Permaculture adventures in Sector39

trying to make sense of living in a crazy time

Archive for category renewable energy

Autumn PDC

Aug 20

Posted by stevie in Green events, Wales, courses, energy, forest gardening, organic growing, peak oil, permaculture, renewable energy, sustainability | No Comments

The flier for the next Permaculture Design course is available for download here and we are already taking the first few bookings for it. I am especially excited about this up coming 2 week course as we are going to be at a new venue and working with some very interesting people. The plan is to be based at a local farm, which is very much in transtion and really an ideal place to be considering issues such as food security and the complexites of the challenges we are facing as a society trying to work towards sustainability.

Other new things we would like to try out include charcoal burning, as a way of exploring energy and value added produce, thanks to John Owen who will be leading that session. We will be visiting the garden project at Cwm Harry as well as old favourites like a trip to CAT and Sweet Loving Flowers, who have transformed an acre or so of sheep pasture into one of the most diverse and productive pieces of land I have seen. Lots more info about the course will be posted here over the next few weeks.

  • Share/Bookmark

The future of flight?

Jul 1

Posted by Steven Jones in climate change, energy, evolution, peak oil, permaculture, renewable energy, sustainability | 1 Comment

Airships are the future


Click image for link to a posting on air ship design

From Guardian article


Click lower image for link to recent Guardian article

The thing about petrol is energy density. it is an incredibly compact way of storing energy, very handy for things like airplanes, which consume a lot of energy and are very weight sensitive. If you try and run a jet plane on bio diesel then the whole payload of the plane ends being the fuel, as i understand it. So it make the whole exercise pretty pointless. Aside form the environmental damge they do, and the fact that global oil supply is peaking and climate change, planes needs loads of infrastructure, like airports and runways. airships dont need any of that… and as most of lift comes from the helium all they need is a little engine to push them forward, you can run them on chip fat, with lots of possibilities for solar powered, in part anyway. It changes everything.

The Graf Zeppelin in its hayday in the 1930′s flew from Paris to New York in 20 hours.. a much more sedate speed than concord and still workable, without the noise, expense and pollution. Think about this though, no more road freight, no more trucks, or even big ships potentially. The future is airships, get on board.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , ,

Drill Baby Drill (not)

Jun 19

Posted by Steven Jones in climate change, energy, peak oil, renewable energy, sustainability | 1 Comment

  • Share/Bookmark

Build your own wind turbine

Feb 18

Posted by Steven Jones in courses, evolution, forest gardens, permaculture, renewable energy, sustainability | 1 Comment

windpower course

Windpower workshop, Feb 2010

The Sector39 crew are working away this year putting together what we are calling ours ‘Skills for Sustainability Programme.‘ The idea is to offer crash courses, tasters, introduction, skill-sharing and networking events  in key areas like local food, energy, bees, fruit trees etc. whatever we need to equip ourselves to relocalise at least some of our food and energy production.

We have had a lot of success with our 2 week permaculture courses and we are busy thinking how to break some of that into smaller chunks, to make it accessible to a broader range of people. Focussing on the skills, practical stuff and areas where there is the most common interest and seems to make a lot of sense as a starting place.

So organic growing – especially veg. is one starting point and we have a one day and 20 week – (Thursday afternoons) course a coming up. The 20 week one is externally funded, so don’t be shy about getting a place on it, it is potentially free.

And the other big one we are trying out for the first time is the Build your own wind turbine course, Its 3 days at the Workhouse last weekend of this month with V3power, a bunch of guys from Nottingham who run these courses all over the place.  We are really keen to get some people on this one, so please get in touch if you are interested, find out how to part pay in Dolydd’s or time dollars

These 1,2 and three days courses are lively and informative and also of course create a platform for people to share their knowledge and experience and come together to celebrate creativity and ingenuity.

Get in touch with us to find out more – but here are the details of the 3 day wind turbine course

Introduction to building a Wind Turbine

Friday 26th February to Sunday 28th February 2010

The Workhouse, Llanfyllin, Powys, SY22 5LE

This weekend course covers all the practical elements of building a wind turbine and gives an overview of all the technical aspects needed to create a wind based renewable energy system. We hope to build a working 1.2m wind turbine over course of the weekend.

Over the weekend, participants will get hands on experience in metal work including welding a turbine mounting, carving wooden blades and building the electrical generator.

We will also explore some of the theoretical aspects of building and installing a turbine, such as blade design, sighting your turbine and appropriate systems for storage and usage of the power you generate.

The course is suitable for complete beginners who haven’t used a tool since school, and for people with plenty of practical and technical knowledge looking to supplement what they already know.

We are very excited to be able to run a course in conjunction with the vibrant Workhouse project. The Workhouse is a centre for arts and environmental education set in the stunning Cain Valley mid Wales. The Workhouse is already home to the highly acclaimed Workhouse festival and is developing an exciting range of music, theatre, and arts events and a broad spectrum of educational and training courses including permaculture design, green crafts and music technology.

For more information about the venue please visit: www.llanfyllinworkhouse.org

The course costs £200 including food. Accomodation will include limited spaces inside the workhouse and camping in the grounds; there are also a number of local B&Bs for those that would prefer. It’s sure to be a lovely weekend, getting to know all the different participants at a beautiful rural location. A discount is also available for people who are unwaged. Please ask.

To book on to the course, please email info@v3power.co.uk and you can check out our website www.v3power.co.uk to see more about who we are and what we do. There is more info here at S39

  • Share/Bookmark

$12 Million an hour!

Feb 10

Posted by Steven Jones in energy, global warming, peak oil, renewable energy, sustainability | No Comments

Sunset and Moonrise at the North Pole last week

With the moon at its closest to earth, sunset at the north Pole last week

Not really relevant , but I couldn’t resist posting this stunning image that has been rattling its way around the Internet all week. It is of sunset at the North Pole, with the Moon at its nearest point to earth – somehow it serves as a metaphor for the times we are in. Serious change is upon us.. the moon is at its nearest and the oil age is ending! One cycle leads to another.

$12 million dollars an hour!… That’s what the Chinese are spending on renwable energy generation and clean technologies at the moment, a recent conference heard

The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has reported that China “doubled its entire installed capacity each year since 2005.” Last year, they became the largest wind market in the world, passing the U.S. and Europe.

The USA installed 9.9 gigawatts; they installed 13.

China is now also producing nearly 50% of the world’s solar cells annually, but that’s likely to grow to 70%. And they’re doing it more cheaply than their established German counterparts. (In fact, German companies have been finding it’s cheaper to buy from the Chinese than it is to make their own.)

For all the negative China stories ( they are building a new coal power station every 8 weeks or whatever) the reality is they are clear focussed on investment in sustainable energy; yes they have just signed a huge coal deal with (climate change denying) Australia (I wonder why) but a large part of that coal generated energy is going to be used to build renewables. (See Energy and Capital for source) and rest largely to make cheap throw away shit for the US/ EU market – because we are still suckers for that shit.

Not only that, but China is also planning to invest heavily in renewables factories and plant in the US, while the rest of the world is bickering about the details of climate change accords, it seems to me that China is going ahead full steam in converting its huge economy to be the first to really corner the renewables market. Maybe the whole AGW debate is a red herring, we dont even have to come with an agreement, or maybe we do but basically we just need to get on with it… but whilst the children in parliament bicker and fight we just need to get on with the inevitable.. oil is running out, the carbon age is over all bar the shouting and anyone who is not seeing the emerging picture really needs to go the opticians and get their eyes checked. (or their economists fired)

Invest in renewable energy generation and energy efficency, relocalise your food supply, and start researching into organics and teaching the nation permaculture design, anything else is simply a waste of time. We have been travelling in the wrong direction for a long time, and just because we as a nation and economy have so much invested in consumerism and oil use, still doesn’t change the fact that we have been wasting our energies going in the wrong direction and we have to change. As James Howard Kuntsler has said – the sub-urban consumerist economy has been the biggest mis-allocation of resources in our planet’s history.

$12 Million an hour.. that is serious investment and that is what it takes to turn this juggernaut around.. meanwhile we are pumping our savings and putting ourselvs in hock for a generation or more trying to prop up a collapsing economic paradigm. Oh yes lets us bail out the poor car industry….  no lets not!

Oil is not the future.. Greenpeace image

Oil is not the future.. Greenpeace image from a recent campaign

  • Share/Bookmark