DIY Alternative Energy, Build Your Own Solar Power

Ever wanted to build your own energy network? Well, now you can!
This guy made his own solar power unit.

So what is a solar panel anyway? It is basically a box that holds an array of solar cells. Solar cells are the things that do the actual work of turning sunlight into electricity. However, it takes a lot of cells to make a meaningful amount of power, and they are very fragile, so the individual cells are assembled into panels. The panels hold enough cells to make a useful amount of power and protect the cells from the elements. It doesn’t sound too complicated. I was convinced I could do it myself.

I started out the way I start every project, by Googling for information on home-built solar panels. I was shocked at how few I found. The fact that very few people were building their own panels led me to think it must be harder to do than I thought. The project got shelved for a while, but I never stopped thinking about it.

Save the Planet: Plant More Trees

Simple stuff really: forests are good for the environment and we ought to have more of them.

The researchers’ calculations suggest that carbon storage in Midwestern forests could offset the greenhouse gas emissions of almost two-thirds of nearby populations, and that proper management of forests could sustain or increase their storage capacity for future generations.

Based on measurements taken between 1999 and 2005 at a forest study site in northern Michigan, the scientists have determined that similar upper Midwest forests covering an estimated 40,000 square miles store an average of 1,300 pounds of carbon per acre per year.

Factoring in effects of climate, history and tree type, the researchers developed an equation suggesting that a heavily forested region in northern Michigan could store more than 350,000 tons of carbon per year. With the area population emitting about 573,000 tons of carbon annually, the forests would sequester approximately 62 percent of the region’s human-caused carbon emissions – the equivalent of yearly emissions from about 225,000 cars.

The Greenest Cup of Office Coffee

The Green Lantern (the cute name for Slate’s enviro-advice column) answered the question of which kind of cup to use in the office. The answer isn’t as clear as you think, as always, there are many issues that need to inform your decision. In sum, use an old mug (don’t buy new ones) and wash using environmentally friendly soap.

The Lantern uses a mug for office beverages, but he’s chosen to go the scavenger route—using an old one someone left in his office. Your colleagues’ instincts are right to avoid polystyrene, but they shouldn’t buy brand-new mugs as a replacement (even the kind that come with cheeky green messages). Unless you absolutely need to drink your coffee on the go, ceramic is better than stainless steel. And when you wash, do it by hand, using phosphate-free soap and cold water. (If you want to use hot water, see if you can share washing duties throughout the office, so the water doesn’t need to be heated separately for each mug.)

What if you get your coffee at the local Starbucks on your way to work? The nationwide chain deserves credit for including 10 percent recycled content in its cups, and paper—unlike polystyrene—has the advantage of being a renewable resource. But in other ways, the wood-based venti cups are even worse than office polystyrene: They’re heavier, which means more energy used to create the cup and more waste once the cups have been crushed. Other coffee retailers are experimenting with cups made out of plant-based material, which can then be composted—a positive step, although one that raises a question of where all that extra corn will come from.

Stolen Bikes May go to Poor

Recently in Toronto over 2,000 stolen bikes were found, which is good news itself. Now, after the public has been given a chance to reclaim their bikes, community groups are championing the idea that the stolen bikes should be give to the poor. The bikes that have been stripped for their parts should be given to local non-profit bike organizations to help them run their bicycling operations.

Heaps said the city can’t get directly involved, but it has encouraged interested outside groups to raise the matter with Toronto police, who seized the bikes after arresting bike shop owner Igor Kenk and laying a series of charges related to bike theft and drugs.

“There are many people out there who cannot afford a bicycle,” Heaps said. “They probably would benefit from a second-hand bike that was safe and sound.”

One interested group is the Community Bicycle Network, but a project of that size would likely need a number of groups to get together, said its spokesperson Sherri Byer.

“Everybody would like to see (the bikes) go back into the community in some kind of goodwill manner,” Byer said in an interview yesterday.

“They could go back to community organizations and go to people on low income who need bikes. It would be nice to see something good done with them.”

Toronto police have been getting “continual requests and suggestions on just how to deal with these bikes,” said spokesperson Const. Wendy Drummond.

Urban Agriculture Growing in Popularity

Urban framing is gaining popularity here in Toronto and that is good for jobs and people’s health.

Urban agriculture should not be confused with gardening, says Field. The main difference is the scale – the plots are larger – and the food is sold, not shared among a community or taken home at the end of the day by one gardener.

The harvest from FoodShare’s rooftop garden and greenhouses is included in its urban agriculture, as well as its bounty from city soil. And, as urban farmers such as Matchbox Garden and Seed Co. and The Cutting Veg begin to set up stalls at farmers’ markets, Toronto joins a larger movement that recognizes living in the city doesn’t mean you have to live miles from your food.

On Wednesday, Michael Ableman, the granddaddy of urban farming, is to speak at the Robert Rose lecture series From the Ground Up, a fundraiser for the Gardiner Museum. Ableman’s talk will be followed by a panel discussion on urban agriculture with Field from FoodShare, food columnist and author Elizabeth Driver and architect Stephen Teeple, who is designing community housing with green spaces for agriculture.

“What Michael did in his big garden in Los Angeles was to go from community garden to urban agriculture and he showed he could do it,” says Field.