Simple Solar Principles

Simple solar principles
dark gets hot
light reflects
clear keeps the wind out
insulation keeps heat in
heat can be stored and moved
and any window that sees sunlight
is already
a solar
collector

Free Energy: Solar and Dynamo LED Keychain Lights

Last year, one of the vendors at NESEA's Building Energy conference (http://www.nesea.org/buildingenergy/) gave away a keychain fob, a little two LED hand crank light.  This year, another vendor gave away three LED solar keychain lights.  A few weeks later, I got another solar LED light as a giveaway from the MIT Energy Initiative.

A little searching found where these promotional gifts are available in bulk:
1.61 @ per 5000 solar keychain lights
http://promotionalproductsonline.com/products/Colored-Solar-Powered-LED-Keylights.html

1.32@ per 5000 hand crank keychain lights
http://www.dhgate.com/top-50-pcs-lot-brand-new-2-led-mini-dynamo/p-ff80808133cfdac80134165da92c2e25.html#s1-1-1

I wonder what happens when these cheap sweatshop trinkets meet the necessary invention of the bottom billion and a third, billion and a half people who do not yet have access to reliable electricity.




In 1988 I visited China.
One evening, I walked out of the White Swan Hotel
on Shamian Island and crossed the bridge
into the city of Guangzhou.
There I saw a line of men
standing behind small folding tables
in closed shop doorways.

Coming closer, I saw that they were rebuilding and
reselling
plastic "disposable" lighters.

I want a solar rechargeable reading light
just as cheap, adaptable, and readily available
as a disposable cigarette lighter.
We need to make it possible
for every child around the world
to read in bed
and dream.

That's one way we could transition to a more renewable economy.

Richard Komp has been practicing another, seeding solar cottage industry systems around the world for the last few decades.  He teaches people how to assemble their own panels, from  AA battery to household, school, or hospital scale, out of raw solar cells.  You can read more about cottage industry solar at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/25/1196968/-Solar-as-a-Cottage-Industry

Boston Solar House Tour, 1990

A tour of suburban homes and urban apartment houses using solar energy around the Boston area from 1990 or so. Some of these houses were built as early as the 1960s.

Energy Critical Elements

"Energy Critical Elements"

Wednesday, January 16, 2013
1:30p–2:30p
MIT, Building 6-120, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Robert Jaffe - Morningstar Professor of Science, Department of Physics
I will then turn to our recent report on "Energy Critical Elements: Securing Materials for Emerging Technologies", describing rare elements' roles in emerging technologies, constraints on availability, and government actions to avoid disruptive shortages.

Web site: http://student.mit.edu/searchiap/iap-9289af8f3b3c7818013b3d15ee340001.html
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Physics IAP
For more information, contact:  Denise Wahkor
617-253-4855
DENISEW@MIT.EDU

American Physical Society (APS) and Materials Research Society Energy (MRS) Critical Elements report:
http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=236337

Since the Chinese have recently monopolized rare earths production, energy critical elements have become a serious economic and policy concern.  The US has responded by engaging in rare earths mining and now produces 20% of some of them.  Australia is also beginning rare earths mining.  If the usual model of capitalistic boom and bust, which we've experienced with the silicon market over the last decade, is any indication, there will be an over-investment in rare earths elements (REE) and then a subsequent bust as the market settles.  However, the fact remains that the US is 90% dependent on imports for critical energy materials.

Some of these energy critical elements include:

Gallium, germanium, indium, selenium, silver, and tellurium, all employed in advanced photovoltaic solar cells, especially thin-film photovoltaics.

Dysprosium, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium (all REEs), and cobalt, used in high-strength permanent magnets for many energy-related applications, such as wind turbines and hybrid automobiles.
Most REEs, valued for their unusual magnetic and/or optical properties. Examples include gadolinium for its unusual paramagnetic qualities and europium and terbium for their role in managing the color of fluorescent lighting. Yttrium, another REE, is an important ingredient in energy-efficient solid-state lighting.
Lithium and lanthanum, used in high performance batteries.
Helium, required in cryogenics, energy research, advanced nuclear reactor designs,
and manufacturing in the energy sector.
Platinum, palladium, and other PGEs, used as catalysts in fuel cells that may find wide applications in transportation. Cerium, a REE, is also used as an auto-emissions catalyst.
Rhenium, used in high performance alloys for advanced turbines.

Tellurium is one fourth as abundant as gold.  It takes 80 tons of Te to get a gW of peak power in thin film pv solar according to Jaffe.  (However, thin film pv is not the most efficient pv currently available and I doubt that anyone would consider deploying large-scale thin film pv installations.)  The estimated world production of tellurium is 500 tons per year.

Neodymium and praseodymium are used in wind turbines and are about one tenth of world rare earth production.

Terbium production is about 450 tons per year.

Rhenium is perhaps the rarest material with an annual world production between 40 and 50 tons per year.

In the next few years the US will sell off its helium stockpile. Helium is a by-product of natural gas, at 4 parts per billion, but only some natural gas deposits include it and those have not been adequately mapped.

10% of world's silver production now goes into silicon pv contacts.

Almost all of these materials are by-products of other materials and their prices are artificial because of that:
Rhenium with molybdenum
Tellurium with copper (also zinc and lead)
Indium and germanium with zinc
Gallium with aluminum

Thorium is frequently present in rare earth deposits as well but usually disposed of because it is not economic to capture it. As are many other useful materials.  Witness the flaring of gas from the fracking operations in North Dakota.

In addition, as by-materials, they depend upon the main ores and the processes used to produce them.  For instance, copper can be processed in such a way that tellurium is lost.

The report recommends some changes in policy:
a "coordinated response" which is beginning as the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has established a task force on critical and strategic mineral supply chains led by Cyrus Wadia;  the US DOE has selected the Ames Laboratory to house the Critical Materials Institute;  and, although the Bingaman-Murkowski amendment of the energy critical materials bill died in the last Congress, it will be re-introduced in the next Congress with the sponsorship of Ron Wyden and Barbara Murkowski since Jeff Bingaman has retired from the Senate;

"comprehensive, reliable, and up-to-date information on all aspects of the life cycle of ECEs as present information on many of these materials is very uneven";

"research and development to both expand availability and reduce dependency" on such materials and to train scientists and technologists in the field especially since it takes 5-10 years for research and develop substitutes and another 5-15 years to bring new sources online;

and "recycling" as many of these materials are not yet recycled or even tracked through the materials flows of our industrial and commercial systems.

Thomas Graedl of Yale is one scientist working on recycling and materials flows:

"The historical reservoir for the materials used by our technological society has been virgin stocks (ore bodies, mineral deposits, and the like). For a variety of reasons, those stocks may become inadequate or unavailable at some times or places in the future, and the loss of resources by dissipation or discard is often problematic from an environmental standpoint. These issues can be addressed by developing cycles for the stocks and flows of materials of interest, particularly if the cycles are temporally and spatially resolved.

"I, along with my colleagues, have characterized regional and global cycles, current and historic, for copper and zinc, determining the stocks available in different types of reservoirs and the flows among the reservoirs. GIS techniques are used to display some of the results in spatially-gridded form. The work provides a new basis for assessments of resources sustainability, environmental impacts over time, and related policy initiatives."
source:  http://environment.yale.edu/profile/graedel/research

Europe is actually doing some recycling now.  EU Rare Earths Recycling study:  http://reinhardbuetikofer.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Rare-earths-study_Oeko-Institut_Jan-2011.pdf

One company is Solvay
http://www.solvay.com/EN/NewsPress/20120927_Coleopterre.aspx

Of course, there is an industrial association and lobbying group, RARE, the Association for Rare Earth (http://www.rareearthassociation.org/)

RARE is the premier international advocate and opinion leader for rare earth industry suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers dedicated to improving the future through rare earth innovation.

One interesting parallel track Robert Jaffe didn't mention is the Center for Inverse Design
(http://www.centerforinversedesign.org/) which is doing a systematic examination of the periodic table for new and more efficient properties, in some cases using genetic algorithms. Carla Gomes of Cornell is also doing some interesting work on the computational analysis of new materials.  After hearing talks on the Center and then, a few weeks later, Dr Gomes, I alerted her to the Center's work.  I have emailed Dr Jaffe about both and hope that something useful can come from making such connections.

In addition, there's the currently outlandish possibility of nuclear transmutation of elements.  Here is a presentation by Yasuhiro Iwamura of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on transmutation reactions delivered at the American Nuclear Society on November 12, 2012:
http://youtu.be/VefCEaLAkRw

It is always good to remember

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

But I wouldn't hold my breath in anticipation of such (scientific) miracles.

Occupy Sandy

http://techpresident.com/news/23062/hurricane-sandy-moves-occupy-wall-street-protest-people-powered-recovery

A group of people from the Occupy Wall Street movement is collaborating with the climate change advocacy group 350.org and a new online toolkit for disaster recovery, recovers.org, to organize a grassroots relief effort in New York City.

Occupy Sandy:  http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-sandy/

Boston TEDX talk by Recovers.org http://www.ted.com/talks/caitria_and_morgan_o_neill_how_to_step_up_in_the_face_of_disaster.html



The combination of the jobs and economic focus of Occupy with the climate change and energy transition ideas of 350.org along with the disaster recovery systems of Recovers.org is a model that can build resilience and preparedness quickly if continued.  Add Solar IS Civil Defense, set the Maker Culture loose, and it just might shade over into Solar Swadeshi, Gandhian economics, a non-violent and restorative open source peer-to-peer economic system where we plan for 100% success for all humanity, to paraphrase R Buckminster Fuller.


First encountered Recovers.org in April, 2012 when Caitria O'Neill, one of the founders, spoke at Harvard.  Morgan O'Neil, Caitria's sister and another of the founders, was working on a PhD in atmospheric science before her hometown of Monson, MA was hit by a tornado and she began disaster recovery work.

Here are my rough notes from that presentation:
4/17/12
Harvard
Recovers.org
Common misconceptions - Red Cross and FEMA organize volunteers, assess needs and donations, or canvass neighborhoods.  They do not do any of these things.
Common problems - Spontaneous volunteers and unsolicited donations (almost never a need for clothes)
[accommodating surges of volunteers, donations, and interest is a problem not confined to natural disasters]
Town/ngo/community responses do not interface optimally now
No centralized info hub
Short window of interest - 50% of web searches on a disaster are in the first 7 days but needs are beginning to be reported only after that first week
Recover.org databases the initial interest information for use later
Use community organizations for long-term recovery
[build resilience, especially for most common emergencies and disasters - flood, fire, blizzard, drought]
Internet communication more organized and prioritized than facebook
Centralized info clearinghouse
Tools:  needs reporting, canvassing, volunteer management, donation databases
Fema pays for 75%, state pays for 15%, town pays for 10% - and volunteer hours can be counted if accounted for.
Recovers.org has a database service that can be deployed online immediately along with a package of tools to take advantage of that initial interest
Post-disaster assistance free
License subscriptions to preparing towns - first sale to five towns in Illinois in response to periodic flooding

Previously:
Planning for After the Storm Emergency and Before the Next One
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/28/1151415/-Planning-for-After-the-Storm-Emergency-and-Before-the-Next-One
Building Resilient Communities:  John Robb at NYC Maker Faire
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/14/1144458/-Building-Resilient-Communities-John-Robb-at-NYC-Maker-Faire
Eating the City and Town:  Todmorden and Beyond
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/05/1125342/-Eating-the-City-and-Town-Todmorden-and-Beyond
My Solutions to Climate Change
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/26/1136484/-My-Solutions-to-Climate-Change
Occupy Green
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/16/1037270/-Occupy-Green

Solar Stove Design Challenge

Solar Cookers International needs new designs for a more durable solar cooker.  For years, people in refugee camps have been using the CooKit, a cardboard and aluminum foil solar reflector with a plastic bag as a "greenhouse" around a blackened pot, to cook food and reduce the need for cooking fuel and the consequent necessity for women and children to leave the relative safety of the camps to look for fuel, exposing themselves to injury, rape, and murder by the very people they've been trying to escape.  The Touloum camp in eastern Chad for refugees from Darfur is one place where these solar cookers have made a real impact.

The design criteria are
the reflector must be waterproof and UV resistant, cost less than US $25 and last for at least five years;
it must hold one or more three to five liter cooking pots;
the greenhouse replacement for the plastic bag should last for at least one but preferable two years or longer;
the reflector and greenhouse must allow the cooking pot to reach temperatures between 250 F/121C and 300F/149C;
both the reflector and the greenhouse must be lightweight, unbreakable and fold flat for shipping;
both must be easy to open and close, easy to clean and easy to store indoors;
the cost of the greenhouse should not exceed $10

Please spread the word as there are 10 million displaced persons and refugees in the world today, many in desert regions where solar cooking could be used, and more than 2 billion people are still cooking every day over open fires.  If solar cookers can reduce a portion of the need for combustible fuels and the resulting black carbon, it would be a great help to the people using them and help reduce local deforestation and climate change almost immediately.

More information at
http://www.solarcookers.org/index.html
http://solarcooking.wikia.com

You can support solar cookers in African refugee camps today through
http://www.solarcookerproject.org/
http://www.jewishworldwatch.org/

One of my favorite solar oven designs was Dr Charles Greeley Abbott's from the early 20th century.  It was a parabolic trough that heated oil as its working fluid.  He built it on Mount Palomar in CA when that area was remote and used a clock and counterweight system to track the sun during the day.  The oven got hot enough to bake bread:  http://www.motherearthnews.com/do-it-yourself/how-to-build-a-solar-cooker-zmaz77mjzbon.aspx

David Gordon Wilson of MIT has been working on another stored heat solar oven using a Fresnel lens to concentrate sunlight on lithium nitrate which can store heat up to 25 hours and produce temperatures of 450º F over that period of time.  They say they'll have a production model available soon.
http://inhabitat.com/wilson-solar-grill-stores-the-suns-energy-for-nighttime-fuel-free-grilling/
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39261/173660389.pdf


A few days ago, I remarked to a friend that the annual local solar cooker picnic, usually around summer solstice, hadn't happened this year.  Then I got this notice:

12th Annual Solar Picnic

Saturday, July 28th
11:00 to 3:00 (Solar Noon will be 12:51 PM)
Somerville Community Growing Center, 22 Vinal Ave. Somerville, MA  (near Union Square)
See map: http://www.thegrowingcenter.org/find_us.html

12th Annual Solar Picnic at the Somerville Community Growing Center

Celebrate the sun and another year's growth in the garden. Come and join us for a solar picnic - no gas, wood or charcoal grills, just solar cookers using the energy of the sun!

This event is a simple, traditional pot-luck picnic. No fire, just solar ovens/cookers. We will have a few solar cookers and some space available for you to bring your own. If you want to learn how to build one or see how they work, this is your golden opportunity! For more information see:
http://solarcooking.org

There will also be other solar devices demonstrated (of course, feel free to bring your own) and a good chance to see old friends and meet new ones. A great place for a picnic, the Somerville Community Growing Center is an urban oasis that was designed and built by local residents and is maintained by volunteers. http://www.thegrowingcenter.org

It's a recipe for a fine midsummer's day: friends, fun, food and the sun! Relax, chat, learn and explore the gardens. And when the delicious aroma of solar-cooked cuisine fills the air, come to the table and feast!

Sponsors:   The Boston Area Solar Energy Association: http://www.BASEA.org (a chapter of NESEA).

Somerville Climate Action: http://somervilleclimateaction.org

Previously:
My Solar Christmas
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-solar-christmas.html
Short Term Climate Forces:  Black Carbon, Methane, and Tropospheric Ozone
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/06/1088365/-Short-Term-Climate-Forces-Black-Carbon-Methane-and-Tropospheric-Ozone
Solar as a Cottage Industry
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/15/1055035/-Solar-as-a-Cottage-Industry

Solar IS Civil Defense - what we are all supposed to have on hand in case of emergency - flashlight, cell phone, radio, extra set of batteries - can be powered by a few square inches of solar electric panel.  Add a hand crank or bicycle generator and you have a reliable source of survival level electricity, day or night, by sunlight or muscle power.

This is also entry level electrical power for the 1.5 billion people around the world who do not yet have access to electricity.  Civil defense at home and economic development abroad can be combined in a "buy one, give one" program like the Bogolight (http://www.bogolight.com) which is a solar LED light and AA battery charger.

Solar IS Civil Defense and could be much more.

-------------------------

I wish the mainline environmental groups had been broadcasting practical material like this for the last twenty years or so instead of devoting almost all their advertising to scaring us about climate change.

Simply Questions

Simply Questions about the ecological footprint for children (because adults are too crazy to understand it).

Solar as a Cottage Industry

Richard Komp (sunwatt@juno.com) has been building solar cottage industries in Nicaragua, Niger, Peru, Mali, Rwanda, Pakistan, Mexico, Haiti, India, and Mexico for the last few decades. He teaches people how to build small solar electric systems using factory second photovoltaic cells and assembling them into collector arrays themselves.

Here's a video of his 2009 Pakistan project


One of his latest projects is in Colombia (http://www.mainesolar.org/Colombia2011.pdf PDF alert) at the Universitaria de Investigacion y Desarillo (UDi) in Bucaramanga and uses solar to make more solar: solar cookers are used to encapsulate solar electric panels using ethylene-vinyl-acetate (EVA) instead of silicone. The EVA cures at a temperature near the boiling point of water and the students built two solar cookers big enough to fit 65 watt PV modules. 24 students in one week made six 65 watt PV modules and about 8 solar cell phone chargers, besides studying the design of several different PV systems. One of the solar cookers ended up in a restaurant on the beach while the second was used for making PV modules. "There is about $90 worth of materials in each big cooker," writes Komp.

Komp also gave lectures on solar thermal systems, including solar air conditioning, relevant as the UDi is designing a zero energy addition to their campus, a building where all the electricity, hot water, and air conditioning will be 100% solar powered.

"We designed a lithium bromide absorption air conditioner that ran from heat from an array of 150 evacuated solar water heater tubes. The only electricity the air conditioner will need is to run the pumps and fans since the heat furnishes all the energy needed to produce the chilled water, which will be stored in large insulated tanks for use when cooling is need[ed] at night or cloudy days. All the hot water needed (and then some) will be from the waste heat from the air conditioner system. ($100,000+ in costs)"

Part 1 of Richard Komp's 10 part introduction to photovoltaics series.

http://www.mainesolar.org/Komp.html - reports on Richard Komp's various international projects

Richard is not the only person taking factory seconds to the developing world to make local solar devices locally. Here's a BBC story (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15876602) on making solar cell phone and battery chargers in Kenya through Mark Kragh and KnowYourPlanet (http://www.knowyourplanet.com).

Richard is also not the only person using solar to make more solar as this article about an industrial solar furnace for PV manufacture points out
http://inhabitat.com/nrels-new-optical-furnace-bakes-more-efficient-solar-cells-using-50-less-energy/

Some 30 or more years ago, Solarex talked about building a solar breeder facility where the solar panels on the roof would provide the power to make the solar panels inside the factory. Unfortunately, Solarex never completed its project and no longer exists.

There are other cottage industries that can be built around solar besides solar electricity. Solar ovens have been used in African refugee camps for years now, supported by such institutions as German CARE (http://www.care.de/) and the Jewish World Service (http://www.jewishworldwatch.org/donate/solarcookerproject.html)

Here's a video on a solar cooker workshop held in Nyala, Sudan under the auspices of the Darfur Peace and Development Organization.



This video from German CARE is especially close to my heart because it shows a woman in one of the 3 international displaced person camps they run in Easten Chad using a solar oven and a "haybox" or retained heat cooker to prepare a meal.



The haybox is simply an insulated box into which you place a hot pot. The heat has nowhere to go but into the food. You can also use a stone as a heat reservoir: heat the stone, place it in the box with a pot of food, cook. It's an old, old technique updated with solar. I love these ancient solutions to common problems.

In Tanzania, Robert Lange has been working with the Maasai people adapting an efficient cookstove to their local needs (http://www.maasaistovessolar.org). They have established a small factory to produce them using local materials.

"Lange reports that, 'Our particulate and CO monitors show that the stoves cut indoor smoke by 90 percent. They also reduce the amount of wood use by 60 percent, thereby saving 12 to 15 hours a week of wood-gathering for the woman of each household.'

“'We are finding that householders are willing to pay for stoves if they know they will really save time and eliminate the smoke compromising their children’s health. Maasai typically have little cash but they have goats and cows. If they are able to see value in the stoves, they are ready to sell "a goat and a half" to purchase one. Referring to Lange as "Babu”, they affectionately call the stoves “Jiko ya babu” (Grandpa’s stove).'

"'The numbers also show the potential in business stimulation. The final cost for a stove is about $55. Of this, $10.40 goes to the local brick maker; cement and other building materials cost $8.50 at the local supplier; steel for custom parts is purchased for $12 from the Arusha steel merchants; transport of bricks and labor required to form the steel parts come to about $9.00. And the women’s team that makes the stoves in the homes, building them, maintaining them, and training the householder how to uses them, earns $14 per stove to be divided among team members.'"

Animation of stove design http://www.informmotion.biz/Maasai_stove_v2.html

This 5 gallon solar shower design is also ripe for a locally produced solar cottage industry
http://www.greendiary.com/solar-shower-affordable-solution-healthy-life.html

One of the best introductions to the variety of solar solutions being implemented around the world is The Renewable Revolution by Sajed Kamal. Sajed is another person who has been doing solar internationally for a number of decades. He lives in an apartment house in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston and practices what he preaches:

"It inspires me to look at the 46W stand-alone PV system we installed in our home in 1986. Sitting on the south-facing window sill of our fifth floor condominium unit in the Fenway, with the battery box placed inside and under the window, it has been supplying electricity for a room with two 15W fluorescent lights, a table lamp, a small table fan and a record player diligently and reliably, around the year, for over 20 years! All I had to do was to replace the set of two interconnected 6V, deep-cycle batteries twice. The room is also equipped with a variety of solar cookers - both home-made and factory-made - well-used over the years. The PV system also has the capacity to power our 'Tulsa Hybrid' solar cooker that can cook three ways, day and night, year-round: by direct sunlight, being plugged into the regular household current (110VAC), or by solar electricity from the PV system (12VDC converted to 110VAC through an inverter). Last but not least, the battery in our digital camera too, gets recharged by the PV system."

I know Richard Komp, Robert Lange, and Sajed Kamal personally and thus can say that their work is a labor of love, lasting over many years and now decades. Richard and Robert are always looking beyond their own pockets for support in what they do. You can contact them at their respective websites if you care to contribute.

Occupy Green

This idea may be moot after all the forced evictions of the Occupations from public spaces but I thought I'd share it anyway.

I've visited the Occupations in Wall Street, Boston, and Providence, RI. Every time I go to one of them, I try to connect with somebody about making the Occupation green with, as yet, little success. In New York, I saw the greywater treatment system Mobile Research Labs set up and talked to a couple of people about using some simple solar techniques. In Boston, I've tried to connect the winterization team with the student Energy Clubs at some of the local colleges and universities and alerted my own network of solar enthusiasts to Occupy Boston's efforts. I've also tried to do the same by contacting OWS's Sustainability Group. In Providence, I talked with the only occupier I saw up and around early on a Sunday morning. He was picking up trash around the park and was disappointed that the group hadn't organized themselves enough to do recycling. I gave him my card and my elevator pitch for a green occupation and he said he'd pass it on.

I look at the Occupations and see economic refugee camps and a possible test-bed for emergency response and sustainable economic development around the world. Some may say that's crazy but the links are there if you look.

Occupy Wall Street had the aforementioned greywater treatment system and bike generators in NYC built by Time's Up. In October, Greenpeace brought solar panels to the site (video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZI8WSM7O2w ). There was even a system for carrying compostable "wastes" to community gardens by cargo bike.

In Boston, Revolt Lab designed and built a portable solar charger (more at http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/59128-occupy-wall-street-spawns-diy-solar-power ). Sage Radachowsky built a winterized micro house and brought it to the Occupation.

There is even an effort to Occupy Rooftops on Community Solar Day, November 20, by Solar Mosaic, a group which has been building community solar projects one panel at a time.

All of these are great ideas and a good start but there are many other things that are possible.

How about the 99% expressing solidarity with the Other 90%, the poorest people around the world, by using the solar cooking techniques that has been used in African refugee camps for years:



I especially like this video because it not only shows you how to use (and make) a simple solar cooker but also demonstrates an old slow cooking technique, the hotbox or haybox cooker. This is simply an insulated container into which is placed the a pot of food once it has been heated up to cooking temperature. This is an idea that goes back a long ways into our history and is just as useful today.

Rainwater harvesting is another simple idea that the Occupations could use as access to water has been an issue for most Occupation sites since they started.

Sanitation is an obvious problem that has not been adequately addressed. I wonder if the Drink Pee Drink Pee Drink Pee process where you can pee in a container and "then perform a biochemical reaction that transforms the nutrients in your urine into an immediately usable fertilizer to feed your own plants" might be applicable.

The US military is now making solar and wind powered forward bases. Can some of their technology be adapted by the Occupations? Does Architecture for Humanity and Crisis Commons have any interest in trying out emergency response ideas through the Occupations?

These ideas are only a beginning of what is possible.

----------------

All I know about simple solar is at
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/09/simple-solar-parts-1-2-and-3.html
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/12/simple-solar-parts-4-through-8.html

Trash Technology and Recycled Solar: Plastic Bottles

Trash Technology and Recycled Solar: Plastic Bottles

Solar water disinfection
http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN
A two liter plastic bottle can be made into a water treatment system simply by filling it with contaminated water and exposing it to the sun. Sodis is an organization that promotes this technology around the world.

The disinfection process can be speeded by turning aluminized mylar snack food bags inside out and making them into reflectors as two young women in Belo Horizonte, Brazil discovered: http://hybridliving.com.au/news/index.php/2008/05/isef-sterilizing-water-with-trash/

Solar bottle bulbs for daylighting
http://www.elliottlemenager.com/2010/06/21/amazing-water-bottle-sky-lights/

In 2002, during a long electrical shortage, at Uberaba, São Paulo, Brasil, Mr Alfredo Moser discovered a way to gather sun light in the house through plastic bottles hanging from the roof. First shown at the Globo Reporter in the 25th May 2007.

Alfredo Moser was pressed by a scarce electricity substitution and found out that he could light his house with a bottle of water filled with water and a protection cap made of camera film.

The bottle is just refracting sunlight very effectively and produces an equivalent light power compared to a 50/60W lamp. In a rainy day, even without much light and direct sun, one still have some light. Scientist have now visited Moser and are looking into ways to take this concept to maximize its potential.

That was 2002. Now over 10,000 households, small businesses, and schools in the Philippines have installed solar bottle bulbs. Iliac Diaz of Liter of Light is attempting to spread it worldwide.
http://isanglitrongliwanag.org/

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2011/0822/Used-soda-bottles-light-up-the-world-for-free

The invention is something that is so simple, cheap, and sustainable that anyone can create and maintain it themselves.

As Diaz says, the three rules of appropriate technology are that people can find it, they can replicate it, and most importantly, they can make a business of it.

Here's another Brazilian design, for a PET bottle hot water heater
http://www.temasactuales.com/temasblog/environmental-protection/waste-recycling/a-solar-water-heater-made-of-pet-bottles/

There are also plastic bottle houses
from Argentina
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-house-of-plastic-bottles.html

and Nigeria
http://nationaldailyngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6798:plastic-bottle-house-now-in-nigeria&catid=111:real-estate-today&Itemid=455

In Nigeria, they fill the bottles with sand or dirt to make bottle bricks.

Here's a backpacker solar water heater
http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Water-Bottle-Heater/

A recycled solar cloche or cold frame for the garden
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2005/03/recycled-solar.html

All these devices make use of the Simple Solar Principles
Dark gets hot
Light reflects
Clear keeps the wind out

Most any and everybody can understand how to build and use them.

Even when a plastic bottle is chopped up, it may still help in purifying water
http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=CNBP_028110&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=83404a1a-b1e0-4304-bd02-54148b96d1ca

“Plastic bottle” solution for arsenic-contaminated water threatening 100 million people
Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

DENVER, Aug. 31, 2011
“Dealing with arsenic contamination of drinking water in the developing world requires simple technology based on locally available materials,” said study leader Tsanangurayi Tongesayi, Ph.D., professor of analytical and environmental chemistry at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J. “Our process uses pieces of plastic water, soda pop and other beverage bottles. Coat the pieces with cysteine — that’s an amino acid found in dietary supplements and foods — and stir the plastic in arsenic-contaminated water. This works like a magnet. The cysteine binds up the arsenic. Remove the plastic and you have drinkable water.”

Water bottles walls, hanging bottles in south-facing windows in south-facing windows, is folk technology that goes back at least to the 19th century. Always wanted to set up a stacked thermosyphon from one gallon to five gallon container to another to see how that would affect the system. Has anyone combined solar water disinfection with solar daylighting? How about water collection and treatment with solar daylighting, water and space heating, plus PV power as one integrated system.

Previously:
Trash Technology for Education and Survival
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/31/980477/-Trash-Technology-for-Education-and-Survival
Fastfood Containers as Solar Devices
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/05/20/868401/-Thought-Experiment:Fastfood-Containers-Recycled-into-Solar-Devices?detail=hide&via=blog_563738
Recycled solar
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2005/03/recycled-solar.html
Solar Is Civil Defense
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2008/05/solar-is-civil-defense-illustrated.html
Small-scale LED Lighting, Off-Grid Cell Phones
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/05/small-scale-led-lighting-off-grid-cell.html
Solar Insurgency
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2007/11/solar-insurgency.html
Solar Swadeshi
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2010/12/personal-power-production-solar-from.html
Gandhian Economics
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/forum/topics/notes-from-foundations-of


All I know about simple solar is at
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/09/simple-solar-parts-1-2-and-3.html
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/12/simple-solar-parts-4-through-8.html

Solar PSA: A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector

Here's my latest Solar PSA on how a south-facing window is already a solar collector:


"Any window that sees direct sunlight is a solar collector. You can learn how to use that free energy to make your home more comfortable and secure. Caulk and seal the window against drafts. Install storm windows on the exterior, interior, or both. Cover the window at night with an insulating curtain to prevent conduction, convection, and radiative heat loss. A valence above the window will stop night-time drafts and reduce condensation. A sunny window can double as a greenhouse for starting seedlings or growing house plants. Expand the solar space below, above, or beside the window with a windowbox solar air or water heater. You can even design a living system to provide fresh vegetables and fish year round while producing space heat, cleaning the air, and reducing waste. A south-facing window is already a solar collector. Learn how to use it."


I made the following four 30 second public service announcements for public access TV around 1991. They served as intro and outro to the videos of the Boston Area Solar Energy Association lectures (http://www.basea.org) I shot and cablecast on Cambridge Community TV (http://www.cctvcambridge.org/) for a few years. The tape archive of all those lectures needs to be digitized.

I made the following four 30 second public service announcements for public access TV around 1991. They served as intro and outro to the videos of the Boston Area Solar Energy Association lectures I shot and cablecast on Cambridge Community TV for a few years. There is still a tape archive of all those talks by national and world class energy experts that could be digitized if anyone was interested.




30 seconds of solar history (based on the book A Golden Thread by John Perlin and Ken Butti and independent research) along with modern, working examples, often hidden in plain sight.



Energy sources broken down by btu (though I'm not quite sure my math is correct).



These two trick questions were collaborations with the polymathic Ed Hill.





I made another set of 15 second spots back in the late 1970s and early 1980s for the Urban Solar Energy Association, the precursor of BASEA which hosted workshops and solar barnraisings as well as monthly lectures and talks. Those PSAs went to the local TV stations and, if memory serves, two channels ran them at least once. There may even be a 2 inch tape somewhere in my archives. That was the first south-facing window is already a solar collector PSA. The others were "A south-facing porch can be a sunspace or greenhouse. Learn how to use it at the Urban Solar Energy Association.

Recently, I put all I know about Simple Solar online in eight video installments that add up to about a half hour.
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/09/simple-solar-parts-1-2-and-3.html
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/12/simple-solar-parts-4-through-8.html
Al Gore is doing 24 hours of Climate Reality on Current TV on September 14. I wonder how many minutes will be devoted to solutions rather than describing the problem and persuading the unconvinced. An inconvenient truth about "An Inconvenient Truth" is that it was very light in the solutions department.

I say Solar IS Civil Defense. At least that level of solar is affordable, available, and practical today whatever Climate Reality you inhabit.

DIY Climate Change: Ongoing Global Brainstorm

Since it seems that we can't expect too much out of the international or national policymakers for the next couple of years, I've been thinking that the next logical step for 350.org and the climate movement is to do it ourselves. That could take the form of an ongoing global brainstorm on local, practical solutions where people who are working on projects can report their successes and failures, trade ideas on what works and what doesn't, and help us all climb the learning curve faster as well as replicate successes quickly and modify them appropriately for different local conditions.

There are a number of people already thinking and working along these lines (appropedia, globalswadeshi, the coalition of the willing, global system for sustainable development...*) but they are dispersed, not networked, and there is no central nexus you can point people to. This is something that needs to be done in order to make do it yourself climate change happen. If done right, it would eliminate a lot of unnecessary duplication around the world and could build a community of practitioners that could be brought to bear on specific areas and problems like an Emergency Rescue Squad or ecological SWAT team.


Last year, when the Haitian earthquake happened, there were crisis camps set up in response all around the world. Pecha-kuchas, short design talks using only 20 slides with only 20 seconds allowed for each slide, devoted to helping Haiti occurred on one night in cities on almost every continent. Resources were brought to bear in an ad hoc way that are currently being institutionalized. It seemed to me that people had begun to learn from the experience of the Asian tsunami, New Orleans and Katrina, and now Haiti how to respond in a way that was more effective. I think the same kind of thing could happen with the long emergency of climate, especially if it were focused on building security and developing a better standard of living.

The other day, I ran into Thomas Goreau who has publish the first of a set of books on innovative technologies for small island developing states. His field of primary interest is the coral reefs and he told me he is going to Panama to work with some islanders there on a solar project. Now I know why I went into that supermarket even though I didn't buy anything. A handbook or encyclopedia of appropriate technologies in printed and electronic form could be distributed and updated by the users as they build their own indigenous projects. The same day, Robert Lange ( http://www.the-icsee.org/projects/africa/maasaioftanzania.htm ) who has been working in Tanzania with the Maasai developing a more efficient cookstove and building solar LED lighting systems emailed me about getting his new stove design tested. I've been trying to put him in contact with Richard Komp ( http://www.mainesolar.org/Komp.html ) who's been doing solar as a cottage industry, seeding small solar businesses around the world for the last 20 or so years. The point is that there is so much expertise and so many different people working, mostly in isolation, on the same problems. Lots and lots of things are happening on the local and regional level that never reach the outside world. We need to link all of it together and reveal for ourselves a new infrastructure of development and economics that is hidden because it is disconnected and unrecognized.

I've seen this in the local agriculture field. When we started direct marketing here in MA back in the mid-1970s, there were only 12 or 18 farmers' markets. Now there are over 140 and bids to make some of them year-round. In the 1990s, I tried to get the local ag folks to start mapping the economic system that had grown up around those efforts but they weren't interested. It was only a year or so ago that Boston's Sustainable Business Network started doing that and went on to hold a huge event by the Children's Museum, a local food festival that was more successful than they'd dreamed of. It was packed, all day, and everyone had a great time. I think the same dynamic is happening with local responses to climate change and I think one of the next steps will be recognizing that fact. I just hope it doesn't take 30 years.

The 10/10/10 world-wide climate work day was great as was the international art day that happened in November. Both need to keep happening. Add the linking and networking on practical, local solutions and responses and we can start a parade that the politicians will be running to get at the head of, as they always do.

I've sent this idea to Bill McKibben and 350.org They are interested in the concept.

DIY Climate Change: Ain't Nobody Else
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/23/922941/-DIY-Climate-Change:Aint-Nobody-Else

* Appropedia http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia
Globalswadeshi http://globalswadeshi.ning.com/
Coalition of the Willing http://cotw.cc/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Willing
Global System for Sustainable Development http://gssd.mit.edu/GSSD/GSSDen.nsf

Personal Power Production: Solar from Civil Defense to Swadeshi

US and NATO forces have distributed more than 700,000 solar/dynamo am/fm/sw radios in Afghanistan since before our invasion of 2001 and that a simple modification to that solar/dynamo adds battery charging capabilities to each of them (circuit diagram at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/12/195518/177 ).

US AID is distributing 250,000 solar/dynamo radios in Sudan over the next few years. Again, those solar/dynamos can not now charge extra AA or other size batteries although with a connection to a battery bay from the cell phone charger output they certainly could. The combination of a few square inches of solar electric, photovoltaic, PV power with a hand-crank or pedal power generator provides a modicum of electric power day or night, by sunlight or muscle power. It also allows battery switching, charging one set of batteries while using another. This is practical personal power production and the technology is deployed in the field in Afghanistan and Sudan or available off the shelf right now for $30 from LL Bean and many others, if you are willing to do a little tinkering.

The same technology is also a Solar Civil Defense.

Flashlight, cell phone, radio, and extra set of batteries all can be powered with a couple of square inches of solar electricity (PV) panel. It is also what we are supposed to have on hand in case of a blizzard or hurricane, emergency or disaster. Add a hand crank or pedal power generator and you have reliable production of AA and larger battery electrical power.

This level of survival solar power is a significant rise in the standard of living for the 1.6 to 1.8 billion people in the world who do not now have access to electricity, too. Civil defense preparedness here in the US could be linked to providing services to the poorest of the global poor. I am talking with a Cambridge, MA group which includes city officers and officials about the possibility of promoting Solar IS Civil Defense locally through a buy one, give one exchange with a sister city in the developing world, possibly with Bogolight (http://www.bogolight.com) or Light Haiti Project ( http://lighthaiti.org/donations.html ).

In addition, this combination of small scale solar and human power is an example of swadeshi, local production or self production, a core principle of Gandhian economics:
"Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote."
Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi, 1919 ( http://members.tripod.com/~anusandhan/articles/article1.html )

Gandhi would spin thread for an hour each day, usually producing a hundred yards for weaving into cloth, and helped develop a simple spinning wheel (charkha) that allowed many to do the same. He believed that spinning was the foundation of non-violence and that khadi cloth was a means to the local production of economic independence. Gandhi was a middle-aged man when he first asked his wife Kasturba to teach him to use the spinning wheel. Once he had mastered the wheel, he practiced spinning every day for the rest of his life. Home-spinning became a symbol for independence and self-reliance throughout India under his encouragement and direction and a market began in cottage industry and home produced cloth, khadi.

Gandhi used the charkha, the spinning wheel. Today there is an e-charkha available, developed by RS Hiremath ( http://www.flexitron.diytrade.com/sdp/194986/4/pd-699352/5454575-0/e-charkha.html ):

"...spinning on the two-spindle e-charkha for two hours will produce 2,400 meters of yarn and provide a light output for 7.5 hours. According to the innovator, the LED light is of the latest type and has an extremely long life of at least 35 years. The generator in the e-charkha is also custom designed for this application and is of the three-phase AC version with no brushes, which makes it last for over three and a half decades. Hiremath has sold over 1,800 e-charkhas till date, the biggest consumer lot residing in Rajasthan and Gujarat. He says, “The response till now has been overwhelming. Most users are delighted with the prospect of a charkha generating them money and electricity.... The e-charkha, which weighs around 10 to 12 kgs, has two models—a two-spindle one and an eight-spindle one. The universal retrofit kit that can be easily attached to the shaft of any charkha is priced at Rs 1,500, while the two-spindle e-charkha costs Rs 4,500 and the eight-spindle one Rs 11,000. The innovator has applied for a patent for the retrofit kit, which consists of a three-phase AC generator, lead acid battery and intermediate control circuits for charge and discharge. It is currently manufactured at a facility in Bangalore and is mostly produced by disabled employees. The product is currently being marketed by Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), Mumbai."
http://www.dare.co.in/people/featured-innovation/e-charkha.htm

One humanpower is about one sixth horsepower. A healthy person can produce 100 watts of power for hours on end and 300 watts in a sprint.

Returning to Afghanistan, there is the example of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Badshah Khan, who practiced Gandhian non-violence and raised the world's first non-violent army, over 100,000 strong, of Pashtun and other peoples, Muslim, Sikh, and HIndu, in the very areas where the Taliban is now active in Pakistan. They were the Khudai Khidmatgar, the Servants of God, the Red Shirts, who based their non-violence on the Islamic principle of sadr, patience, and the Pashtun custom of melmastia, hospitality. Badshah Khan was educated in a madrassa as well as a missionary school. He began building his own schools in 1910, educating both boys and girls, and formed the Khudai Khidmatgar a decade or so later. That group lasted until 1947 when it was disbanded, forcibly, by the new nation of Pakistan. I wonder if the Taliban learned anything from him.

Could we do with electricity what Gandhi did with cloth, at least for emergencies and disasters? Can hand-made electricity, 21st century khadi cloth, provide real electrical power to the people and a survival level of energy independence and autonomy?

Solar IS Civil Defense, Illustrated http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/12/195518/177
Solar Swadeshi http://solarray.blogspot.com/2005/05/solar-swadeshi-hand-made-electricity.html
Afghanistan Solar http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/27/0353/85056
Solar Tactics in Afghanistan http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/26/01854/3246
Low Level Leverage Points in Afghanistan http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/4/810944/-Low-Level-Leverage-Points-in-Afghanistan
Solar Insurgency http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/8/0317/01605
Solar IS Civil Defense http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/30/142018/700
Islamic Satyagraha Army http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/27/23370/2751

Climate Collaboration Contest

To members of the Climate CoLab community,

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Climate CoLab contest, as well as a major upgrade of our software platform.

The contest will address the question: What international climate agreements should the world community make?

The first round runs through October 31 and the final round through November 26.

In early December, the United Nations and U.S. Congress will be briefed on the winning entries.

We are raising funds in the hope of being able to pay travel expenses for one representative from each winning team to attend one or both of these briefings.

We invite you to form teams and enter the contest--learn more at http://climatecolab.org.

We also encourage you to fill out your profiles and add a picture, so that members of the community can get to know each other.

And please inform anyone you believe might be interested about the contest.

I voted for the 350 alternative, the closest this simulation can get to zero emissions, and entered a zero emissions scenario in the last iteration of Climate Collab. The new program is more detailed than the last but there is still a lot of work to do. Your participation can help make this tool more useful.

cross posted to http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/11/909327/-Climate-Collaboration-Contest

How to Change US Energy in One Growing Season

1. Consistently demonstrate practical, affordable energy efficiency and renewable energy ideas, devices, and systems at the over 4000 weekly farmers' markets that take place across the USA from Memorial Day to Halloween or Thanksgiving.

The people who attend farmers' markets are a core constituency for green technology and practical applications that save money, energy, and resources. They are likely to be early adopters who can spread those possibilities into the community. I've done energy demos at my local farmers' market and know that a renewable energy company sometimes participates in the year-long weekly market near Providence, RI. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more examples out there.

Do energy education weekly at as many of those 4000 weekly markets as possible and over one growing season energy use and attitudes would change significantly. See Mr Franklin's Folks for one vision of how this might work.


Cambridge, MA has been doing monthly weatherization barnraisings since the summer of 2008. Since then, at least 18 other nearby and distant communities have begun their own weatherization parties. Still other groups are doing solar barnraisings in at least four states, that I know of:
Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative in NH
Seacoast Area Renewable Energy Initiative in the Piscataqua region on Maine and NH
Coop Power in Western MA
Grid Alternatives in CA

During the last energy crisis in the 1970s, there were groups that did solar barnraisings too. Some of those solar devices are still working.

Personally, I'd like to see a weatherization barnraising on the White House. With the full participation of all the TV carpentry shows, "This Old House," "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," the HGTV and DIY channels.... It could make for some great PSAs and instructional audio/video and the power of the President's bully pulpit (plus a little of his own sweat equity) would go a long way toward generating the mass movement toward energy efficiency that we should have undertaken thirty years ago.

3. Energy education could also work in conjunction with emergency preparedness and civil defense. Start with the basics - flashlight, cell phone, radio, an extra set of batteries.... all of which can be powered with a couple of square inches of PV. Add a hand crank or pedal power back up and you have reliable production of AA and better electricity day or night, by sunlight or muscle power.

Solar IS Civil Defense, pure and simple.

It is also a significant rise in the standard of living for the 1.6 or so billion people in this world who don't have access to electricity today.

In fact, there are organizations where you can join a buy one give one program and support coordinated development in the developing world with civil defense in the developed world.

4. 350.org's next event is an international climate change work day on 10/10/10. If groups going to farmers' markets weekly and doing monthly energy barnraisings monthly organize with that October 10 in mind, that event could make an even bigger splash and larger impression on the general public.

Weekly energy demos at farmers' markets and monthly energy barnraisings could also continue after that one single international work day so that the work continues and we all change the way we use energy, from wasteful and polluting to efficient and clean.

5. Build an information network so that different groups working on these issues around the world can share experiences and speed innovation.

I'd like to see an online solutions architecture established to make good energy ideas go viral. There are already some sites which are useful resources:
Appropedia
Open E Farm
BuildItSolar
Solar Cooking Archive

It is way past time for the changes we need. We shouldn't wait for politicians or business to change. We should start making the changes we need ourselves. Begin the parade and there will be plenty of "leaders" ready to run to the front of the line.

Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous behaviors that will avoid extinction.
R. Buckminster Fuller

We remain alert so as not to get run down, but it turns out you only have to hop a few feet to one side and the whole huge machinery rolls by, not seeing you at all.
Lew Welch

The only war is the war against imagination.
The only war is the war against imagination.
The only war is the war against imagination....

the war that matters is the war against the imagination
all other wars are subsumed in it.

Diane di Prima

Zero Net Energy House Winner Is Positive Net Energy House

At the NESEA Building Energy Conference in March, the winner of the MA Zero Net Energy House contest was announced. It is the Stephens/Clarke Residence in Montague, MA which was built by Bick Corsa. The 1152 square foot, 3 bedroom house cost $180,000, was monitored from January 1, 2009 to January 1, 2010, and produced two and a half times the energy it consumed. This Zero Net Energy House is actually a Positive Net Energy House.

The house is highly insulated, with R42 walls, R100 ceiling, and stands on an R30 insulated slab. It is powered by 4.94 kW of solar electric panels, solar air and hot water heaters, and passive solar heat gained through U-.17 windows (about R 5.8, according to my calculations). There is a mini-split air source heat pump serving as a furnace and demand hot water heaters as back-up in case it's needed.

The house used 1,959 kilowatts for the entire year with an annual energy bill for heating, cooling, hot water, cooking, appliances, and lighting of $392. They sold 2,933 kilowatt hours worth $586 back to the grid over that same period.

Tina Clarke, a Transitions Town trainer, and her husband, Doug Stephens, moved into their new home in December 2008 and will be using it in conjunction with Greenfield Community College and Franklin Regional Technical High School to educate builders and students in green jobs and green building techniques. Information about these courses can be found at http://www.gcc.mass.edu/media/docs/cg/community_ed.pdf"

In an interview with the Springfield Republican, builder Bick Corsa said the things that are most successful at lowering utility bills in a new home are tried-and-true design techniques.

“People tend to go for glamorous high-tech gadgets. There is nothing wrong with that stuff, but I tell people to go with the things that pay for themselves. A superinsulated shell for the house; put your money into that. It has no maintenance and it will save you on your heating,” he said.

Also, homes that have lots of windows that face toward the sun, called passive solar heating, will reduce heating bills. In this region, facing to the southwest gets you the most sun exposure.

“Those two things together – superinsulation and passive solar heating – are by far the most effective ways to have a really low-energy house. They are simple things that do their job year after year,” Corsa said....

These are also techniques that can be adapted to existing housing as well.


Case Studies of Zero Net Energy Houses and Deep Energy Retrofits
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=eoeeaterminal&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Energy%2C+Utilities+%26+Clean+Technologies&L2=Energy+Efficiency&L3=Zero+Net+Energy+Buildings+(ZNEB)&sid=Eoeea&b=terminalcontent&f=doer_Zero_Net_Energy_Buildings_Case_Studies&csid=Eoeea

Zero Energy Intelligence
http://www.zeroenergyintelligence.com/blogspagehtm/?p=1284

Boston Herald article on the Stephens/Clarke residence
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/view.bg?articleid=1238366

Solar IS Civil Defense



cross posted to bluemassgroup.com, dailykos.com, eurotrib.com, globalswadeshi.net, and greenmassgroup

How to Heal the World

It was probably around thirty years ago that I went to a basement apartment near Harvard Square for a presentation by two people visiting from Auroville, a religious community and ecovillage near Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, India. The man and woman talked about their work planting trees and reforesting the area. They showed slides, focusing on a method they derived by trial and error to provide water for their saplings by molding bunds, small catchment basins just downslope from the tree to gather rainwater so that it could soak down into the roots. They talked about following erosion gullies upslope to where they began and using stones and pebbles to stop the erosion at the source. They said that after more than a decade of work, the weather had noticeably changed in the region and the seasonal rains had returned.

How did we get into this mess?
A little bit at a time and because everybody does it.
We get out of it just
that same way.
4/23/01 John Berry, in conversation

I think about this as I plant my garden. I remember John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed; Jean Giono's story of Elzéard Bouffier, "The Man Who Planted Trees;" John Todd's vision to restore the devastated mountains of Appalachia. I think about ecological design instead of geoengineering, the small seeds planted and tended over time with modesty and patience rather than the heroic technology of global scale for immediate results and long-term unintended consequences.

One of my favorite videos is this short piece on Greening the Desert, a permaculture installation in Jordan near the Dead Sea. It reaffirms my faith in the idea that "You Can Fix All the World's Problems in a Garden."

Greening the Desert Follow-Up, Six Years After the Funding Ran Out



"The Man Who Planted Trees" is Jean Giono's allegorical story of a shepherd who plants a forest. It is beautifully written and, unfortunately, fiction. You can read it in English and en Français or watch the Academy Award winning animation.



John Todd's Ecological Design for Appalachia won the first Buckminster Fuller Design Challenge. He proposes using biological waste treatment to clean up coal slurry and tree planting and biomass production to restore the landscape and provide jobs.

One Man Creates a Forest in India shows that what Giono imagined can happen in reality. Abdul Karim is a living Elzéard Bouffier.

Auroville is still planting trees and you can help build their Sadhana Forest.

There is also the Green Belt Movement in Africa founded by Wangari Maathai.

Trees for the Future promotes tree planting all around the world.

Arbor Day varies from state to state but usually happens in April.

crossposted to dailykos.com, eurotrib.com, globalswadeshi.net, bluemassgroup.com, and greenmassgroup.com

Old Solar: 1881

Edward Sylvester Morse patented his air heater in 1881. It is still a great design with a versatile vent system.

A simple glazed box on the south wall with a dark absorber, an air space, and two sets of vents at top and bottom, to the outside air and the inside of the house, this is a basic air heater that can be modified for wall or window.

Edward Sylvester Morse built at least three of these. One was at the Peabody Museum in Salem, MA and used an iron absorber panel. The second had a slate absorber and was on his own home, also in Salem. The last was at the Boston Athenaeum. He also lectured on the topic at MIT and published a pamphlet on his solar air heater findings.

ES Morse was a remarkable gentleman. Not only did he teach at the Essex Institute in Salem, MA but he lived and taught in Japan and traveled to China. His book, _Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings_, is still in print and a great primer on traditional Japanese culture. He was a president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and wrote wonderful reports on topics as diverse as noise pollution, archaeology, and natural science. I especially enjoyed "Fireflies Flashing in Unison."

SolarWall is a modern adaptation of Morse's idea. It is an unglazed perforated absorber. A fan draws outside air through the absorber and into the heated space. It gets up to 75% thermal efficiency they say.

Solarwall uses the air flow pattern shown in the leftmost illustration of Morse's patent. The TAP (Thermosiphon Air Panel) is an example of the middle illustration, cycling room air past the absorber in a closed loop, full heating mode. The third illustration shows an air chimney from the floor of the room to the top of the absorber, a cooling technique.

I'd like to see a Morse collector with modern materials, PV fan assist, and controls that monitor and maximize the vent system. Could be interesting.

Old Solar: Eames Solar Do-Nothing Machine

Old Solar: 1980 Barnraised Solar AIr Heater

Old Solar: Keck and Keck Twentieth Century Modern Old Solar: Venetian Vernacular
More on simple solar devices:
A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector

Simple Solar - Parts 4 through 8

From My Basic Solar Advice:

First, reduce your load. Insulate, caulk, seal everything you can. Weatherize everything up the wazoo, even going so far as to get a blower door test - pressurizing your house with a large fan installed in the front door and having a professional go around finding where all the air leaks are. Get the most efficient appliances (refrigerators tend to be the largest electrical load in the house) and lights that you can find and afford and install them. When you've become as efficient and energy-conserving as you can be, then start thinking about solar.

Then, and only then, go solar.

This is my solar backpack. It has three solar lighting systems on it which I use for my lights when riding my bicycle at night. I've been using it for four or five years now, hasn't failed me yet, and cost a little over $60 to put together. Dirty F*ck*ng Solar Hippie Backpack

Minimal solar lights and flashlights, solar is civil defense, and an affordable way to ease into the renewable future. After all, Solar Is Civil Defense

Solar and dynamo power for reliable sources of low voltage DC power: light, radio, cell phone, and anything that uses a battery. The combination of small scale solar and a hand cranked or foot pedaled dynamo provides a reliable source of low voltage DC electricity, day or night, by sunlight or muscle power. It is one method to bring useful amounts of electricity to the quarter of the world's population that does not now have access and a good idea to have on hand in the industrialized world in case of emergency and disaster.

Here's the summation of my 30 years of playing with sunlight and demonstrating simple solar devices for a couple hundred thousand of people throughout the Northeast. This short clip reviews all the devices and techniques I presented in the rest of this series.