Some good questions were raised in the first thread, so i thought i would do a part two at look at some of things raised, and maybe give a little background.
Edison cells were good, they had some issues but nothing time and research couldnt improve. The problem was in 1975 (or 74??) A battery company brought the technology (I cant remember the company off the top of my head but wiki has the answer), they sat on the technology and closed down all research on it. Now there are no end of theories as to why they did this, everything from they wanted to protect what was then there own new alkali battery technology, to they brought it and realized it wasnt going to work.
Now things move on tech wise, lithium took over from nickel cadmium and became the gold standard. So Edison and his cell was forgotten about from a research view point. But look back in these forums, things we struggled to do 5 years ago we now buy a extremely cheap arduino shield to do.
Home automation was expensive and difficult and a bit niche,the goto at one point was the X10 system, 5 years later home automation is very easy and X10 has become the betamax of this tech, outdated and rarely used.
In the alternative energy field, actually lets not call it that! Its green renewable energy or some forms are simply renewable energy, we are talking here about truly Carbon neutral systems that can be taken to carbon Negative. So first point to clear up.....
Not all green tech is Carbon Neutral, despite the claims! Like many things you can manipulate the figures, this was one point that someone kindly raised in the part 1 thread. So lets take a quick abridged look at the EU regs and specifically UK regs and what Carbon Neutral means.
I the UK new houses have to reach set standards of insulation and Carbon points, new houses are virtually hermetically sealed, letter box's that lead into the house loose you points. One of the tests involves pressuring or depressurizing the house, then they watch the sensors and see how long it takes for the pressure to reach that of the outside.
From this they calculate how much the house leaks, there is a minimum figure for this, currently most dont meet the top level standard, i know of one self built house that actually beats the standard, so it can be done.
All new houses are supposed to have some form of solar water heating, and so the list goes on. We also have a target for affordable housing, this we currently fail at completely! One answer being looked at and one i am also involved in, is the use of modern Log cabins, these have no end of advantages.
First you need fast growing sustainable wood OR composite wood made from wood waste, the heavy effective insulation. One the big advantages however is our obscure planning laws, it is extremely easy to get planning permission for log cabins, in most places they are almost treated like garden sheds.
So building houses this way is quick and cheap and the red tape much less. Once you seal them up and insulate its a question of how to go from 1 (the point at which a house/building is considered Neutral) to 0 or - x. I dont understand the system of numbers or how that side works, its complicated and not my field. But i do know if you get a house to 1 i can get it to neutral.
First glance it looks easy, just add Solar electric panels! But if you do the carbon calcs on solar PV cells (photo voltaic) then your carbon foot print goes up. The reason is the solar cells take energy and resources to make, the foot print of the manufacture,installation,delivery etc etc should all be taken into account when working out how much energy was used to make them.
My pet peeve with this is some Governments like my own have pet schemes like wind power, they seem to think its ok to bend the rules. What they actually do is work out the foot print then offset it against the energy the turbine 'COULD' produce in best case scenario, without topping and without needing maintenance, they then add in a life span that is unrealistic.
If you do all that then yes wind power does come out neutral, in reality however wind turbines dont EVER get near the figures used. I am not anti wind power as such, for example its better than oil being used in a power station or coal. Same with solar PV cells, they use unrealistic figures for the sun etc. Solar water with evacuated cells is however a great idea, especially if you add a heat sink in.
The reason i like solar heating is the energy it can save, unfortunately there is so many figures given for each 1C its hard to give you an exact figure. But the normally excepted figure is turning down your thermostat by 1C save you between 1-3% a year on your energy bill, there is alot of different scenarios and things to consider, so for simplicity its excepted that every 1C you save = a fair amount of energy.
So adding solar with say a decent hot water tank or even a underground water heat sink, can raise the temp of the boiler input water significantly, you cant give a figure because you cant guess how much sun your going to get. But our own system was filled recently because we had a new heating system fitted free, it was done under a special keep Scotland warm scheme.
So it gave me a chance to measure the effects of our system...
NEXT post i will go into what systems we have etc, first i got to go do some things
Edison cells were good, they had some issues but nothing time and research couldnt improve. The problem was in 1975 (or 74??) A battery company brought the technology (I cant remember the company off the top of my head but wiki has the answer), they sat on the technology and closed down all research on it. Now there are no end of theories as to why they did this, everything from they wanted to protect what was then there own new alkali battery technology, to they brought it and realized it wasnt going to work.
Now things move on tech wise, lithium took over from nickel cadmium and became the gold standard. So Edison and his cell was forgotten about from a research view point. But look back in these forums, things we struggled to do 5 years ago we now buy a extremely cheap arduino shield to do.
Home automation was expensive and difficult and a bit niche,the goto at one point was the X10 system, 5 years later home automation is very easy and X10 has become the betamax of this tech, outdated and rarely used.
In the alternative energy field, actually lets not call it that! Its green renewable energy or some forms are simply renewable energy, we are talking here about truly Carbon neutral systems that can be taken to carbon Negative. So first point to clear up.....
Not all green tech is Carbon Neutral, despite the claims! Like many things you can manipulate the figures, this was one point that someone kindly raised in the part 1 thread. So lets take a quick abridged look at the EU regs and specifically UK regs and what Carbon Neutral means.
I the UK new houses have to reach set standards of insulation and Carbon points, new houses are virtually hermetically sealed, letter box's that lead into the house loose you points. One of the tests involves pressuring or depressurizing the house, then they watch the sensors and see how long it takes for the pressure to reach that of the outside.
From this they calculate how much the house leaks, there is a minimum figure for this, currently most dont meet the top level standard, i know of one self built house that actually beats the standard, so it can be done.
All new houses are supposed to have some form of solar water heating, and so the list goes on. We also have a target for affordable housing, this we currently fail at completely! One answer being looked at and one i am also involved in, is the use of modern Log cabins, these have no end of advantages.
First you need fast growing sustainable wood OR composite wood made from wood waste, the heavy effective insulation. One the big advantages however is our obscure planning laws, it is extremely easy to get planning permission for log cabins, in most places they are almost treated like garden sheds.
So building houses this way is quick and cheap and the red tape much less. Once you seal them up and insulate its a question of how to go from 1 (the point at which a house/building is considered Neutral) to 0 or - x. I dont understand the system of numbers or how that side works, its complicated and not my field. But i do know if you get a house to 1 i can get it to neutral.
First glance it looks easy, just add Solar electric panels! But if you do the carbon calcs on solar PV cells (photo voltaic) then your carbon foot print goes up. The reason is the solar cells take energy and resources to make, the foot print of the manufacture,installation,delivery etc etc should all be taken into account when working out how much energy was used to make them.
My pet peeve with this is some Governments like my own have pet schemes like wind power, they seem to think its ok to bend the rules. What they actually do is work out the foot print then offset it against the energy the turbine 'COULD' produce in best case scenario, without topping and without needing maintenance, they then add in a life span that is unrealistic.
If you do all that then yes wind power does come out neutral, in reality however wind turbines dont EVER get near the figures used. I am not anti wind power as such, for example its better than oil being used in a power station or coal. Same with solar PV cells, they use unrealistic figures for the sun etc. Solar water with evacuated cells is however a great idea, especially if you add a heat sink in.
The reason i like solar heating is the energy it can save, unfortunately there is so many figures given for each 1C its hard to give you an exact figure. But the normally excepted figure is turning down your thermostat by 1C save you between 1-3% a year on your energy bill, there is alot of different scenarios and things to consider, so for simplicity its excepted that every 1C you save = a fair amount of energy.
So adding solar with say a decent hot water tank or even a underground water heat sink, can raise the temp of the boiler input water significantly, you cant give a figure because you cant guess how much sun your going to get. But our own system was filled recently because we had a new heating system fitted free, it was done under a special keep Scotland warm scheme.
So it gave me a chance to measure the effects of our system...
NEXT post i will go into what systems we have etc, first i got to go do some things
, but its a chance to make sure i dont miss something out i guess.
