Archive for the ‘Energy use’ Category
May 28th, 2009
Water from Melting Greenland Ice Sheath May Impact Northeast US Coast
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From the Environmental News Network (ENN.com)
New research by the National Center for Atmospheric Research points to the possibility that water from the melting Greenland Ice Sheath could change oceanic circulation in the North Atlantic, in a way that would raise sea levels off the Northeast by about eight inches more than the average global sea level rise that is expected with global warming.
Results of the study are being published this week in Geophysical Research Letters. They suggest that moderate to high rates of ice melt from Greenland may shift ocean circulation by about 2100, causing sea levels off the northeast coast of North America to rise by about 30 to 51 centimeters (12 to 20 inches) more than other coastal areas.
The research builds on recent reports that have found that sea level rise could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is even more urgent than previously believed.
“If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise,” says scientist Aixue Hu, the paper’s lead author. Hu is at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. “Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise.”
To assess the impact of Greenland ice melt on ocean circulation, Hu and his coauthors used the Community Climate System Model, an NCAR-based computer model that simulates global climate.
They considered three scenarios: the melt rate continuing to increase by 7 percent a year, as has been the case in recent years, or the melt rate slowing down to an increase of either 1 or 3 percent a year.
Read the rest of the article here.
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May 27th, 2009
Household Energy Use to Triple by 2030, Due to Power-Hungry Electronics
Courtesy of CleanTechnica.com
Experts call energy efficiency the low-hanging fruit, because it’s cheaper to cut power use than create new energy from fossil fuels like coal.
But our creature comforts — like iPods, cell phones, PCs and plasma TVs — are sucking the life out of advances in energy efficiency around the world, the International Energy Agency says.
In other words, too much fruit is rotting on the vine.
The IEA says in a new “Gigawatts and Gadgets” report that electricity consumption from power-hungry electronics could cause household energy use to triple by 2030. That means increased greenhouse gases from electric generation, and increased electric bills for creating that power.
The agency is urging consumers to choose more power-sipping devices when they go shopping. Technology allows trendy gadgets to be up to 40 percent more energy efficient, but standards are lacking.
It used to be that refrigerators and other appliances used the most electricity in our homes. If you go to buy a new fridge, you’ll see tags that show “estimated energy use per year.”
Our digital gadgets have now surpassed the electric use of “white goods” like refrigerators, Reuters reports.
What to do? Before you go shopping, check out some online guides to greener gadgets:
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May 20th, 2009
Back to Basics: Aerocivic Gets Website
Written by Christopher DeMorro, courtesy of Gas2.0
Jeremy Clarkson, the outspoken host of Britain’s Top Gear auto show, made a spectacle of racing a Prius vs. a BMW M3, in which the latter recieved better gas mileage. His point was that is isn’t what you drive, but how you drive. Nothing emphasizes this idea more than the Aerocivic, a simple yet highly publicized Civic whose owner, Mike Turner, utilized basic hypermilling techniques such as coasting down hills and shutting off his engine at stop lights to maximize fuel usage. He then took his very basic car a step further by applying an aerodynamic body kit to reduce drag at high speeds, and now he is using the power of the Interweb to give further insight into the how and why of his car, the Aerocivic.
Turner details the cost of improvements to his 1992 Civic DX, such as the boat tail, smaller side view mirrors, and lower nose, all of which work to lower the drag coefficient, thus allowing the car to slide through the air easier and using less power and petrol. Turner says he spent only $400 improving the fuel efficiency of his car, which has been the subject of many stories already, and on a level road going 65 mph he claims to get 95 miles per gallon.
The website is very informational and also details where Mike got his influences, such as homemade aircraft and the 1939 Maybach Stromlinienkarosserie. The little details like the sealed panel gaps and windshield wiper deflectors help greatly in reducing drag, you can really appreciate the thought that went into this car. It is a really great read and contains some good ideas for your own Aero-car project, so make sure you check out the Aerocivic website.
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May 19th, 2009
Goooobama! President Sets Strong Emissions Rules
It is a great deal for the environment– and a terrible day for global warming. President Obama announced today tough new national rules for auto emissions and mileage standards. His administration has embraced standards that California sought to enact for years over the objections of the auto industry and the Bush administration.
The new rules, which will go into effect in 2012, will create a single new national standard that will yield a car and light truck fleet in the United States that is 40 percent more fuel-efficient by 2016 than it is today. The mandated national average for automobiles and light trucks will be 35.5 miles per gallon. The current national standard is slightly more than 25 miles per gallon.
Read more on the story from the New York Times here.
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May 18th, 2009
ZigBee-Powered Smart Grids: Coming To A Home Near You?
You can’t read a green-focused blog or periodical these days without seeing something about smart grids. Smart transmission grids from wind farms to cities, smart distribution grids from our local utilities, or even smart energy networks at home. The advertised benefits are many - the ability to move renewable energy from remote sources to urban areas, less energy waste in transmission, and the ability of utilities to optimize energy consumption across their grids all the way down to (and into) your home. To make this last leg work, utilities will need to be able to talk to your appliances, climate control systems, and other home energy devices in order to manage their energy production in a smart and low-carbon way. (For an entertaining and informative if optimistic description of how this might work some day, check out Chapter Ten of Thomas Friedman’s great book Hot, Flat and Crowded).
Enter ZigBee, a relatively new wireless technology that is a frontrunner in the race to network and control all of your home environmental systems. Now, if you’re like me, your first question might be whether we really need another wireless technology. As if WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, CDMA, GSM, and the many other protocols out there aren’t enough already! But ZigBee has several major attributes that DO make it an important piece of the puzzle. The ZigBee protocol is optimized to pass relatively small amounts of data between devices efficiently - not great for streaming real-time voice conversations or music, but perfect for sending a thermostat setpoint or refrigerator temperature to the smart meter outside your home. The key benefits are that ZigBee transmitters are very simple and inexpensive to build AND they require very little power. They cost fractions of what a Bluetooth connection would cost, and can be powered for months or years on the smallest of batteries. This is the key advantage - they can be integrated into almost any point of home energy use (switches, outlets, lights, appliances) without requiring a significant power source and without driving up the price.
A home full of ZigBee-networked devices could be the termination point for the developing smart grid. All of your home energy users would be networked to a centralized controller or your PC, and you could see and change energy usage throughout your home from your office or cell phone. You could program lights and outlets to turn off if a room is unoccupied, or if electricity prices increased during a hot day. You could turn on your heating system and lights before arriving home on a cold winter’s night. And your utility could shut down or delay certain systems (with your pre-approval, of course) if it faced a day of peak demand across your local electricity grid.
So, if you consider yourself an early adopter of green technology, can you get your hands on any worthwhile ZigBee-powered devices? Unfortunately, there aren’t that many consumer-oriented ZigBee products available yet, but that’s likely to change. Utilities are already beginning to install ZigBee-enabled smart electricity meters on homes and apartments throughout the country, so expect to see products that communicate with them soon. Keep your eyes open for products from these leading ZigBee-related companies:
- Tendril. Tendril is a Boulder-based smart grid company that is launching a full line of residential products, including the Vantage Internet portal, the Insight home energy monitor, the Set Point thermostat and Volt wall outlets. They’re not available at retail yet, but they might be available through your utility if they happen to have a smart grid pilot program.
- Cisco Systems. Cisco is the world’s largest networking hardware company, and just today they announced the outlines of their plans to enter the smart grid market. They stated the intention to enter the residential market without mentioning any specific plans. But Cisco’s successful forays into the small business and residential networking markets after initially focusing on corporate markets (via big steps like acquiring Linksys) suggests they’ll launch major initiatives soon.
- Greenbox. Greenbox will provide a web-based solution that allows you to manage your home’s energy usage and environmental footprint from one place.
- GE and other major appliance manufacturers. The major electronics companies haven’t announced many residential smart grid plans yet, but they’re clearly a big piece of the overall puzzle. Look for ZigBee in a refrigerator or washing machine near you soon.
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