Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Our Solar Bus!

posted @ 8:07 PM |

Sunday, May 18, 2008
The 1st solar bus on Earth

The Adelaide City Council has raised the standard in International sustainability with the introduction of the world’s first solar-powered electric bus.

It’s the first electric solar bus is recharged using 100% solar energy, and is a free everyday service for the people of Adelaide through the Council’s Adelaide Connector Bus service.

Manufactured by New Zealand company Designline International, the bus doesn’t have a combustion engine, which makes it a very quiet, zero emissions vehicle.

It features high quality, state-of-the-art components sourced from some of the
world’s leading transport and technology companies including MAN and Siemens.

And in a further ‘green’ development being introduced by the Adelaide City Council, the bus will be recharged using a solar photovoltaic system supplied by BP Solar and installed at the soon-to-be-completed Adelaide Central Bus Station.

This system is the largest grid connected solar photovoltaic system in the State,
and means the bus is also carbon neutral.

The air-conditioned solar electric bus can carry up to 42 passengers, with 25 standard seats, two seats especially designed for disabled passengers, and room
for 15 standing passengers.

The solar electric bus and the recharging system at the Adelaide Central Bus Station represent a significant investment by the Adelaide City Council into a sustainable future for the City of Adelaide, while providing leadership in sustainable public transport options for cities around Australia.

posted @ 7:17 PM |

Thursday, April 24, 2008
2nd Song chosen to be the theme song for the blog

posted @ 9:49 PM |

The Two Songs chosen to be the theme song for the blog

posted @ 9:47 PM |

posted @ 9:43 PM |

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Current Progress

We are currently going on with the solar bus, OZY aka Ong Zhi Yong going to have it done by this tuesday hope he complete it soon done for now cya all

posted @ 10:19 PM |

Global warming and what we can do to stop it

Solar energy

Global Warming
•In 2004, the Earth’s average temperature was 14.6 degrees, one of the highest ever recorded, you might think of it as peanuts, but if you do not add the north and south poles temperature, the figure would rise significantly. The main causes of global warming, the rise in Earth's temperature, can be split into two groups, mainly man-made causes and natural causes, which will be explained in the next few slides.


Natural causes of global warming

•Natural causes are causes created by nature. One natural cause is a release of methane gas from wetlands. Methane is a greenhouse gas. A greenhouse gas is a gas that traps heat in the earth's atmosphere. Another natural cause is that the earth goes through a cycle of climate change. This climate change usually lasts about 40,000 years. This type of natural global warming does the lesser damage to the Earth between the two main causes.


Man-made causes of global warming

•Man-made causes probably do the most damage. There are many man-made causes. Pollution is one of the biggest man-made problems. Pollution comes in many shapes and sizes. Burning fossil fuels is one thing that causes pollution. Fossil fuels are fuels made of organic matter such as coal, or oil. When fossil fuels are burned they give off a green house gas called Carbon dioxide. Also mining coal and oil allows methane to escape. How does it escape? Methane is naturally in the ground. When coal or oil is mined you have to dig up the earth a little. When you dig up the fossil fuels you dig up the methane as well.

Man-made causes of global warming (Continued)

•Another major man-made cause of Global Warming is population. More people means more food, and more methods of transportation, right? That means more methane because there will be more burning of fossil fuels, and more agriculture. Now your probably thinking, “Wait a minute, how can agriculture contribute to global warming?" Well, have you ever been in a barn filled with animals and you smell something terrible? You're smelling methane. Another source of methane is manure. Because more food is needed we have to raise food. Animals like cows are a source of food which means more manure and methane.

•Another major man-made cause of Global Warming is population. More people means more food, and more methods of transportation, right? That means more methane because there will be more burning of fossil fuels, and more agriculture. Now your probably thinking, “Wait a minute, how can agriculture contribute to global warming?" Well, have you ever been in a barn filled with animals and you smell something terrible? You're smelling methane. Another source of methane is manure. Because more food is needed we have to raise food. Animals like cows are a source of food which means more manure and methane.

What we can do to stop global Warming

•There is no way we can stop global warming completely, even if we reduce the amount of global warming we are producing now by 2000 levels, it still would not stop it completely, but global warming can be stalled. One of the big issues in global warming is pollution, but it is impossible to ask all the factories to stop work, it would kill our current lifestyle, stop we must tackle the more vulnerable issues type of energy used. There are two main categories of energy, reusable and non-reusable energy. Reusable energy is made up of things like coal and other fossil fuel. They are called non-reusable because they take millions of years to regenerate.

•The other category of energy, renewable energy. It is so named as it is made up of energy like geothermal energy (steam energy), solar energy (energy from sunlight), and many others. These energy sources have not limits to their supply and what’s more, they do not release toxic gases into the atmosphere that will cause global warming.

The most efficient reusable Energy source

•By far, the most efficient renewable energy source is solar energy. Unlike geothermal energy which needs to tunnel underground to get energy, and other reusable energy sources that need large man-made structures to be built to harness their power, solar energy just needs one thing to get energy, a solar panel! Yes, it is dead simple, just have a solar panel and you can harness solar energy.

Solar energy

•As the name suggests, solar energy uses energy from light, or more specifically, light from the sun itself, this does not mean you have to go up close to the Sun and get scorched by it to produce energy. On Earth, enough solar energy enters our atmosphere for us to harness it, although there is one short coming of this energy source, you cannot get energy at night! To solve this, you have to add one more object to your solar panel, a battery! Think about it, if you can charge your batteries through solar energy in the day, you can get energy at night! Simple solution isn’t it.

•Do you know how energy goes into our homes? Factories burn coal and other fossil fuels to harness the power and send it our homes, but if you have solar panels in those factories, all the workers don’t need to do all that work and can do other stuff and all the toxic gases that were released when they burn fossil fuels won’t be released if you use solar energy. Pollution, one of the largest contributors to solar energy will also get cut because no toxic gases will be released into the atmosphere.

•If you fit solar panels on cars, they would not need to refuel once every now and then and you won’t spend so much money on petrol and waste time refueling your car (or for children, this refers to your parents). Cars also won’t release the toxic gas carbon monoxide in to the atmosphere, therefore causing global warming to slow down, it is impossible to stop global warming until further advances in technology.

Conclusion

•Solar and other forms of renewable energy will definitely come into our lives no matter how far into the future it may be, but time come we all have to use renewable sources of energy.

posted @ 9:28 PM |

Monday, April 14, 2008
carbon dioxide emissions

One in a new generation of computer climate models that include the effects of Earth's carbon cycle indicates there are limits to the planet's ability to absorb increased emissions of carbon dioxide.
If current production of carbon from fossil fuels continues unabated, by the end of the century the land and oceans will be less able to take up carbon than they are today, the model indicates.
The Earth's various sources and sinks for carbon. The land and oceans can absorb some of the increased carbon from fossil fuel emissions, but as the emission rate increases, these sinks saturate and become less effective at removing carbon from the atmosphere. (Graphics by Inez Fung/UC Berkeley)
"If we maintain our current course of fossil fuel emissions or accelerate our emissions, the land and oceans will not be able to slow the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the way they're doing now," said Inez Y. Fung at the University of California, Berkeley, who is director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, co-director of the new Berkeley Institute of the Environment, and professor of earth and planetary science and of environmental science, policy and management. "It's all about rates. If the rate of fossil fuel emissions is too high, the carbon storage capacity of the land and oceans decreases and climate warming accelerates."
Fung is lead author of a paper describing the climate model results that appears this week in the Early Online Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Fung was a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel on global climate change that issued a major report for President Bush in 2001 claiming, for the first time, that global warming exists and that humans are contributing to it.
Currently, the land and oceans absorb about half of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity, most of it resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, Fung said. Some scientists have suggested that the land and oceans will continue to absorb more and more CO2 as fossil fuel emissions increase, making plants flourish and the oceans bloom.
Fung's computer model, however, indicates that the "breathing biosphere" can absorb carbon only so fast. Beyond a certain point, the planet will not be able to keep up with carbon dioxide emissions.
"The reason is very simple," Fung said. "Plants are happy growing at a certain rate, and though they can accelerate to a certain extent with more CO2, the rate is limited by metabolic reactions in the plant, by water and nutrient availability, et cetera."
These images show the greening trend in the northern hemisphere during the 1980s and the browning trend since 1994. NDVI is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, a satellite-derived index of photosynthesis.
In addition, increasing temperatures and drought frequencies lower plant uptake of CO2 as plants breathe in less to conserve water. A second study she and colleagues published last week in PNAS report evidence for this temperature and drought effect. Since 1982, a greening of the Northern Hemisphere has occurred each spring and summer (except for 1992 and 1993, after Mt. Pinatubo erupted) as the climate has steadily warmed. As a result, there is a small but steady decline in atmospheric CO2 each growing season due to increasing photosynthesis at temperate latitudes in the northern hemisphere. When Fung and a team of her former and current post-doctoral fellows took a detailed look at this phenomenon, however, they discovered that since 1994, enhanced uptake of CO2 as photosynthesis revved up in the warm wet springs was offset by decreasing CO2 uptake during summers, which became increasingly hot and dry - an unsuspected browning in the past 10 years.
"This negative effect of hot, dry summers completely wiped out the benefits of warm, wet springs," Fung said. "A warming climate does not necessarily lead to higher CO2 growing-season uptake, even in temperate areas such as North America."
In the climate modeling study published this week in PNAS, she and colleagues found that similar water stress could slow the uptake of CO2 by terrestrial vegetation, and at some point, the rate of fossil fuel CO2 emissions will outstrip the ability of the vegetation to keep up, leading to a rise in atmospheric CO2, increased greenhouse temperatures and increased frequency of droughts. An amplifying loop leads to ever higher temperatures, more droughts and higher CO2 levels.
The oceans exhibit a similar trend, Fung said, though less pronounced. There, mixing by turbulence in the ocean is essential for moving CO2 down into the deep ocean, away from the top 100 meters of the ocean, where carbon absorption from the atmosphere takes place. With increased temperatures, the ocean stratifies more, mixing becomes harder, and CO2 accumulates in the surface ocean instead of in the deep ocean. This accumulation creates a back pressure, lowering CO2 absorption.
In all, business as usual would lead to a 1.4 degree Celsius, or 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, rise in global temperatures by the year 2050. This estimate is at the low range of projected increases for the 21st century, Fung said, though overall, the model is in line with others predicting large ecosystem changes, especially in the tropics.
With voluntary controls that flatten fossil fuel CO2 emission rates by the end of the century, the land and oceans could keep up with CO2 levels and continue to absorb at their current rate, the model indicates.
"This is not a prediction, but a guideline or indication of what could happen," Fung said. "Climate prediction is a work in progress, but this model tells us that, given the increases in greenhouse gases, the Earth will warm up; and given warming, hot places are likely to be drier, and the land and oceans are going to take in carbon at a slower rate; and therefore, we will see an amplification or acceleration of global warming."
"The Earth is entering a climate space we've never seen before, so we can't predict exactly what will happen," she added. "We don't know where the threshold is. A two degree increase in global temperatures may not sound like much, but if we're on the threshold, it could make a big difference."
Fung and colleagues have worked for several decades to produce a model of the Earth's carbon cycle that includes not only details of how vegetation takes up and releases carbon, but also details of decomposition by microbes in the soil, the carbon chemistry of oceans and lakes, the influence of rain and clouds, and many other sources and sinks for carbon. The model takes into account thousands of details, ranging from carbon uptake by leaves, stems and roots to the different ways that forest litter decomposes, day-night shifts in plant respiration, the salinity of oceans and seas, and effects of temperature, rainfall, cloud cover and wind speed on all these interactions.
"This is a very rough schematic of the life cycle of the ecosystem," she said.
Five years ago, she set out with colleagues Scott C. Doney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Keith Lindsay of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., and Jasmin John of UC Berkeley to integrate the carbon cycle model into one of the standard climate models in use today - NCAR's Community Climate System Model (CCSM). All of today's climate models are able to incorporate the climate effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but only with concentrations of CO2 specified by the modelers. Fung's model does not specify atmospheric CO2 levels, but rather predicts the levels, given fossil fuel emissions. The researchers used observations of the past two centuries to make sure that their model is "reasonable," and then used the model to project what will happen in the next 100 years, with the help of supercomputers at NCAR and the National Energy Research Scientific Computer Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
The climate model coupled with the carbon cycle has been her goal for decades, as she tried to convince climate modelers that "whether plants are happy or not happy has an influence on climate projections. To include interactive biogeochemistry in climate models, which up to now embrace primarily physics and dynamics, is new."
She admits, however, that much work remains to be done to improve modeling. Methane and sulfate cycles must be included, plus effects like changes in plant distribution with rising temperatures, the possible increase in fires, disease or insect pests, and even the effects of dust in the oceans.
"We have created a blueprint, in terms of a climate modeling framework, that will allow us to go beyond the physical climate models to more sophisticated models," she said. "Then, hopefully, we can understand what is going on now and what could happen. This understanding could guide our choices for the future."

posted @ 10:18 PM |

Saturday, April 5, 2008
Hydropower

Of the renewable energy sources that generate electricity, hydropower is the most often used. It accounted for 7 percent of total U.S. electricity generation and 73 percent of generation from renewables in 2005.
It is one of the oldest sources of energy and was used thousands of years ago to turn a paddle wheel for purposes such as grinding grain. Hydropower or hydraulic power is the force or energy of moving water. It may be captured for some useful purpose.
Prior to the widespread availability of commercial electric power, hydropower was used for irrigation, and operation of various machines, such as watermills, textile machines, and sawmills. A trompe produces compressed air from falling water, which could then be used to power other machinery at a distance from the water.
The energy of moving water has been exploited for milennia. In History of India, water wheels and watermills were built; in Imperial Rome, water powered mills produced flour from grain, and in China and the rest of the Far East, hydraulically operated "pot wheel" pumps that raised water into irrigation canals. In the 1830s, at the peak of the canal-building era, hydropower was used to transport barge traffic up and down steep hills using inclined plane railroads. Direct mechanical power transmission required that industries using hydropower had to locate near the waterfall. For example, during the last half of the 19th century, many grist mills were built at Saint Anthony Falls, utilizing the 50 foot (15 metre) drop in the Mississippi River. The mills contributed to the growth of Minneapolis. Hydraulic power networks also existed, using pipes carrying pressurized liquid to transmit mechanical power from a power source, such as a pump, to end users.
Today the largest use of hydropower is for the creation of hydroelectricity, which allows low cost energy to be used at long distances from the water source.

posted @ 7:46 PM |

What is carbon trading

Emissions trading (or emission trading) is an administrative approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants. It is sometimes called cap and trade.A coal power plant in Germany. Due to emissions trading, coal might become less competitive as a fuel.A central authority (usually a government or international body) sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted. Companies or other groups are issued emission permits and are required to hold an equivalent number of allowances (or credits) which represent the right to emit a specific amount. The total amount of allowances and credits cannot exceed the cap, limiting total emissions to that level. Companies that need to increase their emissions must buy credits from those who pollute less. The transfer of allowances is referred to as a trade. In effect, the buyer is paying a charge for polluting, while the seller is being rewarded for having reduced emissions by more than was needed. Thus, in theory, those that can easily reduce emissions most cheaply will do so, achieving the pollution reduction at the lowest possible cost to society.[1] There are active trading programs in several pollutants. For greenhouse gases the largest is the European Union Emission Trading Scheme.[2] In the United States there is a national market to reduce acid rain and several regional markets in nitrous oxide.[3] Markets for other pollutants tend to be smaller and more localized.Carbon Trading is sometimes seen as a better approach than a direct carbon tax or direct regulation. By solely aiming at the cap it avoids the consequences and compromises that often accompany those other methods. It can be cheaper, and politically preferable for existing industries because the initial allocation of allowances is often allocated with a grandfathering provision where rights are issued in proportion to historical emissions. In addition, most of the money in the system is spent on environmental activities, and the investment directed at sustainable projects that earn credits in the developing world can contribute to the Millennium Development Goals. Critics of emissions trading point to problems of complexity, monitoring, enforcement, and sometimes dispute the initial allocation methods and cap.[4]The carbon trade came about in response to the Kyoto Protocol. Signed in Kyoto, Japan, by some 180 countries in December 1997, the Kyoto Protocol calls for 38 industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions between the years 2008 to 2012 to levels that are 5.2% lower than those of 1990.Carbon is an element stored in fossil fuels such as coal and oil. When these fuels are burned, carbon dioxide is released and acts as what we term a "greenhouse gas".The idea behind carbon trading is quite similar to the trading of securities or commodities in a marketplace. Carbon would be given an economic value, allowing people, companies or nations to trade it. If a nation bought carbon, it would be buying the rights to burn it, and a nation selling carbon would be giving up its rights to burn it. The value of the carbon would be based on the ability of the country owning the carbon to store it or to prevent it from being released into the atmosphere. (The better you are at storing it, the more you can charge for it.)A market would be created to facilitate the buying and selling of the rights to emit greenhouse gases. The industrialized nations for which reducing emissions is a daunting task could buy the emission rights from another nation whose industries do not produce as much of these gases. The market for carbon is possible because the goal of the Kyoto Protocol is to reduce emissions as a collective.On the one hand, carbon trading seems like a win-win situation: greenhouse gas emissions may be reduced while some countries reap economic benefit. On the other hand, critics of the idea suspect that some countries will exploit the trading system and the consequences will be negative. While carbon trading may have its merits, debate over this type of market is inevitable, since it involves finding a compromise between profit, equality and ecological concerns Carbon trading involves the creation and transfer of carbon rights from one party to another. The trade requires the measurement, allocation and reporting of these carbon rights or "carbon credits" (to an agreed standard). The GGAS allows accredited abatement certificate providers to create NGACs that can be traded or sold to other parties who need additional credits to meet their emissions target.
Problem: Carbon emissions into the earth’s atmosphere have resulted in drastic climatic changes. Though, we have both, firm believers who blame Industries outright for polluting the atmosphere resulting in some of natures shocking disasters and some who believe its difficult to blame carbon emissions being responsible for these climatic changes as its hard to find a pattern over the past billion years or so how climate has changed.
Though, both have strong points to back their beliefs, whenever I see smoke coming out of chimney, i belive its not good for the environment.
Solution: NGOs or non-profit organizations for long have been screaming for everybody’s attention towards this huge problem, but no one seems to care enough, not until there is a financial incentive attached to it. That’s what the governments of various countries have been trying to come up with, a trading mechanism where companies gain a monetary benefit out of polluting the air less. Kyoto protocol’s goal is exactly that. The idea is to divide the whole world into two, one who can afford making changes to their existing infrastructure and the ones who cannot. As everybody is polluting, be it a developed country or a developing country, the financial aspect has to be kept in mind. All developed countries will have to cut down their emissions by some x percentage or else they pay heavy fines. Now, one way of measuring how much they are polluting the air less, is by clean each tonne reduction of CO2 a unit and a company must own those amounts of units at the end of every period.

posted @ 6:33 PM |

Thursday, April 3, 2008
A Graph on Global Temperature

posted @ 9:30 PM |

More About Gobal Warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation.
The global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the hundred years ending in 2005.[1] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations"[1] via the greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward.[2][3] These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least thirty scientific societies and academies of science,[4] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[5][6][7] While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with some findings of the IPCC,[8] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.[9][10]
Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century.[1] The range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a thousand years even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. The delay in reaching equilibrium is a result of the large heat capacity of the oceans.[1]
Increasing global temperature will cause sea level to rise, and is expected to increase the intensity of extreme weather events and to change the amount and pattern of precipitation. Other effects of global warming include changes in agricultural yields, trade routes, glacier retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.
Remaining scientific uncertainties include the amount of warming expected in the future, and how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is ongoing political and public debate worldwide regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences

posted @ 9:26 PM |

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

(:

posted @ 11:17 PM |

Sunday, March 30, 2008
Ways On How To Save Energy

1)energy-saving lightbulbs cost a bit more, but according to the Energy Saving Trust, each bulb can save you £9 over the course of a year (or £100 over the lifetime of the bulb as they last up to 12x longer too). In fact, if we all fitted just one of these lightbulbs, Scottish Power reckons we could save enough electricity to power lighting in three million homes for a year! Cheap energy saving lightbulbs can often be found in Wilkinson's and Lidl.

2)switch off and unplug all appliances that aren't being used. According to Friends of the Earth, 85% of the energy used by a DVD player is wasted when it is on standby. And don't forget that equipment when fully charged continues to draw electricity - so unplug that mobile phone/camera/electric toothbrush etc.

3)do not spend ages pondering the contents of the fridge with the door wide open (each minute a fridge door is left open takes three minutes to cool back down again). And remember to let food cool before putting into the fridge. Freezers also benefit from being kept in a cool room, such as a garage.

4)Try and match the ring size on your cooker to the size of pan it is heating - you'll waste less energy. If you need to simmer something for a while, most cookers have small ring for this purpose. And don't forget that by putting a lid on saucepans the contents will heat faster and save energy.

5)there can be major savings to be made by switching gas and electricity supplier if you haven't done so for a while. Get some recent bills together and compare gas and electricity suppliers to see how much you could save.

6)Shut the curtains at duskMake sure that they don’t hang in front of the radiators or the outside wall will benefit from the heat instead of the room!
Use thick curtains that are thermally lined. Or get a second pair of curtains from a charity shop to act as lining material.Put up secondary glazing - even taping up polythene across the windows will help.

7) Replace your incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lights: Compact fluorescent light bulbs use only about a third as much electricity as standard incandescents. According to some experts, if you substitute compact fluorescent bulbs for a quarter of the incandescents used in high-use areas, you can cut the amount of electricity you use on lighting by half.

8)Buy products with a strong warranty. A warranty is a great way to avoid unnecessary replacement costs.ENERGY STAR qualified light fixtures come with a 2-year warranty -- double the industry standard. Plus, they are a stylish addition to any décor.

9)Flip a switch when leaving a room. Saving energy and money can start by not wasting energy. When you leave a room, turn off the light and see the savings.

10)Close doors and vents to unused rooms. Many of us live in houses with more space than we need, yet we still spend the money to heat empty rooms. The DOE calculates that, “by closing the vents to just one spare bedroom in a five-room house, you can instantly cut your heating bills by as much as 20 percent.”

This are just 10 ways of saving energy in which we can save the Earth as lesser carbon dioxide is being emitted and use Energy Star products as they use lesser energy. That's all for today.

posted @ 5:32 PM |

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Solar Buses
Solar Power
NOLS on the Road Declares Energy Independence: Solar Power
The bus is rigged with solar panels to power our audio/visual equipment, lights, computers and refrigerators. There are eight solar panels on the bus' roof, and these produce electricity that is stored in batteries inside the bus. An inverter changes the voltage for different appliances—fans and interior lights run on a 12-volt system, while everything else runs on 110 volts.
The system, of course, depends on the sun, but even on a cloudy day the bus can collect solar energy. The batteries can store up to two days of power—even more if used conservatively. This comes in handy when the bus is parked inside convention centers at conferences, sometimes for three or four days.
Solar power is becoming a popular solution to meet our energy needs right at home. The same system installed on the NOLS Bus is used in many homes and offices.The NOLS Bus' custom system was designed by a local Wyoming business run by NOLS instructors--Creative Energies, suppliers of solar and wind energy solutions to homes and businesses around the West.
The NOLS Solar-Powered Theater
Each evening the movie screen comes down and the projectors come out as the NOLS solar-powered theater comes to life. Powered entirely by solar energy collected during the day, the NOLS theater features the NOLS movie, “The Expedition,” sneak previews of the upcoming NOLS television series, and NOLS alumni expedition slide shows.
Solar-Powered Information Stations
Inside the bus three computer stations, a DVD player and TV provide more information about NOLS, alternative energy and wilderness. Entirely powered by solar energy, the NOLS bus illustrates the school's educational message of environmental protection, whether in far off wild places, or right on the road.
The Adelaide City Council has raised the standard in International sustainability with the introduction of the world’s first solar-powered electric bus.
It’s the first electric solar bus is recharged using 100% solar energy, and is a free everyday service for the people of Adelaide through the Council’s Adelaide Connector Bus service.
Manufactured by New Zealand company Designline International, the bus doesn’t have a combustion engine, which makes it a very quiet, zero emissions vehicle.It features high quality, state-of-the-art components sourced from some of theworld’s leading transport and technology companies including MAN and Siemens.And in a further ‘green’ development being introduced by the Adelaide City Council, the bus will be recharged using a solar photovoltaic system supplied by BP Solar and installed at the soon-to-be-completed Adelaide Central Bus Station.
This system is the largest grid connected solar photovoltaic system in the State,and means the bus is also carbon neutral.
The air-conditioned solar electric bus can carry up to 42 passengers, with 25 standard seats, two seats especially designed for disabled passengers, and roomfor 15 standing passengers.
The solar electric bus and the recharging system at the Adelaide Central Bus Station represent a significant investment by the Adelaide City Council into a sustainable future for the City of Adelaide, while providing leadership in sustainable public transport options for cities around Australia.

posted @ 11:12 PM |

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

SURVEY:
Sample Size: 33
Age Group: 7 years old to 70 years old

Question A: Do you drive a car?

Question B: Do you usually car-pool with your friends?

Question C: On average, how many hours don you think you used the air-conditioner?

Question D: When you go to the supermarket, do you bring your own plastic bags to use them?

Question E: Do you use CFC free refrigerators?

Question F: What is the temperature of your air-conditioner?

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I feel that Singaporeans do not know the importance of global warming. They are not aware of the dangers that the Earth is facing. The government should organize more "Go Green" campagins to educate the people of Singapore. This would benefit the Earth in the long run.

posted @ 10:47 PM |

Thursday, February 14, 2008

testing. (:

posted @ 1:30 AM |