This Sat-urday item (what I’m calling satellite and other green/off-grid tech news) is from Cory Doctorow’s Boing Boing post about LightLane, a concept device that paints bike lanes using portable lasers from the bicycle.
Quoting the Good Magazine blog post “Superb Idea: Bike Lane That Travels With You’:
“While ridership is increasing every year, bicycle safety remains […]
Yesterday, there was a Boing Boing post about Leno’s Garage and a video featuring a magnetic levitating wind turbine, which will be delivered to Ed Begley, Jr.’s house. Jay took great pride in his own larger wind turbine. He bragged: “Mine is bigger than Ed Begley’s.”
Oddly enough, perhaps due to the “carbon footprint” needed for […]
Here’s a searchable directory of bike co-ops from bikecollectives.org. They even had an exhibit in Las Vegas at the bicycle industry’s trade show, Interbike.
One of the listings led me to the following about a Bike Over Borders conflict:
“. . .we learned first hand that the policies of “free trade” are made for corporations, not for […]
A Kurzweil AI post describes the rapid growth of off-grid households.
“Once the preserve of mavericks, hippies and survivalists, there are now approximately 200,000 off-grid households in the US, a figure that has been increasing by a third every year for the past decade.”
The post links to a New Scientist story, How To Unplug From The […]
BBC reports that the SeaGen tidal power generation project has reached its full power goal in a system test on December 18th. A Belfast Telegraph article headline proudly proclaims its local achievement “Northern Ireland tidal turbine breaks world energy record”.
Also, a front page item on Digg links to a CleanTechnica blog post titled “SeaGen Shatters […]
This Slashdot post links to an American Chemical Society article about a report by researchers here in Nevada, published in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, about the impact of turning waste coffee grounds into biodiesel.
“The resulting coffee-based fuel — which actually smells like java — had a major advantage in being more stable […]
There are advocates of hemp for biofuel, just as there are for tobacco.
That’s my excuse for including this anti-drug-war item on a permaculture blog. I’m also sick of seeing COPS style reality shows which glorify the destruction of our freedom. The latest atrocity is a new show called Heimatschutzministerium, or to translate from the […]
I’ve been on the road helping a friend move his stuff from the house he sold in Culver City, CA to his new home in Pahrump, NV. But while I haven’t posted here for a week, I have been taking notes about all things sustainable.
The first item is the most recent. During yesterday’s Ed Schultz […]
This Oregonian article about Ty Adams describes his conversion of a recreational vehicle into a sustainability demonstration.
“It runs on biodiesel, has solar panels for its electricity and hot water, a composting toilet and channels to catch rainwater.”
See Ty’s website at SolTrekker.org or watch his SolTrekker Intro video (also embedded below) and see the Portland TV […]
VaPooRizer.Com
Front page Digg item about a new garbage treatment plant that uses plasma to vaporize trash while generating energy.
But where does the poo go?
Excerpt from the inhabitat story linked from Digg:
“Recently St. Lucie County in Florida announced that it has teamed up with Geoplasma to develop the United States’ first plasma gasification plant.
The plant will […]
After reading an article about a new Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) initiative, I thought back to the off-grid Seasteading project, started by one of PayPal’s founders.
In their new book in progress, Seasteading: A Practical Guide to Homesteading the High Seas, by Patri Friedman, Wayne Gramlich, and Andrew House, under a section called “Technological […]
You can greatly exceed the $1 per watt price of new wind power systems by building your own homebrew wind turbine generator. [Update: I really meant that you can get the same value for a fraction of the price, but you probably understood that anyway. Typical small scale retail systems are more like $4 per […]
Great photos from the opening of Josh Tickell’s award winning documentary film, Fuel, may be seen at The Fuel Film website. The FAQ page introduces a variety of alternative energy methods and their advantages.
The trailer for Fuel’s previous incarnation as Fields of Fuel is no longer available, but unless I’m misunderemembering, the new one takes […]
Professor Marc A. Baldo in video in which he explains a new window building material that is tolerant of defects (unlike today’s photovoltaic cells), should be inexpensive to make, and is expected to double the efficiency of solar electric systems because it concentrates sunlight at any angle towards its edges, thus does not need sun […]
I inherited a “Huffy” bicycle about as rusty as my riding skills, and the rear tire is flat. Otherwise, it seems sturdy enough to carry my weight and has convenient storage that easily fits a six pack. Which of course would only be for green tea or something eco friendly.
Instead of America’s nouveau poor going […]
In an email message titled “watch the two videos,” Geo. McCalip wrote:
“The Algae Bioreactor Video and the HDVG Video are about 2/3 of the way down the page.”
“http://www.valcent.net/s/Home.asp”
This Google Video of a 22 minute Bloomberg interview with the Valcent founder back in June might be more accessible to various media players.
The vertical growth bioreactors […]
A Kurzweil AI report (with photo) of an article from New Hampshire’s Union Leader tells of Segway (and more successful projects) inventor Dean Kamen’s new role in automobile manufacturing.
The Stirling cycle is an external combustion design, has safety, efficiency, and energy source flexibility advantages over traditional internal combustion engines. Stirlings aren’t as susceptible to altitude […]
The “raw solar” MIT project based on Washington state inventor Doug Wood’s designs has a revamped website and is moving forward with commercial deployment.
From their FAQ page:
“Because of the simplicity of the design, and use of widely available materials, the dish has a huge potential to address the energy problems of the rapidly developing third […]
Flies came in and transformed orange peels on waste lands over time, replacing invasive grass species and weeds with a lush forest rich in biodiversity. Daniel Janzen’s approach cost $3,000 per episode compared to $600,000 spent doing the same work with human labor and tractors. After orange juice is squeezed and oil from the skin […]
Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder linked to a Marijuana Policy Project chart showing that 9 out of 10 marijuana decriminalization initiatives passed across the nation. The prison guards in California caused the only defeat, of Prop 5.
“Proposition 5: Expand the number of drug offenders diverted from prison into treatment and decriminalize the possession of up to […]
Press coverage by The Auto Channel of the Santa Monica Alt Car Expo 2008. For city folk, plug-in hybrids are the most promising new technology concept. Battery chemistry is still under development with no clear winner yet for the standard energy storage solution. From the YouTube video description:
“Southern California Edison is doing things with wind, […]
Geo. McCalip’s True American Century is a counter-neocon site with good energy and environmental positions and a plan to reduce our incarceration rate to the lowest in the world. The prison guard union isn’t going to like that!
The good ol’ neocons would have us shocking and awing forever to cement the world order for a […]
An AP news item at Philly.com that I saw linked from Fark (!) has the headline “Energy hogs: prisons now recycle, grow own food.”
Excerpt:
“LITTLEROCK, Wash. - Of all the things convicted murderer Robert Knowles has been called during his 13 years behind bars, recycler hasn’t been one of them.”
“But there he was one morning, pitchfork […]
Stefan Molyneux speech from 2006 with a libertarian take on pollution, energy and the like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j27XJ0vjr0Y
I noticed this cool Stirling engine water pump a long time ago, but never got around to blogging about it. This external combustion motor is heated with a gas burner, but there are solar powered Stirling engines you can look at online, too. Built in 1895, it originally pumped water a hundred feet into the […]
An article about Extensive Garden Roofs on the Associated Construction Publications site describes the acceptance of green roofs in the construction industry for various reasons and the shift from “intensive” to “extensive” garden roofs.
Excerpt:
“. . .thicker and heavier “intensive” garden roofs are giving way to a lighter “extensive” system, which is designed to be more […]
A biodiesel research item about E Coli at Gas 2.0 linked from a front page Digg post led me to another Gas 2.0 story about a landscaper growing 22 acres of jatropha for biodiesel, with the expectation of saving half of the $24,000 per month formerly spent on diesel at the pump.
Looks like my “grow […]
Boing Boing announcement by Mark Frauenfelder of the launch of H+: Humanity Plus, a new online magazine, helmed by veteran editor R.U. Sirius. The first issue is available as a free PDF download.
H+ “. . .covers the scientific, technological, and cultural developments that are challenging
and overcoming human limitations.”
One “mini interview” in the issue, by another […]
The OpenFarmTech.org site has an active community applying the open source ideas from computer technology to off grid homesteading and local farming.
The OpenFarmTech.org folks are as enthusiastic about small scale cheap (and ultimately free) automation like RepRap “Wealth Without Money” ideals as I am, except they are actually deploying RepRap and other doodads applied to […]
This Kurzweil AI article quotes author Richard Dooling’s description of his appearance topics on Coast To Coast AM:
“. . .how a wizard, an atomic physicist, and the Unabomber predicted the Wall Street debacle.”
Kurzweil AI also describes Dooling’s latest book:
“Rapture For the Geeks is a witty, fun, fast-paced, and very readable romp through the latest […]
J. Kent Hastings
Record Your Own
You are currently browsing the archives for the Energy category.