December 2, 2008
Category: english+ sustainability
Silicon Valley has changed the world once. Now, thanks to a wave of investment and innovation in solar power, it’s on to the next revolution: A massive disruption of the U.S. electricity market.
(Business 2.0 Magazine) — There’s a missile-bunker vibe you get when walking into Solaicx, a Silicon Valley startup that manufactures the silicon wafers that are the building blocks of solar panels.
October 29, 2008
Shawn Frayne, a young inventor based in Mountain View, California, is the creator of Windbelt, a new device for wind-energy production based on an aerodynamic phenomenon known as aeroelastic flutter.
This phenomenon is a well-known destructive force and it caused, for example, the Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge to collapse in 1940 (video). Researchers at Humdinger (this is the name of the company pushing forward the Windbelt technology) have discovered that it can also be a useful and powerful mechanism for ‘catching the wind’ at a variety of scales and costs beyond the reach of traditional turbines.
September 22, 2008
Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) recently revealed a free plug-in for Google SketchUp that will allow anyone to perform energy modeling on projects.
September 10, 2008
As we know, the natural sunlight is an indispensable source of life for the living organisms; for the man,
however, it plays various roles with remarkable psychological effects not exclusively bound to the quality of the vision of individuals, but for their well-being as well: the feeling of a well aired place, the perception of the true natural colours, the regulation of the biological cycles. The abstention from its benefits for long periods is the principal cause of some depressing pathologies.
July 10, 2008
The Passive House (www.passivhauskurs.de) is the world’s leading standard in energy efficient construction: Energy saved on heating is 80% compared to conventional standards of new buildings. The energy requirement for heating is lower than 10 to 20 kWh/(m²a) (depending on climate), adding up to a low cost of 10 to 25 € per month. Therefore high energy prices are no longer a threat to Passive House occupants.
June 13, 2008
In this week’s post I would like to continue my reflections on sustainability by asking where we actually stand ourselves in the face of climate change? How are we prepared to accept neccesary restrictions and unavoidable change?
Well, the majority of people still do very little. Yet this should not make them feel guilty because a real change in climate change is not about guilt and expiation. On the contrary, mistakes and errors are natural milestones in the search for new solutions, they show us what we have overlooked and what we could do better and more intelligently.
May 19, 2008
Think to a Plaid in the middle of a field, a sunny day and some musical Nerds with their laptops that generate sweet electronic melodies: not a sound from a generator, no stinky fuel but only the sound of the music and the smell of just cut grass.
Play on Plaid is also the occasion to record tracks produced with solar energy and make out of them records with out being totally slaves of oil.
March 8, 2008
First realized as an Industrial Design Thesis project at Pratt Institute in Spring 2005 by Samuel Cabot Cochran, GROW.1 employs thin film photovoltaics with piezoelectric generators and screen printed conductive ink encapsulated in ETFE fluoropolymer lamination.
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