Posts Tagged ‘energy’
Wangaratta High School: Applied ESD
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on March 10th, 2010
Source: Green Building Council Australia (GBCA)
From the Green Building Council Australia Fact Sheet
Wangaratta High School in north-eastern Victoria was awarded a 4 Star Green Star – Education PILOT rating in August 2009 for Stage One in its three part redevelopment plan, becoming the first Green Star certified school in Australia. Utilising environmentally sustainable design (ESD) principles, the Taylor Oppenheim/Meinhardt Group project team aimed to reduce the new senior school’s negative impact on the environment, while at the same time, providing students and teachers with a healthier, more productive space. With US studies revealing green schools foster higher reading retention, better test scores and greater staff retention, it is easy to see why educational facilities around Australia are considering greener alternatives.
Ground heat exchange system
During project consultations, Wangaratta High School and the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development outlined their vision for the new school to be as energy efficient as possible, reducing the electrical power demand on-site as well as the recurrent energy costs accrued by the school. This brief was realised through the implementation of a ground heat exchange (GHE) system which would service the majority of the facility’s heating and cooling needs. This geothermal technology uses the earth as both a heat source and a heat sink, circulating water in a series of grid loops under the earth’s surface to cool or warm the building above. The system circulates water through a grid of 42 loops extending 100m below, using heat pumps to push the water through hydronic pipes in the building’s floor slab. Because heat energy naturally flows from areas of higher temperature to those of lower temperature, the GHE heating and cooling system is a highly efficient, renewable energy source that maintains a pleasant temperature range of 20-26°C throughout the year, with little need for supplementary heating or cooling.
Associate for the Building Science & technology Group at Meinhardt, Dr Mirek Piechowski says: “By tapping into the renewable energy stored in the ground, the GeoExchange technology offers the most energy efficient heat transfer mechanism for climate control system. The other significant feature of the GeoExchange technology is the fact that in the heating mode only up to 25 per cent of the heating energy is derived from fossil fuels, i.e. electricity, while the remaining 75 per cent is renewable energy. In contrast, in traditional gas heating systems 100 per cent of heat is derived from burning gas,” he explains.
A feasibility study conducted by the Meinhardt Group predicted the GHE system would save the school around $35,000 in energy bills, as well as a reduce CO2 emissions by 253 tonnes annually. Combined with other energy efficient measures, this system achieves energy savings of up to 75 per cent, compared to conventional buildings of the same size.
Tags: consumption, energy, innovation, Urban Design and Built Form
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Motivating sustainable energy consumption in the home: Research Paper
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on January 11th, 2010
Source: Experientia, from “Design for Sustainable Behaviour (part 2)”
Image: gilgongo vial flickr CC
Abstract: Technologies are just now being developed that encourage sustainable energy usage in the home. One approach is to give home residents feedback of their energy consumption, typically presented using a computer visualization. The expectation is that this feedback will motivate home residents to change their energy behaviors in positive ways. Yet little attention has been paid to what exactly motivates such behavioral change. This paper provides a brief overview of theories in psychology and social psychology on what does, and does not motivate sustainable energy action in the home.
“Motivating sustainable energy consumption in the home”, Helen Ai He and Saul Greenberg, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Calgary
Tags: behaviour change, consumption, enabling technologies, energy
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Searching for a Miracle: Report
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on December 7th, 2009
Source: PostCarbon Institute
In November, the Post Carbon Institute and the International Forum on Globalization released their important and challenging new report Searching for a Miracle. The report, authored by Post Carbon Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg and edited by Jerry Mander, explores the question of whether any combination of known energy sources can successfully supply society’s energy needs at least up to the year 2100?
The report explores some of the presently proposed energy transition scenarios, showing why, up to this time, most are overly optimistic, as they do not address all of the relevant limiting factors to the expansion of alternative energy sources. Finally, it shows why energy conservation (using less energy, and also less resource materials) combined with humane, gradual population decline must become primary strategies for achieving sustainability.
The report makes the case that it is necessary to prepare societies for dramatic shifts in consumption and lifestyle expectations. It will also be necessary to promote a new ethic of conservation throughout the industrial world. A sharp reversal of today’s globalization of commercial activity—inherently wasteful for its transport energy needs—must be anticipated and facilitated, and government leaders must encourage a rapid evolution toward economies based on localism especially for essential needs such as food and energy.
The study remarks that this is not necessarily a negative prospect, as some research shows that, once basic human needs are met, high material consumption levels do not correlate with high quality of life.
The emphasis by policy makers on growth as the central goal and measure of modern economies is no longer practical or viable, as growth will be limited by both energy shortages and by society’s inability to continue venting energy production and consumption wastes (principally, carbon dioxide) into the environment without catastrophic consequences. Standards for economic success must shift from gross metrics of economic activity, to more direct assessments of human well-being, equity, and the health of the natural world.
Read the full article.
Tags: behaviour change, economics, energy
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Small-scale wind farms
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on December 1st, 2009
Source: Environmental Research Web
Image via physicsworld
From “Fish inspire wind farm configuration”, Edwin Cartlidge
Conventional wind turbines work best when located as far as possible from the destructive vortices of neighbouring turbines. However, a pair of scientists in the US have worked out that the performance of other kinds of turbine actually improves when they are placed close to one another, concluding that wind farms could therefore be made much smaller than they are today. The familiar propeller-like turbine with a horizontal axis of rotation can convert 50% or more of the energy from the wind that it is exposed to. In a wind farm, however, the wake from one turbine will disturb the air reaching the blades of its neighbours meaning that turbines must be placed far apart.
A less familiar family of turbines have a vertical axis of rotation. Individually, these vertical-axis turbines are less efficient than the horizontal-axis devices because only part of the turbine can be pushed by the wind at any one time, and they have therefore proven far less popular. However, these turbines have a significant advantage over the horizontal-axis variety – their power output can be increased when they are placed very close to one another. Now, Robert Whittlesey and John Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology have worked out how best to arrange such closely spaced turbines by drawing on the work of aeronautical engineer Daniel Weihs, who showed in the 1970s how fish save on energy by swimming within schools. Such fish form a series of offset rows, and Weihs found that fish get carried forward by the vortices created by the swimming motion of their two closest companions in the row immediately in front of them. Whittlesey and Dabiri wondered whether the relative spacing of vortices produced by an individual fish might serve as a good template for the arrangement of vertical-axis turbines within a wind farm and set up a computer model to test this idea.
Read the full article by Edwin Cartlidge.
Tags: energy, innovation, wind
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Tweeting Energy Meters
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on July 31st, 2009
Source: Springwise
German utility company Yello Strom is clearly into accessible tech: it manages its meters directly via households’ broadband connections, and offers access to Google’s PowerMeter. Now, it’s keeping its customers informed by enabling meters to tweet about energy use. Each “Yello Sparzähler” smart meter (designed by IDEO) is allocated its own Twitter account, which is automatically updated with energy consumption data.
Tags: consumption, energy, new systems/services
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Low-Speed Urban Maglev Research Program – Lessons Learnt
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on July 1st, 2009
Source: Going Solar Transport Newsletter
Image: withvengeance86 via Flickr
In 1999, the US Federal Transit Administration initiated the Low-Speed Urban Magnetic Levitation (UML) Program to develop magnetic levitation technology that offers a cost effective, reliable, and environmentally sound transit option for urban mass transportation in the United States. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: enabling technologies, energy, Transport
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Building the Smart Grid
Posted in Models by Devin Maeztri on June 23rd, 2009
This article discusses about investment in technology and innovation in energy sector to promote renewable energy.
Original article published in The Economist.
“Even though the demands being placed on national electricity grids are changing rapidly, the grids themselves have changed very little since they were first developed more than a century ago. The first grids were built as one-way streets, consisting of power stations at one end supplying power when needed to customers at the other end. That approach worked well for many years, and helped drive the growth of industrial nations by making electricity ubiquitous, but it is now showing its age.”
To read more of the article visit The Economist.
Tags: energy, grid, renewable energy, sustainable
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Climate Change Activism in Connecticut High School
Posted in Models by Virginia on June 5th, 2009
Excerpt from the Department of Environmental Protection, Connecticut
Students from Amity High School in Woodbridge have shown what can be achieved with dedication, passion and commitment to an issue.
The Amity High School Global Warming Club has been awarded the 2009 Climate Change Leadership Award in their efforts to promote and educate the community on the effects of climate change. They’ve also succeeded in:
- signing up over 500 households and businesses for CTCleanEnergyOptions at many community events in all three towns.
- requesting the Orange Board of Selectmen to purchase clean energy.
- Earning solar photovoltaic systems under the CT Clean Energy Fund’s “Clean Energy Communities” program through clean energy sign-ups: a 3 kilowatt system for Amity Regional School District #5 (comprising Bethany, Orange and Woodbridge), 3 kilowatts for Beecher Road School (Woodbridge), 9 kilowatts for the Bethany Community School, 4 kilowatts for the Bethany Fire Headquarters, and 2 kilowatts for the old Bethany Fire House.
- A contest at the high school to see which household can lower their electric bill the most between November 2008 and March 2009.
- Letters to the CT General Assembly to support climate change legislation.
- Fund raising for local land trusts.
Tags: education, energy, green energy, leadership, renewable energy, sustainable schools
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Harvesting the wind – integrating existing energy structures with new
Posted in Models by fedwards on June 3rd, 2009
This article, Harvesting the wind, was originally published by Suzanne LaBarre on 13 May 209 on the Metropolis website. It demonstrates an innovative model to integrate existing powerlines with wind energy. An alternative version of distributed systems perhaps? The full article can be found here.
Harvesting the wind
From the window of a TGV hurtling through France, the countryside flattens to a smudge—electrical towers rise and recede in clusters, and tall, lanky wind turbines seem to whip off pirouettes like a young Moira Shearer. Most passengers turn their heads, nodding off on a neighbor or burying their noses in Le Monde, but for a triÂumvirate of young designers, the sight is a view of the future. The passing turbines and pylons augur a new way to harness renewable energy in a country that relies almost entirely on nuclear power. “When we’re riding on the train, we al-ways see pylons, and some turbines too,†NicÂola Delon says. “We say, ‘Both are here. Can’t we mix them together?’â€
Tags: design, energy, energy systems, innovation, integration, sustainable energy, wind
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An Urban Dream Farm for London?
Posted in Models by Devin Maeztri on May 14th, 2009
The first community project in the metropolis to recycle food wastes into energy and fertilizer by anaerobic digestion Sam Burcher.
The organic muesli producer who keeps making history.
Alex Smith has been made a London Leader of Sustainability for 2009 by the London Development Agency (LDA). This appointment by the Mayor of London’s office is a far cry from thirty years ago when Alex was a squatter and started his food company Alara with two £1 notes he found in the street. Alara now produces up to one hundred tonnes of organic muesli each week, some sixty percent of UK’s total muesli production.
Tags: community, energy, Food, London, sustainability, waste
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