Michael McElfresh — Tesla batteries: just the beginning of how technology will transform the electric grid

The spread of cost-effective batteries will fundamentally change the way the electric grid operates. Combined with other innovations, batteries in homes and businesses will transform how people and businesses treat electricity.

Along the way, these batteries will improve the efficiency and reliability of the grid overall.

The Conversation
Tesla batteries: just the beginning of how technology will transform the electric grid
Michael McElfresh | Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University

Pando Daily — Hugh Jackman explains how coffee and a technology that burns manure can help change the world (via Pando Daily)

Hugh Jackman explains how coffee and a technology that burns manure can help change the world (via Pando Daily)

By Hugh Jackman On September 10, 2013Most PandoDaily readers, I assume, accept the idea that technology can make our lives better. We lionize companies like Google, Twitter, Intel, Apple, and Microsoft. We applaud CEOs as celebrities, and, as was the…

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Mark Tran — Solar-powered toilet wins sanitation prize

A solar powered toilet that breaks down water and human waste into hydrogen gas for use in fuel cells has won first prize in a competition for next-generation toilets to improve sanitation in the developing world.

The California Institute of Technology in the US received the $100,000 (£64,000) first prize for its design. Loughborough University in the UK took the $60,000 second prize for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals and clean water, and Canada’s University of Toronto came third, winning $40,000 for a toilet that sanitises faeces and urine, and recovers resources and clean water.

The winners took part in a Reinvent the Toilet challenge set by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which asked designers to break with a sanitation model that has changed little since it was developed by Alexander Cummings more than 200 years ago. It is a model that depends on piped water, sewer or electrical connections that poor countries can ill afford.

The Raw Story
Solar-powered toilet wins sanitation prize
Mark Tran | The Guardian

Might seem ho-hum to suburban and urban dwellers, but this technology is a big deal not only for the developing world but also for off-grid in developed countries. There are already many composting toilets and waterless urinals in production now, but the zoning laws make their use difficult in many places, requiring installation of an expensive septic system and making many otherwise usable building sites unusable. This is something that can stop you dead in your tracks, and I have seen it happen when the authorities nix an ordinary septic system due to lack of ground perk, which requires a prohibitively expensive solution for many people. 

Sewage also wastes an incredible amount of water needlessly, given technological advances, and water is a scarce commodity in many regions, and it is fairly expensive everywhere now to the intensive purification needed.

So I mark this a potentially major trend developing, along with distributed solar installations in general.

In Transition 2.0 — printing your own money, growing food, localising economies, and setting up community power stations

To mark the release of In Transition 2.0 — an inspirational film about communities printing their own money, growing food, localising their economies and setting up community power stations — I spoke to Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Network and Transition Totnes, about energy ownership, cooperative finance strategies, and how storytelling can change our expectations of ourselves and our communities.

Read it at Energy Bulletin
In Transition 2.0 — printing your own money, growing food, localising economies, and setting up community power stations
by Jonny Gordon-Farleigh

In Hippie Holdout, a Fight Over Worms and Moats

Read it at The New York Times
In Hippie Holdout, a Fight Over Worms and Moats

by Patricia Leigh Brown
(h/t The Oil Drum)

Fun read. Libertarians of the left unite!

Clean, Efficient Wood Stoves Good for People and the Planet

SAN SALVADOR, Jan 11, 2012 (Tierramérica) - In his quest to make the most efficient possible use of energy generated through wood combustion, Salvadoran René Núñez developed a simple but highly efficient wood stove that produces no smoke and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent.

A whole meal can be cooked on a Turbococina or "Turbostove", as he dubbed the device, using just five small pieces of wood around 13 cm long, which can be easily obtained from tree pruning. 

The Turbococina is not a new invention. Núñez developed a prototype 16 years ago, and since then, the professor, electrical engineer and inventor has continued to work on perfecting it. In 2010 he achieved a thermal efficiency rate of 93 percent and a 95 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Prior to that, he had already managed to eliminate nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide emissions.

Read the rest at IPS

Clean, Efficient Wood Stoves Good for People and the Planet

By Edgardo Ayala

Not fancy, but very high tech in a simple way.

Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

Open Source Ecology

Open Source Ecology: Global Village Construction Set

Longer video and more detailed video of the project:
Global Village Construction Set
An Open Hardware project in Maysville, MO by Marcin Jakubowski

Extending available resources by using knowledge and cooperation to do more with less (reminiscent of Bucky Fuller's design science).