Another solution may be to build more energy-efficient homes. A Twin Falls, Idaho Times-News article, June 15, 2002, related how the U.S. Department of Energy promotes solar water heating and electric systems in new homes. Some residences will be able to produce most of their own energy requirements and adapt more efficient strategies for using the least possible amount of electricity from traditional power sources.
Anything we do to lower our use of power for homes and businesses cuts utility bills and saves the environment. The article states it is now possible to reach 100% self-sufficiency using a variety of energy-saving and energy-producing strategies, but the products and methods required are costly. A DOE website contains more information. (136)
An AP article by Martha Mendoza told how people in Taos, New Mexico build homes out of "junk". Many build them right into earthen hillsides. Windows and doors open to the light outside and passive solar energy heats them. Glass bottles, metal cans, plaster or adobe-covered straw bales and even old automobile tires form walls with earth packed within and around them for stability and insulation. Actor Dennis Weaver has a virtual "castle" made of discarded tires in Ridgeway, Colorado. (137)
A similar residential area is also being built in Washington state. These homes use no electricity or gas, produce no sewage and don’t pump underground water. They are, as the creativity culture puts it, "off the grid". Inside the luxurious structures, green plants, even bananas or grapevines, grow and purify the air. Solar power panels and windmills, sunshine and underground ventilation tubes provide power, heat or coolness. “Thermal mass maintains a constant temperature" assisted by a pellet or wood-burning stove in wintertime. (137)
"Earthship" structures generate power through rooftop solar panels and windmills while storing electricity in batteries. "An ‘Earthship’ office can run six sets of computers, fax machines, copiers and more with solar and wind generated power.” Water from rainfall is gathered on the bowl-shaped roof, held in buried cisterns and filtered before entering the home plumbing system. Drain water flows into purifying interior gardens to be recycled back through toilets and finally flushed outdoors as compost for garden plants designed to further neutralize the waste. (137)
These earth or trash-type buildings cost an average of $75 per square foot in 2000 A.D.. Michael Reynolds, Taos, NM, who makes a business of producing tire and dirt homes, had a starter package deal at $35,000 that was entirely self-sustained, had no utility bills and could be erected by his crew in two weeks. (137) A book is available describing the process and architectural plans can be bought for those who want to build their own home or office. (138)
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New Home Technology Methods now available:
Radiant Energy: Nicola Tesla, T. Henry Moray, Edwin Gray, and Paul Baumann developed devices that ran on radiant energy__ a natural energy form that can be collected... "directly from the environment or extracted from ordinary electricity by the method called ‘fractionation.’" Although radiant energy does not behave the same as electricity, it can provide the same power... "at less than 1% of the cost." About a half dozen working models of fuelless, self-running free-energy machines are currently powering the Methernitha community in Switzerland. (140)
Mechanical Heaters: Two types of these machines exist; either can transform a small amount of mechanical energy into a large amount of heat. One is a rotating cylinder system designed by Frenette and Perkins of the U.S., in which one cylinder rotates within another... "The space between is filled with a liquid and this fluid heats up as the inner cylinder spins." (141)
A second type "uses magnets mounted on a wheel to produce large eddy currents in a plate of aluminum, causing the aluminum to heat up rapidly"... "Magnetic heaters have been demonstrated by Muller of Canada, Adams of New Zealand and Reed of the U.S." All of them put out ten times more heat than standard methods using the same energy input. (140)
Solar-Assisted Heat Pumps: The standard refrigerator is the only “alternative energy machine” now owned by the average consumer... "It is an electrically operated heat pump"... "using"... "one unit of energy (electricity) to move 3 units of energy (heat)"... "giving"... "it a ‘coefficient of performance’ (COP) of about 3.” (140) It is an “over-unity” device.
Eight to ten COPs can be attained with solar-assisted heat pumps. In these devices, a heat pump draws heat from a solar collector and dumps it into a large underground absorber, which remains at 55 degrees F.. Mechanical energy is extracted in the transfer. This process is like a steam engine extracting mechanical energy between the boiler and the condenser, except that it uses a fluid that... “boils” at a lower temperature than water. An industrial scale heat-pump near Kona, Hawaii, generates electricity from temperature differences in ocean water. (140)
Super-Efficient Electrolysis: Uses electricity to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen to be used as fuels. Some automobiles are currently testing this method.
Permanent Magnets: Dr. Robert Adams of New Zealand, Dr. Tom Bearden of the U.S., Jean-Louis Naudin of France, Troy Reed, of U.S., and Frank Richardson of the U.S., developed designs and some working models of magnetically powered electrical transformers, electric motors, generators and heaters that run on permanent magnets. (140)
The Milwaukee based Astronautic Corporation of America has come up with a prototype of magnetically operated refrigerators. (141) Present day refrigerators or air-conditioning units are based on the repeated compression and expansion of a gas, which cools, expands, then cools again and re-cycles through an insulated compartment. Magnetic refrigeration operates by repeatedly switching a magnetic field on and off. When placed in a magnetic field, tiny bar magnets of metallic atoms pivot around to be parallel with the field. This occurs normally in a lower energy state, but when extra energy is added, the atoms begin to vibrate and produce heat. When used for cooling purposes, part of the heat energy produced is recycled to nudge the bar magnets back to former directions, once again cooling the disk below room temperature. Later, it repeatedly circulates over the device to cool the refrigerator. It runs with a very low motor noise that is inaudible when enclosed in a refrigerator’s outer shell.
Scientists at the University of Amsterdam reported that they had created an iron-based compound that also exhibits a large warming effect in a magnetic field. Dr. Robert Shull, leader of the magnetic materials group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, said the iron compound works at far warmer temperatures, operating in 100-degree heat when other, more expensive metals such as gadolinium, might fail. A disadvantage, however, is iron’s production of the poison, arsenic. Dr. Ekkes Brack, physics professor and an author of the paper, also noted that cell phones had gallium arsenic.(141)
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(136) Sheinkopf, Ken, Associate director for the Florida Solar Energy Center." New Homes Try for Zero-Energy”, article from
the Orlando Sentinel, in the Twin Falls, Idaho, Time-News, June 15,2002: www.eren.doe.gov/solarbuilding/zero-energy-blds.htm
(137) Mendoza, Martha. AP article, July, 2002. Times-News, Twin Falls, ID.
(138) Solar Survival Architecture, P.O. Box 1041,Taos, NM 87529.
(139) Melchizedek, Drunvalo. “Alternative vs. Zero Point Energy” Spirit of Ma’at, Vol. 2. Feb. 2002. www.maatresearch.com/archive/feb2/editor.htm
(140) Lindemann, Peter, D.Sc. “The World of Free Energy.” Spirit of Ma’at, Vol. 2. Feb. 2002. www.maatresearch.com/archive/feb2/lindemnn.htm
(141) Chang, Kenneth. Building a Better Refrigerator With Magnets. Astronautic Corporation of America, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.