Greg's blog

An article in inhabitat.com describes the world's first molten salt solar plant, which just went online in Italy.  The plant uses molten salt to store heat from the sun; the heat is used to produce steam to drive a turbine that generates power much in the same way a hydro-electric plant does.  Because the molten salt has such high inertial heat, the plant can generate power around the clock.

Earlier we talked about how to make your own rain barrel.  The rain barrel project was easy to do, and it was very exciting to see how quickly the barrels filled up when it rained.  Unfortunately, it was also a bit disappointing to see how quickly those sixty-five gallons of water were used up watering the yard when the rain stopped.  C

Recently, Barbara picked up a new clock for my nightstand.  It wasn't new-from-the-store, but it was new to me, and looks the same as any new-from-the-store clock would look one month after you took it out of its package.  The clock it replaced was purchased used and then donated to a charity.

Dear Mr. Scharfman,

Thank you for sending me the planning survey on Universal Paragon Corporation's plans to develop the Brisbane Baylands.  I was unable to complete the survey the first time it was sent out, and I am glad to have a second opportunity to participate.

I have a few comments on some specific items in the survey that were impossible to answer in the format provided.  I'd like to start with what I view is the most important question on the survey.

I don't know what I want for Christmas this year, but I'm starting my 2010 list early.  A few weeks ago I went and saw the Nissan Leaf at Nissan's "Zero Emissions Tour" in San Jose, and I must say I'm pretty excited about it.  It's been a long wait for an all-electric commuter car that can do more than my 80-mile round-trip jaunt to work without the price tag of a Tesla Roadster.  The Nissan Leaf, with an advertise

According to conventional wisdom, tracking the sun with solar panels took more energy than was gained by optimizing the angle to the sun -- or so I thought.  Meca Solar is selling solar trackers that they claim offer a 35% increase in yield over fixed installations.

Neat!

     - Greg

Back in February, my sister sent me a link to the electric car company Miles EV.  On their website, they featured a 100+ mile range highway-speed fully-electric car with an estimated MSRP under $40,000 that they said would be ready to test drive sometime in August, and would be available for sale sometime early in 2010.  It is now gone from their website, which currently is only featuring a few small low-speed cars and trucks.

We have been planning on setting up rain barrels in our yard for some time now, but it was the recent weather report, predicting one more rainshower, that spurred us to get moving in time to catch it.

Lately there seems to be a lot of talk about using nuclear energy to reduce our petrolium and coal consumption.  The arguement usually involves a comparison of the volume of nuclear waste per unit of energy produced compared to coal, coupled with an assertion that neither solar nor wind can provide baseline power.