The Distance Project

Inspiration like no other - The Solar Decathlon 2007

Posted on October 21st, 2007 by Zach.
Categories: Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Urban Planning.

Every two years a group of university students descend upon the Mall in Washington DC for the Solar Decathlon. For anyone who has not seen the event, it is worth a trip to DC in my opinion. I have never been so inspired by the possibilities for the future as when touring the event.

Picture this: 25 University teams made up of students from Architecture, Engineering, and Design programs spend 2 years of there college lives planning, designing and constructing 800 squre foot homes. Each with their own cool approaches to a combination of livability and sustainability.

Every other October, the house roll into town on flatbed trucks and plop themselves down a stones throw from the capital building. But this is not for show, the kids all battle it out in 10 event competition to see whose house will be America’s next top model! Sorry no, I am watching too much reality TV as I write these days. But they do compete and the it is fierce. All the houses have to power a maximum of 800 square feet completely by solar, no exceptions. They must also heat a certain amount of hot water per hour, as well provide good aesthetics for a home, and good communication of their theories through tours and websites.

All of this proved especially challenging in the 2005 when it proceeded to rain for 6 days of the competition.

While the rain was rightly disappointing to many of the teams and a pain for all of the vistors to the houses (For most of the week you get to tour any house you’d like), I actually like seeing whose houses were built tightly and whose leaked like a sieve!

No such problems this year as we had unbelievably beautiful weather for the week and watched a University in Germany take home top honors followed by the University of Maryland.

I spent most of the week on the Mall for the event as we showed off our newest product the PowerCube. There are a couple of observations that I came away with:

- Our good friends Richard King and Wendy Burt at the Department of Energy who run the event, continue to put on an amazing show. The show from the outside was a huge success. Huge crowds, great houses, just a truly fun time. Big up to both of them for pulling it all off yet again.

- The National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden Colorado, is one of the coolest assets the US Government has. In to make sure the show was a success, everyone from the Lab was so knowledgeable, excited about the event, so genuinely passionate about renewable energy. Just a great group.

- The passion and creativity of the students is straight up inspiring. I can’t say this enough, it is just fun to be around that kind of passion for something that will revolutionize our country. They are changing the world.

This decathlon was such a success that there is rumblings of a European version next year as well.

Check out all of the websites for the teams from the SolarDecathlon07 website. So many green products and approach to green building, these websites are a must see if you are thinking about a building project in the near future.

Keep track of this thing as they gear up for 2009 because it is something not to be missed.

0 comments.

The Power of Hybrids

Posted on October 10th, 2007 by Zach.
Categories: Sustainability, Systems of the World.

The other night I was at dinner and found myself in discussion with someone unimpressed by the Hybrid car revolution. Fair point from the outside I suppose, but I thought it was worth a little bit of time here to show why hybrids matter.

When it comes to cars, one of the first thing people look at is gas mileage and on that front most of the Hybrids are pretty good, if not mind blowing - somewhere between 30 and 50 mpg depending on the size of the engine. This is better than the national average, but for a regular Civic driver or someone who drives a TDI from Volkswagen, it is not enough to pony up the extra bucks.

Fuel efficiency is a big deal obviously and I don’t want to devalue how important it is in the larger equation. Energy conservation is the single most important challenge facing the U.S. Vehicles are no different, and hybrid technology is addressing this as the technology matures. 

In terms of the impact of hybrid technology though, fuel efficiency is only part of the equation, and I would argue the smaller of the two. What really matters are the emissions.

In traditional cars and trucks a large majority of emissions are produced either when the vehicle is at idle, or moving at slow speeds. Stop-and-go traffic for example, is an emissions nightmare. So much so that cities see significant reduction of pollution when they use more timed traffic lights systems. By reducing the number of times cars have to stop for lights, the pollution levels are lower.

Because a hybrid vehicles operates on an electric motor during these critical times (0 -15 mph), the emissions are reduced by a large factor. The numbers are actually staggering: around 80% of the total emissions in a three mile drive are created during the first mile.

To put the impact of this into perspective next time you are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic that forces you to slow down around 10 - 15 miles an hour, take a look around you and imagine every one of the cars putting out zero emissions. In every major urban area these days, this is a daily occurrence at rush hour.

Idling my not seem like a big deal to the average person, but it is. According to a Washington State University Study, trucks and buses burn in the neighborhood of 840 million of gallons of diesel a year JUST IDLING! Combine that with the emissions quotient and the numbers for trucks are just plain scary.

Trucks at idle, cars in traffic, imagine if every one of those vehicles were producing zero emissions. Hybrid system are a critical answer to these issues, and that is why they matter now.

They matter for future innovation as well. Emerging technologies like plugin hybrid systems up the electric speeds from 0-15 mph to actual cruising speeds - spurts of 50+ mph. The systems are only going to get better.

Most importantly, hybrid systems separate the energy production from the motor. In current examples like the Prius, a gas engine charges batteries which then run an electric motor. At high speeds the combustion engine kicks in as well, but increasingly the electric motor takes the load with the gas engine used for producing electricity.

Future systems will fully divorce the engine from the motor. This will enable a wide variety of energy production sources to be used in cars - hydrogen fuelcells, biofuels, sterling engines, etc. And that kind of flexibility is where innovation will continue develop.

A couple of facts:

• The transportation sector generates 27 percent of U.S. GHG emissions

• There are 200 million registered vehicles in the U.S.,  almost one per person.

• The average U.S. car each consumes 600 Gallons each year.

• 12,000 pounds of carbon dioxide is emitted from one U.S. car each year.

• U.S. cars and light trucks traveled 2.7 trillion miles in 2004. That’s the equivalent of taking 10 million trips to the moon.

• Emissions for the first km are 80% of total emissions for the 4km journey.

• The U.S. produces 45% Percent of the world’s automotive carbon dioxide emissions.

• The Toyota Prius reduces normalized tailpipe emissions by up to 90% and greenhouse gas emissions by around 50%.

• The City of Ottawa estimates that reducing idling by only 5 minutes per day in all City vehicles will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 384 tonnes and save $80,000 in fuel costs across the fleet.  5 minutes!

         Sources: pewclimate.org, Evironmental Defense, University of Bath (UK), City of Ottawa

0 comments.