Category Archives: Sustainable Energy

Here’s Hoping Ethanol Gets More Sensible!

Right now ethanol is generally made from corn. It’s an option for biofuel, but has a negative impact on the availability of corn for consumption, making the price generally higher. It’s not the best choice, really.

So I am quite glad to hear that technology is finding ways to make ethanol from grasses and trees. That’s a much more sensible source, I suspect. May depend on exactly how these things are grown, but it makes more sense to me than using a food crop for fuel production.

I found this in particular interesting:

Sell said the future of biofuels is cellulosic ethanol, made from microbes that break down woody bits of non-food crops into sugars that can be fermented into fuel.

Cellulosic, and other new biofuels such as biobutanol, which can be made from petroleum as well as biomass, could begin to feed the commercial fuel market within six to 10 years

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San Diego Water Treatment Plant Goes Solar

It makes a lot of sense here in San Diego to go solar, so I was delighted to read that the Alvarado water treatment plant has gone solar. Better yet, it was at no cost to the city. That’s very important given the money troubles the city of San Diego has been having of late.

Sun Edison put up the panels and will sell the electricity back to the city at a rate that will save the city about $40,000 per year. Sounds like quite a good deal to me.

The deal only takes care of about 20% of the treatment plant’s need, so call it a good start. They’re hoping to add more panels in the future to take care of the rest of it.

I’m glad to live in an area that is recognizing the advantages of solar power. In the climate we live in, it’s ridiculous to not think about using solar power. I look forward to solar panels becoming more affordable so that more people here can generate power too.

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Disposal of Fluourescent Bulbs

I’ve been considering going to compact fluorescent bulbs for a while, but the disposal issue has bothered me for a while. They have mercury in them, so they are more hazardous to just throw out. But I didn’t know how to handle it.

But there’s a story on one of my local news station’s website about how we’re supposed to handle them. I actually hadn’t been aware that in San Diego it is against the law to throw out fluorescent bulbs. For city residents, the landfill has a hazardous material disposal site where you can make a Saturday appointment to get rid of your bulbs.

But I’m not within San Diego limits. Fortunately, it turns out that Ikea does fluorescent bulb recycling too. Now this is not exactly convenient to me, as they’re at least a half hour drive away if traffic is good. But I certainly like that they offer this service.

I’d love to see other retail stores offer this kind of service. Walmart, Target and Home Depot immediately come to mind as places that sell the bulbs. Be very handy if they helped with the disposal too. Continue reading →

Solar Technology Marches On

I’m really impressed. If Nanosolar can pull this one off… wow! Talk about an improvement in the availablity of solar power!

They’re working on a printed solar panel technology. They’re building a plant right now that could produce 430 megawatts of solar cells annually… compare that to current solar panel production in the United States of 153 megawatts. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

You can read a variety of news reports on their site. Here’s a quote I liked from one of the stories, which appeared in Mercury News: Continue reading →