Gabriolan.ca » electricity

New battery could change world, one house at a time

Gabriolan — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:49:05 +0000

I’d love to be off-the-grid as far as power is concerned. And hmmm, maybe the rest of Gabriola would as well, if it were easy and cheap enough. Here’s an article from the (Utah) Herald Extra that will be of interest to anybody who dreams of these things: New battery could change world, one house at a time.

In a modest building on the west side of Salt Lake City, a team of specialists in advanced materials and electrochemistry has produced what could be the single most important breakthrough for clean, alternative energy since Socrates first noted solar heating 2,400 years ago.

The prize is the culmination of 10 years of research and testing — a new generation of deep-storage battery that’s small enough, and safe enough, to sit in your basement and power your home. (…)

These batteries switch the whole dialogue to renewables, said Daniel Nocera, a noted chemist and professor of energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who sits on Ceramatec’s science advisory board. They will turn us away from dumb technology, circa 1900 — a 110-year-old approach — and turn us forward. (…) I can’t imagine anything more secure than generating my own energy with the sun at my house, and now I’ll have a way to store it. It’s the ultimate in security, and the ultimate in control. [continue]

DIY wind generator for $150

Gabriolan — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:09:30 +0000

Here’s one for all you Gabriola do-it-yourself types: How Kevin Harris built a wind generator in his back yard for $150.00. He wrote:

Lately I’ve been spending a great deal of time working on ways to generate my own electricity. It isn’t a necessity for me yet, but someday being electrically self-sufficient could really come in handy. My interest started a while back when I stumbled upon a how-to article on building wind generators from treadmill motors and PVC pipe. It sounded easy enough, so I decided to try and design my own. This particular design can be built for $100-$150 if you are thrifty and can regularly generate 50-250 watts (considerably cheaper than a solar panel of similar power output). Here’s how I built it [continue]

Fascinating.

When I was a kid, our next-door neighbour made all kinds of whirligigs: wooden birds that flapped in the wind, wooden squirrels that ran in circles every time a breeze hit them — lots of that kind of thing, plus many fan-like contraptions that looked and moved much like Kevin’s wind generator. Now I’m thinking that Old Mr Neighbour would have had a lot of fun making electricity out of his spinning artwork.

Hey, Gabriola Artworks, how about a show on art that produces electricity?

If any of you make wind generators on Gabriola, I’d love to hear about it.