IceCycle is a neat idea of storing energy at off peak times to use during peak periods. I believe Energy storage technology goes hand in hand with renewables. To bad nobody has a lead on storing heat energy. I would love a device that cools my house in the summer and stores that heat for the winter. See the article here.
reuse
From Air to Rail
Air travel is very, very, very bad for the environment. So why am I bringing it up on this website? (yeah for rhetorical questions!)
A company is proposing to take old airplane fuselages and convert them into monorails. This just sounds cool! And it is! Energy for the trains comes from solar power, wind power, and regenerative breaking.
This is such a good use for old environmentally unfriendly technology because it takes it and makes it into a sustainable transportation system.
It has yet to be prototyped, but let’s hope that this system is built.
In 2007 it’s Easy Being Green
MSNBC has collected ten simple things that you can you do to make the world a little greener and a little better.
These really are small, simple, and everyday things that you can do to make the world a better place, so I encourage everyone to give it a try!
Stained Art Tea Cups
Tea cups get stained and that’s a fact that once was bad and now is good. Thanks to artist Bethan Wood who has made a tea cup that shows groovy designs when it gets stained.
“Stain is a set of a teacups designed to improve through use. This project examines the assumption that use is damaging to a product (For example, scratches on an iPod).
The interior surface of the cup is treated so as to stain more in predetermined places. The more the cups are used, the more the pattern is revealed. Over time they will build up an individual pattern dependent on the users personal way of drinking tea.”
Salt Lake City to use Waste Power
Salt Lake City is going to start a small pilot project that will use sewage to heat and cool buildings. The idea uses the simple concept of heat transfer to transfer energy from one source to another.
“The system should sufficiently heat and cool Lear’s 8,000-square-foot building about 95 percent of the time. For the remainder, Lear will pool 1,800 gallons of water in the basement, also using the water to irrigate the building’s lawn.
It’s a bit expensive – the system costs $20,000 more than traditional systems – but if it works well, Lear hopes it could be eventually used by the masses.”