Ecoexperimentos: Calentador solar gratis con botellas PET Hace ocho años José Alano, un mécanico brasileño retirado, tuvo la inspiración de recoger botellas de plástico (PET) y cartones de leche usados para desarrollar un sistema de calentamiento de agua por energía solar simple, barato y que pudiera construir cualquier persona.The Ecologist le dedica un estupendo artículo contando su historia:…viendo que en su pequeño pueblo de Tubarão no existía ninguna infraestructura para reciclar los envases y sintiéndose incapaces de tirar todos esos envases a la basura, Alano y su mujer pronto se encontraron con una habitación llena de botellas y cartones de leche vacíos. [...] Haciendo uso de su ingenio y experiencia con captadores solares, él y su esposa construyeron una versión alternativa utilizando 100 botellas PET y 100 cartones de leche usados. Lo que más impresiona es oir cómo Alano se describe a sí mismo:“No me considero un inventor, sino un simple ciudadano que trata de encontrar soluciones a los problemas.”
Make A Cheap & Easy Solar USB Charger With An Altoids Tin Photos by Joshua Zimmerman The craftster behind the very popular $3 solar-powered emergency radio is back with a new awesome project: a cheap solar battery charger with a USB plug. Zimmerman wrote, saying that he saw a lot of small solar powered chargers being talked about over Earth Day, but there was a big problem: "They're all quite nice, but also quite expensive. So, he came up with his own, using one of our favorite reusable items -- the ever wonderful Altoids tin. In looking for the cheapest way to accomplish the task, Zimmerman found that he could build a USB solar charger for under $30 (or $10 if be buys parts in bulk, though it's not likely you'll be buying bulk solar cells and DC-to-USB converter circuits). Zimmerman states, "The central brain of our project is a DC to USB converter circuit. It can be done with a Minty Boost kit, a premade circuit off of ebay, or grabbing one from a cheap USB charger.
Solar Thermal – An Old Concept for Today’s World | GreenBuildTVGreenBuildTV Some people think the concept of solar thermal is radically new. Truth is – people have been using the power of the sun for decades to provide hot water. But catching the sun’s rays hasn’t always been an easy task. Throughout the years, many creative solutions have been devised to help generate solar-heated water. Early on, people used a black-painted water tank, mounted on a roof, to gather the sun’s rays. A few of the more common solar thermal collectors today include: the flat plate, evacuated tube, and parabolic trough. Flat Plate Collectors Developed and in use since the 1950′s, flat plate collectors remain the most common type of solar thermal collector. Plates are usually constructed of copper or aluminum, though some polymers can also be used, especially in climates susceptible to freezing. Evacuated Tube Collectors Evacuated tube collectors have been in use for the last thirty years. Parabolic Trough Which system is right for me?
CAS Raspberry Pi Educational Manual You might remember that we mentioned last year that a team of UK teachers from Computing at School (CAS) was working on a Creative Commons licensed teaching manual for the Raspberry Pi, with recognition and encouragement from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. That manual is now available at the Pi Store (which you’ll find on your Raspberry Pi’s desktop) as a PDF. If you’re not a Pi owner, there’s a link to a copy at the bottom of this post. The manual is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 unported licence, which is a complicated way of saying that it’s free for you to download, copy, adapt and use – you just can’t sell it. You’ll find chapters here on Scratch, Python, interfacing, and the command line. We want to say an enormous thank you to the whole CAS team, especially Andrew Hague, who corralled everything (and everyone) together as well as editing much of the document and writing a couple of the chapters. The manual itself?
7 Solar Water Heating System Designs by Michael Hackleman (Rob Harlan is a general and solar contractor with 25 years of experience with solar water heating systems in Mendocino County, California. Rob primarily designs and installs photovoltaic systems today.) MH: Rob, will you give a brief history of the last 30 years of solar-water heating system design and implementation? Rob: Solar-water heating systems got a real boost in the 1970s when tax credits were offered by state and federal programs to help folks make the investment. These systems were intended primarily for domestic hot water, i.e., showers, dishwashing, cooking, and clotheswashing. They were also popular for heating the water in pools and hot tubs. MH: As I recall, a lot of manufacturers also disappeared when the tax credits went away. Rob: Some designs were indeed flawed—poorly implemented, overly complex, or incorporating untested ideas. Rob: And—on active systems, a controller turns a pump on and off as solar heat is available. Rob: Freezing protection. Rob: True. 1. 2. 3.
Cinva Ram [edit] Overview The Cinva Ram was developed in 1952 by Raul Ramirez of the Inter-American housing center in Columbia. It was very popular in Columbia and neighbor developing countries, due to an effective low cost design. With this machine, 2 workers, 1 loading the machine and the other working the press, can produce roughly 2 bricks per minute solidworks files note, these plans are so far only on paper, the ram head might be to short, in a few days the prototype will be complete and ready for testing. [edit] See Also
15kw Solar Power Plant This is a big stack of mirrors, but look how simply the heat of the sun redirected can generate enough heat to power a 15kw Steam powered generator! Love this! Watch This Video: Other Great Stories From Offgridquest.com: ARCHI URBAIN (05/01) : Luc Schuiten / Vision sur la mobilité Not too bright – The 12 volt Tiny House Option One aspect of construction that I neglected when building Tiny House Ontario was what I would do about electricity. To tell you the truth electricity scares me because it carries the power of fire. Even so, I thought about it enough to know that I did not want to be on grid, and that I wanted to do it myself. After living there, two seasonal years, I knew that my need for electricity was very limited. On a whim, because there was a fantastic sale, I decided on a small solar panel from Canadian Tire. After my success, I decided that I would not invert my power when it entered the house because the power that is lost to the inverter is quite something. It was not easy for me to figure out how to get this, but it turns out that I got all of these items at a marine supply store. It was not a fast job to put in the wiring. As far as cost goes, all the materials, including fixtures, cost roughly $1200 in Canadian, plus 15% tax which is less than the cost of one Hydro pole.
ECAL Low-Tech Factory / Rocking-Knit