Archive for the ‘Solar’ Category

Recently an MIT professor, Daniel Nocera announced a major breakthrough that promises to make the way passable to revolutionize the adaptation of storing solar and wind harnessed energy. The current problem has been that when the sun goes down, or the wind stops blowing, the energy stops. Battery systems are expensive, and only live so long before they need replacing. This new discovery uses non-toxic natural materials to split oxygen and hydrogen from water, at room temperature. These can be stored and recombined in a fuel cell later whenever electricity is needed.

You can hear Daniel Norera discuss this at … MIT TechTV

You can read an article about this work at MIT news.

Below I posted my intentions to start a web site narrowing the available stock plans to ones that generally fit in the categories of sustainable and green. Both words are now official (to me at least) buzz words that are rapidly loosing their meaning due to so many people associating their products with “green” and “sustainable”. It is like the word “bungalow”. Do a Google search for bungalow plans and the same old multi-gabled stuff (being polite here) shows up, just relabeled.

While I do have specific goals for these new plans, as well as modifying some of the existing plans, I would very much appreciate hearing from people as to what they expect in this specific category of house plans. I am not going to simply relabel plans. I am especially interested in what spec builders are after. I would specifically like to know what your market would like, basically what constitutes a sellable product for you.

Would passive solar be a plus? (ie: solar green houses or “sun space”, solar mass walls, direct gain etc?)

Would a dedicated room for alternative mechanicals be important? (ie; would you be installing renewable energy products… solar water heating, photovoltaics or wind equipment?)

Would you install active solar panels to generate electricity?

Do you need assistance specifying sustainable products?

etc

You can post to this message,. or reply to me via this link
http://www.thompsonplans.com/contact/index.php

If you need to attach something you can email me via the form/email link above and I will reply with a different address. If I put my “real” address in this blog I would be spammed to death over night. The spam robots are relentless.

thank you for your assistance.

I would like to pass this along to anyone interested.

It’s Almost Time to Face It!
Come January 30th at 9 am EST, thousands of people will be logging on to www.architecture2030.org to view one of the most informative and solution-oriented webcast on global warming to ever be aired. If you have not registered, register today at Face It Registration. Remember, you can view the webcast any time after 9 am EST by just logging on.

I described in an earlier post about a new company developing thin film solar panels. Nano Solar recently sent out a progress report to subscribers which I will paste below. I find this development very encouraging and exciting. The only issue seems to be supply availability for individual home owners. The first use of this major advancement in solar technology is headed to Germany for a megawatt municipal power plant. It seems the US archaic electrical codes are an obstacle to the progress here. Hopefully the success of the plant in Germany will help get things changed here, but that is not what the old US is good at… so far.

Nanosolar Ships First Panels
December 18, 2007
Posted by Martin Roscheisen, CEO

After five years of product development – including aggressively pipelined science, research and development, manufacturing process development, product testing, manufacturing engineering and tool development, and factory construction – we now have shipped first product and received our first check of product revenue.

We are grateful to everyone who supported us through all these years and the many occasions where there appeared to be mile-high concrete walls in our path; the unusual intensity and creativity of our team deserves all the credit for achieving this major milestone today.

Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:

- the world’s first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;

- the world’s first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;

- the world’s lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;

- the world’s highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;

- an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.

Today we are announcing that we have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern Germany and that the first Megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there.

I would like to announce that I am starting a sister web site www.sustainablehouseplans.com. It most likely will be a while before I actually get the site online, but I am starting to shift my time from developing plans for this site, to designing plans for the new site. I would not mention it here, but the day after I registered the site name (yesterday), I needed to give out the new link to ASU, and this is what that link will open for the present time. So, if you linked here from there, sorry, but I’m not really here. However, I do have another site, and please visit that (www.thompsonplans.com)… and keep reading. The new link (sustainablehouseplans.com) will start showing up on a new web site related to a plan I donated to The NC State Energy Office and the Appalachian State University Energy Center. It was built by a Habitat affiliate in Hickory,NC and was the first Zero Energy Home (ZEH) built in North Carolina. My new plans will not necessarily be geared for the affordable housing market, but will maintain an Arts and Crafts feel with nice porches and warm detailing.

My interest has long been designing homes that are connected with the environment. Unfortunately, in the early 1980′s that was not what many of my clients were interested in. Despite my living and working out of a passive solar house that I built in Atlanta, very few clients had any interest in investing funds for solar features. I also loved the Arts and Crafts character, and since that is what my clients wanted, that is what I did. This web site grew out of that work.

Today we live in a different world. Everyday more people are becoming aware of the shortsightedness of using fossil fuels. “Green” is now the buzz word in advertising and marketing new homes. But, for the most part, this just implies product selection, and does not necessarily address the energy consumption issues to any great extent. I am starting the new site by reworking many of the existing house plans I have, and incorporate passive and active solar functionality. My intention for these new plans is to incorporate thermal mass storage as a fundamental heat source, along with room designated for photovoltaic systems. Some will incorporate attached solar greenhouses. All plans will have 2×6 wall construction, as well as other environmentally sound construction details.

If you have linked here from another site through the www.sustainablehouseplans.com link, please look around, and if any of the plans work for you, and you are also interested in solar considerations, email me. The new plans will be specifically oriented to work with the sun.