The purpose of the North Carolina State University Green Build database is to help you find projects in the State of North Carolina that have implemented specific green building techniques, strategies, or technologies.

"Green building" is sometimes referred to as "high performance building" or "sustainable building." It means that

• energy, water, and materials are used efficiently during the construction and lifetime of the structure
• The health and productivity of occupants is supported;
• The impact of the structure on the local and global environment is minimized.

This database is a collection of case studies, but it is organized in such a way that you can

• identify projects by any one of about 140 techniques, strategies, and technologies related to green building.
• You can also identify projects by location, building type, or site condition.
• New construction and retrofits to existing buildings.

Source NCGreenbuilding.org

HCNG or Hythane

Hythane is a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen, usually 5-7 percent hydrogen by energy. Natural gas is generally about 90+% methane, along with small amounts of ethane, propane, higher hydrocarbons, and "inerts" like carbon dioxide or nitrogen. Hydrogen and methane are complimentary vehicle fuels in many ways.

Methane has a relatively narrow flammability range that limits the fuel efficiency and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions improvements that are possible at lean air/fuel ratios. The addition of even a small amount of hydrogen, however, extends the lean flammability range significantly. Methane has a slow flame speed, especially in lean air/fuel mixtures, while hydrogen has a flame speed about eight times faster. Methane is a fairly stable molecule that can be difficult to ignite, but hydrogen has an ignition energy requirement about 25 times lower than methane. Finally, methane can be difficult to completely combust in the engine or catalyze in exhaust after treatment converters. In contrast, hydrogen is a powerful combustion stimulant for accelerating the methane combustion within an engine, and hydrogen is also a powerful reducing agent for efficient catalysis at lower exhaust temperatures.

Source Hythane.com


Hydrogen fuel enhancement is a term used to describe the supplementation of an internal combustion engine (ICE) fuel with hydrogen. The term is used for onboard hydrogen injection to inject either a hydrogen-enriched mixture, or pure hydrogen into the intake manifold of the engine and for hydrogen / compressed natural gas blends (HCNG or H2CNG which is premixed at the hydrogen station .


HCNG (or H2CNG) is a mixture of compressed natural gas and 4-9 percent hydrogen by energy.[1] Hydrogen contents of less than 50% in the HCNG blend have leakage and flammability risks similar to those of CNG alone. With the hydrogen being part of the mixture, there are no special precautions needed to avoid hydrogen embrittlement of the materials coming in contact with the mixture.[2] Premixing is done at the hydrogen station. HCNG stations can be found at Hynor (Norway) and the BC hydrogen highway in Canada.

Source Wikipedia

You Can Roll Efficiency Improvement Costs into Your VA Loan

Are You a Veteran buying your first home, and it was built before 2002? Check this out...

-Editor

The VA allows VA borrowers to borrow additional funds to install Energy Efficient Upgrades to the home simultaneously when purchasing a new home with a VA Loan or Refinancing an existing loan. The VA Energy Efficient Upgrade program is available to all Veterans and all qualified VA Service Members.

It's purpose is to provide funds that otherwise would not be available to retrofit existing homes and/or construction of a new home with the most up to date energy efficient, cost saving features.

There are specific VA guidelines for utilizing this program and the funds can only be used for installation of certain and specified energy efficient upgrades. The following is a list of some of the features that can be installed as outlined by the VA. In addition to this list, there may be other eligible energy efficient upgrades items that must be approved by the VA Lender and the VA:

• Solar Panels
• Energy efficient heating and cooling systems
• Energy efficient water heater
• Insulation
• Weather stripping and caulking windows and doors
• Storm doors and windows

The Whole Story from the Veterans Administration Loan Information Center

OREG or Microgrids Two Names for Distributed Energy Resources (DER)

For those of you interested in On site Reliable Energy Generation (OREG), moving to Renewable Energy, we have to know how grid providers see who you are and what you do.

In a nut shell, they see you as an energy resource. They call you Distributed Energy Resources (DER)

They call your On site energy generation a microgrid, and are fast working on ways to network all OREG resources together.

This white paper, written by the Deportment of Energy in 2002 lays out the concept fairly well.

- Lee Royal

Microgrids - An emerging Strategy for Reliable Power Generation

In 1996, a sagging power line in Oregon brushed against a tree, and within minutes 12 million customers in eight states lost power. Such is the vulnerability of today's power grid.

To address this weakness, Berkeley Lab scientists are helping to develop a new approach to power generation in which a cluster of small, on-site generators serves office buildings, industrial parks, and homes.

Called a microgrid, the system could help shoulder the nation's growing thirst for electricity — estimated to jump by almost 400 gigawatts by 2025 — without overburdening aging transmission lines or building the 1,000 new power plants required to meet this demand.

And it may make statewide blackouts a thing of the past, or at least ensure that service to critical equipment is maintained.

"Catastrophic loss of power to all systems like the 1996 blackout should be impossible," says Chris Marnay, an energy scientist in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division. "If we sat down today to devise a power system from scratch, our design wouldn't resemble the one we have."

The Rest from Sciencebeat

Environmental Power Corporation

Environmental Power Corporation is a developer, owner, and operator of renewable energy production facilities. The Company owns and operates the Huckabay Ridge facility in Stephenville, Texas, a multi-digester facility for the production of pipeline-grade natural gas, which began commercial operation and has several similar facilities in varying stages of development.
It also operates three digester facilities in Wisconsin utilizing the same technology that is employed at Huckabay Ridge.

The Company has operated in two major segments through Microgy, Inc., as a
developer of renewable energy facilities for the production and commercial application of methane-rich biogas from agricultural and food industry wastes, and through EPC Corporation and its subsidiary, Buzzard Power Corporation, the holder of a leasehold interest in a waste-coal fired generating facility in Pennsylvania known as the Scrubgrass facility. On February 29, 2008, the Company completed the disposition of the leasehold interest Scrubgrass facility.

After the disposition the Company operated only in Microgy’s segment.
The biogas produced by Microgy facilities can be used to produce pipeline-grade methane, which it refer to as RNG, marketable biogas, compressed natural gas (CNG), liquified natural gas (LNG), renewable electrical energy or thermal energy, as well as other useful by-products.

In addition, Microgy has developed, for itself, significant engineering, construction and process knowledge regarding these systems.

Source Reuters

Geothermal Ground Loop Image

Source: Photobucket.com

ORMAT's 10k Report Summary

EDGAR Online via COMTEX) --

ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

You should read the following discussion and analysis of our results of operations, financial condition and liquidity in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes. Some of the information contained in this discussion and analysis or set forth elsewhere in this annual report including information with respect to our plans and strategies for our business, statements regarding the industry outlook, our expectations regarding the future performance of our business, and the other non-historical statements contained herein are forward-looking statements. See "Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements". You should also review Item 1A - "Risk Factors" for a discussion of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results described herein or implied by such forward-looking statements.

We are a leading vertically integrated company engaged in the geothermal and recovered energy power business.

• We design, develop, build, own, and operate clean, environmentally friendly geothermal and recovered energy-based power plants, in most cases using equipment that we design and manufacture.
• Our geothermal power plants include both power plants that we have built and power plants that we have acquired, while all of our recovered energy-based plants have been constructed by us.

We conduct our business activities in two business segments, which we refer to as our Electricity Segment and Products Segment.

• In our Electricity Segment, we develop, build, own, and operate geothermal and recovered energy-based power plants in the United States and geothermal power plants in other countries around the world and sell the electricity they generate.
• In our Products Segment, we design, manufacture and sell equipment for geothermal and recovered energy-based electricity generation, remote power units and other power generating units and provide services relating to the engineering, procurement, construction, operation and maintenance of geothermal and recovered energy power plants.

Both our Electricity Segment and Products Segment operations are conducted in the United States and throughout the world.

Our current generating portfolio includes geothermal plants in

• the United States,
• Guatemala,
• Kenya,
• Nicaragua
• New Zealand,

as well as recovered energy generation (REG) plants in the United States.

During the years ended December 31, 2008 and 2007, our U.S. power plants generated

• 2,266,422 MWh and
• 1,994,263 MWh, respectively.
  

For the year ended December 31, 2008, our Electricity Segment represented approximately 73.2% of our total revenues, while our Products Segment represented approximately 26.8% of our total revenues during such year.
For the year ended December 31, 2008, our total revenues increased by 16.5% (from $296.0 million to $344.8 million) over the previous year. Revenues from the Electricity Segment increased by 16.8%, while revenues from the Products Segment increased by 15.8%.

For the year ended December 31, 2008, total Electricity Segment revenues from the sale of electricity by our consolidated power plants were

• $252.3 million, as compared to $216.0 for the year ended December 31, 2007.
• In addition, revenues from our 50% ownership of the Mammoth Project were $9.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2008.

This additional data is a Non-Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (Non-GAAP) financial measure as defined by the SEC. There is no comparable GAAP measure.

Management believes that such Non-GAAP data is useful to the readers as it provides a more complete view on the scope of the activities of the power plants that we operate. Our investment in the Mammoth project is accounted for in our consolidated financial statements under the equity method and the revenues are not included in our consolidated revenues for the year ended December 31, 2008.

For the year ended December 31, 2008, revenues attributable to our Products Segment were $92.6 million, as compared to $80.0 million during the year ended December 31, 2007, an increase of 15.8%. Most of the increase in revenues was derived from two large geothermal projects, the Blue Mountain project in Nevada and the Centennial Binary Plant in New Zealand.

See Full Article @ MarketWatch.com

Green Ocean Energy Ltd

Green Ocean Energy has a device to add to wave energy generation to ocean based wind turbins.

[This from their website]

Wave Treader has grown out of our work with Ocean Treader and uses it's Sponsons and Arms but this time they are mounted on the base of a static offshore structure, typically a Wind Turbine or Tidal Turbine. By sharing the high infrastructure costs with another device, such as the foundation costs, cabling costs, etc., the economics of both devices are enhanced and the energy yield for a given sea area greatly improved.


[Wave only device]

Ocean Treader is a floating device designed to be moored 1 – 2 miles offshore in ocean wave systems, and as such will be largely unobtrusive from the shoreline. The theory behind the machine has been proven in wave tank testing and we are now working towards developing a full size machine for offshore testing.

Wave Treader has grown out of our work with Ocean Treader and uses it's Sponsons and Arms but this time they are mounted on the base of a static offshore structure, typically a Wind Turbine or Tidal Turbine. By sharing the high infrastructure costs with another device, such as the foundation costs, cabling costs, etc., the economics of both devices are enhanced and the energy yield for a given sea area greatly improved.

Both devices are unique in their respective fields, are patent applied for, and are both highly cost effective.

Due to our background in the offshore oil and gas industry we are well aware of the challenges in deploying such machines and therefore from the outset they have been designed to satisfy the triplicate requirements of:

Efficiency : Reliability : Survivability

The full story at Green Ocean Energy.com

How to assess a Potential Geothermal Resource

I found this article @ Renewable Energy World

Very useful for qualifying potential generation sites

-Editor

by Karl Gawell

Q: I live near a geothermal hot spring. Does that mean that there are geothermal power resources underground? How do I go about finding out? -- John from Moscow, Idaho
A:
Hi John. Thanks for your inquiry. I wish I could take a look at the spring. I came across one on a mesa just off a bike trail in the desert in New Mexico, and it was quite a beautiful sight. There was boiling water on the surface and all kinds of mineral deposits in and around the spring with patches of different colors. The best answer I can give you to the first part of your question is a definite maybe. I would say that the chances are pretty good that you live near a geothermal resource. However, whether or not it is a resource that could be used for electrical power would require further exploration. For a geothermal power resource you really need three things: 1. Hot water (do you happen to know the temperature of the spring?) 2. Permeability in the rock, and 3. Both of these attributes at a depth that is economically reachable. To find out if your spring sits atop a resource with those attributes, there are a number of places you can look.

Websites such as

• www.navdat.org,
• www.earthchem.org,
• www.inl.gov/geosciences/seismicnetwork.shtml,
• http://earth.google.com/,
• http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/,

list public data or images regarding the chemistry of rocks, temperatures at the bottom of numerous drill holes, seismicity, or changes in surface geology. There is almost certainly data available for your area. However, even with all this great information, you still might not know if your spring sits upon an exploitable resource.

The full article