Greenman3610 takes on the idea that wind energy is not as efficient in this video and explains why cutting funding to the growing industry would be a bad idea.
Showing posts with label Alternative energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alternative energy. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Monday, September 12, 2011
I Want One!
Having more and more energy efficient houses and buildings is beneficial not just to the people who make the technology but in the long run to the people who live in the houses as Greenman3610 shows in his latest video. We have been seeing over the last few years more and more houses like these popping up around the country and as far as houses are concerned it is definitely the wave of the future. As the title of my post suggests I would really like one but that isn't going to happen for sometime. Right now though I would just take a more energy efficient apartment building but right now most apartments don't have any reason to make their buildings more energy efficient, why should they in order to maximize profit for them they need must put in the cheapest stuff available and fix broken parts with cheap parts. I want to make something clear that I don't have a problem with them trying to make a profit but I feel you could charge more rent if people didn't have to pay as much for their utilities they would want to move into your place, ok that is the end of that rant but hey its my blog. Enjoy the video.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Energy Efficiency
Greenman3610 has a new video out showing that even if politicians don't want to believe it companies and private individuals have been slowly trying to become more efficient in their energy usage.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
T. Boone Pickens on The Daily Show
So after my last post I figured I would include the extended interview Jon Stewart had with T. Boone Pickens earlier this week.
Mr. Pickens is someone who made his money in the oil and gas industry and is now an advocate of trying to get off of OPEC oil and converting to cleaner natural gas that we can find within the US. Mr. Pickens has also been an advocate of other alternative energy sources including wind power.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive - T. Boone Pickens Extended Interview | ||||
| ||||
Mr. Pickens is someone who made his money in the oil and gas industry and is now an advocate of trying to get off of OPEC oil and converting to cleaner natural gas that we can find within the US. Mr. Pickens has also been an advocate of other alternative energy sources including wind power.
Wind Power in Oil Country
When most people think of west Texas they think of oil. The southern high plains and areas nearby have long produced many barrels of oil. This is largely due to the presence of the Permian Basin that made this area a rich area at one time. In recent times oil production has decreased as the peak oil for this area has long since been removed. This has led to an economic depression of sorts in cities such as Midland/Odessa and surrounding areas. But some of this is starting to change.
In the mid-1800s when farmers first started settling the southern high plains a major problem to agriculture in this area is the lack of water. At some point in time water was discovered in the Ogallala Aquifer in the rocks making up the Ogallala fromation as well as some of the underlying Cretaceous rocks. This water would allow farmers to grow plants that would not normally have naturally grown. In order to get this water up from the deep the water needed to be pumped up from these depths. To accomplish this task windmills, like the one at left [photo at left of a windmill at the National Ranching Heritage Center (Wikipedia article) in Lubbock, Texas from ~1898 taken by author], were built that would use the naturally occurring high winds in this area to pump the water up (as someone who has living out on the southern high plains trust me the wind is almost always blowing).
Wind is continuing to serve the southern high plains today. With the decline in oil the future in energy is starting to move toward alternative fuels. In Lubbock there is a place known as the American Wind Power Center (Wikipedia article) which showcases the past present and future in wind power. In the wind power center they have a fully functioning moder windmill. Often times these modern windmills are accused of being loud but as you can see in the video I posted to YouTube earlier today is that the windmill itself is quieter than the wind itself. Most of sound that the windmill itself produced could not be heard until right next to it. What is more is that the farmers whose land is being used to put up many of these wind farms enjoy having them, just as they enjoyed having the oil wells before. The footprints of the wind farms are less than those of the oil fields before them and also give the farmers subsidies that are on par with or larger than their subsidies from the oil companies. And after the initial construction of the windmills farmers can continuing farming the land as they were before. All of these things contribute to making west Texas the wind power capital of the U.S.
As with oil before it the future of American power rests in west Texas!
In the mid-1800s when farmers first started settling the southern high plains a major problem to agriculture in this area is the lack of water. At some point in time water was discovered in the Ogallala Aquifer in the rocks making up the Ogallala fromation as well as some of the underlying Cretaceous rocks. This water would allow farmers to grow plants that would not normally have naturally grown. In order to get this water up from the deep the water needed to be pumped up from these depths. To accomplish this task windmills, like the one at left [photo at left of a windmill at the National Ranching Heritage Center (Wikipedia article) in Lubbock, Texas from ~1898 taken by author], were built that would use the naturally occurring high winds in this area to pump the water up (as someone who has living out on the southern high plains trust me the wind is almost always blowing).Wind is continuing to serve the southern high plains today. With the decline in oil the future in energy is starting to move toward alternative fuels. In Lubbock there is a place known as the American Wind Power Center (Wikipedia article) which showcases the past present and future in wind power. In the wind power center they have a fully functioning moder windmill. Often times these modern windmills are accused of being loud but as you can see in the video I posted to YouTube earlier today is that the windmill itself is quieter than the wind itself. Most of sound that the windmill itself produced could not be heard until right next to it. What is more is that the farmers whose land is being used to put up many of these wind farms enjoy having them, just as they enjoyed having the oil wells before. The footprints of the wind farms are less than those of the oil fields before them and also give the farmers subsidies that are on par with or larger than their subsidies from the oil companies. And after the initial construction of the windmills farmers can continuing farming the land as they were before. All of these things contribute to making west Texas the wind power capital of the U.S.
As with oil before it the future of American power rests in west Texas!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
It can be done!
It may at times seem impossible for us in the west to completely give up our coal, oil, and natural gas usage for energy. Well according to a story in the New York Times a Swedish city has managed to almost completely do that.
The difference between this and the use of ethanol as the U.S. mandated for gasoline is that it uses waste. The ethanol that the U.S. uses comes from corn this is corn that could have been used for eating or agricultural land used for something else. Instead this uses waste that has already been produced and will be produced no matter what and converts it into natural gas.
But Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels.What they have done is to use the agricultural products to produce methane and then capture this to burn to produce steam to turn the turbine in the power plant. They also manage to take some of this and convert it to fuel for cars. Methane is a type of natural gas and as with natural gas it burns much cleaner than these other sources of energy. This source of energy would be hard to manage in some of the larger cities in the U.S. and Europe but for areas where there is already plenty of agricultural waste this is a potential energy source.
But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or wind turbines for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines.
The difference between this and the use of ethanol as the U.S. mandated for gasoline is that it uses waste. The ethanol that the U.S. uses comes from corn this is corn that could have been used for eating or agricultural land used for something else. Instead this uses waste that has already been produced and will be produced no matter what and converts it into natural gas.
In the United States, biogas systems are rare. There are now 151 biomass digesters in the country, most of them small and using only manure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. estimated that installing such plants would be feasible at about 8,000 farms.It is nice to see that the idea is making inroads into the U.S. but it makes sense considering that consumers want to continue to receive cheap electricity but the backlash against higher carbon producers and against drilling and mining in general. This is positive but more work needs to be done as we try to clean up our act on the environment.
So far in the United States, such projects have been limited by high initial costs, scant government financing and the lack of a business model. There is no supply network for moving manure to a centralized plant and no outlet to sell the biogas generated.
Still, a number of states and companies are considering new investment.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Time to act
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico(/America if you ask Colbert) continues to be the big news all over the U.S., as it should be. Jon Stewart on Wednesday night did a segment on President Obama's speech. In that speech the President says we need to work on getting off of oil, well this was Stewart's response:
If this isn't an excuse to get us off of oil I don't know what will. While I know that it will take sometime (we can't just change overnight) there is a way to start making alternatives more acceptable. Start by lowering subsidies to oil companies and increase the subsidies to alternative energy solutions among other things. There is increasing evidence that we are changing the global climate but not only that we are running out of oil it is time to instigate a change before we are forced to make a change because we run out of oil. It is time to act!!!!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| An Energy-Independent Future | ||||
| ||||
If this isn't an excuse to get us off of oil I don't know what will. While I know that it will take sometime (we can't just change overnight) there is a way to start making alternatives more acceptable. Start by lowering subsidies to oil companies and increase the subsidies to alternative energy solutions among other things. There is increasing evidence that we are changing the global climate but not only that we are running out of oil it is time to instigate a change before we are forced to make a change because we run out of oil. It is time to act!!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
