One of the largest consumers of residential electricity is your refrigerator. A fridge works by removing heat from inside and pushing it outside. You’ll notice the neato grill on the back of your fridge that cools the condensed fluid before returning to the compressor to absorb more heat. The key point to recognize here is that the warmer your home is (or at least the warmer the air behind your fridge), the harder it is for the heat to dissipate.
Archive for Big Idea
Swimming Pools
A good friend of mine is always saying to me that he wishes they made an all-in-one alternative energy kit. His Acme alternative energy kit would consist of a large water tank painted black to act as a thermal mass, solar water heaters, solar panels, and a wind turbine.
I’ve been thinking about this model and realized that many people already have this system partially installed. Partially installed because many people have a swimming pool.
A swimming pool could be used as a solar mass collecting heat from the sun and stirring it for those cold winter nights. The pool would work really well with a heat pump and a radiant floor heating system. Most people just cover up their pool with an insulating cover anyways, why not make that an extra thick and rigid cover capable of supporting solar water heaters that would circulate hot water into the pool.
With a solar hot water photovoltaic hybrid system on your pool, you now have hot water, a warm house, and electricity. if you were to add a wind turbine, you would have your Acme alternative energy kit!
Lastly, in the summer time you could use your swimming pool and your water heaters in reverse to radiate heat out of the pool. With a swimming pool full of cold water you’ll enjoy a cool home all day. You would be able use your home to heat your pool for a mid day swim.
Sustainability Exchange
Dear Readers,
Just thought I would let you all know about a new interest in my life.
Some friends from USM and I are organizing a new group called Sustainability Exchange.
The purpose of the group is to swap ideas, articles, news, and videos around sustainability. We’re hoping to start a podcast soon and one day we hope to give workshops.
Currently, we’re organized only as a facebook group but there are plans to synergize with an up and coming non-profit to help accomplish some mutual goals together.
I will keep you posted, but if you’re interested, join the facebook group because I’ve posted a ton of links.
Micro-hydro Rainwater Potential Energy Battery
One thing Ive always wondered about is using a micro-hydro turbine tocapture the potential energy of rain.
is there even enough potential energy in rain worth collecting? I have never seen such a system or crunched any numbers but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that if you had a tall enough building with a large roof in an area with a high annual precipitation, you could generate a decent amount of power.
The reason why I was thinking of this is because a while ago I sat in an an interesting lecture by Dr. Rucgard Komp where in he said that in some more rural countries they use electric pumps and solar panels to pump water. it made me wonder why more rural areas don’t use water storage as a sort of potential energy battery rather than lead acid as a chemical energy battery.
picture the following situation. Manuel is a goat farmer in a small village of Mexico. He comes accross a solar powered pump. its able to pump more water than they need during the day but none at night because the sun is down. So Manuel decides to put a 10,000 gallon pond at the top of a small hill. during the day, the pump fills the pond which is also filled by rain once in a while. at night, Manuel regulates the release of water to a lower tank and uses the pump to harvest the gravity based stored potential energy as useful electricity and water.
can this work? How high, wide, and deep would the pond need to be? it would be interesting to find out someday.
Instant Hot Water Heaters Explained
I remember when i was working at the Home Depot there was an instant hot water display that for some reason never really caught on.
Instant water heaters or tankless heaters are either electric or gas water heaters that have no tank and heat water on demand by passing it through a spiral like heated exchanger.
The heaters aren’t rates by storage capacity like traditional heaters, they are ranked by the speed in which they can heat an amount of water from one temperature to another. If you have cold norther ground water at 45 degrees and like to take scalding hot showers with two water heads then we would suggest ordering the top of the line gas heater.
The display gathered a lot of dusk because of this fact. The gas heaters were expensive and the electric heaters were said to be under powered. I never realized at the time one great way two mix the traditional tank heaters and the tankless to create a powerful hybrid system.
If you have a traditional tank heater, to supply your shower water you probably have it set to 120 – 160 degrees. However, if you installed an inexpensive electric tankless heater near your shower it would allow you to turn your tank down to maybe 60-70 degrees and heat your water partially on demand.
The savings would be significant over time and well worth the $129 for the instant heater.
BioFuel, USM Should Reconsider
Sitting in class yesterday I heard that USM converted to using only bio-fuels to heat the campus last winter but stopped because of the possibility that using bio-fuel may be taking food out of hungry mouths. The students mentioned that because the school feared the corn used to make the ethanol to heat the school was going to contribute to a food shortage or price increase, the school suspended buying bio-fuels. My argument against this decision is two fold.
First, ethanol production doesn’t decrease food supplies, it increases them. I’m no expert and this is all second hand information so don’t take my word for it, youtube it. The food vs. fuel debate is erroneous. 85% of all corn in this country is fed to cattle, not humans, but cattle are not evolved to eat corn. Cattle evolved eating grass and by eating corn they would shorten their life cycle drastically if we didn’t shorten it for them and turn them into tasty burgers. Ethanol is produced by fermenting corn with yeast but the yeast only eat the starch of the kernel leaving the protein rich kernel untouched in a produced called distillers grains. Distillers grains are the byproduct of the ethanol process and contain no indigestible starch, so when cattle eat distillers grains, they gain 17% more weight than cattle fed with the unprocessed grains. Its healthier for the cows to eat this product and they process it more completely. Instead of leaving the starch in the fields as cow patties, we can take it out before the cows eat it to drive our cars.
Furthermore, the fact that ethanol production actually makes more food for humans by delivering healthier cattle to slaughter much faster doesn’t even matter. In my limited research of ethanol, I’ve never read or heard of anyone using it to heat a home or business. It was more likely that USM was using a biofuel oil in a conventional heating oil based furnace. As far as I know heating biofuel is made with soy or other plant oil and is sometimes mixed with regular petrol heating oil. I haven’t heard anything about soy bean oil or other biofuels other than ethanol to be mistakenly blamed for rising food costs. I will continue to read around but doubt I will find anything.
USM Should reconsider using bio-fuel to heat its buildings. If we were really concerned with taking food away from hungry people, maybe some one with some motivation could convince USM to invest in the $3,000 worth of equipment that could process waste restaurant vegetable frying oil into heating oil. It would be even less expensive than bio-fuel, would be a first for the area, and most importantly it would make use for an other wise wasted resource that’s thrown on the trash heap.
Its not often that I commend USM for doing something good, usually I’m complaining. Using biofuel is what we should be doing, its a using the school as a trend setting role model to set a positive message for the community. We need to step back into that role.
