Energy

Many people understand that their homes or commercial buildings will leak energy. They also understand that over time it will hurt the environment. The problem is that it isn't a big deal to them because they can't see it. It is like telling a 16 year old that the sun can damage their skin. They don't see it happening so they don't worry about it. The easiest way for me to let people know that stick building, even if it does have decent insulation, is not efficient is with a picture. Building with Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) is the best way to reduce energy leaks.

SIPs are a strong structural system consisting of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) insulation which is laminated to oriented strand board (OSB) forming a structural panel.

Now let me show you why. These two buildings are almost identical, located in West Virginia each has about 6,000 sf of roof. The photo on the top will show the thermal imaging while the photo on the bottom will show you what we are looking at with the naked eye.

The building on the left was stick built while the building on the right had a roof constructed of Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) You can see the roof has multiple large "hot spots". The building on the right is a nice consistent purple showing that there are little to no leaks. The parking lots and road retained heat so they show up as yellow and orange.

Below are the same picures from the other side.

Again the stick built building (now shown on the right) has obvious hot spots while the SIP roof (now shown on the left) has no heat loss.

The use of SIPS greatly reduces energy loss. The direct benefit of using SIPs is that there is less energy loss and in turn there are less greenhouse gases being let out into the atmosphere. So while you can't always see the effect our choices have there are consequences, short term and long term. People can help the environment and themselves if they choose green building materials.

Preparing to install your first set of solar panels? Wondering if you are harnessing all the sun's energy that you possibly can? A new device from California-based Solmetric stands to help both residential and commercial solar power users get the most from their investment.

Also useful when designing the layout of new construction or remodeling projects, the Solmetric SunEye is a "hand held electronic device that allows users to instantly assess total potential solar energy given the shading of a particular site. Identifying the shading pattern early in the process reduces the expense of system and home design and improves the efficiency of the final system or house," according to the Solmetric website.

Release just last year, the SunEye was recently chosen as one of BuildingGreen's Top 10 Products for 2007. Chosen from over 200 products being reviewed by the website, the SunEye joins fellow BGTV favorite LED light from LLF Inc.

An easy-to-use interface and USB connection for data transfer to your computer makes the SunEye simple for all users. What else does this swank little device do? Here are a few more of its efficient features:

+ Integrated electronics plot solar exposure at that location.

+ Users can edit images, simulating the removal of obstructions such as trees or structures.

+ Shading percentages in monthly, seasonal, annual, and multi-skyline averages can be determined in the field or uploaded to a personal computer via USB data cable for further analysis, reporting, and printing.

+ The Solmetric SunEye automatically generates reports for sales quotes and solar rebate applications.

Why: Heat rises, so near your ceiling the air is probably the warmest in your house (good reason for slow circulating fans in high ceiling houses, but that's another topic). If there's an attic above your ceiling it's probably a major conduit of heat loss in winter. Adding insulation to your attic is said to be one of the most cost-effective energy saving investments you can make. Typically the attic will also get very hot in summer, so insulating it will also greatly reduce cooling problems in summer.

My project: Soon after buying my 32 year old house in 1999, I realized the attic insulation was pathetically inadequate. This house has roof trusses and the original builders simply put a few inches of loose mineral (rock) wool in the spaces between the 2x4 rafters. 32 years of settling and blowing around left the remains of the rock wool in very scattered condition. Many spots were bare -- you could look right at the gypsum drywall of the ceiling below!

Extensive remodeling in this house involved new and replaced wiring, recessed ceiling lights, bathroom fans, etc. etc. that required much climbing around in the attic, over the rafters, displacing and replacing insulation. Obviously, I had to finish all those big projects before adding more inches of insulation in the attic. Therefore it was summer of 2002 before this job got done.

Choosing the method of adding insulation was easy. I wanted to leave the few inches of rock wool there -- it would be nasty to remove and why waste it? So, by far the quickest and cheapest method was to add more blown-in loose insulation. Recycled cellulose, made from old newsprint I think, with flame and bug retardent chemicals added, was the clear choice. You can actually rent machines to do this, buy the bags of material, and do it yourself. But it was cheap enough to hire a professional and I'm glad I did. They knew how to seal off the attic from living spaces below, had more powerful blowing machines than you can rent, and knew how to get even coverage. And it's a really dirty job.

The two fellows came one morning, did the whole attic and were gone by noon. I had about 1700 sq. feet of attic area, to which they added 6+ inches of blown cellulose for total cost of $668. The R-value of what they added is ~23, so my total ceiling R-value now is probably close to the recommended 30 for this area. I now have between 7-8 inches covering the entire attic.

cellulose blown insulation

Energy savings:I averaged my natural gas usage in therms for the 6 highest heating months (Oct - Mar) of 2000-2005 -- two winters before and three after attic was insulated. The average savings after insulating was 330 therms for the 6 heating months, approximately 1/3 of the total usage for those 6 months of the year (980 before, 650 after). Natural gas was pretty cheap in 2002-3, a little over $.50/therm, but has approximately doubled since then, though it spiked higher in 2005-06, it has come down a little since then. But at then current rates, my insulation project paid for itself in the beginning of third winter (fall '04-winter '05). At present gas price, the project would have paid for itself in the second winter.

depth approx 7-8"

Hoping to embrace the natural energies of the earth but avoiding installing solar panels (for whatever reason)? Well, how about your own personal wind turbine?

In one of Atlanta, Georgia's oldest neighborhood, the area's first small-scale wind turbine was installed in Christine and Curt Mann's backyard. Though not all of their neighbors were as amped about the new energy saver as the Mann's were, the turbine will generate enough power to run the entire home and "eliminate as much CO2 from the atmosphere as an acre of mature, healthy trees."

This particular model was designed especially for residental customers that tap into an traditional power grid. "The blades are curved and shaped for quiet operation. It is the first backyard-sized wind turbine that includes a built-in inverter and requires no external components."

When asked about installation of the wind turbine in this urban setting with relatively low wind speeds, Roger Cone, founder of Southern Energy Solutions, said, “We all went into this project knowing that this was not an ideal placement of the Skystream. Our target markets for the Skystream wind turbine are those areas of Georgia with greater average wind speeds, such as the mountains of north Georgia and the coastal areas of southeast Georgia.”

It's clear that solar panels are still the most logical choice for most homeowners and builders, this new residental turbine is more proof that Americans are ready to take the health of the planet into their own hands. Will the Mann's neighbors install their own turbines in the near future? Probably not, but this could be a big development for those living in coastal (and more breezy) areas.

[via ENN]

In this video, Chronicle energy reporter David R. Baker demonstrates a new online game called "Energyville'' developed for San Ramon oil giant Chevron Corp.

I thought this was a pretty brilliant initiative from Chevron-- sort of a spin on Sim City. The petrol providers are obviously key participants in our evolution, but it's interesting to see them having a dialog with consumers and addressing some of the issues they're facing and how demand ties in.

We've linked before to the Rocky Mountain Institute's well-known report on what's wrong with the United States' energy grid (basically, it's over-centralized, with too few generating stations, making us vulnerable to outages). Now a company called Bloom Energy has a solution, and the technology is green: "The company's vision is to use solid-oxide fuel cells to allow homes to generate their own electricity. The fuel cells would use (but not burn) hydrocarbon fuel, and produce just half the carbon dioxide that today's power plants do."

Excess power can flow back to the grid, so you might even earn some cash back once your own power needs are met. Or better yet, as Bloom Energy CEO KR Sridhar hinted in an interview last year, you might be able to generate enough power to fill up your car at home.

Link via Treehugger.

image sxc.hu.

The Benefits of Fluorescents

Replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents saves energy as you are replacing a 100-watt bulb with one that is only 23-watts, while still producing the same amount of light. In addition, the CFL bulbs produce 70 percent less heat, lowering the need for air conditioning. A CFL bulb will typically last ten times as long as a traditional incandescent bulb, saving you $30 or more over the life of each bulb.

If every American home replaced just one light bulb with a CFL bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.

By swapping all of the bulbs of the world with CFL's would cut world energy use by 10 percent. To put it into perspective, that equals more energy than is currently planned to be saved with solar and wind power.

Reducing energy use also cuts down on power plant emissions of mercury and other emissions that contribute to global climate change, acid rain and smog.

How the Technology Works

Nikola Tesla first introduced fluorescent bulbs at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. They work by passing an arc of electricity through mercury vapor in the lamp. The charged mercury atoms produce an ultraviolet (UV) light, which is absorbed by the phosphor powder coating on the inside of the tube. When energized these phosphors emit the white light you see.

To generate the mercury vapor, a small drop of liquid mercury lives inside the tube. This mercury is instantly vaporized when the lamp is turned on, only to re-condense when the lamp is turned off.

Unlike an incandescent bulb, the fluorescent bulb has no filament to break or get hot. This is what gives the CFL is energy efficiency.

Without the mercury vapor, there would be no light emitting from the tube.

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