Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Upcoming Events and Goodies for Do-It-Yourselfers -- Time to Study?

Upcoming events you might be interested in attending:

AWEA Wind Power Supply Chain WorkshopCleveland, OH December 8-9, 2008

Windpower 2009Conference and ExhibitionChicago, IL May 4-7, 2009

Links to Solar Energy Events

Links to Web-Based Alternate Energy Newsletters

Want to Do It Yourself? Or, Learn More about How These Things Work?

Good references for the adventurous "Do-It-Yourselfer" types:
Alternate Energy Resource Manual--Lots of ideas for ways you can build your own alternate energy sources for your home or small business.

Solar Power Design Manual--Teach Yourself All About Solar Power. Comprehensive Manual by Genuine Expert. Spreadsheet Included.

Renewable Energy Solutions--The Manual--The folks who put this together have been presented on TV, Google, and the New York Times as a source of Alternate Energy Information. Good stuff for those in need of Alternate Energy!

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Using Solar Panel to Cook, Sera Temple, Lhasa, Tibet, China
Using Solar Panel to Cook, Sera Temple, Lhasa, Tibet, China Photographic Print
Su, Keren
Buy at AllPosters.com

Here's proof that you don't need to have a huge amount of "technology" to effectively use alternate energy (in this case, solar energy for cooking). The energy from the sun is available for anyone who wants to capture it--and you can use simple materials such as cardboard, silver-coated mylar film or mirrors, and a rebar pot-holder stand to make this concept work.



Friday, November 21, 2008

Solar Happenings in the San Francisco Bay Area

Chinese solar photovoltaic manufacturer Trina Solar Ltd. of Changzhou, China, has chosen San Francisco, California as its base for North America sales operations. A few miles south, in the Silicon Valley, the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation dedicated a 185 kW solar-electric system on the roof of their Parkside Hall--an ancillary building next to their main facility. The solar installation of SunPower solar panels mounted on non-roof-penetrating T10 Solar Roof Tiles was designed and installed by SunPower Corporation.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Remote "Electrification" in the Rural Philippines - the Solar Method

In coordination with the Australian and Philippine governments, BP Solar installed one of the world's largest solar power projects (the Municipal Solar Infrastructure Project - MSIP) in the Philippines between 1997 through 2001--with ongoing imrpovements to the facilities. The Australian Government provided a grant and soft-loan combination of about $27 million to fund the project for which BP Solar provided design, training, engineering, and installation services after the Australian and Philippine governments confirmed the intended locations for the facilities.

The installation provides lighting for homes, schools, and community centers, as well as remote telecommunication, fresh drinking water, and vaccine refrigeration for about 721,140 individuals in 11 provinces, 53 municipalities, and 435 villages in the most remote and otherwise un-electrified areas of Mindanao and Visayas.

BP installed 1,145 packaged solar systems in the 435 villages in order to upgrade four district hospitals, 11 rural health centers, 104 village health centers, 260 village drinking water supply systems, six municipal halls, 201 village halls, 266 schools, and lighting for 289 communal areas.

A key factor is that before starting this project, the government and BP representatives prepared the villagers for the project by hosting community assemblies to introduce the project concept and the basics of solar electricity generation. Community groups were formed to manage the systems, and training was provided to 2,251 villagers so they could maintain and repair the facilities. After the installation, follow-up visits were conducted to ensure that the facilities were operating effectively without any troubles.

If more systems like this were installed through joint ventures with governments and private industries, there would be a lot less dependance on oil and other fossil fuels.

At the same time, although governments (federal, state, and city) should get on board with alternate, renewable energy sources for their facilities such as the Philippine installation, it's still up to us as individuals to investigate and implement our own energy-saving and alternate energy applications--whether it be solar photovoltaics, solar water heating, solar air heating, wind-power generation, and other sources.

(The BP Solar Project office is in Mandaue City, Cebu--and the BPPI's main office is in Makati City.)

Friday, November 7, 2008

Upcoming Solar and Alternate Events - Resources for Do-It-Yourselfers!

The resources are out there. All you have to do is either attend an event to get the information in person (take a lot of notes!) and get the materials there:

American Wind Energy Association

AWEA Wind Energy Fall Symposium 2008
Palm Desert, CA November 19-21, 2008

AWEA Wind Power Supply Chain Workshop
Cleveland, OH December 8-9, 2008

Windpower 2009
Conference and Exhibition
Chicago, IL May 4-7, 2009

Links to Solar Energy Events

Links to Web-Based Alternate Energy Newsletters

Or... you can also find good references for the adventurous "Do-It-Yourselfer" types:

Alternate Energy Resource Manual--Lots of ideas for ways you can build your own alternate energy sources for your home or small business.

Solar Power Design Manual--Teach Yourself All About Solar Power. Comprehensive Manual by Genuine Expert. Spreadsheet Included.

Renewable Energy Solutions--The Manual--The folks who put this together have been presented on TV, Google, and the New York Times as a source of Alternate Energy Information. Good stuff for those in need of Alternate Energy!

Happy Friday! If you get these references today, you'll be able to get the materials at the hardware store this evening or tomorrow morning and have a good weekend start at building your own alternate energy contraption!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Project, anyone? Home-made solar water heater?

A recent post in another forum mentioned that all the focus nowadays seems to be on solar photovoltaic panels--that's the "high-tech" and "sexy" issue that's getting all the attention.

But the benefits of other, less technology-oriented, solar energy collection are largely being ignored.

Anyone who has entered a car left on a parking lot all day (even a day when it's cloudy) can attest to the "collection of solar heat".

So, the next question is, "How do we USE this captured solar heat?"

That's something we could be working on.

Also, if you leave a black or dark-colored garden hose laying on the lawn all day, you can generally be sure that the water in the hose will be hot. Very hot.

So again, how do you use this heat?

These scenarios point to using an enclosed solar collector with piping/tubing within the enclosure. The piping comes from a water source, flows to the enclosed solar collector tubing, absorbs the heat collected and stored in the enclosure, then flows out to provide hot water for bathing or through a heat-exchanger (like a radiator) to provide room heat.

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) contractors and construction professionals are already aware of using this type of heat collection and are using versions of it for under-floor thermal heating. The thermal mass of the floor around the embedded water-flow piping radiates the heat into the living space of the buidings. At the moment, most of this type of "space-heating" is provided by natural gas heaters heating the water going to the heat-exchanging floor-tubing. But this could also be accomplished by using parabolic solar collectors heating the water for storage in insulated tanks and then releasing the water through the floor-heat exchangers. It won't take long before these should be common.

In the meantime, there's nothing stopping folks like you and me from reading up on this alternate energy use and just doing something ourselves. This beats waiting around for the government or ready-made products to be available.

Just a thought.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Hybrid Concentrated Solar Energy - Do It Yourself?

Copper tubing and panels being soldered before being spray-painted flat-black. To be used in solar water heater collector. Work done at the University of Guam. Photo by Dave Gardner


The concept of "Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV)" is becoming well-known and can be seen every day on the road in much of the U.S. and the rest of the world.

But now, in a joint Australian, American, and Chinese research project, the concept of "Hybrid Concentrated Solar Energy" is being studied and has resulted in devices that combine solar heat collection with solar photovoltaic electricity generation.

Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU), China's Tianjin University, and Silicon Valley's Chromasun created large roof-mounted solar-trough-concentrator systems that use the mirrors to focus sunlight onto strips of high-efficiency photovoltaic cells. Then, the thermal aspect of the collectors uses heat-absorbing water-flow tubes that provide flow to hot water storage and in-slab floor heating. These devices were large installations (for example, 80 mirrors, 80 meters long, 20 kilowatts) used primarily for businesses and government institutions.

This process has worked so well that now the researchers are developing smaller devices to be available for individual consumer home use.

You can read more details about this project here: Hybrid Concentrated Solar Energy".

Still Room for the Do-It-Yourselfers

Although it's great that this type of research is being done at the University and Corporate level, what's to keep folks from tinkering with this concept at home and coming up with something similarly innovative or even better? Who wants to wait for the research and development to finally work its way through the government and corporate bureaucracy before becoming available for regular consumers like us?

You can buy "pieces" of solar photovoltaic chips or the whole panels on eBay or from other sources. You can also go to local hardware stores to buy copper tubing, PVC-pipes, caulking compound, flat-black paint, "glazing", plywood, aluminum sheets, and other supplies. You can also find plastic fresnel lenses (useful as "concentrators") readily available either through online suppliers or your local stores.

If you don't have much in the way of mechanical or electrical or plumping ability, you may be able to find some friends or acquaintances who might like to help you with a project like this. You only need to ask around.

If you have a website shows your own alternate energy contraptions and you'd like to share it, let me know the link--and I'll link to it here!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Losing Interest in Alternate Energy? DON'T!

Just because the gas/fuel prices have come down almost by half (here in the U.S.) since about 4 months ago, don't abandon the continuing push toward alternate energy. This drop in prices is only a brief moment in this crazy economy. You can bet that fuel prices will be jumping up toward the end of the year.

Who to blame? Who knows? It could be the OPEC folks in cahoots with the automotive manufacturers messing with the supply to lull us into buying more gas-guzzlers. It could be some kind of manipulation by the big oil companies to play games with us while they post RECORD PROFITS! But it really doesn't matter.

It's time for ALL OF US to explore our own methods of tapping into alternate energy sources--whether it's homemade do-it-yourself solar collectors for heating water or air, or assembling your own solar photovoltaic panels and then installing them on your roof. Or, hybrid-electric-vehicles (HEV) or plug-in-hybrid-electric-vehicle (PHEV), or Natural-Gas-Vehicles (NGV), or hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles (HFCV).

Of course, not only should we be switching to other sources of energy, we should also be conserving and cutting back on how we currently use energy. By properly insulating our homes, by switching the incandescent light bulbs to fluorescent bulbs or better yet, Light-Emitting-Diodes (LED), by not taking long hot-water-showers, by not leaving unnecessary lights and electrical appliances on when they're not being used.

Some of this will require minor adjustments to our daily habits. And some of this will take more than that--it may require a major investment into the methods of using the alternate energy sources.

But every step toward alternate energy (anything other than fossil fuel) will be a good move that will pay off quicker than most would assume.

I'm curious. With the folks from all over the world reading this blog and some of my rants here, what are you doing and what are your countries doing to use alternate energy and to conserve energy?