Category: Energy

Thermal Inertia for Free Heating and Cooling

How does not needing an air conditioner or a furnace sound? To me, it sounds great.

The Enertia home uses thermal energy to cycle cooling and warming the house. It achieves this by delaying the thermal patterns of the planet, it’s like slow motion but in real life.

Once completed, even before you move in, these new homes will have come alive with a natural atmospheric cycle, like the Earth, on which they are based. A built-in “biosphere,” in gradual but constant motion, draws energy from the sun, and geothermal stability from the ground, creating a temperate climate that buffers the primary living space.

Solar in Seville

bright
The wonderful inhabitat has a post all about the solar generating that’s happening in Seville.

This tower, while not a new technology (see CESA-1), is part of a series of projects whose final aim is to provide enough green energy for 180,000 homes, or most of the population of Seville. The final project, able to produce over 300MW, will include a series of towers, two more of which are being built, and standard photovoltaic power plants, as well as a mixture of newer parabolic solar collectors which will be installed at a later stage. The entire power plant will be operational by 2013. And here’s the most impressive part. The entire development, once it’s operational, will generate zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Spin-Powered Office Towers

EcoGeek has the lowdown on a high-rise design that supposedly can power itself and up to ten other office buildings. The tower is designed to have spinning floors and will act like a giant windmill, don’t worry all the essentials like elevators are in a central non-rotating concrete core. A neat idea, but one that I do question.

The video shows the spinning in action:

iSave Shower Power

I’m a sucker for nice long hot showers and I can’t help but think that it’s wasteful and an exercise of pure luxury that a lot of the world can’t afford. This all doesn’t stop me from spending 10 minutes enjoying hot water. A new invention may help me ween off my wastefulness though.

The iSave is a shower head (or a faucet fixture) that tracks how much water you’re using. It’s powered by the water itself, genius!

neat-o

City Likes to Blow

Toronto is looking to green their buildings, and what better place to start than city hall?

Putting small wind turbines on the roof at city hall was one of several ideas presented yesterday to reduce the building’s $3 million annual energy bill.

“Personally, I think it’s a really neat way of increasing the renewable energy footprint for the city hall,” consultant Paul Leitch told about 50 experts meeting yesterday to ponder ways of greening the 42-year-old twin towers.

Leitch said it would cost about $125,000 to install six of the devices – three on each tower – to produce enough electricity to power about nine homes.

Thanks, Lindsay!