The Restructuring Roundtable is a mostly monthly (it takes the summer months off) meeting of the energy sector in Boston that takes a morning to discuss energy issues in depth with the major players from all around NE. There is also much time allotted for networking.  The slides from the presentations are available online within a day or two and the video of the presentations comes a little later.  It is a great resource for anyone interested in these issues and the public is most definitely invited.

The Roundtable, for me, follows in the tradition of the NE-wide energy policy meetings the great Duane Day used to host at the Department of Energy starting back in the days before Reagan killed us.

The 6/14/13 Restructuring Roundtable was “ISO-NE’s Generation Retirement Study & 2020 Resource Options for New England.”  You can see the agenda and look at the slides here:

http://www.raabassociates.org/…

The video should be available in a few weeks.  ISO-NE manages the electricity market in New England and is thus the entity that is responsible for maintaining the flow of electrons from one utility to another when necessary.

http://techpresident.com/news/…

A group of people from the Occupy Wall Street movement is collaborating with the climate change advocacy group 350.org and a new online toolkit for disaster recovery, recovers.org, to organize a grassroots relief effort in New York City.

Occupy Sandy:  http://occupywallst.org/articl…

Boston TEDX talk by Recovers.org http://www.ted.com/talks/caitr…

The combination of the jobs and economic focus of Occupy with the climate change and energy transition ideas of 350.org along with the disaster recovery systems of Recovers.org is a model that can build resilience and preparedness quickly if continued.  Add Solar IS Civil Defense, set the Maker Culture loose, and it just might shade over into Solar Swadeshi, Gandhian economics, a non-violent and restorative open source peer-to-peer economic system where we plan for 100% success for all humanity, to paraphrase R Buckminster Fuller.

You can now estimate with great detail the solar electric potential of any roof in Cambridge, MA by just typing in an address on a webpage, the Cambridge Solar Tool

(http://cambridgema.gov/solar).  For instance, the double triple decker in which I live has six apartments and a total roof area of 2,781 square feet. 1,136 of those sq ft have high PV (photovoltaic) potential.  This could support an 18kW solar electric system providing 22,945 kWh per year, enough to power about a third of the electricity used by those six apartments, if each apartment uses the rough US average of around 11,000 kWh per year (my own annual electric use is around 1,600 kWh/yr).

The estimated savings per year for such a PV system are $9,081. The total cost  is $101,720.  With the Federal tax credit of $30,516 and a MA state tax credit of $1,000, the final cost to the owner would be $70,204.  In addition, the Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) of 27¢/kWh could produce $6,212 per year (at least that’s my reading of the MA SREC program, but I could be wrong).  Such an investment would pay for itself in about 8 years with a return on investment (ROI) of 12.93%, a better return than gold (10.19%) or the stock market (Dow Jones average:  5.50%).  The solar electricity would replace other fuels that now spew 12 tons per year of carbon into the atmosphere.

If the owner did not want to put any money down, they could opt for a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), buying electricity from a third party which owns, installs, maintains, insures, and monitors a PV system on the roof of our double triple decker at a long term, generally 20 years, fixed and lower cost than what is paid now for power.

Solar IS Civil Defense – what we are all supposed to have on hand in case of emergency – flashlight, cell phone, radio, extra set of batteries – can be powered by a few square inches of solar electric panel.  Add a hand crank or bicycle generator and you have a reliable source of survival level electricity, day or night, by sunlight or muscle power.

This is also entry level electrical power for the 1.5 billion people around the world who do not yet have access to electricity.  Civil defense at home and economic development abroad can be combined in a “buy one, give one” program like the Bogolight (http://www.bogolight.com) which is a solar LED light and AA battery charger.

Solar IS Civil Defense and could be much more.

This idea may be moot after all the forced evictions of the Occupations from public spaces but I thought I’d share it anyway.

I’ve visited the Occupations in Wall Street, Boston, and Providence, RI.  Every time I go to one of them, I try to connect with somebody about making the Occupation green with, as yet, little success.  In New York, I saw the greywater treatment system Mobile Research Labs set up and talked to a couple of people about using some simple solar techniques.  In Boston, I’ve tried to connect the winterization team with the student Energy Clubs at some of the local colleges and universities and alerted my own network of solar enthusiasts to Occupy Boston’s  efforts.  I’ve also tried to do the same by contacting OWS’s Sustainability Group.  In Providence, I talked with the only occupier I saw up and around early on a Sunday morning.  He was picking up trash around the park and was disappointed that the group hadn’t organized themselves enough to do recycling.  I gave him my card and my elevator pitch for a green occupation and he said he’d pass it on.

I look at the Occupations and see economic refugee camps and a possible test-bed for emergency response and sustainable economic development around the world.  Some may say that’s crazy but the links are there if you look.

The Climate CoLab is part of MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence.

In both 2010 and 2011, the primary activities have been a pair of online contests, where teams of community members are invited to propose actions to key aspects of climate change.

The 2011 contest poses the question:

How should the 21st century economy evolve bearing in mind the risks of climate change?

In the initial stages of a contest, teams develop proposals on what should be done. Expert judges assess and select finalists among these proposals.

In the final round, Climate CoLab members are invited to vote. Winners are chosen based on voting and on a second review by the judges. A group of policy makers are briefed on the winning proposals.

On the national level, my proposal made the final cut:

How to Change US Energy in One Growing Season

http://climatecolab.org/web/gu…

You can vote for it or other proposals in the contest until November 15 at the URLs above.  Please take a look.

Solar water disinfection

http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN

A two liter plastic bottle can be made into a water treatment system simply by filling it with contaminated water and exposing it to the sun.  Sodis is an organization that promotes this technology around the world.  

The disinfection process can be speeded by turning aluminized mylar snack food bags inside out and making them into reflectors as two young students in Belo Horizonte, Brazil discovered:  http://calais.phase2technology…

Solar bottle bulbs for daylighting

http://www.elliottlemenager.co…

In 2002, during a long electrical shortage, at Uberaba, São Paulo, Brasil, Mr Alfredo Moser discovered a way to gather sun light in the house through plastic bottles hanging from the roof. First shown at the Globo Reporter in the 25th May 2007.

Alfredo Moser was pressed by a scarce electricity substitution and found out that he could light his house with a bottle of water filled with water and a protection cap made of camera film.

The bottle is just refracting sunlight very effectively and produces an equivalent light power compared to a 50/60W lamp. In a rainy day, even without much light and direct sun, one still have some light. Scientist have now visited Moser and are looking into ways to take this concept to maximize its potential.

Here’s my latest Solar PSA on how a south-facing window is already a solar collector:

http://www.youtube.com/v/FdGAd…

“Any window that sees direct sunlight is a solar collector.  You can learn how to use that free energy to make your home more comfortable and secure.  Caulk and seal the window against drafts.  Install storm windows on the exterior, interior, or both.  Cover the window at night with an insulating curtain to prevent conduction, convection, and radiative heat loss.  A valence above the window will stop night-time drafts and reduce condensation.  A sunny window can double as a greenhouse for starting seedlings or growing house plants.  Expand the solar space below, above, or beside the window with a windowbox solar air or water heater.    You can even design a living system to provide fresh vegetables and fish year round while producing space heat, cleaning the air, and reducing waste.  A south-facing window is already a solar collector.  Learn how to use it.”

A couple of years ago, Dr William Moomaw of Tufts mentioned a regional scale experiment with an all-renewable grid in Germany.  I’ve been curious about that project since then.  Today, I did a little googling and found a seven-minute youtube called “Fully renewable: biogas + wind + solar”

Dr Jurgen Schmid at the University of Kassel, Department of Efficient Energy Conversion is the spokesperson from this December 2007 video.  The system described is wind with pumped hydro storage and grid scale solar with methane from biomass (corn biofuels).  When the sun isn’t out in the South, the wind may be blowing in the North.  When there’s too much wind, it can be used to pump water into reservoirs that will provide hydroelectricity days or weeks later.  When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, biomass can be burned or converted to methane.  They say Germany can have a 100% renewable grid by 2050.  Dr Schmid, along with John Sievers, Stefan Faulstich, Mathias Puchta, Ingo Stadler, is the co-author of “Long-term perspectives for balancing fluctuating renewable energy sources” (pdf alert:  http://desire.iwes.fraunhofer…. details the steps necessary to get to a fully renewable grid.

Straw Centrifuge Pump

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

A lot of modern junk – plastic bottles, cups, refills, rubber slippers, pens etc can be reused in many creative ways to make joyous learning aids.  Children could make more than a dozen delightful pumps using all kinds of odd stuff.  For instance, push two film cans on the ends of a 15 cm piece of old bicycle tube to make an air pump.  The opening/closing valves are made using bits of sticky tape.  This high quality pump can easily inflate a balloon!  Or else make a scintillating sprinkler within a minute.  Poke a broom stick in the middle of a plastic straw.  Make two half cuts 2 cm away from the centre.  Bend the arms and secure them in place with some tape to make a triangle.  Twirl this triangle in water to make a most delightful centrifuge or sprinkler.

Arvind Gupta has been building science teaching toys from trash materials since 1978 and for the Children’s Science Centre at Inter-University Centre for  Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune University, Pune 411007 Maharashtra India since October 2003.

On his website

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com

you can find hundreds of toys children can make for themselves with easily available materials

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com…

He even has video demonstrations of many designs

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com…

“The best thing a child can do with a toy is break it !”

“And somewhere there are engineers

Helping others fly faster than sound.

But, where are the engineers

Helping those who must live on the ground?”