Monthly Archives: July 2007

DIY: Energy load evaluation made easy.

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The Kill A Watt has been an absolute mainstay device in the Solar world for many years now and i am glad i can now offer it to those that are working to get off grid.If you are not inclined towards doing all of the calculations to match your home with the solar you will need to reduce or get completely offline,I do now offer a load evaluation consulting service.This would provide absolutely accurate data on how many panels,batteries,correct wire guage,trackers(or fixed array) and type of inverter you might need.Would also include recommendations on which appliances to replace with links to suitable alternatives.All that is needed is your household Kill A Watt data and your city to calculate yearly insolation data.If interested there are online load sheets and contact forms on hughessolarenergy to get the process started!

Top 10 Truths about LEED for Homes

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Well, my ninjas, its another Green Tuesday here at architecture.mnp – and I’m bringing you some info straight from the USGBC on building green homes in the US [sorry to all my international ninjas - but I assume things are similar wherever you’re at]. I was perusing the USGBC website [trying to study for LEED, which is not a simple task] when I came across this ‘Top 10 Truths about LEED for Homes’, a pretty interesting list basically giving you reasons to green your [or your client’s] home. Featured here is my favorite point, for all you haters out there [you know who you are]:

3. LEED homes are very cost-effective to build

The reality is that the net cost of owning a LEED home is the same as a code home. A brief explanation follows. The typical cost of an entry level (i.e., certified) LEED home is about 3 to 5 percent higher than a home that is built to code. For an averaged priced $300,000 new home, this means a cost increment of about $10,000 for the additional green measures. When this $10,000 cost increment is amortized over 30 years, the result is an increase in the monthly mortgage payment of approximately $70 per month. This amounts to a cost increase of about $2 per day – for all of the feature and benefits of a LEED home (e.g., healthier, more comfortable, more durable, energy efficient, and environmentally responsible). However, if you also weigh in the approximately 30 percent utility bill savings from a LEED home, the utility bill savings are approximately $70 per month. So, the bottom line is that the increase in the cost of the monthly mortgage payment is about the same as the monthly utility bill savings. And so the net monthly cost of a owning a LEED home is the same as the monthly cost of owning a home that is built to code.

So head on over to the USGBC and find out why you should be building green, and study up to become a LEED AP [speaking of which, anyone want to share notes? I’m serious here, my ninjas…]

Sidwell Friends School [green.MNP]

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Now my ninjas, I’ve been telling you not to sleep on our green site [green.MNP is a pretty easy name to remember], and here’s a great reason why. Our HNIC, Black Octagons [AKA The Eight Sided Blackness] is going green and writing new content to our environmentally conscious partner page. Last week he featured the Sidwell Friends School, a project that’s definitely worth you leaving the archtiecture site to read more about…so long as you come back when you’re done.

The building was sited to take advantage of passive solar design. Together with high-efficiency electric lighting, photosensors, and occupancy sensors, daylighting minimizes lighting energy use. Solar-ventilation chimneys, operable windows, and ceiling fans minimize the need for mechanical cooling. Rather than develop a utility plant for this building alone, a central plant was created to serve the entire campus. A photovoltaic array generates about 5% of the building’s electricity needs.

Reclaimed materials include exterior cladding, flooring and decking, and the stone used for landscaping. Interior finishes were selected for their high levels of recycled content, low chemical emissions, and use of rapidly renewable materials.

He even quotes our ninja John over at archidose’s weekly dose, who also featured the project [also worth taking a look at - both his post on the Sidwell Friends School, and archidose in general, which is a siiick site].

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Design / e2 : Deeper Shades of Green

So, after featuring one of the Design/e2 video podcasts [‘Grey to Green’] last week for Green Tuesday, I thought I’d keep things alive and throw another one up this week [they’re short, but pretty interesting]. I hope to continue to find videos to feature for our Green Tuesday series – so if you see anything out there in the internets, let me know!

Check out this, and other videos from the PBS series Design / e2.

Nick’s back from ASES

Our correspondent on the ground, Nick C., just got back to us with a report from ASES. We appreciate Sun Ra as well. Heres what he had to say:

It been a hot second my ninjas, but I just got back from the American Solar Energy Society conference in Cleveland Ohio. Big things are on the horizon for the solar industry, from First Solar’s announcement that they have signed contracts for in excess of 650 MW of PV at a cost of $1.88 per watt. Why is this particularly exciting? Well, right now the market price is somewhere in the range of $3.50 a Watt (http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=49298). Do your thing First Solar, is what I say. On the federal level, there is some really cool legislation being considered in both the House ( H.R. 550) and Senate (S.590) that would extent the Investment Tax Credit for solar for up to 8 years and eliminate the $2000 tax credit cap for residential solar systems. What does this all mean??? The investment tax credit (check SEIA.org) currently covers 30% of a solar systems cost for both commercial and residential applications, though there is a cap of $2000 for residential. The newly proposed legislation would extend this credit for 8 years (meaning all those capitalist banker types will be a lot more amenable to throwing investment dollars at solar) and eliminate the cap for residential systems (meaning the average systems of 3.5 kW that now costs about $35 k minus would be eligible for a credit of over $10,000 instead of the capped $2000). What’s it all mean? Each one of those dollars brings us a little bit closer to grid cost parity, energy independence and no more of that stinking, nasty coal.

From an industry growth perspective, the Prometheus Institute has recently released projections (Prometheus.org) that the solar industry will maintain its phat growth (40% that is) through 2010, that’s both production capacity and installations. That means a lot more solar, falling PV prices, and a big middle finger to the fossil fuel economy. I also attended presentations from Spectrolab that outlined their 44% efficient concentrating PV technology (http://spectrolab.com/prd/terres/cell-main.htm) And our good friends at SunPower are also introducing a 23% efficient polysilicon wafer (SunPower presentation at ASES), now given the industry standard ain’t much better than 16%, id say we should be looking for big things from SunPower and co.

All and all, while the stuffy ass reporters at the NYT, seem to think that we are way too excited about solar (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/business/16solar.html?_r=1&oref=slogin), I’d say they got it wrong, we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. The growth I suspect we are looking at will be in terms of orders of magnitude (10x) rather than incremental). And as a wise ninja once said, “space is the place, and the sun is the one”

thanks to nick

Maverick Farms

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I came across an article about this awesome farm in Gourmet Magazine, but unfortunately the magazine does not have their articles on the web (at least not that I can access). Anyway, Maverick Farms is located in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina:

Maverick Farms formed in spring 2004 to preserve a small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, an area under intense pressure from development. It operates as an open laboratory, experimenting with human-scale farming techniques and traditional food preparation.

Maverick Farms works to reclaim the pleasures of eating and sharing meals in a culture overrun by industrial agriculture and flavorless food. The project arose out of Springhouse Farm, which for 30 years sold hand-picked vegetables to local restaurants. Maverick Farms is continuing with that tradition while embarking on new education and outreach projects to connect local food producers and consumers.

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Mmmmmmmmmmm, delicious.

[Gourmet; Maverick Farms]

Sidwell Friends School

“A house is a machine for living,” said Le Corbusier. And while that’s blatantly plagiarized from the Washington Post article referred to later in this post, it’s definitely one of those ‘true-dat’ quotes that seemed pretty appropriate at the top of green.mnp (sorta). In order to be a machine for living, a house must facilitate life, as opposed to death by natural disaster.
On that same note, it’s amazing what you can find just by doing a Google search for “green.” A little poking around, even just on the surface, can yield tons of information.

My good friend and associate, orange menace, from our very own architecture.mnp, has many times stated to me that it is the building and construction industry that is always at the forefront of environmental changes, and is always cataclysmic in any major change in that area: from the architects and designers of the manufacturing plants on down to guy who does the independent consultation for central air conditioning in your home. Nothing makes this more apparent than the current push in the industry for workable, feasible sustainability.

Sometimes people may wonder why we cover these apparently random green buildings on this page, so we just wanted to give an idea why. Moving right along…

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The Sidwell Friends School middle school building was completed in September of 2006. It was named one of the top ten green projects by the American Institute of Architects this year.

Environmental Aspects

Designed to foster an ethic of social and environmental responsibility in each student, the facility demonstrates a responsible relationship between the natural and the built environment.

Bicycle storage and showers are available, and the building is located within walking distance of a subway stop and several bus stops. Parking is available in an underground lot. A green roof and constructed wetland reduce stormwater runoff, improve the quality of infiltrated runoff, and reduce municipal water use. The wetland treats wastewater for reuse in the toilets and cooling towers.

The building was sited to take advantage of passive solar design. Together with high-efficiency electric lighting, photosensors, and occupancy sensors, daylighting minimizes lighting energy use. Solar-ventilation chimneys, operable windows, and ceiling fans minimize the need for mechanical cooling. Rather than develop a utility plant for this building alone, a central plant was created to serve the entire campus. A photovoltaic array generates about 5% of the building’s electricity needs.

Reclaimed materials include exterior cladding, flooring and decking, and the stone used for landscaping. Interior finishes were selected for their high levels of recycled content, low chemical emissions, and use of rapidly renewable materials.

Link

Archidose, a blog near and dear to our hearts, also did a feature on this building last month. They have some good pictures of the project, one of which we stole. All images are copyright of Barry Halkin.

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The wetland is but one of numerous sustainable strategies incorporated into the building’s siting and architectural design. These include rainwater collection on a vegetated roof, photovoltaic panels on the roof, solar chimneys for passive ventilation, sustainable (especially local and native) materials, high-performance glass and exterior walls and roofs, and exterior sunscreens that respond to orientation to maximize passive passive heating and cooling. With all these elements, the building becomes a tool for teaching sustainability, from the materials and technology to water treatment and co-existing with local wildlife.

Architecturally, the most attention-getting gesture is surely the exterior sunscreens, placed vertically on east- and west-facing elevations to respond to the rising and setting sun, and placed horizontally on the south face (the north face is free of screens to maximize sunlight). One important outcome of these screens is a unification of the existing and addition into a cohesive entity, oriented about the courtyard, like an environmental anchor.

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I will spare you any of my own commentary and simply leave you with a quote from the Washington Post article that started this whole foray. If you want a real description of the school then read this article… it’s quite poetic.

The usual tour of a new building doesn’t include loving detail about the sewage system, a trip to the basement to check out the heating and cooling equipment, or a traipse across the roof to see how the building will handle storm runoff. Most people, proud of a spanking new bit of architecture, want to talk travertine marble and daring cantilevers.

But the stewards of the new middle school building on the campus of Sidwell Friends School are promoting it as one of the most environmentally friendly pieces of architecture in the country. And in the process, they’re thinking so much about the building as a collection of systems (photovoltaic cells, water filtration, passive solar) that you might think they were channeling the perverse vision of Le Corbusier from a century ago. A house, Le Corbusier wrote, is a “machine for living.”

There in a nutshell is the great challenge for what is known as the green building movement: What role will aesthetics play? Are green buildings beautiful because they’re environmentally friendly? Or should they be beautiful even if one doesn’t know the environmental agenda that is driving their construction? Put another way, can low-slung buildings with green, growing roofs compete with the uber-sexy architecture of titanium-clad twisty shapes and torqued walls and hallways?

Link

Yeah? Well, I’ve got a quote of my own.

“It’s not easy bein’ green!” – Donatello, Ninja Turtles