Weatherization Barnraising: This Old Extreme White House Makeover

Saturday, December 6, between 30 and 40 people came to a house in Cambridge, MA to do a weatherization barnraising. We began checking in at 8 am to start work at 9. There was a blower door and an infrared camera to test our results. This was part of the public access TV series Energy Smackdown, a competition between different towns to see which can reduce their carbon footprint most. Materials were donated by EFI and Home Depot. Byggmeister donated the blower door and infrared camera and the operator, Kerry Koskinen, volunteered his time.

A blower door depressurizes the house by 50 Pascals so that you can see where the air leaks in. You can feel the draft with the back of your hand or see it with a smoke pencil (or a stick of incense or a cigarette). A blower door test costs from $200 to $500 and is well worth it if you are serious about cutting down infiltration. On average, 2 professionals in one day will reduce air leaks by about 250 cfm [cubic feet per minute].



We started at 4500 cfm at 50 pascals and after 3 hours of work and about $500 of materials we ended at 3850 cfm.





The infrared camera gave us a clear view of where the leaks were. The camera records temperature and you can see heat as the lighter colors and coolth as the darker. The temperature scale is registered on the left of the picture. Unfortunately, the battery on the IR camera conked out before Kerry could do the after pictures.









An IR thermometer which costs $70 rather than $7000 for an IR camera will also work but it just ain't as kewl. And there's an infrared "heat seeking ray gun" whose beam changes color in the presence of cooler temperatures that should be available sometime in 2009 for $39.99.

I was working on windows, putting Mortite rope caulk around the window sash. Unfortunately, the windows had plastic cladding and the composition of Mortite has changed since the last time I used it. It wouldn't stick. Very frustrating. I switched to insulated the wall sockets instead. Eventually, we changed to weatherstripping tape, a product I hadn't used before and didn't use that day either as I had a previous engagement and had to leave early. Later reports informed me that most if not all the windows were weatherstripped in record time.

The organizers reported that

With the "blower door" and infra-red camera to guide us, we found that we reduced the air infiltration at Chris and Pam's last weekend by 15%. This will be close to what you can expect in your own home if you decide to weatherize as we all learned to do. That should be worth about $200/year at current fuel prices.

We didn't finish insulating the attic hatch which would have reduced the air infiltration even more.

This is what the crowd looked like as we gathered for our instructions.



A good time was had by all, with the possible exception of the cat who I heard got insulated behind a wall for a day or so.

I'd like to see a weatherization barnraising at the White House. Complete with blower door test and infrared camera.

I'd like to see President Obama kick off the move to green jobs with a weatherization, insulation, and energy efficiency work day on public buildings. There are plenty of repairs and upgrades for government buildings that provide immediate rewards, saving enough money through lower energy costs to pay back in a couple of years. This is exactly where the green job economy starts. Architecture 2030 has a stimulus plan to create millions of jobs by applying energy efficiency methods to existing buildings that would pay for itself in energy savings within five years.

from Architecture 2030 Stimulus Plan - pdf alert:

With a federal investment of $85.56 billion each year for two years, the Plan will:
in just two years,
create at least 8.445 million new jobs and
create a new $1.6 trillion renovation market
and in just five years,
save consumers $142.33 to 200.88 billion,
reduce CO2 emissions by 481.13 Million Metric Tons,
reduce energy consumption by 6.17 Quadrillion Btu,
save 1.83 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and
save 83.35 million barrels of oil.

I'd like to see President Obama bring weatherization barnraisings to the national level but, even if he doesn't, we'll continue to have weatherization barnraisings in Cambridge. The next barnraising is at a local public school and will have the help of the MIT Sustainability Club, a student group. I can imagine weatherization and, later, solar barnraisings on one school building a month, with energy efficiency training building throughout the community. A consistent program of hands on energy education could be significant.

from MIT Sustainability Club:

HEET, a Cambridge-based energy efficiency team, is weatherizing the Cambridgeport Public School. We need someone who can install a few photosensors in classrooms and stairways so when it's bright enough from daylight, the lights turn off. The person should be able to teach a few volunteers how to do this work also (safely).

The Cambridge public school system needs help decreasing its energy use, so more of its budget goes to teachers and books, than to wasting energy. Help us help them.

The event is tentatively planned for January 19th, from 12:30 pm to 5 pm
Cambridgeport Public School, 89 Elm St. Cambridge

If interested, email Audrey@audreyschulman.com

HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team) was recently awarded a Climate Superstar by MCAN. Check out the article the Boston Globe wrote about HEET:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/11/30/turning_up_heet/

Windowbox Solar Air Heater

This is a demonstration model of a solar windowbox air heater.

You can build it from a sheet of insulation board, some clear glass or plastic, and a furnace air filter painted black.

When the sun shines, the black absorber inside the insulated windowbox gets hot, heating air which rises into the room behind the window, and drawing cooler air from inside that room past the absorber in a thermal loop that lasts until the sun goes down.

At night, the cold air sinks to the bottom of the windowbox and closes off this thermal loop so there is no additional night time heat loss.

Increase the efficiency of the windowbox solar air heater with a solar electric, photovoltaic, PV fan.

This demonstration model uses a repurposed solar car window ventilator. Only when the sun hits the PV panel does the fan move air, an automatic solar circuit thermostatic control.

The windowbox solar air heater is a supplemental heater for one room with a south-facing window and can be modified to provide increased ventilation and cooling in the summer as Edward Sylvester Morse's 1881 solar air heater design did.



Cost for a 2 foot by 3 foot insulation board solar windowbox air heater is around $100. PV fan car vents are available for as little as $5. One recently built windowbox has heated air by at least 20º Fahrenheit, from 65 to 85º, and will do so all winter.

Old Solar: 1980 Barnraised Solar Air Heater

This house has been solar heated for nearly 28 years now, the glazed black box on the south wall pumps heat into the living room whenever the sun shines, consistently and reliably. It was built in the Riverside neighborhood of Cambridge, MA in 1980.

This solar collector is an air heater that takes air from the kitchen,


moves it past the black absorber plate with a fan,


and then exhausts the solar heated air back into the living room.


Sometimes on sunny winter days, the people who live there have to flip the damper and dump the collector's air outside to prevent overheating.


It has worked unfailingly all these years without any major maintenance, even for the fan and the thermostat that turns it on and off.

Unfortunately, this solar air heater will soon be at least partially shaded. The vacant lot next door is being developed for condos and the new construction will shade the sun from the collector for part of the day. The collector's owners bought a part of the property next door so that their collector will still see some sun and received a settlement from the developer to compensate them for the loss of their sun rights. That money will help pay for the new solar electric panels they've installed on the roof.


The panels cost around $26,000 and have supplied as much as 2 kilowatts to the household.


There is a special meter just for the solar array.


Some days they even run the electric meter backwards.


After the state and Federal rebates, the installation will cost around $17,000, less the sun rights settlement. That old solar air heater not only provided reliable space heat for 25 years but will help pay for the new solar electric panels. Not bad.

In the course of this recent solar experience, one of the owners approached the city zoning board and the city council about solar shading and zoning. Now the city manager has a committee examining the issue of sun rights and the hope is that soon we will have a policy that will help Cambridge become more of a solar city.

This solar air heater was barnraised by the Urban Solar Energy Association, now the Boston Area Solar Energy Association, in 1980. It was one of six such projects sponsored by a community development corporation (CDC) called Riverside Cambridgeport Community Corporation. I located another project still around from those days at the Cambridge Community Center in the same neighborhood.



I haven't found out yet whether it's still working but the glazing needs to be replaced (there was a 25 year warranty on Kalwall, as I recall). Solar Barnraisings are beginning to come back into style. Reglazing this old collector would be a great way for the next generation of solar barnraisers to start.

PS: These types of simple air heaters can be modified for summer use to provide solar ventilation and cooling too, as Edward Sylvester Morse's solar air heater from 1881 demonstrated.



More Old Solar:
Old Solar: Keck and Keck Twentieth Century Modern
Old Solar: Venetian Vernacular
Old Solar: 1881

More on simple solar devices:
A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector

Homefront Advantage

I finally finished a short video (less than two minutes) on WWII posters for the Homefront. These posters exhorted all of us to become part of the war effort. It wasn't about "going shopping" then, it was about energy and resource conservation, rationing ourselves for the benefit of our armed forces, and making the Homefront an effective front for fighting the Axis powers.

In 2004, I tried to contact the Kerry campaign to convince them to use these posters in reminding us of our history. I think they would be just as effective this election year.

I also hand delivered to Al Gore a packet with some of my favorite WWII posters but, again, have seen no results from this attempt.

Links to more of my favorite WWII posters at
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/29/2145/7162
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/22/225321/63/96/425004
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2006/07/its-all-one-war-that-never-ends.html

Solar IS Civil Defense, Illustrated

Solar IS Civil Defense
Like this solar LED light and AA battery charger


or this solar/dynamo am/fm/sw radio, similar to the ones US and NATO forces have distributed in Afghanistan.

Solar IS Civil Defense
and, after all,
we are at war.


Solar IS Civil Defense
a flashlight, radio or cell phone, an extra set of batteries
solar powered
with hand or foot operated dynamo back-up,
emergency lighting and communication
day or night
from sunlight or
muscle power.

One solar component
is an LED flashlight
which also charges AA batteries.
This design allows for
battery switching,
charging a second set of batteries
to use in other devices.

The Bogolight is a charger and light
with an international development
addition:
each light bought
buys another solar LED light and battery charger
for someone who has no access to electricity
in this world.

Solar IS Civil Defense in another way.


US and NATO forces have distributed
solar/dynamo am/fm/sw radios
in Afghanistan.

Those solar/dynamos could easily charge
AA batteries
and establish a low power DC grid
through battery switching.
This level of survival electricity
would raise the standard of living
for most Afghanis,
helping to rebuild their lives
as well as their country and economy.

This circuit diagram is one way
to add this capability to the present
solar/dynamo radios now in Afghanistan.



The image I have is of a
solar swadeshi, hand-made electricity.
Instead of turning the handle
of the charkha spinning wheel
making thread
for khadi cloth
an hour a day as Gandhi did,
turning the crank of a dynamo a half hour a day,
the direct production of survival power
for yourself, your family, and your community,
swadeshi, local production.

How did Gandhi's Pashtun colleague,
Badshah Khan practice it?
And could his example
help bring peace back
today?

Lifecycle Costs of Photovoltaics

Treehugger had a squib about a recent Brookhaven Labs analysis of lifecycle cost assessment for photovoltaic panels. There wasn't a direct link so I had to do a little digging to find it but the conclusion alone is worth it:

Using data compiled from the original records of twelve PV manufacturers, we quantified the emissions from the life cycle of four major commercial photovoltaic technologies and showed that they are insignificant in comparison to the emissions that they replace when introduced in average European and U.S. grids. According to our analysis, replacing grid electricity with central PV systems presents significant environmental benefits, which for CdTe PV amounts to 89–98% reductions of GHG emissions, criteria pollutants, heavy metals, and radioactive species. For roof-top dispersed installations, such pollution reductions are expected to be even greater as the loads on the transmission and distribution networks are reduced, and part of the emissions related to the life cycle of these networks are avoided.

It is interesting that emissions of heavy metals are greatly reduced even for the types of PV technologies that make direct use of related compounds. For example the emissions of Cd from the life cycle of CdTe PV are 90−300 times lower than those from coal power plants with optimally functioning particulate control devices. In fact, life-cycle Cd emissions are even lower in CdTe PV than in crystalline Si PV, because the former use less energy in their life cycle than the later. In general, thin-film photovoltaics require less energy in their manufacturing than crystalline Si photovoltaics, and this translates to lower emissions of heavy metals, SOx, NOx, PM, and CO2. In any case, emissions from any type of PV system are expected to be lower than those from conventional energy systems because PV does not require fuel to operate. PV technologies provide the benefits of significantly curbing air emissions harmful to human and ecological health. It is noted that the environmental profiles of photovoltaics are further improving as efficiencies and material utilization rates increase and this kind of analysis needs to be updated periodically. Also, future very large penetrations of PV would alter the grid composition and this has to be accounted for in future analyses.

The four types of PV examined were multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon, and thin-film cadmium telluride.

Cadmium telluride was best overall but

At least 89% of air emissions associated with electricity generation could be prevented if electricity from photovoltaics displaces electricity from the grid.

The estimated energy payback time (EPBT) for PV ranges from 6 years to 1.1 years, depending upon the type of PV, the insolation, and the installation. PV panels are usually rated to have a lifetime of 25 to 30 years. Now you know what to say when anybody questions whether PV's produce more energy than it takes to make them.

originally posted at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/28/232952/333/722/466075

Solar on the Radio

I was interviewed on the Samantha Clemens show on Saturday, February 16 over Tufts University radio, WMFO. You can listen to the interview at http://www.samanthaclemens.com/Guests.html

We had a good time talking about the fact that Solar IS Civil Defense and other things. Have a listen and let me know what you think.

My Solar Christmas

As a Christmas gift, I donated solar ovens to people in the refugee camps around Darfur. For the people there, who are at risk every time they have to leave the camp to seek scarce fuel, a solar oven can mean survival.

Jewish World Watch sends two solar ovens to the Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps in Chad for $30.

There are other solar oven programs as well.

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.

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



I also gave the gift of bees and trees as I do every year through Heifer International. Donate bees, trees, rabbits, geese, chickens, goats, as well as heifers to a project from their catalog somewhere around the world, including the US, in the names of your loved ones.

I like to give bees because they are all about pollination and improving agricultural production. Investment in pollination in these days of colony cluster disease is especially important.

I like trees because they are also a carbon offset. I've given a decade and more's worth of 60 trees a year to Heifer International. That should do something to absorb some of the carbon my energy use has released to the atmosphere.



Last but certainly not least, I also gave a few solar LED flashlights and AA battery chargers to friends and family. These Bogolights are very well designed with one button (on and off) and one screw to secure the battery bay. There's even a phosphorescent band so you can find the flashlight in the dark. They work as reading lights too. I know because I tried them out. They also use standard AA rechargeable batteries and allow for battery switching, charging one set of batteries while using another set in a second device.

Bogo means "buy one, give one" by which they mean, you spend $25 to buy one for yourself and the company sends a second to somebody in the developing world. You can even choose where and what program. A good deal.

I gave these solar flashlights because

Solar IS Civil Defense

Solar Fountain Harvard Square

Harvard Square, November 2007

Ecological Design Principles
by Bill McDonough

Waste equals food
Use only available solar income
Respect diversity
Love all the children







Harvard Square, October 2007

This is a Solar IS Civil Defense arrangement.

The posters around the fountain include A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector and reproductions of historic WWII posters:



Ambrose Spencer has a larger solar fountain that he displays from time to time and I just read about Charles Goldman's portable solar fountain that he walked from Brooklyn to the Bronx.

click for movie
Ambrose Spencer and SunToys at AltWheels 2005

Video courtesy of http://energyvison.blogspot.com

For years, I've been recommending that people take these things to the public squares and most especially the farmers' markets, a core constituency of any green movement, as in the story "Mr Franklin's Folks".

It's all part of a Solar Survival Show and the sooner we start performing it the more likely we are to survive.

Solar Insurgency

Small super-empowered vanguards can, with the use of systems disruption to amplify effort, delegitimize weakened governmental hierarchies and force them into the box of hollow states. However, instead of a pure organic government envisioned by Che, an organic open source insurgency, composed of a plethora of small super-empowered groups (that appeal to primary loyalties of tribe, cast, clan, family, gang, ideology, etc.), form in the vacuum. This open source insurgency will only bring fragmentation and perpetual conflict. The vanguard's role, is merely as a catalyst for its formation.

John Robb, Global Guerrillas

What if the global guerrilla vanguard was constructive rather than destructive? What if the vanguard was building resilience and autonomy, survival and security instead of chaos and destruction?

Small super-empowered groups can also do potholes as, reportedly, Hizbollah has been able to show in Lebanon. Maybe not global guerrillas but certainly a localized, decentralized model, Cuba's already gone through their Peak Oil experience and adapted through lots of public transport, bicycles, and local agriculture. In the 70s some of the 60s civil rights/antiwar/feminist/environmental energies of the Cold War baby boomers went into community gardens, farmers' markets, food coops, feeding programs, local agriculture, sustainability and environmental restoration. These networks still exist.

In the face of oil-funded terrorism, an oil war in Iraq, an overstretched, under-budgeted, corrupt social welfare system, and increasingly expensive natural disasters and emergencies Solar IS Civil Defense can be a logical open source guerrilla response.

For instance, a minimal amount of solar electric photovoltaic PV power charges batteries. Combine that with a hand crank, foot pedal, or string pull generator and you have virtually permanent personal electric power (cell phone, flashlight or reading light, computer, camera...) for emergency situations, just in case.

Before the invasion of Afghanistan, NATO forces dropped solar/dynamo AM/FM/SW radios for the civilian population. After the invasion, they gave away more radios. Unfortunately, the solar/dynamo wouldn't allow for battery switching. The NATO radios charge only the internal hardwired battery. If the solar/dynamo could charge batteries in the external battery bay, then you could charge one set of batteries while you used in rotation another two or three sets of batteries to operate a cell phone and light as well as the radio. The solar/dynamo would be a source of electricity day or night, by sunlight or muscle power, at least for the lifetime of the batteries, crank, pedal, string, and PV panel. Now add a bicycle.

The Bogolight charges standard size AA batteries and thus does allow for battery switching. The Bogolight is a solar LED flashlight or reading light that provides 4 hours of light for every 8 hours of sunlight. It is very well designed. You buy one for $25 and they donate a second light to various development programs around world. Solar IS Civil Defense at home and abroad.

The human scale combination of solar power with human muscle power allows the human power component to become a kind of Solar Swadeshi. Instead of turning Gandhi's spinning wheel making thread for khadi cloth, cranking or pedalling or pulling a string, the repetitive practice of personal power producing electricity for an AA battery all the way back to the grid.

Open source global guerrilla vanguard as solar scholar warriors fomenting resilience, cooperation, and the free exercise of the imagination, green ecological designers to save us at the last possible moment, the promise of the Whole Earth Catalog, Woodstock, New Alchemy Institute, the Viridian greens, Burning Man, worldchanging...

Solar Water

The Watercone® is a solar powered water desalinator that takes salt or brackish water and distills it into freshwater. It is simple to use, lightweight and mobile.

Designed to produce 1.5 liters a day, it provides a child's daily needs for fresh water and reduces the number of children who die as a result of drinking unsafe water, currently estimated to be 5000 or more each and every day.

The WATERCONE® is a long lasting UV resistant Poly Carbonate product and can be used up to 5 years daily. The material is non-toxic, non-flammable and 100% recyclable. The black pan for the saltwater is already made out of 100% recycled PC. Even when the WATERCONE® becomes old and tarnished, it can still be used to collect rain water, as a roof panel or container for other goods.

The Watercone® project is looking for investors and companies to initiate mass production tooling and distribution. So the Watercone can be manufactured for a lower price and become affordable to the people in need...

Single products are not available at the moment!

The Watercone® was tested in Yemen in 2004 and in the Lake Baikal region of Russia in 2005.

Thanks to Ecogeek for bringing this design to my attention.

Until everybody who needs one can get a Watercone®, you can pasteurize water in clear plastic bottles by exposing them to the sun.

The Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) process is a simple technology used to improve the microbiological quality of drinking water. SODIS uses solar radiation to destroy pathogenic microorganisms which cause water borne diseases.

SODIS is ideal to treat small quantities of water. Contaminated water is filled into transparent plastic bottles and exposed to full sunlight for six hours.

Sunlight is treating the contaminated water through two synergetic mechanisms: Radiation in the spectrum of UV-A (wavelength 320-400nm) and increased water temperature. If the water temperatures raises above 50°C, the disinfection process is three times faster.

You can raise the temperature of the water in transparent bottles by putting them in the sun against a dark background.

Simple Solar Rules:
Dark heats up
Light reflects
Clear keeps off the wind

As suggested above, years from now, when your Watercone® wears out, you can use it to collect rainwater for the gravity drip irrigation system exhibited at the recent Design for the Other 90% show at NYC's Cooper-Hewitt Museum.



Change the color of the gravity drip bag to black and you have a solar hot water heater. [See Simple Solar Rules above.]

There are lots of other things you can do with sunlight and plastic containers.

I plant my garden a month or six weeks early by practicing Recycled Solar. Place a ring of plastic bottles on the soil, fill them with water, plant seeds of your choice (I've grown tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, and greens with this technique) in the middle, and cap it with another bottle with its bottom cut out. This makes a solar heated coldframe or cloche.



Solar IS Civil Defense.

M. Preston Burns, Pandora's Box, Experiential Geometry

I've been experimenting for over thirty years with geometric models. Recently, my collaborator and the man who introduced me to this work, M Preston Burns, died and I have been going over his portfolio and papers. Mel or, as I knew him, Bud Burns worked primarily with the cube and the tetrahedron. He divided the square faces of the cube on the diagonal revealing the equilateral tetrahedron packed inside. He cut and hinged the cube and made a winged tetrahedron, eight hinged equilateral triangles, to fit inside. Then he filled the corners with ToyBlox, wooden forms which demonstrated the two-fold symmetries of the cube and tetrahedron. He called it Pandora's Box and demonstrated six inch, one foot, four, six, and eight foot models publicly since around 1970 when he built the first prototype.

This is a short video of what was probably his last presentation of Pandora's Box :



The advantage of working with these models is that they teach geometry and symmetry experientially, without the need of numbers or words. These forms are inherent in dimensionality. They are true, in the way a carpenter measures true - straight, level, plumb. By having three dimensional models you can turn around in your hands, you develop a hand-eye relationship with fundamental geometric forms. The cube and tetrahedron models of Pandora's Box teach the relationship between the right triangle and the equilateral triangle as well as two-fold and three-fold symmetry viscerally. This is full contact mathematics.

If you are interested in this kind of experiential geometry, there will be a symposium on "Synergetics and Morphology" at the Rhode Island School of Design on November 3 and 4, 2007 in Providence, RI. Further information is available from the Synergetics Collaborative

Another short video of Bud outlining his symbology system:



His friends will remember M Preston Burns at the current exhibit of his work in Cambridge, MA at Toscanini's Ice Cream, 899 Main Street on Tuesday, August 28 at 7 pm.



You can see more of his drawings at Bud's Gallery

Dancing the Cube in Jamaica

This is a video Julie of Videosphere took December 2006 of Azisu, Nikita, Chaka, Werner, and Bud playing with a magnetic Quanta Cube, a cube made of 72 A and B Quanta. The A and B Quanta are the smallest common symmetrical tetrahedra of the regular tetrahedron and octahedron, two of the Platonic Solids. They were first discovered and analyzed by R Buckminster Fuller and Dr Arthur Loeb. Both the A and B Quanta come in left-hand and right-hand pairs, they are mirror images of each other, enantiomorphs. As positive/negative pairs, they are perfect for magnetic coupling and there are magnets at the centers of each of the four faces of each Quanta in the Quanta Cube, 288 magnets in all.

The Quanta Cube is derived from the work of M. Preston Burns, Bud, the skinny old dude in the video, who built his first Pandora's Box nearly 40 years ago. We worked together building various models of the box at different scales from eight feet to six inches and demonstrated them before the public and as part of an arts curriculum with Tribal Rhythms. Bud dissected a cube along its diagonals, hinged the pieces, and packed a "winged tetrahedron," a hinged tetrahedron with eight equilateral triangles, in the center. He filled the corners of the cube with ToxBlox, illustrating the symmetrical divisions of the cube. That is Pandora's Box.

One day, I was playing with a set of A and B Quanta I had made and discovered how to fill the box with A and B Quanta. Later I developed the magnetic coupling system with Carl Fasano of RISD.

More on Synergetic geometry and R. Buckminster Fuller at
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
http://synergeticists.org
http://www.bfi.org/

More video of the Quanta Cube at
http://energyvision.blogspot.com/2006/02/evolution-of-cube.html

More geometry video from RISD:
http://energyvision.blogspot.com/2006/02/geometry-study.html

"You Can Fix All the World's Problems In a Garden"

"You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people actually today don't actually know that and that makes most people insecure."

So says Geoff Lawton from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. He proves it here with a video describing how permacultural design and a local team desalinated the soil and grew a garden on 10 acres of barren desert land two kilometers from the Dead Sea. Within four months, the trees produced their first figs.

"We could regreen the Middle East. We could regreen any desert...."

I think Candide would agree. I'm not sure about Voltaire.

Here's a recycled solar cloche I found in Candide's garden.

Solar IS Civil Defense

Thanks to worldchanging for alerting me to this permaculture story.

Originally posted at dailykos.

Invisibility of Solar Power

We swim in sunlight and solar power every day and every minute of daylight. We just don't recognize it as btu's, lumens, or watts. We don't count the calories in our solar diet and include no accounting in our energy budget for all the sunlight we already use.

Part and parcel of this invisibility is our inability to see actual working solar when it is right in front of our eyes. Probably the most common solar electric device around your town is the portable electric sign powered by PV panels. It's that orange thing behind the tree.



Can you see the PV panels on this health center in Brookline, MA? Would you recognize it as solar, glancing up from the street or your car window as you passed by?



This is the Porter Square Shopping Center in Cambridge, MA. The story I heard, is that the owners, one of whom was John O'Connor, author of _Who Owns the Sun?_ and an environmental activist, wanted people to see the PV panels so they raised them up on steel girders, an investment more costly than the panels themselves. I always thought they should have included some legend on the steel like "Solar Energy at Work" or "Solar Energy Works!" I think that might be a good idea on other public solar installations too. [The Porter Square Shopping Center has a geothermal heating system in addition to PV solar.]




This is one of those poles with PV panels you can see by the side of many highways. They are monitoring traffic, counting cars, sending congestion alerts. I've seen some powering emergency equipment too. They are all over the place once you recognize them.


This trash container is a solar powered trash compactor. They were invented in Jamaica Plain and Boston is testing out 50 around the city. This one is in Davis Square in Somerville. The first one I saw was on Spectacle Island last summer.



Boston is also trying out solar powered parking meters. As a bicyclist, I think there are still some design issues to be worked out.

Keep your eyes open. At least when the sun is shining.

Cross-posted at dailykos as an entry in my diary there.

Cell Phone Solar: The Video

I wrote about Cell Phone Solar before at solarray and in one of my diaries at dailykos.


What I wrote a few months ago and what I learned in Jamaica is still true:

Cell phones change everything
Cell phone solar with AA/D battery charging is a useful minimum scale
The price point should be $10 American or less

Solar in Thirty Second Segments

I made these thirty 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. The tape archive of all those lectures needs to be digitized.



The modern history of solar is hidden in plain sight but the best book I know on the earlier 2500 years is still A Golden Thread by John Perlin and Ken Butti.



I still don't understand the relationship between a calorie and a watt. I understand the btu though. Sorry, physicists.



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

Minimum Solar Light

Combine one of the new powerful LED lights powered by a couple of CR2032 button batteries like the Energizer Trim Flex LED with a solar panel from a novelty solar hat fan or one of the PV chips from a solar education kit, connect them together, possibly with a IN4003 blocking diode between the solar panel and the batteries to prevent electrical discharge through the panel at night (correct me if I'm wrong), and you have an effective solar rechargeable light suitable for reading.

There is a button battery solar charger which works fairly well. There is also the Micro Solar LED which I have not tried yet. You can also buy rechargeable button batteries and AC chargers.

I'd like to see solar light as available and affordable as a disposable cigarette lighter anywhere and everywhere around the world. Right now the price for this level of solar light is between $20 and $10. Commodity production and pricing should bring that down to $5 to $1.


Solar PSAs
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=gmoke

Solar Experiments
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2006/03/solar-video.html

Interviews and Site Visits
http://energyvision.blogspot.com

Crossposted to http://gmoke.dailykos.com


Solar IS Civil Defense

Unknown Auschwitz Satyagraha

For all those
in war
       and the danger of war,
refugees and dispossessed,
sufferers of famine, pestilence
and disaster
             on this day.

Unknown Auschwitz Satyagraha

On April 21, 1985 I saw a public television program on the Holocaust. It consisted of the survivors meeting at the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, Yad Vashem I believe it is called, looking for those they had lost and telling the stories of what had happened to them. Most of the images were tight close-ups of faces saying things the eyes would not forget.

One woman said she had been a prisoner working in a typing pool in Auschwitz. The SS officer in charge told her when she arrived that she was allowed three mistakes a day or off to the ovens. They worked twelve hour shifts and typed thousands of reports all in quadruplicate. And only three mistakes a day.

Eventually, she was transferred to another job, another SS officer. He seemed to be a gentleman and she couldn't understand why he was in the SS. On the first day, he took her to a storeroom. It was in chaos. He asked, "Do you think you can clean this up?" Of course she said yes. He prohibited only one thing. She was not to open one certain door.

There came a time when she was working in the storeroom and heard screams. They were like the sounds "of a dying animal, being beaten to death, indescribable really." Naturally, they came from beyond the forbidden door. She had to open it. Behind the door was a set of stairs leading down. She descended and saw her gentleman SS officer beating a Polish worker with his belt in front of a group of other workers. She said, "The workers looked up and were struck as if they saw an angel. They had no idea women had worked above them. We had no idea there were men there below." The SS officer looked up too and saw her. He told her to get out but she didn't move. He came up the stairs and told her to go back but she didn't move. She said, "I'm not a hero but something happened. I grabbed hold of his sleeve and wouldn't let him go. He told me to leave but I looked into his eyes, for minutes, for a few seconds, for me it seemed like an eternity. And still I wouldn't let go of his arm. Finally he said, 'It's all right, go.' But I looked into his eyes for another eternity, holding his sleeve for dear life. Then he said, 'It's all right. I won't beat them anymore,' and I walked back up the stairs."

Later, she found out that the SS officer had been beating a worker to death with his belt every week, but from then on he stopped. Still later, just before a death march, the workers sent her a pair of high-topped boots and she believes it was only those boots that kept her alive through the march. She was an angel for them and those workers were angels for her.



Perhaps this story shows us what might have happened if Gandhi had met Hitler. Maybe he would have held Hitler's sleeve and searched his mad eyes into his madder soul until Hitler too said, "It's all right. I won't beat them anymore."




That evening there was a story on the Cambodian Holocaust on "Sixty Minutes" and the next morning on National Public Radio's Morning Edition a piece on the Armenian Holocaust.

The documentary I think was called "The Gathering," produced by Joel Levitch for Jason Films broadcast on April 21, 1985 on WGBH-TV Boston, MA.



Editorial Comment: I first published this piece online on August 1, 1997, although I wrote it the 80s, read it publicly in the early 90s, and produced a video version of the piece that was cablecast locally and exhibited in a museum show on courage in NY.

May we remember the example 
of this woman and Dr King and Desmond Tutu and Gandhi 
and Tolstoy and Thoreau and King Ashoka and 
create peace on this day, 
if only for a moment, 
        for a breath, 
        for ourselves.

Video version

Cell Phone Solar: What I Learned in Jamaica

Driving up to Junction on twenty miles of bad road, we stopped for directions at a gas station and picked up an older woman waiting for a ride who guided us the rest of the way. A mile or two later, we turned a corner and saw a line of wind turbines on the slopes of Don Figeroa Mountain, the Wigton wind project (http://www.mct.gov.jm/energy_5.htm). I turned in my seat and asked the woman on her way to Junction whether the wind machines had made any difference.

She said, "No, mon, we still have to pay for the electric and the gas."

A little farther down the road we passed a sign for DigiCel, the local cell phone company. I turned to her again and said, "But the cell phone changed everything, didn't it?"

She smiled widely and nodded deeply.


On the sun porch and veranda, we videotaped the solar electric light system we'd brought. We showed the three different sizes of interconnecting solar panels and LED lamps with batteries in their cases and displayed the different sets of connectors. We had one connector to go from the battery to a USB device, another was a 12 volt socket like a car lighter. We had a set of attachments to charge cell phones from the solar batteries and another that let us connect directly to the solar panels as well.

In fact, we also had a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio which we were using to charge the rechargeable AAs the digital cameras required and a hand cranked dynamo specifically designed for charging cell phones. From what we saw, people in Jamaica were using mostly AAs and D cell batteries but we didn't have a D cell battery bay, only the one for AAs, a set of alligator clips,, and the multimeter.

We had cell phone solar.

Cell phone solar and AA/D cell charging: that's emergency, camping, and most of the world and it's a scale that is understandable, accessible, and probably affordable.


One night, I was talking to some Jamaican kids at Doreen's bar, the local watering hole a few steps away from the guest house. We showed them the lights and explained how the batteries in the lamps could also charge cell phones. They liked that idea a lot. I told them that the large solar lights cost $75 American and the smallest, the one on my backpack, was $30 American. They didn't like that. I said I thought solar lights and cell phone chargers could probably be available for $5 to $10 American and their eyes lit up.


Here's what I learned in Jamaica:
Cell phones change everything.
Cell phone solar with AA/D battery charging is a useful minimum scale.
The price point should be around $10 American or less.