Eco Geek Latest

203 MW Wind Farm Completed in Utah

Megan Treacy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:29:00 +0000

It's great to see some of the large wind farm projects that were just ideas a couple of years ago become reality. First Wind's Milford Wind Corridor project has just seen the completion of its first phase - 203.5 MW in Millard and Beaver Counties in Utah, the largest renewable energy facility in the state.

The wind farm consists of 97 turbines and will be able power 45,000 homes. Southern California Public Power Authority is purchasing all of the electricity generated over the next 20 years on behalf of the cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena and Burbank.

Construction on the wind farm began almost exactly a year ago. Over the next few years, the wind corridor will expand to include four more phases totaling over 1 GW of wind energy capacity.

via Press Release

Solar Spacecraft to Launch in 2010

Megan Treacy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:28:00 +0000

The Planetary Society is planning to launch a solar-propelled space craft in 2010 after its first attempt landed in the ocean four years ago.

The LightSail-1 would run on the pressure of light hitting its four triangular-shaped Mylar sails. The society sees the project as a way to achieve long space flights with slow, continuous acceleration that eventually leads to high speeds. The society's executive director imagines flights of many years reaching speeds of 100,000 mph where the craft could leave the solar system in five years instead of 25.

The spacecraft will be composed of three Cubesats, small cubes that contain the electronics and controls modules and the sails. When the craft hits the target altitude the sails will unfurl to resemble a kite. The LightSail-1 will "piggyback" on another mission's rocket (the exact one is yet to be determined) and then orbit at an altitude of around 500 miles for a few days to test sunlight as a means of propulsion.

If it's successful, the society plans to launch LightSails 2 and 3 for longer and farther missions. The 2010 launch will cost almost $2 million and will be privately funded.

via AP

Images via Planetary Society

Wind Turbines to Power Cell Phone Towers

Megan Treacy — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:18:00 +0000

Small-scale wind turbines can't produce the large amounts of power that their giant brothers can, but there's still room for them in the renewable energy landscape. As an example, cell phone company Core Communications will begin using small vertical-axis wind turbines to power their cell phone towers.

The company will use turbines from Helix Wind that can generate electricity in winds as slow as 10 mph. The turbines will power the towers and any extra electricity will be sold to the grid, giving Core Communications a new source of revenue as well.

The turbines will be installed on a trial basis on cell phone towers in Southern California for three months starting in early 2010. If they perform well enough, additional turbines could be rolled out permanently.

via CNET

Finally! A Recycling Plant for Dirty Diapers

Megan Treacy — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:10:00 +0000

As a new mom and an ecogeek, I know that choosing a diapering method is a huge issue. Disposable diapers clog landfills for hundreds of years. There are alternatives to disposables, of course, but they have their drawbacks. Cloth diapers require extra water and electricity for laundering and the couple of biodegradable options don't quite perform as well and are hard to find at local supermarkets. This leads to an overwhelming majority of parents choosing disposables and approximately 27.4 billion diapers making their way to American landfills every year.

Enter one of the more exciting stories I've come across in a while. Companies Versus Energy and Knowaste are partnering up to build a diaper recycling plant in the UK. Not only will the diapers collected stay out of landfills, but the plant will actually run on the organic matter contained in them.

The diapers will be shredded, washed, sanitized and separated into organic material and reusable paper pulp and plastic that may find new life as roof tiles, shoe insoles, wallpaper, industrial thickeners or many other potential uses. The water used in the process will be treated and reused.

The plant will open in May 2010 in Birmingham and is the first of five planned for the UK. The diapers will be collected from nurseries, nursing homes and hospitals. My fingers are crossed that the U.S. will follow soon.

via Triple Pundit

Europe Testing "Road Trains" to Cut Fuel Use

Megan Treacy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:28:00 +0000

Have you ever been driving in rush hour and wished you could just zone out and read a book during your trip instead of stressing about the traffic? Well, the EU is testing a way to make that possible while cutting fuel consumption at the same time. The idea is that eight vehicles would travel as one "train," linked by wireless sensors. It's believed that the system, called Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE), could cut fuel use by 20 percent for cars traveling in the trains.

Each road train would be controlled by a lead vehicle driven by a professional driver. All other drivers in the train would be passengers able to take their hands off the wheel and enjoy the ride. Sensors would collect and send information to the lead vehicle about what was happening around each of the cars. Cars, buses and trucks would all be able to join a train and could leave at any time.

The SARTRE project will be conducted for three years on test tracks in the UK, Spain and Sweden and eventually on public roads in Spain. Some specifics will have to be sorted out like how exactly vehicles will join and leave the trains, how the trains will signal to other cars that they're traveling as one and how to ensure a safe organization of vehicles (e.g. not allowing cars to be sandwiched by large trucks).

Ultimately researchers see the road trains being a paid service for drivers.

via BBC

Garmin Offering "Eco" Cable to Go with Systems

Megan Treacy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:40:00 +0000

Garmin has revealed screen shots of its new Eco-Route add-on for the Nuvi 1xxx GPS systems with Bluetooth. The Eco-Route is a cable that plugs into your car's diagnostic communications port and feeds data to your GPS.

Eco-Route reads air, fuel, throttle position and combustion mixture information and then uses that to display performance information for the driver. Fuel economy data includes not just the gallons used, but the cost of fuel used and the total carbon footprint for the trip. The add-on includes a driving challenge that scores drivers on braking, speed and acceleration, aiming to make users more efficient drivers.

Drivers can also choose the most fuel efficient route instead of just the usual shortest or fastest options.

All of this sounds great, but there is a big drawback - the price. The cable will cost $149 for new and old users alike. If it still sounds appealing, Eco-Route should be available by early next year.

via Autoblog Green

Bacteria Could Rid the World of Packaging Waste

Megan Treacy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:17:00 +0000

Consumer and shipping packaging can be incredibly wasteful. Some companies are downsizing their packaging, but many products sitll come wrapped and boxed in ridiculous amounts of plastic, paper, cardboard - you name it. One designer has come up with a way to get rid of the waste by wrapping objects in bacteria, creating a biodegradable, custom-fitting shell. Both gross and exciting!

Mareike Frensmeier just won third place in the Cargo Packs 2020 challenge for his bacteria wrap idea called Bacs. The packaging is made by covering an object with a culture of the bacterium acetobacter xylinum, then starting a sugar feeding frenzy. This creates a "fibrous nano-scaled cellulose network" that encases the object and keeps it safe along its journey.

The Bacs system can be manipulated to offer damp, gel-like packaging for food, dry, paper-like packaging or freeze-dried, foam-like packaging for the most fragile objects. Now, I'm not sure bacteria wrap will ever take off but the idea of a world free of packing peanuts sure is a nice one.

via Treehugger

KLM Testing Biofuels on Passenger Flight

Megan Treacy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:39:00 +0000

As many of us in the U.S. are planning our Thanksgiving menus, Dutch airline company KLM is planning the first biofuel flight with passengers on board. On November 23, a Boeing 747 will take off running on a 50/50 combination of biofuel and jet fuel.

The biofuel being used in this test flight will be made from camelina, a feedstock that produces 84 percent less emissions than regular jet fuel and has proven to be a low-impact crop, requiring less water and fertilizer and can grow in areas where food crops won't be displaced.

Other test flights have been done using other feedstocks like jatropha and without passengers with positive results, but this will be the first using a purely camelina biofuel and with people (other than the pilot) onboard.

via KLM

Desklamp Powered by a Phone Jack

Hank Green — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:25:00 +0000

From my perspective, they very fact that this is possible is the news here. It's a "reading" lamp that can be powered by a phone jack. That's right, your phone jack has a tiny amount of power that comes through along with the phone signal to power things like ringers and speakers and microphones. I imagine that the light output of this thing is pretty pathetic, honestly. I haven't seen any in use, but just looking at the price (less than $6) and the LEDs the thing has got makes me think this isn't going to assist all that much with reading, unless it's very dark out and you REALLY want to find out whether Robert Langdon is really dead.

There are a couple of other advantages to the lamp. First, these phone jacks are the most standard plug in the world. While everybody has a different outlet for power, almost every country uses the same phone jack. Second, when the power is out, often, phone lines are not, meaning this could be a way to have some light during an emergency. And, finally, what could be the most appealing reason to uses this ugly, cheap, and insignificant source of light is that the power you pull from telecoms is free. They pay for it...you don't. Now that I think of it, it's probably against the TOS agreement you have with the phone company, but there are no meters, so they'll never know. You can use all of the (really insignificant amount) of electricity you want to power this lamp, and you'll never get charged for it.

Buy it Here

US Government Surpasses Google for Geothermal Funding

Philip Proefrock — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:09:00 +0000

More than $300 million in funding for research and development of geothermal energy has been announced by U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. This now pushes Google.org into second place behind the government in domestic geothermal R & D funding.

The projects funded by this program address a number of issues which are needed in order to further develop geothermal energy, including advanced mapping and drilling research, coproduced power (such as utilizing hot water produced in some oil wells), and exploration of low temperature geothermal (under 300 degrees F, and down to as low as 165 degrees F). Some of these funds will go towards ground source heat pump research and demonstration projects, which do not generate power directly, but which use the energy they do consume for heating and cooling in a much more efficient manner.

This program also puts the United States well ahead of Australia, which last year spent $43.5 million on geothermal research.

The Department of Energy has published a list (PDF) of all 123 projects under this program.

USDOE Press Release