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May 2012

Food

From farm to plate

London, Ontario……For two hours every Thursday afternoon,  Julie Richards-Bramhill  is a conduit connecting a lone vegetable farmer with  hundreds of families looking for organic food.

Her garage is a drop-off and pickup point for  Triple Cord Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), one of several in the London area.  CSAs are a fast-growing solution to an old issue: how to connect food producers with customers. The customers are essentially buying a share of the season’s crops: if there’s a bumper crop of yams, for example, they all eat lots of yams. If the cucumber crop turns sour, none get to take home cukes.

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Energy

In Berlin, an experiment in living “off-grid ready”

How different is life in a super-efficient home designed to generate more energy than it consumes? The Welke family in Berlin are guinea pigs in a social experiment.

For 42-year-old Jörg Welke, it’s a dream come true. Shaped like a cube and featuring a lot of glass, Welke’s temporary new home looks more like an oversized designer-stereo than a house. A black touchscreen on the wall is the first  thing a visitor notices when entering the “efficiency plus” home. The control center allows the family to regulate its energy needs including lights, shutters, appliances and heating.

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I dream of the Smart Grid

One man’s fantasy of what the so-called smart grid could mean for all our futures:

The further encroachment of government and bureaucracy on our private lives and personal liberties has taken it’s next big step. The so-called “Smart Grid” system for efficient management of our electrical usage has taken the next step with the installation of “Smart Meters” in the Burlington area, with the intention of installation proceeding state-wide over the next few years.

For those who don’t already know, “Smart Meters” are replacements for the standard mechanical dial-type electrical meters we already have on our homes and power poles.

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Cooking under pressure

I often forget how good a pot of pintos can be. This last Sunday, I had to come up with a dish to take to church for our first Sunday after church dinner. I knew the main dish would be enchiladas, so I decided to make a pot of pinto beans. My recipe is simple, it’s dried pinto beans, picked, rinsed and soaked overnight.

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Energy

Microgeneration in UK

These are exciting times for the British microgeneration sector. Dave Sowden, chief executive of the Micropower Council has said that the UK is “the only country in the world that has a government–backed microgeneration strategy.” Some of the more recent innovations include:

Home energy management company PassivSystems has developed an iPhone app, PassivEnergy, that allows consumers to manage domestic heating from any location, as well as a secure portal that calculates energy use and finds a tariff best suited to individual needs.

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EPA $1m to Colleges for off-grid research

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded more than $1 million in grants to 15 university and college teams for innovative off-grid solutions.

Projects include a new process that uses spinach to capture and convert the sun’s energy to electricity and a partnership with a local landfill to design a process that uses waste heat and drainage to grow algae for biodiesel production.  If one of the teams below is in your area they might be able to use your off-grid home or community as a test bed for ongoing research. Contact via the college or the EPA web site:

The projects were selected from more than 300 college innovators showcasing sustainable projects, almost all designed to facilitate off-grid living and use natural resources more efficiently.   Following an initial peer review process, the EPA selected 45 teams for two days of judging by a panel of national experts convened to provide recommendations to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Here is a complete list of the best projects:

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Solar Leasing

With meters running backwards, utilities seek a niche

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Land

Nine tips for land purchase and self-building

________________So you’ve decided to buy some land and build an off-grid home. Good luck.

If you are in the United States, chances are strong you will succeed. In the UK and Canada you will be beset by bureaucracy and even if you triumph over the system, there are plenty other traps for the unwary. Here is a checklist of simple ways to stay on top and out of trouble.

Time is money
Unless you are going for a second home, building your off-grid place is no quick route to home ownership and it takes an average of about two years from finding a plot to moving in, so make sure you factor in the cost of renting or paying the mortgage on your existing home over this period. Half of this time is likely to be spent securing the relevant permissions and finding contractors.

Beware of false economies

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Urban

Future high-end homes

Los Angeles, the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the California Institute of Technology are running a poster child for a new generation of smart homes. CHIP, which stands for Compact Hyper-Insulated Prototype, is a prefab, solar-powered home designed to challenge every architecture and engineering preconception about the net-zero-energy home.

The home’s energy functions are connected to a central, Internet-capable automation system that allows lights, air conditioning, home entertainment and irrigation systems to be turned on and off remotely.

Cape Town, the home building industry is similarly exploring innovative ways to go greener and smarter.

Architect Matthew Beatty says green building principles are not being driven by environmental concerns alone. Rapidly rising operating and utility costs, electricity and water usage in particular, will force us to turn to energy-efficient buildings.

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Solar Power intro

Are you thinking of switching from conventional energy to solar power? A rooftop solar PV power plant is not only a money-saver, it can also generate cash by supplying excess power to neighbours or the local power company.
In No Name Key, the Florida community where money-grubbing locals recently stumped up $650,000 to bring Utility power onshore, the economics of solar power has been transformed. The existing solar homes will now be able to wring a hefty income from the Keys Utility company which has laid the cables into the island paid for by those who want to push up property prices.

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