Fuel and Energy Alternatives

This is a neat project. A site called hackaday posted this project. It’s essentially a homemade wind generator (generates electricity from wind.) It’s not one of those large windmill style turbines that you might have seen. This is a vertical design. They’ve sliced pvc pipe lengthwise in half to catch the wind. One advantage of a design like this is that it would work with wind from ANY direction. Their design drives a small DC motor. (DC motors can be used two directions…. hook up a current and get motion or supply motion and get current…)

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I’ve been on my own personal campaign to tighten up air leakage around our house. Busy caulking windows and trying to find ways to blunt that cool air from getting in and the warm air from getting out.

This evening I was thinking about the power outlets. I’ve noticed that some of our outlets on the exterior walls are a bit drafty. Since you want to be careful around an electrical outlet I’ve been wondering about safe ways to insulate around the outlets. Fortunately I’ve found some very good tutorials on what to look for and how to do it.

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I saw this on the news last night, it looks like Fletcher, North Carolina is going to be home to the worlds largest solar heating and cooling system. A company called Vanir Solar Construction is building the system. They were previously known as Appalachian Solar Energy before being bought by the Vanir Solar Construction company. The second largest system is installed in the Olympic Village in Beijing China.

Appalachian Energy started out in 2003 and operates a small hydroelectric dam in Madison County which powers around 600 homes. As I understand this solar install will be in the Fletcher Business Park.

Pirates raiding ships have been in the news off and on in recent years. It’s been steady, but nothing really high profile. It’s probably passed underneath many peoples radar. This week though, the price of gas climbed $1 a barrel on news that a large oil tanker had been captured by Somali based pirates. After reading that linked article. It sounds as though, we’re seeing something not too different from the Barbary Coast Pirates of old (first overseas expedition of the US Marines (“To the shores of Tripoli”…))

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I haven’t looked around too much, but saw a price of $1.98 at the Woodland Hills (19/23 New Stock Road Exit) Ingles. (The other gas station there has it cheaper with a car wash.)

This is the first time I’ve seen the price under $2 in I don’t know when.

Here’s hoping we see $1.50 gas by Christmas. (Of course, I’d take it if it were lower too.)

We can’t let the lower prices though make us lax with our gas saving habits and the true need for more domestic production and development of alternatives! So, keep using gasoline carefully and let’s keep looking at alternatives and domestic production so we can stop sending so much money to the parts of the world that don’t have our best interests at heart.

The county of St. Lucie, Florida will be home to the first plasma gasification plant in the US. They’ve contracted with Geoplasma to construct the plant which will use plasma to rip apart 1500 tons of garbage each day. From what I recall reading before the primary byproduct is an obsidian like residue. The process also powers turbines which creates electricity. I’m not quite sure that the whole process creates energy though…. I would be interested in hearing the complete process and get the numbers of power input to output from the whole process.

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Wow! I just read this article over at the Guardian about miniature nuclear reactors that could power 20,000 homes, cost $25 million US dollars and essentially be buried underground, refueled every seven to ten years.

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This from the WOW – “where can I get some of that” category. A fungus has been found growing in the Patagonian Rainforest that naturally synthesizes a hydro-carbon compound that dramatically resembles diesel. From the article:

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Last night our local news had a story on the exciting potential of the Jatropha nut for biofuel purposes. They talked about how well it grew in marginal soils, so I looked online. The first thing I found was this story. The Jatropha plant can grow in barren, marginal land that it appears otherwise would not support other major crops. However, it isn’t without it’s drawbacks.

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