ENERGY

 

Current system implemented in Galapagos:

Diesel and electric generators.  Diesel is imported on tanker ships to a central terminal for Petrocomercial (a subsidiary of the government owned petroleum corporation), and then tranfered by barge to San Cristobal, Santa Cruz, and Isabela.  Consumption ranges from 400,000 gal/month in winter to 650,000 gal/month in the summer. 

 

Change to:

Solar energy- each house will have solar panels on the roof and a personal battery to give electricity and heating/cooling to each specific house. 

Biomass- for times where there is no sun or wind available, the extra biomass energy will be converted into power for the homes and buildings. 

Continue minimized petroleum use for hotels and bigger buildings that need extra energy.

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Implementation Plan:
Ecuador will implement a new system of energy use in which after 5-10 years everyone must obtain a certain percentage of their household power from solar cells.  The solar cells will be on a “leasing” system.  Energy bills will come from the cost of leasing government provided solar cells (similar to meter system in the US- enforcement provided by local cities, they would be trained by Orgala)


Details:

SOLAR:

We would use photovoltaic systems, which have 2 main parts: a solar collector and a solar tank.  The “flat-plate collector” (a thin, flat, rectangular box with a transparent cover) is mounted on the roof.  The sun heats an “absorber plate” which heats the fluid running through tubes within the collector.  Then a pump or gravity will move the heated fluid from the collector to the storage tank.  Crystalline silicon is the leading commercial material for photovoltaic cells. 

Also, the use of daylighting, which can be used when building or remodeling houses, will save a lot of energy.  Building orientation, so the longest walls run from east to west, allows solar heat to enter the home in the winter, while allowing in as little sun as possible during the summer.  Shading and overhangs reduce excessive summer heat.  The strategy for this hot to moderate climate location is to admit light while reducing heat.  Installing casement or other operable windows and adding vertical panels (wing walls) perpendicular to the wall on the windward side of the house allows for accelerated natural breeze through the interior. A thermal chimney can be used to vent hot air out of the house. 

http://www.eere.energy.gov/RE/solar.html

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BIOMASS: <>Direct combustion involves the burning of biomass in a boiler to produce steam. The pressure of the steam then turns a turbine attached to an electrical generator, which makes electricity. Biomass is the only renewable source of transportation fuels. These renewable fuels, called biofuels, produce fewer emissions than petroleum fuels. Biofuels also can help us reduce our dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuels. 

http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumerinfo/factsheets.html#bioenergy



Our Other Plans:

<>We were going to use wind power, but the amount of power generated wasn’t worth the cost, monetarily and environmentally.  The proposed system was as follows:

WIND:

A 10-500 Watt personal wind turbine can be used to personally power an individual building.  Building-integral wind turbines can be mounted so the building channels wind to them, to increase effective windspeed at the turbine by a factor of at least 2 and possibly 4, and the building provides a high and sheltered mounting (with no need for towers and the uneven windspeed patterns they cause to spinning blades, which causes noise and blade fatigue).  It also affords practical protective grills, to safeguard people from possible blade disintegration, keep birds away from the spinning blades, and protect the turbine from weather and sun damage.

http://home.earthlink.net/~fradella/green.htm

http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumerinfo/factsheets.html#bioenergy