Shameless Plug for BeUtilityFree

Take the idea of energy sustainability and apply it to what are probably your largest energy uses: your home and car. That’s the approach of BeUtilityFree. Take a look at what we do at www.beutilityfree.com. (I’m the webmaster as well as a renewable energy installer, so I’d love to hear feedback on what you think of the site at brett_s AT BeUtilityFree.com.)

The grand plan is to start out by reducing the amount of energy you use through replacing your current fixtures and appliances with more efficient ones, or designing your new home with efficiency built right in. Then you can buy a much more affordable renewable energy system that will cover your modest needs.

Once you own your means of production, you start getting paid back through avoiding the ever-rising cost of fuel, selling renewable energy credits for your production, taking tax breaks and utility incentives and maybe even selling excess energy.

We sell energy-efficient appliances and lighting and renewable energy systems like solar electric, solar hot water, wind power, hydrogen cogeneration and ethanol stills. We’ll design renewable energy systems, install them or just sell the components to those who have the skills to set them up themselves.

Our special, can’t-find-them-anywhere-else items are Nickel-Iron batteries, the Superior Solar Storage Tank and our 3″ and 4″ column Ethanol Stills.

We are hoping to unveil a few exciting things in the near future. Among them are:

• A turn-key ethanol plant. Just put feedstock, water, enzymes and yeast in one end and watch the fuel pour out the other. We’re currently testing enzymes for cellulosic production so that making ethanol can be as inexpensive and sustainable as possible.
• A Purchase Power Agreement plan that lets anyone get solar energy from their rooftop without any up-front investment. We’d retain ownership of the solar system and sell you the energy at a rate lower than the utility company’s.

If we can get everyone to pump renewable energy into the grid or unplug and make their own energy sustainably, we’ll have taken a huge step toward getting this climate problem licked. And if everyone owns the source of their energy, we can all get out from under the thumb of the utility company and the US Oil War Machine and get back to making a poistive difference in the world.

Brett

I just read in the current issue of Discover magazine that there are two new capacitor gadgets out on the market. A bike light and a cordless screw driver. I am REALLY excited about the screwdriver. It’s made by Coleman, and has a recharge time of 90 seconds. Seriously, that is unbelievable. I have spent so much time waiting for hand drill batteries to recharge that it makes me edgy just writing about it. 90 seconds! Instead of a battery this driver has an ultracapacitor inside which, like all capacitors, has the ability to take a charge very quickly. You can learn more about it at flashcelldriver.com

Charges in 90 seconds! That’s right… 90 SECONDS!!!

The bike light is pretty cool too. It has a capacitor in it, and gets its charge from a magnet attached to the wheel of your bike. Every time the magnet goes by it allows the light to generate a little electricity. There are two models, one that flashes, and one that stays on continuously while you ride, and for a short time when you stop. Learn more at reelight.com

I should point out that I have not seen either of these devices in person.  I am relying on Discover magazine and the manufacturer’s websites, but even so, I’m pretty impressed.  Capacitors are still not useful for larger, more power-intensive machines like hybrid cars, but researchers are working on it.

This is a weird time for tech, and isn’t the tiny stirling engine cute? The article is here.

My favorite (and the priciest–imagine that) is the Tango T600, looking like a laterally-compressed ocean fish, leaving a plume of tire smoke behind it as it peels out on a race track!

If better batteries come out, as has been promised by Chevy for its Volt electric/biodiesel/E-85/gasoline hybrid, I can only see the price and performance of these cars getting better.  As gas prices go up, the demand should rise and as the renewable percentage of our electricity production rises, I can see these goofy-looking little honeys getting more attractive and solving more of our climate problems.

Get ready to live in the future, folks!

Last year I had the privilege of attending the US Green Building Council’s 2006 Greenbuild Conference and seeing, among other wonders, Shaw Industries’ amazing Ecoworx carpet.

Just like any other carpet, you lay it down and use it for years (it’s available in tiles so you can replace the most-used portions without re-carpeting the whole house), but when you need to replace it you simply pull it up, dial the toll-free number printed on the back and arrange for it to be picked up.

This is the cool part and I got to see a demonstration of it given by a Shaw lab techie. They dissolve the old carpet in an organic solvent which isn’t consumed by the process or flushed down the drain or evaporated off into the atmosphere. The resulting plasticy goo is then allowed to reharden, chopped up and pulled back out into fibers to reweave into new carpet.

There is no loss (except from wear at the home) of either the carpet material or the solvent and the process can be repeated infinitely. The techie I talked to said she had performed the transformation on one sample 27 times in a row with no hitches!

Better yet, Shaw worked to make this carpet with William McDonough (one of my heroes), who made sure that the ingredients used would not off-gas and would contain no substances that would be toxic alone or combined.

For more on the Cradle-To-Cradle concept, look here. And for a great video of a lecture William McDonough gave on Cradle-To-Cradle design, look at this.

Reware has a trio of nice-looking bags that have thin-film solar panels built right into them. I have not seen the product with my own eyes, or tested it in any way, but they look really cool. Check it out for yourself:

Reware solar bags

Check out the Power Pockets while you’re there, and they have some nice t-shirts as well.

This is so cool! Here’s a little info on the technology, and here’s some info on the products.