John [jpratt27] has published an excellent summary of a new plan to develop a new solar-powered greenhouse in South Australia. This plant will not only produce fresh vegetables but will also be used to desalinate water in a very arid region. A few more details are needed about how the resulting salts will be dealt […]
Tag: Solar
Solar Energy as an alternative fuel source.
February 17 Energy [Science and Tech] News via GeoHarvy
Originally posted on geoharvey:
Science and Technology: ¶ A number of studies investigating the effect of wind turbines on birds have found that the actual impact wind turbines have on avians is relatively low. However, according to this new research, published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, wind turbines’ effects on bats cannot be…
What the heck is an Earthship? … maybe an idea whose time has come!
Have you ever heard of the concept of an “Earthship“? I was introduced to the concept by my brother-in-law about 14 years ago and was blown away. What is an Earthship then? In a nutshell, an Earthship is an Eco-friendly home, made predominantly from recycled materials, designed to be as close to “off-grid” as possible.
The concept of Earthships arose in the halcyon flower-power days of the 1970s in various states in the southern USA. The concept seems to have developed by Michael Reynolds, an architect from New Mexico. As you can see in the linked Wikipedia article, his idea was not without problems, but it was, none-the-less revolutionary. Michael has a website where he educates about, demonstrates and promotes the Earthship technology. The site has designs for a number of systems that an Earthship needs if it is to meet code (see figure 2, below). Continue reading “What the heck is an Earthship? … maybe an idea whose time has come!”
Conservation International – A blog to make a difference
One of my colleagues showed me this site today and it looks really good. This is a link to their blog page. This group has some pretty high priced help on their roster. From Harrison Ford to Hillary Clinton, they seem to have the bases covered. One of the environmental movement needs more of is […]
Solar Lights Recycling | Your Solar Link
I am constantly looking for good environmental blogs and have been following a really good one lately named “Environmental world for all”. The site is authored by a university student in peace studies with minor in environmental studies. One of the author’s recent posts discusses the benefits of solar LEDs for use as Christmas lights. It is a […]
Solar Thermal – What to do when the power goes out!
I spent 6 months living in Kathmandu back in the 90s. It was commonplace for the power to go off each evening for 2 or more hours and to cope with the outages everyone had battery backups and gas-powered generators.
But over here in Canada we have never needed battery backups or generators to keep things running. The electrical system is far more reliable here than it was in Nepal in the 90s. That being said, we do still get the occasional power outages but for the most part they are little more than an inconvenience. The same cannot be said for solar thermal systems when the power goes out. Continue reading “Solar Thermal – What to do when the power goes out!”
City of Ottawa – Help for Folks Installing Solar Thermal
The City of Ottawa has a nice new web page that acknowledges the existence of solar energy, and in particular solar domestic hot water (SDHW). The site, which can be found on ottawa.ca gives information about two different types of SDHW systems: a CSA approved factory packaged system and not factory packaged system. Both types of installation […]
Failsafe systems for solar hot water
As I mentioned in earlier blog entries, my system has a number of failsafe features to maintain system heat and pressure within tolerable boundaries. In the summer, the system dumps excess heat into the swimming pool, and in the winter it dumps the excess heat into a radiant water heater in the basement. This spring […]
Power Surges and Drops – Causing Electrical Problems?
I don’t know if you have noticed it too, but there seems to be a lot more power outages and surges these days. I’m not talking about the 20 day variety like the one that hit us during the ice storm, but rather the one and two second ones that seem to come in bunches […]
Undergrads bring energy education to Ghana
In another piece from MIT press, here is a story about how some MIT undergrads brought alternate energy education to schools in Ghana. Now if we could only get the education here in Canada… Undergrads bring energy education to Ghana.
OpenEI Blog: Solar-powered desalinisation
I just ran across this interesting post about a small (1000 gallon per day) and smaller (80 gallon per day) solar-powered desalinization unit that could be deployed quickly and cheaply in disaster zones where potable water is hard to come by and electrical power even harder to come by. You can read more about it here: […]
300 Years of Fossil Fuels in (About) 300 Seconds « Fighting for Hope’s Blog
Got 5 minutes? Spend it watching the worlds’s energy history at the “Fighting for Hope’s” blog. Show it to your kids and to their teachers. 300 Years of Fossil Fuels in (About) 300 Seconds « Fighting for Hope’s Blog.
So, what solar equipment do I need to buy (part 1)?
Solar system components
When you start to think about a solar system, you have to remember that the industry is relatively new in Canada. It has been used in Europe for decades, but its penetration on this side of the Atlantic has been marginal until recently. That means that you have to be conscious that some of the product on the market may not have been certified for use in Canada. The components that were installed in our house and that I will be speaking about below were all CSA approved and the “non-packaged” installation proposal that prepared was certified as compliant with the Ontario Building Code by a professional engineer.
The solar collectors we use in our house are the CAREarth Vacuum Tube Solar Collector SJ Series Heat Pipe Technology. Continue reading “So, what solar equipment do I need to buy (part 1)?”
But, it’s always cloudy and cold here! What good is solar heat here?
It is a sad fact, but if you don’t get any sun, you don’t get any solar heat. But even the grayest areas of the country get a significant amount of sun. Thermomax, a is a Canadian company that uses European technology to provide solar hot water products. Its web site has done a great job […]
How does solar thermal work?
In my earlier post I discussed how we decided to select solar hot water in our new house, but before we made the decision we had to understand something about the technology so that we could evaluate the options available to us. In this post, I will be describing the components involved in solar thermal systems in very general terms and I will wrap it up with a discussion of the “gotcha” points we ran into when implementing our solution.
Solar Hot Water – Not easy, but worth it!
When we bought our new house about 4 years ago, we wanted to be able to take some control over the utility costs so that when energy prices rise, we would have a bit of protection. There are lots of technologies out there that are environmentally friendly, but not all of them are suited to use in a sub-division and many have a low rate of return on investment. Further complicating matters is the fact that many of the municipal inspectors have no idea what they are looking at when presented with some of the new technologies. So which one to choose… Continue reading “Solar Hot Water – Not easy, but worth it!”
Gourken's Brain Dump (more of a trickle actually) 