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With thinking green in technology, you have to imagine all of the new untold advancements people are making…it amazes me every time I find something new and they are not talking about it on major nation wide news stations! (so irritating!)

I just added a new page to the site (link to the page on this site). I has to do with thinking green in technology and the new green technology advancements. We all want free green energy, so check out the page…let me know what you think. Feel free to comment on this post after reading the new page! (link to the page on this site)

Thanks everyone!

Experts say biomass or ‘bioenergy’ is in fact one of the main green energy sources being considered for mass implementation.

The question is…what in the world is bioenergy?

It’s kind of like something out of a sci-fi movie, it is a process by which lots of yummy organic material such as animal waste, plants and wood are used to generate electricity, produce heat and also aid in the production of bio fuels.

With biomass, hot air or water is generated to produce electricity. This is done through direct combustion and yet this is considered the simplest way of generating energy from biomass, it is also considered the most common method of generating energy from biomass.

Not only can biomass be used to generate electricity, biomass can be used for hot air production. This means it could be used as a new renewable and slightly greener method of heating your home or office. To do so, the biomass must be combusted in a furnace where it heats the air being fed into your home/office. Biomass could also be used as a more efficient water heater, simply by using the same method of heating the air. The best part is…we already know that biomass can be used in a small scale heating system. (so keep your eyes out for them)

Some people have been combining the heat producing features and the electric producing features of biomass to generate the both of them, which is commonly called ‘CHP’ (or Combined Heat and Power). This is something that most people consider to be one of the best features of biomass, is it’s ability to be efficient enough to serve multiple purposes.

It is a fact that if you compare the electricity produced by biomass and solar sources, biomass will always produce more. Why? Because solar panels take in energy from the sun and send it somewhere to be stored or used. But the plants and organic materials used to create biomass have been taking in and storing energy from the sun within them. Meaning that biomass is just a big mass of sun energy…almost in a concentrated form.

You don’t have to collect it first which is what happens with solar or even wind energy since this is manufactured technology. It is readily available unlike the other two which is totally dependent on the weather.

With using biomass extensively, the dependence on foreign oil and the cost to dispose of waste will no longer be a problem. Think of the ‘REAL’ freedoms this could create for many countries. Including North America!

There is one real downside to bioenergy…you have to burn waste and other organic materials to produce power. This adds to the pollution which is already in the atmosphere and that causes concerns among many scientists and eco watch dogs everywhere. Luckily for bioenergy…the future is bright, clean, green, renewable, and realistic. Thanks to someone stating the obvious…plants work to scrub the carbon dioxide from our air, thus reducing the pollution in our atmosphere. If we use biomass/bioenergy we can plant more crops and other green organic life, which will do just that…and a good idea has risen, prep and use the land that once produced oil and grow the green material need to produce biomass/bioenergy!

Biomass uses renewable natural resources which is why it is considered green energy and we have an endless supply of it everywhere we look. Just like the power we consume from the sun or the wind, they are all renewed naturally and independently.

We have the green technology to generate power without causing harm to our environment…we just need to muster the willingness to take the next step and make it happen.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Travis_Gutierrez

Learning to live a green lifestyle as just got easier….check out this great green lifestyle website. It is a great resource for information on products and tips towards living a greener life.

(Photo: Jim Motavalli)

NISKAYUNA, NEW YORK – We hear a lot of talk about the “smart grid,” and it sounds high-tech and cool, not to mention just around the corner. A look at how General Electric is preparing for this brave new future was both exhilarating and sobering.

Exhilarating, because it promises to give consumers considerable control over their energy efficient destiny. We’ll be able to order our energy-conscious appliances to run only when the time-dependent rates are low, and switch to half-power when peak use sends those rates soaring. We’ll see our real-time power use displayed on “smart meters” and home energy managers. We’ll plug in our cars, and let the grid decide on an optimal charging time.

Sobering because it isn’t here yet, and won’t be tomorrow either. There are 140 million electric meters in use in the U.S., and just making them “smart” will take at least 10 years, GE officials said. Replacing all the transmission lines that make our grid “dumb” — i.e., unable to move wind power generated in North Dakota to, say, New York, where there’s a big population waiting to use it — will take much longer and cost much more. Estimates of total cost range from $100 billion to $2 trillion.

The Obama administration’s $11 billion in smart grid stimulus funding certainly helps, but even the most optimistic estimate sees a relatively long timetable and huge investment for the full vision to be realized.

Dialing in the smart grid at GE in Niskayuna.
(Photo: Jim Motavalli / iStockPhoto)

While at GE, I watched a technician simulate what it would be like for the grid to take control of my power use, and visited the “kitchen of the future,” a row of cutaway appliances (with neon tubes substituting for stove burners) at General Electric’s Global Research HQ in Niskayuna, New York. A computer monitor would allow me to cut my dryer’s electric use from 4.5 to 2.5 kilowatts when rates spike (and increasing drying time in the process, of course).

GE unveiled what it called the “Net Zero Energy Home” concept, but it didn’t say whether it would actually build one for us to play with.

An Ipsos poll commissioned by the company shows that three out of five people would “change their electricity consumption behavior” after the smart grid was introduced, because they could see how, for example, leaving a light on affects their bill. Some 73% of respondents (in the U.S. and the UK) wanted to learn more, and half of Americans (a third in the UK) were willing to pay more per month for smart grid benefits).

Electric vehicles (EVs) are also part of the smart grid, of course. In fact, its appearance appears to be neatly timed to coincide with the first plug-in hybrid cars — which will mostly be charged during off-peak hours. According to GE’s Natarajan Venkatakrishnan, charging an EV uses as much power as your whole house is likely to consume in a day. If every plug-in hybrid owner came home and plugged in at 6 p.m., grid disaster could soon ensue.

EV startup companies, from Aptera to Bright Automotive, are equipping their cars with software to interact with the smart grid when it’s available. My guess is the cars will be on the road before the grid is ready.

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Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc

Putting solar panels on the roof (or side) of your skyscraper is so 2008. If you really want some efficiency without all those complicated photovoltaics. If you really love renewable energy, and you also like EXTREME temperatures, you should just buckle down and put a solar power tower at the top of your skyscraper.

And that’s the idea of the Almeisan Tower that’s been designed for Za’abeel park in Dubai.

The tower would be a home to an observation deck, a cafe, a children’s library and community meeting space, and would produce enough electricity to power itself, and several neighboring buildings. The solar power portion, at the top, would simply be a bunch of rotating mirrors that focus the sun’s light on a point at the peak of the structure. That point would get so hot that water pumped through would vaporize, and turn a steam turbine to create electricity. It’s not a new idea, eSolar is building several of these plants in America now, and they’ve been producing power in Spain for years.

But I’ve never seen anyone planning on sticking one on top of a building.

Solar thermal power is generally more well suited to centralized power generation, where lots of energy can be produced off-site on cheap land in sunny areas. But I’m not going to fault the building’s designer, Robert Ferry, for thinking outside the box. I hope this thing gets built, if only because it’s kinda awesome.

Via Inhabitat

You wouldn’t guess that a bit of green slime could do so much. But from from food to fuel, PetroAlgae, Inc. seems to have thought of everything. This Florida-based renewable energy company has developed a technology in which algae and other microorganisms produce fuel to feed cars, animals, and even humans…and say they can do it cheaper than anyone else.

With the addition of a few basic nutrients, algae gather most of their energy from the sun. The result is a protein and carbohydrate-rich slime that can be converted to a variety of products. First, the protein is extracted and processed into animal feed or blended into human food products. PetroAlgae actually lists one of its products as “meal replacer”, conjuring images of our new Utopian future in which chewing is obsolete.

After the protein extraction, what remains is a “lipid-carbohydrate mash”. PetroAlgae claims that this material can be sent directly to a petroleum refinery and processed into diesel, gas, or jet fuel without the need to retro-fit any of the refinery’s conventional equipment. Algae cultivation requires very little square-footage relative to conventional crops, can be grown on non-arable land, and consumes up to twice its weight in carbon dioxide as it grows.

In addition to algae, PetroAlgae draws from a large pool of microorganisms including diatoms, cyanobacteria, and micro-angiosperms (tiny flowering plants). While exact species remain unnamed, the company conscientiously notes that they use only species indigenous to the region in which a production facility will be installed. They have already begun licensing their technology to commercial facilities in Asia, and are poised to complete contracts with the U.S. and several European countries this year. Each licensee is promised the potential to produce 1.5 million barrels of transportation fuel per year, or the equivalent of 1.4 billion miles for a single truck. If PetroAlgae’s assertions hold true, the cost of fuel production is essentially paid for by the revenue from food and feed products, meaning that their microbe-derived fuels will remain competitive with fossil fuels, at any price.

PetroAlgae is in the business of licensing its technology rather than building the algae plants itself. It already has deals with algae farms in India and China and is currently working on deals in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Via BioFuels Digest

With all the sun that hits our home’s roof, we’ve got to do something with it, right?  The good news is solar panels are becoming more popular and more affordable.

Solar panels, or cells, are photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity.  The photovoltaic cells are made of a semi-conductor material, such as silicon. When the sunlight strikes, the energy is partially absorbed into the semi-conductor material, shaking the electrons loose, which forces them to flow in a current, yielding the energy to power your house.

The cost for home solar panels ranges from $8,000-$30,000, depending on what kind of system you want.  The least expensive systems are for smaller units that aren’t looking to be completely, “off-grid.”  Being off-grid means that you are completely independent, and if your solar fails, you don’t have the option to use conventional energy.

The more expensive systems are for large houses that use a lot of energy and want to be entirely energy independent.  While many people will want to have energy independence, there are a few incentives for staying on the grid.

For instance, when you have more energy than you need, you have the option to sell your excess energy back to the electric company.  Alternatively, if you live in a cloudy area, it might make more sense for you to use solar energy only part of the time.

You will need to have a professional come out to access your home.  One of the aspects of your home that’s evaluated is the orientation of your roof.  Solar cells typically need to be on a south-facing roof with no shade. Shading as little as one little square of your solar unit can cut power in half.

The “smart grid” is a hot topic these days: it’s in the press a lot, and gets tons of play in Washington D.C. However, the average citizen is still pretty hazy on the details.

Many people confuse the smart grid with smart meters; which are the smart grid’s most noticeable aspect, but only one piece of the puzzle. It’s all really pretty intuitive, once you see it on paper.

Definition

The term “smart grid” is an umbrella term, defining the modernization of the electricity infrastructure in the U.S. It will take a decade or more to fully revamp the grid with the latest technologies. It’s a project the Department of Energy (DOE) compares to the national interstate highway system and the Internet, both of which took decades to develop.

Our electricity grid includes several components: generation, transmission, distribution, and end consumption. Electricity storage is currently inefficient and costly, but storage may be a major component of the system in the future. The “grid” refers to the portion of the electricity infrastructure between the power plant and end-user: transmission, distribution, and storage.

Smart meters and other advanced metering infrastructure and smart devices which communicate digitally, more efficient transmission lines, software allowing households and businesses to voluntarily reduce demand at certain times, and energy storage technology are all components of the smart grid.

According to the DOE, our electricity infrastructure includes “9,200 electric generating units with more than 1,000,000 megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines.”

The National Academy of Engineers called it: “The most significant engineering achievement of the 20th Century.” Every time we flick on a light switch or surf the Web, we have the electricity grid to thank.

Motivation for an upgrade

If the current grid is so great, why should we change it?

New technology:

It’s said that while Alexander Graham Bell would not recognize today’s communications infrastructure, Thomas Edison would be very familiar with our electricity infrastructure. We have the technology to digitize the electricity grid to increase communication between its various components, we just need to implement it.

Efficiency:

It’s estimated that $150-$180 billion are lost every year in the U.S. due to blackouts and poor quality electricity. 7% of energy is lost in transmission and distribution. Making the grid just 5% more efficient would be equivalent to permanently eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from 53 million cars. Part of modernizing the electricity infrastructure would be realizing potential efficiency gains.

Demand response:

A big goal of the smart grid is to level out demand. Currently, there are certain time of the day and certain periods of the year when demand spikes — peak demand episodes — requiring excess capacity to deal with those rare occurrences.  In fact, according to the DOE, “10% of all generation assets and 25% of distribution infrastructure are required less than 400 hours per year, roughly 5% of the time.”

By informing users of real-time electricity prices — which rise as demand rises — the smart grid will allow consumers to level out demand and remove the need for many excess power plants and a lot of extra infrastructure.

Distributed power generation:

Large-scale implementation of solar and wind power — above 20% of total electricity — will require advanced energy management techniques, according to the European Wind Energy Association.

With 30 states having developed and adopted renewable energy standards requiring certain percentages of electricity to come from renewable sources by certain dates (California’s being the most ambitious: 20% by 2010), this will become an important issue in the near future.

“Islanding” is another important result of distributed power generation. When power is cut off to a region because of a natural disaster, military/terrorist attack, or any other reason that region would be able to sustain some of its basic electricity needs (hospitals, grocery stores, etc.) through local energy sources such as solar panels and already charged electric vehicles.

Environment:

Electricity generation is responsible for 40% of CO2 emitted in the U.S., twice as much as transportation. By allowing for more renewable sources, increasing efficiency, and reducing peak demand the smart grid will help reduce our carbon footprints significantly.