The New Tesla Home Battery Powered By Solar Will Make Off Grid Living Mainstream One of the brains behind Tesla motors and Paypal, Tesla Motors CEO and entrepreneur Elon Musk has a new invention up his sleeve that will help power homes at low cost, and it will make living off-grid easier than ever. A Florida woman had to stand up to a local judge to continue living off grid when he declared it illegal, but if millions of people start to live more self-sufficiently and sustainably, what will the corrupt judiciary say then? Musk’s new invention is based on Tesla’s lithium-ion battery technology, and the new battery is expected to help the company become a leader in the growing home energy-storage market. “We are going to unveil the Tesla home battery, the consumer battery that would be for use in people’s houses or businesses fairly soon,” Bloomberg quoted Musk as saying. Not only does this mean that people could tell their electric company (and their high bills) good-bye, better lithium-ion storage also means that even solar arrays would work better.
When Will This West Oakland Neighborhood Get a Grocery Store? At the corner of West Grand Avenue and Market Street lies a vacant dirt lot, one of many scattered throughout West Oakland. This unassuming space is one of three priority locations for People’s Community Market (PCM), which could be the neighborhood’s first grocery store. But in the brutal Bay Area real estate market, making the project a reality is proving to be a difficult undertaking. Brahm Ahmadi’s been working on it for five years. The community organizer who moved to Oakland more than a decade ago wanted to create an “authentic grocery store” that would provide healthy, affordable food options for locals. Ahmadi recognized the need for a full-service grocery store while serving as the executive director of nonprofit People’s Grocery. His goal received national news coverage and he pitched the idea to various investors, but investors balked at the low rate of return. Now PCM faces a new challenge. The challenge now may be as much political as it is financial.
Solar power passes 1% global threshold - Futurism Synopsis Solar power now covers more than 1% of global electricity demand. In three countries in Europe – Italy, Germany and Greece – solar PV supplies more than 7% of electricity demand. Summary China is currently the fastest growing market, installing 10.6 GW in 2014, followed by Japan with 9.7 GW and the US with just over 6.5 GW. At Their Annual Gathering in Seattle, Urban Planners Confronted a Growing Housing Affordability Crisis By most measures, Seattle is exactly the kind of urban success story to be celebrated by the 6,300 planners and other city-minded activists who gathered here this week for the American Planning Association’s annual National Planning Conference. This is a city with plenty of height and density, after all. It has streetcars and other transit, plus bikes and pedestrians coursing through a grid. There are lots of innovation-economy jobs, too, as witnessed by the Amazon-fueled building boom all along Westlake Avenue. It’s as green a city as they come, and there’s a bustling foodie scene, thoroughly local and organic. Even the weather was nice. It all sounds great, except for one additional characteristic of this fast-growing Pacific Northwest metropolis of 3.6 million: It’s rapidly becoming unaffordable. The cost of housing in Seattle is already a crushing burden on household budgets. But for all that effort, a total of 1,787 affordable units have been built since 1992, Rahaim said.
Cover Charge: New Spray-On Battery Could Convert Any Object into an Electricity Storage Device Perhaps someday you'll need to go to the store because you ran out of cathode paint. A team of researchers has just announced a new paint-on battery design. The technique could change the way batteries are produced and eliminate restrictions on the surfaces used for energy storage. The paint-on battery, like all lithium ion batteries, consists of five layers: a positive current collector, a cathode that attracts positively charged ions, an ion-conducting separator, an anode to attract negative ions, and a negative current collector. Neelam Singh, a member of the team of materials scientists and chemists from Rice University in Houston and Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and lead author of the paper, says, "It was really exciting to find out. Singh says her team's work is filling a need in the socially critical field of energy storage for new battery designs. But for now paint-on batteries are not quite ready to hit the shelves at your local hardware store.
This affordable housing complex has a solar farm on its roof In a city dotted with cranes and shiny high-rise residences, it’s easy to miss the Holiday Apartments. Located on a busy street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, the blue-green building has a simple, rectangular design. It’s only three stories high and has a modest 30 units. A clock with a sunburst design, located on the building’s side, provides a touch of pop — and hints at the building’s cool secret: There’s a solar farm on its roof. These days, a rooftop solar array may not sound like a big surprise, even in rainy Seattle. The solar sector in particular is going off. All these projects turning sunlight into electricity will make money, by selling said electricity, collecting government incentives, or both. Clean energy on the grid is good for everyone — because, you know, climate change — but the rewards are not evenly distributed. That’s a problem. The solar farm atop the Holiday Apartments is an attempt to address this very dilemma. What gives?
Israeli firm developing electricity-generating roads Tiny piezoelectric crystals embedded in the road generate electricity when driven over A group of Israeli engineers have created a system that allows certain types of roads to generate electricity just by driving over them. The Israeli engineers behind the project claim that a 1km stretch of the power-generating asphalt will generate 400kW - enough power to run eight small cars. The system works by embedding tiny piezoelectric crystals into the road. According to the Environmental Transport Association (ETA), if the system was installed on every stretch of British motorway it would generate enough energy to run 34,500 small cars. The system differs to another electricity-generating road we reported earlier, developed by a Californian local. While the Israeli project is still undergoing testing, the hydraulic plate system is expected to be used by Oakland terminal operator SSA to supply around 5% of its energy needs.
Capracotta, Italy Sets New World Record For Single-Day Snowfall The town of Capracotta, Italy, last week following 101 inches of snow that fell in 18 hours. Meteoweb.eu photo. According to Meteoweb.eu, on Thursday, March 5th, the town of Capracotta in the Italian province of Isernia broke the single-day snowfall record–tallying up an absurd 265 centimeters, or 8 feet, 4.8 inches–in a mere 18 hours. The town, which sits at right about 4,700 feet in central Italy's Apennine Mountains, is historically one of the snowiest areas in the world thanks to its proximity to moisture coming off of the Mediterranean, and broke the single-day snowfall record previously held by the town of Silver Lake, Colorado, which tallied up 6 feet, 4 inches during an April storm in 1921. The streets of Capracotta post Guinness book-setting snowfall. Read also: The Winners and Losers of the 2015 Season
The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change Forever The renewable-energy boom is here. Trillions of dollars will be invested over the next 25 years, driving some of the most profound changes yet in how humans get their electricity. That's according to a new forecast by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that plots out global power markets to 2040. Here are six massive shifts coming soon to power markets near you: 1. The price of solar power will continue to fall, until it becomes the cheapest form of power in a rapidly expanding number of national markets. Solar power will eventually get so cheap that it will outcompete new fossil-fuel plants and even start to supplant some existing coal and gas plants, potentially stranding billions in fossil-fuel infrastructure. 2. With solar power so cheap, investments will surge. 3. The biggest solar revolution will take place on rooftops. $2.2 Trillion Goes to Rooftops by 2040 4. Yes, the world is inundated with mobile phones, flat screen TVs, and air conditioners. The Beauty of Efficiency 5. 6.
Solar Streets: New Roadways May Ditch Asphalt for Energy-Generating Sunshine ... As a kid in the 1960s, before most people had even heard of solar power, Scott Brusaw imagined “electric roads.” Almost five decades and two government-funded prototypes later, the electrical engineer from Ohio is on his way to raising $1 million to start producing solar panels for our streets and highways. Not to power the light, mind you—to function as streets and highways. “We can use [photovoltaic panels] to create roads, parking lots, tarmacs—anything under the sun,” Brusaw says. The biggest challenge Brusaw faced was engineering a case to protect the fragile solar cells. It may take some time to see them on highways, though. “The regulatory challenges of putting solar panels on rooftops were significant over the last 20 or 30 years,” Fromer says. Electric safety concerns would also need to be addressed, he says, considering that the road is not controlled. Brusaw’s project could have a huge impact—if it overcomes the many challenges to getting it out into the real world.
IBM Solar Collector Magnifies Sun By 2000X and Could Provide Power to the Entire Planet - Futurism | Futurism Synopsis A team at IBM recently developed what they call a High Concentration Photo Voltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system that is capable of concentrating the power of 2,000 suns. Summary Each 1cmX1cm chip can convert 200-250 watts, on average, over a typical eight-hour day in a sunny region. In the HCPVT system, instead of heating a building, the 90 degree Celsius water will pass through a porous membrane distillation system where it is then vaporized and desalinated.
Debate on climate change should be over THE state Senate this week had a brief but telling debate about climate change. It ended, depressingly, with a mostly party-line vote that very well could have taken place years earlier, with Republicans resisting the science on humankind’s clear role in reshaping our global climate. At issue was an amendment proposed by state Sen. Cyrus Habib, D-Kirkland, to a worthwhile energy policy bill that simply added the international scientific consensus: “The Legislature finds that climate change is real and that human activity significantly contributes to climate change.” State Sen. That retrograde summary of climate change research is wrong and corrosive. Ericksen’s amendment passed because just one Democrat, state Sen. From the Puget Sound region, Republican Sens. There certainly were partisan politics in play with this vote: a Democrat, Habib, seeking to amend a Republican’s bill in the GOP-led Senate.
France decrees new rooftops must be covered in plants or solar panels - Futurism | Futurism Synopsis Rooftops on new buildings built in commercial zones in France must either be partially covered in plants or solar panels, under a law approved on Thursday. Summary Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer. Changing the Conversation About the Growth of Pacific Northwest Cities From the issue feature, "Living by Design in the Pacific Northwest." Subscribe to receive ARCADE in print. Illustration: Roman Kogan According to The New York Times website, last September one of their most emailed stories was an article by Jennifer A. We live in a beautiful region endowed with an abundance of ecosystems that provide clean air, water, energy and food. In October, Sustainable Seattle launched the Pacific Northwest Resilience Challenge with a summit at the University of Washington. 1. 2. 3. This was not a design challenge, a policy forum or an academic conclave, but all the players were there: developers, corporations, land use planners, angel investors, academics, public utilities, game designers, lawyers, data analysts, insurance brokers, nonprofits and local and state government agencies. The financial shackle is a chimera. The biggest challenge is the lack of political will to act. Current discussions about resilience focus on risk.