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Big Data for Big Buildings: SPARC Greens the VA

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:02:00 +0000

Big Data for Big Buildings: SPARC Greens the VA:

Making buildings more energy efficient isn’t just about more efficient air conditioners and lights, or smarter energy management software. Part of the challenge facing the green building sector is how to manage the massive amounts of data that come from building energy systems — whether those are the HVAC and lighting systems themselves, or the people who use energy within them.

SPARC, a Charleston, S.C.-based software developer for government and commercial clients, says its new SPARC520 system can handle that big data challenge from the cloud. This week, it announced its first project with a big client, the U.S. Veterans Administration, which is using the SPARC520 as part of its “Greening as a service” initiative to meet Obama Administration mandates to reduce energy and resource use at federal agencies.

So far, the VA hasn’t said just where or how it will use the SPARC520 system across its portfolio of buildings, though it did announce Wednesday that it has used it to identify about $3.5 million in energy savings at its 700,000-square-foot, 11-story Washington, D.C. headquarters building.

According to CEO Eric Bowman, the SPARC520 approach covers the gamut of “smart building” efficiency functions, from initial building efficiency assessments using utility and property records, to going into the building and pulling data to figure out where energy is being wasted and how to save it.

We’re talking really big data here. For the VA headquarters building, SPARC has installed 107 clamp devices to meter electricity, water and natural gas usage, each collecting 27 different types of data every 10 seconds, Bowman said in a Wednesday interview. That’s 2,889 data points every 10 seconds, or about 2 billion data points per year, he said.

“Is it real time? Not quite, but it’s close,” Bowman said. SPARC has built an engine, known as SPARC IQ, that can take those large sets of building sensor data and do in-memory, real-time analysis of it from its Amazon cloud-hosted servers, he said.

The process involves a lot of use of cutting-edge technology in the open-source database realm, including use of a MongoDB document-oriented NoSQL database from 10Gen, and servers running open-source messaging protocol AMQP via RabbitMQ.

Essentially, these features allow such functionality as bringing incoming data into reports immediately, instead of via a batch process, and putting it in working memory so that operators can run energy “scenarios,” which model how building energy and resource use can change over time, in real time, instead of as a request that takes hours or days to process.

To put it in a way that a federal bureaucrat can relish, here’s the Wednesday prepared statement of Dr. David Paschane, director of strategic initiatives for VA’s National Capital Region: “The SPARC520 application is enabling us to easily coordinate the use of comprehensive data, and feed that data into multiple decision models among disparate offices. The discoverable strategic opportunities will make a big impact in our cost of doing business, and our ability to extend the use of other performance architectures.”

SPARC’s software engineers have been busy building these energy scenarios, based on different settings for building equipment, different efficiency retrofits and upgrades, and different behaviors on behalf of the building occupants, Bowman said.

These ideas aren’t unique to SPARC, of course. The data analysis and scenario modeling process sounds a bit like the whole-building modeling approach that’s been taken by SCIEnergy, a startup with deep data analytics that seeks to create digital replicas of how buildings consume energy to find insights that traditional building management technology can’t find.

On the front end, startups like FirstFuel and Retroficiency have been using existing meter and property data to do “hands-off” efficiency assessments of buildings. When it comes to in-building energy and water monitoring, startup Panoramic Power has brought wireless sensors like the generic ones SPARC is using to deliver power data from within the building.

Getting into the actual building controls side of things has been the realm of giants like Honeywell, Siemens, Johnson Controls and Schneider Electric and big IT partners like IBM and Cisco, as well as startups like BuildingIQ, Viridity Energy, Pulse Energy and many others in the smart building field.

SPARC doesn’t actually do any real-time building energy system controls, though it has integrated with a host of building management systems to feed data from its scenario analysis process into alerts and the like, all in the hopes of helping building operators find and fix resource-wasting processes while they’re happening, Bowman said.

At the same time, SPARC520 is experimenting with a set of scenarios that have more to do with getting the people in the building to save energy, he said. The company, founded in 2009, has built up a set of employee engagement tools, including SPARCet.com, meant to get workers communicating and interacting with one another in pursuit of organizational goals, whether it be improving sales performance or saving energy, whether via online contests between departments, mobile device apps that "push" energy alerts to employees, or other means.

Others are trying to modify people's behavior to save energy. Startup Lucid Design is using monitors that post energy stats and alerts inside commercial buildings to try to get occupants to change behavior. Startups like Opower, Simple Energy and Efficiency 2.0, in turn, are trying to influence the behavior of residential customers.

Bowman said that the VA is using SPARC520 at other sites, though he wouldn’t provide any more details. SPARC is also testing out its technology with other clients, in both data center and office-type settings, he said.

Founded in 2009, SPARC has been internally funded and employs about 200 people. Bowman declined to state how much money the company has raised to date or to discuss any financial details.

The Smart Grid for Water Gets Bigger

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:25:00 +0000

The Smart Grid for Water Gets Bigger:

Smart metering isn’t just about electricity — natural gas and water are important market sectors too. Water, in particular, is primed for growth, as rising global demand and ever-shrinking supplies of fresh water make preventing the massive losses in the water sector worth spending money on.

Indeed, with much of the world’s water infrastructure nearly a century old, there’s a crying need to prevent “non-revenue” losses suffered by water utilities. The World Bank estimates that worldwide costs from unmetered water total $14 billion annually, and the EPA reports that the United States loses about 6 billion gallons of water from leaks every year.

That, in turn, is driving increased investment in technology to properly meter water, detect leaks, identify degrading systems and otherwise make water deliver more efficient. That investment can range from region-wide smart water projects, such as IBM’s investments in projects in Malta, Australia, Japan and the United States, to small-scale water meter deployments for municipal and regional water utilities across Europe and North America.

This week, big meter maker Itron announced a 4.6-million smart water meter project with Sydney Water, the water utility for Australia’s biggest city. It’s one of the world’s largest smart water meter deployments to date, but if analysts’ projections are any guide, it won’t be the last.

Indeed, global smart water meter shipments are expected to reach 29.9 million units by 2017, up from just 10.3 million meters in 2011, according to Pike Research. That adds up to an annual market value of $476 million by 2017.

Key markets include Europe and North America. In Europe, research firm Frost & Sullivan predicts the smart water meter market will be worth up to £13.2 billion ($20.5 billion) by 2020, with “strong double-digit” growth over the decade.

As for the U.S. smart water market, the GTM Scott AMI Market Tracker predicts 2012 will see 5.5 million smart water meters networked, up slightly from 5.3 million in 2011.

Compared to the 15.68 million electric smart meters shipped in the U.S. last year, smart water meters are still a small market, roughly equivalent with gas metering, where 5.56 million meters were shipped last year, GTM research found.

But at the same time, the smart water metering market has seen far less penetration to date than either electric meters or gas meters, providing plenty of room for expanding markets. Leading vendors in the water metering space, in order of 2011 U.S. shipment volumes, are Neptune, Itron, Badger Meter, Sensus, Master Meter, Aclara, Elster and DataMatic, according to GTM market data.

Governments in Europe and North America haven’t mandated the deployment of smart water meters as they’ve done for smart electric and gas meters. Still, the rollout of communications systems to link these mandated smart meters can also be extended to include water.

London-area water utility Thames Water, for instance, is expanding its trial of connecting water meters with the same network that’s linking gas and electric meters. Sensus and Elster, two electric metering giants that also do gas and electric meters, have rolled out unified systems for some municipal utilities that handle all three resources.

In the meantime, there are plenty of ways to deploy technology in the water sector besides smart meters. Leak detection is one growing field, with giants like IBM and startups like Israel’s TaKaDu applying hardware, software and analytics to the task.

Other key water technologies include filtration and reverse osmosis technologies for water purification and desalination. Greentech Media has tracked hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars invested in water technologies over the past several years.

Construction of The World’s Largest Solar Bridge Reaches Halfway Point in London

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 17:35:00 +0000

Construction of The World’s Largest Solar Bridge Reaches Halfway Point in London:

London’s super-solar Blackfriars Station is halfway to becoming home to the world’s largest solar bridge. Solarcentury began construction on the ambitious project last fall, fitting the bridge with a solar array that will supply a whopping 900,000kWh of clean electricity per year, provide more than fifty percent of its power need to operate the transit hub, while reducing CO2 emissions by an estimated 511 tonnes for the same time period!

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Plant Paradise: Artificial Pavilion Extends Dutch City into Lake

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Plant Paradise: Artificial Pavilion Extends Dutch City into Lake: [ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

In a bid to host the World Horticultural Expo in 2022, the Dutch city of Almere has commissioned MVRDV to design an artificial pavilion that would extend the city out into a lake. The concept would enable the city to host the six-month festival, and would also create a permanent platform for a new university as well as offices, homes and leisure facilities.

Measuring about 111 acres, the extension would be covered in a patchwork of gardens called ‘plant libraries’, as well as pavilions and greenhouses. This vibrant new urban neighborhood stands opposite the current city center in Almere, bringing it out onto the water. MVRDV aims to create a 300% greener exhibition than the current standard, “both literally green and sustainable.”

“We dream of making green cities. City that is literally green as well as ecological. A city that produces food and energy, cleans its own water, recycles waste and holds a great biodiversity. A city which might even be autarkic: A symbiotic world of people, plants and animals. Can this symbiosis between city and countryside offer essential argumentation to the global concerns regarding urbanisation and consumption? Can we realise in the next ten years an exemplary ‘green’ city which realises this synthesis? And could this city be the Floriade 2022?”

Each block of the city extension will be devoted to different plants, and the planned university will be home to a stacked botanical garden, “a vertical ecosystem in which each classroom will have a different climate to grow certain plants.” Newly constructed homes, which will help ease some of the cramped conditions in the rapidly growing city, will be located in orchards.

Almere is one of four Dutch cities currently up for consideration to host the festival, and a decision will come in October.

The Green Building Council of Australia Launches Community Ratings for Sustainable Practices

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:12:00 +0000

The Green Building Council of Australia Launches Community Ratings for Sustainable Practices:

Courtesy of Athanasios Polyzoidis & Katerina Petsiou

The Green Building Council of Australia has released Green Star – a new comprehensive rating system that can assess the degree to which communities, as a whole, succeed in creating livable and sustainable environments. This is a new and dynamic way to look at the culture of sustainability. “Green building” is not only reflected in individual buildings; it is the accumulation of the buildings, the infrastructure, the urban planning and design, the amenities of the community and the lifestyles that communities live. Projects such as DIY Urbanism in the Netherlands by MVRDV and “e_co_llectiva” by Athanasios Polyzoidis & Katerina Petsiou have this kind of regard for the development of holistic community.

Read on for more after the break.

Courtesy of MVRDV

A growing number of designs features holistic approaches to building design and that includes the street and the plaza and the communty associated with it. More than that, urban developments have more frequently begun to incorporate a mix of programming: residential, commercial, retail and recreational working together. The system will rate each community according to livability, economic prosperity, environment, design, governance and innovation. The administration hopes that it will encourage better and more creative designs for communities with improved planning. It provides an incentive that up until now has only been awarded to individual buildings.

The GBCA is setting a precedent that will hopefully be followed by other Green Building Councils. It promotes a healthy competition for the best in planning for healthy communities, both for the residents and the environment.

Find more information here!

via Design Build Source, “Green Star: Communities Rating System Released” by Emily D’Alterio

The Green Building Council of Australia Launches Community Ratings for Sustainable Practices originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 25 Jun 2012.

A Bright Future for Willets Point – Redevelopment on an Environmentally Marred Peninsula

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:34:00 +0000

A Bright Future for Willets Point – Redevelopment on an Environmentally Marred Peninsula:

The New York Economic Development Corporation and Mayor Bloomberg of NYC announced the completion of the final plan for Willets Point - a peninsula on the Flushing River in Northern Queens, New York. The development of Willets Point is part of the urban renewal project associated with Citi Field – the Mets’ new stadium. Nicknamed the Iron Triangle, the project will include housing for mixed incomes, retail and entertainment amenities, a hotel, a convention center, office space, parks and open space, and a new public school, all of which falls under the umbrella of LEED-certified buildings and infrastructure. As with every redevelopment plan, there are positives and negatives to restructuring the community.

Read on for more after the break.

The Willets Point Redevelopment Plan is a ten- to fifteen- year commitment to the regeneration of this district. There are many environmental concerns associated with this land. Historically, the 60-acre peninsula was used as an ash dump. It accumulated approximately 100 railroad car loads of ash per day. Since, it has also been contaminated by petroleum, paint, cleaning solvents and automotive fluids. A high water table exacerbates the environmental hazards, threatening to spread into other bodies of water. It also lies within the 100-year flood plain which requires that the grade be elevated significantly. In addition, storm water and sanitary infrastructure is lacking. Its neighbor, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, was marred by the same kind of environmental damage, but was restored in the early 20th century in preparation for the 1938 World’s Fair. Now officials believe it is time for Willets Point to follow suit.

Willets Point is valuable due to its geographic location. It has the potential to become a hub for a variety of activities from entertainment, residential use, outdoor recreation, and commercial and retail use. It is regionally well connected to the subway towards Manhattan, to the LIRR towards Long Island, the highways and airports. It is already well positioned in proximity to other popular destinations such as Flushing, Corona Park, the National Tennis Center, Shea Stadium and Citi Field. The benefits are tangible – the plan promises 25,000 “person-years of construction employment”, 5,000 permanent jobs, 1,000 indirect jobs that come from the convention center, mixed-income housing, a new diverse community and hub, an estimated 30-year fiscal impact of $4.2 billion dollars, and the rebuilding of environmental infrastructure throughout the peninsula, in addition to a LEED buildings.

Despite its advantages, there are challenges to the city’s plans. According to Smriti Rao’s article in DNAinfo on New York Neighborhoods, residents and local businesses in the area are reluctant to relinquish their properties to eminent domain. It is a legitimate claim to private property but is often pushed aside for development such as these. However, Bloomberg ensures that 95 percent of the property has been or is being acquired. Is there no way that the future plans could be incorporated into the already existing architecture and infrastructure that the community there has established? It is frequent tug-of-war between the two. As the project goes out to bid, we will be able to see if and how the redevelopment unfolds and changes the district for the better.

via DNAinfo, “Mayor Unveil Massive Willets Point Redevelopment Plan” by Smriti Rao

via NYC EDC, Willets Point Redevelopment Plan

A Bright Future for Willets Point - Redevelopment on an Environmentally Marred Peninsula originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 25 Jun 2012.

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Green Roof’s Serve as Vital Wildlife Habitat

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 06:08:00 +0000

Green Roof’s Serve as Vital Wildlife Habitat:

Green roof’s provide the benefit of natural heating and insulation, a lovely space to escape to amidst the bustle of city-life, but new research shows that they are also providing a vital refuge for birds as they fly through on their way to somewhere else.

Dustrin Patridge is a doctoral candidate at Fordham University, and he’s been tracking the insect life – as well as monitoring which birds are stopping over.

Reporter Rachel Nuewer visited Partridge for Ecomagination to get a closer look at these beautiful green roof’s, and the research that Partridge is doing.

Source: Ecomagination

Letter on Warburg House

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 03:01:00 +0000

Letter on Warburg House:

Following last week’s post on the Warburg House (Building an Energy Efficient Home for Under $100,000), Walter Feuchs sends this letter:

25 years ago the concept of a “World House” was introduced. The Energy Star, hurricane and seismic rated 512 sf.abode was temporarily assembled at the UN in NYC in 30 minutes. scenes are on YouTube.

A newer fiber composite version building envelope with footprint of 115 sq ft will also be temporarily assembled in 39 minutes at various international locations.The roof panels are integrated with PV’s at the production stage which is measured in minutes…not hours or days.

An international conglomerate will likely mass-produce this milestone as well as off the grid sustainable communities, on an international scale. A house that more than pays for itself compared to traditional products has a competitive edge. In nations that offer 100 year mortgages this development will be revolutionary.

Thanks, Walter.

The Solar-Powered Microgrid, Courtesy of Forest City and Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 00:11:00 +0000

The Solar-Powered Microgrid, Courtesy of Forest City and Japan:

In Albuquerque, N.M., a smart grid-solar-energy storage project backed by a consortium of Japanese giants is testing out a key element of the idea of net-zero energy communities: how to harness mass-market solar to balance the grid inside and outside the neighborhood’s borders.

At least, that’s where the idea could go for Mesa Del Sol, a mixed-use redevelopment project with plans for 18 million square feet of office, industrial, and retail space and about 37,000 homes. Forest City, the Cleveland-based property development giant, is in charge of the decades-long development plan, and last week unveiled the first piece of it: the 78,000-square-foot Aperture Center, which has been set up to run on its own solar power.

The event center’s 440-kilowatt peak load will be covered by a 50-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system, an 80-kilowatt fuel cell, a 240-kilowatt natural gas powered generator and a 160-kilowatt-hour battery storage system. The technology -- and funding -- comes via Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), which is investing about $10 million in the Mesa Del Sol project and another $12 million in another project in Santa Fe.

On the U.S. side, utility PNM, Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico are on the team. In its entirety, it’s still pretty small, on a par with the many different solar-storage-backup power systems being tested out around the country and the world.

But if it fulfills its promise of smoothly connecting and disconnecting from PNM’s grid -- as well as providing its power to smooth out the grid during times of peak stress -- it could take the claim of the first fully functioning microgrid in the country, said Manny Barrera, Mesa Del Sol’s director of engineering.

And that, in turn, could help developers like Forest City tackle a key challenge of managing all the rooftop solar that they can pencil into their plans, now that solar panel prices and installation costs are plummeting.

Distributed solar is booming, driven by the flood of cheap panels from China and financial innovations like the leasing and financing plans from the likes of SunEdison, SolarCity, SunRun and others. Up to a point, all that two-way power flow from homes and businesses isn’t too disruptive to utility operation. But higher penetration rates can start to cause instability on feeder lines, substations or even entire regions.

This used to be a hypothetical problem, but it isn’t any longer, Barrera noted. Some neighborhoods in incentive-rich states like California and New Jersey are seeing penetration rates of 10 percent, 15 percent or even 20 percent or more. At those levels, passing clouds can be more than a nuisance: they can shut off an invisible source of power to the grid, causing frequency and voltage destabilization, and, eventually, power outages.

Utilities don’t know where solar panels are, and can’t control them -- though work is underway to make solar inverters responsive to grid commands. In the meantime, buildings themselves have the ability to shape their own solar output, especially if they have batteries or fuel cells to back them up and the control systems to manage it all. That's what the Aperture Center is meant to demonstrate, Barrera said -- but in the future, the same concepts could be applied to multiple buildings in a neighborhood, or across a city, he said.

NEDO’s next step for the project is to test out solar smoothing, peak shaving and other such operations, Barrera said. While the entire building and environs can run on its own power indefinitely, that would require more use of the natural gas-fired backup power system. The point is not to run on its own as an island -- though it can do that if the utility needs it -- but rather to make solar’s impact on the grid a benefit, rather than a problem, for the utility.

Governments and industry are pouring billions of dollars into research on this front. In the United States, the Department of Energy’s SEGIS (solar energy grid integration systems) program ties Sandia Labs with utilities including PNM, Duke Energy and San Diego Gas & Electric, and companies like Petra Solar and Princeton Power on testing various combinations of smart meters, solar power controls, energy storage systems, customer interfaces and variable pricing schemes. Energy storage companies like A123, Xtreme Power, SAIC and others are backing up wind and solar power for power smoothing and load-shifting.

As for Japan, it is scrambling to deploy smart grid and renewable power en masse to cope with the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, which crippled the island nation’s nuclear power production. At the same time, it is seeking foreign markets for its technology -- the NEDO consortium is one of several partnerships pushing Japanese technology to market, including others in the U.S., such as Hitachi’s lead role in a DOE-funded smart grid demonstration in Hawaii.

The list of particular project roles assigned to the nine-company Japanese consortium provides further detail on where these competitors to General Electric, Siemens, Schneider Electric, ABB et al. are staking their claims. According to Barrera, Toshiba is doing the upstream energy management system, Sharp is providing the solar panels, Fuji Electric builds the fuel cells, Tokyo Gas built the cogeneration plant, Mitsubishi Heavy provided the gas-fired power generator, and Furukawa provides both the advanced lead-acid batteries that back up the solar array and the management and operations software for it.

Arizona-Based Company Heliae is Growing Algae on a Commercial Scale for Transportation Fuel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:07:00 +0000

Arizona-Based Company Heliae is Growing Algae on a Commercial Scale for Transportation Fuel:

Algae fuel and other biofuels have gained popularity in recent years to the point that even the US Military has adopted it as jet fuel. Given its recent rise to prominence, it’s not particularly surprising to learn that Arizona-based algae biofuels company Heliae has decided to harness the growth of algae on a commercial scale so that it can be used as transportation fuel.

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2 Million Computers to Study Effects of Human Activity on Watersheds

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:23:00 +0000

Researchers are tapping the power of 2 million volunteered computers to run millions of simulations to help predict the effects of human activities on large watersheds. Read the rest here:
2 Million Computers to Study Effects of Human Activity on Watersheds

Xero Flor Green Roofs Get Cradle to Cradle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:43:00 +0000

Xero Flor Green Roofs Get Cradle to Cradle:

Xero Flor is a lightweight green roof and system originally developed in Germany. A version was first supplied to Ford’s Dearborn Truck Plant by Xero Flor America LLC, the exclusive manufacturer and distributor here in the states, and now the company’s announcing Cradle to Cradle Silver for the technology.

The company’s pre-vegetated green roof mats install above a custom base for a green roof that’s “naturally resistant to weed encroachment, wind uplift, and surface erosion,” according to Xero Flor America.

The mats are supplied by regional farms and used with recycled-content products to help purchasers reap LEED credits if desired.

Xero Flor has been used in private homes across the country, including in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, Utah, and Washington, to name a few locations.

[+] More about lightweight Xero Flor green roofs.

Credits: Xero Flor America LLC.

In Benin, Solar-Powered Irrigation Pollutes Less and Produces More

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In Benin, Solar-Powered Irrigation Pollutes Less and Produces More:

In 2007, the nonprofit Solar Electric Light Fund began helping women’s collectives in the west African nation of Benin water their vegetable gardens using solar power. The system they used was simple enough: solar-powered water pumps, paired with drip irrigation. Each of these two technologies have been shown to improve the lives of people living in poverty, off the grid. But few people had ever tried combining them.

“Neither of them were particularly innovative in their own right, but bringing them together truly was,” says Bob Freling, SELF’s executive director. “I found precious few examples of solar water pumping. Frankly, it was puzzling, because it seemed like a perfect fit.”

This technological innovation means the women’s collectives can keep producing crops during the region’s six-month dry season, provide greater food security to their families, and start thinking about sending their kids to school. It also could help communities survive and adapt to climate change. The project is now expanding: At least eight more villages in Benin will start using the solar irrigation systems.

Drip irrigation delivers water directly to plant roots, increasing crop yields and using 40 to 80 percent less water than traditional irrigation systems. It’s particularly well suited for dry places, like the semi-arid Sahel region of which Benin is part. But it also requires power inputs, which can be hard to come by in off-the-grid communities. When SELF began working on the project, one of the pioneers of drip irrigation, Dov Pasternak, was working to spread the irrigation technology across west Africa. Pasternak had designed a vegetable garden that used diesel generators to pump water into the irrigation system, but Freling says “That was going to be a non-starter for us.”

Although Pasternak was skeptical of the affordability and longevity of solar systems, he agreed to work with SELF, and soon, Freling says, became "a die-hard believer in solar." The system installed in the pilot villages pumps water into a holding tank from a surface stream in one and from an underground source in the other. Gravity pulls the water to the plants, a mix of vegetables like tomatoes, carrots, okra, and cabbage. Because it’s powered by the sun, the system self-regulates: more water goes to the plants when it’s sunny, which is when they’re most thirsty.

Since the beginning of the pilot program, SELF has worked with researchers at Stanford’s Center for Food Security and the Environment to monitor the impacts of the program on the communities using the irrigation systems. The women involved the project document their plantings, their haul from the gardens, the portion they feed to their families, and the portion they sell. Already, the women report that they’re better able to provide for their families: Women growing vegetables with the technology fed their families 3 to 5 more servings of vegetables each day during the project's first year. The women in the project use the extra income to buy staples for their families, and the community as a whole benefits from the increased availability of vegetables during the dry seasons.

While SELF installs solar irrigation systems in additional villages, monitoring of the pilot villages will continue to measure the long-term impacts of the project. “Are people actually able to make longer term investments? Beyond that initial boost, are they on a path to growth and reinvestment that could be long lasting?” says Jennifer Burney, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Diego who is affiliated with the Stanford food security center.

The pilot is the first step in a larger vision of bringing solar power to households, clinics, schools and business centers in the district. SELF started with the gardens, because the local communities said that was where their need was greatest. But some day, solar power could electrify the entire district of Kalalé—44 villages with a total population of more than 100,000 people. While the garden project has shown short-term impacts, it could help improve communities' resilience to climate change in the long run. The same agricultural problems that faced these villages to begin with—poor yields and infrequent rains—will likely get worse in the decades to come. The solar irrigation systems not only keep down emissions while encouraging development, they provide the tools to tackle climate challenges they could face in the future.

Photo courtesy of SELF

Bamboo: Good or Bad for the Environment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:24:00 +0000

Bamboo: Good or Bad for the Environment:

These days everyone is talking about bamboo. From walls to flooring, bamboo is regaled as the environmental answer to wood. Bamboo flooring is commonplace from showrooms to homes, and the building community expects that it will be used in plywood next. Just think, tomorrow your garage doors could be constructed with the renewable source.

Environmentalists love it for its quick growth and for the fact that it can be harvested without harming the environment. However, the downsides of bamboo are now being scrutinized as its popularity grows and expands throughout the world of home construction. Some of those concerns include biodiversity, soil erosion, and chemical use.

Bamboo is technically a grass and is native to South America, all parts of Asia, as well as northern Australia and areas of the southeast United States. It’s touted for its strength, hardness, and fast growth rate. For builders, bamboo has more compressive strength than concrete and the same strength-to-weight ratio as steel in tension. Also, it grows much faster than trees.

Almost all of the bamboo used in the United States is grown in China. Some of the bamboo plantations there date back hundreds of years, and most of the world’s population uses the grass in some form. Bamboo is common in housing for flooring, in construction as support poles, and in household implements like chopsticks or cutting boards. The fact of the matter is that bamboo is flourishing.

A positive aspect of bamboo is that it can be harvested without killing the plant. A decade ago farmers cleared virgin forest in order to plant their bamboo farms. The profitability of bamboo surpassed the profit of rice and other kinds of farming. This hasn’t been the case in recent years, but a bamboo plantation doesn’t have the biodiversity of a natural forest. Given its invasive nature, bamboo can also quickly take over a nearby forest.

The clearing of forest also incited concerns over soil erosion as did newly planted fields, especially on steep slopes. Researchers found, though, that planting bamboo along river banks helped decrease erosion. Once the grass was established on farms, erosion decreased there as well.

The downside to bamboo lies in its construction. Instead of being cut and used whole, like wood, bamboo is sliced into pieces and glued together. There are serious questions regarding health and safety surrounding how the bamboo is handled and the chemical components used to glue and seal it. Currently there are no standardized requirements for its construction or the glue holding it together. In fact, rates of strength and hardness vary from one end of the spectrum to the other depending on supplier, and the glue can contain formaldehyde and be harmful to the environment.

Although planting and harvesting bamboo may not impact the environment negatively, the handling of it certainly can. In six years there has been little done to ensure that it’s safe for handlers or the people that manufacture it. There is still lots of room for improvement and debate of bamboo.

Join in the discussion in the comments below and/or share the piece.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by mike lowe

Misawa Homes Unveils Home with PV Wall Panels for Year-Round Power Generation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:22:00 +0000

Misawa Homes Unveils Home with PV Wall Panels for Year-Round Power Generation:

Misawa Homes Co., a major Japanese housing manufacturer, opened an eco-friendly model house in Asahikawa City, Hokkaido in May 2011, with photovoltaic (PV) panels installed on the exterior walls, aiming to consistently generate electricity throughout the year.

In this region, where temperatures fluctuate over 50 degrees Celsius over the course of the year and high levels of snow accumulate in the winter, most households require heating more than half the year. Because heavy accumulations of snow make it almost impossible for rooftop PV panels to generate any electricity, Misawa Homes designed a house with PV panels on the side in November 2010, and completed the prototype in May 2011.

As there has been a growing interest in renewable energy, this model house is attracting much attention from people who realized that enabling power generation at home will be also helpful in saving energy.

Next Generation Zero-Energy Model House Debuts in Asahikawa, Hokkaido (Related JFS article)

http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/027090.html

Solar Power on Vertical Walls Possible with New BIPV (Related JFS article)

http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/031089.html

Leading Scientists Predict Giant Orbiting Power Plants Could Power the Earth by 2041

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:08:00 +0000

Leading Scientists Predict Giant Orbiting Power Plants Could Power the Earth by 2041:

Solar power has been studied and tested for nearly 40 years, but only within the last few years have we seen innovations truly make leaps and bounds. Looking towards the future, scientists are now saying that with the technology we have in development today, giant solar-powered satellites able to collect energy and shoot it back down to earth could be used to power the entire globe as soon as 2041. John Mankins, former NASA scientist and U.S. Space Agency former Head of Concepts, is credited with pioneering the theory, which is creating quite the buzz with a number of international scientists and organizations.

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Interactive Map Compares Transit Habits of Hundreds of Cities

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:55:00 +0000

Interactive Map Compares Transit Habits of Hundreds of Cities:

The European Platform on Mobility Management (EPOMM) just unveiled a new interactive web tool that makes it easy to compare transportation data between cities internationally. Now analysts, designers, and planners can conveniently view data on transportation habits in hundreds of cities. Unfortunately, all of this data highlights how far behind American cities are compared to European cities.

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Smarter Sprinklers Can Cut Outdoor Water Use In Half

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:49:00 +0000

Smarter Sprinklers Can Cut Outdoor Water Use In Half:

Bathroom faucets, showerheads, residential toilets, flushing urinals, and irrigation systems: one of these things is not like the others. Only irrigation systems are optional equipment used outside the bathroom, but they recently joined the list of products eligible for the Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense label, which is awarded to water-efficient technology that’s sound, frugal, and innovative.

And while watering the lawn might seem more avoidable than flushing the toilet, landscape irrigation uses the better part of 7 billion gallons of water every day and can add up to well over half of a household’s total water use. In the same way that smart grid technologies can help consumers cut energy use, smart irrigation systems can help consumers manage water use. Like smart grid technology, the leading smart irrigation systems depend on collecting and monitoring huge amounts of data. And in the best case scenarios, they can cut a household’s or a business’ outdoor water use in half.

Smart irrigation systems start from the premise that most people aren’t paying close attention to their water use. Homeowners set a timer on their sprinkler system and forget about it, leaving it to run during a downpour or afterward, when the soil is saturated. Smart irrigation systems pay much closer attention to the weather and adjust their behavior—one type measured how dry a patch of a soil was and watered accordingly. But studies have shown that those systems are less effective than ones that base watering schedules on huge amounts of processed weather data.

HydroPoint, a California-based company that has been a leader in developing this second type of irrigation system, was named to the Cleantech Group’s annual list of 100 top clean tech innovators this year. The company downloads massive quantities of data from weather satellites run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, then translates it all into numbers relevant to kilometer-square patches of land. Its WeatherTRAK system knows, more or less, the condition of a family’s front yard or a business’ campus grounds. Customers can also input the types of plants and soil they’re working with for even more specific watering plans.

Using a smart irrigation system doesn’t guarantee water savings. If a piece of land has been underwatered, for instance, a smart system can increase water use. And using water more responsibly doesn’t address the fundamental disconnect of water use in America: People are still trying to grow grass lawns and green golf courses where they’ve no right to be.

There’s a growing interest in net-zero landscaping—creating outdoor spaces that thrive on a supply of rainwater and graywater from household appliances. The winning entry in this year’s Solar Decathlon, for instance, paid particular attention to the house’s water use. Smart irrigation systems can support this type of sustainable landscaping: When there’s less water to work with, it’s all the more important to use it wisely.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Matt McGee

Company Starts Selling "Water Cells" To Generate Electricity Using Only Water

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:44:00 +0000

Company Starts Selling "Water Cells" To Generate Electricity Using Only Water:

Nakabayashi Co., a Japanese company specializing in products and services for supporting information management, announced on June 24, 2011, that it will start selling in August its new product called Digio2 Water Cell NOPOPO (TM), which generates electricity when water is poured into it. The cell can be easily stored for use during disasters and emergencies.

The water-powered cell, the size of an AA battery, is activated when water is put into an opening using an attached syringe. An ordinary cell battery discharges a slight amount of electricity even when not in use, causing a gradual decease in power capacity over an extended period of time. The water-activated cell, in contrast, can be stored for about 20 years unopened because the cell works only when water is poured into it, causing a chemical reaction.

One of these batteries can, for example, provide enough electricity to light a light-emitting diode (LED) for about five hours. The number of uses depends on the amount of electricity required by the device used with the cell. When its power weakens, the cell can be recharged several times simply by adding more water.

Because 100 units weigh only 1.5 kilograms -- lighter than 100 ordinary batteries weighing 2.3 kilograms -- it is ideal for storage, such as at public facilities. In addition, it contains no toxic substances such as mercury, hexavalent chromium, or cadmium, permitting safe disposal after use.

Frito-Lay Plant in Arizona Approaches Net Zero Energy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:28:00 +0000

Frito-Lay Plant in Arizona Approaches Net Zero Energy:

Frito-Lay and its parent company PepsiCo probably aren’t the first companies that come to mind when you think about green businesses, but with the unveiling of Frito-Lay’s new facility in Arizona, the company just took a big step towards bolstering its green cred. The Casa Grande plant is ‘near net zero,’ meaning that it will be mostly run on renewable energy sources, like solar power. Additionally, the facility will be water efficient, recycling and reusing most of its own water, and the plant will divert most of its waste from local landfills.

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Stunning Net-Zero Energy Homes of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:30:00 +0000

Stunning Net-Zero Energy Homes of 2011:

The biennial Solar Decathlon finished today and teams will begin the grunt work of taking their homes back or sending them off if the homes were acquired. As we’ve done in the past, here’s a short roundup of all 19 Solar Decathlon homes for 2011. The competition fosters the design, build, and operation of net-zero energy homes that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. Maryland won the entire competition, and Appalachian State was given the People’s Choice Award.

Appalachian State University

The Solar Homestead — www.thesolarhomestead.com

Florida International University

perFORM[D]ance House — solardecathlon.fiu.edu

Middlebury College

Self-Reliance — solardecathlon.middlebury.edu

New Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington

First Light — www.firstlighthouse.ac.nz

The Ohio State University

enCORE — solardecathlon.osu.edu

Parsons and Stevens Institute of Technology

Empowerhouse — parsit.parsons.edu

Purdue University

INhome — www.purdue.edu/inhome/

SCI-Arc/Caltech

CHIP — www.chip2011.com

Team Belgium: Ghent University

E-Cube — www.solardecathlon.ugent.be

Canada: University of Calgary

Technological Residence, Traditional Living (TRTL) — www.solardecathlon.ca

Team China: Tongji University

Y Container — solardecathlon.tongji.edu.cn

Team Florida (USF, FSU, UCF, and UF)

Flex House — www.flexhouse.org

Team Massachusetts (MassArt, Umass Lowell)

4D Home — www.4dhome.us

Team New Jersey (Rutgers, NJIT)

ENJOY House — www.solarteamnewjersey.com

Team New York (The City College of New York)

Solar Roofpod — www.ccnysolardecathlon.com

Tidewater Virginia (ODU, Hampton U)

Unit 6 Unplugged — www.teamtidewaterva.org

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Re_home — www.solardecathlon.illinois.edu

University of Maryland

WaterShed — 2011.solarteam.org

The University of Tennessee

Living Light: UT Solar Decathlon House — www.livinglightutk.com

[+] Check out the Solar Decathlon 2011 models.

[+] Check out the Solar Decathlon 2011 renderings.

*University of Hawaii has withdrawn from competition.

Credit: Jim Tetro/U.S. DOE.

New SolarWindows Would Be First See-Through Windows To Generate Electricity

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 03:26:00 +0000

New SolarWindows Would Be First See-Through Windows To Generate Electricity:

Solar technologies are constantly evolving, becoming more and more effective as new designs and discoveries are made in the field. New Energy Technologies continues this trend with the advent of their new product, the SolarWindow. The new windows will be the first see-through windows that can also generate electricity through a specially designed spray put on the window.

They are developing six different types of SolarWindows for different situations:

Commercial- A flat glass window for installation in commercial buildings
Structural Glass- Structural glass walls and curtains for tall structures
Architectural Glass- Textured and decorative interior glass walls, room dividers, etc.
Residential- Window glass for installation in residential homes
Flex- Flexible films that can be applied to existing windows
BIPV- Building product components associated with building-integrated-photovoltaic(BIPV) applications in homes, buildings, and office towers.

Automakers Debate Visions of the Future of Clean Urban Transport

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:39:00 +0000

Automakers Debate Visions of the Future of Clean Urban Transport | GreenBiz.com:

How will people get around in the cities of the future? To listen to heads of R&D departments at Toyota and GM, people in perpetually sunny, clean cities will zip around in electric-powered pods that drive and park themselves while accidents and emissions become a thing of the past.

That vision was presented during today's Changing Cities-Changing Cars panel at the Meeting of the Minds conference in Boulder, Colo. Less starry-eyed dreamers on it talked about car sharing, electric buses, lighter vehicles and reducing idling.

The panel's tone was set by its moderator, Bill Reinert, national manager of advanced technology at Toyota. "… A bus with one passenger is one of the most inefficient ways to move people around," he said. "Cars done the right way can be an effective way to move people."

The vision of Chris Borroni-Bird, director of advanced technology vehicle concepts and the EN-V program for GM, meshed nicely with that. Cities and residents have competing needs from transportation, he said. Cities want clean air, to use less energy, to have fewer accidents, less congestion and less parking needs. People want to drive in urban environments because of the comfort and convenience personal transportation offers. (Pictured above is a concept image from GM's rollout of the EN-V last year.)

"There's a reason why people still drive cars in dense cities," he said. "It's a freedom of expression. For some, it's a status symbol."

His team's solution is the EN-V or Electric Networked Vehicle. This highly maneuverable electric pod is networked and provides autonomous driving capability so it can automatically caravan with other EN-Vs and avoid accidents. "It retains the essential benefits of a car without the downsides of car," he said. (The video at right has Borroni-Bird walking through the EN-V concept.)

Autonomous cars would not only be more efficient from an energy perspective -- the 500-pound EN-V has a 3.4-kwh battery compared with the 34-kwh battery in a Nissan Leaf, according to Larry Burns, director of the Roundtable on Sustainability Mobility at Earth Institute (and one of the presenters at GreenBiz.com's VERGE event last June) -- but freeing people from driving could give them an extra hour a day, which he valued at $12,500 a year, or half the price of a car.

"Alternative propulsion and energy technologies get all the attention," Burns said. "Driverless vehicles and the coordination of all that moves us and goods around will be the most sustainable transportation we'll get to experience."

Offering a different kind of solution was Sascha Simon, director of Advanced Product Planning for Mercedes-Benz USA. Two years ago Mercedes started exploring the concept of car sharing because personally owned cars sit unused about 80 percent of the time, he said.

The increased efficiency of shared assets drove the company to launch Car2Go, first in Germany and then in Canada and Austin, Texas -- where there are currently 15,000 members. Soon electric vehicles are planned to roll out when Car2Go launches in San Diego as "the future of urban mobility," according to Austin.

Even more pragmatic was the vision of Michael Austin, vice president of BYD America, which focuses on selling electric selling cars to fleet operators and electric buses to governments.

The buses run 187 miles on a charge and could carry about 40 passengers in the United States for about $8 in energy costs. Compared with using 25 gallons of diesel, e-buses make moving people in cities "very much about public transportation," he said. At a cost of about $650,000, e-buses are twice the cost of a diesel bus but save $500,000 in fuel and maintenance costs over 12 years, according to Austin.

Wrapping up the panel was a late addition to it: John Coleman works on fleet sustainability for Ford. His goal is to make the 5 million cars Ford currently sells each year significantly reduce emissions without requiring new infrastructure.

Ford is aiming to cut between 250 and 750 pounds from the weight of its vehicles and plans to make its new trucks 30 percent lighter, according to Coleman.

The company also looked at idling technology for applications such as utility bucket trucks which idle all day long. By adding a small battery that only runs the bucket, Ford reduced fuel usage by 80 percent and doubled the amount of time workers could be out because of reduced noise concerns.

"It's not as sexy, but with an 80 percent reduction in fuel, now we're making a difference," Coleman said.

New Material Cleans Polluted Water by Acting Like a Toxin Magnet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:48:00 +0000

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a material that they call SLUG-26 which acts like a pollutant magnet when tossed into contaminated waterways. SLUG — perhaps a play on the California school’s Banana Slug mascot — is a new material that is cheaper and more effective than current methods of removing negatively-charged pollutants from waterways. The material is a positively-charged substrate which, that when placed in polluted water, exchanges non-toxic negative ions for negatively charged pollutants thereby cleaning the water.

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from INHABITAT by Brit Liggett

California says yes to recycled water

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 01:00:00 +0000

The state Senate today passed a bill allowing so-called graywater systems in homes and commercial buildings.

The bill, AB 849, is aimed at clarifying a patchwork of local regulation that has at times prohibited these "non-potable water reuse systems," which divert drain water for irrigation and other purposes.

If signed by the governor, the new state law would prohibit local jurisdictions from banning graywater systems, which have gained popularity as more municipalities face restrictions on fresh water. It would allow those jurisdictions to enact stricter graywater standards than those of the state only if they provide climatic, geographic and topographic reasons for the tougher regulations.

The state adopted uniform rules for installing graywater systemsin 2009, according to an analysis of the bill, which was sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles).

The Assembly already has approved the bill.

Photo: A graywater system collects and filters laundry water in an East Rancho Dominguez low-income housing development. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

This article is taken from: California says yes to recycled water