The Energy Blog

Build Yourself a Solar Space Heater

Gary Reysa is a retired airplane product development engineer who lives in the "Big Sky" country near Bozeman Montana. His website Build it Solar has plans, tools, and information to help you build solar projects that save money and reduce pollution. Projects are low cost designs for the do it you selfer. Some of the projects featured on the home page are for a thermal storage wall, building a sun space, plans for passive solar homes, how he is coming on a plan to cut his own energy consumption in half, ten energy saving projects with one year paybacks and a solar space heater.

The simple and inexpensive passive solar space heater that he uses to heat his shop/barn is a project that could be completed in a weekend. The design can be adapted to suit a wide variety of spaces, including a living space.

SOM Designs Zero Energy Chinese Skyscraper

The 71-story, 2.2-million-square-foot Pearl River Tower, in the new city of Guangzhou, China, being built for the China National Tobacco Corp., is a “net”-zero-energy building designed by the storied architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), New York City, scheduled for completion in 2009.  The firm has set its sights on redefining one of its bread-and-butter project types, the corporate headquarters, into a model of high-tech sustainability

The Pearl River Tower epitomizes the super tall corporate headquarters building of tomorrow as an iconic, high performance structure, that is designed so that it potentially produces as much energy as it consumes. The building’s form guides wind to a pair of openings at its mechanical floors. The winds drive turbines that generate energy for the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. The openings also provide structural relief, by allowing wind to pass through the building instead of pressing against it.

Energy Efficiency Standards Proposed in Boston

A UPI story reports that Boston officials have announced plans to require stricter building standards to promote energy efficiency.If adopted Boston will be the first in the nation with green building requirements.

The standards would mandate that new buildings meet requirements involving efficient heating and cooling, use of recycled materials, separation and disposal of waste and energy efficient walls and glass. Out of 70 design areas, 26 would have to meet green standards.

The standards would not be as strict as LEEDS standards, it will use similar certification requirements, just not as strict.

Teacher Saves Two-Thirds of his Electricity

The Christian Science Monitor had an article on saving energy at home, that reports on a high school science teacher, Ray Janke, who decided to see what he could do to save on his electric bill.

He exchanged incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents, put switches and surge protectors on his electronic equipment to reduce the "phantom load" - the trickle consumption even when electronic equipment is off - and bought energy-efficient appliances.

Two things happened: He saw a two-thirds reduction in his electric bill, and he found himself under audit by Mass Electric. The company thought he'd tampered with his meter. "They couldn't believe I was using so little," he says.

Twenty-two percent of all energy in the United States is used for residential purposes. (Transportation accounts for 28 percent.)

Cutting back on electricity used for lighting (9 percent of residential usage nationwide) presents the quickest savings-to-effort ratio. The EPA estimates that changing only 25 percent of your home's bulbs can cut a lighting bill in half. Incandescent bulbs waste 90 percent of their energy as heat, and compact fluorescents, which can be up to five times more efficient, last years longer as well.

This is going to be my major campaign, to reduce use of electricity in the home and I will continue to refer to articles on this subject. If everyone were to be energy conscious at home we could slow down greatly the need for new power plants and in the extreme eliminate any new plants.

The US government has a home energy saver calculator at: hes.lbl.gov. The Energy Star program website is: www.energystar.gov . For tips on sealing your home, go to: www.energyconservatory.com .

Lighting the Key to Energy Saving

The BBC News website has an article "Lighting the key to energy saving" that quotes the IEA as saying a global switch to efficient lighting systems would trim the world's electricity bill by nearly one-tenth. Better building regulations would boost uptake of efficient lighting, it says. Nineteen percent of global electricity generation is taken for lighting - that's more than is produced by hydro or nuclear stations, and about the same that's produced from natural gas.

There is a strong case for introducing lighting measures into building codes. Currently codes have a lot of energy measures in them, but with few exceptions there aren't specific provisions for lighting.

A related article argues for banning the incandescent light bulb, which includes this quote: "They waste so much energy that if they were invented today, it is highly unlikely they would be allowed onto the market."

The Energy Blog has strongly argued for more energy efficient lighting since being enlightened while researching the post: "Wal-Mart's Bright Idea"

Are Super Efficient Buidings Justified?

Energy costs are among the top business expense line items, and some companies are turning that to their advantage.

Smart buildings could be the next big software and networking play with venture capitalists showing strong interest in the sector. Innovations are revolutionizing energy use, to ultimately combat global warming.

An estimated 35% of U.S. electricity is used in commercial buildings and another 29% in industry. Businesses spend $135 billion a year on energy, and as much as half of that is wasted. Commercial buildings create 278 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually.

That is changing. Some high-performance buildings are generating their own renewable energy and selling excess kilowatts back to the utility. Advanced lighting systems harvest daylight, while new solar technologies can make the whole building produce power. Certification for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Development (LEED), the green building rating system, is helping to boost property values and lower vacancy rates.

Big buildings have big appetites for energy, with massive potential to conserve it -- and even to produce their own renewable energy. Super-efficient buildings can cut costs and carbon, generating generous goodwill -- but can owners justify the price?

MIT Enterprise Forum Northwest will host a program in Bellevue on November 8, 2006 to explore recent developments and incentives for super-efficient commercial buildings. The Enterprise Forum is an outreach of MIT, which recently has launched major initiatives in energy research.

The Effect of Zero Energy Homes on Peak Load

The effect of distributed solar power used in a zero energy home (ZEH) subdivision on peak demand is disccused in the paper Impact of Distributed Solar on SMUD’S Peak Load. The study was conducted on the Pemier Gardens Zero Energy Homes subdivision in the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD).

Sustainable Houses More Profitable

HOK, a global architectural firm, made a study of the firm’s profitability on 15 green projects found that they were, on average, 25% more profitable than conventional projects. There is a widespread belief that sustainable design is more time-consuming for the design team and therefore not as profitable as conventional projects. But that isn’t the case. They discovered that the sustainable projects did better than the average for conventional projects completed during the same period. The study did not look into the reasons for this difference, but Lazarus speculates that integrated design helps the firm reduce costs while delivering a better product. Other possible factors include more motivated clients, a more focused design team, or a higher fraction of institutional projects with bigger budgets.

Thanks to tip from TreeHugger