Hamster Power
A June 15 article in High Country News describes an invention for using a hamster to power a night light. Indeed, a hamster can power a light if the wheel is tuned correctly and you select a hamster breed that wants to run all night long.
The inventor of this device, Dan Fink, owns a company called ForceField that builds systems for people to live off grid. According to Fink, the first item to look at when going for energy independence is use- efficiency:
"Fink, who considers education to be Forcefield's primary business, believes our widespread ignorance about the workings of watts and volts has gotten us into trouble. "People call us all the time and say, 'I'm worried about climate change! I want to put solar panels on my roof,' " Fink says. "But then we find out their houses aren't insulated, and they're using incandescent light bulbs during the day. We make them do all the cheaper things before we teach them how to make their own power."
When people do make their own power -- on their rooftops, or with a 30-kilowatt microturbine installed in the basement -- they pay more attention to how they use it. They replace kitchen lights with compact fluorescents and reading lights with LEDs. They might even turn the lights off altogether for a few hours.
Electricity generated Forcefield's way -- close to home and in small batches -- is called distributed generation. It's the way Thomas Edison originally delivered electricity back in 1882, when he built the United States' first power plant in Manhattan and provided energy to just 60 customers. In the last decade or so, ever since California became the first state to open its energy markets to individual competitors, distributed generation has been sputtering back into the U.S. energy mix, making a dent in energy demand and securing supplies where blackouts mean disaster. It allows an ordinary electricity consumer to become a one-person power plant, and guarantees that a business can weather a downed power line without incident."
http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.11/lets-get-small?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email
Arbor Insulation Launched
Arbor Insulation was launched in 2005 with the idea of changing they homes are built and use energy. It is our hope that we could help people build homes that are more energy efficient, safer, and more comfortable.
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