After coaching a First Lego League team last year and attending a solar power expo or two I’ve had my curiosity about solar electric piqued. As of today I’ve actually signed a contract with Gen-Con, Inc. and expect to have a 2.4kW system on my roof within about a month!
I need to pull cat5 to the garage, but apparently should be able to suck the inverter’s stat’s off onto the web even.
Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Solar panels coming
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Guerrilla gardening
Monday, June 2nd, 2008Boingboing’s linked an LATimes article on the subject of Guerrilla Gardening. Individual property rights are always bumping up against the good of the collective society. There usually aren’t many people standing up for the latter and those that do aren’t usually empowered to make a change. There’s something very libertarianly socialist about this guerrilla gardening concept though and it seems like it’s generally a positive thing, besides maybe police hassles.
There are definitely some areas in my metro region (Portland), city (Tigard), neighborhood (Bull Mountain) and my neighbor’s yard (I’ll leave him be) which could use guerrilla gardening. I might just have to try to tackle one occasionally!
Just add google traffic
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008This says the US EPA is using google maps to show pollution but that it can’t show traffic caused pollution. Seems pretty obvious that you could infer it based on google maps’ traffic feature. But whta do I know.
Oh maybe not. The EPA’s using Google Earth. I’m sure somebody at google’s made some sort of Google Earth feed reader thing that can populate it with real-time live streaming data points off the web.
A trip to Free Geek
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Up until this weekend I’ve had a large rambling collection of computer hardware “that might be useful” but which wasn’t getting any meaningful use by me. I’d been planning to recycle/donate it somewhere somehow and finally got organised, backed up a few things, wiped my hard drives, filled up the Subaru (to the brim) and drove over to Free Geek.
I am seriously impressed by their operation! They’re way huge compared to what I expected, had lots of volunteers and a huge stream of people dropping off things. Their thrift store has gobs of reasonably priced recycled systems and accessories. And they’re all about linux (Ubuntu specifically) and OpenOffice to keep prices down for their target demographic.
I was a bit sad though to see the genuine Hercules monochrome ISA card and amber monochrome CRT sorted into the recycle pile instead of reuse. But then there probably aren’t that many ISA slot sporting motherboards in a chassis big enough to hold the card desired for use by some random nerd like me as a server console. A volunteer said their museum of old computer stuff has had to become picky as they get so much old crap that they’d run out of room.
But it feels good to know some of the stuff (5 computers, 4 monitors, 3 UPS’s, and a lot more) should find new homes and if not be recycled responsibly!
NW Solar
Monday, October 8th, 2007A couple weeks ago I went to the NW Solar Expo in Portland. I was really struck by how solar is a commercial reality today. The expo was all about how to get solar electric or water heating today. It still takes governmental assistance to make it financially reasonable, but that’s a smart investment in the future in a number of ways.
This weekend we were in Bend and they were having a tour of local homes that demonstrate solar and other green building options. Unfortunately we weren’t able to do the tour because we didn’t have time and it looks like we missed the similar local tours here last month.
This winter I’m going to try to spec out a solar electric system for my home usage, get quotes to figure out the up front price and estimate the cost in the end after all the incentives have rolled in. And presumably I’ll then need to figure out whether I can get one of the state’s energy investment loans to cover the up front investment. After a few years and all the incentives it doesn’t sound like it has to amount to an unreasonable cost, but there is a substantial up front cost before the incentives.
IEEE’s Spectrum magazine has an article on this topic. It highlights California’s push, but at the end mentions that Oregon has just started some major funding as well. For our state it really makes sense as investment in fostering local high-tech industry and energy independence, not to mention the environmental positives.
3000+ mpg is totally bogus
Thursday, June 22nd, 2006This extremely high gas mileage is interesting in as much as everybody in the US is complaining about gas prices but it seems completely bogus. They don’t appear to be doing anything meaningful beyond reducing speed, weight, friction, air drag. So sure they produce a high number, but it’s not like we’re learning anything new or there’s real innovation here that will make any real difference. Most consumers still tend to prefer larger, fast, strong looking cars and have bad driving habits, all of which run counter to fuel efficiency. That’s what needs changed and it’s going to take more pain in the wallet to do that.
Fuel cell rental car
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005Honda’s running a world first trial with a consumer renting a fuel cell car from them. Very cool. But with the press coverage and word that the car is a million dollar car, how long until this LA driver gets carjacked?
Make makers
Thursday, June 16th, 2005NPR affiliate WBUR Boston’s “The Connection” aired yesterday a lengthy interview with Phil Torrone and Dale Dougherty of Make and Rosalind Williams from MIT.
It’s interesting to hear that beyond encouraging people to get into DIY tinkering in the digital age, the creators are disturbed by consumption and the throw away culture. I hadn’t thought of that angle. They definitely provide a forum that will encourage some serious innovation and interesting advances if legislation and the producers (and the negative connotation that the public tends to hear in “hacking”) don’t manage to squash it.
If nothing else they’ve encouraged me to fiddle with some things I wouldn’t have otherwise.
The world in 2020
Friday, January 14th, 2005The CIA’s updated its period forecast (published every 5 years) on the world 15 years in the future. Their thoughts on the year 2020 are interesting. It’s a mixed bag. Some really interesting and positive things happening and some scary.
Reading about all the upheaval and change they expect it’s fairly amazing that they say they don’t expect major conflict (ie: world war), but cite the US’s opportunity to guide things for the better. I’ve worried since Sept. 11, 2001 that the country’s foreign policies could end up on a slippery slope dragging the world toward a broad war and Bush has continued to scare me.
Green power vs. “conventional”
Sunday, December 12th, 2004This article talking about how cleaner/renewable power has finally reached a price parity with conventional generating methods is timely. I just got my power bill and my local Portland General Electric has a couple options for buying greener power at roughly the same price per kWh as their standard mix. They even differentiate hydro and “low impact hydro” (presumable something other than a massive dam across a major river damaging sediments, water temperatures, fish migrations, &tc.?).
I also got my gas bill. Ooof. Bad news. I’m glad I finally have window coverings on the upstairs windows at least. Went to Home Depot and bought some insulation for the outbound hot water heater pipe. Also turned the central heat down a notch.
I bought my blinds online and am happy them, and while they were easier to put up than I expected, they were not shipped in a sturdy enough box and the quality of their simple white wood blinds is not that high (IMHO subpar paint coverage and cheap plastic pulls). They’ve got a helpful website though and are quick.
