The Race Between Two Forms of Sunlight

clipped from dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com There is a race afoot between two energy sources that are, in essence, different forms of concentrated sunlight Coal, of course, is one, forged from the baked, compressed remains of ancient plant life. And newcomer, capturing the heat of the sun with arrays of mirrors and turning it into electricity. estimates that China’s explosively growing use of coal for electric power had vaulted it past the United States into world leadership in emissions of carbon dioxide. so-called solar thermal power plants are steadily improving, in part because of new techniques for storing solar energy as heat so that electricity can be generated when it is needed most concentrated solar power — can be found in a nice, and enthusiastic, overview of the technology the Army’s Schofield Barracks on Oahu, where more than 5,300 homes are being built with solar hot water systems and photovoltaic panels When the project is done, it will be the world’s largest solar community

Solar king and the Stalin of windpower

This article is long and detailed so follow the link for more information.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Hermann Scheer has been described both as the "solar king" and the "Stalin of windpower" "Our dependence on fossil fuels amounts to global pyromania, "And the only fire extinguisher we have at our disposal is renewable energy". Scheer, chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy what has become known as "Scheer's law", German households and businesses that generate renewable energy can sell it back to the grid at more than triple the normal market price. "The key to it working is that consumers have guaranteed access to the grid at guaranteed prices," More than 300,000 individuals and small businesses have jumped at the opportunity in Germany, and the number is rising all the time. Scheer's family, whose house is powered by a windmill, is among them. Scheer's law has created whole new industries - wind power, which employs 80,000 people in Germany, and photovoltaic (solar) power, which employs 40,000 "You give people energy independence and you get social commitment

New Ways to Store Solar Energy for Nighttime and Cloudy Days

clipped from www.nytimes.com Solar power, the holy grail of renewable energy, has always faced the problem of how to store the energy captured from the sun’s rays so that demand for electricity can be met at night or whenever the sun is not shining. The difficulty is that electricity is hard to store. Batteries are not up to efficiently storing energy on a large scale. A different approach being tried by the solar power industry could eliminate the problem. Storing Solar Energy The idea is to capture the sun’s heat. Solar thermal systems are built to gather heat from the sun, boil water into steam, spin a turbine and make power, as existing solar thermal power plants do — but not immediately. The heat would be stored for hours or even days, like water behind a dam. “You take the energy the sun is putting into the earth that day, store it and capture it, put it into the reservoir, and use it on demand,” SolarReserve, a company backed in part by United Technologies, the Hartford conglomerate.

Save Your Favorite TV Show

Off track but a little fun.

clipped from www.usatoday.com It's that time of the year again when flailing television shows need all the help they can get, which is where you come in. Take our survey and vote for the shows you just can't live without next season. VOTE:  Which shows do you want to see back next season? clipped from www.zoomerang.com Within the next few weeks the networks will determine which of this season's TV series will return next fall. Tell us — and the networks — what you hope happens to these shows. Please select "Keep," "Drop," or "Don't Care" from the tab under each show. We'll reveal the results later this month.

Rocky Politics: The Coal Question

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Which weighs more this election year—the economy, or the environment? This was supposed to be the year the environment and climate change reached a political tipping point For the Democrats, the issue is especially prickly. As the WSJ reports today (sub reqd.), coal has become part of the political battlefield as the primaries wind down: The race for the Democratic nomination hinges on a handful of states where coal is still king. That puts Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a bind: how to attack global warming without threatening an industry that provides half the U.S.’s electricity and more than 80,000 mining jobs. Sen. Barack Obama called the U.S. “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” We’ve written before And both candidates have been taken to task for double-talk on coal, such as Sen. Clinton’s apparent support for mountain-top removal coal mining

This Solar House, Part One

In this two part feature, Norma and Alan Williamson explain in detail how they went about a zero-energy retrofit of their home, which saves money, energy, and the global climate.


Solar, Part 1 (Dec)
We moved into our 2,300-square-foot house around Thanksgiving 2003. Within a month, in order to make use of state rebates that would decrease after the first of the year, we purchased a 6-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) system. Installation occurred in two phases. First, in December, we installed the 4-kW array of 35 sapphire-blue PV panels that you can see on the south-facing side of our main roof; eight months later we added the 2-kW set over the garage (see "Solar, Part 2" below). This 6-kW PV system supplies all our energy needs, from our home's heating and air conditioning to the "fuel" for our electric car. (To learn how PV panels work, see Inside a Solar Cell.) Cost: $36,000 (6-kW system; after rebates and tax incentives totaling $17,500, our out-of-pocket expenditures came to $18,500)

Insulation (Jan)
As part of our goal to make our home net-zero-energy—that is, generating more energy than is consumed—we set about improving our home's insulation. In January, we contracted a company to inject cellulose (recycled paper) insulation into the walls, bringing them up to an R15 level. (The R-value indicates the resistance of a material to the passage of heat and cold.) The following month, we replaced our leaky, single-glaze aluminum windows with dual-pane thermal windows. These are so-called "low-emissivity" windows, which keep winter heat in and summer heat out. We left our front picture window (behind car in main image and at left) intentionally non-low-emissivity, so the winter sun could warm our living room—a passive solar technique. Cost: $1,300 (insulation), $10,000 (dual-pane windows)

Roof (Mar–Jul)
To further increase thermal resistance, we decided to replace the roof and upgrade our attic insulation. In March, we removed the 4-kW solar array as well as the existing, substandard roof tiles. The following month, we brought the attic insulation up to an R30 level. Then, in June, we installed aluminized solar sheathing on the roof. This is a thermal reflective plywood that keeps external heat out and reflects interior heat back in. We also installed roof jacks (to hold up the solar array) and then a new composite shingle roof. Finally, in July, we put in a whole-house cooling fan and whole-house heat-recirculating system (as well as two skylights, one seen in the center of the roof). The fan cools the attic and ceilings when outside temperatures are high, while the heat fan shuttles warm air from the attic to the ground floor when outside temperatures are low. Cost: $300 (attic insulation), $23 per 4' x 8' board (solar sheathing), $4,000 (new roof), $600 (whole-house fan), $570 (whole-house heater), $1,450 (two skylights)