http://locavolt.com/energy Do It Yourself Energy Independence Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:07:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Straight out of Portland, Oregon, comes a bold, can-do entrepreneurial, science and engineering based attitude straight out of the 1950s, recently almost completely lost to the American bipartisan (albeit, mostly Republican anti-science) innovation squashers: via NYT: There are questions about whether the efficiency efforts will work as designed. “Most ... http://locavolt.com/energy/solar-heating-cooling/110/vertical-farming-get-corporate-boost A recent move by an Australia based company EnviroMission to build a set of solar updraft power generating towers ranging over hundreds of acres in La Paz County, Arizona raises questions about adding in more superheating generator solutions into the energy equation. While a couple of towers, which require converting ... http://locavolt.com/energy/power-generation/solar-updraft-towers/105/solar-updraft-towers-bad-idea A post at the New York Review of Books [link] on the photographs by Olaf Otto Becker gives a breath of fresh perspective, outside the numbers and political/economic arguments dominating the current Copenhagen talks... just the pictures and simple observations of change. From the post: Lining its banks were millions ... http://locavolt.com/energy/environment/103/melting-greenland-glaciers-olaf-becker-photos The Geysers program of deep rock drilling and fracturing for access to geothermal heat sources took a hit today when AltaRock let the federal government know they would no longer be pursuing the california Geysers project: In fact, AltaRock immediately ran into snags with its drilling, repeatedly snapping off bits ... http://locavolt.com/energy/power-generation/geothermal/99/altarock-geyser-california-geothermal-drilling-stopped-basel Its being reported that Building Integrated Solar Photovoltaics is getting a push forward with Dow Chem putting out a line of solar rooftop shingles starting in 2010: Dow Chemical said on Monday it would begin selling a new rooftop shingle next year that converts sunlight into electricity -- and could generate ... http://locavolt.com/energy/power-generation/solar-photovoltaic-pv/suburban-pv-solar-systems/97/solar-rooftop-shingles-dow A recent report from the NY Times on renewable energy and its over-reliance on large volumes of water has highlighted another major stumbling block for widespread adoption of new, green power generation technologies: Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many ... http://locavolt.com/energy/power-generation/94/renewable-technology-water-use-demand-table A new study on atmospheric methane causes and increases over the last twenty years is due out in this Septembers American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters. The study looks specifically at the causes driving atmospheric methane increases, which grew in 2007 and 2008 after a ten-year static, near zero growth ... http://locavolt.com/energy/environment/92/arctic-warming-methane-increase-study From around the web: Western Wind secures 24 year right of way extension for Mesa Wind Farm and the right to expand from 30MW to at least 50MW [link] Plum Creek has passed another round of regulatory approval for a round of Luxury Resorts in Moosehead, Maine [MPBN] Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice ... http://locavolt.com/energy/land-use/90/land-use-digest-9212009-wind-luxury-resorts-solar-farms-biofuel-production Distributed network effect: similar to home size fuel cells but utilizing natural gas instead, two German companies, an energy group Lichtblick, and Volkswagon, the auto manufacturers, are proposing they team up to build small single home sized gas generators that produce heat, hot water, and electricity: The Hamburg-based renewable energy group ... http://locavolt.com/energy/power-generation/distributed-network/88/swarm-power-schwarmstrom First Solar, an American solar company based in Tempe, Arizona, has signed an agreement with Chinese officials to build a 2,000-megawatt photovoltaic system, or a scale of electricity for 3 million chinese homes: Chinese government officials signed an agreement on Tuesday with First Solar, an American solar developer, for a 2,000-megawatt ... http://locavolt.com/energy/energy-digest-news/83/first-solar-china-2k-megawatt-solar