BrightBuilt on TreeHugger!

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/bright-built-barn.php


BrightBuilt Barn has been Treehugged!

Funny end line: "If it isn't the greenest project we have presented, it is certainly the best marketed, with a website, a wiki, a blog and an extensive press kit. We will check back when the interior is finished."

Click on the link to view the full article.

file:///Users/pka2/Desktop/Bright%20Built%20Barn%20is%20Net-Zero%20Energy%20:%20TreeHugger.webarchive

We Get Treehugged!

Today BrightBuilt Barn received a nice review at Treehugger, a leading eco-tech and sustainable lifestyle blog.

Here's the link:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/bright-built-barn.php

Great BrightBuilt article in the paper!

The BrightBuilt Barn was featured on the cover of the Portland Press Herald Business section today. Maine USGBC has also linked to it on their front page.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=209134&ac=PHbiz

Progress continues on the Barn. Naomi Beal, our photographer, grabbed some great shots last week of Alan Gibson's progress. The plumber and electrician are in there now, integrating their work with the renewable energy systems, which were started by Revision Energy a few weeks ago. The irony is that in the next one(s), all of this work will be done in Bensonwood's factory, and brought in completed.

On site, Alan, Keith and I added a cool new feature: some of the baseboards will be attached on magnetic latches for easy access. This is primarily for show-and-tell. And no, we haven't run this by the code guys...yet.

Balloon Power

There are lots of new ideas circulating about how to reduce the cost of alternative energy. In our previous  post, we linked to sites explaining how inexpensive kites can be harnessed to produce wind power cheaply.

In today's story, we learn about how balloons can decrease the cost of solar energy. The balloons are cleverly made with a reflective back surface and a transparent front. They act as concentrators of the sun's rays, and focus their high-energy beams on a photovoltaic (PV) solar cell. This allows a small PV panel to produce as much electrical power as a much larger one. Since the balloons are light and cheap, and can be held in place with light and cheap wires rather than the heavy and expensive steel frames required by metal concentrators, the total cost of solar energy production is much reduced.

The link is here:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/cool_earth_gets.php

Go Fly a Kite

Dutch researchers have demonstrated a prototype wind energy generator that uses kites, rather than wind turbines. The kites can ascend to heights a half mile or more above the ground, where the winds are much stronger and more reliable than those that drive the near-earth wind turbines.

Scientists from Delft University in the Netherlands have developed a 10 square meter kite (ca. 100 square feet), that in tests produced 10 kilowatts of electrical power when tethered to a generator - enough to serve 10 homes. They say that the idea can be easily scaled to produce megawatts of electricity at prices comparable to coal fired electrical generators - far cheaper than wind turbines.

Last year Google invested $10 million in an American company with a similar idea, called Makani.

The link to the article in the Guardian is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/03/renewableenergy.energy

A link to the description of the project on the website of the Delft University of Technology is here:

http://www.lr.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=8d16d19a-e942-45aa-9b52-48deb9312e92&lang=en

And a link to an article on a similar scheme from Italy, from Wired News, is here:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sequoiaonline.com/blogs/img/kitegenerator_definitivo_caption.jpg&imgrefurl=http://kitestudio.blogspot.com/2006/11/generating-power-from-kites.html&h=4000&w=5315&sz=2149&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=8KlIIzP2lxYdaM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkite%2Bwind%2Bgenerator%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

MIT Scientists Discover Cheaper Way to Produce Hydrogen from Solar Energy

In the July 31 issue of the premiere scientific journal Science, a team of MIT scientists reveal a new method of producing hydrogen from electricity. This new method uses cobalt and phosphorus, both being abundant and widely available minerals, to dramatically lower the energy required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The proposed application of this technology is to store energy from solar electric panels for use during the hours when the sun isn't shining. The scientists suggest that this will make it feasible for each household to produce its own energy, with no need for the present system of transmission lines from central power generators. The household will use solar energy directly during the day, and use the stored hydrogen energy at night, in a fuel cell or other hydrogen powered energy generator.

The scientists predict that the technology could be in widespread use within 10 years.

A link to the MIT News Office release is here:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html