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

The problem is it’s not too efficient to split water into the stuff (and oxygen of course). The Department of Energy’s goal for efficiency by 2010 is 10%. Now comes along QuantumSphere Inc. They have figured out a way that with nano-particles (ones they developed) they can increase the surface area of the anodes used in conversion and they’ve got it working at a 85% efficiency. Keep in mind, it’s is working, with a theoretical goal of 96%.

Kevin Maloney, president, chief executive officer and co-founder of QuantumSphere says “Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car.” …. Oooo, Detroit will love this.

Now is this a pipe dream? No. Things are coming out very soon. They’ve got a battery using these particles that will increase alkaline cells power by 320% (more power in ratio to nasty chemicals) that will ship in the 2nd half of this year!. They have and are doing lots of cool things here, read this article to get the rest of the scoop on things like hyper efficient Metal Hydride batteries.

One last thing to get excited about. Their goal was to make a thimbul full of these nano particles. But they are way ahead of schedule. They now have a plant that can make TONS of the stuff!

Now put this at an existing Coal Fired power plant, and in tests it’s trapping up to 90% of the CO2, and producing hydrogen using the waste heat of the plant. Better yet, you end up with products you can sell to pay for this (so it’s a profit venture) Super pure sodium bicarbonate and Hydrogen. As a bonus, it also removes most of the heavy metals from the plant emissions. The company is called Skyonic (an Austin based company), and they hope build a full sized plant to do just this in 2009. The process is not perfect, and not done, but heck, this is a direction I’ve not seen anyone go in before.

Now if they just had a publicly traded stock …

So energy is pouring down on us in buckets, the problem is we have no good way to catch it. Batteries are not efficient enough, they loose energy over time. We need a good portable light weight and flow-able energy storage device. Something that does not lose energy over distance like power lines do due to resistance in the lines.

Over the years, a lot of talk has been given to using hydrogen for this. It burns clean (It’s by product for burning is water, and it has the added effect of producing clean water, so it’s byproduct is drinkable water). In short no green house gases.

Problem: It takes a lot of energy to get hydrogen produced. It’s so inefficient, it’s just not worth it so far. So here comes the clever folks at Penn State U and their biological approach to producing hydrogen. [Read More]

Normal electrolysis, a huge jolt of power is used to split hydrogen and oxygen apart. In this technique they use waste water, some vinegar or something else like that, a few special microbes and a jolt of electricity.

The efficacy: They’ve gotten between 68 and 91% depending on the material’s used.

Yes we can power our cars with it, and if the Guys at United Nuclear can get around the new “terrorism laws” that limit the use of some chemicals, they can store Hydrogen in a safe solid form and run your car off it. I’d love to see their Hydrogen hybrid kits become available.

A few of the finer details are a little off, but all in all the shows have been great. It’s really cool to see what the designers are thinking about, and what is on the way. Perhaps the most interesting thing for me in this episode on fuel is that a lot of the future is already available now. Of course they showed prototype cars that can do some amazing things, but really the near future of fueling our vehicles is not so much about bringing in new technology, as it’s about getting more people on-board with the advances that are already commercially available like ethanol, biodiesel and hybrids.

One of the great things about cable is that you get more than one chance to see a good show. If you missed any of Future Car, check out the schedule for your second chance.

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Gotta pay the bills:

The exquisite combination of exterior paint colors is used by the professional exterior designers to give a unique look to the fence gate. There is a need of fine-quality material for the establishment of driveways in the patio or garage.

Since the house is a prototype it was CRAZY expensive to build, but apparently any future homes like it will be much cheaper since they have now figured it all out.

Read the full story here.

Read the back story here.

Check out the first solar/hydrogen house in the US… if they ever let the guy actually turn it on.

Thanks to hydroguy for the tip on this story.

There is definitely some promise there, but the hydrogen folks have some hurdles to get over first. One of the biggest ones is where the hydrogen will come from. Up to this point everything I have read and heard pushes that problem off to be solved magically by technology in the future. It doens’t do us any good if we are using fossil fuels to make a fuel that is supposed to free us of the chains of fossil fuels.

My buddy Greg from www.yoyoguy.com turned me on to a site that actually deals with the problems as well as the benefits of hydrogen. They are the first to admit that the technology isn’t quite ready yet, but they are also the first I have seen (in my very limited research) who don’t talk about hydrogen in such glorious terms as to make it unbelievable. Check it out for yourself here. They are even realistic about hydrogen generation and propose that you do it yourself with solar. I have to say, it would be awfully nice to not have to pay someone else for your fuel. But then again, I’m still crossing my fingers and waiting for my solar car. With some luck, some help, and some solar panels, I’m hoping to make my Prius get closer to that goal.