Home Improvement

Image by Uriel 1998

So, does this qualify for a home energy improvement tax credit?

Most modern home uses solar power to be the most frequent type of green power and you can earn yourself a wonderful tax credit each year by adding solar panels to your rooftops. You really have to initially judge the position of your house before figuring out how much this could bonus you. Plenty of people believe that setting up a sun-powered technology system for their own home is highly-priced – and it certainly could be depending on what you are after. The installation of a solar water home heating system for your home for instance, is an entirely unique thing to do than using the power to power your lights. There’s no comparison.

The quality of the photovoltaic panels themselves, however, is the central issue of adding photo voltaic power to your residence. For your rooftop, they range from low power ones make with simple ingredients from the hardware store to high-end multicrystalcells. While adding more value to your expenses, sun-powered power will add much more value to your home.

Another excellent way to get a very big home energy tax credit is by making use of wind power for your household. It is even a much better idea than the more often used and better-looking sun-power panels. If you have a great deal of space available and are truly comfortable in making long-term investments, however, only then will this kind of power be the better choice to you. Just be sure to first study wind speeds locally for at least a year using a wind analyzing machine prior to taking the actual plunge.

Another lesser known source of getting a small home energy tax credit is through the use of biomass power. Biomass power is a kind of sustainable power that’s very popular. For water heating and uses farming vegetation, bushes or even solid wood waste products in the house, it works quite well. Getting a tankless hot water heater in a home is an additional superb choice for you to fulfill your water heating needs. Linked to regular, tank-style heating units, tankless hot water heating elements conserve energy through the reduction of standby losses. When working with these, normally keep in mind that energy is unavoidably lost due to encircling air over time even when you don’t make use of any of the heated water.

An eco-friendly household helps you to save thousands of bucks in energy costs. Proper insulation of your property is a hint that you’ll be able to check right away to reduce cooling and heating expenditures. In order to high temperature your residence whenever it is just not effectively protected, you need to pay extra power . Heating and cooling personal savings by the ‘tri-level’ home is over a $300 each year. Just think that an common home has more than 1/2 of the power going for cooling and heating.

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Generating alternative energy for homes is rather easy. Typically, one gets surprised to find out the evaluation of a basic power audit about their home. The making of an power reliable property which is a particular trend in home based building can without difficulty match various spending budgets in addition to design types. Creating a power reliable house using alternative energy can favourably supply unparalleled power effectiveness while helping Mother Nature also unlike spending 1000s of hard-earned dollars just to generate some property owner’s homes to look more attractive. That’s pointless! Creating a power reliable home along with today’s soaring power fees is more advisable.

The most frequent types of alternative energy for homes in modern homes is in fact sun-powered power or better known as solar energy. The location of your house will determine its utmost potential. The cost for creating a sun-powered technology system in the house is often expensive for a lot of people , depending on what their after. The installation of a photovoltaic water home heating system for your own home for example, is an entirely unique thing to do than using the power to power up your lighting. There’s no comparison.

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Image by Duane Storey
That’s 10.5 watts for this little experiment. First part of this little experiment is to see if I can power all my lights every night using only stored solar energy from the day times.

An even superior idea than the more typically used and better-looking sun-powered energy panels is utilizing wind power. You can only really make full use of this variety of energy if you dwell in a windy area and are truly happy making long-term investments. A special machine can be used first to study wind speeds locally for at least a year prior to taking the actual plunge, to be sure. Alternative energy for homes can make use of the wind very well, especially if you live in a windy area.

IF CAP AND TRADE PASSES, REMEMBER, CATTAILS CAN BE USED FOR HEATING HOMES…

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Biological power is usually a very popular sort of eco-friendly energy. For farming vegetation, bushes or perhaps solid wood waste elements, as well as for water heating inside your home, it works incredibly well. A tankless hot water heater is another choice for you to warmth water in your house. Tankless hot water, from the reduction of standby losses linked to regular, tank-style heating units, really helps you to protect energy. Energy is unavoidably lost with the encircling air over time even when you avoid using any of the heated water when you use these.

For energy costs, alternative energy for homes helps you to protect hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Proper insulation of your property is often a hint that you’ll be able to check at once to reduce cooling and heating expenses . so as to high temperature your residence whenever its just not effectively protected, you have to pay extra power . Heating and cooling personal savings because of the ‘tri-level’ home is over a $300 each year. Imagine that an common home has over 1/2 of the power going for cooling and heating.

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Efficient

Image by trekkyandy
The old dishwasher (GE Nautilus) used to operate per year with an electric water heater and per year with a gas water heater (according to the old dishwasher’s Energy Guide).

Energy star is often a registered brand of the U.S. Epa. This is the universal symbol for power productive products.

Their home equipment use a smaller amount of power than their alternatives, causing them to be way more cost effective to run. They declare that a professional sun powered energy star water heater may prevent 4,000 pounds of co2 from entering the environment since these gadgets use 10-50% less power then standard models. Yes! In response to Power Star, the joint program of the Epa along with the Department of Power, qualified photo voltaic water heating elements can cut water heating bills in half and extensively reduce your carbon footprint.

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Image by skwitko
The hot water heater. Yeah, that’s the whole thing. Propane-fired, on demand, Energy Star. Pretty cool.

Energy star water heaters mean extra money but can almost always cover themselves in running expenses, minimizing environment impact, over their forecasted lives. The Energy Star webpage, in 2009, the mixture of these kitchen appliances as well as other energy-saving procedures saved Us citizens $17 billion on power bills and preserved enough power to prevent greenhouse gas emissions equal to thirty million cars and trucks. Enhanced regulations for this ‘star’ certification means lower power costs for consumers who purchase certified equipment. Residences which have been certified by power star are at the very least 15 % more power proficient than the properties that were made in compliance using the 2004 International Residential Code (IRC).

Inside the house, a qualified tankless energy star water heater is another choice for you to high temperature water. Tankless hot water heating elements conserve power through the elimination of standby losses linked to regular, tank-style heating units. Power is unavoidably lost with the encircling air over time even should you stay away from any of the heated water when you use these.

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Converting sunlight to electricity might no longer mean large panels of photovoltaic cells atop flat surfaces like roofs.

Using zinc oxide nanostructures grown on optical fibers and coated with dye-sensitized solar cell materials, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new type of three-dimensional photovoltaic system.  The approach could allow PV systems to be hidden from view and located away from traditional locations such as rooftops.

“Using this technology, we can make photovoltaic generators that are foldable, concealed and mobile,” said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering.  “Optical fiber could conduct sunlight into a building’s walls where the nanostructures would convert it to electricity.  This is truly a three dimensional solar cell.”

Details of the research were published in the early view of the journal Angewandte Chemie International on October 22.  The work was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the KAUST Global Research Partnership and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Dye-sensitized solar cells use a photochemical system to generate electricity.  They are inexpensive to manufacture, flexible and mechanically robust, but their tradeoff for lower cost is conversion efficiency lower than that of silicon-based cells.  But using nanostructure arrays to increase the surface area available to convert light could help reduce the efficiency disadvantage, while giving architects and designers new options for incorporating PV into buildings, vehicles and even military equipment.

Fabrication of the new Georgia Tech PV system begins with optical fiber of the type used by the telecommunications industry to transport data. First, the researchers remove the cladding layer, then apply a conductive coating to the surface of the fiber before seeding the surface with zinc oxide.  Next, they use established solution-based techniques to grow aligned zinc oxide nanowires around the fiber much like the bristles of a bottle brush.  The nanowires are then coated with the dye-sensitized materials that convert light to electricity.

Sunlight entering the optical fiber passes into the nanowires, where it interacts with the dye molecules to produce electrical current. A liquid electrolyte between the nanowires collects the electrical charges.  The result is a hybrid nanowire/optical fiber system that can be up to six times as efficient as planar zinc oxide cells with the same surface area.

“In each reflection within the fiber, the light has the opportunity to interact with the nanostructures that are coated with the dye molecules,” Wang (left) explained.  “You have multiple light reflections within the fiber, and multiple reflections within the nanostructures.  These interactions increase the likelihood that the light will interact with the dye molecules, and that increases the efficiency.”

Wang and his research team have reached an efficiency of 3.3 percent and hope to reach 7 to 8 percent after surface modification.  While lower than silicon solar cells, this efficiency would be useful for practical energy harvesting.  If they can do that, the potentially lower cost of their approach could make it attractive for many applications.

By providing a larger area for gathering light, the technique would maximize the amount of energy produced from strong sunlight, as well as generate respectable power levels even in weak light.  The amount of light entering the optical fiber could be increased by using lenses to focus the incoming light, and the fiber-based solar cell has a very high saturation intensity, Wang said.

Wang believes this new structure will offer architects and product designers an alternative PV format for incorporating into other applications.

“This will really provide some new options for photovoltaic systems,” Wang said.  “We could eliminate the aesthetic issues of PV arrays on building. We can also envision PV systems for providing energy to parked vehicles, and for charging mobile military equipment where traditional arrays aren’t practical or you wouldn’t want to use them.”

Wang and his research team, which includes Benjamin Weintraub and Yaguang Wei, have produced generators on optical fiber up to 20 centimeters in length.  “The longer the better,” said Wang, “because longer the light can travel along the fiber, the more bounces it will make and more it will be absorbed.”

Traditional quartz optical fiber has been used so far, but Wang would like to use less expensive polymer fiber to reduce the cost.  He is also considering other improvements, such as a better method for collecting the charges and a titanium oxide surface coating that could further boost efficiency.

Though it could be used for large PV systems, Wang doesn’t expect his solar cells to replace silicon devices any time soon.  But he does believe they will broaden the potential applications for photovoltaic energy.

“This is a different way to gather power from the sun,” Wang said.  “To meet our energy needs, we need all the approaches we can get.”

John D. Toon is manager of the research news and publications office at Georgia Institute of Technology.

That’s because electricity is nonexistent in Gathungu’s hometown of Njoro, in northwest Kenya. Landlines and other forms of communication are not as efficient, so Gathungu and millions of others in emerging nations rely on mobile phones. Charging the phones can be a headache in towns and villages where electricity is scarce.

Gathungu’s troubles may soon be over, though.

Kenya’s biggest mobile phone company, Safaricom Ltd., launched the nation’s first solar-charged phone this month. The handset comes with a regular electrical charger and a solar panel that charges the phone using the sun’s rays, company CEO Michael Joseph told CNN by telephone.

Retailing at about $35, the phones were manufactured by Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp. Safaricom plans to make an initial supply of 100,000 phones available.

“People are excited about these phones,” Joseph said. “I expect to be sold out in a week.”

Eco-friendly phones have been touted by several companies at global trade shows, but most have not been launched yet.

Samsung unveiled a solar-powered phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year and introduced its first sun-powered phone in India in mid-June. The company expects its Solar Guru model to perform well in India, another country where electrical supply can be erratic.

Unlike many technological innovations, the solar phone is making its big splash in developing nations, where the need is the greatest. After the Solar Guru is in circulation in India, Samsung said, it plans to launch similar phones in other Asian markets, Europe and Latin America.

For the time being, Kenyans are happy to serve as early adopters.

“The power crisis here has been going on for ages,” Joseph said, adding that the Safaricom phone’s solar panel is small and portable, unlike charging devices some Kenyans now use.

Only about 1.3 million of Kenya’s 37 million people are connected to the national electrical grid, said Migwi Theuri, a spokesman for Kenya Power and Lighting Co. The east African nation, which gets most of its energy from hydro-generation, has been undergoing power rationing after a three-year drought.

Despite the limited availability of power, Kenya has one of the most vibrant cell phone markets in Africa, analysts say. An estimated 17 million Kenyans use mobile phones.

Some charge phones on bicycle-run generators, Joseph said. Or like, Gathungu, they pay businesses in major cities to charge their phones, sometimes waiting an entire day.

“There’s an enormous need for a device like this,” Joseph said of the solar phone, which can charge during talk time, as long as there are rays.

“They will continue to charge on natural light, even on cloudy days,” he added.

Gathungu plans to buy one of the new environmentally friendly phones. For him, it’s a matter of money and convenience. He earns 4,000 Kenya shillings ($53 dollars) a month as a waiter. Charging his phone for 50 shillings (70 cents) a week adds up. The solar phone would pay for itself, Gathungu said.

Until he buys one, he’ll keep making the trek to the shopping center every Sunday afternoon after church. He wouldn’t go into further detail about his mobile phone woes, not wanting to waste his battery charge on the call.

What state might be number two? Surely some other large southerly state. Arizona? Maybe sunshine-state Florida?

Not even close. Number two for solar electric power, and number one in total solar installations on a per capita basis, is small and not-so-sunny New Jersey, more known environment-wise for its abundance of Superfund sites. What’s perhaps most remarkable is how quickly the state got to the runner-up spot, from six solar installations only seven years ago to 4,340 today. Even in the throes of the recession, solar installers (120 of them today, versus two at the turn of the millennium) are reporting booming business.

“It’s just really taken off,” says Dan Potkay, president of New Jersey-based Brite Idea Energy, a solar installation company. Solar panels are not only appearing on residential rooftops, but on schools, churches, convention centers, and gyms, and as electricity-generating roofs over stretches of paved parking lots. Ground-mounted farms of solar panels are even planned for at least two of those infamous (albeit now cleaned-up) New Jersey Superfund landfills.

That all still pales in comparison to the solar revolution in Germany. Since it began a major push in 2000, Germany has become the most solar-powered nation in the world. With about one-fourth the United States’ population, it has six times more solar installed, including more than 300,000 residential rooftop systems, along with multi-megawatt commercial systems. That amounts to half the world’s total solar capacity — and in a country that enjoys sunshine about on a par with Oregon.

There’s a lesson here. The solar booms in Germany and New Jersey were not about abundant sunshine, but about subsidies. Both the European nation and the northeastern U.S. state kick-started their programs by providing early adopters with solid guarantees of economic returns on their investments. Taxes were not raised to accomplish this. Instead, utilities were allowed to raise rates minimally on all rate payers in order to subsidize those who were ready to move on installing solar systems.

In theory, subsidized sales lead to growing manufacturing scales and falling costs and, eventually, a day when renewables can compete directly with dirtier, and often imported, fossil fuels. Solar remains expensive compared to fossil-fuel-based energy, but theory and reality have continued to converge, with prices dropping by about 20 percent with each doubling of world production, moving steadily toward parity with dirtier fuels.

In a world threatened economically as well as environmentally by rising greenhouse gas emissions, dozens of other nations and several U.S. states have also begun to turn to various subsidy schemes for renewables, many of them using Germany’s approach as a model.

Although it also began with a version of straight-up subsidies, New Jersey has turned to a different approach, issuing credits that can be traded like stocks or bonds on a free-floating market. A few other states, and Great Britain, have attempted more modest versions of this market-based model, but New Jersey’s is the most aggressive attempt yet. And while the state’s solar boom is still on, the effort is too new for anyone to know if the approach will prove as successful as Germany’s over the long run.

The Germans built their world-beating program for solar and other renewables around a direct subsidy called a feed-in tariff. The approach is simple and straightforward: install solar panels on your roof, pump the power into the grid, and for 20 years you’ll get a guaranteed payment for each kilowatt hour you feed in; with solar, that’s presently about five times the going wholesale rate for nuclear power. Wait a year or two to install your system, and, assuming solar costs have fallen, expect a slightly smaller payment, although still a level and predictable sum.

Since Germany began its aggressive push, several other nations, including 17 other European states and more than 20 other nations around the world have adopted or announced feed-in tariffs, including, just weeks ago, China. The province of Ontario and a small scattering of U.S. states and even two American cities have adopted versions of the tariff approach.

Program designs, though, vary by nation, state or province, or city. Some attempts have been more successful than others.

Spain offers a bit of both triumph and trouble. In 2007 it mandated high tariff payments that turned out to be so generous that they quickly blew up a solar bubble. Although the government originally projected that the program would lead to 400 megawatts of installations by 2010, the program’s first 18 months saw 3,000 megawatts installed in the sunny nation. With no provision to automatically step down the tariff if it proved to be overly generous, Spain almost instantly blew past even Germany, becoming the world’s largest solar market for 2008, but at a cost to utilities of some $26 billion.

The world’s solar panel manufacturers, including a host of new companies in China, went boom mode themselves, cranking out shipments just for Spain that were large enough to fill entire container ships. But because costs for the program were rising far more than planned, by the summer of 2008 the Spanish government announced it would cut the tariff by 30 percent. It also put a firm cap of 500 megawatts on installations for all of 2009. Boom became sudden bust. In the midst of a developing world recession, 20,000 jobs in Spain’s nascent solar industry vanished.

In North America, tariffs have been slower to take off. But this year Ontario modified a modest existing tariff program to make it more attractive. And the city of Sacramento’s municipal utility has a limited program, as does the municipal utility for the city of Gainesville, Florida. Vermont, Washington, and California have instituted tariff programs at the state level (but in California only for commercial-size projects), and several other states are discussing this approach.

Feed-in tariffs aren’t the only subsidies now in play in the United States. There is no national tariff program (a bill has been introduced in Congress, but passage seems unlikely), but the 2009 stimulus bill extends a hefty 30 percent federal tax credit to solar customers through 2016. Commercial installations also can be depreciated for tax purposes on an accelerated basis.

Among the states, which regulate their own electric utilities, there’s a dizzying hodgepodge of approaches to providing solar and other renewable energy incentives, of both the stick and carrot variety. Stick-wise, more than two dozen states have developed “renewable portfolio standards” that require their utilities to hit certain targets — x percent of generation from renewable sources by year y — for instance. A few offer rebates on installed solar systems; in California, for example, homeowners are eligible for rebates under the state’s “million solar roof” initiative.

Most states allow “net metering,” meaning utilities must buy back unused power (electricity generated, say, on an afternoon when a house is unoccupied). It means that the owner’s meter can, essentially, spin backwards when there is excess power. (Although in some states the owner receives only the wholesale, not retail, rate; in general a monthly or annual electric bill can only go down as far as zero owed).

New Jersey’s continuing solar boom depends most heavily on its alternative approach to subsidies. When the state kicked off its solar program in 2002, it relied on a small “societal benefits” charge on all ratepayers’ bills to provide a simple, straightforward rebate that amounted to about 60 percent on solar installations, combined with a full retail net metering (backwards-meter) mandate. But by 2007, the program had become so popular that it was overwhelming available funds.

In the hope that market efficiencies could help control costs over time, the state has turned not to a tariff-style guarantee, but to a complex approach that relies on a floating, market for tradable solar renewable energy credits (SRECs).

An oversimplified version: install a solar system on your roof (or install a commercial system on a warehouse or in a field) and each year you’ll earn SRECs based on how much power your system generates annually — one credit for each 1,000 kilowatt hours. You can then turn around and sell your credits back to companies that generate power for the state’s grid. The companies can use the SRECs to help them meet state renewable portfolio standards that steadily ramp up to a mandate requiring that 22.5 percent of their energy come from renewables by 2021.

The credits are actually sold by brokers on an electronic market, like stocks or bonds, at whatever price the market will bear. At the moment, the market is bearing a fabulous price. It takes a calculator to work through the complexities, but with SRECs currently selling for just under $700, and the federal tax credit as well as a reduced state rebate in play, a homeowner in the state can pay for a solar system in four years or less.

After the system is paid for, there’s the promise of not only free, clean energy but of SREC profits for years to come. (SRECs are expected to decline in value over time, but could still be worth multiple thousands of dollars annually to the owner of a residential solar system, and far more to owners of large commercial installations.)

Some other states, including Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania have also begun to turn to SRECs, although so far those programs are providing a far less generous payout: in the $200 to $250 range. (The divergence appears to be occurring mostly because New Jersey is wielding a bigger stick, assessing a high “alternative” charge as a de facto penalty if companies do not hit their benchmarks.)

In an email, Doyal Siddell, chief spokesman for New Jersey’s Public Utility Commission suggested that his agency had decided the SREC approach was a way to avoid the “significant downsides” of German or Spanish-style tariffs “with regard to cost exposure to ratepayers, budgeting for uncertain expenditures and… inflexibility in adjusting to market changes such as falling equipment costs.”

But at least one industry insider is skeptical that it will be a real improvement.

Dolores Phillips, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Solar Industries Association, a regional trade group, worries that New Jersey’s SREC market makes the economics of going solar too unpredictable, suggesting that the alluring SREC-based economics of 2009, especially at New Jersey’s high rates, could be a “fluke.”

Phillips pointed to a May, 2009 report by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that cited “stability and certainty” as key benefits of feed-in tariffs. In particular, the NREL study noted that since risk raises the cost of financing, a safe, predictable income stream means lower costs overall.

Clearly, properly-designed, feed-in tariffs had the desired effect in Germany, ramping up manufacturing and, in doing so, driving down costs. It’s simply too soon to tell if the U.S. states moving toward a market-based approach are onto something better.

A California company hopes to store solar power by focusing thousands of mirrors on millions of gallons of liquefied salt. An artist’s rendering of such a solar plant is shown here.

The holy grail of renewable energy is a solar power plant that continues producing electricity after the sun goes down.

A Santa Monica, Calif., company called SolarReserve has taken a step toward making that a reality, filing an application with California regulators to build a 150-megawatt solar farm that will store seven hours’ worth of the sun’s energy in the form of molten salt.

Heat from the salt can be released when it’s cloudy or at night to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.

The Rice Solar Energy Project, to be built in the Sonoran Desert east of Palm Springs, will “generate steady and uninterrupted power during hours of peak electricity demand,” according to SolarReserve’s license application.

So-called dispatchable solar farms would in theory allow utilities to avoid spending billions of dollars building fossil fuel power plants that are fired up only a few times a year when electricity demand spikes, like on a hot day.

SolarReserve is literally run by rocket scientists, many of whom formerly worked at Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of the technology giant United Technologies. Rocketdyne developed the solar salt technology, which was proven viable at the 10-megawatt Solar Two demonstration project near Barstow, Calif., in the 1990s.

United Technologies has licensed the technology to SolarReserve and will guarantee its performance — a crucial advantage for the startup when it seeks financing from skittish bankers to build the Rice solar farm.

As many as 17,500 large mirrors — each one 24 feet by 28 feet — will be attached to 12-foot pedestals. The mirrors, called heliostats, will be arrayed in a circle around a 538-foot concrete tower.

Atop the tower will sit a 100-foot receiver filled with 4.4 million gallons of liquid salt. The heliostats will focus the sun on the receiver, heating the salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. The liquefied salt flows through a steam-generating system to drive the turbine and is returned to the receiver to be heated again.

SolarReserve isn’t the only developer planning to tap molten salt to store solar energy. Abengoa Solar, for instance, intends to use salt storage at its 280-megawatt Solana solar trough plant outside Phoenix.

That project, however, will heat tubes filled with synthetic oil to create steam and transfer some of the heat to salt-filled storage tanks. By using salt for both steam and storage, SolarReserve can generate higher-temperature steam, which will allow the Rice power plant to operate much more efficiently, according to Kevin Smith, SolarReserve’s chief executive.

“Consequently, our system can capture three times the energy for the same pound of salt,” Mr. Smith wrote in an e-mail message. “Plus they have additional ‘bolt on’ equipment, plus multiple heat transfer steps to go from oil to salt to oil and then to steam for electricity generation.”

SolarReserve’s plant will be built on private land — the site of a former World War II-era Army airfield — near the desert ghost town of Rice. The company will air-cool the power plant, avoiding controversies over water use that have dogged other solar projects.

But the height of the solar tower — 653 feet when a maintenance crane is attached to the top — could generate resistance from conservationists worried about the impact of the project on desert vistas. A proposed SolarReserve power plant in Nevada ran into resistance from Air Force officials concerned that the tower would interfere with radar at a nearby military base.

The company said it is negotiating with California utilities to buy the electricity generated from the Rice project and expects the solar farm to go online in October 2013, barring unforeseen delays.

Iosa Ghini Associati has designed the Energy Belt, a sleek solar-powered monorail system for Bologna, Italy that will connect the airport to the city center. The system’s smoothly sculpted lines run above the countryside, providing great views for travelers. The monorail will also provide infrastructure for other uses, namely a pedestrian walkway alongside the tracks and a solar system that runs along the rail’s southern face.

The Energy Belt was designed to speedily move people from the main train station in Bologna out to the airport with only one intermediate stop at Lazzaretto. It crosses over one major highway, spanning the stretch of road in a graceful arc. At each station a metal screen covered in vegetation protects passengers from the elements, and also helps filter the air, provide natural insulation and shade the platform.

The system is designed to operate using solar energy captured by photovoltaic panels placed at each monorail station and along the track’s south-facing side. Since the solar system installed directly on the monorail infrastructure, the landscape below is not disturbed with extra equipment. Running at a height from 7 meters up to 25 meters, the Energy Belt monorail is supported by slender piers, giving the system a very small footprint along its 5,084 meters of track.

Solar powered, direct, convenient, and fast – the monorail system offers an enticing option for travelers looking to take it easy rather than driving to the airport. Its highly probable that a monorail would be more expensive than a ground level light rail system, but where’s the novelty and graceful architecture in that?

Imagine a cool breeze blowing from your window! ‘Blind Air Conditioner’ is an innovative air conditioner that can also function as a blind. ‘Blind Air Conditioner’ is installed on the window itself like a blind, thereby emphasizing the image of a window on a breezing morning. ‘Blind Air Conditioner’ challenges the old design by combining the functionality of both an air conditioner as well as a foldable blind.

I absolutely love the idea of marrying solar power with air conditioning but I’m still unsure of how this would actually function as a proper air conditioner. Because of condensation, won’t it make a drippy, wet mess like standard window AC units, and furthermore, where will the water drip since there is not an outside component to the device? Will the built-in solar panels be powerful enough to provide enough juice to an energy-guzzling appliance like an AC unit? Can you really raise and lower hefty techno-blinds with built-in solar panels and air conditioning capabilities? Isn’t this more of a souped-up bladeless fan?

Hmmph. I’d like to think something like the Blind Air Conditioner would be possible in the not-so-distant future but there needs to be a few functionality kinks worked out if this concept reaches a second phase. When next summer hits and my own electric bills skyrocket, I’m going to certainly dream of cool, solar-powered breezes.

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For the Shaw brothers, who converted the downtown arts building and community center into a miniature solar power plant two years ago, each reverse rotation subtracts from their monthly electric bill. It also means the building at that moment is producing more electricity from the sun than it needs.

“Backward is good,” said John Shaw, who now runs Shaw Solar and Energy Conservation, a local solar installation company.

Good for whom?

As La Plata County in southwestern Colorado looks to shift to cleaner sources of energy, solar is becoming the power source of choice even though it still produces only a small fraction of the region’s electricity. It’s being nudged along by tax credits and rebates, a growing concern about the gases heating up the planet, and the region’s plentiful sunshine.

The natural gas industry, which produces more gas here than nearly every other county in Colorado, has been relegated to the shadows.

Tougher state environmental regulations and lower natural gas prices have slowed many new drilling permits. As a result, production — and the jobs that come with it — have leveled off.

With the county and city drawing up plans to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming and Congress weighing the first mandatory limits, the industry once again finds itself on the losing side of the debate.

A recent greenhouse-gas inventory of La Plata County found that the thousands of natural gas pumps and processing plants dotting the landscape are the single largest source of heat-trapping pollution locally.

That has the industry bracing for a hit on two fronts if federal legislation passes.

First, it will have to reduce emissions from its production equipment to meet pollution limits, which will drive up costs. Second, as the county’s largest consumer of electricity, gas companies probably will see energy bills rise as the local power cooperative is forced to cut gases released from its coal-fired power plants or purchase credits from other companies that reduce emissions.

“Being able to put solar systems on homes is great, you take something off the grid, it is as good as conserving,” said Christi Zeller, the executive director of the La Plata Energy Council, a trade group representing about two dozen companies that produce the methane gas trapped within coal buried underground.

“But the reality is we still need natural gas, so embrace our industry like you are embracing wind, solar and the renewables,” she said.

It’s a refrain echoed on the national level, where the industry, displeased with the climate bill passed by the House this summer, is trying to raise its profile as the Senate works on its version of the legislation.

In March, about two dozen of the largest independent gas producers started America’s Natural Gas Alliance. In ads in major publications in 32 states, the group has pressed the case that natural gas is a cleaner-burning alternative to coal and can help bridge the transition from fossil fuels to pollution-free sources such as wind and solar.

“Every industry thinks every other industry is getting all the breaks. All of us are concerned that we are not getting any consideration at all from people claiming they are trying to reduce the carbon footprint,” said Bob Zahradnik, the operating director for the Southern Ute tribe’s business arm, which includes the tribes’ gas and oil production companies. None is in the alliance.

Politicians from energy-diverse states such as Colorado are trying to avoid getting caught in the middle. They’re working to make sure that the final bill doesn’t favor some types of energy produced back home over others.

At a town hall meeting in Durango in late August, Sen. Mark Udall, who described himself as one of the biggest proponents of renewable energy, assured the crowd that natural gas wouldn’t be forgotten.

“Renewables are our future … but we also need to continue to invest in natural gas,” said Udall, D-Colo.

Much more than energy is at stake. Local and state governments across the country also depend on taxes paid by natural gas companies to fund schools, repair roads and pay other bills.

In La Plata County alone, the industry is responsible for hundreds of jobs and pays for more than half of the property taxes. In addition, about 6,000 residents who own the mineral rights beneath their property get a monthly royalty check from the companies harvesting oil and gas.

“Solar cannot do that. Wind cannot do that,” said Zeller, whose mother is one of the royalty recipients. In July, she received a check for $458.92, far less than the $1,787.30 she was paid the same month last year, when natural gas prices were much higher.

Solar, by contrast, costs money.

Earlier this year, the city of Durango scaled back the amount of green power it was purchasing from the local electric cooperative because of the price. The additional $65,000 it was paying for power helped the cooperative, which is largely reliant on coal, to invest in solar power and other renewables.

“It is a premium. It is an additional cost,” said Greg Caton, the assistant city manager.

Instead, the city decided to use the money to develop its own solar projects at its water treatment plant and public swimming pool. The effort will reduce the amount of power it gets from sources that contribute to global warming and make the city eligible for a $3,000 rebate from the La Plata Electric Association.

Yes, the power company will pay the city to use less of its power. That’s because the solar will count toward a state mandate to boost renewable energy production.

“In the typical business model, it doesn’t work,” said Greg Munro, the cooperative’s executive director. “Why would I give rebates to somebody buying someone else’s shoes?”

The same upfront costs have prevented homeowners from jumping on the solar bandwagon despite the tax credits, rebates and lower electricity bills.

Most of Shaw’s customers can’t afford to install enough solar to cover 100 percent of their homes’ electricity needs, which is one reason why solar supplies just a fraction of the power the county needs.

The higher fossil-fuel prices that could come with climate legislation would make it more competitive.

“You can’t drive an industry on people doing the right thing. The best thing for this country is if gas were $10 a gallon,” said Shaw, as he watched two of his three full-time workers install the last solar panels on a barn outside town.

The private residence, nestled in a remote canyon, probably will produce more power from the sun than it will use, causing its meter to spin in reverse like the Smiley Building’s. The cost, however, is steep: more than $500,000.

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