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Green Housing Takes Root in Oregon
baldinux writes "I was reading an article in the Portland Tribune which showcased the City of Portland's noteworthy 'Rose House' (1.8mb PDF) project, part of the Office of Sustainable Development and Oregon Department of Energy's plan to encourage sustainable, energy-producing, environmentally-friendly housing for the future, a plan which is gaining national and international attention. The Rose House, at only 800 square feet (approx. 244 sq. meters), is equipped with solar panels and incorporates technologies that recapture lost heat and energy during normal appliance operation, such as ventilation. During peak hours -- when power is at highest demand -- the Rose House could produce surplus energy, feeding kilowatt hours back to the power grid, and `rolling back' the meter -- the power authority's way of purchasing the surplus energy and lessening the burden on comparatively 'dirty' power plants. The article suggests that homes like this could see net power bills as low as $0 per year. The environmental benefits of a lessened burden on centralized, often fossil fuel or nuclear, power generation plants would be considerable."
One of the reasons many people I know aren't getting things like solar panels installed is that the initial cost is too high.
That's because land in Texas is relatively cheap. The real point was the ~15% premium; essentially, in Texas such a home should cost in the 95-120 range, I would bet (depends on relative percentage cost for land, materials, and labor).
800 sq ft is a decent sized one bedroom apartment, or a fairly small two bedroom.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Oh dear. Isn't it sad that it's impossible to correct a post without making an equaly silly looking error.
You mean 800 sq ft = 74 m2.
P.S. Google? Just use units(1).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Portland relies on hydro power rather than dirty power. Isn't it odd that a region that sells its excess kilowatts to other regions is one of the few places in the US where green housing is seriously considered?
Why don't the regions of the US that rely heavily on coal or nucler power have the same impitus for cleaner alternatives?
These are breasts; this is source code.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
This effort is noteworthy. If the construction costs are marginally higher than standard, it should be possible for the governemt to step in with incentives and pick up the tab of the difference. This kind of housing would save indirectly on other costs (power plant construction, pollution, etc) and could therefore qualify as a win-win situation.
--- "I didn't think anyone would understand it" -Prof. Bob Muller
I am wondering how it is you went from units of area to units of volume?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
"I'm hearing a lot more interest from buyers who have called up and said they want the greenest house in Portland," Heslam said. "For a growing group of people, rather than having the fanciest house on their street, they'd rather impress their friends by having the greenest house on their street."
It seems more and more that people define their "greenness" as part of their social status. I mean, from hybrid cars to these energy efficient homes, it seems like people have transitioned to environment friendly ways not so much to be friendly to the environment, but rather for others to see.
I suppose part of it shows the philanthropic side of a person, taking care of the poor, defenseless environment that everyone abuses. Part of me wonders, if it were cheap enough for everyone to do, would the wealthy still do it, or would they simply indulge in the excess which they can easily afford?
I think the interesting thing here is that they went for a house that is much smaller than the average American house.
Compared to Europeans, Americans live in -huge- houses, which have to be heated/cooled/cleaned, etc.
A smaller house is cheaper to run and takes a heck of a lot fewer resources than a big house.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The price per SQ I quoted didn't include the land because I do not think the price quoted in the article include the cost of land.
Hell, if it was only 15% more they could get very low interest loans from the power company to help pay for the extra. AEP/TXU provides such loans to redo AC with lower energy units and to install heat pumps.
I bet you they are comparing the cost of this home to the cost of a new home, new land and new utility connections. It is in their best interests to play with the numbers so it looks better on paper. Helps with getting more funding/grants.
(This may be rambling as I am tired)
Where I come from, "greenhousing" is the term used when you get a bunch of people in a car, roll up the windows and smoke ridiculous amounts of pot, filling the inside with smoke.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
What's new about this stuff?
I've seen "passive" houses being built for years (in Europe).
Maybe 6 years ago this would have been kind of innovative. But in the year 2004? C'mon!
What is more likely is to have a neighbourhood power distribution inside your local transformer loop and feed the it from your production via the same plug. That too might confuse the shock protection circuit breakers which apparently measure current levels between the two wires to make sure no equipment is earthing the power. Also the power man's in for a shock when he finds that there are 200 power sources he has to disconnect to pull a new line off the main cable . Technical difficulties in implementing this are too high , or we'd already be generating our own electricity. (btw, my desk lamp is powered by a solar panel and a rechargeable battery and that's only because my city scheduled a half-hour power cut daily).
Feed the power grid back is a pipe dream at least in the Indian power situation. But oregon might be different after all .... If you need me I'll be in my backyward feeding the power grid with my cold fusion powered giant hamster wheel.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Are they talking about Texas...?
Building costs vary from state to state, county to county and even city to city. Portland, being Oregon's major city, may have higher building costs than the rest of the state, and quite possibly higher than where you are in Texas.
800 sq feet isn't huge, but is plenty of space for an individual or couple without kids and not planning any straight away. At $117k, the mortgage would be close to average rent with lower bills and, unlike rent, payments would be building equity. Sounds like a nice little place to me...
I ferment meat and I'll have the food groups wired...
What are the odds of getting everything round the wrong way like that?! You are Backwards-Man!
I think the real problem humanity will face is over population. The world is staying the same size, but there are more people. How much longer can people keep cutting down trees, without replacing them, until the price of lumber gets so high that only a small amount of people will be able to afford it. I remember when I was in highschool, the population of the USA was 250 million, and in the papers a few weeks ago it referenced the population at 300 million. If that is correct, we grew by 50 million people in the past 15 years. What will happen in the next 50 years? Is it possible we will pass the half a billion mark? Will we become the next India?
What people should think about is economics. The world is becomming a divided place. Even in the USA. I remember reading an article in school which showed that the top 1% of people in the USA owned 10% of the wealth around the time of the revolution. Today 1% of the USA owns more than 40% of all the wealth. The papers also had an article that Bush wants to eliminate overtime pay. That means buisness will be able to force people to work more hours, without the detterant of paying time_and_a_half. Does that mean we will see 50 hour work weeks and less to show for it? But before anyone decides to jump on the democratic bandwagon, they are not that much better. Both the republican and democratic party are subject to the same rules of the game, the same need to raise moeny and bow to the lobbists. We need a new breed of politicians, but to get them, we need to pay attention and not vote the way we pick what fast food resturan to eat lunch at.
While solar panels might sound cool, it is like a band-aid on a wound to the neck. I don't know what the anwser is. We can't stop people from having kids. We can try and conserve natural resources, but eventually the number of people will be more than the planet can support.
What scares me is the fear that 90% of the population will be pushed into slave like conditions, while the richest 10% live relativly well, even in the worst of conditions. They will hire some of the poor, train them as police or military, and protect the "public peace". Think of India, where even with the poverty, a small percentage of the people live luxeriously, and the rest are controlled by a somewhat corrupt police force and politicians. The rest live on the streat and the have's walk past them, sometimes looking at the have-nots as human garbage, but most of the time trying not to make eye contact.
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
The building that I live in at Portland State University is a "green rated" building. Besides all the recirculated heat etc, it also uses collected rain water to do things like flush the pottys.
:-/
One of the advantages I guess to living in a state with dirt cheap electricity and *way* too much water
I am not fully up on solar cell tech so these numbers may be wrong but it appears that a solar cell setup costs between $5000 - $7000 per KWH. This being a 3.3 KW setup would place the cost of the solar cells alone at 15,000 - 21,000.
I just do not see how they can build the house for what they are saying they can. I also do not understand why they had to get a 15,000 grant to build a home that costs nothing to heat/cool.
It's because we Portlanders are so full of hot air... we'll make any flat surface we're standing on seem to take on 3 dimensions.
I doubt many people would want to live in 800 square foot houses if given a choice. Most people who make money like to build big gigantic houses. Some even like to go into well established neighborhoods, buy an older smaller house, tear it down, and build their McMansion.
I think the real problem humanity will face is over population.
The problem isn't so much overpopulation. The problem is that a small segment of the world's population has acquired a taste for a lifestyle that uses a disproportionate amount of resources.
People need to start choosing to live in a smaller house, driving a smaller car.
The real change will require social engineering on a massive scale.
Imagine if it was considered patriotic (instead of crazy/granola) to use fewer/alternate resources!
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
To further increase eco-friendliness of this house they should also consider equipping it with materials that convert waste heat directly to electricity.
t icle.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324635.100(Subscription required)
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/ar
Although the technology is still in its early stages , it looks promising enaugh to reduce energy waste in households.
My gf told me that passive heating in houses is being offered for years and years. The technology is there - it just won't catch on.
Why? Because, for one, you can't even open a window to let fresh air in - it would disrupt the heat cycle. Oh - and that people don't feel comfortable with styrofoam walls. And that the kitchens are usually in the middle and have no ceiling, etc...
Yes this is absolutely true. Before that time the Chinese would eat by slamming their face down in the bowl and sucking rice and gravy through their nostrils.
We could go on all day about how easy (for a few bucks extra initial) it would be to make our living structures more environmentally friendly. We are demanding the corporations who make our products to clean up so it is only fair that we do the same. Actually its imperative. For those who think an 800 sq ft home isnt large enough for a family of five or whatever, perhaps you need to realize that jus because you have the ability to build 10,000 sq ft homes and drive 5 metric ton cars (yes we all saw the Hummer replacement marketed on TV & the internet this week) doesnt mean we SHOULD!
There are endless techniques that we can integrate into new homes, many of which should be REQUIRED, including solar panels which are yes very expensive now and not very efficient in energy producing terms, but what about new designs for homes including bigger windows and skylights using low emissivity glass. There have been advancements in new heating technologies like using heat tapped from the Earth's Core, and using renewed and recylced building materials. We have the tech, lets put it to use!
...and it should be known by now
Tis is ridiculous. We had that kind of houses for YEARS in europe, at least in germany. And its not a niche-market around here but mainstream. Due to the fact that energy and heating costs are very high in germany a lot of people consider a "low-energy-house" or even a "zero-energy-House". But im happy to see that america finally found out about some enviromentally sound ideas from last century. Whats next cleaner air? Less fuel? Kyoto?
I disagree that overpopulation is the problem, at least in the medium term. I think the problem is overconsumption, especially by Americans, and that is the issue addressed by the original article.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
That is way off, in the area of Texas I am in you can build a new home for about 70-90 per square foot . Plus [800 sq ft] is way small if you plan to have a family.
It may be small, but it isn't too small. I grew up in a house of roughly 1200 sq ft (excluding basement) with four other siblings. My wife grew up in a house of roughly 800 sq ft with two other siblings.
As long as children share bedrooms, and you forgo the formal dining room, family room, media room, and den, it is doable. Why spend money on rooms you aren't going to use? A living room works just as well as media room/family room. A dining room can be formal or informal. Bedrooms are for quiet study and sleeping, they don't need to be the size of aircraft hangers.
As for the housing costs, locations differ. For example, in Texas, where you are at, I'm guessing 2x4 construction is the norm. In Minnesota, where I am at, 2x6 construction is mandated by building code. In Texas, I'm guessing you can get by with a small crawlspace, or slab-on-grade. In Minnesota, the frost line is so deep that by the time you get below it, its trivial to add a basement. Etc, etc.
One of the big problems with mains electric power is that it can't easily be stored. This means that wind/wave/solar power all need backup fossil or nuclear capacity for when it's not windy or sunny. Batteries are bulky (look in the basement of your data center), contain nasty chemicals, are expensive and have a short life. Maybe the answer is a few more schemes like Dinorwig? This was originally conceived as a means of responding instantly to spikes in demand, but fundamentally it's a clever way of storing excess power from the grid and releasing it later. How much would it cost to hollow out a few of the Rocky Mountains?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I like the idea of distributed solar power generation for a variety of reasons. I think it's one of the only ways that (once installed) has minimal environmental impact, assuming that you're going to build a house in "that spot" either way.
To build fields of solar arrays or mirrors in the desert wrecks the desert, and then you have to deal with transmission line losses which are significant. Same problems with wind, geothermal, hydro, and tidal power - you wreck the environment you install them in to some degree and then you pay transmission line inefficiencies.
And often in these articles they don't talk about the cost of photovoltaics, either. They are semiconductors, which take larges amounts of energy to produce, and require some really nasty chemicals to process as well. So for every house you build with a photovoltaic roof, you've got to deal with those issues, which means it's going to take some time before you net any power or positive environmental impact.
There was an article in Discover Magazine last year about a company who was making a solar power generator based on a Stirling engine and they were claiming some impressive efficiencies. Manufacturing these was an issue of machining which can be made pretty clean - I thought that this was a cool idea. (I'd link to it but I'm in lynx right now and don't feel like googling it - sorry!)
Also you've got the issue of what to do at night. Of course hooking to the grid takes care of that right now but it means that you're relying on "dirty" power at night, and once enough people switch to this model then that would be all the dirty power was there for. Of course, it's sunny somewhere all of the time but then you've got transmission line issues. Putting batteries in your basement is an option, but most of those technologies are nasty too - lots of heavy metals to deal with. "My" solution for that - flywheel storage... I don't know if anyone is seriously working on that one though.
" I think I've read somewhere that solar panels cost more in energy to create than they ever produce. Is this correct? " No. Current solar panels generally recover the initial investment in 3 to 5 years (depends on how much sun they get, obviously) and last for about 20. They do degrade a bit in performance towards the end of their lives, but will typically provide 3 to 4 times the initial energy investment during their lifetime.
The best use of solar panels I've ever seen was for AirConditioning ... if the sun's not out, the air's cool anyway and if it is solar power kicks in . Don't know if it'll work for a bigger scale , unless we have spray on solar panels for those BIG tinted windows.
For the simple answer to cost of instal is check the power requirement for a simple AC unit. Remember they don't like power sags. Now price a solar system big enough to run the AC. Also price the storage battery or co-gen setup to keep it running when a puffy cloud passes by.
For most people, the required expense to run a high power draw device is beyond a home solar instalation. Most solar instalations are for hot water, and enough electric to run a few small energy effecient appliances. Don't expect to run a regular all electric home of just solar. Expect to use an alternate power source for things like the hot water, heating, cooling and clothes dryer. They won't be solar electric.
Another place to check is your monthly electric bill. Our home of 6 in the summer runs about 35 KWH/day. This is about an order of magnetude above a typical home photo-voltaic instalation. Very deep cuts in electric use are in order to even consider moving off grid. I simply don't have enough money or roof space to supply my current electric demand. Things like the dishwasher, electric dryer, AC, electric heat, and un-effecient refrigeration (fridge and freezer) would have to be replaced.
A high effeciency fridge is a serious chunk of change. I've looked into them.
The truth shall set you free!
I've been looking into building a home here in Japan, and the only thing that turned up in the article that isn't offered by most construction companies/builders here is the staggered studs. The rest of it (roof insulation, foundation insulation, well-insulated windows, single heating/cooling system for the whole house, 3.3KW solar panel) is pretty much standard, or if it's not standard, it's available as a unexceptional option.
Is the US really that far behind in construction techniques?
what he said.
we bought a 2600sf house on 4 acres for myself, my wife, and three pets. probably about 1/4 to 1/3 of it is essentially unused space - she spends most of her time in the 8x22 sun room on the south side, and i spend most of mine in the 12x21 office on the north side. there are a couple rooms that we don't step foot in for weeks. every time i walk by them, the mortgage payment figure slides around before my eyes. quickly followed by the climate control expense.
if i had it to do over again, i would go smaller, more energy-efficient, and put the savings toward more land, (even) more privacy, closer to the ocean, or just plain more leisure time; but this was our first house, and we wanted a "nice" place and didn't really give as much thought to the day-to-day practicalities involved.
my current daydream is to get together with a few other people/couples and go in on a fully self-sustaining vacation house on the shore somewhere. this would allow us to buy land more cheaply (inaccessible, unserviced by utilities, etc), and put the money toward a nice waterfront view and privacy.
the house mentioned in the article doesn't quite fit the bill, since it's designed to be hooked up to the grid and contribute energy back at some times, and draw energy off it during others; but the technologies used would be applicable to a self-sustaining house as well. and any experimentation that drives the initial price of these technologies down is very welcome.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
If you build any house less than 2000 SQ. FT. these days you wouldn't find a buyer. This is where the greenies allways miss the mark. Build the same house with modern amentities (including elbow room) and you may get someone to listen.
Hell, just publish easy steps for the new homebuilder and people will listen. I'm 2/3 the way into building a new house. Months ago I tried to have Slashdot run a "Ask Slashdot" on this very issue. It was rejected , of course.
Here is what I actually did: thermal barrier in the attic, manifold water system, insulated all interior walls, install only one waterheater, cathedral ceilings, return-air ductign in all major rooms and high SEER air conditioning system. Wish I could have found other (affordable) ways to save energy.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
in case any non-americans are wondering why the size of the apartments is "only 244 square meters", 800 square feet is in fact about 75 square meters.
converting areas is different from converting lengths... tsk tsk.
-duncan
sigh ... where's your data from; I call
bullshit on the basis of
this:
/. should have a rule: no fact
claims without reasonable references (I guess
it might get pretty "thin" here though)
1. Do solar cells produce more energy than is used during their manufacture?
Yes. The amount of time it takes for a technology to produce more energy than was used in their manufacture is called the energy payback time. Solar cells have an energy payback time ranging from a few months to 6 years, depending on the type of materials, the type of solar cell and where it is used. Solar cells have warranties well in excess of these numbers, typically 20 years. The origin of the popular myth that solar cells do not produce enough energy in their lifetime to recover the energy in making them is unknown, as every published study has shown that solar cells produce more energy in their lifetime than the energy used in production.
I wonder if
Another consideration that governs energy payback is surface temeperature. If you use panels, mount them well clear of the roof finish / substrate below for convective cooling. Photovoltaic activity drops off markedly with high panel temps, increasing payback time.
Note most panels are rated at 25degC surface temperature, but under standard illumination, and depending on ambient temps, will typically be running at 55-65degC. That's one reason it's difficult to achieve rated output.
Finally, the panels don;t die after 25years - they wil continue producing electricity until physically destroyed, but the amount tails off on an exponential curve. 25-35years is usu. given as alifetime, becasue at that point rated output is expected to have have dimished 20-25% (depends on rating method)
Anyway, beyond payback, all that power is FREE.
It shouldn't be said any longer. This was true in the early days of photovoltaics (PV), but the technology has been steadily improving. It is no longer true (a little like saying "integrated circuits will never become commercially viable for home users"). These days, PV recovers its costs in 3-5 years, in most residential applications, and then keeps working well for another 15 at least. And getting better all the time.
By the time you ditch the heater, air conditioner, water heater, dishwasher... how much money do you think that saves? The stove and fridge will be more expensive than "conventional" but the fridge is only maybe twice as expensive, the stove less than that.
My dream home isn't even this big - I've been working on plans for one roughly half this size, constructed on part of an old house trailer frame. I had an office in the back (now used as a storage shed) roughly 10x12 feet, 2x4 walls and one layer of fiberglass insulation - even when it was ten degrees outside I sometimes had to open the door to cool the place off because the heat from the computer and stereo would get the place so hot.
A developer here in Mississippi has been building tiny homes for years and has, pretty much by himself, converted a run down part of town into a fairly high rent community - there's a "church" (where my buddy used to live) and across from that what looks like a Beale Street hotel, and several other small homes. It looks almost like a toy model of New Orleans, and the houses are very practical. It's just a matter of accepting the paradigm - once you stop saying it can't be done, one quickly realizes just how practical it can be.
Try using online resources such as Wikipedia:
I think I've read somewhere that solar panels cost more in energy to create than they ever produce. Is this correct?
Although I can't find the exact answer to this rumour (thankfully other people have beaten me to it anyway, see the other replies to your post), there's a lot of interesting information about solar cells there.
I've also read that the Chinese were not responsible for chopsticks, although they were responsible for fortune cookies. Apparently chopsticks were invented just 200 years ago in San Francisco.
Chopsticks were developed about 3000 to 5000 years ago in China (the exact date is unknown).
Simply not true. Autarkic housing can be achieved simply, and the result need not look like a pudding. Their usual issue is actually overheating in spring and autmn seasons (low-angle sunlight comes in through windows, during seasons of near-minimum heating requirement).
Even 'regular' houses have no excuse not to be more efficient. Heat reclaimation units deal with pre-heating incoming air with the outgoing (hey, Wickes in the UK sell a packaged unit suitable for retrofit to an average UK house for less than 160quid last I checked; payback is 15-18months ). That also deals with odour, air moisture content etc. It's quite easy to get a 3-bed UK semi (say 100sq.m.) down below 1.2Kw design heatloss for a 19degC interior / -1degC exterior temp difference.
At which point, you might note, overheating can actually become an issue with typ. family (2 adults at 135W each @average activity, two kids at 100w each, modicum of household gizmos). Your only real losses are top-up heating overnight and domestic hotwater.
(yes I am an architect)
The reason why conventional air conditioning units {and refrigerators -- a fridge is just a cupboard with its own air-con venting into the kitchen} are sensitive to voltage drops, is the kind of motor they use to drive the compressor; a capacitively-started induction motor. The idea is that once the motor has started, a time delay relay disconnects the starter winding. This time delay relay typically uses a simple bimetallic strip and heater coil arrangement; in pre-semiconductor times, this was about the only way to do it, and it just kind of stuck. At first, the strip is touching a contact which sends current through the capacitor and starter winding; as it heats up, it bends away from the contact and cuts the power to the starter winding, so only the main winding is powered. If you don't use the starter winding then the motor will sit still (unless you spin the armature by some external means).
..... and gets hotter than it should. Now, if the delay relay were mounted in good thermal contact with the motor, then it would be helped to operate by the excess heat building up in there; but that huge hefty chunk of a motor would slow down the resetting action. This means next time the refrigerator's thermostat is calling for cooling, the motor won't start because the delay relay is now in the "run" position. So the motor just gets hotter and hotter. And he fridge certainly isn't getting any cooler, so the thermostat won't open in a hurry. It has actually been known for fridges to fail castastrophically under low-voltage conditions!
The problem is that at low voltages, the heater doesn't get hot enough to open the bi-metallic switch. The starter winding stays connected all the time and the motor draws about double the power it should
(As an aside, I know that an electronic delay relay could be built that would do the same job, but using a simple R-C delay circuit coupled to a conventional electromagnetic relay, for about 50p in bulk. Maybe modern fridges do actually use this kind of thing instead.)
If you wanted to build an air conditioner that was really immune to supply fluctuations, the obvious choice would be a DC brushless motor. You could run it from mains via a switch mode supply -- they're cheap as chips nowadays -- or straight from DC. Brushless motors are quite tolerant of voltage variations anyway, as long as you can get enough whack to shift the spindle and not so much as to damage the transistors in the drive circuit. And it would also be an idea to give a refrigerator a chimney of its own, so as to dispose of the hot air it produces directly rather than relying on your home's aircon to shift it. If you added a nice big air relief opening, the draught thus created should help to cool the kitchen. In winter, you could divert the fridge flue into an upstairs room (you don't want to get it back anywhere near the fridge). With an aircon, you probably could do something sensible with the meltwater from the ice that builds up on the evaporator, too.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
--- You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down at the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in, week out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt.
--- Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of damp gravel, work a twenty-hour day at the mill for tuppence a month, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
--- Well, of course, we 'ad it tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and lick the road clean with our tongue. We 'ad two bits of cold gravel, and worked a twenty-four hour day at the mill for six or seventy-four years, and when we got home, our dad would slash it to us with a bread knife.
--- Right. I had to get up at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down at the mill and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our mother and father would kill us and dance on our graves singing Halleluja.
--- Aye, and you try telling young people of today that. And they won't believe you.
--- Aye, they won't!
The solar field in california (bakersfield, I believe) uses high temperature collectors, molten brine, and a stirling engine to generate power, and so far as I know the best that's done is about 30%. You can get very nearly that right now from concentrated PV - a single cell a few inches on a side can supply as much power as a whole panel if it's made properly, the rest of the assembly is just mirror and a cooling manifold (which also provides a steady supply of heat for storage). This is present day tech - within the next decade there's serious talk of multilayer cells that can go as high as 60% efficiency in concentrated applications. That could mean a kW supplied by as little as 16 sq. in. of semiconductor material.
> Plus it is way small if you plan to have a family.
:)
Man, you americans sometimes seem so weird. Sorry, for saying this, but here in Germany, a house with 240 square meters is more than average. A lot of families WITH children live in flats of 60-70 square meters or houses around 120-140 square meters. 240 square meters would be considered luxurious. I guess the US are really just bigger than Europe...
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Who has an interest in increasing the size of the market for these products so economies of scale can lower their prices? Taxpayers.
Who has an interest in lowering electrical demand so the possibility of power shortages decreases? Taxpayers.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. Energy costs are (comparatively) low in the US. And people will buy what they can afford. If energy costs skyrocketed, fewer and fewer people could afford to buy giant energy-sucking houses, and they wouldn't get built. It's the same reason that rising petrol costs have made hybrid cars popular (although those that can afford them still buy gas-guzzling SUVs). The question is, why is energy so cheap in the US?
In MA at least, you can choose who makes your power.
http://massenergy.com/Green.FAQs.html
For a few cents extra per kwh, you can have clean power without an initial investment. If you truly care about the environment, you should be buying clean power. You have a choice of wind, solar, hydro or various mixes (at varying cost.)
this sig has been rated E for Everyone.
But the downside is you have to live in Texas.
Wrong.
Until it died last year, my parent's had an American Standard steam boiler (circa early 1970's) tied to a millivolt thermostat system. It was natural gas fired.
A small amount of electricity was generated by a thermopile in the pilot flame. That was enough to run the heating system without outside electricity.
Self awareness - try it!
I went through the home this weekend, and yes, it's small; about the size of the first one-bedroom apartment my wife and I had. The (two) bedrooms aren't very large, but they're big enough. The house is constructed on the back of a large lot. The people occupying the house are recent retirees, and either their son or daughter (I forget which) owns the home on the front of the property. They encouraged their parents to build a home on the property and move in BEFORE they were old and debilitated, which seemed to make sense to me.
Slashdotters will be happy to know that the "spare bedroom" has been converted to a home office, and is well stocked with computer gear. These folks aren't dottering old people, they're very active. No, the house doesn't have a formal dining room, a media room, an acre-sized kitchen or any of the other appointments common in the million-dollar, Street of Dreams homes on your average home tour, but it is comfortably sized for a retired couple who want to live life.
Home construction prices in Portland seem to run somewhere over $100 per square foot, but when you get down to smaller sizes, the price per square foot goes up, because you still have to have a kitchen and bathroom, no matter how large or numerous your rooms are.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
That's what they use between units in a row of condos or townhomes. Instead of running the insulation up and down between the studs, you weave it in and out along the wall. Keeps the noise down. So, yeah, your larger builders would have experience with it.
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
Typical waster. Demonstrating an extremely efficient house with some compromises doesn't force anyone to use it. The ease with which oil shoots from the ground and burns in furnaces has allowed us to waste so much of it that it now costs over $40:barrel, with $50 inevitable, and soon. Why are you complaining about environmentalists offering a typically sized city apartment, when you could be complaining about the energy companies whose supply of misery is inexhaustable?
As for "wasteful nature", the Earth sheds only 30% of the power it receives in sunlight. The other 70% is consumed in the complexity of natural processes, with human life balanced amidst the cycles. Even that 30% albedo might not be "wasted" - it's too early to tell, until we understand even a little about the conditions where it goes, far from the planet. Nature's conservation is an inspiration, not an invitation to waste.
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make install -not war