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Hannah just finished the seventh grade and her favorite subject was science. This year, her class did a lot of hands on science experiments about energy conservation, composting and gardening. Hannah has taken a lot of what she's learned in class and has implemented it in her home.

During Hannahs' research, she found my website and blog and was kind enough to thank me for the resource and suggest an additional link for keeping your heating and cooling under control. I have added the link as it is good information. If you want to see it, follow the related link below.

So again, thank you Hannah! Keep up the good work. -:)

Sincerely,

Brad

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Wow, my new position makes it very difficult to make time for this blog. It's nice to see that people are still visiting it. :)

The SMART-Turbine - a home or commercial use electricity generating wind turbine - rated to a peak of 1750 watts has entered pre-production. This machine uses Vertical Axis Wind Turbine properties and combines modern materials and proprietary circuitry to maximize production of electricity in any environment. The machine can be wheeled into place by one person with a dolly, positioned, guy wired, (staked like a tent to the ground) and plugged in to any available outlet using a weather resistant extension cord. This is a "Plug and Play" power generating device designed for real people as well as commercial use. Commercial applications would simply daisy chain the machines since they can stand right next to each other and weigh less than 100 pounds.

The chart above has over 65 million data points recorded every three seconds for 16 days. Green represents the SMART-Turbine and Blue is the nearest cost relevant competitor. During this low wind time period, the SMART-Turbine still produced useful energy most of the time, while the competitor never reached its minimum threshold to start producing. The SMART-Turbine power output increases at a steeper rate than the competitor, meaning - not only does it start sooner but it produces more power than the competition in every wind speed. You can click the image to open it full size in a new window.

The bottom line, SMART-Turbine is designed to make electricity all the time at a meaningful level in order to have a real impact on your electric bill rather than waiting for perfect conditions to happen for a few moments every month as is currently typical.

To learn even more, feel free to visit the website by following the related link below:

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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.
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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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1. Maintaining a constant temperature

Cause: A persistent myth suggests that you can save energy by leaving the house at a set temperature.

Effect: You could miss out on significant potential energy savings by not using a programmable thermostat and adjusting the temperature overnight and during the workday.

Though the impacts of adjusting the thermostat vary based on your climate and other factors, studies show that knocking the temperature down by 10 degrees for eight hours per day can cut heating bills by 5 to 15 percent.

Sure, the furnace will cycle on for a longer period to return to the more comfortable temperature, but it will be far outweighed by hours of savings when it didn't have to work as hard.

2. Cranking up the temperature to warm up the house

This is a myth because the heating unit only has one temperature, it uses time to cycle the overall temperature up to your setting. If your thermostat is in a poor location, too close to a heat source then you have a different problem.

3. Closing off vents in unused rooms

Experts recommend never shutting off more than 10 percent of vents. Sealing your ducts is a more efficient way to save energy, preventing loss in the walls, attic and under the house.

4. Using the fireplace

The problem here is a traditional fireplace. In the traditional arrangement, you have an open fire that vents up the chimney. Because heat rises and fire needs oxygen to burn, the effect is to pull air into the house through any leaking window, crack or vent to feed the fire as the heat is blasted up the flu and out into the outside air.

To read the rest of the list, follow the related link below.

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There are really two stories here. First, from my headline is the ability to print a car. Note, only the body is printed. You may already know that 3D printing is becoming common place. Currently you can get your hands on one that uses ABS, Syrup, and other materials as the medium. One of the more advanced units I read about recently uses two substances, one of them that will dissolve easily in water so that the finished item can be more complex than the printer would be able to create without temporary supports as part of the print out.

Printing a car with one of these printers is really a neat idea. This allows very quick one-off production of a CAD design without the tedious process of clay modeling. However, I think the artists that do clay modeling will be upset.

The second story here is the lightweight aerodynamic car is estimated at 200 MPG! This kind of efficiency may be better for the environment in the near future than hybrids. Of course, all electric vehicles will likely be the best in the foreseeable future and who knows what comes after that.

To read a bit more on vehicles and understanding the impact of high MPG cars, use the search feature and look for "MPG" or click here.

To read a bit more about the Urbee Blue, follow the related link below.

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According to statistics, about 30 percent of all water used by an average household is devoted to outdoor uses. Even more painful is the stat that about 50 percent of all outdoor water goes to waste through evaporation and improper system design.

An easy way to cut down on this waste is lower the requirement of the number 1 water user in the yard, the lawn.

The Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance (TFCA) is trying to reduce domestic water use by identifying new water-sipping, drought-tolerant grass. So far the organization has been able to produce and test several types of Bermuda grasses that retain 70 percent of their green color after two months in summer temperatures without irrigation.

The research has also shown that this new variety of drought-tolerant Kentucky blue grasses could save up to 10,000 gallons of water over a single growing season as compared to some heat-tolerant varieties.

While this research is still young, it is very promising and may be something we want to look at for our future yards.

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