Discover The Wind

Check out the Discover the Wind website.

They have Micro Wind Turbines affordable enough for anyone to start building their own power plant.

This is a picture of part of their turbine system (small is beautiful and color is happiness), plus the connection to a 12v battery, which connects to a power inverter (converts DC current into AC current), which has locations to plug your appliance(s) in (see the power strip?).

Looking Ahead 3 D Solar cells

William Yuan, a 12 year old 7th grader has invented the 3D Solar Cell, which is 10 times more efficient than the flat, 2 D Solar cells in use today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFzuzU9zEKg

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

This is truly inspiring!

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/the-Boy-Who-Harnessed-the-Wind-id-0061730327.aspx

"This is the story of William Kamkwamba, a clever boy in Malawi, Africa who built his own windmill from found materials at age 14. Much of the energy of the book is that it is a very recent story, the main events taking place just in the last six years.

After barely surviving a famine in Malawi (sub-Saharan Africa), 14-year-old William Kamkwamba was determined to find a way to make life better for himself and his family. What if he could somehow bring electricity to his village, to pump water for crops in times of drought? Using diagrams in an old forgotten science book called "Using Energy" that he found in a grade school library, he cobbled together a contraption out of scraps and junk that worked to power a few light bulbs -- and changed the life of his village forever. His neighbors, steeped in superstition and with little or no knowledge of science, thought him crazy. But he had a gift for mechanical things, he understood the principles, and he knew he could do it. And he did. Eventually he got a second windmill going, powering a a water pump from a deep well, which is now used by all the women in the village. Today every house there has a solar panel and a battery to store electricity, too.

But this is much more than a story about an African boy who built a working windmill. It's a monument to the human spirit. In fact, we don't even get to making the windmill itself until halfway through the book. In the first half, William tells us a lot about his life in Africa, the terrible famine that swept his land, how he and his family survived, and the clues along the way which eventually led to him making the windmill. Even as a little kid, he was taking apart radios to see how they worked -- with no books or training, just trial and error. Then he saw a bicycle light that ran from a mechanical dynamo -- the kind that generates electricity when you pedal. Experimenting with this, he figured out how to get it to power his radio when he turned the bike pedals. When he finally found a picture of a windmill in the "Using Energy" book, it all came together. "In my mind I saw the dynamo," he explains, "saw myself with my neighbor's bicycle those many nights ago, spinning the pedals so I could listen to the radio... The wind would spin the blades of the windmill, rotating the magnets in the dynamo, and then creating current. Attach a wire to the dynamo and you could power anything..." Sounds simple? In principle, yes -- but there is no local Radio Shack in a Malawi village for William to go get the parts. He must make do with what he can scrounge -- and that's the really amazing part of this story..."

It's Time to Upgrade

The energy and focus that has gone into the technical aspects of the Recovery Bill has hit me with the revelation that, "Wake up America...it's time to upgrade!"

For the last decade or so it seems we have been slogging through the silt at the bottom of a pond when it comes to thinking about innovation and forward thinking.

Sure there were many advances in computing, electronic devices, surveillance internet communication...but most of them seem to be all kinds of innovative ways to sell even more stuff and clutter up our lives with ADVERTISEMENTS for just about everything you could think and some you wouldn't have.

The quality of other aspects of our lives have not been improving, however, and it's time to formulate new ways of looking at the problems we have been ignoring and letting build up into crises.

Energy Transformation for Self-Sufficiency

After waiting for 30 years for the country to appreciate the value of low tech energy sources for transformation into power, it appears the time has come to pick up the ball and run with it.

When I was in Pratt Institute School of Architecture, 1975 - 1980, energy alternatives were discussed briefly, and only offered as a subject of study in the Ecology class. I was part of a study, paid for by a Federal grant, in my last year of school, the goal of which was to develop a design for energy alternatives in affordable multi-family housing.

As the study progressed, it became apparent the the mentor of the project, who may have even intiated the grant process, and was a modular building manufacturer who steered the results of the study, not to solutions which provided the residents with self-sufficiency, but rather to solutions which became an add-on to the cost of his product.

Many good things came out of that study...

- siting of the building in relation to the sun and wind
- building forms and materials which conserved energy
- construction processes which had less damage to the site and used less energy to construct, etc.
- implementation in local building and energy codes
- influencing and equipping the designers and all who read the report to use these ideas in all future projects, myself included


While these results certainly advanced the progress of energy saving ideas and methods, I felt that it did not go far enough in addressing the needs of the residents

Since then, I have thought long and hard about the state of energy sources and technology, and believe there are more reasons than just that the US has had oil, gas, nulcear and hydro dams available at an affordable cost all thse years.

The reasons seem to have more with attitudes than technology:

The mental block of having to change presents an obstacle for many people...
"If it ain't broke, it don't need fixing".

The technological simpicity seems "too good to be true".

"Nothing in life is free", and so on...


Other countries have been developing viable alternates to fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power in more long term, integrated ways than the USA has.

One reason may be the sheer scale difference between US and the smaller European countries. It is easier to have a consensus on converting energy sources for public utilities on that scale.

For the countries with much greater populations like India, Japan and China, the difference may be that the US has a much more diverse population with multiple states having control over legislation and initiatives, and a less centrist federal government.

This blog was formed to explore these attitudes and provide solutions and explain technolgy which just about anyone can understand and use.

Ultimately, I would like to provide a "blueprint" for a small business model which would promote, educate, install or help homeowners themselves install incrementalized systems, at very little cost, with the goal of part or entire energy self-sufficiency.

I see these times as an energy winter, a season where we all have to hunker down and find a way to keep the fire going (or electricity, hot water, running water), for the have nots, who are suffering terribly right now.


Would love to hear thoughts on this subject...