Carlsbad Chronicles: A Tale of Solar Aspirations

Imagine the sun-kissed town of Carlsbad, where rooftops are adorned with solar panels like shimmering jewels. In the heart of this sunlit paradise, resides Jake, an enthusiastic environmentalist with a vision of transforming Carlsbad into a beacon of renewable energy. Inspired by the potential of solar power, Jake decided to take the plunge into sustainable living and installed solar panels on his home.

Fast forward a few years, and Jake noticed a gradual decline in his solar power output. Puzzled, he delved into the world of panel degradation. This real-life scenario in Carlsbad emphasizes the importance of understanding the long-term effects on your solar power calculation.

The Pandemic Pause: An Unanticipated Hurdle

As we navigate the landscape of sustainable energy, it’s essential to consider unforeseen challenges. The pandemic, a global crisis that touched every corner of the world, brought about disruptions we never anticipated. Supply chain shortages and logistical nightmares affected industries across the board, including the solar sector.

In Newmarket, a small town grappling with the aftermath of the pandemic, Sarah found herself facing unexpected delays in maintaining her solar panels. The shortage of essential components meant that replacements were hard to come by. This unexpected pause in maintenance showcased the vulnerability of solar infrastructure during uncertain times, adding another layer of complexity to the solar power calculation equation.

Crunching Numbers: Solar Power Calculation Unveiled

Now, let’s demystify the intricacies of calculating solar power energy. It’s not just about the initial installation; it’s about projecting into the future, considering the wear and tear, and accounting for external factors like global crises.

Understanding Solar Power Calculation: A Brief Overview

You, like Jake and Sarah, might wonder how to calculate solar power energy effectively. The solar power calculation involves assessing panel efficiency, sunlight exposure, and the impact of long-term degradation. It’s a delicate dance between the potential energy harnessed and the gradual loss of efficiency over time.

The Carlsbad Conundrum: Navigating Degradation Challenges

In Carlsbad, Jake faced the challenge of estimating how much his solar panels had degraded. Long-term exposure to the sun, weather fluctuations, and other environmental factors contribute to this gradual decline. This predicament highlights the need for accurate estimates when calculating solar power energy in the long run.

The Pandemic Pause Revisited: Factoring in Unexpected Delays

Sarah’s story in Newmarket serves as a stark reminder that the unexpected can disrupt even the most meticulously planned solar power calculation. The pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions exposed vulnerabilities in maintenance, emphasizing the importance of contingency planning in your solar journey.

Navigating Newmarket: A Blueprint for Sustainable Solar

In Newmarket, where Sarah faced challenges, a community initiative emerged. The town collectively embraced sustainable practices, forming a network to share insights and support in solar panel maintenance. This collaborative effort demonstrated the power of community-driven solutions and offered a template for others facing similar challenges.

The Path Forward: Integrating Lessons for a Sustainable Future

As we reflect on Carlsbad’s aspirations, the pandemic’s hurdles, and Newmarket’s community-driven approach, the path forward becomes clearer. Estimating long-term panel degradation impacts is not just about numbers; it’s about resilience, adaptability, and community spirit.

Embracing Sustainable Solutions: Beyond the Solar Power Calculation

In your solar journey, consider the Carlsbad lesson—regular maintenance and monitoring are crucial. Factor in potential disruptions like the pandemic, and learn from Newmarket’s collaborative approach. Sustainability is not a solo endeavor; it’s a collective effort that requires continuous learning and adaptation.

Charting Your Solar Course: A Personal Call to Action

Now, armed with insights and anecdotes from Carlsbad, the pandemic, and Newmarket, it’s time to chart your solar course. Embrace the future with a solar power calculation that goes beyond the immediate installation, considering the long-term impacts and potential challenges that may arise.

In the end, it’s not just about calculating solar power energy; it’s about creating a legacy of sustainable living. As you embark on this journey, remember that every watt generated is a step towards a greener, cleaner future—a future we build together, one solar panel at a time.

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Here are a few ways you can build smarter and secure a brighter future for yourself and the planet.

Build Smaller

New homes in the United States have a larger square footage than those in any other country, and they’re only getting bigger. Home sizes have grown 63% over the past 44 years, which means there’s less green space and more congestion than ever before.

Therefore, the most eco-friendly building option is to construct smaller homes, which won’t affect the environment and its biodiversity so drastically. Modest houses also use fewer materials and require less energy to heat and cool, which is a huge plus for the planet.

Incorporate Passive Design

If you want to save money on energy bills and build a naturally eco-friendly home, try incorporating passive design. This sustainable approach features strategic window placement, extremely effective wall insulation and a tight building envelope to maximize energy efficiency.

Do you live in a colder climate? Install more windows in West-facing walls to increase warmth and light. If, on the other hand, you’re building a home in a hot environment, you may choose to install East-facing windows to keep the interior cooler without running AC. Purchase energized, dual-glazed glass to minimize conductive heat loss and get the best bang for your buck.

Rely on Renewables

Integrating renewable energy systems into your home’s design is another great way to save money and be a more eco-friendly consumer. Whether you install solar panels, residential wind turbines or a small-scale hydroelectric system, you’ll effectively minimize your carbon footprint by shunning fossil fuels like coal and oil.

Want something a bit more subtle? Opt for photovoltaic windows or hire a construction team that partners with local wind farms or solar facilities for power. These decisions may seem insignificant, but they add up to make a huge difference.

Install Energy Star Appliances

If you don’t want to install renewable energy systems, the next best option is to purchase Energy Star appliances. These gadgets are more energy-efficient and will conserve resources so you don’t rely so heavily on fossil fuels.

Choose an Energy Star rated washer and dishwasher and low-flow toilets and showerheads to conserve water. Look for clothes dryers, refrigerators, dehumidifiers and other appliances with the same rating, too. While they may require a bigger upfront investment, they’ll save you more money in the long run.

Landscape Wisely

Landscaping is yet another important part of building your home, and you owe it to the Earth to make your yard eco-friendly. Instead of tossing the wood and brush you cleared to lay foundations, use a drum mulcher to convert it into wood chips for your garden or flower beds. You can also practice xeriscaping, which involves placing plants with the same water requirements close together to improve irrigation efficiency.

Choosing native plants can also benefit local wildlife and conserve water. Incorporating rain gardens, green walls, and ground cover can also minimize mowing, watering and pesticide application, all of which can negatively impact the environment.

Recycle and Repurpose

Instead of purchasing brand new materials to construct your home, consider using recycled and reclaimed materials. If you’re demolishing an old home to build yours, salvage whatever you can and repurpose it. Recycle the rest to keep it out of landfills and conserve nonrenewable resources like plastic, steel, aluminum and glass.

Another great way to save money and resources is to visit second-hand shops like Habitat for Humanity. These places are a gold mine for builders looking to repurpose everything from old doors to light fixtures.

Use Sustainable Materials

More and more project managers are looking for sustainable building materials because they’re easier to maintain and can substantially increase resale values. However, if your builder isn’t accustomed to sourcing eco-friendly materials, you have every right to ask for them.

Look into composite roofing shingles, and bamboo or cork flooring, which are more sustainable than hardwood. Precast concrete slabs are an excellent choice, too, as they often take less energy to assemble.

The Most Eco-Friendly Option

Of course, the best way to make home building more eco-friendly is to refrain from building anything new at all. After all, moving into a pre-existing house doesn’t require any new materials. Even if you renovate, you’ll use fewer resources than you would building a home from scratch. Therefore, it’s best to treat construction as a last resort and only lay new foundations when absolutely necessary. Then, you can incorporate the eco-friendly materials and practices above.

Originally Published: wakeup-world.com

The post How to Make Home Building More Eco-Friendly appeared first on Table for Change.

Things didn’t go to plan, and Tesla’s ambitions for a wireless global electricity supply were never realized. But the theory itself wasn’t disproved: it would have simply required an extraordinary amount of power, much of which would have been wasted.

Now, a research paper has suggested that the architects of the 5G network may have unwittingly built what Tesla failed to construct at the turn of the twentieth century: a “wireless power grid” that could be adapted to charge or power small devices embedded in cars, homes, workplaces, and factories.

Because 5G relies upon a dense network of masts and a powerful series of antenna, it’s possible that the same infrastructure, with some tweaks, could beam power to small devices. But the transmission will still suffer from the key drawback of Tesla’s towers: high energy wastage, which may be difficult to justify given the urgency of the climate crisis.

5G Networks

Decades ago, it was discovered that a tightly focused radio beam can transmit power over relatively large distances without using a wire to carry the charge. The same technology is now used in the 5G network: the latest generation of technology to beam internet connection to your phone, via radio waves transmitted from a local antenna.

This 5G technology aims to provide a 1,000-fold capacity increase over the last generation, 4G, to allow up to one million users to connect per square kilometer—making those moments searching for signal at music festivals or sports events a thing of the past.

To support these upgrades, 5G uses some engineering magic, and this magic comes in three parts: very dense networks with many more masts, special antenna technology, and the inclusion of millimeter wave (mmWave) transmission alongside more traditional bands.

The last of these, mmWave, opens up much more bandwidth at the cost of shorter transmission distances. For context, most WiFi routers operate in the 2GHz band. If your router has a 5GHz option, you’ll have noticed that movies stream more smoothly—but you have to be closer to your router for it to work.

Increase the frequency further (like mmWave, which operates at 30GHz or more) and you see even greater improvements in bandwidth—but you need to be closer to the base station to access it. This is why 5G masts are more densely clustered than 4G masts.

The last bit of magic is to add many more antennas—between 128 and 1,024 compared to a much smaller number (just two in some cases) for 4G. Multiple antennas allow masts to form hundreds of pencil-like beams that target particular devices, providing efficient and reliable internet to your phone on the move.

These happen to be the same raw ingredients needed to create a wireless power grid. The increased network density is particularly important, because it opens up the possibility of using mmWave bands to transmit different radio waves which can carry both internet connection and electrical power.

Experimenting With 5G Power

The experiments used new types of antenna to facilitate wireless charging. In the laboratory, the researchers were able to beam 5G power over a relatively short distance of just over 2 meters, but they expect that a future version of their device will be able to transmit 6μW (6 millionths of a watt) at a distance of 180 meters.

To put that into context, common Internet of Things (IoT) devices consume around 5μW—but only when in their deepest sleep mode. Of course, IoT devices will require less and less power to run as clever algorithms and more efficient electronics are developed, but 6μW is still a very small amount of power.

That means, for the time being at least, that 5G wireless power is unlikely to be practical for charging your mobile phone as you go about your day. But it could charge or power IoT devices, like sensors and alarms, which are expected to become widespread in the future.

In factories, for instance, hundreds of IoT sensors are likely to be used to monitor conditions in warehouses, to predict failures in machinery, or to track the movement of parts along a production line. Being able to beam power directly to these IoT devices will encourage the move to far more efficient manufacturing practices.

Teething Problems

But there will be challenges to overcome before then. To provide wireless power, 5G masts will consume around 31 kilowatts of energy—equivalent to 10 kettles constantly boiling water.

Though concerns that 5G technology can cause cancer have been widely debunked by scientists, this amount of power emanating from masts could be unsafe. A rough calculation suggests that users will need to be kept at least 16 meters away from masts to comply with safety regulations set by the US Federal Communications Commission.

That said, this technology is in its infancy. It’s certainly possible that future approaches, such as new antenna with narrower and more targeted beams, could significantly reduce the energy required—and wasted—by each mast.

At present, the proposed system is rather reminiscent of the fictional “Wonkavision” in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which achieved the feat of beaming confectionary into TVs—but had to use a huge block of chocolate to produce a much smaller one at the other end.

Because it’ll consume a high amount of power compared to the power it’ll deliver to devices, 5G wireless power is, for the moment, speculative. But if engineers can find more efficient ways to beam electricity through the air, it may well be that Nikola Tesla’s dream of wireless power could be realized—over 100 years since his attempts failed.

Originally Published: singularityhub.com

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The tsunami made the tribe realize how vulnerable they were to power outages. “The tsunami was really a wake-up call about how people experience a disaster here,” Jana Ganion, the tribe’s energy director tells The Washington Post. “We realized that people are going to come here for resources.”

So the tribe decided to do something few others were considering at the time. They built a microgrid to meet their own energy needs. Income from the 102-room hotel and casino helped pay for the $6.2 million facility, as did a grant from the state of California secured with help from the Schatz Energy Research Center, a clean-energy institute affiliated with Humboldt State University, according to the Post.

The microgrid saves the tribe $200,000 a year in utility costs and reduces its carbon footprint by 200 tons a year. The project has been so successful that the tribe is adding more solar panels to its general store and other structures on its 100-acre reservation. The existing solar array covers 2 acres and supplies electricity to a number of first generation Tesla Powerpack batteries.

Rolling Blackouts Test The Microgrid

Last fall, Pacific Gas & Electric cut the electricity to Shasta County to the east, but had to interrupt the supply to Humboldt County to do so. Overnight, the casino and hotel became the place that local hospitals, newspapers, and governments turned to during the outages.

The tribe transformed a hotel conference room into a newsroom so the local paper could publish. It used hotel rooms to take in 8 critically ill patients from the county’s Health and Human Services Department. The reservation’s gas station and mini mart were among the only ones open, drawing a nearly mile-long line of cars.

In all, the tribe served more than 10,000 people during the day-long outage — about 8% of the population of Humboldt County. “When these power cuts started, we looked like geniuses for what we had done. But in truth, we didn’t really see them coming when we made our decision,” Jason Ramos, a member of the tribal council who ran emergency operations during the blackout, tells the Post.

Merging The Past With The Future

The power cuts by PG&E and California’s other major utility companies have highlighted the state’s antiquated regulatory environment. Consumers are rushing to cut their reliance on the grid wherever possible after millions of customers had their electricity shut off last fall.

Henry Stern is a member of the California Senate. In 2018, his home was destroyed by the Woolsey Fire, which prompted him to introduce a bill that would make it easier for private citizens to create microgrids. The law was signed by outgoing governor Jerry Brown and establishes December, 2020 as the date when new regulations will take effect.

“It’s like we have a high schooler stuck in the sixth grade,” Stern says. “We’ve got a mature technology stuck in a far less mature regulatory system. It’s as much a culture shift as an engineering challenge that we face now.” Tom Williard, principal of Sage Energy Consulting, adds. “Utilities have had the same business model for 100 years, and boy, is it hard for them to change. But this is an issue that must be addressed quickly.”

At issue is the extent to which microgrid owners can share their electricity with others — the so-called “over the fence” doctrine. At present, they are not allowed to use existing transmission lines to supply power to other customers nearby, primarily because private microgrids are not regulated by the state.

In some states, microgrids are allowed to sell electricity to others, but only when power to the local grid is unavailable. That allows them to act as a critical backup strategy, especially for rural communities situated far from the generating facilities that normally supply the electrical grid. It also helps those who want to construct a microgrid to pay for it.

“The main culprit here is climate change,” says Jana Ganion, energy director for the Blue Lake Rancheria tribe. “When we look for the solutions to the wildfires and the power shut-offs — examples of our changing climate — we must make these decisions through the lens of clean energy.”

Can There Be Too Many Microgrids?

Speaking off the record, a member of the current administration in California tells The Washington Post, “As you think about doing these systems, you have to ask how much they will cost and how do you continue to fund the rest of the grid. Microgrids are a tool, they have a role, and they must be one of many things we have to look at. But they are not a panacea.”

One of the issues the governor’s office has to consider as it works to create a new regulatory framework for microgrids is making sure all customers are served. As microgrids proliferate, some residents of the state could find themselves locked out of local microgrids, leading to a possible “energy poverty” situation during periods when the main grid is blacked out.

The benefits of microgrids were amply demonstrated last October when rolling blackouts crippled Humboldt county. Now the issue is how to integrate them into the existing utility grid in a way that is fair to all stakeholders.

Originally Published: cleantechnica.com

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“Trees Are Cool,” reads a popular bumper sticker. That phrase has at least two possible meanings, and researchers have just added another pertinent interpretation. According to research published July 5th in the journal Science, a worldwide tree planting program that does not encroach on existing agricultural land or urban areas could remove two thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities over the past 200 years, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing.”

Here’s the abstract of that study.

The restoration of trees remains among the most effective strategies for climate change mitigation. We mapped the global potential tree coverage to show that 4.4 billion hectares of canopy cover could exist under the current climate. Excluding existing trees and agricultural and urban areas, we found that there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares of canopy cover, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon in areas that would naturally support woodlands and forests. This highlights global tree restoration as our most effective climate change solution to date.

However, climate change will alter this potential tree coverage. We estimate that if we cannot deviate from the current trajectory, the global potential canopy cover may shrink by ~223 million hectares by 2050, with the vast majority of losses occurring in the tropics. Our results highlight the opportunity of climate change mitigation through global tree restoration but also the urgent need for action.

“This new quantitative evaluation shows [forest] restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” lead researcher Tom Crowther of ETH Zürich in Switzerland tells The Guardian. “What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.” Fellow researcher Jean-François Bastin, also of ETH Zürich, agrees that climate action is urgent and asdds, “Governments must now factor [tree restoration] into their national strategies.”

Crowther went on to say that planting trees is not enough, however. Concurrent with the reforestration program, a dramatic decrease in new emissions will be required as well, since the planting process will take 50 to 100 years to fully sequester the projected 205 gigatons of carbon dioxide suggested by the study.

Tree planting is “a climate change solution that doesn’t require President Trump to immediately start believing in climate change or scientists to come up with technological solutions to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,” Crowther said. “It is available now, it is the cheapest one possible, and every one of us can get involved.” Individuals could make a tangible impact by growing trees themselves, donating to forest restoration organizations and avoiding irresponsible companies, he added.

“The most effective projects are doing restoration for $0.30 cents a tree. That means we could restore 1 trillion trees for $300 billion, though obviously that means immense efficiency and effectiveness. But it is by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed.” He believes $300 billion is a number a coalition of billionaire philanthropists could come up with together with members of the public.

To put it in perspective, Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington and a candidate for president of the United States, has proposed a climate change plan he says would cost $9 trillion but add millions of jobs to the economy.

The researchers, aided by hundreds of helpers, measured the amount of the tree cover shown in 80,000 high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth. They then used artificial intelligence computing to combine that data with 10 key soil, topography and climate factors to create a global map of where trees could grow.

Their analysis showed about 2/3 of the Earth’s land mass — about 8.7 billion hectares — are capable of supporting forests. 5.5 billion hectares are already forested and 1.5 billion hectares are used for growing food, which leaves 1.7 billion hectares in other areas. On the Crowther Lab website there is a tool available that lets you look at particular places in the world, identify the areas for restoration, and find out which species of trees are native to them.

“This research is excellent,” Joseph Poore, an environmental researcher at Queen’s College, University of Oxford tells The Guardian. “It presents an ambitious but essential vision for climate and biodiversity.” But he has a concern. Many of the reforestation areas identified — particularly in Ireland — are currently grazed by livestock. “Without freeing up the billions of hectares we use to produce meat and milk, this ambition is not realizable.”

Crowther has an answer for Poore’s complaint. “Restoring trees at [low] density is not mutually exclusive with grazing. In fact many studies suggest sheep and cattle do better if there are a few trees in the field.” The potential to grow trees alongside crops such as coffee, cocoa and berries – called agro-forestry – was not been included in the calculation of tree restoration potential and neither were hedgerows: “Our estimate of 0.9bn hectares [of canopy cover] is reasonably conservative,” Crowther says.

Objections & Quibbles

Not everyone agrees with the conclusions Crowther and his team have come up with, and reducing carbon emissions will still be essential to any climate action plan. But a proposal that costs a tenth as much as carbon capture and geoengineering has to be given serious consideration. Crowther and company have given us a new tool to battle a warming planet if people can find the gumption to put it to good use.

Originally Published: https://cleantechnica.com

The post Got An Overheating Planet? Plant 1 Trillion Trees. Problem Solved appeared first on Table for Change.

Clean energy companies like SolarReserve want to prove molten salt can aid solar power electricity any time of day. The potential is there, but the price of generating power and the importance of energy storage must be addressed.

PRODUCING ENERGY WITH MOLTEN SALT

Alongside solar and wind power, clean energy companies are also looking into using salt to generate electricity — molten salt, to be precise. SolarReserve is just one of several companies trying to prove that molten salt can generate electricity just as effectively as solar and wind.

In 2015, the company brought its 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes solar energy facility in Nevada online, bringing with it 1,100 megawatt-hours of energy storage and the ability to power 75,000 homes in Nevada. Similar concentrated solar power (CSP) projects are planned for South Australia, Africa, Chilé, and more countries around the world.

You see, unlike solar and wind power, which can reduce the need for fossil fuel energy when the sun’s out or when it’s windy, facilities that utilize molten salt can operate at any time of day and store energy for up to 10 hours. This form of power comes about quite simply: sunshine concentrated onto a tower by a field of mirrors heats molten salt within the tower to over 1,000 degrees Farenheit, which can then be used to generate steam and turn a turbine.

Molten salt facilities are also cheaper. According to Inside Climate News, the Crescent Dunes plant can generate power for $0.06 per kilowatt hour. If a recent report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is anything to go by, prices are expected to become even cheaper.

THE NEED FOR ENERGY STORAGE

Even by its own standards, however, SolarReserve is falling a little behind. The Crescent Dunes plant is supposed to generate 500,000 MWh of electricity per year, but Inside Climate News reports it has yet to reach that goal.

Meanwhile, Spanish engineering company Sener has two projects for Ouarzazate, Morocco in the works that use molten salt. The price of the two projects isn’t quite low enough yet, but the expected price drop could put the company in a prime position to push their CSP projects. Even Google has plans to store renewable energy in molten salt, but it still needs to test its own system to see if it can be used commercially.

Before molten salt CSPs can truly begin paving the way to 24-hour solar energy, though, utility officials and energy policymakers need to understand the importance of energy storage, and when renewable energy is needed most. Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve, told Inside Climate News that U.S. utilities “just wanted kilowatt-hours. They didn’t care about when they got them.” In other words, they were less concerned about what time of day the renewable energy would be available to use.

Smith went on to explain that things are changing, with places like California having an excess of renewable energy generated during certain hours of the day. This is something that can only be addressed when the conversation with officials shifts to what to do with this excess energy, and what to do for their power grids as a whole.

“We believe now is the rebirth of the CSP market. And it’s all about storage,” said Smith.

Originally Published: futurism.com

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The most important change that can happen is smarter consumerism and a fix it instead of ditch it mentality when it comes to our electronics as well as always ensuring proper recycling when it’s time to get rid of them. But having more earth-friendly electronics is also key.

Researchers at Stanford University think they are well on their way to that goal after developing thin, flexible semiconductors and other electronics that are also biodegradable.
The team created a thin, polymer-based semiconductor that degrades when exposed to a weak acid like vinegar.

“This is the first example of a semiconductive polymer that can decompose,” said lead author Ting Lei, a postdoctoral fellow working with Bao.

The team also made a degradable electronic circuit and a biodegradable substrate material that all of the various electronics can be mounted on. All of these parts are flexible and can mold to smooth or rough surfaces, even an avocado.

The substrate is made from a transparent cellulose and the electronic components are made from iron instead of gold, which is environmentally friendly and not toxic to humans.

These skin-like electronics will have a plethora of applications like skin patches that monitor glucose levels, blood pressure and other vital signs as well as wearable gadgets and environmental monitoring sensors that could be deployed across large areas, sending back data on forest health and then biodegrading when done.

Bao’s team hopes that biodegradability becomes a part of all electronics not just their skin-like devices.

“We currently have computers and cell phones and we generate millions and billions of cell phones, and it’s hard to decompose,” said Lei. “We hope we can develop some materials that can be decomposed so there is less waste.”

The post Biodegradable Semiconductors Could Help Our E-Waste Problem appeared first on Table for Change.

For those who can’t, or don’t want to, install solar on their rooftop, or who just want to offset some of their electricity with clean solar energy from their windows, a forthcoming product could prove to be a simple DIY solution. SolarGaps motorized blinds, from a Ukrainian startup, is one of those ideas that seems so obvious after you hear about it, because while even ‘dumb’ window blinds can save a significant amount of energy by reducing the cooling load of a room, adding solar cells and a tracking mechanism to them is a great two-fer.

The SolarGaps smart solar blinds can be mounted inside or outside windows, and include a motorized component for either manually or automatically raising and lowering them, while an automatic tracking mechanism adjusts the angle of the blinds to follow the sun’s position through the day. The blinds are made with SunPower solar cells, which have a purported 25-year lifespan, and the electricity generated by them can be used directly or stored in a home battery system for use after dark. According to the company, a square meter of SolarGaps blinds can produce 100 watt-hours of electricity per day when mounted outside the window, or up to 50 watt-hours per day when mounted inside, which is “enough to power 30 LED light bulbs or three MacBooks.”

“Today billions of city residents never have the opportunity to use solar power because they live in apartments with no roof access to install solar panels. Yet, the majority of them have windows which can be used to generate electricity and save energy. SolarGaps provides them with such an opportunity. No matter if you live in a house or an apartment, SolarGaps opens your windows (pun intended) to green energy.” – SolarGaps

The aluminum blinds also function as privacy shades, and when mounted outside, offer window protection during storms as well, and are said to be functional “between -40 degrees Fahrenheit to +176 degrees Fahrenheit.” And because everything is going ‘smart’ these days, the SolarGaps can be app-controlled and set on an automated schedule (or operated manually), and can integrate with other smart home devices such as Google Home, Amazon Echo, and the Nest thermostat.

According to the company, the SolarGaps blinds are designed “to fit a broad range of windows” and can be custom-sized as well. These horizontal blinds have a maximum width of 8ft (2.5m), a minimum width of 24in (60cm), a maximum height of 13ft (4m), are 3 inches (8cm) deep, and weigh in at about 20 pounds for every 10 square feet.

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The Prosper-Haniel coal mine in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia will be converted into a 200 megawatt pumped-storage hydroelectric reservoir that acts like a giant battery. The capacity is enough to power more than 400,000 homes, Governor Hannelore Kraft said, according to Bloomberg.

 

Founded in 1863, the Prosper-Haniel coal mine produces 3,000,000t/y of coal and is one of the few active coal mines remaining in Germany. But the mine is slated for closure in 2018, when federal subsidies for the industry dry up.

Kraft said that the miners in the town of Bottrop will remain employed at the site as it converts to its new function.

Pumped-storage facilities are not a new idea, as such systems are already in operation around the world. However, this is the first time that a coal mine will be used as part of the infrastructure.

Engadget explained how such a facility would work:

Similar to a standard hydroelectric power plant, pumped hydroelectric storage stations generate power by releasing water from a reservoir through a turbine to a second reservoir at a lower altitude. Rather than releasing the outflow, however, the water is then stored in the lower reservoira until it can be pumped back up to the top reservoir using cheaper, off-peak power or another renewable energy source. In the case of the Prosper-Haniel plant, the lower reservoir will be made up of more than 16 miles of mine shafts that reach up to 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) deep. The station’s 200 megawatts of hydroelectric power would fit into a mix of biomass, solar and wind power. It’s not a perpetual motion machine, but the water stored in the surface reservoir will effectively act as as backup “battery” that could kick in and fill any gaps in the energy mix whenever the other sources fall short.

Germany’s ambitious “Energiewende,” or energy transition, aims for at least an 80 percent share of renewables by 2050, with intermediate targets of 35 to 40 percent share by 2025 and 55 to 60 percent by 2035.

The country is well on track, as renewables supplied nearly 33 percent of German electricity in 2015, according to Agora Energiewende.

Germany has such an impressive renewable energy mix that last year, on a particularly windy and sunny day, so much power was generated that people were paid to use it.

And while that’s good news for the environment and German consumers alike, renewable energy has a well known storage problem. The electricity produced by, say, wind turbines or solar panels must be used or else it’s lost. On the flip side, renewables might not be able to meet demand on cloudy days with no wind.

Batteries, working as pumped-storage facilities, are a promising solution to this problem, since they store excess renewable energy on productive days and discharge it during energy shortfalls.

“We have a very sympathetic ear” to sustainable and cost-effective storage, Governor Kraft said in a March 14 speech in Dusseldorf.

More mines could be converted into industrial-scale storage facilities as North-Rhine Westphalia seeks to double the share of renewables in its power mix to 30 percent by 2025, Kraft said.

Learn more about Germany’s transition from coal here:

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