Archive for March, 2007
March 31, 2007 at 7:26 pm · Filed under The Politics
One of the major problems with the Koyoto agreement is that CO2-pollution now can be traded between power companies and countries. A direct consequence for me as a consumer who wants lower my households emissions is that my spared emissions is a product that my regional coal based power supplier owns!
In the old days before Koyoto I could save CO2 by remembering to turn the lights off and buy low power consuming products. But not anymore. Every time I save a bit CO2, that amount goes into the calculations that shows how much CO2 Danish companies can sell on the world market. The more CO2 -quotas that are available on the market the cheaper it is for power plants to buy the right to keep on burning coal.
At the moment the Danish Minister of Environment is running a campaign to make people take a personal responsibility. Again and again it is mentioned that we should be concerned about our use of power and turn off stand by devices etc. but the fact is that it has absolutely no influence on the CO2-emisisons. Instead we are making the (coal burning power companies) richer and fulfilling our ministers political project of lowering Denmark’s total emissions. But what does it really matter if the quotas just are sold to Germany?
Actually we would be better off with a greater individual approach and no Koyoto protocol at all. Koyoto is a mistake because it eliminates the personal responsibility and makes environmentalism and passion for the wellbeing of the planet a good that can bought and sold on a market place.
One more wind generator here means more CO2 emitted somewhere else.
March 27, 2007 at 11:10 am · Filed under Green Tech
I have been researching a bit more about my wind generator project, and to my disappointment the project is so unsure when it comes cost/benefit and technology that I will skip it for now. The main problem is that water heating demands so much power and many AirX owners have not been able to get the desired amps from the generator. This means that I feel the project is too risky since I would have to invest nearly 2.000 euro in generator, controllers, wire, batteries, heater, cone etc. etc. 2.000 euro is a lot of wood – about 3 years usage for us or similar to nearly 5 years electricity.
Instead I will focus on insulation, more about this later.
March 22, 2007 at 5:43 pm · Filed under Green Tech
Engineers at the University of Hong Kong and a private renewable energy company have developed a new micro wind turbine that can generate electricity even if wind speeds are as low as two meters per second.
Lucien Gambarota , the main inventor of the technology, says this is its advantage over conventional small wind turbines, which only work about 40 percent of the time because of low wind speed.
“We never stop this machine and they never stop because there is always one meter per second wind – 365 days, 24 hours a day, they keep working,” said Gambarota. “They deliver different levels of energy because the wind changes but these turbines they keep moving, they keep spinning.”
Gambarota says the small turbines are ideal for crowded cities such as Hong Kong because they can be installed on rooftops and balconies.
Their design is simple: plastic gearwheels, each about 25 centimeters in diameter, are linked to one another and turn, moved by the wind. Groups of gearwheels can be arranged in an array of shapes and sizes, ranging from about two up to thousands of square meters, depending on how much energy is needed and how much space is available. The energy generated by the turbines is stored in a battery, which then powers electrical appliances.
“Let’s say if you have good conditions, five, six meters per second, if you are a family with one kid you need most probably three, four square meters of that then you can most probably cover at least 60, 70 percent of your energy needs.”
The technology can also help power bigger buildings. Administrators at Hong Kong’s Sea School, a secondary school offering basic seaman training, will install the new micro wind-turbines on its roof in April.
High-resolution image of the serial turbines here: http://www.hku.hk/shareimg/upload/news_5535_picture1.jpg
March 22, 2007 at 5:35 pm · Filed under Wind Power
The rapid growth of wind power in the United States has resulted in two new factories to manufacture wind turbine blades. Knight & Carver opened its wind blade manufacturing and repair facility in Howard, South Dakota, on March 6th. The new facility will serve as the wind blade headquarters for Knight & Carver, which was previously better known for building yachts. The 26,000-square-foot facility will employ as many as 25 full-time employees in 2007, with plans to expand to a 25-person workforce within two years.Meanwhile, Vestas announced on March 20th that it has decided to build a wind blade factory in Windsor, Colorado. The new $60 million facility, located between Fort Collins and Greeley, will have a production capacity of 1,200 blades per year and will employ about 400 people. The Danish company bills itself as the leading supplier of wind power technology in the world, and has already installed more than 9,300 wind turbines in the United States. In early March, Vestas received an order for eight of its 3-megawatt wind turbines, which will be installed at the Tehachapi Pass in Southern California as part of an effort to install 1,500 megawatts of wind power there. Construction on the new blade factory will begin soon, and the factory will start producing wind turbine blades in early 2008.
March 19, 2007 at 11:38 am · Filed under Climate
It looks like a colour-coded terror alert scale and meteorologically speaking, that’s exactly what it is. With climate change making conditions more unpredictable, national weather services from across the European Union have joined forces to create http://www.meteoalarm.eu a new website providing up-to-the-minute information on ‘extreme weather’ across the continent. The initiative, managed by Austria’s Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, is designed to give Europeans a single source for details on flash floods, severe thunderstorms, gale-force winds, heat waves, blizzards and other violent weather that poses a threat to life or property. It also issues 24- and 48-hour warnings for heavy fog, extreme cold, forest fires and ‘coastal events’ such as high waves or severe tides. Although the European site officially will launch in Madrid, Spain, on March 23 World Meteorological Day it is already live on the web in test form. The Network of European Meteorological Services includes 20 countries and covers land stretching from Portugal to Sweden. Not every nation in the region is contributing, but the site hopes to bring others online eventually.
At the moment there are code red warnings in the north-west corner of Spain for ‘Coastal Events’ and in southern Austria for heavy snowfall.
March 13, 2007 at 1:58 pm · Filed under DIY Projects, Green Tech, Wind Power
Last night I came a bit further with my research into the world of micro wind turbines. My setup will be made from these parts:
1 Vind Generator Air X Land – 24V. (US build with integrated chargecontroller)
10 meters of special cable.
1 24 boiler to fit in my 220 liter hot water tank
2 12 Volt deep cycle batteries, Solar SP 200, 120Ah. 22 kg each !
1 Controller to secure the batteries from running dry.
I have asked for a price for all the parts from one dealer just 50 km. from here and he will answer me later this week.
More about my wind project: Finding the right wind generator
March 12, 2007 at 9:11 pm · Filed under Green Tech
Some weeks ago I wrote a story for Lemwig Müllers Magazine Aktu about energy savings at one of the largest water service companies in Denmark. The savings on the power bill is now about 30% but when the program is fully implemented the savings will be up to 60%. The cool thing is that it is solely done by writing a smart code to the PLCs (small industrial computers). that controls the various pumps at the plant.
The massive power savings came as a surprise to the water plant management. They just ordered new PLC-units to control and monitor their pumps, but the delivering company Picca had a brilliant programmer. He understood the plants function and needs and in few days he wrote a piece of code, uploaded it to the PLCs and now the plant saves power big time.
A water plant pumps water from the underground to a central buffer tank that secures the need of the costumers at peak periods like in the morning when people are showering. This is normally done with full power on the pumps just in time to fill the buffer tanks. By lowering the speed of the pumps and letting them run for a longer time, the power consumption can be lowered significantly.
The programmer at Picca, tells me that this is the first time such a project has been done and the possibilities are huge. It is estimated that 20% of the worlds total power usage is used on moving water from one place to another.
March 12, 2007 at 4:46 pm · Filed under DIY Projects, Wind Power
The wind is always blowing here and my coming DIY project is setting up a mini windmill. I have considered a lot of different setups from the Calorius mill that produces hot water directly in the tower (no generator) to a grid-connected setup. The mini generator market is so small that it is impossible to find the right setup as a standard package, and I am not a genius when it comes to calculating inverters.
The hot water mill, Calorius, was too expensive. On-grid setup – also very expensive, the inverter would cost more than the mill and since I am looking for a less than 2 diameter mill (mills less than 2 meters can be installed without applying for it) there would be nothing but expenses.
Instead I am going for a 24 Volt mill that only will be used for the boiler in our hot water tank. The tank is already connected to solar panels and a wood stove/oilburner. This is working great but in the summer when we do not need hot water for anything but the how showers it would be nice to avoid burning wood or oil on (partly) cloudy days.
So what I need is a mill, a battery, a charger and boiler.
The mill above is from www.procure.dk. It is a 600 Watt, 24 Volt mill, that seems inexpensive. (a bit more than 1.000 euro) It comes complete with chargecontroller. It is made in China and it worries me a bit compared to:
The other one I consider is the American build Air X One from South West Windpower. Link. It is smaller and cheaper than
the other but can also do 400 Watt at 12,5 m/s. Download video here: link. It has a build-in chargecontroller in the mill-head.
Finding the right boiler has been hard, but I think this guy can help:
http://www.wind2watts.co.uk/index_files/Page841.htm
I will make up my mind this week, so stay tuned :-)
March 7, 2007 at 12:19 pm · Filed under Green Tech
Concerns about possible accidents and radioactive waste have pushed 61% of European Union citizens to say they want the bloc to use less nuclear power, an E.U. survey showed Monday.At the same time, a majority of survey respondents said they were concerned about climate change, which they attribute to the consumption of fossil fuels.
Nuclear power is a contentious issue in Europe. While E.U. officials acknowledge it is one of the cheapest sources of low carbon energy, they are unwilling to push for more reactors.
Finland and France are unabashedly pro-nuclear and building new reactors. Other countries, such as Austria and Germany, oppose nuclear energy.
Instead of turning to nuclear power, E.U. officials are pushing fuel sources such as wind turbines and solar panels. Clean coal technology is also slated to be installed in the E.U. by 2020, writes Dow Jones.
March 6, 2007 at 5:33 pm · Filed under Green Tech
This is an Amazing video. Solar Tower technology is a large-scale renewable energy technology based on simple fundamentals of physics — hot air rises. Solar Tower technology has the potential to offer competitive renewable energy with equal reliability to fossil fuel generators, developers say. To me it looks both expensive and very experimental.
[youtube]cLIiGTZxH5s[/youtube]
A smaller scale version has been build in spain:
[youtube]C-EvV90MeDY[/youtube]
March 5, 2007 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Green Tech
An electric tea kettle that boils exactly as much water as you need — not two or three times as much.
It would be nice if more manufacturers paid attention to the details like this — it takes a lot of energy to boil water.
This is how it works: The internal reservoir holds a full capacity of water ready for use, while the measuring button allows any quantity – from a single cupful to full capacity – to be released into the separate chamber for boiling.
The result? Exactly the right amount of water every time you boil –and no more waste.
If you avoid boiling 6 cups of water a day, this adds up to 1.2 KWH per day, or 430 KWH per year and 900 lbs of CO2 if your electricity comes from a coal powered plant.
Link to manufacturer, here you can also find you local dealer: Link
March 2, 2007 at 11:31 am · Filed under Bio Fuel, Green Tech, Video
Biogas- and water treatment plants are now able to produce electric power from biogas and deliver it directly to consumers over the grid. A revolutionizing micro power plant, the XRGI, has been developed and approved to produce electricity from biogas, and this gives new opportunities for the biogas- and water treatment plants.
With a guarantee for effect and low service expenses Biogas- and water treatment plants now can produce power to cover the plants own consumption and supply the grid with 100 pct. CO2-neutral power.
“The technology is now so mature that power production from Biogas- and water treatment plants is very interesting – both economically and from an environmental point of view. XRGI has been designed to run at least 30.000 hours without any repairs, and service is only to be done every 4.000 hours. This gives extremely low operating costs. ,” says Bjarne Bogner, CEO of EC Power, the company that developed the technology behind the XRGI-systems.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 1, 2007 at 6:38 pm · Filed under Bio Fuel
New biofuels technology developed by North Carolina State University engineers has the potential to turn virtually any fat source – vegetable oils, oils from animal fat and even oils from algae (possible also human left-over fat) – into fuel to power jet airplanes.The technology – called Centia™, which is derived from “crudus potentia,” or “green power” in Latin – is “100 percent green,” as no petroleum-derived products are added to the process. Centia™ can also be used to make additives for cold-weather biodiesel fuels and holds the potential to fuel automobiles that currently run on gasoline.
NC State received provisional patents to use the process to convert fats into jet fuel or additives for cold-weather biodiesel fuels. The technology has been licensed by Diversified Energy Corp., a privately held Arizona company specializing in the development of advanced alternative and renewable energy technologies and projects.
