HOW THE ZERO HOUSE WORKS

by Jane McGrath

Most
of us strive to leave “our mark” on the world. But, lately, the trend
is to leave as little a mark as possible on our environment.

After listening to the media chatter about the rising costs of oil and the onset of global warming, many are seeking to reduce their personal ecological footprints,
or harmful impact on the planet. People feel a tug of economical good
sense and environmental stewardship to advance green technology. Green technology
seeks to reduce factors harmful to the environment — from excessive
waste to reliance on energy that requires the release of greenhouse
gases.

Even large-scale corporations have been investing in
energy-efficient technology to reduce their ecological footprints and
gain “street cred” with their green-leaning customers. Architects are
no exception. Green building,
which is the process of implementing green technology to make
structures more energy and resource efficient, is steadily gaining
popularity.

Specht Harpman
The
zeroHouse design is an exemplum of cutting edge green building because
of its abilities to function without any utility connections to outside
sources.

Today, plenty of buildings are described as sustainable
– using less fossil-fueled power than traditional structures. But
certain designs, like that of the zeroHouse, threaten to revolutionize
the idea of green building and overshadow predecessors to radically
redefine sustainability. Few buildings truly live up to the idea of
sustainability in the way the zeroHouse could. Using cutting-edge,
green technology, the zeroHouse design works completely off the grid (as in the power grid), feeding only on the renewable energy of the sun.

Imagine
a home that is not merely energy efficient, but doesn’t have a single
energy bill in its mailbox. Imagine a sustainable home that doesn’t
sacrifice your comfort. Not only that, but imagine being able to build
this house in a remote location without power lines, constructing this prefabricated home in only one day and with only two flatbed trucks full of materials.

Keep reading to find out the details of this futuristic, green-dream house.

How many solar cells would I need in order to provide all of the electricity that my house needs?

Location is crucial in determining how many
solar cells are necessary to power a house.

To calculate how many square inches of solar panel you need for a house, you need to know:

• How much power the house consumes on average.
• Where the house is located (so you can calculate mean solar
  days, average rainfall, etc.). This question is impossible to answer
  unless you have a specific location in mind. We’ll assume that on an
  average day the solar panels generate their maximum power for 5 hours.

The first question is actually pretty interesting, so let’s work on it.

A “typical home” in America can use either electricity or gas to provide heat — heat for the house, the hot water,
the clothes dryer and the stove/oven. If you were to power a house with
solar electricity, you would certainly use gas appliances because solar
electricity is so expensive. This means that what you would be powering
with solar electricity are things like the refrigerator, the lights,
the compute­r, the TV,
stereo equipment, motors in things like furnace fans and the washer,
etc. Let’s say that all of those things average out to 600 watts on
average. Over the course of 24 hours, you need 600 watts * 24 hours =
14,400 watt-hours per day.

If you have read the HSW article entitled How Solar Yard Lights Work, then you can get a feeling for how much power a solar cell
can produce. The solar panel shown in that article contains 4 cells,
and each of them can produce 0.45 volts and 100 milliamps, or 45 milliwatts.
Each cell measures 2 inches by 0.5 inches. In other words, with these
solar cells you can generate 45 milliwatts in one square inch (6.45
square cm). For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that a panel can
generate 70 milliwatts per square inch.

To Read the original article  CLICK HERE

Feature Article in the Arizona Republic: by Chris Hawley

LA VENTA, Mexico
- The windmills stand in rows like an army of Goliaths, steel towers
taller than the Statue of Liberty and topped with blades as long as a
jetliner’s wing.

The blades whoosh through the air, carving energy from a wind that rushes across Mexico’s
Isthmus of Tehuantepec on its journey from the Gulf of Mexico to the
Pacific Ocean. Nearly every day, another tower rises out of the
countryside.

The isthmus – Mexico’s narrowest point – is becoming the Saudi
Arabia of alternative energy as U.S. and European companies, emboldened
by new technology and high oil prices, rush to stake their claims in
one of the world’s windiest places. The Mexican government wants the
isthmus producing 2,500 megawatts within three years, a goal that will
require thousands of windmills and catapult Mexico into the top 12
producers of wind energy.

Opponents of Mexican President Felipe Calderón fear the generators
are the first step toward privatizing Mexico’s energy sector. And some
residents are angry that the electricity is not going to homes in
Oaxaca, one of Mexico’s poorest states, but to power Walmarts and
industries.

“It has divided neighbors against each other,” said Alejo Giron, a
communal farmer in La Venta. “If this place has so much possibility,
where are the benefits for us?”

Gifted with wind

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 130 miles wide, lies at the bottom of a
funnel formed by two mountain ranges. Winds from the Atlantic Ocean and
the Gulf of Mexico whistle through on their way to the Pacific Ocean.

The turbines need about 8 mph of wind to work. The winds near La
Venta average more than 19 mph, and in winter, gusts are so strong they
can flip tractor-trailers.

Private wind-farm projects have gone into high gear since the
inauguration of Calderón, who has warned that Mexico is running out of
oil and needs to modernize. He pushed legal changes, allowing more
private investment in the state-controlled energy sector.

One day in 2006, a sound truck showed up in the town of Santa María Xadani.

“It had this loudspeaker, and it went around saying there was going to be a program to help farmers,” said farmer Abel Sánchez.

Representatives from the Spanish firm Endesa laid out a complicated
offer: 1.4 percent of the electricity profits, plus $300 a year per
tower, with the money divided among the hundreds of landowners, a
contract obtained by The Arizona Republic shows. Each landowner
would get another $4.60 an acre annually, and the company would pay
$182 per acre of land damaged during construction. There was a signing
bonus of $37.

In exchange, property owners would have to get permission from the
energy company before selling their land or striking deals for
development.

One good cow can produce $90 of milk a month, so most farmers were
unimpressed, Sánchez said. But the company men made it sound like a
government aid program, and there seemed to be little to lose, he said.
Many small landowners signed up even though they couldn’t read the
contracts.

Soon construction began on several other wind parks, and farmers were shocked at the disruption.

To support the huge generators, crews built gravel roads 50 feet
across, hammered in pylons and poured in 1,200 tons of concrete per
tower. Pads of gravel 100 feet long and 50 feet wide were dumped onto
sorghum fields to support the cranes.

Farmer Salvador Ordaz now has two roads cutting through his 16 acres
of pasture, and says part of the land is unusable because of dust and
blocked irrigation lines. He cut his herd from 30 cows to 10.

“When you think of windmills, you just think of this one tower,” Ordaz said. “But it affects a lot more land than that.”

Sánchez and about 180 other farmers wanted out. They sued Endesa and
two other Spanish companies, Preneal S.A. and Union Fenosa S.A., saying
the companies had misled poor landowners and tricked them into signing
deals.

Endesa and Union Fenosa did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Preneal declined to comment.

In October, Preneal relented and canceled its contracts with the
dissenting landowners. Endesa and Union Fenosa did the same in March.

“It’s clean energy, but dirty business,” said Claudia Vera, a lawyer
at the Tepeyac Human Rights Center who helped landowners with their
case.

Benefits of the wind

The companies say they’ve treated landowners well.

“The truth is, if the people felt that what we were paying wasn’t
fair, we wouldn’t be here,” said Eurus project manager Ignacio Querol.

Indeed, many residents say they’ve benefited.

Aquileo Jiménez, 51, used his first payment from Acciona to buy an
old bus and now has a contract to shuttle workers to construction
sites. José Cruz Velázquez, 45, opened an auto-parts store to serve the
construction trucks.

“It’s done good things for us,” Cruz said. “Even people who were in
the United States are coming back here to work because of it.”

Others wonder how long the good times will last. Once construction
is finished, Acciona has promised to remove the gravel pads and narrow
the access roads. The land-damage fees it pays will shrink, and it’s
not known how much the profit sharing will be.

“People are not thinking about the long term,” Giron said. “Those
generators will be making millions of dollars for the company, and they
will be limiting what you can do with your land for 30, 4

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