The Big Picture | Peak Water ? — interesting graphics tho I am not sure I get it, are there huge fleets of tankers moving water from South America to Asia?
Tag: Energy
Green Made Simple
GreenMadeSimple: Find incentives, rebates and green business listings in your area — nice resource for finding discounts, rebates, etc for energy programs.
Energy reads
* bcurtisBLOG » People are talking about water… — nice chart on where all our water goes. Only 13% for household use. A huge amount to thermoelectric power generation.
* Tom Evslin on energy policy. Great points — we need a country-wide BHAG with respect to energy — an Apollo-type program. And the government can lead through its own purchasing policies.
* Small scalable wind turbines — pretty cool looking.
* One man’s experience with solar thermal here in Seattle — the numbers look good.
* Ten fastest green cars on the planet — Karl’s car looks awesome
* REI trialing solar — I wonder if Fat Spaniel is part of the setup
* Solar shingles — love this idea, embedding green technology right into structural materials
Matsci stories — fuel cells, friction
* 50% greater fuel cell efficiency — basically by nanoscale engineering of the fuel cell elements. cool
* frictional duality
— suggests that smart nanoscale fabrication might be able to affect friction
XunLight, Silicon Thin Film Solar Maker, Raises $22M
XunLight, Silicon Thin Film Solar Maker, Raises $22M | EcoGeek — Nice to see an Ohio company leading the way
Fat Spaniel Coverage in San Jose Mercury News
Plugging into your system’s vital signs – San Jose Mercury News — nice coverage on Fat Spaniel today
Home energy stuff
Very interested in products that make us smarter about our energy use at home. Sean reports on his use of TED — the TED device lets you get finegrained reports on your electricity use, and with a little playing around you can get smart about use circuit-by-circuit as Sean reports. I have to try one of these out.
Silver Spring Networks seems to be building out a really complete energy monitoring and reporting solution, worth learning about.
Phil highlights some recent comments from Doerr on the energy opportunity — excellent elevator speech
Interesting energy reads — Cogeneration At Home: Ceramic Fuel Cells And Bloom Energy; Solar as a Service; Vacuum-insulated windows; Solar roof tiles
* The Oil Drum | Cogeneration At Home: Ceramic Fuel Cells And Bloom Energy
* “Solar as a Service” — i like the phrasing
* Vacuum-insulated glass windows — makes sense, I wonder what the effective life of these are
* Solar Roof Tiles — nice notion. It will be interesting to see the degree to which we can embed solar and green technology into everyday materials.
Tornado Power Plants
An Update on Tornado Power Plants | EcoGeek — awesome, man-made tornados as part of a power plant. It just seems like the beginning of a great Michael Crichton novel.
Setting Sun? The "End of the Beginning" for Solar Bonanza
Environmental Capital – WSJ.com : Setting Sun? The “End of the Beginning” for Solar Bonanza — turmoil in solar. Supply issues, tax credit concerns, etc. As far as I am concerned, this is good for investing — unstable markets represent opportunities for new entrants and for change.
Lemnis Pharox LED Bulb
Cool Tool: Lemnis Pharox LED Bulb — seems like a good bulb. ordered.
Green Links
* Idea Blob: An Infectious Way to Fund Your Green Business : Ecopreneurist — ok not really green specific but interesting
* Reusing worn oil production tubing as jewelry — just looks cool.
* Artifical Solar Leaves — cool looking, and in general the idea of making renewable installs more stylish is a good trend
* Recent funding news
* UK competitor to the Tesla
* Enerjar plans
* Zero VOC paint at Home Depot
* Walmart funding green ideas
Intriguing materials science notes
* Nanotechnology-based clean hydrogen for cars — uses a vapor deposition process to create small catalyst spheres
* New aluminum alloy used to create hydrogen — I don’t understand this one as well
* Changing fluid behaviour with nanoparticles — interesting camera lens, microfluidic applications
* Organic metal hybrids for storage and catalyst use
* Solar cell directly splits water for hydrogen — learning from the plant world
Greentech PPA Report
Good summary of this report — Clean Energy Future by Arno Harris: GreenTech’s PPA Report — Key Insight on Leased Buildings:
* In 2009, PPAs will be established as the standard way that American businesses pay for on-site green power, bringing solar to commercial rooftops of mainstream America with yearly additional growth of 30-50%.
* In 2008 the clear majority of new commercial installations will be third-party
managed, with 65-75% of the market.
* In 2007, of the national commercial and institutional solar market, an estimated
50% was developed under PPAs, up from 10% in 2006.
* The PPA segment has not only outstripped conventional commercial PV sales, it has also expanded the market — acquiring new customers that would not have purchased solar hardware.
* PPA companies will continue to drive down costs with innovations across the entire
value chain.
MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship competition
MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize-Judges — cool, our own Brian Curtis is a judge! Interested to see the entries.
DOE Lighting for Tomorrow
Lots of great energy stuff up at the DOE site — including Solid-State Lighting: Research Highlights which has their award winners for solid state lighting last year. I’ve tried some of the inexpensive commercially available LEDs and they suck. I’m going ty try out one of these more expensive can replacements
Greener Gadgets winners
Greener Gadgets Design Competition 2008 – Produced by Core77 — some nice stuff here. I’d like to build one of these EnerJars.
Costco going solar
Search Results | Seattle Times Newspaper — wonder if they are using Fat Spaniel