Battery Boredom—Does Tesla Have the Answer?
Batteries are obviously not a new technology. Every grocery and convenience store sells a variety of small-scale batteries for use in household devices and hobbyists dedicated to making their own storage units can cobble together strings of batteries to create longer-term solutions. But the storage side of renewable energy sources—wind, geothermal, and especially solar—has been largely […]
Read full post »Floating the Energy Boat—Japanese Solar Plants Take to the Water
Is water the new way forward? While much has been made of wind turbines and geothermal energy in recent years, water-based efforts have been largely sidelined in part over concerns about pollution and in part thanks to government tax breaks for other forms of carbon-reducing power generation. Now, initiatives by both the Kyocera Corporation and […]
Read full post »Going Green? Your Restroom Cleaning Plan
Think your restroom is clean? Think again. Public and commercial bathrooms contain “too many bacteria to count.” That’s the designation applied when there are more than 250 colony-forming units per millimeter – in the case of high-traffic restrooms, the number approaches 1000. Yuck.
Read full post »What You Don’t Know About Cogeneration
You’ve probably heard the term “cogeneration” or seen the phrase “combined heat and power” (CHP). That’s because the concept is catching on – new energy reforms in Mexico aim to encourage the development of cogeneration plants, and work is almost complete on California-based Calgren Renewable Fuels’ anaerobic digester, which will replace the natural gas currently used […]
Read full post »Saving Money With a Water Conservation Program
Commercial buildings have a web of interconnected systems relying on water. Water is one of our most precious resources and yet conservation is an often overlooked aspect in whole-building design strategies. Most commercial facility managers struggle with managing its consumption, resulting in lots of wasted water. As water rates rise across the country, it’s an economically […]
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