New Energy Watch

Do-It-Yourself Solar Sources

There's the sun blazing away, and here you are on the ground, and away goes all that unharnessed energy again. You're interested in solar panels, or in heating your water with solar, or in optimizing your house for passive solar heating, or all of the above. But the hunt for information takes a lot of time and bookmarks, especially if you're inclined to do the initial research yourself and stay hands-on throughout the project.

Here's an excellent collection of research links from BuildItSolar.com, covering the following topics:

• General Engineering Reference Sites
• Software Tool Lists
• Solar Position and Radiation Tools
• Windows and Glass
• Home Heat Loss/Gain and Passive Solar Home Design Software
• Energy Savings Calculators
• Solar Collector Design
• Piping and Plumbing Analysis and Properties
• Heat Exchangers
• Pumps and Solar Pumping
• HVAC
• Refrigeration
• Electrical
• Electric Motor Current Draw
• Unit Conversion
• Heat Transfer Analysis Methods
• Materials Specs
• Pollution and Emissions Calculators
• Energy Conversion
• Books and Publications

Even if you just want to hire an installer or contractor, you should educate yourself on the topic to get the most out of your new solar power.

To find reliable solar installers in your area, consult FindSolar.com.

~ Doug Logan, NewEnergyWatch

Green Remodeling from AlwaysBuildGreen.com

 If you're thinking of making structural changes in your home, or of building a new home, have a look at Green Remodeling, a well-written piece at AlwaysBuildGreen.com. The article provides a good framework for how to think about building materials, home location and orientation, and general energy conservation, including the notion of "embodied energy," meaning "the sum of all the energy required by all the materials and services (including the cost of upkeep and maintenance) that go into
constructing a building..."

Embodied energy is expressed in Btu per pound, and, according to the author, gives us "a realistic base for comparison to assess different products or technologies for use in our homes."

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Embodied Energy.

As valuable as the concept of embodied energy is, it can also cause trouble and confusion, because it's not well standardized -- there are different ideas of which numbers can be used in a given situation. As a result, people on both sides of an energy issue can conjure up figures to support diametrically
opposed arguments and beliefs. For example, while you might include diesel tractor fuel as part of the embodied energy in a gallon of ethanol, would you also include the fuel in the farmworkers' cars when they drive to work? What about the food energy it takes to sustain the workers? The fight in and around the biofuels industry over ethanol and soy-diesel production has been bitter in this regard.

But don't let the confusion of self-interested feuds sour you on the concept of embodied energy. Maybe it's hard to take it into account when you go to the local building supply store to buy a few sheets of plywood or a can of paint, but if you're building a whole house, or adding a kitchen, or putting on a new roof, then it definitely pays to consider energy-efficient alternatives. That's where the rest of AlwaysBuildGreen.com comes in handy. Even if you're not near their showroom in Norwalk, Connecticut, you can get a good idea of the types of materials and products that are available by visiting their website.

~ Doug Logan, NewEnergyWatch

Popular Mechanics: Biofuels Update

There’s a fine article by Jennifer Bogo in the September 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics on where we stand with biofuels. First, she reviews the mistaken headlong rush toward corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel a couple of years ago. The story is now well-known: Both fuels take a lot of energy to produce, and when over 20 percent of the country’s corn crop and 13 percent of soy are diverted to the fuel sector, food prices go up.

Unfortunately, the backlash against using these feedstock crops for biofuel has been overdone, too, so that biofuels as a whole have taken a bad rap.

Bogo outlines efforts to make the next generation of biofuels viable. Two of the more promising paths will be cellulosic ethanol, made, as the name suggests, by breaking down cellulose compounds and extracting sugar from them, and biodiesel made from algae that feed on CO2. These technologies have not been brought to a scale that can make much of a dent in the immediate problem, but meanwhile scientists and engineers are bounding ahead with third- and fourth-generation technologies that aim to produce sugar-alcohol fuels like biobutanol and other “designer hydrocarbon” fuels.

The biofuel companies cited in Bogo’s article are as follows:

Cellulosic Ethanol

• Iogen
• POET
• SunEthanol
• Verenium
• Coskata
• Range Fuels

Algal Biodiesel

• GreenFuel Technologies
• HR Biopetroleum
• Solazyme
• Solix

“Green” Gasoline

• Virent

Biobutanol

• Cobalt Biofuels
• Dupont
• Gevo
• Tetravitae Bioscience

Designer Hydrocarbons

• LS9
• Amyris

Fourth-Generation Fuel

• Synthetic Genomics

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

Gasoline Energy Equivalents and Conversion Calculator

The energy in one gallon of gasoline equals:

• 124,000 Btu
• 36.3 kilowatt-hours (See the Soltrex Interactive Energy Calculator to relate kWh to other outputs.)
• 48.7 horsepower/hour
• 31,250 kilocalories
• 1.24 therms
• 124 cubic feet of natural gas
• 1.36 gallons of propane
• 12.4 lbs. of coal (depending on quality)
• 0.89 gallon of home heating or diesel oil
• 0.005 standard cord of firewood

Put in a value for any one element, and all the others will fall in line. Don't use commas.
(Thanks to www.unitconversion.org.)

kilowatt-hour [kW*h]:
watt-hour [W*h]:
horsepower hour [hp*h]:
kilocalorie (IT) [kcal (IT), kcal]:
Btu (IT) [Btu (IT), Btu]:
foot-pound [ft*lbf]:
therm:
fuel oil equivalent @barrel (US):

Examples of Moves You Can Make:

1. I just put an insulation blanket around my electric hot-water heater. Estimated electrical savings are 5 percent. At 4700 kWh per year, savings would be about 235 kWh. 235 kWh = 6.47 gallons of gasoline.

Here's the US DOE EERE Energy Cost Calculator for Electric and Gas Water Heaters.
Here's the US DOE EERE page, "Insulate Your Water Heater Tank for Energy Savings"

2. I'm carpooling to work with my neighbor two days a week. This saves me about three gallons of gas a week (and completely eliminates two person/days of pollution). Three gallons of gas per week - 3.72 therms (1.24 x 3). That would be 182 therms per year (49 weeks x 3.72) or 3 barrels of oil. Wouldn't it be helpful if a few million more people did that every day?

3. I walk to my friend's house now instead of driving. It's about a mile each way. If I do that twice a week for a year, it's 4 miles x 50 weeks = 200 miles / 25 miles per gallon = 8 gallons of gasoline, or 992,000 Btu, or 9.92 therms.

4. In the example above, those walks to the friend's house also burn about 120 kilocalories per round-trip (that's for a 150-lb person; see the Soltrex Interactive Energy Calculator for kilowatt-hours, which you can then convert onward). So 120 kilocalories x 2 trips per week x 50 per year = 12,000 kilocalories. That's less than half a gallon of gasoline -- no wonder we're so addicted to petrofuel. On the other hand, 12,000 calories is about 4 pounds of fat.

5. Here's a combination example. Instead of using a leaf blower to clean up my yard this year, I used a rake. I saved a quart of gas and oil, or 31,000 Btu (124,000 Btu / 4), and I burned about 700 calories in two hours.

10 Good Articles on Energy Policy

Here, but not in chronological order, are 10 New York Times articles that we've clipped in recent months, and have been meaning to promote. Sorry for the dense grouping, but together, these pieces are even greater than the sum of their parts. Whoever advises Senators Obama and McCain on energy policy would do well to sit their candidates down and make them read these.

Why are all the articles from the same paper? The simple reason is that the Times, led by columnist Tom Friedman, has been singularly strong among American media in pushing for a rational, forceful, coordinated green energy policy in the United States. So far, the Times writers have succeeded in lighting exactly zero fires under the Bush administration. But others have been listening, and the times, they are a-changin'.

The Winning Hand / Bob Herbert
The fastest, cheapest, easiest and cleanest step toward a sane energy environment is the powerful combination of efficiency and conservation.

Allies Dressed in Green / Tom Friedman
Without the communist threat, what will keep the cement in the Atlantic Alliance? Maybe terrorism, but more likely a mutual devotion to new energy.

Make Them Fight Us All / Tom Friedman
If fighting terrorism is "the decisive ideological struggle of our time," why are only a few of us fighting? Can't we all pitch in?

Move Over, Oil, There's Money in Texas Wind / Clifford Krauss
The Oil Many Cometh / Timothy Egan
Texas to Tel Aviv / Tom Friedman
All three of these articles cover the rapid ascendancy of oilman T. Boone Pickens to the forefront of the wind-power movement. "We import 70 percent of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year... I have been an oilman all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of.."

Turning Glare Into Watts / Matthew L. Wald
Large solar thermal plants could be built quickly (within two years) in the American Southwest, and produce megawatts to match the power from multiple nuclear reactors.

Dumb as as We Wanna Be / Tom Friedman
Bickering in Congress, and between Congress and the Executive, has hamstrung America's ability to join the next great global industry. We're missing out on investments, technological advances, and jobs.

Bring on the Right Biofuels / Roger Cohen
The backlash against biofuels has been indiscriminate. The biofuels industry is still a tiny part of the energy picture; the right fuels need to be encouraged and developed in the right ways. Tariffs and subsidies that supress rational biofuel development and land use need to be reconsidered.

Truth or Consequences / Tom Friedman
If there were a politician with the courage to lead correctly, even if it meant being voted out of a job, he or she would tell voters the truth: Gasoline needs to be four bucks a gallon at the minimum, and this is why...