Green Options

Not every breakthrough in the solar industry comes from efficiency gains from esoteric new Silicon Valley start-ups (though these are being catapulted by the recent funding bonanza) and university labs.

Some come from understanding that half the cost of a solar installation is just the cost of getting boots up on your roof, like for any other roofing job. One block off the grid reduces that cost by aggregating homeowners into groups to go solar together.

Some breakthroughs come when utility-scale solar companies forge innovative partnerships with housing developers rather than keep on battling NIMBY transmission costs, as BrightSource just did to meet its contract with PG&E for RPS solar power.

Others are starting to happen as titans of industry like Dow Chemical gear up to develop the little extras that smooth the assembly line process to speed up production-lines.

Because in manufacturing, assembly-line efficiency determines production costs:

I thought this was a neat idea and if the manufacturer’s claims are true, it could be the first step towards individual energy independance for a lot of people. Honeywell, the same people who made my safe, teamed up with Earthtronics to produce a home wind turbine that lacks many of the drawbacks of larger wind turbines. Namely, all it takes is a gentle breeze to turn the blades, providing up to 2,000 kWh of energy annually.

It is a compact and neat idea. My only question is, does it actually work?

Ever heard of HFO-1234yf? No? Well, give it time. You will. That random alphanumeric string is the trade name of a new chemical refrigerant (whose technical name is an even bigger mouthful, 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoroprop-1-ene) jointly developed by Honeywell and Dupont. And after December 8, when the Society of Automotive Engineers’ International Research Program endorsed it as the best answer to Europe’s new, stringent, and impending regulations governing mobile air conditioning (MAC) systems, HFO-1234yf looks to be poised to become the latest industry standard.