Kreative Kubits

Some things to consider regarding the usage of solar kits for the home include:

• Decrease in your energy bills – some consumers report op to a 50% decrease in their energy bills when using solar for the home to supplement their energy consumption.

• If you install a solar power kit, you will have at least some power in case of a power grid failure. Solar kits are not normally suited to fully power conventional homes: the average home consumes more energy a day that a routing solar panel set-up can provide; however some power harnessed from solar energy is preferable to none. If a home is built optimally to utilize solar energy, then the home can be better suited to using solar panels. However, after market solar kits are not optimized in the manner of  home systems. These kits offer a great supplemental source of power, but not a primary source of power.

• Most home solar kits do not include the array wiring between the modules and battery bank. These and other necessities will need to be purchased separately.

• You get what you pay for. The wattage that you can harness generally increases with the amount you spend on your solar items.  More expensive models have more solar panels. It is possible to use with the rising cost of energy prices, solar kits for the home have become increasingly popular. These kits provide the essentials needed for setting up your home to receive supplemental power from the sun. These relatively inexpensive kits can save you significant amounts of money on your energy bill. A solar home kit is a great investment to supply your home with supplemental power.

Chris Wright is the webmaster of Solar Kits at http://www.solar-kits.net and is a leading authority on saving money with alternative energy.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_J_Wright

Have you ever been driving in rush hour and wished you could just zone out and read a book during your trip instead of stressing about the traffic?  Well, the EU is testing a way to make that possible while cutting fuel consumption at the same time.  The idea is that eight vehicles would travel as one "train," linked by wireless sensors.  It's believed that the system, called Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE), could cut fuel use by 20 percent for cars traveling in the trains.

Each road train would be controlled by a lead vehicle driven by a professional driver.  All other drivers in the train would be passengers able to take their hands off the wheel and enjoy the ride.  Sensors would collect and send information to the lead vehicle about what was happening around each of the cars.  Cars, buses and trucks would all be able to join a train and could leave at any time.

The SARTRE project will be conducted for three years on test tracks in the UK, Spain and Sweden and eventually on public roads in Spain.  Some specifics will have to be sorted out like how exactly vehicles will join and leave the trains, how the trains will signal to other cars that they're traveling as one and how to ensure a safe organization of vehicles (e.g. not allowing cars to be sandwiched by large trucks).

Ultimately researchers see the road trains being a paid service for drivers.

via BBC

As a new mom and an ecogeek, I know that choosing a diapering method is a huge issue.  Disposable diapers clog landfills for hundreds of years.  There are alternatives to disposables, of course, but they have their drawbacks.  Cloth diapers require extra water and electricity for laundering and the couple of biodegradable options don't quite perform as well and are hard to find at local supermarkets.  This leads to an overwhelming majority of parents choosing disposables and approximately 27.4 billion diapers making their way to American landfills every year.

Enter one of the more exciting stories I've come across in a while.  Companies Versus Energy and Knowaste are partnering up to build a diaper recycling plant in the UK.  Not only will the diapers collected stay out of landfills, but the plant will actually run on the organic matter contained in them.

The diapers will be shredded, washed, sanitized and separated into organic material and reusable paper pulp and plastic that may find new life as roof tiles, shoe insoles, wallpaper, industrial thickeners or many other potential uses.  The water used in the process will be treated and reused.

The plant will open in May 2010 in Birmingham and is the first of five planned for the UK.  The diapers will be collected from nurseries, nursing homes and hospitals.  My fingers are crossed that the U.S. will follow soon.

via Triple Pundit

1. Spring clean the cleaning products. The number one rule of thumb, doctors and environmental safety experts say, is read the ingredient list carefully on anything you’re going to be spraying in the air or wiping on touchable surfaces. Air fresheners are among the biggest culprits; many contain either Isopar, which is deodorized kerosene, or paradichlorobenzene, both of which are carcinogenic and toxic to the lungs, liver, and kidneys. Among cleansers, oxygen bleach cleansers are particularly dangerous; you also want to watch out for products containing chlorine bleach and ammonia. Both of these aren’t good to breathe. The worst practice, experts say? Spraying chlorine bleach in the shower or bathroom where the steam makes you more likely to breathe it. There are lots of good “green” cleaning products on the market now, so when you shop, replace your old standbys with these. Your lungs and cells will thank you.

2. Practice plastic safety. Experts say that the truth about microwaving plastic wrap or microwaving food in plastic containers isn’t so clear. Some plastics contain Di-ethylhexyladipate (DEHA), which is added to make plastic more pliable. Experts still consider DEHA a possible carcinogen. Heating plastic does make it more likely that any chemicals contained in it will be released into food. So use only containers specifically labeled microwave-safe; glass is safest of all, of course.

3. Test for radon and remove it. An odorless, radioactive gas that’s produced by the natural decay of uranium, radon is more common than you might think. After smoking, it’s the leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The only way to find out if there’s radon in your home is to test for it. Call the National Safety Council’s National Radon Hotline (800)767-7236, and they’ll send you a low-cost test kit; test kits also available at hardware stores.

4. Clean out the kitchen cupboards. The scientific community has argued back and forth over whether non-stick pans (aka Teflon) pose a cancer risk. Non-stick Teflon coating is made from perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a chemical known to cause cancer, but most studies show that not enough PFOA gets into the human body from pans to pose a risk. Still, the EPA has called on manufacturers to phase out PFOA, and some experts say heating the pans on high heat or using them once they’re scratched is not a good idea. The takeaway: Don’t use non-stick pans to cook foods over 300 degrees, and toss them when the coating gets scratched.

5. Weed out dangerous pesticides and weed killers. Several common pesticides have been linked with health conditions, including cancer and Parkinson’s. For example, chemicals used in household pesticides like Raid and flea bombs were detected at high levels in the urine of children with leukemia; another study linked herbicides with a higher incidence of childhood brain cancer. Methyl bromide, a crop fumigant, has been linked with prostate cancer, while atrazine, used on corn and other crops, particularly in the Midwest, has been linked to cancer and birth defects. One recent study found people diagnosed with Parkinson’s are more than two times more likely to report pesticide exposure than people not diagnosed with the disease. Try to grow your garden as organically as possible, and pull weeds by hand. If you have a pest problem in the house, do your best to control it without airborne sprays. If you have to spray or bomb, send everyone away and air the house out for a day before coming back in.

For those of you who don’t already know I have a certain facination with treehouses. This treehouse is the absolute coolest treehouse I’ve ever seen in my life.

http://www.paralleldesign.com/mckinney/kevin-01.htm

It's great to see some of the large wind farm projects that were just ideas a couple of years ago become reality. First Wind's Milford Wind Corridor project has just seen the completion of its first phase - 203.5 MW in Millard and Beaver Counties in Utah, the largest renewable energy facility in the state.

The wind farm consists of 97 turbines and will be able power 45,000 homes.  Southern California Public Power Authority is purchasing all of the electricity generated over the next 20 years on behalf of the cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena and Burbank.

Construction on the wind farm began almost exactly a year ago.  Over the next few years, the wind corridor will expand to include four more phases totaling over 1 GW of wind energy capacity.

via Press Release

Consumer and shipping packaging can be incredibly wasteful.  Some companies are downsizing their packaging, but many products sitll come wrapped and boxed in ridiculous amounts of plastic, paper, cardboard - you name it.  One designer has come up with a way to get rid of the waste by wrapping objects in bacteria, creating a biodegradable, custom-fitting shell.  Both gross and exciting!

Mareike Frensmeier just won third place in the Cargo Packs 2020 challenge for his bacteria wrap idea called Bacs.  The packaging is made by covering an object with a culture of the bacterium acetobacter xylinum, then starting a sugar feeding frenzy.  This creates a "fibrous nano-scaled cellulose network" that encases the object and keeps it safe along its journey.

The Bacs system can be manipulated to offer damp, gel-like packaging for food, dry, paper-like packaging or freeze-dried, foam-like packaging for the most fragile objects.  Now, I'm not sure bacteria wrap will ever take off but the idea of a world free of packing peanuts sure is a nice one.

via Treehugger

Small-scale wind turbines can't produce the large amounts of power that their giant brothers can, but there's still room for them in the renewable energy landscape.  As an example, cell phone company Core Communications will begin using small vertical-axis wind turbines to power their cell phone towers.

The company will use turbines from Helix Wind that can generate electricity in winds as slow as 10 mph.  The turbines will power the towers and any extra electricity will be sold to the grid, giving Core Communications a new source of revenue as well.

The turbines will be installed on a trial basis on cell phone towers in Southern California for three months starting in early 2010.  If they perform well enough, additional turbines could be rolled out permanently.

via CNET