THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for February, 2009

If you are interested in green architecture then please spend a moment welcoming GreenPods on to the market. These are wonderful, small, highly eco-smart dwellings.

GreenPod Developmentis based in Washington and they seek to design and construct affordable, sustainable, modular homes.  At right you see one of their “SoloPods”, but the also have other designs that are equally compelling. Below you see the model called the “Floating Pod.”

The Pod designs range from 300 to 800 square feet.  But if you need additional square footage, the Pods can be joined or stacked. Pod designer Ann Raab uses movable walls, multi-use furnishings, lighting, and windows to visually enlarge the Pod’s living spaces.

The Pods boast many environmentally-savvy features.  All Pods utilize passive-solar design principles to cut energy use.  Every Pod features low air infiltration design,energy-efficient windows, energy saving appliances, low-flow plumbing and LED lighting.  They also make extensive use of daylighting.

The uber-green can go beyond these elements and opt for such additions as greywater recycling, rain water storage, roof gardens or green roofs. 

Currently GreenPods is working on projects in Washington and California, and they can also service Oregon. Founder Ann Raab told me that they hope to be able to serve more parts of the country next year.  I also asked her about costs and she said that depending on the size and features one selects for the their Pod, the cost would range between $150-$250 per square foot. 

In case you are in Washington, you can stop by the GreenPod showroom. It’s at Artisans on Taylor, which is located at 236 Taylor Street, Port Townsend, WA, 98368 (across from the Rose Theater).

Dubai has plans to build the world’s first rotating building with independently moving floors. What’s more, plans call for it to be completely energy independent. The self-powered Dynamic Tower will have revolving floors, with each one powered by wind turbines located in between the floor. This will lead to the building looking radically different every time you look at it (sort of like a constantly evolving Dali architecture).

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Written by Sean Sullivan, courtesy of Sustainablog.org

Cut out cut flowers this Valentine’s Day, and you’ll do you part in cutting out carbon.

The cut flower industry is among those that raise the ire of the thoughtful environmentalist. Nearly three of every four cut flowers sold in the US are imported, and a large chunk of those come from South America. Colombia and Ecuador are large growers and exporters of roses, and flowers can be flown in from as far as Europe.

Following those flowers leads one to the unhappy knowledge of all that’s involved in their life cycle, from seed to vase. It’s symbolic of our throw away society that many don’t consider the tremendous waste that’s part and parcel of bringing those flowers to market.

Because cut flowers are especially perishable, they must be flown in over long distances to avoid spoilage. That’s quite a carbon footprint for a product that under best conditions will last a week or so.

The US government has some say in what pesticides can be sprayed on food crops. Not so with flowers, as they’re not a particularly popular food product. One can also safely assume that spraying habits and controls concerning chemical pesticides and fertilizers are somewhat less stringent in developing countries.

The health of the environment in these growing areas often takes a back seat to the potential profits gleaned from flower sales, with workers and waterways assuming the brunt effects of pesticide and fertilizer spraying.

Yet as always, the choice isn’t whether to give or not to give, to do harm or do without. Rather, it’s the diligence required to discover and decide how we can satisfy wants and needs in a way that won’t mean murder on our ecosystem.

If you have an allergic aversion to wasting dirty fuels and using harmful chemicals, adopt an idea listed below to give Valentine’s Day flowers that show you’ve a crush on the planet as well.

The greenhouse is a centuries-old method of growing in colder or adverse climates, and there’s likely one near you. Doesn’t get more local than that.

Need further selling? Giving live and local is also a potential source of brownie points, Romeo(a). Tell him or her that, like your relationship, you wanted the flowers you give to last and grow.

Note also that you are not adopting a dog that will pee on your rug and beg to be walked at dawn. Just plop your live and locals near a window and add water every few days. They’ll clean and sweeten your air supply, and excrete only useful oxygen.

Directing your hard earned dollars toward more eco responsible flowers is a powerful statement you can make for the environment, as you’re speaking the universal language of profit. As long as flowers flown from faraway foreign lands are profitable, the practice will continue.

There will surely come a time in the near future when the growing scarcity of oil drives fuel prices so high as to make flower flights prohibitive, but that time is not now. So it falls to us to speak with our wallets on behalf of the planet.

Yet don’t stop there. Communicate with your voice as well as your greenbacks. Ask your local florist (the owner or manager) before you buy for your Valentine whether they sell flowers still among the living. This can be an interesting and informative exercise.

Live flowers growing in soil may in fact turn out to be an outlandish and eccentric concept to those who sell flowers for a living. Kindly inform them that the natural tendency and desire of flowers is, in fact, to live and grow, and that you wished they had live and locally grown flowers to sell.

Politely inform them that your search for live flowers must therefore take you elsewhere. Few things motivate a business person like the idea of needlessly lost sales. Our desire here is not to put a flower shop out of business, but to motivate its operator to offer a more sustainable alternative.

One wishes concern for the environment was equally as compelling as profit, but alas. Yet the savvy environmentalist uses all available implements within one’s garden tool bag. Happy V-Day

Photo Credit (Flowers) http://flickr.com/photos/indy138/2667297356/

Electronics companies that produce quality products and can claim energy-efficiency have a serious advantage these days, and VIA Technologies knows it. Yesterday, the company announced the release of the NSR7800 2U rackmount server. The network storage device is powered by a 1.5GHz C7 processor, and supports up to a gigabyte of DDR2 system memory. VIA’s server also contains eight 3.5? S-ATA II hard drive bays as well as dual-gigabit LAN. So where does the power efficiency come in?

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In what is purported to be the world’s largest solar deal, Southern California Edison and BrightSource Energy signed a series of contracts yesterday to give California 1,300 MW of solar energy— enough power for 845,000 homes. The project will produce 3.7 billion KWH of power and avoid over two million tons of CO2 emissions each year.

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