Smart Energy

Check out this amazing performance of the Bond theme on the Eigenharp Alpha.

This amazing musical instrument has 120 playing keys, 12 percussion keys, two strip controllers and a breath pipe. And it’s only around 4k Euros! There’s a load o’ mo’ vids over on YouTube. Via Boing Boing.

Americans are still reacting to the news that a man got away with only a four-month jail sentence after shooting a bicyclist in the head in cold blood, in front of his three-year old child. In Germany, the web is buzzing about a sentence equally extreme, on the opposite end of the spectrum. Christopher-Felix Hahn, a student of theater science in Gießen, has learned he is banned from riding a bike, skateboard or any other “unlicensed vehicle” on the streets — for fifteen years.

via Student Caught Biking Drunk Banned from Cycling for 15 Years : TreeHugger.

According to a just-released report form New Energy Finance, the levelized cost of going solar by the end of 2010 will be about 50 percent of what it was in 2008.

A news brief on Environmental Leader explains that levelized means

the lifetime cost per kilowatt hour before subsidies.

The New Energy Finance report compares the levelized costs of various energy sources, including geothermal and wind, as well as solar. Envrio Leader says that

Thin-film solar can cost as little as $3 per watt of installed capacity, making it the least expensive option – about 25 percent less than crystalline silicone systems. Prices for photovoltaic projects with tracking systems have not declined as much, however.

Charles Diez shot a bike rider in the head -- and got 120 days in jail

Via Treehugger:

While driving down the road one day, Charles Diaz grew upset at seeing a man riding his bike on a busy street with his 3 year-old son. So he shot him in the head. Thankfully, the bullet narrowly missed his skull, instead getting lodged in the cyclists’ helmet. Well, Diaz has just been sentenced for admitting to nearly murdering a man by firing a gun towards his head–and he’s received a paltry 4 months in jail.

Police said Charles Diez, an Asheville firefighter since 1992, stopped his car to confront a couple riding bikes along heavily traveled Tunnel Road. Diez was apparently incensed by Alan Simons carrying his 3-year-old child on a seat mounted on the back of his bike. After an argument, Diez pulled a gun and shot at Simons, but the bullet passed through Simon’s bicycle helmet, just missing his skull, police said.

Via Streetsblog:

In August, a grand jury reduced charges against Diez from attempted first degree murder to felony assault. While assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill certainly sounds like an offense worthy of a lengthy prison term, the presiding judge apparently agreed that this was a case of a stand-up guy having a bad day.

Via Mountain Xpress:

Convictions on such a charge result in an average 20-39 months in prison for the defendant. But in the sentencing, Superior Court Judge James Downs found that Diez’s military service, along with testimony from former colleagues about his good character, were mitigating factors, and chose to sentence him to 15-27 months instead. Downs suspended all but four months of that sentence unless Diez breaks the law again in the next 30 months.

To exist or not to exist, that is the unicorn's question.

The belief that unicorns do not exist. More generally, a form of atheism that considers the proof that a deity exists to be no more convincing than the proof that a unicorn exists. — Urban Dictionary

<From Greek a = not, monokeros = unicorn (mono = one, keros = horn), ism = belief>

Since I cannot deny with absolute certainty that there are no gods, I decided to go with amonokerism to explain my beliefs.

A group of Washington State University researchers will be working with Avista utility company on a demonstration project that hopes to make the city of Pullman the region’s first smart grid community. The Pullman project is part of a Department of Energy regional smart grid demonstration project throughout the Northwest that is designed to expand upon existing electric infrastructure and test new smart grid technology.

Using smart grid technologies, the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project, announced by DOE today, will test new combinations of devices, software and advanced analytical tools that enhance the power grid’s reliability and performance. The total estimated cost for the project is $178 million with DOE providing half the funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The project’s participants, primarily utilities and industry team members, will provide the remaining funds.

The $38-million Pullman project involves automation of many parts of the electric distribution system using advanced metering technology, enhanced communication, and other elements of the smart grid. The project is intended to show how smart grid technology can enhance the safety, reliability, and efficiency of energy delivery on a regional and national level.

As part of the project WSU, along with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, is set to serve as a “micro-grid,” a locally based, electricity-producing power grid, said Anjan Bose, Regents Professor in the WSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Serving as a micro-grid, WSU will communicate with Avista to improve electric power efficiency throughout the community.

“The micro-grid provides a local way of controlling electricity production and distribution and should make the whole system more responsive to people’s needs,” said Bose. “This is a good demonstration project of one of the ways that we can make the grid smarter.”

Adapted from a press release published in WSU Today.

Over on Grist, David Roberts has some ideas about ways to rationalize residential energy-efficiency retrofit markets. Right now, he says, the marketplace is fragmented:

the market involves thousands and thousands of tiny, sporadic transactions, usually involving small-scale buyers and small-scale providers.

What it needs is something more than the “blunt tool” of raising energy prices — we need something to  jump start and rationalize the market now. Roberts gathers together a few suggestions about how to bring focus, standards and economic power to the retrofit market.

One way would be through collective purchasing at the community level (cities or even neighborhoods). Another is to open up some financing options (currently, the options are pretty much non-existent, though there are a few tax incentives). Yet another is by improving the quality of information to consumers (that’s why we’re here blogging about this stuff) and increasing the transparency of claims made by vendors and manufacturers.

Architect Johnna Barrett has plans for five ready-to-build homes ranging in size from 1,800 to 2,500 square feet. The series of plans are called SUSTAIN houses and they look pretty good. (Wish I could say the same for the SUSTAIN Web site, which makes some common though easy to fix blunders with its implementation of Flash). Here’s what SUSTAIN is claiming you can build from their plans:

All exterior and interior materials have been specified to earn LEED credits, and with proper site selection and following the LEED checklist included with your home plans, you can easily be LEED gold or platinum certified.  We want to show that environmental consciousness can be beautiful.  All of our home plans have been independently reviewed and carry the Designed to Earn the Energy Star seal. This means that when built according to specifications you can count on an annual energy savings of 20-30% over similar homes built to code.

The plans come with very specific lists and instructions for contractors and landscapers, so you get what you expect to get in the finished building.

Willow House, designed by Johnna Barrett

Architectural firm Perkins + Will is going open source with its database of chemicals in building materials.The purpose of the list is to create change through knowledge:

Rather than use harmful products, we will seek out alternatives that proect our health and the health of future generation. It is our hope that this list will be a catalyst for marketplace change.

According to a post on Jetson Green,

P+W’s Robin Gunther said at a panel last week, “amazingly, it’s hard to fathom that as architects we don’t always know what (chemicals) are in the building materials we use. It’s time for this to change; time to bring a standard for care to building design and construction by starting with the elimination of toxic chemicals in building materials.”

You can browse the data set several ways, including by category (e.g., chlorine- or fossil-fuel based components), by health effect, or by name. A robust search tool is provided, as is a long list of references.

Next-day addendum: as if to underscore the importance of knowing what we build with (we are what we eat?), there’s a new report in INHABITAT today about toxic drywall from China.

If you’re searching for energy alternatives but need a quick primer on geothermal production for your home or small business, Scientific American has a good explanation of the currently available options.

Geothermal isn’t just for utilities. Homeowners looking to go green and lower their utility bills can install a residential system, essentially a scaled-down version of the binary-cycle system. A series of pipes is installed underground. Water circulating in the loop is heated naturally underground and then transferred to a heat exchanger which concentrate the energy and releases it inside the home as heat. In summer and in warmer climates, the process is reversed to fill the home with geothermal-cooled air.

The binary-cycle technology extracts close-to-the surface warm (not necessarily hot) water and combines it with a second (“binary”) fluid, like butane or pentane, which has a low boiling point. This fluid is then pumped through a heat exchanger, where it is vaporized and sent through a turbine before being recycled back into the system. Binary-cycle geothermal plants already pump out dozens of megawatts of electricity in California, Nevada and Hawaii, among other places.

Residential geothermal systems are expensive to install, but there is a 30 percent tax credit currently available. The Geothermal Energy Association has even more info. And The Christian Science Monitor’s Bright Green Blog has a personal-experience story, too.