Tag Archives: Home & Garden

Energy Crisis? No Problem. Google To the Rescue

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Google’s to do list: Organize the world’s information? Check. Cloud based software, free email? Check. Solve the world’s energy problem?

Check.

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the search giant has invested $10.35 million in a revolutionary new geothermal energy technology. It’s called Enhanced Geothermal Systems, and it’s reported that the system could generate thousands of times the yearly amount of energy needed to run the US (and beyond).

Clusterstock reports:

EGS expands the potential of geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.

A recent MIT report on EGS estimates that just 2% of the heat below the continental United States between 3 and 10 kilometers, depths within the range of current drilling technology, is more than 2,500 times the country’s total annual energy use.

[Clusterstock via Silicon Alley Insider]

RoofRay’s Solar Calculator Makes Green Power Easy

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Going “green” can be a pain in the neck. It can get really confusing trying to sort out all the options. It’s enough to make you want to forget it all, crank the AC and mix recyclables.

That’s why it’s refreshing to find a tool like RoofRay. It’s a website that helps you calculate the value of putting solar panels on your roof. Using Google Maps, you zoom in on your house, then use RoofRay to draw in solar panels. The site will then figure out how much energy you should expect to generate, as well as the cost to install a solar setup.

[via DVICE]