Energy Archives - Page 37 of 66 - Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

Solar heating your home

A sunspace can make a dark room into a bright living space. It is also a source of solar heating for your home and a place to garden all year round.

A sunspace is usually a light-frame enclosure made of glass or other transparent glazing, aluminum or wood framing, windows, skylights and sliding glass doors. Also known as conservatory, greenhouse, solarium, or sunroom.

Pre-engineered sunspace kits (such as this one) are available in a variety of sizes and styles but be careful to find one which specifically aims to enhance the solar heating capacity if that is what you are after.…

March 28, 2010 No Comments

Energy

Community Power in the UK

The UK government has issued a draft policy document empowering town halls to bring in decentralised energy schemes.

A 12-week consultation exercise on revised planning policy statements (PPSs) covering climate change and the natural environment was launched last week.

Councils are urged to assess their area to secure decentralised energy opportunities to meet the needs of new development. ‘Local authorities should look for greater integration of waste management with the provision of decentralised energy, co-location of potential heat suppliers and users and district heating networks based on renewable energy from waste, surplus heat and biomass,’ says the draft.…

March 27, 2010 No Comments

Energy

Peak Oil back in the news

The world’s oil reserves have been exaggerated by about 33%, according to Sir David King, the UK Government’s former chief scientist, who warns of shortages and price spikes within years. 2014 is the likely year he says when demand exceeds new supply.

King and a research team from Oxford University say it is an open secret that OPEC is likely to have inflated its reserves, but that the International Energy Agency (IEA), BP, the Energy Information Administration and World Oil do not take this into account in their statistics. Their new research argues that estimates of conventional reserves should be downgraded from 1,150bn to 1,350bn barrels to between 850bn and 900bn barrels and claims that demand may outstrip supply as early as 2014.

The paper also raises concerns that public statistics have started to incorporate non-conventional reserves

…

March 22, 2010 2 Comments

Energy

Waitrose to open first ‘off-grid’ store

One of the UK’s most successful retailers ,The John Lewis Partnership, which owns Waitrose supermarkets and John Lewis department stores, is to open its first ‘off-grid’ (his words) retail store, this year.

It will be located in the Isle of Wight, Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership said in private talks at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in London today The store will be large — between 15,000 and 20,000 sq ft. and powered by a mix of technologies, including combined heat and power.

Mayfield said the new off-grid store would deliver carbon savings of 60 per cent compared to one opened “two or three years ago”.…

March 17, 2010 No Comments

Community

Off the Grid and the prepared

So, just what does that mean? I can tell you from personal experience and from the responses I have received from people over the years that it definitely has different meanings to different people. From living completely without any utilities, no electricity, water or gas (think hunter’s cabin, wood stove, candles or kerosene lamps, no running water…), to generating one or more of these items on site yourself (think solar panels, wind power, methane digester…), I even had one person say that for him, living “off the grid” meant living so remotely that the government couldn’t find you, essentially hiding from the world. For some people it brings up a picture of a hermit living in a shack on a remote location, others envision a state of the art home that independently takes care of the needs of all occupants from food and water to electricity.…

March 5, 2010 3 Comments

Energy

Monbiot anti-micropower rant is anti-green

Everybody in UK eco-circles is talking about George Monbiot this week, which is just the way he likes it.

George Monbiot is an unashamed cheerleader for big power – his column in the Guardian has previously come out in favor of large nuclear power stations, and this week he spoke out against micro-generation. George Monbiot is also in favor of large, centralised wind farms and other forms of renewable energy, and sets himself firmly against micro-generation –which he caricatures as a middle class subsidy.

The occasion for his latest outburst was the introduction of the UK government-backed Feed-in tariff (FiT), which will reward householders and others who generate renewable energy back into the grid. Ignoring the fact that the FiT was enormously successful in Germany, which has become a European leader in micro-generation, “the only renewables policy that makes sense,” says George, “ is to build big installations where the energy is – which means high ground, estuaries or the open sea – and deliver it by wire to where people live.”…

March 3, 2010 1 Comment

Energy

Government grants create turbine debacle

The UK Government’s energy conservation watchdog has admitted that consumers were duped by inappropriate grants into buying wind turbines that never stood a chance of working properly.

In an attempt to ensure that there is no repeat of the wind turbine debacle, the Energy Savings Trust, funded by Government and big energy companies, has embarked on the first large-scale trials aimed at providing definitive information on the performance of different green technologies in the UK.

The first trial concluded that an unknown amount of government cash has been wasted encouraging urban consumers to buy wind turbines when no one really knew whether they were effective or not.…

February 25, 2010 1 Comment

Energy

Bloom energy box enables off-grid living

More details of the Bloom Box have been revealed at a carefully managed press conference in California. The much-hyped off-grid source of cheap electricity will not lead us all to disconnect from the grid tomorrow, but it is undoubtedly disruptive technology, and very exciting for the off-grid community.

The firm’s executives and backers do think that many people in future may choose to install the small box in their home and use it to generate electricity from such fuels as methane and ethanol or even solar, rather than buying it from expensive, wasteful centralised producers. It is a game-changer.

…

February 24, 2010 8 Comments

Energy

Boom time for Bloom Box

A new but still unseen fuel cell technology that its creator claims can be an off-grid source of cheap energy, and clean power, is about to get its formal debut

Bloom Energy’s much-hyped fuel cell, known as the Bloom Box, will take place at eBay’s headquarters in California tomorrow (24 Feb). Bloom Box is already being trialed on the campuses of Google and eBay among others. FedEx, Wal-Mart and Staples are among a score of Fortune 100 companies that have signed up as Bloom Box clients to save million in electricity costs. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, among those who endorse the technology, is on the Board of Directors of Bloom Energy, an eight-year old stealth start-up that raised more than $ 400 million from Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists who have installed Bloom Boxes in their own bug-out locations.

…

February 21, 2010 13 Comments

Energy

V2G will sustain microgrid

Micro-grids could operate reliably without the need for a national grid backup if they tapped the vast amounts of power stored in the batteries of electric and hybrid vehicles, to balance out fluctuations in supply and demand.

Vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, technology, which will enable electric car owners to make money while storing power for their local micro-grid, was unveiled at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The first experimental V2G system went live last year at the University of Delaware, the Christian Science Monitor reported. At Delaware, electric cars are connected to the grid whenever they are not being driven.

…

February 20, 2010 1 Comment

Cómo construir panel solar para $100 – Usted puede también

En este artículo voy a describir cómo construir una foto de paneles solares fotovoltaicos para una fracción del precio que se pagaría a un fabricante. Le mostraré cómo los materiales de bajo costo y las herramientas simples pueden ser utilizados para hacer los paneles que rivalizan con los productos comerciales en la producción de energía, pero a un precio mucho más bajo.

Hace varios años me compré una propiedad a distancia en Arizona (en Ingles). …

February 12, 2010 1 Comment

Energy

Big Power’s green energy scam blocked

The UK power regulator has introduced a new certification scheme aimed at stopping power companies from marketing ‘green’ tariffs that arent really green.…

February 11, 2010 1 Comment

All you need to go off-grid

Energy

Solar heating your home

Community Power in the UK

Peak Oil back in the news

Waitrose to open first ‘off-grid’ store

Off the Grid and the prepared

Monbiot anti-micropower rant is anti-green

Government grants create turbine debacle

Bloom energy box enables off-grid living

Boom time for Bloom Box

V2G will sustain microgrid

Cómo construir panel solar para $100 – Usted puede también

Big Power’s green energy scam blocked

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