From Canada comes the rather amazing story of Cansolair, a company that reuses soda cans to make solar panels. Once installed, this soda/solar unit can provide up to 30% of the heating for your house. All this in the cloudy, foggy Labrador region. All without adding another CO2 particle to the environment. Maybe Coke knew it was onto something when they introduced this new flavor last year.
Check out this video to see how it’s done.
This car will be competing in October in the World Solar Challenge race across Australia. About a dozen team members are expected to go to Australia for the race, although only four will drive the solar car in the competition. By the way, the car’s name is Eleanor and when the sun shines, it will do 55 mph all day long.
That’s the upside of the NYT story Dark Days for Green Energy, which details slowdowns and layoffs in the alternative energy world brought on by a combination of the credit crisis and the continued price moderation of fossil fuels. We’re trying hard to see the positive side of things here at Warm Home Cool Planet.
The price of solar panels has fallen by 25 percent in six months, according to Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, who said he expected a further drop of 10 percent by midsummer. For homeowners, however, the savings will not be as substantial, partly because panels account for only about 60 percent of total installation costs.
So while congress debates how much of the stimulus package will be spent on tax cuts, and how much will be spent on, well, actual infrastructure spending that stimulates the economy, maybe more of us can take matters into our own hands and start buying up those solar panels.
Of course, just when we thought that the glass was at least half full we read this:
In Massachusetts, for example, the Commonwealth Solar program cut its rebate by $1 per watt on Jan. 1, reducing the overall discount by $3,000 for a 3 kilowatt solar panel system…
So make your calculations carefully, and make sure you get the latest information on the bewildering array of deductions, exemptions, incentives and rebates which make Massachusetts one of the most solar progressive states in the country. This list of goodies is dated 2009, which is nice.
Built by volunteers in the Riverside Neighborhood of Cambridge twenty eight years ago, this old solar project just keeps on keeping on.
So you’re caught up in the moment, dreaming about solar panels, a wind turbine on your roof, selling energy back to the power company rather than paying a monthly utility bill. But if we are, as President Obama suggested, to put aside childish things and enter a new era of responsibility, we must do first things first.
That means having taking a whole house approach to our energy conservation efforts. it doesn’t make sense to spend tens of thousands of dollars generating electricity you’re throwing away through inefficiency. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you generate energy or simply consume it, what really matters is your net energy footprint.
People sometimes fixate on a single facet of a problem with the best intentions. Dieters pack on the pounds while virtuously wolfing down bags of fat-free cookies. How many times have you heard someone order the super-size double whopper value meal with a diet soda, and thought that soda isn’t really the problem?
The free home energy audit is a good starting place for rethinking your energy diet.
You’ve got to learn to walk before you can run.