Science Horizons

Try a few of these energy saving tips using new green products to put cash back in your pocket unless of course you are trying to do your part to keep your electric company’s revenues up.

Throw out all the incandescent bulbs

CFL is an abbreviation for a Compact Fluorescent Lamp, which is a fluorescent light bulb with the same form factor as a traditional incandescent bulb (meaning it will fit in most places where you now have plain old light bulbs installed).

CFLs produce light differently than incandescent bulbs. In an incandescent bulb, electricity runs through a wire filament and heats the filament until it starts to glow. In a CFL, an electric current is driven through a tube containing argon and a small amount of mercury vapor. This generates invisible ultraviolet light that excites a fluorescent coating (called phosphor) on the inside of the tube, which then emits visible light.

You have heard this before, but unless you are only going to turn on that incandescent bulb a couple of times a year, you are wasting money (no matter how cheap the bulb is). Green products help you save money. One of the new Energy Star compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) saves around 75% over an equivalent incandescent bulb. In one year, that could add up to a $30 savings – per bulb!

CFLs have been out several years now. Along with the bulb style, you can now choose the shade of white light you like. This can really enhance the mood of a room, home office or family room. The CFL colors vary from a warm yellow to daylight blue. If you prefer the look (color) of incandescent bulbs, choose a warm light.

The bluish CFLs may have a negative effect on light sensitive people. If friends or family are light sensitive, a warmer color CFL might be better.

Look on the package for a number that ends in K. This stands for Kelvin or the “temperature” of the bulb. A Kelvin rating of 2700K-3000K is a warm/yellow bulb. A Cool White bulb has a rating of 3500K-4100K. A rating of 5000K-6500K is a Daylight blue bulb.

To replace a 40 watt incandescent bulb, use a 9-13 watt CFL bulb; for a 60 watt incandescent bulb use a 13-15 watt; for a 75 watt incandescent bulb use an 18-25 watt CFL; and for a 100 watt incandescent bulb, use a 23-30 watt CFL.

Please do not forget to recycle all compact fluorescent bulbs. In some states, the law forbids the disposal of any bulbs containing mercury in the regular solid waste trash. There are about five milligrams of mercury in one CFL bulb, or about 1/5 the of mercury found in a normal wrist-watch battery.

To dispose of an old CFL, visit a retailer like ACE Hardware, Orchard, Home Depot or IKEA. Many of them will recycle these bulbs for you.

A host of new green products for outdoors, poolside, garden, and sidewalk lighting are moving to light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs. The new LED bulbs are 90% more efficient than an incandescent bulb. I would recommend using an Energy Star compliant system; you will usually have a longer time between bulb replacements. However, stock up on replacement bulbs – the manufacturers seem to change the design every couple of years, and then it becomes hard to find replacement parts.

Next time will look at some more green products that can further reduce your carbon footprint and save you still more money.

Michael

Michael Edwards Government alternative energy, energy, energy conservation, Environmental, general, Government, green planet, Home, international, renewable energy, solar energy, solar panels, solar power, Technologies

At Green Products, we have come across a product from Cool Earth: Solar Balloons. Cool Earth was created with the mandate of producing electricity using solar power, specifically solar cells. Solar power is not a new concept, but how the sunlight is collected and concentrated is truly unique.

The current installed solar plants use flat-panels. Each panel is heavy, large, easily damaged, and costly to repair. This means the cost to produce a watt of electricity is 5-7 times greater than using natural gas and is not a feasible alternative to fossil fuels. This is no longer true with the Cool Earth solar balloon system.

One side of the balloon is made from reflective silver Mylar plastic. The other half is transparent to allow in sunlight. The silver material is parabolic-shaped to concentrate the sunlight on to a single point to achieve maximum light concentration. This is why high performance solar cells are used.

With the new design comes and the ability to increase sunlight concentration and reduce expensive solar cell material by 300 to 400 times. This cost reduction will bring the price down to a mere one dollar per watt. To give that some context: a typical flat-panel PV(photovoltaic) system on a residential rooftop is about seven to eight dollars per watt.

Each balloon is eight feet in diameter and can withstand over 100 mile per hour winds. The balloons are linked together in series, with the initial installation able to produce 10 megawatts, enough to power 3,500 homes during the day.

One of the areas under consideration is the need to add more peaking power plants, also known as peaker plants. A peaker plant is operational only when demand for electricity is at the greatest, like during the hot summer months. This green product could be used to eliminate rolling brown outages that we have encountered in the past few years.

Some of the more interesting aspects of this solar power station are how simple the design is and how multiples are pulled together to produce a solar power plant. Check it out.

Michael

Michael Flum Family Air Pollution, alternative energy, energy, energy conservation, energy savings, Environmental, Family, general, global warming, green planet, renewable energy, solar energy, solar panels, solar power