How to Design a Passive Solar Greenhouse
by: TreeHugger Design, 2011-02-11 13:17:19 UTC
From Collin's dad's solar geodesic greenhouse, through a greenhouse built from soda bottles, to a simple DIY hoop house, we're not shot on self-built grow spaces here on TreeHugger. but the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia has a very detailed post and time-lapse slideshow by Rob Avis about how he built a Read the full story on TreeHugger

Renewables Supplied 75% of Spain's Electricity on January 6
by: Eco Geek Latest, 2011-02-11 18:32:41 UTC

On January 6, renewable energy made up a record-breaking 75 percent of Spain's electricity.  Over the course of the day, coal only accounted for four percent of the electricity supply.

On that day, conditions must have been ideal for renewable energy production, but even on any given day, Spain is cranking out some clean energy.  Spanish power transmission company Red Electrica reports that in 2010, renewable energy sources supplied 35 percent of all of Spain's electricity, which means the country surpassed its goal of having 30 percent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2010 and has almost hit its target of 35.5 percent by 2020 way ahead of schedule.

Last year, coal-fired power in Spain dropped 34 percent and gas-fired power dropped 17 percent leading to a 20 percent cut in emissions.

It's completely inspiring to see a country making such significant progress on upping renewable energy production and slashing fossil fuel use.

via Greenpeace

The Finnish Blood in Me by Sami Kallio
by: Dezeen, 2011-02-09 22:36:02 UTC

Stockholm 2011: Finnish designer Sami Kallio presents a collection of furniture, including these stools with legs shaped like lolly sticks, as part of the Greenhouse at Stockholm Furniture Fair this week. (more…)

The Cevisama Ceramic Tile Show Kicks Off Today in Spain
by: Inhabitat , 2011-02-09 21:59:31 UTC

This week marks the start of the Cevisama ceramic tile show in Spain, and Inhabitat is reporting live from Valencia on the world’s most cutting-edge ceramics. You heard that right – we’re in Spain to soak in the sights and check out ceramic tiles while we’re at it. This ancient material has received a 21st century upgrade as manufacturers are taking steps to reduce material use, cut carbon emissions, and optimize energy efficiency, and we’re looking forward to checking out an array of innovations ranging from tiles made from recycled materials to air-purifying ceramics and grassy green wall tiles. We’ll be hitting the show floor all week as part of the Reign in Spain tour hosted by Tile of Spain, so stay tuned for our coverage of the best and brightest innovations in Spanish ceramics.

+ Cevisama

+ Tile of Spain

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What's next in wind energy harvesting systems?
by: Ecofriend, 2011-02-10 09:04:34 UTC
Dattatreya:

As we know it:

The vitality of our very existence in the near future is preeminently defined by our optimum usage of renewable sources of energy. Essential among them is the wind energy, an all important energy source in itself as clearly shown by the statistics that affirms production of 58,982MW of power in 2005 through wind energy which was less than 1 percent of global energy. However, by 2008, eight percent of Europe’s electricity was derived from wind, and wind power generation in the United States has increased 13 fold from what it was in 2000. Globally 2 percent of electricity production now comes from wind-powered generators, with capacity increasing exponentially in recent years.

Need for a change:

Well, even clean energy producing wind turbines have their ‘bad days’. They are comparatively costly and can easily get damaged by natural calamities, like severe storms or extreme lightning. Moreover, they are susceptible to causing noise pollution, striking almost 50-60 decibels on an average. The horizontal axis ones are criticized for not being ‘bird friendly’ and at last but not the least - some people find wind turbines downright ugly!

What’s in the future?

Unconventional Turbine Designs:

1. Aerogenerator Wind Turbine:

What’s innovative?
Aerogenerator is made by the British firm Windpower. The gigantic V shaped structure of 144 meters is mounted offshore, and is capable of generating 9 megawatts of electricity - which is 3 times the conventional output. It can also generate power at more than 110mph wind speed.

The Impact:
The vertical axis of the Aerogenerator can make it possible to generate power from all directions, substantially cutting the expenses on building newer mechanism. Additionally it can also generate power in storms.

2. Helix Wind’s Savonious Turbine:

What’s innovative?
Helix Wind, a company known for designing efficient wind turbines, have introduced 2kW medium wind system and 5kW System and these turbines are claimed to generate much less noise and are safer for birds and bats than any other existing wind turbine. The noise that the turbine dubbed Savonius makes is similar to the noise generated when wind passes through a tree or a house.

The Impact:
The highly reliable Low RPM Permanent magnet generator, exclusive in this design, helps the blades of the turbine to start spinning at 5 mph up to 50 mph. Also, the shapes of the blades are designed in such a way so that they are visible to birds and other creatures of flight.

3. AeroCam - a horizontal wind turbine:

What’s innovative?
AeroCam is a new wind turbine from Dallas based Broad Star Wind system. It is designed specifically for commercial purposes. The compact design with multiple horizontal blades can counter variant wind speeds.

The Impact:
AeroCam has the ability to automatically and intelligently adjust the pitch of the movement of the aerodynamic blades as the turbine rotates, thereby optimizing its performance, using the same principle of a bird changing the shape of its wing in flight.

4. Highway Mounted Wind Turbine:

What’s innovative?
An Arizona State architectural student has extraordinarily conceptualized the ‘chromosome’ axis shaped wind turbine. It is powered by the movement of the wind caused by the passing vehicles rushing at the average speed of 70 mph. Each single wind turbine is expected to produce 9.6 Kwh of energy, annually even if the median wind speeds is kept at a minimum of 10 mph. This energy is sufficient to light up a 700 sq ft apartment.

The Impact:
Additional renewable energy production can be achieved by this unique concept, that too indirectly from the energy devouring vehicles themselves!

5. Hexicon floating wind platform:

What’s innovative?
The Hexicon company has eminently come up with a floating platform that can accommodate six or seven large turbines to generate up to 40MW of renewable power. The structure will feature a control-center platform, used for regulating the turbines. The system, according to the company, can generate electricity at the same cost per MW as conventional offshore wind farms that are being built at 20-30m depth in the North Sea.

The Impact:
The platform can be built onshore and then modulated on site. In a unique move, if more energy is needed from the platform, it can also accommodate wave-power installations.

6. GEDAYC Revolution wind turbine :

What’s innovative?
Spanish industrial designer David Sarria Jiménez contrived a state-of-the-art petal shaped wind turbine design that is expected to be five times cheaper, faster, and easier to install than traditional turbines. These much smaller turbines, dubbed as GEDAYC Revolution, can make use of weak to very strong winds to generate renewable wind energy.

The Impact:
This highly efficient wind turbine could rotate its wings at 6m/s wind speed with significant ease and is capable of generating 50% more power than the traditional propeller-based models.

7. Wind Lens Turbines:

What’s innovative?
Developed by Kyushu University Professor Yuji Ohya, the Wind Lens debuted at the Yokohama Renewable Energy International Exhibition 2010. The system features a honeycomb-like structure that triples the amount of wind energy that can be produced by offshore turbines! The wind lenses can intensify the magnitude of the wind speed.

The Impact:
Each lens, measuring about 112m in diameter, will be able to provide enough energy for an average household. And again, the artistic conception may win over many critics, cynical of wind turbine’s ugliness.

Airborne Wind Turbines:

1. NASA researchers conceptualizes airborne wind turbines for renewable energy:

What’s innovative?
In NASA’s reverie, wind turbines would not take up earth’s spaces, but rather ‘float’ in the free space above earth - spinning with greater speed in higher altitude, and sending back the resultant clean energy through nanotube tether cables.

The Impact:
NASA aerospace engineer Mark Moore believes that the idea has great potential as wind speed is more consistent and its velocity much higher at higher altitudes. At an altitude of 2000 feet, one can get between eight and 27 times the power production.

2. Makani Airborne Wind Turbine Prototype Test-Flight:

What’s innovative?
The company Makani Power has designed an agile airborne turbine with wings. It carries three propellers that can self-launch when winds have proper speeds (7.8 mph), and doesn’t carry fuel or batteries. The launch is done vertically, by using the propellers. When the contraption reaches at a height of 200m, the propellers change their position from vertical to horizontal and the wing begins to hover like an aircraft. These propellers now acting as turbine blades, rotate and generate energy, propagating it to the base through its cables.

The Impact:
According to the company, the price of the energy it generates can even compete with the price of coal, also being 40 percent cheaper than the power produced by ordinary wind turbines.

3. Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS):

What’s innovative?
MARS is a lighter than air turbine that uses Helium which allows it to move higher than traditional ones. The turbines spinning about horizontal axis, generate energy that is transferred to the ground by making use of about 300m long tether cables.

The Impact:
The Magenn Air Rotor System is less expensive per unit of actual electrical energy output than other wind powered systems. Additionally, wind farms involving MARS can be placed closer to demand centers, which could reduce transmission line costs and transmission losses.

4. Kite Wind Turbine:

What’s innovative?
These helicopter-styled wind turbines feature giant rotating blades that initially propagate it up to the best possible height for generation of wind energy. Then, they work as huge floating turbines and shift to energy production mode.

The Impact:
Taking zero space upon our precious landmass, the Kite Wind Turbine will be able to generate clean energy efficiently and rather speedily - corresponding to the greater wind velocities of higher altitudes.

5. The Sky Serpent:

What’s innovative?
Designer Doug Selsam’s Sky Serpent uses a system of small rotors to catch more wind for less cost. Optimal angles for the shaft has been worked out so as to make sure each rotor catches its own fresh flow of wind and not just the gush from the one next to it, as previous multi-rotor turbines have shown.

The Impact:
This design can be feasible and very cheap to install. As a matter of fact, it only uses one-tenth of the traditionally used blade material, but delivers the same wattage of power.

Micro Wind Turbines :

1. Motorwave Mirco Wind Turbines:

What’s innovative?
Researchers at Hong Kong University and Lucien Gambarota of Motorwave Ltd. have uniquely developed Motorwind, a micro-wind turbine technology small enough for private use in both rural and urban contexts. Unlike large-scale wind turbines, Motorwave’s micro-wind turbines are light, compact (25 cm rotor diameter), and can generate power with wind speeds as low as 2 meters/second.

The Impact :
The gear-like turbines can be linked to fit just about anyplace and a row of eight turbines costs just $150. According to tests, turbines arranged within a surface area of one square meter and a wind speed of 5 m/sec generate 131 kWh/yr.

2. NanoVent Skin (NVS) Wind Turbine:

What’s innovative?
Product Designer Agustin Otegui conceived of an organic lattice covering a building. This lattice would be composed of micro vertical axis turbines. Otegui estimates the turbine blades to be about 25-mm long with a 10-mm dia. He says rough calculations for each turbine show 0.2W and a power density of 90 W/m2.

The Impact:
This concept truly epitomizes “total green technology”. Along with micro turbines, solar power would be harvested through an organic photovoltaic skin.

3. Folding Wind Turbine:

What’s innovative?
The Ventus, thought of by designer Sergej Kuckir, is a portable and folding wind power station that can be carried along during trekking or a scientific expedition in the wilds. The entire contraption features a vertical axis wind turbine, turbine mast and batteries, all of which can be folded and packed in a tube of just 10cm in diameter.

The Impact:
Practical usage of wind energy, rather than solar energy atop mountains. The designer also estimates this 4kg system can be used to generate up to 400W of renewable electric power, which is stored in onboard batteries for later use.

4. Wind Cubes concept:

What’s innovative?
Industrial designers Liao-Hsun Chen and Wen-Chih Chang have come up with the concept of Wind Cubes. The designers estimate that each Wind Cube will be able to generate 21.6KWh of electricity and 15 such systems working together could produce enough energy for a family of four.

The Impact:
The Wind Cubes can be easily fixated to the outer wall of our dwellings with three screws and clicking a single switch activates the whole system. Multiple Cubes can also be connected to generate more power and strengthen the entire installation.

5. Vibro-Wind Setup:

What’s innovative?
Researchers at Vibro-Wind Research Group have developed this low-cost method of generating clean electricity. Similar in conception like solar panels, they can be attached to roofs and exterior walls.

The Impact:
This Vibro-Wind setup generates electricity from vibration caused by wind rather than wind itself, which increases the efficiency of the whole setup, that too at a substantially lesser cost.

6. Philippe Starck’s Wind Turbine:

What’s innovative?
French designer Philippe Starck has designed two micro wind turbine models with different power outputs. The 400 W WT had a quadrangular form, twin blades and a power output of 400W. And the second RevolutionAir model – produced in collaboration with Italian company PRAMAC, is helicoidal in shape, has triple blades and can generate a power of 1KW.

The Impact:
Whereas most turbines have huge blades that require an acre or two and emit tremendous noise, these operate quite independent of wind direction, rather exploiting turbulent air flows. Moreover, they are extremely quiet.

Others:

Windbelt:

What’s innovative?
Shawn Frayne’s Windbelt was one of Popular Mechanics’ Breakthrough Awards winners. Founding the Humdinger Wind Energy LLC, he has developed variant models of Windbelt. At its smallest scale, the micro-Windbelt is roughly 5 inches long and 1 inch tall and can generate power for sensors or small electronics. A larger Windbelt in a 1-meter long frame, called the Windcell, can provide 3 to 5 watts of power, enough for an LED light or other comparatively low-power appliances. Windcells can also be assembled into panels. A 1 meter square Windcell panel is expected to produce up to 100 watts, and have a panel cost of around $1 per watt.

The Impact:
These can be installed at a much lower cost than solar panels. Furthermore in context of urban areas, variable small intensity winds (6m/sec) can be utilized by these exceptional devices.

Small-Scale Wind Power Panels
by: Eco Geek Latest, 2011-02-08 22:09:46 UTC

A few years ago, the Wind Belt developed by Humdinger Wind Energy promised a compelling alternative to fan style wind power generation. More importantly, the Wind Belt was ideally suited for smaller scale power generation, which would be ideal for low-cost power generation for remote locations.

Now, other designers are coming up with other approaches that offer similar kinds of smaller scale power generation that do not require open fields, large swept areas, and powerful winds - things that large, spinning blade turbines need - to create electricity. One such project is the Vibro-Wind generator, which has been developed by a team of students at Cornell University.

The test Vibro-Wind generator is made with an array of foam blocks which catch the wind and act as oscillators. It produces electricity with piezoelectric transducers, small devices that emit electrons when stressed by the vibrations from the blocks.

Small and cheap may be a useful alternative for producing wind power, particularly in environments without consistently strong winds that are suited for large turbine installations. Beacuse the Vibro-Wind generator works with buffeting and vibration, it could be more appropriate for urban installations where swirling winds are more usual than the ideal winds needed for typical bladed turbines.

via: Inhabitat

New York To Harvest Energy From Sewage Waste
by: Eco Geek Latest, 2011-02-09 17:51:30 UTC

New York City's sewage treatment plants will now be in the business of harvesting and selling renewable energy.  Heating fuel will be extracted from sludge, butanol (a gasoline alternative) extracted from the algae that grows in wastewater and, of course, methane gas will be captured from sewage plants' digesters.

The city's residents create 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater daily, which results in a daily yield of 1,200 tons of sludge being sent to landfills.  The city is looking for vendors to turn that sludge into renewable energy, fertilizer, and paving and building materials.  City officials plan to have contracts by 2013.

The city sewage plants already use half of the methane produced by the digesters to provide about 20 percent of the electricity used by the plants, but now they'll be putting the rest on the market.  The Newtown Creek Wastewater Plant in Brooklyn already has a contract in the works with National Grid that will provide enough methane gas to heat 2,500 homes.

The city is also looking to build solar and wind installations at its wastewater treatment plants on Staten Island.

via NY Times

 

Love Blossoms by Daniel Brown for Mulberry
by: Dezeen, 2011-02-10 11:28:18 UTC

British digital designer Daniel Brown has created a website for fashion brand Mulberry where users can email a unique image of a flower to their valentine. (more…)

10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Winterize Your Home Fast (Slideshow)
by: TreeHugger Design, 2011-02-03 14:00:53 UTC
Image Credit: Dano Have you recently had an electric bill shocker? Sure it's been winter for weeks -- but now is when you realize how much it's squeezing your wallet. In an old, pre-1945 house, the air leaks can add up to the equivalent of a hole in your wall 21 inches in diameter! Winterize your home fast with the following 10 cheap and easy solutions. The savings -- calculated by RMI -- can add up to real and significant cash in your pocket. Read the full story on TreeHugger

Is Sustainable Design Wearing Thin?
by: TreeHugger Design, 2011-02-04 15:19:05 UTC
Image credit: Susan Serra, CKD, used under Creative Commons license. TreeHugger was founded as a sustainable design blog. From Alan Chochinov's 10 steps for sustainable design, through Yves Behar's predictions for sustainable design in 2011, to the classic d... Read the full story on TreeHugger