn its ultra-dense energy storage technology into a reality.

For more Click here.

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A dream come true!

In 1984 I wrote an article about alternative construction where I said "septic systems and sewage treatment plants are wasteful and barbaric technology that will be abandoned in the future". I was thinking the next ten years, but maybe I was off by a couple of decades. Here is a fun building that gives me hope!

The sewer systems we use today are entirely ineffectual and unnecessary. The primary flaw in our design is that we use fresh water to dispose of feces. This is perhaps the most ineffectual thing to do with human manure — it pollutes fresh water, and it requires municipalities to maintain extremely costly sewage treatment infrastructures. Even after treatment, sewage can still wreck havoc on rivers and groundwater.

The most effective and straightforward thing to do with sewage is to compost it (or use it to produce fuel). It’s a valuable resource.

The C. K. Choi Building is a 30,000-square-foot building that is part of the University of British Columbia. The building has no connection to the sewage system. Instead it has composting toilets and waterless urinals installed.
The toilets on each of the three floors connect via stainless steel chutes to five Clivus Multrum composting systems in the building’s basement. The toilets emit no odors, because all the waste is collected in the basement and fans ensure that no odor escapes the composting containers.

The system is maintained and emptied by the Clivus Multrum company through a service contract. Every day the university maintenance staff wipes down the toilets and adds a can of wood chips or bark mulch to each toilet. Every six months, the compost (which no longer resembles feces) is removed from the system and used as a fertilizer.

Because of this system, the C. K. Choi building uses just 500 liters of water per day (132 gallons), a similarly-sized conventional building uses an average of 7,000 liters of water a day (1850 gallons) or fourteen times as much water.
But about the water from sinks and other systems? This graywater is filtered and pumped into a 300-foot-long outdoor planter bed with lilies. The final discharge is used to irrigate plants. A test by the city of Vancouver of the fecal coliform counts of the discharged water showed that it contained less than 10 CFU per 100 milliliters (by comparison swimming is permitted in water with up to 200 CFU per 100 milliliters).

The building also captures rainwater: the rain is in a 7,000-gallon tank below a staircase. It is used to irrigate the landscape, which is bordered by thirsty ginkgo trees.

What this example clearly shows is that modern buildings can do quite well without a connection to a municipal sewage system. The maintaining the building’s composting system is probably less overall than a building with flushing toilets.

More information on this topic (including many other case studies) can be found in the excellent Composting Toilet System Book by David Del Porto and Carol Steinfeld.

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Taiwan’s Solar Stadium is 100% Powered by the Sun

Taiwan recently finished construction on an incredible solar-powered stadium that will generate 100% of its electricity from photovoltaic technology! Designed by Toyo Ito, the dragon-shaped 50,000 seat arena is clad in 8,844 solar panels that illuminate the track and field with 3,300 lux. The project will officially open later this year to welcome the 2009 World Games.

Not only does the solar system provide electricity during the games, but the surplus energy will also be sold during the non-game period. On days where the stadium is not being used, the Taiwanese government plans to feed the extra energy into the local grid, where it will meet almost 80% of the neighboring area’s energy requirements. Overall, the stadium will generate 1.14 million KWh per year, preventing the release of 660 tons of carbon dioxide into atmosphere annually.

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Combined Heat and Power for the Home Now a Reality

The generation of most electricity produces enormous amounts of heat which is typically wasted – literally up the chimney. Cogeneration – or “Combined Heat and Power” – systems make use of this otherwise wasted heat to warm buildings. Much of Manhattan is heated this way courtesy of several con-edison plants in the vicinity. It’s a brilliant solution to improve energy efficiency in an urban area, but doesn’t work so well in less urban areas. There, people typically rely on their own natural gas furnaces to heat their homes.
But what if you could reverse the cogeneration idea? Imagine taking an already efficient gas furnace and generating a home’s electricity directly from it, while it heats?
That’s the reality that Marathon Engine has in store for the North American market today. While not quite a start-up (they’ve been selling units in Europe for 5 years), the company’s “EcoPower MicroCHP” units look set to sell well, despite, or perhaps because of the economy downturn.

The EcoPower unit is not only capable of generating all of a sizable home’s heating and electric needs – it can also sell excess generation back to a utility (assuming Net Metering is in legal and in place). The larger the home, the better the paypack which makes the system particularly suited for multi-family buildings and small businesses with strong heating needs. It’s also best used in cold climates where heat is required for most months of the year – you won’t find much use for it in Phoenix.
As for greenhouse gases, the company claims (see PDF here) to offer a 65% reduction in CO2 emissions vs a coal powered equivalent. In reality it’s very difficult to measure the reduction because there are so many factors that might go in to what the device replaces and what kind of heating and electric demand is called for.

The only drawback is that the EcoPower isn’t cheap – coming in at a whopping $35,000. But for a large home, the device could apparently pay for itself in a half-dozen years or so. Despite the cost, if it works, and as long as energy prices stay high, economies of scale will likely bring the EcoPower within reach of more consumers.

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Why are we not showing this to all our kids?

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Beware Vampires

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Solar Update

Above is an updated solar incentive map by state from DSIRE, the government funded outfit that keeps track of solar incentives and laws that make it easier (or harder) to go solar.

This database is very specific by state and the summaries are generally easy to understand.

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Solar AC

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Spain stops wind turbines to balance supply

LONDON (Reuters) - Spain had to shut down some of its wind turbines on Wednesday as wet and windy weather caused a surge in green electricity generation at a time of low demand, grid operator Red Electrica said.

The country's thousands of wind turbines supplied a new record of 54.1 percent of demand early on Wednesday, forcing gas- and coal-fired power plants to run at minimum output to avoid system overload as hydropower companies drained brimming reservoirs.

"High wind output in the early hours of this morning, together with the high level of hydropower generation, due to reservoirs opening up after recent rains, forced the control center to cut thermal power to a technical minimum," Red Electrica said in a statement.

"Due to low demand at the moment this was not enough ... So the control center had to order wind power production to be cut between 4 am and 7 am this morning by 600 megawatts."

Spain has invested heavily in wind power generation over the last decade to cut carbon emissions and reduce its reliance on imported fuel.

It now has over 18,000 MW of turbines installed, out of a total power generation capacity of about 93,000 MW, and first produced over half of its electricity with them early on November 9.

Wind turbines are seen as a key technology for producing electricity without emitting climate-warming carbon. But the Spanish experience highlights the difficulties for grid and other plant operators in balancing the system when the wind blows hard and there is little demand, especially early in the morning.

Greater numbers of electric cars charging up overnight could help absorb some of the extra output in future but there are still too few to make a difference.

Wind power output hit 54.1 percent of demand at around 0350 local time (0250 GMT) on Wednesday, or over 10,000 megawatts.

Even after the order to cut output the remaining turbines were still producing around 40 percent of Spain's power at around 7 am, reducing the contribution of coal and gas plants to under 5 percent in the hours in between, according to Red Electrica data.

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World's first wave farm now generating power for 1,500 homes

There's power in them thar waves! That's why Portugal built Agucadoura, the world's first wave farm off its coast, consisting of three Wave Energy Converters generating a total of 2.25MW.

The elongated metal contraptions bob up and down with the waves, while internal pistons, attached to the sea floor, remain stationary and pump hydraulic fluid. This drives electric generators, whose power is brought ashore by underwater electrical cables. The wave farm is now tapping into enough constant, renewable energy to power 1500 homes.

Who knew there was so much power in the ocean waves? If we laid these 459-foot orange caterpillars all over the world's oceans, we could tap 2 terawatts of power, twice the consumption of the entire world. That's not exactly practical, but a smaller-scale rollout of such generators might be a clean power alternative, ready to be snapped up by an energy-starved planet.

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New Posiibilities from a Japanese Company

Panasonic is charging into the green space headlong — first with deals to supply batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles — and now announcing that it will launch a massive lithium-ion storage battery capable of powering an average home for up to a week, the company says.

This is significant for two reasons. First, if home batteries like this one become commonplace, renewable sources of energy like rooftop solar and residential turbines could finally take off. The biggest roadblock to their adoption is that they are intermittent; reliable storage is needed to make them effective. Second, if affordable storage is achieved on the home-level, there might be less need for grid-scale storage, which is pricier and harder to accomplish.

The announcement is hastened by Panasonic’s acquisition of a more than 50 percent stake in Sanyo, making the company a battery manufacturing powerhouse that could trounce almost everyone else in the market, including A123Systems, Johnson Controls-Saft, Valence Technologies, and others. Becoming the earliest entrant into the home storage space would solidify its dominance.

Panasonic, which says it has already thoroughly tested this technology, plans to bundle its storage device with a home energy monitoring system that would allow users to view how much power they are using and how much it is costing them right on their television displays. This could make the company a major player in the smart grid arena as well.

Depending on how successful Panasonic is at marketing its household battery (and bringing down the cost), it could become a formidable competitor for fuel-cell makers like Clear Edge Power. Fuel cells also allow for low-emission operations, converting natural gas into electricity and recycled heat. But they don’t store electricity for use later, which is a major need for alternative energies to gain traction.

Panasonic, which scored a deal to supply batteries to Tesla Motors in October, has already successfully pushed automotive battery makers out of the market, like Imara, which shuttered earlier this month. Valence, being kept afloat by a new contract with Smith Electric Vehicles, could be next if it doesn’t move fast. In any case, it will have a head start, with Panasonic’s storage system not hitting stores until 2011

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Can Wireless Energy From Space Power 300,000 Homes?

Japan has serious plans to send a solar-panel-equipped satellite into space that could wirelessly beam a gigawatt-strong stream of power down to earth and power nearly 300,000 homes.

The satellite will have a surface area of four square kilometers, and transmit power via microwave to a base station on Earth. Putting solar panels in space bypasses many of the difficulties of installing them on Earth: in orbit, there are no cloudy days, very few zoning laws, and the cold ambient temperature is ideal.

A small test model is scheduled for launch in 2015. To iron out all the kinks and get a fully functional system set up is estimated to take three decades. A major kink, presumably, is coping with the possible dangers when a 1-gigawatt microwave beam aimed at a small spot on Earth misses its target.

The $21 billion project just received major backing from Mitsubishi and designer IHI (in addition to research teams from 14 other countries).

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