Hippy Green

A geologist in Serbia found a mineral that contains the same chemical composition as the comic books description of kryptonite. After trying to identify the mineral, the geologist searched the internet for comical formula - sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide and received many websites that describe the rock kryptonite that Lex Luther used in the movie Superman Returns.

The mineral will be named Jadarite and will be on show at London’s Natural History Museum tomorrow. So if your a really big fan of Superman, stop by and check it out, if not pass this link around to all your comic book reading friends.

via MSNBC

Notice the image on the right side, Dreamhost buys Carbon Credits to offset its usage for the 1300+ servers it runs (which hosts www.hippygreen.com). So not only is this blog Green by nature, but its hosted by a Green Company. If you looking for a web server/solution, I highly recommend Dreamhost. Dreamhost is not only as green as they come, but has some awesome service and plans, its one of the best web hosting companies I have used. (and I have been hosting a website since 1998). I will be renewing my contract with them the end of this month and could not be happier.

*Side Note, I will be also getting a VPS (Virtual Private Server) from slicehost to use for my Ruby on Rails application, but thats mainly due to speed/scaliablity/load. The Ruby on Rails can run on Dreamhost, but the rails framework is heavy on shared servers like Dreamhost. If your looking for a php/web hosting server, SIGN UP NOW by Clicking on the image below!

If your looking for some hardcore ruby on rails server, slicehost or engine yard.

Chris Pepe over at Tears of Fire posted yesterday (I was planning to post it, but was so busy launching Hippy Green) on Earth Day his Recycled GreenHouse, a light blub, Dunkin Donuts cup and some small flowers.

Chris is know for his creativeness and have written about him yesterday. This article on his twiki even made it on makezine’s blog, another great site that has come cool DIY Green projects! So if you have a dead light bulb and some creative juices flowing you to can build a small green house in an hour.

Direct from Bloomberg, the $4/gallon gasoline is coming to America. I know when I had my Subaru STI paying $3.50 (93 octane) I was walking more and thought a bit before I just drove around the block, but now the average Joe is going to pay $4, WTF?!?! America needs to wake up and fight this! We need to either get the government to stop subsiding the oil companies so they don’t turn another $10 Billion (with a B) QUARTER (4 times a year!) I will be the first to say that I did not VOTE for BUSH the first time and I sure as hell didn’t the second! We need to fight these GREEDY Oil companies and tell them to invest their profits into renewable resources or offset their carbon footprint! Lets start building CO OP wind farms and wind turbines on our mountains.

America is at war over oil and yet the price just gets higher and more ridiculous. Obviously we are a Oil dependent country, but we need to DRASTICALLY change our usage! Lets start building these small plugin vehicles and high speed segways.

With the jump in cost of gasoline this raises the commuters cost thus either forcing people to make more or change jobs. America is also a country of negative savings, we are spending more then we are making! We are living from paycheck to paycheck and with gas prices jumping dramatically this will kill our economy.

After attending GoRuco and hearing about them offsetting our carbon footprint, I started to think about mine. Granted I was not the most “environmentally” person, but I still have a vision of renewable energy! During my summers at College I must have drove at least 15,000 miles, but after selling my STI this past summer and sharing a car/ using mass transit, I have only realized that I need to move into a City and walk or bike to my destination.

A bicycle is the most environmentally efficient form of transportation. In the Netherlands and Japan there were racks of bikes just ready to be used. There are even communities setup to have community bicycles that are shared among its members.

Well sorry for the rant, but we need to contact our government officials and tell them that we need to stop subsiding the oil companies and to invest into alternative energy solutions! I want to build a wind farm CO OP like the picture below of the one in Spain, who’s with me?

For all those California readers you may know that there was about 85,000 hybrid owners who were given HOV exempt stickers to allow their hybrid to travel in the carpool lane without the minium 2+ persons in the car. The DMV recent changed the laws creating this market for people to either steal these HOV exemption stickers from cars or buy them (up to $4,000 more) for used hybrids with HOV exempt stickers. California DMV claims there are two to three dozen victims per month (WOW! a bit much?) that have been scammed out of their beloved HOV exempt sticker, but at least the stickers are “chemically treated” to crumble apart if tampered with.

Why Not? There are a lot of positive alternatives to various household items such as light bulbs, furniture, and what to do with all that stuff you have. There are various types of efficient light blubs from LED to HEI the cost might be a bit steep, but think about how many times you either replace it or if it lowers your monthly electricity bill. If you are reading this today RUN TO HOME DEPOT!!! Home Depot is giving away 1 million CFL light bulbs during Earth Day.

As for furniture and other stuff you have lying around the house check out Freecycle. You can buy/sell stuff by posting, also check out craigslist. I know in Vermont there was a place called Recycle North recycle north great place for college students to find furniture and write off stuff for tax deductions. So come join the green bandwagon!

Chris Pepe of Tears of Fire has build some interesting Green DIY projects. Using our Avronics board he has build a Wind LCD Meter to monitor the MAKE DIY Wind Turbine that his brother Michael built. Chris has worked on a variety of EE projects that deal with Green Technology as well as fun Green toys like a solar powered pendulum. Chris is also a University of Vermont Graduate and is currently working on some really interesting projects.

This past Thursday April 5, I attended the Google NYC Office for a tech talk with Luiz Barroso’s on “Watts, Faults, and Other Fascinating Dirty Words Computer Architects Can No Longer Afford to Ignore”. He discussed various energy problems and concerns that Google is facing along with ideas and ways to solve them.

Google has many data centers with racks of computers. Each computer has at least 1 power supply for power. Most data centers use at least 2 of everything to be redundant incase something fails. Efficiency can play a major role in not only saving money but also being environmentally friendly. If a power supply for 1 computer in a data center only 50% efficient then 50% of the energy used to power this 1 computer in a data center goes to waste. Most data centers have hundreds of racks of computers. Each rack holds about 42 1u cases or 42 computers. This could vary in setup but a data center contains hundreds if not thousands of computers.

Using energy efficient power supplies can cut down on the cost and the waste of power. During the talk, Barroso points out that a computer server could cost less then the power that it uses over the course of its life. Most computer servers last about 4 years and the power required to keep it up and running would cost more then the server. He also points out that the energy used while the server is idle and not processing anything is about 10 to 20% less then when the server is at full peak processing.

How many computers to do you leave on at your home? Do they have a efficient power supply?

Seeing how fast people are moving into cities and how much the price of a square foot costs, it only makes sense that we look at building up. We need to look at utilizing all the space we have in our large cities. While I was visiting Japan I saw many unique structures that saved on space by building on top of one another. For example, some of the highways the buses drove on were actually double decker. Building a farm as a skyscraper makes sense and provides food without traveling outside the cite. We could also attach wind turbines and solar panels on this skyscraper to gather energy.

Skyscraper Farms are just the next step, they provide harvesting for both food and energy. We need to start thinking urban planning in cities like New York where 1000sft Condo, 1 bedroom 1 bath in Chelsea costs 1 million dollars! We need to build solar panels and wind turbines on top of these skyscraper Farms as well as produce.

Wired Magazine had a great article about Skyscraper farms

The demand for solar engery has been growning expotentialy in recent studies. The solar equipment industry will grown from $20 billion last year to a predicted $90 billion in 2010. The falling cost of solar panels have also raised the demand and help the average houseown setup and install his own source of “free energy”.

I know this summer I was thinking of building a solar panel array and start selling power back to the grid. I did some research and tax credits and time and found The Solar Center posted some great figures and seem to be on the ball with going green. For example , in Connecticut you can get $5/watt of solar power. So if you build and buy a 5000 Watt System for $45,000 you can write off $25,000 come tax time and only spend $20,000. Yes I know that sounds like a lot, but there is additional $2,000 in federal credit and you should be saving about $1,077 a year on electricity. Thats a 6% Rate of Return. So if your living in the tri-state area and want to install solar panels, give them a call at 888-SOLAR-05. Some of you must be saying but its a tax credit. Well yes, the idea of going green does appeal to rich folks and is nice minus on what you own the state.

If solar energy is not your thing or you live in Seattle, you should also look at wind power. Depending on your state there are also tax credit available for the about of energy the wind turbine produces. Unfortunally this tax credit does not apply to DIY like antics over at tearsoffire.org who has built a wind turbine with his brother and a nice windmeter project with our Avroincs Board. I know we should start selling this as kits but time, life, and job are and have been getting in the way. Anyway, wind turbines are great and in some cities if the turbine is below 30ft you don’t even need a permit! This comes in hand when you happen to place it outside your neighbors window.

The final idea for my little talk about alternative energy is thinking about investing in a coop. In Europe its common to invest money into alternative energy and have the energy your coop produces subtracted from your currently electricity bill. It blows my mind when I go out to Arizona and see that no one has any solar panels on their roof. Scottsdale alone has almost 300 days without rain. The last time I was out their they were hopping it rained due to the fact they had not gotten any in 180 DAYS! I will be going back down to Scottsdale the end of April and hope to see or get at least 1 person to install some solar panels on their roof.