Tag: renewable

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.”

House of the Future

Students at the University of Nottingham are moving into a new, futuristic house.  This three-storey home is being built as an example to the world on how people can cut carbon dioxide emissions.  Over a period of 20 years, students will live in the house and monitor heat, light, and water consumption.  The goal of the experiment is to cut CO2 emissions by 60 percent.univhouse.jpg

The house features an earth-air heat exchanger for heat; a grey water management system to reuse shower water for the toilet; a rainwater-harvesting system to collect water for the washing machine, shower and gardens; solar heating; and a ventilation / heat recovery system.

Mike Hinman of Stoneguard, the company building the house, states, “This building is, quite simply, 44 years ahead of its time.”

Put Your Leftovers in Your Car

wow!It seems like that neat engine, which is powered by trash, in that car from Back to the Future is almost real! Researchers at UC Davis have found a way to turn leftovers from meals into biogas that can be used to generate electricity or make fuel. That in itself is not revolutionary, what is though, is that they found an effective (cheap) way to do this on a large scale.

The machine will use leftovers from restaurants to make energy, thus making it also a waster-diversion program to boot.

“The Biogas Energy Project is the first large-scale demonstration in the United States of a new technology developed in the past eight years by Ruihong Zhang, a UC Davis professor of biological and agricultural engineering. The technology, called an “anaerobic phased solids digester,” has been licensed from the university and adapted for commercial use by Onsite Power Systems Inc.”

Google Goes Gaga for Solar

solared Google is going to power it’s corporate headquarters using solar power! The installation at the Googleplex will generate a total capacity of 1.6 megawatts which is “enough to supply 1,000 average California homes.”

The Googleplex has a lot of space on its roof it looks like. This is a great thing for any corporation to consider doing. I believe that Google is actually quite concerned about the amount of power an average PC uses because of the cost. Maybe this is their solution since computer makers are dropping the ball.