Earth Day 2011

For Earth Day, a pointer to a decent article in Wikipedia about alternatives to fossil fuel. More clearly than ever, we see that there are ample sources of energy available to us - from sun, wind, water, algae, vanadium reflux batteries, hydrogen fuel cells and more. If we choose to pollute with a finite, increasingly expensive resource that has limitless political and economic implications, let's at least be clear that this is now a choice, and no longer a matter of necessity.

Alternative Energy

Conserving space and energy via smart grid tech

Recently a hot topic: Smart Grids - using energy with intelligence - storing and conserving it, "banking" it, instead of sending excess supplies into the ground, as seems to be the current practice.

Recently a New York architect offered an example of the kind of thinking that goes this way:

New York City has a lot of kids and precious few places where they can play outdoors and actually be kids (unless they're in private school!). New York architect Andrew Burdick's solution: Instead of building new fields, which would sap major time and money, extend the number of hours existing ones can be used.

To do that, Burdick, a finalist in the Philips Livable Cities Awardsand a staffer at Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partnership), proposes throwing up “smart-grid” solar- and wind-powered LED lights that'd allow kids and recreational sports teams to play in a safely lit space well into the night.. . .

Most field lights are huge purse and energy drains, so cities have little incentive to switch them on past dusk. Burdick's antenna-like fixtures include wind turbines and solar arrays that would feed energy to the grid during the day. At night, the fixtures would draw power directly from the grid, but because they're LEDs, they'd suck less juice than your average field light (often metal halide). All told, Burdick reckons that the lights would generate more power than they consume, resulting in a net gain for the city.

More.

San Francisco completes massive solar project

From AP -- Of interest given our discussion and tour of the solar array at Rothenbach Park:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco is now home to what city officials say is California's largest municipal solar installation.

Mayor Gavin Newsom on Monday announced the completion of the Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, which has almost 24,000 solar panels covering an area the size of 12 football fields.

Officials say the installation generates 5 megawatts of renewable energy daily, more than tripling the amount of solar power used by the San Francisco government.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will buy the electricity from Recurrent Energy, which built, owns and operates the project.

Officials say the Sunset Reservoir will help the city move toward its goal of generating all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.