I've mentioned before that I hoped some day to announce the success of my personal project here on this blog. This is not the day. However, there has been a major step forward in my progress.

The original patent application naming me as the inventor and my business partner as the co-inventor has been approved. Hopefully very soon, the world will truly have a cost effective and reliable renewable energy source easily available for their homes.

The SMART Turbine is designed to use wind for producing electricity at a cost per kWh that is lower than any other technology available today and boasts an installed return on investment of no more than 7 years in locations with an average of 12mph or higher annual winds. Making this even better is the 20 year life expectancy before needing to replace the only wear parts at a current cost less than $50, making long term annual ownership and maintenance about $0.40/yr. Yes, that is 40 cents per year after reaching the initial return on investment. Different environments can influence this cost and therefore there may be some variation.

If you want to learn more about the SMART Turbine, you can visit the site directly at www.smart-turbine.com AKA www.spinpower.org.

I just read a lengthy but well written article on earthquake preparedmess. As the focus of the article changed and stretched into related subject matter from current events in Japan, I found the following very interesting:

From the article...

Nuclear power is essentially an elaborate and unlikely way to boil water to turn turbines to create electricity. Its makers must mine, refine, and consolidate huge amounts of one of the deadliest materials on earth, uranium-235 (the less than 1 percent of naturally occurring uranium with 235 electrons; the leftover 99 percent, the less radioactive but nevertheless deadly U-238, becomes nuclear waste in the process). U-235 and the plutonium created from it are dangerous at every stage of the process. In addition, constructing a power plant requires a huge amount of carbon-spewing conventional energy, so there’s never been a lot of logic to building them to bridge our move to renewable energy.

The delusional premise behind nuclear energy is that we can create this material and then contain it for the duration of its dangerous phase. For plutonium, that’s 24,000 years, or about 15 times as long as something called civilization has existed. For uranium-235, that’s 700 million years, a time so vast it’s basically forever.

Fifty years into the nuclear age, we’ve had four major reactor accidents, along with a host of minor ones and leaks and ventings, and we still don’t know what to do with the nuclear waste that plants like the ones at Fukushima produce even when no accidents occur. This is the “spent fuel” that the U-235 quickly becomes. It’s still intensely radioactive and toxic; it’s only “spent” in the sense that it’s no longer useful for boiling water in reactors. It’s still useful for bombs, dirty or otherwise.

There are better ways to boil water.

Follow the related link below to read the entire article.

There are times when quality information is the best tool we have for fighting climate change. Today I received a referral to a website titled "The Homeowners Guide". Bethany, a middle school student discovered the site while doing some research.

The site is filled with information on saving energy, keeping your home safe, how to paint, home maintenance, etc... Keep in mind that proper maintenance means keeping your home efficiency as close to its optimum as possible. A more efficient home will have less environmental impact and in the long run usually saves money on utility bills.

The address for the website is:
http://www.homeloans.org

Thanks Bethany for pointing out a great resource!

- Brad

Here is the short version:

Tap with a filter that is changed regularly is the healthiest and almost as cheap as straight tap water. Straight tap water is next healthiest in most cases and definitely the cheapest. Last, costing 1,900 times as much for the same quantity and containing some of the same toxic chemicals with potential for a few more when not handled properly, is bottled water. Yes, bottled water is very hard on the environment and potentially contains the same toxins as tap water as well as a few that leach from the bottle itself.

Avoid bottled water. Invest in a re-usable container instead.

Follow the related link below to find out more.

LED lighting is becoming more common. I see it in the big box store that I frequent as well as hardware stores. However, there are a couple of things keeping me from changing all of my CFL's to LED.

Let's address the most obvious - cost. The new LED bulbs claim to last 25 times as long as a conventional bulb. The CFL's claim was 10 times as long as a conventional bulb. I already own the CFL's in my fixtures and they have years left to run. There is a second side to cost, the charge for the power the lamps consume and this is the catch. The problem with using watts of consumption to compare cost is this: The LED and CFL use nearly the same watts! The LED for a 60 watt equivalent uses 12 watts where the equivalent CFL uses 13 watts. 1 watt difference for the same amount of light.

What do you gain with the LED? You gain light quality, they produce light that is closer to natural light than the CFL's. However, we are comparing some pretty close numbers again.

My advise - If you already have CFL's, don't change them. Use them until they die and then replace with LED technology.

One more thing, not all LED lights are dimable. Just like CFL technology, you need to check the package if you want a dimable lamp. Both technologies rely on small circuit boards that ultimately control the lamps ability to dim.

Remember, the best way to save power is to turn off lights and other devices when they are not in use.

LED is definitely the next step, but we don't need to run out and change our existing CFL's.