Technomaly » Green

Calculate Home Energy Savings with Microsoft Hohm

J. Matthew Zoss — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:35:23 +0000

Want some information on your home’s energy efficiency and how you can save money? Microsoft’s web app Hohm will calculate the energy usage of your specific house. It doesn’t take much to set up, either – just enter your address and Hohm will set you up with the basic information. The more info you provide, the more specific Hohm can get about your energy usage. It took me about five minutes to enter my power company info and get some data back on my house.

Hohm isn’t just about showing you how much power your home uses – it’s also filled with useful tips on how to lower your energy consumption. If you’re interested in lowering the energy usage of your home, Hohm is a great tool to start with.

Via Lifehacker

Complete Your Enchanted Forest Living Room

Nick Upton — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:07:48 +0000

I always like these crazy designers that blur the line between natural and techy, these sweet chairs do just that.

Designed by Giancarlo Zema for the Avanzini Group, these amazing Bright Woods furniture collection were displayed at the Design in Nature exhibition in the Triennale Design Museum as part of the Milan Furniture Fair.

The chair looks like a some big space nut, crisscrossed with lights. The white is pretty awesome, but the pink, orange and purple could get pretty abrasive in your living room.

The best part, I think, is that when the lights are off, the strips of light turn black, making it look even more like a spooky space nut.

[Via Fresh Home]

Green TVs Getting Greener

J. Matthew Zoss — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:24:07 +0000

If you’ve bought an HDTV in the last few years, chances are that it’s sporting the Engery Star logo that certifies it as a energy efficient device. However, it looks like future HDTVs will be even more efficient. The new Energy Star 4.0 ratings are now in effect. All TVs manufactured as of May 1 must meet stricter regulations to earn the Energy Star status and in 2012 the even tougher 5.0 rules come into effect, which will drop the maximum consumption by an additional 40 percent.

For now, the 4.0 rules drop energy consumption by 40% from the 3.0 rules (so the upcoming 5.0 rules will require TVs that are 80% from the 3.0 rules, obviously). Under the new rules, a 50-inch set can consume 153 watts max (compared to 318 in the 3.0 world) and a display that’s “off” can use no more than one watt. The nature-loving Na’vi will be proud as you watch Avatar on your energy-efficient screen.

Source: Engadget

Futuristic Tower Taps Into Underground Water

Nick Upton — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:27:15 +0000

This futuristic looking tower is the brain child of Polish firm H3AR hopes to tackle the lack of water and shelter in the desert — all while being locally built and cost effective.

The tower is especially designed for the Darfur region of Sudan, where money and water is scarce.

The design of the building resembles a baobab, the “upside down tree” from the Savanah. It consists of water pumps and a treatment plant. These pumps will take water from the aquifer and then pump it all through the building to heat and cool.

Water will be stored within the core of the building. Building’s users will have access to this water, which would be recycled by the treatment plant.

Beyond just water, the tower is designed to provide a climate controlled community center with a school, a health center and a valuable food storage.

The best part is that the bricks used to build the tower are all locally produced.

[Via World Interior Design Network]

Sugar Based Plastic Compostable, Impressive

Asterios Kokkinos — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:00:39 +0000

Researchers at Imperial College London are claiming to have created a plastic made of glucose polymers extracted from grasses and trees. This sugar based plastic would take mere months to decompose as opposed to centuries, and could seriously save all of us from drowning in trash.

That’s incredible. Apparently, the new plastic is also more energy efficient to create than traditional plastic, and seeing as it’s based on sugar, doesn’t require fossil fuels to create.

Jesus christ, anything else this plastic can do while they’re at it? We gonna find out that this plastic’s also a flash drive and a GPS?

Developers of the plastic are currently readying a “market ready” version of the stuff, and if you ask me, it can’t get here fast enough. How many times do we need to hear stories of floating trash scows before we finally come up with a solution? That, and the idea of composting egg shells and plastic bottles in the same load is pretty funny. Hurry up, science, we’re running out of damn time!

Source & Photo Source: FastCompany

2 iPhone Apps To Help Battle Climate Change Deniers

Asterios Kokkinos — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:00:12 +0000

FastCompany, a website I fall in love with more and more each day, has created a list of two iPhone apps to help you spread the news that the planet is dying. Fun!

Their first recommendation is SkepticalScience, an app that provides you with common climate change denier talking points, and then gives you the appropriate response. So the next time someone’s like, “Where’s all the global warming? It’s snowing,” instead of punching them in the face, you can just bring up the fact that global weather patterns being altered is creating both record high and low temperatures. THEN you can punch them in the face.

SkepticalScience is my favorite app, but Jungfrau Climate Guide is pretty awesome too. It’s a scenic look at the Jungfrau region of Switzerland, telling you exactly how different it’s become due to global warming. Also, apparently you can aim it at any glacier and it’ll tell you how big that glacier is supposed to be. While me and my iPhone aren’t usually hanging around glaciers, it’s still pretty cool.

For more info on these apps, Google them, you lazy son of a gun. What am I, your internet maid?

Source & Photo Source: FastCompany

Could White Roofs Help Stop Global Warming?

Asterios Kokkinos — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:00:13 +0000

Cities are hotter than rural areas – between 2 and 5 degrees hotter to be precise – because a lot of the materials used in their construction absorb heat instead of reflecting it. Asphalt roads, tar roofs and other artificial surfaces that make up cities trap sunlight, heating the area around it and intensifying the effects of global warming.

So geniuses at the National Center for Atmospheric Research had a brilliant thought – why not just paint the roofs of buildings white?

“Our research demonstrates that white roofs, at least in theory, can be an effective method for reducing urban heat,” said Keith Oleson, researcher at NCAR and the author of the study. “It remains to be seen if it’s actually feasible for cities to paint their roofs white, but the idea certainly warrants further investigation.”

Oleson’s computer simulations posit some very interesting data – the overall temperature of cities could be reduced by .7 degrees if all the roofs in said city were painted white. Additionally, as buildings with white roofs are less hot, they require less air conditioning, which in turn uses less electricity, which could help abate global warming.

Not bad work for a bucket of house paint and a dream!

Source & Photo Source: MSNBC

Even Greener Homes Built From Local Garbage

Nick Upton — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:00:55 +0000

The green home has long been a dream of the eco-friendly masses and cheaper solar arrays and wind generators have given them a good supplement to the evil grid. But some people are taking green living to another level by using not only recycled materials, but local raw recycled materials.

Dubbed “Earthships,” the homes can be the key to completely getting off the crowded grid — as the ship in Earthship denotes. The thick walls of the homes are built from old stucco walls in New Mexico and bottles, cans and worn tires everywhere.

Earthships can be found in most U.S. states today, though New Mexico is the leader, followed closely by Colorado.

Several have sprung up in England and France as well as in South Africa, among other countries. And with more and more governments tightening up their building codes to require increased energy efficiency and smarter use of resources, Earthships are bound to become even more popular.

[ViaScientific American | Images via Earthship Biotecture]

1816 Sterling Motor May Drive Solar Energy In 2010

Nick Upton — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:14:20 +0000

Designed almost 200 years ago, the sterling motor is about to rev up again, and it could mean cost-effective solar energy on a huge scale.

The Scientific American featured the novel solar energy plant, scheduled to start up in early 2010 in Arizona.

The 1.5 megawatt (MW) demonstration site, known as Maricopa Solar, is set to begin operations early January 2010, with units provided by the Arizona-based Stirling Energy Systems (SES).
While 1.5 MW is only a fraction of the power that may be generated at sites SES has contracted to develop in California and Texas, spokesperson Janette Coates says this is a necessary first step in the technology’s commercialization.

“It’s important for our industry to see — and our partners and investors — that we can take a small-scale plant and get it operational before we break ground on larger ones,” Coates told the Scientific American.

The engines boast 31 percent efficiency, a nearly 200 percent jump over most commercial solar power generators.

The engines have somewhat of a checkered past and multiple criticisms. There have been several planned installations over the years, but the Arizona plant could give those other plans the boost they need — assuming the engines work. Engineers have long questioned the engines as they can get troublesome and need a lot of maintenance to keep working.

The engines work by harnessing the power of expanding and condensing gas. The heat from the sun mirror expands gas on one side of the chamber, the other side chamber is cooled. The chambers grow and shrink beneath a piston, driving a crankshaft.

The problems come in keeping the chamber in tune and running smooth. All those parts need constant attention, not the vast, unmanned solar farms people want.

The draw of this system is that it takes very little water — necessary in those big solar farms. It also means that during the maintenance, there is very little disruption of the power flow. If a bed of photovoltaic panels goes down, a big chunk of the output is gone.

It will certainly be an interesting development in the field of green energy, and even if it doesn’t work, it could mean the competition necessary to push all forms of solar power technology even further.

Animated gif thanks to Wikipedia.

Tesla Takes A Cross-Country, Hijinx-Filled Road Trip

Geoffrey Golden — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:17:05 +0000

Don’t think an electric powered car can survive long drives or tough climates? The folks at Tesla Motors aimed to dispel these myths about the electric car by taking their $100,000 Roadster on a 2,700-mile cross-country road trip from California through Texas and up to Detroit for the currently running North American International Auto Show. So now that they’ve shown the Tesla can handle long drives, it’s time to ask the bigger question: what hilarious sexual mishaps occurred on their road trip?

If we’ve learned nothing from movies, whenever a group of people go on a road trip, sexy hijinx ensue. Did the electric car engineers stop at Al Gore’s mansion for a skinny dipping party, only to discover that some mischievous co-eds stole their hemp underwear? Did one of the engineers learn to “get off” by shocking himself with the 240 volt house plug, used to charge the Roadster’s battery? Did the craziest engineer eat a mouse?

Expect a direct-to-DVD movie in early 2011, followed by a sequel a few months later.

[Image via]

Department of Energy Offers $47 Million For Green Data Centers

Asterios Kokkinos — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:30:52 +0000

Did you know that industry computer servers account for 1.5% of the nation’s energy use? The Department of Energy did which is why they awarded $47 million dollars to companies who are seeking to improve energy usage in data centers.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu awarded cash to 14 projects, including HP’s power supply chain projects, Alcatel-Lucent’s data center cooling project, and IBM’s equipment and software project.

The scary thing is, with increased cloud computing comes increased toll on servers – instead of MS Outlook using your processor, Gmail uses theirs, and as such puts more load on the energy grid. God, imagine how much power Google Wave must take up – if more people start using that cloud beast, we may have to get used to brownouts.