Guest Post by Madeline Binder

Solar energy is rapidly being integrated into American culture as an accessible source of low cost electricity. However, many people are intimidated about converting their homes to a solar energy home. There are two problem that really are keeping people from converting to solar energy, (1) ignorance about the process and (2) concerns about the aesthetics of the panels.

Getting to Know Solar Energy

The first problem that is keeping Americans from converting en mass to solar energy is a simple lack of common knowledge about solar energy. People are concerned about the price and the practicality of converting to solar energy. Fortunately, both concerns can easily be resolved.

What you first need to know about a solar energy conversion is that it is practical for nearly any location in the United States. The conversion process involves installing enough solar panels to meet your energy consumption needs, installing a circuit breaker that connects the solar panels to your homes central grid and installing either a battery or a special transformer that will allow a bidirectional flow of power from your local utility provider.

If you want to be totally off the grid then you will need to select a battery backup for your solar energy power system. This will allow you to store energy that is produced while the sun is out so you have power at night or when the level of sunlight is insufficient to generate enough electricity to meet your needs.

If you want to utilize your solar energy as a supplement to the energy produced by your utility company then you will need a special electronic set up installed which will allow power to be brought in to serve your home as needed and that will also allow your extra electricity produced by your solar panels to be fed into the general power grid. The power that you feed into the grid will be purchased by your local power company, providing you with extra income.

The cost of setting up your solar energy system will depend on a number of factors. For example, the location of your home, the number of panels you set up and the contractors that you select. However, keep in mind that this cost can be somewhat offset by special tax breaks and financial incentives offered by local power companies.

Aesthetic Appeal

Solar panels have a modern design aesthetic that can be integrated into most homes seamlessly. The key here is to find a way to make the panels a part of your home’s architecture, as opposed to a competing visual element.

Madeline Binder, the author, encourages students to explore the importance of doing solar science fair experiments to raise the awareness of this important aspect of using green energy. Exoerimental size solar panels are an important materials used for science fairs.

EarthTalk® is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: ​There are a number of companies out there now doing “energy audits” for the home, after which they try to sell you attic insulation and other products and services. Is this just a scam or would it be wise for me to look into this?  – Bill Richards., New York, NY

For the most part, companies offering energy audits are reputable and legitimate and will help you both save money and reduce your carbon footprint if you follow their advice in regard to upgrading things like insulation, windows and appliances. “A home energy assessment, also known as a home energy audit, is the first step to assess how much energy your home consumes and to evaluate what measures you can take to make your home more energy efficient,” reports the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). “An assessment will show you problems that may, when corrected, save you significant amounts of money over time.”

“During the assessment, you can pinpoint where your house is losing energy,” adds DOE. “Energy assessments also determine the efficiency of your home’s heating and cooling systems [and] may also show you ways to conserve hot water and electricity.”

You can conduct your own energy audit if you know where to look for air leaks (drafts), water waste and other key areas of a home’s inefficiencies. The DOE’s energysavers.gov website has guidelines to help homeowners conduct their own do-it-yourself home energy assessments. For instance, DOE recommends that homeowners make a list of obvious air leaks, such as through gaps along baseboards or at the edges of flooring and at wall and ceiling junctures. The potential energy savings from reducing drafts in a home can be as high as 30 percent per year, reports DOE. (The DOE website also provides information on other ways to save money and resources through less obvious things such as outdoor landscaping. It also posts guidelines for energy-efficient designing and remodeling.)

You should also check the filters on heating and cooling equipment to see if they need to be changed so as to keep your furnace and air conditioners functioning at maximum efficiency. And if these or other appliances over 15 years old consider replacing them with newer models that meet federal EnergyStar efficiency criteria. Also, swapping out older incandescent bulbs in light fixtures with higher efficiency compact fluorescent or LED bulbs will save money and energy.

A professional energy auditor with dedicated assessment tools and the knowledge of how to use them will in all likelihood carry out a more comprehensive assessment than you can do yourself. “Thorough assessments often use equipment such as blower doors, which measure the extent of leaks in the building envelope, and infrared cameras, which reveal hard-to-detect areas of air infiltration and missing insulation.”

If you are concerned about enlisting a for-profit firm that upsells its own energy efficiency upgrade services based on a “free” energy audit, check with your utility to see whether it offers unbiased, independent energy audit services (which it may do for free or for a nominal cost). The assessor from your utility may be able to recommend window and door replacement companies, heating and cooling specialists and other vendors nearby that do reputable work to make your home is not only energy efficient but warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

Contacts:
DOE Energy Savers
EnergyStar

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E – The Environmental Magazine (). Send questions to: earthtalk[at]emagazine.com.
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• Home Energy Audit – a Proactive Step to Selling Your Home (streetsvillerealestatebuzz.wordpress.com)

Guest post by Lewis Davies

Stock up on eco-fuel for winter by recycling autumn leaves

Autumn is a spectacular season heralding the end of summer with a cascade of red, brown and golden falling leaves. Most of us appreciate nature’s beauty at this time of year, but consider the task of raking up and bagging the leaves to be a painful chore with little benefit. However, the leaves that fall from the trees in this season are a great source of carbon-neutral fuel that we can stock up on to last us through the winter.

Bagging up leaves (and other so-called “garden waste”) for the refuse collectors to take away, and pile on top of already heaving landfill sites, is a tragic and unnecessary end to their lifecycle. For those of us with a stove, cast iron or clay chiminea or firebowl we are passing up on the chance to do a little bit for the environment – and for our wallets.

Rather than add to the problem during the autumn we can simply recycle the leaves into eco-logs. All you need to do this is to get your hands on a log maker, which are available from most good garden centers or through online eco-stores.  These handy little tools basically compact the waste into logs with the use of a sheet of newspaper. Of course, you are not limited to just recycling leaves. Any recyclable household or garden waste can be recycled so the benefits of the log makers can be utilized all year round.

This leads on to the benefits of the fuel, which is both eco-friendly and free. It’s eco-friendly because the carbon that it emits when burnt is exactly equal to the carbon it absorbed over its lifetime. In essence you cannot get a more carbon neutral fuel. You may consider, therefore, that logs bought from the local garden centre to also be carbon neutral, but you must also consider the amount of energy which was used to both cut the trees down and then to transport them. This may add up to quite the carbon footprint, which is something you can avoid altogether.

Secondly, there is the matter of cost. If you have trees in your garden, or in a local park, then there is no cost in simply using these as raw materials for your logs. Indeed at this time of year you can often see bags of garden waste piled up next to houses waiting to be taken away the next time the refuse truck drops by. Why not do everyone (and the earth) a favour and ask if you can take them home to make yourself some free chiminea fuel?

In my experience with my kids this can become a very enjoyable way of teaching the value of recycling in a way that children can see the benefits of getting involved. A roaring fire by the chiminea in winter is a great reward for doing your bit for the environment and your wallet.

——————–

Lewis is an outdoor living eco-living enthusiast and writes for Chimenea UK

Guest post by Greg Tornga

A renewable energy primer for the home

Coal, oil and gas = fossil fuels = nonrenewable = will one day not exist

Solar, wind, plant, hydrogen, heat, ocean and flowing water = renewable energy = is constantly replenished by the earth’s atmosphere.

Introducing Solar Powered Energy Into the Home

The term ‘solar powered’ means powered by sunlight.  Scientists have found ways to convert sunlight into electricity through the creation of Solar Photovoltaic Technology.  You must be seeing solar panels popping up in all sorts of locations – homes, businesses and even lined up in big fields. This is a way to create renewable energy and bring us one step closer to removing the need for non-renewable materials on which to live.  Typically, 10-20 solar panels are used to electrify a home.  They are mounted at an angle facing the south or they can be installed to track the sun’s movement.  You can find additional information and resources on how to install solar panels at your home at the website for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Harvesting the Wind

Do you think those big windmill farms you see across the United States are for decoration?  No, you probably, at least, know that the wind turbines catch the winds’ energy and then converts it into electricity.  You can turn to small wind turbines as another renewable energy source for your home.  If you live on one acre of land you can reduce your energy bill by 50%-90% with a small wind energy system.   They are also used on farms to pump water.

Using Plants as Fuel

Energy converted from plants is called biomass energy or bioenergy.  You have probably done this without even realizing it by burning wood in your fireplace to give you heat and light or to cook a meal.  Other forms of bioenergy are found in food crops, grassy and woody plants, oil-rich algae and even fumes from landfills create natural gas and can be used as biomass energy, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  Biomass can be converted into liquid fuel for transportation.

Using the Earth’s Own Heat as Energy

Geothermal energy – heat from the earth’s surface can be used to produce electricity by utility companies for the homes they service while others provide energy for heating and cooling from the heat directly pulled from the ground.

Three more renewable energy sources include:

• Hydrogen – ‘Reforming’ hydrogen by separating it from its hydrocarbons (organic compounds formed with hydrogen), can provide heat, generate electricity and power vehicles and, coupled with electricity, it can move energy from one source to another.
• Flowing water = hydropower or hydroelectric power can create electricity if you have access to flowing water.  The US Department of Energy states that you now have the opportunity to buy clean electricity from hydropower plants, especially if you live in the Pacific Northwest.
• Oceans – With ocean energy, heat from the sun, the gravitational pull from the moon and wind can generate thermal and mechanical energy with the ocean.

Renewable energy is on its way into our lives to save the day!

Sources:  Nrel.gov, Energysavers.gov

Citations:

• By NASA. Photo taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans (of the Apollo 17 crew).[see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons

About the Author: Greg Tornga is the owner of Reliable Glass, a Phoenix window repair company.  He can help you replace your energy efficient glass to keep your home’s electricity bills as low as possible.  To receive a free glass replacement quote, visit www.reliableautoglass.net or call 480-283-8222

EarthTalk® is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Why don’t we reprocess and re-use our nuclear waste like France does? Would it be possible for us to start doing so?  - Albert Jukowsky, Silver Spring, MD

Reprocessing nuclear waste to extract more energy from it, while expensive and controversial, is indeed to this day still practiced in France, the UK, Russia, India and Japan—but not in the United States, where it was invented. The process involves breaking down spent nuclear fuel chemically and recovering fissionable material for use in new fuels. Proponents tout the benefit of reducing the amount of nuclear waste, resulting in less highly radioactive material that needs to be stored safely.

Nuclear reprocessing was first developed in the U.S. as part of the World War II-era Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb. After the war, the embryonic nuclear power industry began work to reprocess its waste on a large scale to extend the useful life of uranium, a scarce resource at the time. But commercial reprocessing attempts faltered due to technical, economic and regulatory problems. Anti-nuclear sentiment and the fear of nuclear proliferation in the 1970s led President Jimmy Carter to terminate federal support for further development of commercial reprocessing. The military did continue to reprocess nuclear waste for defense purposes, though, until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War made continuous ramping up of our nuclear arsenal unnecessary.

More recently, George W. Bush pushed a plan, the Global Nuclear Energy Project (GNEP), to promote the use of nuclear power and subsidize the development of a new generation of “proliferation-resistant” nuclear reprocessing technologies that could be rolled out to the commercial nuclear energy sector. Federal scientists came up with promising spins on reprocessing nuclear fuel while minimizing the resulting waste. But in June of 2009 the Obama administration cancelled GNEP, citing cost concerns.

Proponents of nuclear power—and of reprocessing in particular—were far from pleased with GNEP’s axing, especially in light of Obama’s earlier decision to close Yucca Mountain as the U.S.’s future nuclear waste repository. “GNEP may have gone away, but the need to recycle spent fuel in this country is more important than ever because of the government’s stupid decision to close Yucca Mountain,” said Danny Black of the Southern Carolina Alliance, a regional economic development group, on the Ecopolitology blog. “Without Yucca Mountain, the pressure is on the industry to do more with recycling.”

But a 2007 report by the nonprofit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) would seem to justify Obama’s decision. IEER found that nuclear reprocessing would actually increase our volume of nuclear waste six fold. IEER also reported that France, which runs the world’s most efficient reprocessing operation, spends about two cents per kilowatt hour more for electricity generated from reprocessed nuclear fuel compared to that generated from fresh fuel. IEEE further reports that the costs to build the breeder plants needed to convert spent nukes into usable fuel would “create intolerable costs and risks.”

For now, U.S. nuclear plants will continue to store waste on site, with spent rods cooled in pools of water for upwards of a year and then moved into thick steel and concrete caskets. While proliferation and terrorism have long been risks associated with hosting nuclear plants on American soil, recent events in Japan underscores that even Mother Nature poses a threat. As such, advocates of reprocessing probably stand little chance of reviving plans in a political climate now so hostile to nuclear development.

Contacts:
Ecopolitology
IEER

Related articles

• Researching Safer Nuclear Energy (green.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Tom Clements: Nuclear Industry Intent On Moving Waste To SC (via South Carolina Green Party) (wilderside.wordpress.com)
• Obama’s Transparency on Science Doesn’t Include Nuclear (papundits.wordpress.com)

Image credit: Toucanradio, courtesy Flickr 

A second GM plant being built in Maryland will pull 9% of it’s energy from a large solar array on the roof.  This plant will make electric motors, and various hybrid and conventional transmission systems.

This move suggests GM is riding the green bandwagon of tax credits and consumer opinion.  Although they’re making the second greenest car, it’s better than nothing, right?  The truth is that big American business will not change behavior until it is more profitable than the status quo.

Courtesy of EcoGeek

That leaves community members up in arms.  In a state as small as Vermont, that means all ~650,000 of us.  We are concerned, in the wake of the Japanese nuclear power plant crisis, that businesses are ignoring the environmental and health risks in order to seek higher profits.

Our power plant happens to be the exact same design as the Japanese plant.  This makes us all shake and shudder considering the entire state lies within the fallout area if a similar disaster were to strike locally.  The problem and consequent risk associated with this design is in the waste-fuel storage.  The U.S. has desperately small storage capacity for spent nuclear fuel, which continues to give off radiation and heat for decades if not hundreds of years.

As a consequence, spent fuel sits at active nuclear plants awaiting transport to non-existent long term storage facilities.  So what can we do with all that waste?  Feed it to Algae of course!

Stronium 90, a major and high-risk radiation associated with nuclear fuel is effectively sequestered by bright green pond algae.  Strontium 90 has a half-life of 30 years (meaning half of it is gone in 30 years) and is drawn to bone.  This results in a high rate of bone cancers among those exposed.

The algae grabs the Strontium 90 and holds it as barium-strontium-sulfate crystals, allowing cleanup workers to zero-in on and collect toxic sludge.  That won’t help my daughter from being exposed to radioactive clouds when our power plant inevitably fails, but it might help in the cleanup efforts.

Source

Image via Wikipedia

Going green is not just about new construction and technology, it’s about retrofitting and reusing existing foundations.  The tallest skyscraper in America, the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower), is getting a green retrofit.

Converting just the south side of the 56th floor will generate 2 MW of electricity.  The windows will be replaced with high power density photovoltaic windows.  They produce as much electricity as a standard photovoltaic panel, while still allowing daylight in and reducing heat loss.

The resulting ambiance is calmer and cool, much like a tinted car window.  Only this window generates more electricity than is used within the room.

Imagine the application of this technology on the desert skyscrapers of the middle east, that are baked with direct sun 12 hours each day.  Then again, it’s hard to justify clean energy when you’re floating on a lake of oil.

Source:
inhabitat.com

Related articles

• Willis Tower goes solar (physorg.com)
• Willis Tower to get greener windows (ubergizmo.com)

This is one entry for GE’s Ecomagination Challenge.  It reminds people of that image of a polar bear swimming with no ice to rest on because of global warming.  It changes color depending on the energy being consumed by the home.  Research shows that when people are shown the real time cost of energy going into the home, they are more likely to reduce their consumption.

As one person described to me recently, when there is a meter in your house that shows how much your energy consumption is costing you right now, even your kids will run around turning off lights.

The bear changes it’s glow from green to pink when your home energy use goes above a pre-determined level.

Source