Archive for April, 2007
Zero Carbon House
The Zero Carbon House is a low energy demonstration project to show how renewable energy can create a unique living experience on a remote island in a severe climate. A holistic approach has been taken to eliminating household carbon emissions that would normally result from heating and powering the home, running the family car and growing and transporting food.
Interesting systematic thinking from the Scots on a replicable and sustainable design.
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Another pretty turbine
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Mariah Power Inc. has developed a 1kw, 30 foot tall home turbine that cuts in at 4 meters/second (9 mph) and is a simple appliance. You supply the concrete foundation and the appliance does the rest. If you live in a windy spot, this could be just the ticket. And for you fashion conscious power users, it’s available in multiple colors, white, blue, green, red, and clear. At $4,000 for the appliance, it’s in a competitive price range and with its design, you’re not likely to get complaints from your neighbors… Tip of the hat to MetaEfficient for uncovering this product. |
Calpine up 15%, clears acquisition barriers
We’ve been watching Calpine with interest these past few months as it has become apparent that the company is for sale. Today the company announced that it reached an agreement with Cleco Corp over Acadia Power Holdings. This comes on the heels of the settlement with bond holders of $12B for $0.33 on the dollar last week.
It’s clear the Street likes the news as buyers sent the stock up another 15% today. In January, Calpine was trading for just over $1 per share and today’s closing price was $3.75 per share, nearly a 4 bagger.
Community meets Conservation
Local Cooling has a great concept. Download and install their power management software to maximize power conservation on your installed Windows XP computers (note: we wish they had Linux and Apple versions too…but Windows is a good start.)
More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we’re not using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion dollars! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent in energy terms to the gas consumption used by one car. Learn More About PC Power Consumption…
It’s free, it creates impact, why not join and contribute to the energy savings?
Wind doesn’t have to visually pollute
Aerotecture horizontal turbine installation
Industrial designer Bil Becker has created a wind column design intended to be grafted into urban architecture and help to make buildings more sustainable from a power perspective. These turbines aren’t ultra-efficient, the horizontal model is rated at 1.8kw per module in a 13 meter per second wind (30mph) and the vertical model is rated at 1kw in the same conditions. The turbines aren’t yet price competitive either running at $21,000 per module for horizontal and $15,000 for vertical turbines. But, they are very visually interesting and as volumes increase, price should drop.
The good news about these turbines is that even with the high required wind velocity, they’re likely to be successful. Why? Because urban environments are notorious for “making their own wind” – or rather, large vertical structures act as sails on wind currents not available at ground level and these winds sail through streets (urban canyons) at a pretty good clip. The installation environment plus the design element have the makings of an interesting success story.
We’ll watch Aerotecture with interest as the product comes to market.
