However, in Japan the whole country follows one system: recycle everything you can or pay the price. No one questions the sense behind it, and as far as I can tell, everyone does it.

So how does it work? There are four basic influences at work:

Trash: In Japan, you don’t just throw out trash, you pay to have it taken away. Compared to most pay to throw trash plans in the U.S., you pay a lot. A dollar or so for a small bag. However, recycling is free, so why wouldn’t you do it?

Home recycling: To avoid throwing out trash, home recycling set-ups are often quite elaborate. Where I am living right now we have 4 bins and a pile for paper recycling. The bins are as follows: small plastic bottles, large plastic bottles, aluminum, and trash. Glass can also be recycled separately as well as other metals, but those aren’t as common.

Point of sale disposal: When you buy a tea or some other drink from a machine you don’t have an option to throw it in the trash, there is only recycling. At convenience stores, you have 5 or 6 different bins, with only one set aside for burnable trash. If you can’t burn it, it can be recycled, and will be.

Product packaging: Products are designed for recycling (or burning) carefully. They have to follow certain rules and regulations to make sure that they products can be disposed of easily and efficiently. For the plastic labels on soda bottles that cannot be recycled, they easily tear off to be thrown in the trash. Other products come with instructions on how to dispose of them effectively.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

Japanese Recyling: A Complete System

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Two years ago when I lived in Japan for a brief period I wondered why plastic bags were so common. Recycling was in full swing and houses were adorned with solar water and photovoltaics.

So what was with all the plastic bags? Bags for the smallest purchases to the biggest. No one brought their own and no one seemed to question it. While bags are generally used sparingly and come in a variety of sizes to best fit whatever you are putting in them, two years later, the Japanese are still using tons of plastic bags.

I tried to think about why this was. Even America, which comes late to the party for just about everything green, is beginning to ban plastic bags and encourage consumers to quit using them. However, in Japan, when I go to the bread store I still get one plastic bag filled with other bags individually containing my purchases.

In the U.S. we are told our bags go to landfills where they will exist for hundreds of years, poisoning the ground and preventing other things from decomposing naturally. The Japanese plastic bag has a slightly different fate.

From the time it hits the trash and is carted off it does not go to a landfill, it goes to an incinerator where it is burnt up into nothingness, as if it never existed. So, despite Japan’s love affair with the plastic bag, you don’t see them tumbling around in the streets, caught in trees, or clogging up landfills.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

Japan’s Trash Burning Culture Means Plastic Bags Aplenty

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For the last three weeks I have been hunkered down in Western Japan in a city called Kumamoto. It gets hot down here. Really really hot, some days, and it is still the spring.

However, the air conditioning has never been turned on. Why? The home was designed before air conditioning existed to keep people cool without it.

Here are a few of the more obvious ways in which this works:

• The low roof and lack of attic space does not accumulate rising heat,
• The roof overhang extends several feet beyond the exterior walls, giving lots of shade,
• Bamboo bundles are cheap, easily purchased, and can be propped up to keep the sun off of the house,
• The exterior walls completely open to airflow when you slide open the doors. Much better than a few windows for natural airflow,
• Tatami floors always seem to feel cool.

Unlike most home in the U.S. these days, which are designed to seal up air-tight and keep everything out, the Japanese home is open and breezy. It probably doesn’t do a very good job with the air conditioning on, but it it isn’t even on then that doesn’t seem to matter as much.

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Better Than Air Conditioning: Japanese Homes

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Features & Specifications

The Veco320L is a fairly full featured TV that will likely satisfy all but the most hardcore TV enthusiasts. It has 32″ of viewable area, and supports 720p and 1080i formats, and supports resolutions up to 1366×768. Of course it has all the inputs that come on flat panel TVs today. The rest of the usual specifications can be found on Vizio’s Veco320L webpage.
The coloring of the TV is somewhat unusual. I guess Vizio felt the need to make this TV stand out and made the unit almost entirely white. Personally, I like the look of it, its very clean looking.
In Vizio’s earth mindedness they also packaged the TV in recycled material and printed their manual on recycled material with soy based ink. This is a nice touch that a lot of manufacturers tend to overlook.

Power Consumption

This is the bread and butter of the Veco320L. This TV boasts a 15% reduction in power consumption over version 3.0 Energy Star specifications. They also claim that this is a 44% power savings versus a traditional 32″ LCD TV. Their website claims a power consumption of 84W. However, when I monitored the TV during my usage, it was very rare if the power usage exceeded 65W, and it usually hovered closer to 60W.
Of course that isn’t the whole piece of the pie. Many TVs use a fair amount of power while turned off these days. In this respect, the Veco320L continues to impress. According to the kill a watt, the TV uses 0W while turned off. I’m sure there must be some draw, but its not much at all.

Environmental Impact

For this info, I had to contact Vizio directly. They said that the bezel is made of recyclable ABS plastic. The packaging contents are recycleable as well. They also said that the TV is RoHS compliant. This means that it is free of:  lead, mercury (except trace amount on the CFL), cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB), and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE). So, the TV is safe to be recycled. This is a definite plus.

Final Thoughts

Through the days of using the TV, my wife and I have both grown quite fond of it, her especially.  Our other TV is a Panasonic 27″ CRT.  The high definition and digital channels (just over the air, no cable or satelite) are a vast improvement over the normal TV.  The fact that it was designed to be environmentally friendly means a lot to us.  I love that it is both bigger, crisper, and uses less power than our old TV makes it all the more attractive.  Speaking of attractive, I like the white bezel and the layout of the TV.  It just looks clean.  Combine all that with a pretty good price, and you have yourself quite a decent package that is attractive not only to green buyers, but all buyers.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

Vizio Veco320L Review

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There is nothing like the roar of a gas mower on a Saturday morning to remind you that you’re living in an American suburb. But these days, those same mowers have come under fire for the comparatively high emissions they produce. Unlike most automobiles, they tend to be 2-stroke engines with little to no emissions equipment and are often well out of tune.

So, if you’ve been thinking about ditching that old gas-burner, here are 10 reasons to get an electric mower for this season:

10 Reasons Electric Mowers are King

1. Less pollution: Believe or not, even the dirtiest of the coal-fired power plants spew less emissions than the average 2-stroke engine. With an electric mower there’s no more oil-burning smoke or the knowledge that your mower is one of the biggest polluters around.
2. No more trips to the gas station: With an electric mower you don’t have to drive to the gas station with that little red container in your trunk anymore, nor do you have to check you mower to make sure you’re not running out of fuel (and then possibly run out of fuel).
3. Electric mowers are quieter: With my electric mower I never feel like I’m choosing between uncomfortable ear plugs or hearing damage. Not only is it better for your hearing, but you’ll annoy the neighbors just that much less.
4. Electric mowers are lighter: Electric motors can generate the same amount of power with a lot less mass. That means that your electric mower will be a lot easier to push around than a comparably powerful gasoline mower.
5. Efficiency: Electric motors are more efficient. That means even though your electric mower is using a different source of energy, it’s also using less energy overall. Any way you slice it, that’s a good thing.
6. Mowing with electricity is cheaper: Electricity is cheaper than gas for the energy you get out of it. Also, you need less electricity to get the job done. This results in a net savings for you. Sure, it may not be that much, but over the life of a mower it adds up.
7. Electric mowers last longer: Less moving parts and less explosions mean that electric mowers have less problems and last longer. Since you’ll be buying new mowers less frequently, this will help save money and resources.
8. Electric mowers require less maintenance: Similar to the above point, because there’s less to break on your electric motor you’ll find yourself doing much less maintenance. Sure, you’ll have to sharpen the blades the same amount, but there will be no more spark plug or air filter changes with an electric mower. Plus, your carb won’t get stuck and make the mower throttle uncontrollably (which happened to me in the past).
9. No more pull starts: Don’t you just hate yanking that cord until the mower starts? Especially after it’s been awhile and it’s giving you trouble.
10. Bragging rights: Sometimes it’s nice to be the first on the block with a shiny, new toy. Especially with all the talking points that come with electric mowers (see above).

So, if you’ve ever been frustrated with your gas mower or it’s just reached the end of it’s life, consider replacing it with an electric mower. They’re not prohibitively expensive, and you will find the savings add up.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

10 Reasons to Buy an Electric Mower this Season

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Photo: robertDouglass

Every wonder what happens to all the calories you burn when you’re working out on the machines in the gym? Besides all the heat your body makes when you’re sweating it out, the machines waste a lot of energy generating the friction that your muscles work against.

Wouldn’t it make sense to put that energy to good use rather than just burning it all up? Well, some of the good folks at Oregon State University thought so. Recently they added grid-tie power generating capabilities to 22 of their elliptical machines.

The machines can produce 1 KWH of energy for every 10 hours they are in use. This may not sound a lot, but with over 22 machines used every day this adds up to quite a bit of energy:

Trelstad added that OSU’s effort will produce an estimated 3,500 kilowatt hours of electricity in a year - enough to power a small house. What’s more, OSU will save money on cooling costs since latent heat produced from the machines will be captured.

When you consider that they only cost about $300 to convert each machine, this seems like a very worthwhile thing to do in the long run.

Source: NWF

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Grid-Tie Exercise Machines: A Long Overdue Idea

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Features & Specifications

The EV2411W is not your standard monitor. First off, its on the large side coming in at a hefty 24 inches. This supports a native resolution of 1920×1200. This is large enough to have two applications open side by side without squishing them which can be very useful. Yet, despite its large size, the power consumption is almost mind bogglingly low due to its LED (versus CFL) backlighting.

To help out with the power consumption, the EV2411W has a feature called Auto Ecoview. Auto EcoView automatically dims or brightens the monitor based upon the brightness of the room. This not only saves power, but also reduces the stress on your eyes.

To show the power usage of the monitor, Eizo has incorporated a sort of power/environmentally friendly monitor that they call the EcoView Index. The index visually shows you, via a small bar graph, how much power the monitor is using. Turn the brightness down and the index goes up toward a little tree icon, turn it up and the index goes down. Its not incredibly accurate, but it gives people and idea of how much power the unit is using.

The rest of the general specifications can be found on Eizo’s website.

Power Consumption

This is where the good becomes even better. Right out of the box, this monitor fires up and uses about 35 watts. This alone is fairly impressive considering the average 24 inch LCD monitor uses around 60W. However, with the Auto Ecoview option enabled the power consumption drops almost in half to 19W. With a bit of further tweaking, which mainly involves turning down the monitor’s brightness to zero, I was able to dial down the power consumption to a mere 14W! That’s right, this monitor can be dialed down to use as much as a regular 14W CFL bulb. I’ll add that at this brightness level, the monitor is still more than adequately bright. It would actually be nice if it dimmed a bit further. It was still a little on the bright side when you are working in a very dark room.

As for standby power consumption, the monitor again is a winner. In standby mode, the kill a watt did not register any power usage. Eizo claims that the power consumption is around .4W. Yet, another feature of this monitor that seems to be missing from most days is that it actually has a power switch. With the power switch off, the monitor uses absolutely no power at all.

Environmental Impact

Eizo seems to have done a good job in the environmental arena.  The Epeat page shows that they achieved a silver rating. Upon further looking it appears Eizo didn’t build the EV2411W with any recycled plastic or renewable/bio-based plastics. This is a bit disappointing. However, they did do quite well in every other category, and scored 14/25 optional points. I’d also like to mention that the length of this monitor’s life should be fairly high considering the LED backlighting. LEDs have significantly longer life than CFLs. Assuming the rest of the circuitry holds up, this monitor could outlast its CFL brethren by many years. Additionally, without CFLs, there is no mercury to deal with.

Final Thoughts

During the evaluation of this monitor I really fell in love with it. It was definitely a sad day when I had to pack it up and send it back. The size is great, and the resolution it provides is very useful when multitasking, not to mention great for gaming. The best part of it all is that you don’t have to pay for the size in power consumption. The LED backlighting makes this monitor incredibly efficient. The one downside is you do have to pay up front. The ~$750 price tag is about double what a normal 24″ monitor goes for. But, after seeing what it can do, I would definitely think twice about considering something else.

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Eizo FlexScan EV2411W Review

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Two of our favorite things here on EcoRenovator are powering monitoring systems and DIY projects. So, naturally, this project caught our eye. It’s like a Kill-a-Watt for the entire home, except completely homebuilt.

I won’t go into technical details, but this device is designed to monitor and log (to an SD card) the power consumption of an entire house. Unlike some whole home monitors that just give you instantaneous feedback, this allows you to see when in the day your home is consuming energy and to figure out what each spike and dip represents.

Check out the project on its own page here.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

An AVR-Based Whole Home Energy Monitoring System

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Last week, I took a trip to a local recycling facility.  The owner, a friend of mine, gratiously donated a slew of parts to the project.  I really like this idea.  I realize not everyone might be able to get donated parts, but a recycling center just takes these things apart for scrap.  If you can get the parts for the price of scrap, they’ll gladly get rid of it simply because its no work for them (rather than having to disassemble it).

The motor is a Baldor 24V 1.6HP.  Rule of thumb is that when replacing a gas engine you divide its peak horsepower by 4 to get the electric motor horsepower you need.  So, its a little on the small side.  The gas engine was 8 horsepower.  But, I think that it will work just fine since you very rarely use all 8 horsepower the gas engine provides.  It has a foot mount on it, and no holes for face mounting, so I’ll need to drill and tap some holes in it to mount the face against the mower frame.

I also got a box of contactors.  These are very similar to a simple relay, except they are really heavy duty and can handle a lot of amperage flowing through them.  I’ll likely use one for the main on/off switch.  Along with the contactors came some pretty beefy 0 gauge wire too.

To top it all off, I even got a bunch of batteries.  These batteries are very small (about half the size of a motorcycle battery) 12V 7Ah, and will have to be put in parallel to keep the voltage down, but they’ll hopefully be easier to find space for since they are small.

These parts, all together, are the bulk of what I need for the mower.  The rest should just be odds and ends like fasteners, and other miscellaneous things.  I will need to get new pullies for the mower too since the shaft sizes are different between the motor and gas engine.  However, thats just a trip to the local farm supply shop.  Finding the correct ratios to go with may be a bit more difficult I’m afraid.

EcoRider Build History

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EcoRider: Parts, Parts, Parts!

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There’s nothing quite as sexy in the homemade electricity world as a modest sized wind turbine. It moves. You can see it making power for you. Visions of cutting the grid umbilical or finding fat power-company checks in the mailbox can lead to fainting spells. But hold up — before you plunge into the confusing, delicious, noisy, and sometimes hilarious world of small windpower, there are a few home truths you ought to consider.

First, we’re going to set vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) off to one side for this discussion. They have their place — grinding grain, lifting water, powering remote sensing devices — but they do not and never can generate meaningful amounts of electrical power. Physics precludes it, and no amount of wishful thinking ever won an argument with Physics.

What’s left are the small HAWTs, and a sorry bunch they are. What is “small wind”? Depends on who is talking, probably, but let’s stick to turbines bigger than seven feet diameter but smaller than twenty. Larger birds require major, major investments and infrastructure; anything smaller than seven feet is a science fair project. Size matters: you can reliably gauge a wind turbine’s output by its diameter, as output (both instantaneous and over time) is almost perfectly proportional to swept area. The obvious corollary: a slightly larger wind turbine may produce very much more power. An 11ft turbine sweeps twice as much area as an 8 ft turbine, tho each blade is only 1.5ft longer. They should be rated 1000W and 2000W respectively, tho more on those numbers in a moment.

A similar phenomenon applies to wind speeds in your location: power available in the wind is the cube of wind speed; very small increments of wind speed can make a huge difference in output. The air 100 ft above the ground may be twice the wind speed at head level and carry eight times as much energy. That’s why we put wind turbines on tall poles and why we don’t put them on rooftops. It’s also why most locations are poor for wind power: in a rare instance of scalability, almost any size turbine is not worth having if your mean wind speed is below 11 mph. Winds below that simply lack energy, and no turbine of any design will produce meaningful juice. Very few places have average wind speeds above 11 mph.

Okay, so you have 12 mph winds, an eight foot turbine makes 1000W, multiply that times 24 hours … ka-ching! Twenty-four kWh per day!

Well, no. That 1000W faceplate rating is about as honest as those 6hp ShopVacs that run on wall outlets. Both are ‘peak’ ratings and represent the amperage produced just before melting. Most wind turbines pluck their marketing numbers at “rated wind speed”, often around 28 mph, which is where most of them furl or fly to bits. The wind may only achieve 28 mph 1% of the time. Most of its life, your turby will be mucking around at outputs roughly one fifth to one quarter of its peak power. That’s a better number for projecting with. Given 12mph wind speeds and that 8ft turbine, you’ll probably average 5-6 kWh per day into the grid, a little less into batteries.

About RPMs: an alternator produces lots more juice at higher RPMs than at low. That’s one reason VAWTs don’t work, and it’s why very small HAWTs often spin at up to 1000 RPMs. There’s a parameter in wind turbines called Tip Speed Ratio, or TSR. It’s a function of blade design and simply measures how fast the fastest part of the blade moves relative to wind speed. Higher TSRs are theoretically more efficient, but in truth drag and turbulence quickly cancel out the gains. High TSR turbines tend to be noisy in normal operation and are hard on blades, bearings, and coils. Many companies rely on high TSRs to compensate for undersized alternators, because copper and magnets are expensive. Consensus recommends 5 to 8 is a good range of TSRs — blade tips moving five to eight times true wind speed.

All turbines — wind, water, or steam — are miserable with engineering binds. Wind turbines are especially bothered by these tradeoffs, given the variable nature of their medium and the realities of location. The binds become acute as wind turbines get smaller. You can have a wind turbine that turns in light winds; it will be poor in strong ones. If the alternator gets up to voltage quickly, it will saturate quickly. If it spins fast, it is noisy; if it spins slow, it makes no power.

Your best hope (and there is hope, honest) is to match a wind turbine to your wind resource and electrical needs, put it on a fairly tall tower, and let it do its thing. They are in no wise perfect, but when the planets align they will deliver goodly chunks of power — day and night, clouds or sun, winter and summer.

Part 2: Selection, siting, and costs

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About Small Wind Power: Reality Check

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EcoRenovator is now on Twitter!

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Image: Yuki Yaginuma

This is a post from one of our forum members, Bob McGovern, if you want to check out more be sure to stop by the forum to see what’s going on.

I’ve found discussions surrounding wind energy usually benefit if people have a good sense of the physics and forces involved. The science is both straightforward and subtle. If this is old hat, forgive; if it is new, hopefully a few crudely-executed sketches can give a feel for what is happening where air meets machine, and why some designs are inherently more effective than others. No math, but it helps if you are a sailor.

First, good electricity-generating turbines are not pushed by the wind so much as they are pulled. Making electricity needs medium-high RPMs at the alternator, and blades that are pushed can never go faster than the true wind speed — usually much slower. These are called “drag turbines”. Good turbines rely on aerodynamic lift to turn them: the forces involved are greater, and the blades can spin many times faster than the wind, just as a catamaran can sail faster than true wind speed.

WHOA — sound like a perpetual motion machine? The secret is a phenomenon called “apparent wind”, which is the vector sum of the true wind and the blade (or boat) speed. It looks like this:

A blade with tip-speed ratio (TSR) of 5 will spin 50mph in a 10mph wind, creating its own apparent wind of ~51 mph. The apparent direction of that wind moves closer to the blade’s rotational plane the faster it spins; likewise, the blade tip sees a faster and shallower apparent wind than the blade root.

As the apparent wind contacts the leading edge, it splits. Some air goes along the convex back, some goes along the concave front. The streams adhere to the blade surface and adjacent air by boundary layer effect.

The concave side air slows down, generating a net positive air pressure; the air flowing over the convex back of the blade speeds up, creating a net (and stronger) negative air pressure. Both sets of pressures act perpendicular to the surface of the blade. The forces act in all different directions and intensities, but the net force is a flexing and forward one. The flex force is canceled by the blade’s stiffness; what’s left is a forward vector of surprising strength:

There’s a fairly narrow window of apparent wind direction — or attack angle — in which a lifting airfoil will operate efficiently. The flow along its sides must be smooth, and it must remain attached to the blade surface. If it detaches, the result is lost lift, terrible drag, and turbulence — with attendant noise and vibration. These conditions are known as stalling (attack angle too steep) and luffing (attack angle too shallow.)

The red squiggles are turbulence, eddies that form when flow detaches.

Wind turbine designers have developed numerous strategies to keep the apparent wind angle correct, which is especially hard given that different parts of the blade are moving different speeds, and to keep lift strong and constant along the full length of the foil. These strategies can be grouped in pairs: Taper and draft, twist and pitch. Near the hub of a propeller-style-turbine, the apparent wind is slower and closer in direction to the true wind; the blade root has a wide chord (breadth) and a fairly deep draft, and it faces more toward the true wind. The blade tip is traveling very fast: too much breadth or ‘cup’ would create crippling drag, so the blade there tends to be narrower and flatter. The tip also experiences an apparent wind nearly in line with its rotational plane, so it needs very little twist:

Finally, the best HAWTs (horizontal-axis wind turbines) are able to rotate the entire blade to vary TSR, optimize lift, and keep the alternator spinning at its prime electricity-making RPM. They use taper, draft, twist and pitch all at once. Inexpensive turbines like my Bergey XL1 may use straight blades, extruded as if from a pasta machine. They lose remarkably little in terms of efficiency in their sweet spot. But in light or very strong winds, they luff or stall (or some of each!), lose lift, and make ungodly noise.

You may see curved blades appearing on some machines: as with most such innovations, it is worth asking why, and why commercial turbines rely on a straight leading edge. Bending the tip back may keep flow attached and reduce noise somewhat, but the lifting forces pull outward rather than forward, tip spillage and drag is increased, and you are losing torque at the blade ends, right where you most want it.

Finally, it’s worth a brief look at why the world’s best engineers design HAWTs rather than VAWTs (vertical axis wind turbines). The very worst VAWTs are pure drag machines: paddles pushed by the wind. Their maximum apparent wind is the true wind MINUS their own rotational speed, so they can never go fast and the wind’s force is gutted. And two-thirds of the time, a given blade is either contributing nothing or plowing headlong INTO the wind. These generally fall under the heading of Savonius Rotors. Their TSRs are always less than 1.0, and their efficiencies are gruesome.

Better, though not much, is a class of semi-lifting VAWTs classified as Darrius, Modified Darrius, or Gyro Rotors. These include the famous ‘eggbeaters’ and more modern designs. Almost half the time, their blades are on or near a “beam reach,” moving perpendicular to the true wind, which sailors know is the fastest, most-efficient point of sail. But the back blade is operating in the wind shadow of the front one, its draft must somehow be inverted, the downwind blade is dragging some, and the upwind blade is a sea anchor. Darrius blades are pulling maybe 50% of the time. They aspire to TSRs of 2.5; they do spin faster than the wind, but not much.

Finally, look afresh at the humble HAWT, or propeller-style machine. Its blades are purely lifting foils, though they suffer the disadvantage of reduced speed near the hub. They have TSRs of 5-8, usually. All three blades experience the same apparent wind speed and direction all the time. All three are traveling at 90 degrees to the true wind (that ideal beam reach), pulling in the same direction all the time. A HAWT experiences great lift over a 100% power stroke. That’s why GE, Mitsubishi, and Vestas build them that way.

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A Brief Wind Power Tutorial

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Not too long ago we had a bit of a warm spurt.  This was a perfect time to get some work done on the EcoRider.  Specifically, it was a good time to make good on my promise to the previous owner of the mower to get him his engine back.

There honestly wasn’t a whole lot of work to do to pull the engine out of the mower.  The first step was to remove all the body panels that surround the engine.  Thankfully, mowers are very simple.  A few bolts were removed and that was taken care of.

Ah yes, the joyous moment of draining the gas tank knowing the mower will never needing another drop of gas.  I also removed the throttle and choke linkages and unbolted the engine from the frame.

So, we’re ready to pull the engine out?  Not quite yet.  I also had to remove the belts from the pulleys and remove the pulleys from the engine’s output shaft.  After that was done, the engine simply can be lifted off the frame.  Above shows how the mower is currently sitting.

The next step will be to start aquiring the electric parts for the mower.  This includes, the motor, batteries, and maybe a controller.  I haven’t decided if I want to use one or not yet.

EcoRider Build History

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EcoRider: Removing The Gas Engine

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Over the next 12 weeks, the city of Los Angeles will begin handing out free CFLs and energy-saving tips to the 1.2 million households around the city. This program is part of a large initiative by the city of Los Angeles to lead the way in reducing its own energy consumption and GHG output.

Overall, 2.4 million CFLs will be handed out, that should reduce energy consumption a total of 240GWH, which is a pretty big number, even for a big city. In addition, the CFLs will save the city’s residents an estimated $61.3 million over the life of the bulbs.

Of course, two CFLs isn’t very much in the grand scheme of things - most homes have much more than two light bulbs, but hopefully the free bulbs will encourage households that haven’t yet considered the switch to pick up some more bulbs and try some other energy-saving tips.

Source: GCC

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

LA to Give Out Free CFLs to All City Residents

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Image: OregonDOT

A few days ago, New Jersey’s largest utility provider, PSE&G, unveiled a plan to install 120MW of solar in communities all across the state. This initiative, which will add significantly to New Jersey’s solar power capacity, will cost upwards of $773 million and focus not on large solar plants but an approach that distributes installations across consumers and town governments.

The Solar 4 All Program, as it’s being called, is part of the state’s effort to increase its renewable energy mix, and will go a full 7% towards that goal:

The initiative will expand New Jersey’s solar infrastructure and will satisfy nearly 7 percent of the state’s renewable portfolio standards requirements through 2020. The 120 megawatts of solar capacity will eliminate 1.7 million tons of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent of removing nearly 310,000 cars from the road for one year.

PSE&G will take a four-pronged approach in rolling out this plan:

1. Neighborhood Solar (40 MW): This portion will work with local contractors to install solar panels on light and utility poles around NJ communities.
2. Local Government Solar (43 MW): By using the already available roof space on the state’s many local government buildings (like schools, police departments, etc) PSE&G will add 43 MW of solar capacity to the grid.
3. Centralized Solar (35 MW): PSE&G will use it’s own properties and other underdeveloped building sites with which it has contracts to install roof-mounted solar arrays.
4. Affordable Housing Solar (2 MW): While not high in capacity, PSE&G will work to help homeowners get financing for residential installations.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

New Jersey Utility to Install 120MW of Solar

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A few weeks ago my wife came to me and said her Ipod mini had stopped working.  I wasn’t incredibly surprised as I knew they went bad eventually and we’ve had it for a few years now, and it does get used quite a bit.  So, I talked with my uncle who is a bit of an Ipod guru.  He said it was the hard drive, but it wasn’t a real big deal and I wouldn’t need to buy a new Ipod.  I should be able to get a replacement hard drive online for a reasonable amount of money.

So, I begin to google my way through what it takes to replace a Ipod hard drive.  Then I come across this instructable. It claimed I could not only replace the hard drive, but also upgrade it with a compact flash card. This meant that not only would I be able to increase the capacity of the Ipod, but it would also now last virtually forever (minus the battery), and be incredibly power efficient since there would no longer be any moving parts in it. This sounded like an amazing idea.

I quickly went to work figuring out what compact flash cards were compatable and what one was in my price range.  Not all cards are compatable with the Ipod, so you do have to be a bit careful.  I ended up settling on this 16 gig card which was a descent upgrade from the original 4 gig hard drive.  The reviews on the site helped by saying other people had already used this card for an Ipod upgrade.

A week later it was at my doorstep, and in the mean time I had pulled the Ipod apart and had it ready to go.  The whole process is very simple, but does require some patience.  Anyway, I got the card, and it went back together much easier than it was taken apart.  I now have a power efficient, long lasting, larger capacity Ipod, and a happy wife.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

Bad Ipod Hard Drive? Replace it New and Better

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In Japan, a lot (if not most) rooms like kitchens and living rooms feature these big, overhead flourescent lights. When I first moved into a Japanese home I was a little shocked to see such an imposing, yet soft, source of light. They each cost a couple hundred dollars and seem to do a really good job lighting a room while sticking to a minimalist attitude.

The best thing in my mind was that they were neither incandescent nor the ugly, industrial flourescent tubes I had grown used to in the United States. The fact that they were everywhere and considered somewhat the default for home lighting made it clear that Japan was way ahead of the US in terms of consumer acceptance of energy-efficient lightning trends.

Now, Treehugger tells us about a new kind of overhead light. This light, from Panasonic, not only incorporates the other great features from lighting of this kind, but actively monitors the amount of light in the room and dims itself accordingly, so its never using any more energy than need be, saving up to 60% during an in house study on lighting that would constantly left on.

If you live in Japan you will be able to pick one up for about $400 bucks starting on the first of March. Anywhere else? I guess we’re out of luck.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

An Auto-Dimming Overhead Light?

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Image: Wootang01

It’s been a while since I was last in Japan to see the colourful recycling bins with their suggestive openings, but I remember an urge to recycle so strong that I almost purchased things just to be able to dispose of them.

Well, perhaps that’s a stretch, but according to a researcher at Rutgers the recycling bins with the holes shaped to what belongs in them get 34% more action than those that look more like regular trash bins:

People fail to recycle for a number of reasons, including misinformation and forgetfulness; however, it is also a design problem. My coauthor Michelle Verges and I were talking over the phone about why everyone says they recycle, but if you look around, there is a lot of recyclable material in trash cans. We then went around looking through different kinds of recycling bins and trash cans, examining their contents. We began noticing a pattern: Regardless of the receptacle’s label, recycling bins with little holes in the lids contained recyclables and almost nothing else, while those that lacked those holes were basically used as trash cans. So we carried out a study having recycling bins in one building either with or without the hole, and found that the presence of the hole increased the recycling rate by 34%, which is an enormous increase.

I always assumed that the holes were so that you wouldn’t shove old cereal boxes into the can or plastic bottle bins, but it seems those holes might play a bigger role in the way people recycle.

Have you ever noticed the tendency for shaped recycling bins to be more effective at keeping recycleables out of the trash or do you think it’s a bunch of bunk?

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

Do the Holes on Recycling Bins Make You Want to Recycle?

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It used to be that human beings were the only ones hopping on the Twitter bandwagon, but it seems like this is no longer the case. Recently, however, an innovative individual has been able to turn a few Kill-a-Watts into a whole home energy monitoring system.

As you may know, the Kill-a-Watt is normally just a gadget for one outlet, but in this project entire rooms have been plugged into power strips, meaning that each room in the house will be Twittering its own energy supply. While there are other whole home energy monitors out there, the online access and room by room breakdown make this a pretty interesting solution.

The Wattcher is a simple concept, but an innovative one: take the very handy Kill-a-Watt and some wireless transmitters to send all the data to twitter, where a computer program can aggregate the data. If you’d like more detail in order to build your own, follow this link for some step by step instructions.

However, there is one caveat I can think of: not all of the energy you use in your home comes out of the plugs, so there were likely be a good bit of discrepency between the Wattcher monthly recordings and the actual power bill, depending on whether things lights on switches, electric appliances, etc are commonly used.

I’m not sure if I have the gusto to go out and build one now, but if anyone else, be sure to leave a comment with your impressions of the process and the final product.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

Wattcher: The Twittering Kill-a-Watt Energy Monitor

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For a while I have been interested in the idea of using motion detectors on timers in order to merge convenience with energy conservation. I have noticed this works particularly well in some of the common areas I work in, and was reminded by the bath in my fiancee’s home, so I decided to check it out for myself and see how it worked. Enter the uSwitch Motion Sensor Lamp Switch.

Energy Efficient Concept

The idea behind motion-activated lights is the ability to turn on and off your most used lights more easily. The prototypical environment for a motion-activated light is in an entrance hallway or bathroom, a space that is not used often or for a long period of time but where having a light already on can be useful. No body wants to leave their entrance lights on all night, but as we all know it’s always troublesome coming home late and having to fumble for the light switch in a dark house. By making your lighting need-based, you eliminate waste without added effort.

The uSwitch Motion Sensor Lamp Switch

My test motion sensor switch was procured from Brookstone, and was chosen because it had good reviews and looked like it would fit the bit. Besides your basic motion sensor features, the uSwitch also featured an LED night lamp, customizeable timers (including always on position), and ambient light sensor.

Out of all these features I found the ambient light sensor to be the best. It could stand to be a little more sensitive, but its basic function is to prevent the lamp from turning on during the day or when there are already other lights on. This means that your lamp won’t be flicking on an off when it’s not needed, and the LED lamp won’t be burning when you won’t notice it, a very nice touch, to be sure.

Overall, I was very impressed with the unit. The motion sensing reaches all corners of the room, even outside of the stated range capabilities. It’s also very reliable and does everything I expected. The only complaint is that it sometimes turns on when the room is half lit up, but this may be because of the positioning of the lights relative to the sensor, which is kind of jammed in a corner.

Does it work?

Of course, it’s impossible to say exactky how much I’ve reduced energy usage. Since lamp use in that room is sporadic at best, I can’t make any reliable judgments, but I can say that during times of frequent trips back and forth through the apartment the main living room lights have spent less time on since the motion sensor takes care of any light I need.

At the very least, it’s an incredibly convenient gadget to have for just $30, and it’s definitely helped me conserve some energy in the mean time.

Post from: EcoRenovator.org

uSwitch Motion Sensor Lamp Switch Review

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