Related Posts for Energy efficiency
October 7, 2011
By Edward W. Lempinen, American Association for the Advancement of Science:
DILLINGHAM, Alaska—Tom Marsik and Kristin Donaldson are building a house a few minutes’ drive from the center of this small city, a two-story model with peat-brown vinyl siding that blends easily with the yellows and golds of the tundra in early autumn. The location is stunning, but it’s only from the inside that you see the building’s defining characteristic: White-painted walls that are more than two feet thick.
Built largely on the rigorous codes of Passive House standard, the living space is like a box that has been hermetically sealed, then wrapped in a thick blanket of insulation and placed snugly within a bigger box. Though the house is filled with bright natural light and fresh air, it is virtually air-tight. One night last winter, when the temperature was near zero outside, it was still over 50 degrees inside—without the use of a heater.
“This may be the tightest house in the United States,” Marsik says. “It may also be the most insulated, but I haven’t researched that thoroughly yet.”
Marsik is an assistant professor of sustainable energy at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks Bristol Bay campus, and at the annual meeting of the AAAS Arctic Division, he and his colleagues described a range of ambitious projects that are beginning to change Dillingham from a diesel-powered fishing center to a laboratory for deriving energy from wind, sun, and tides.
The meeting, held 21-24 September, drew nearly 200 researchers, educators, policymakers, and students to the Arctic Division’s first-ever meeting in the Alaskan Bush. They came from Alaska, the Lower 48, Canada, and Siberia for a rich program focused on Arctic ecosystems and how humans interact with them.
In Dillingham, they found a town with the hard-scrabble feel of the Old West, but updated: A black wind turbine whirrs outside the local courts building. At the main building of the Bristol Bay campus, south-facing walls feature 24 midnight-blue solar panels, and an increasing number of public buildings and private homes are installing windmills or going solar, too.
In Search of Energy Security
For native Yup’ik, Aleut, and Athabascan people who lived near Bristol Bay long before Russian explorers landed in early 19th century, life was based on salmon. That remains true for current residents, too. Today, the Bay supports the world’s largest remaining run of wild sockeye salmon, and all five types of Pacific salmon are harvested from the watershed. Dillingham’s population of about 2500 people doubles during the summer salmon season, and fishing provides food and income for many of them. It’s even the main course in the diet of many sled dogs.
But since the mid-1900s, the town’s lifeblood has been petroleum. Without diesel, the modern salmon fleet couldn’t get out of the dock. Diesel powers Dillingham’s electrical generation system. In winter, it heats homes and offices. Gasoline fuels boats used for subsistence fishing and hunting; it also fuels snow machines (or snowmobiles, as they’re known in the Lower 48).
Because of their reliance on diesel, residents of Dillingham find their lifestyle and their economy increasingly at risk. In recent years, the price approached $6 a gallon, and last week it was selling just below $5.50. But cost is only part of the problem. Uncertain supplies are another: Because there are no roads to Dillingham or villages upriver, the fuel is delivered in bulk, twice a year by barge. In times of drought or flooding, deliveries become unreliable.
A similar problem confronts many Alaskans, whether in urban or remote rural areas. According to a July 2008 report from the Institute for Social and Economic Research and the University of Alaska-Anchorage, median home energy costs had nearly doubled between 2000 and 2008. [See “Research Matters” #36.]
“We need a stable energy source,” says Arctic Division President Todd Radenbaugh, director of the Environmental Science Lab at the Bristol Bay campus. “The villages are totally dependent on diesel, and if there’s bad weather—floods, or droughts—the barge can’t get to some villages. Or fuel has to be flown in, and that adds 20% to the cost. It’s a crisis until they get the diesel in.”
To address concerns about energy costs and supplies, the state of Alaska is exploring a range of dam projects for generating power, but new dams raise concerns about financial and environmental costs. In cities like Dillingham, some leaders are looking for solutions closer to home.
The Nushagak Electric and Telephone Cooperative has formed an energy conservation committee, says Radenbaugh, who sits on the co-op’s board of directors. By carefully managing power production and matching it with demand, Nushtel has been able to reduce diesel use, and it recently won a grant to add a high-efficiency generator to its power plant in Dillingham. For two consecutive years, Radenbaugh said, it has been recognized as one of Alaska’s most efficient utilities.
“If we can save 2% or 1% or even a half-percent… just by making sure the power generated is matching the power demanded, it saves a lot of money,” he said.
“We know the future is getting off of diesel,” Radenbaugh added. “The problem is how to do it without losing our lifestyle and the standard of living that we want. We have a good standard of living, and we don’t want to lose it.”
Campus Efforts Support City’s Innovation
Yup’ik people historically understood the value of energy-efficient design. Winter quarters were built partially underground, to take advantage of the warmer sub-surface soil; insulation was provided by a roof framed of wood or whale rib-bones and covered with earth.
Now the Environmental Science Lab at the Bristol Bay Campus is exploring ideas based on the same sensibility—practicing efficiency and using the energy provided by nature—but with 21st century technology. The lab’s Sustainable Energy Initiative was founded in 2009, and it has emerged as an important resource in the community, generating ideas and demonstration projects and providing classes and support to people throughout southwest Alaska.
After regular sessions of the AAAS Arctic Division meeting had ended, Marsik and his colleague, sustainable energy technician Chet Chambers, led a tour of Dillingham buildings that are creating electricity or heating rooms and water without diesel.
In one of the initiative’s first projects, Marsik, Chambers, and students in a construction trades technology class built a small building based largely on the Passive House standard. It isn’t much bigger than a shed, but it was a test of principles: Heat is supposed to come from sunlight shining through triple-pane windows, and from the lights, a computer, and bodies inside the building.
To contain the heat, the crew built double-frame walls that are 28 inches thick; cellulose insulation made of finely shredded newspaper fills the walls and forms a dense pad beneath the floor and between the ceiling and the pitched roof. A heat-recovery ventilator brings in fresh air from outside and at the same time expels the stale air from inside, and both streams pass through a core where the heat from the air going out is transferred into the cold fresh air coming in.
The effectiveness of the building in retaining heat is measured in its r value—its resistance to heat flow and loss. The walls have a rating of 90 to 95, and the ceiling scores 140, Chambers explained. By comparison, the average house in southwestern Alaska has an r value of about 20.
“We’ve Had to Learn a Lot”
The demonstration project was completed in 2010; soon after, Marsik and Donaldson began construction of their 580-square-foot home on the tundra. The structure is set on a berm well above the moist tundra soil; immediately beneath the house is a dense panel of Styrofoam insulation, and insulation extends out 8 feet from each side of the house, just under the soil. Much of the building material comes from Alaska.
Early progress allowed the couple to get married at the home in November 2010. This summer, they hung bamboo cabinets; now they’re laying down bamboo flooring and moving high-efficiency appliances into place. They’ve even installed a small heater—partly because home insurance policies require it. They expect to move in by Christmas.
The project has drawn from the lessons of the small demonstration building, but like most innovation, it has raised a succession of challenges.
“We don’t have enough plumbers in Dillingham,” Donaldson said. “We don’t have enough electricians. We’ve had to do almost everything ourselves. And so we’ve had to learn how to do it—we’ve had to learn a lot.”
While the advanced building methods and green materials have elevated costs, Marsik takes the long view. “It’s going to be a home that’s here for 100 years or longer,” he said. “It will be here basically forever, and it will pay itself off eventually.”
A Boat, an Anchor, and a Tidal Generator
When summer comes and the fishing crews return, electricity demand rises by 40% or more. For Nushgak Cooperative, that creates a dilemma: The utility needs a plant big enough to generate that electricity, but the extra capacity goes unused in the winter, and customers have to pay for a plant that is partly idle. Now city leaders are thinking about how to improve overall energy efficiency by improving the efficiency of the salmon fleet.
Wind turbines aren’t a perfect solution—winds here tend to die down in summer. But the answer might be right beneath their hulls. The Environmental Science Lab has taken the lead in an ambitious proposal to draw electricity from the tides.
How would it work? According to Radenbaugh, a tidal generator—a “low-flow, in-stream hydrokinetic turbine system”—could become part of a barge that produces the ice needed to store the fresh-caught fish, or perhaps part of a floating fish-processing plant. The craft would operate in Nushagak Bay; as tides flow in from the Bering Sea through Bristol Bay, the water would turn the turbine and generate power.
“There would be no permanent structures in the water to impede fish migration,” he said. “The only thing in the bay is the anchor, and the barge, with the tidal generator.” The University of Alaska Fairbanks and partners hope to test a prototype at the confluence of the Nushagak and Wood Rivers in 2012.
With consumer tastes moving away from canned salmon, the processing industry based in Dillingham is moving toward more fresh or flash-frozen fish. To demonstrate how that evolution could boost the local economy, Radenbaugh points to salmon from Alaska’s Copper River, which fetches premium prices around the world.
“There’s a reason they can charge twice as much—they know how to take care of the fish,” he says. “The key, for quality fish, is chilling. People want fresh fish now, and fresh products require chilling.”
And today chilling requires diesel—until researchers, working with Alaskan political and business leaders, can generate an alternative.
September 17, 2011
By JOANNA M. FOSTER of the New York Times:
HOBOKEN, N.J. — On summer evenings, the running path along the riverfront here is clogged with businessmen on smartphones tripping over dog leashes and joggers weaving through a stream of strollers. It had gotten even more congested recently as curious pedestrians congregated around a fenced-off parking lot on Sinatra Drive to guess the purpose of the structure being built inside.
“People have asked us if we’re building a waterfront bar,” said a worker, Steve Scribner. “As if Hoboken needs any more. Someone else thought it was a houseboat, or some kind of giant Porta-Potty.”
But even taking into account Hoboken’s love affair with happy hour, there was an urgency to the building process that seemed incongruous. Someone was always there hammering or sawing — and many of the workers seemed a little young for cocktails.
The compact, shoe-box-shaped mystery building is named Empowerhouse, and it is a superefficient, solar-powered house that will compete in the Solar Decathlon, an event sponsored by the Energy Department that will open on Friday on the National Mall in Washington. It was designed and built by architecture and engineering students from Parsons The New School for Design, the Stevens Institute of Technology and the Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy.
Yet the group aimed to create a structure that would endure in a meaningful way after the competition results are in. Unlike the 19 other entries, Empowerhouse is destined to become a real home for a low-income family in the Deanwood neighborhood of Northeast Washington that will also serve as a model of sustainable housing for Habitat for Humanity.
This year, for the first time, houses in the competition are being graded on cost-effectiveness, as well as energy efficiency and attractiveness. The last winning house was a $2 million entry from Germany with an exterior completely covered in solar panels.
“They racked up extra points because they were producing power above and beyond what the house needed,” said Joshua Laryea, student project engineer from Stevens. “But who can afford a house like that and maintain all those solar panels? It wasn’t a place designed for living in.”
Joel Towers, the executive dean at Parsons, said: “We probably won’t be the shiniest box on the Mall, but a lot of the technology that’s needed for tomorrow’s housing is already available. The question we’re trying to answer is more social than technological — how do we actually bring these green solutions into neighborhoods?” Read more
August 21, 2011
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — The University of Alaska Fairbanks is building a dormitory it hopes will serve as a living laboratory to study renewable energy, gray-water recycling and elements of hyper-efficient design.
The $1 million project, called the Sustainable Village, is being designed to test efficiency and low operating costs, according to The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
The first phase of the village will house 16 students who will also serve as researchers. They will live in clusters that each house between 4 and 6 people.
“It just seemed like a wonderful opportunity,” said Cold Climate Housing Research Center President Jack Hebert, whose organization is partnering with the university on the project.
The village, which will be on a roughly 60-acre plot on campus, will emphasize local building materials and environmentally sound land use. A community garden, shared open space and network of footpaths will be integrated among the buildings.
Construction on the project was expected to begin in April.
“We want to transform our campus life, and this is really a step in that direction,” said University of Alaska Fairbanks Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services Pat Pitney. Read more
July 31, 2011
Guest editorial by Mark Masteller in the Anchorage Press: With little public discussion, the Anchorage Assembly, at the request of the Mayor’s office, recently took an abrupt about-face regarding the development of energy efficient, non-toxic city-owned buildings. This is an unfortunate turn, as these “green” buildings save taxpayer money, provide healthier indoor environments, save energy, promote use of regional and recycled materials, produce fewer greenhouse gases and promote local product development and innovation. In short, high performance buildings promote an economically and environmentally sustainable community while increasing our energy security.
It’s puzzling why Mayor Sullivan would want to eliminate the Sustainable Building Policy, when he has quite correctly and publicly noted the fragility of our Cook Inlet natural gas supplies, which supply us with both heat and electricity. Nationally, buildings use about 40 percent of our primary energy, and about 70 percent of our electricity. And energy experts will tell you that the cheapest-and fastest-way to save energy is by first pursuing energy conservation and efficiency measures. Increasing the efficiency of large buildings helps prolong our local gas supplies.
So what did the assembly do? In a 6-5 vote they eliminated the requirement that new city-owned buildings meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, building standard. Increasingly accepted around the world, LEED was developed by the U. S. Green Building Council and has become the norm for hundreds of municipalities and federal agencies. There are four LEED certification levels: certified, silver, gold and platinum. The MOA was requiring “certified,” and the plan was to go to “silver” in 2012. Instead, they’re going backward. Read more
July 25, 2011
Mark Clayton | The Christian Science Monitor | Jul 23, 2011: As temperatures soared across America, power grid operators and utilities called on all their energy sources – from jet-engine-powered natural-gas turbines to coal-burning behemoths to glowing nuclear reactors – to meet the electricity demand.
Right now, the massive mechanical equipment is doing its job well, with only pockets of energy distress during the heat wave.
Why are things going so smoothly?
A lot of it has to do with a weak economy that has left plenty of backup power available. The rapid growth of energy-efficiency measures is also responsible, as well as something called demand response – when commercial and industrial electricity users are throttled back by the use of computer-controlled switches and the Internet.
“We have definitely seen an impact from increased energy efficiency and demand-response efforts,” says Mark Lauby, vice president of reliability assessment and performance analysis for the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), an organization tasked with ensuring that the nation’s power grid keeps running. “It’s giving us more margin, more resources.”
The recession had an impact on energy demand, as businesses closed or cut back operations. Nationwide, energy demand fell about four percentage points in 2009, before rebounding slightly in 2010. The net result has been a chunk of generating-capacity padding.
In Wisconsin, for example, the recession led to factory closings that chopped power demand from a 2006 peak. Yet this year, We Energies – a utility near Madison – completed new plants that were built in response to power shortages experienced during heat waves of the late 1990s, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Result: plenty of capacity and few problems meeting power demand in Wisconsin. Read more
June 21, 2011
It’s true. Read this report from Rich Seifert of the University of Alaska’s Cooperative Extension Service on three beautiful and fascinating homes in Fairbanks that are using masonry stoves, extra insulation, passive design and more techniques to reduce their energy use. There’s lots to read here and great pictures.
Download the report here (.pdf)
June 8, 2011
By Jill Burke of Alaska Dispatch: A tiny island near the tip of Alaska’s southwestern boundary isn’t the place most Americans are likely to call to mind when they think of innovative housing. But wee Atka, a faraway place that marks the end of the Aleutian chain on the United States map like a last word lost to a trailing sentence, is aiming high.
Together, the people of the community of Atka would fill two average American school classrooms. Their community is as small as their environment is big. To the north is the vast Bering Sea, to the south the even larger North Pacific Ocean. Isolated and storm-pounded, Atka is the last inhabited Aleut village on the U.S. side of the Aleutian chain, and it isn’t much.
Imagine one block of a residential street in any Midwestern city. Pluck from the homes the families that dot either side and drop them into box-like structures on a small island more than 1,000 miles away from the nearest urban area, raise the cost of gas and groceries sky high, eliminate jobs, teach people to learn to live off the land and the sea, and you start to get the idea of what life on Atka and in many of Alaska’s rural communities is like.
A wealthy family from the Lower 48 states might do OK with the change, able to use their cash to command top-notch housing and pay for the island’s $6.80 per gallon home heating oil. But in so many of Alaska’s poverty-stricken communities this is not an option. Disconnected from the road system, many are accessible only by plane or boat. In places like Atka, barges bring goods only a few times each year. Utility trumps pleasure. Real need trumps innovation. And while it may be trendy to be green, it can also be expensive. The Aleutian Housing Authority, which serves the island region in which Atka lies, is convinced better living doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, out of reach.
“There is no group more in need of healthy, affordable, energy efficient housing than low-income people,” said AHA Executive Director Dan Duame. “The cheapest thing to do is throw a rectangle box on the ground, and that’s the way it’s been done for 40 years.” Read more
June 6, 2011
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL of the New York Times:The military hopes that by relying less on fossil fuels, troops will be more speedily deployed and less vulnerable to attacks. Last fall militants in Pakistan set fire to tankers supplying oil to NATO and American troops, including the one above, which was passing through Rawalpindi, Pakistan.Associated PressThe military hopes that by relying less on fossil fuels, troops will be more speedily deployed and less vulnerable to attacks. Last fall militants in Pakistan set fire to tankers supplying oil to NATO and American troops, including the one above, in the city of Rawalpindi.
Last year I wrote about how American troops sent into conflict zones were relying more on renewable energy and green products. In places like Afghanistan, fuel supply routes are extremely vulnerable to attacks, putting soldiers at risk when their cargo includes oil, diesel or kerosene-based fossil fuels.
What is more, regiments tethered to such fuels are less nimble. Soldiers assigned to guard fuel trucks are not available for other tasks.
Now the Marine Corps plans to expand the deployment of green technologies that would be useful on the battlefield. “The goal is to make the Marines a more effective fighting force and to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, transported water, and battery logistics,” said Maj. Gen. John A. Toolan, commander of the Second Marine Division. “We will significantly increase our energy efficiency on the battlefield and in doing so reduce our reliance on logistics convoys.”
Some of the innovations deployed include a solar-powered generator and LED lighting.
There are over 100 forward operating bases in Afghanistan, each of which needs over 300 gallons of diesel fuel daily. Fuel is used to generate electricity and heat as well as to power vehicles, so if the Marines can cut that requirement by even 10 or 20 percent, far fewer convoys will be at risk.
Last year Marine officers told me that they spend hundreds of dollars just getting a gallon of fuel to a forward operating base. A penny saved is a penny earned.
June 2, 2011
Alaska has signed an energy savings performance agreement to increase energy efficiency throughout state facilities, including the University of Alaska Fairbanks, officials announced on April 26. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities selected three contractors, including Ameresco, for three-year contracts to perform audits and implement energy efficient systems and renewable energy sources across the state.
Under this agreement, Ameresco will perform investment grade audits and comprehensive energy services that will include the design, installation, modification, and commissioning of new and existing energy systems. In addition, it will include the verification and reporting of energy savings and a guarantee of energy savings. Ameresco is an independent provider of comprehensive energy efficiency solutions for facilities. See the Ameresco press release.
March 14, 2011
By Molly Rettig at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: FAIRBANKS — Sunlight poured into a large south-facing window and drenched the stained concrete floor, stones and flower beds in warmth. Like batteries, these features capture, store and dispense energy to the 2,300-square-foot house year round. Sun coming through the window has provided all the home’s heat since mid-February.
Outside, a dozen solar thermal panels stared at the Alaska Range and drank in the mid-morning sun. The panels and a stone masonry heater (complete with a bake oven) are the only heat sources in the home.
“You wouldn’t believe how many engineers have told me in the past year that it’s impossible,” Thorsten Chlupp said of the fossil-fuel free system. “I already know I need to build an outdoor swimming pool because I have too much heat.”
Chlupp, a general contractor and owner of Reina LLC, built the home off Old Chena Ridge Road in the fall and moved in with his wife and young daughters in January. The wood-frame house uses local lumber, recycled insulation and sustainable flooring and contains high-efficiency lighting and appliances. While elegant and comfortable, its biggest asset is its insulated thermal mass.
Chlupp designed the house to prove that solar energy, combined with tight construction and proper heat storage, can work even in Fairbanks. It’s poised to be the northernmost passive house in the world (a label for buildings that consume very little energy). He plans to produce his own energy when he adds photovoltaic panels this summer. Chlupp wants to see the design take off in the area. But first he must dispel the myth — among the public as well as building and solar experts — that the heating system won’t work in this climate, he said.
After all, Fairbanks is cut off from solar energy for all of December and January. Yet Chlupp has hoarded so much heat during the past few months that he has burned only one cord of wood. The last fire was three weeks ago.
“We create more storage, and we have the ability to bridge long periods of time when we don’t have sun,” Chlupp said. “In this house we can store eight million BTUs of energy within the tank and within the foundation.”
Eight million BTUs is enough to heat the home for two months.
Chlupp, 37, moved to Fairbanks from Germany as an outdoor and mountaineering guide in 1996. He began building homes 12 years ago and discovered the shortcomings of conventional building in a cold climate. He started incorporating green concepts from Germany, like passive solar and airtight walls, into houses here. But when he pushed for renewables, people said it wouldn’t provide enough year-round energy for this climate and latitude. So he set out to prove the systems were effective and affordable. Read more
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