Building Green
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originally posted at:
http://www.oasisdesign.net/faq/green4000ft2home.htm
Can a 4000 ft2 Home be Green?
I regularly receive requests for my ecological design services for very large private homes.
The individuals behind these requests are generally quite accustomed to getting what they want.
Some have a difficult time understanding:
a) why money alone cannot buy an ecological home, and
b) why I won't work on their project
This is a letter to one such client who I had a particularly nice personal connection with.
I never did work on their place, but I did give them an interview for their TV show about the project, expressing the views in this letter.
Dear ___________,
First let me repeat that I appreciate that your heart is in the right place, you are smart, focused, dedicated to this project, and unafraid of honesty.
Because of the time line on your project, there isn't much time to beat around the bush. Though I would like to tell you what you want to hear and help you achieve your goals, as an ecological systems designer I just can't embrace your project as currently conceived.
This is because the plan is for a house which is poorly oriented and far too big.
If you build a 4000 square foot house for 6 people on your site and do it conventionally all the way, it might cost you $500,000. If you add thin "green veneer," it might add 10% to the cost of the project. Thick green veneer might double the cost to a million dollars.
Examples of "green veneer" in this context are alternative construction materials such as straw bale, nontoxic paints, real linoleum, recycled wood, high performance windows & insulation, alternative power sources such as solar electric and heating, and alternative water sources such as recycled wastewater and rain water harvesting.
Some of these features may be found to save resources over the life of the project. But, if the fundamentals of the project and lifestyle of the inhabitants don't change, these features are essentially add-ons. Properly rigorous life-cycle analysis will show that most of these features will increase the overall environmental impact. "Green veneer" is a strong term, but warranted to countervail the tendency to overlook this uncomfortable reality.
In contrast, building a "deep green" house for six people on your site might cost $100,000-$200,000 less than the presumed base price of $500,000. A deep green house can't be bought with money; it takes something closer to love; lifestyle accommodation, rearranging of priorities, time and personal involvement in the design, construction, and use of the project. Most importantly, it means making a much smaller, better designed house.
It might incorporate nearly the same alternative construction materials, alternative power sources, alternative water sources. However, in conjunction with altering the fundamentals of square footage, siting for optimal solar exposure and water reuse, and occupant lifestyle, the result would be completely different.
The tendency is to view these fundamentals on equal par with other "list items" such as solar power. However, the fundamentals are vastly more—well, fundamental.
Square footage
If you overshoot on square footage, no amount of money spent on greening is going to yield a low-impact project. Lower the square footage, and you lower almost every other impact proportionately.
A 2000 square foot house with completely conventional construction would have a lower ecological impact than a 4000 square foot straw bale house which employed every ecological feature.
The average size of new single-family homes in the US increased from 1,500 square feet to 2,266 square feet between 1970 and 2000. The Census Bureau also reports that the average household size declined over the past 30 years, from 3.1 people per household in 1970 to 2.6 people per household in 2002. Thus, the square feet per person have nearly doubled in thirty years, from 483 to 872.
The ecological design approach is to take the most inherently simple solution and implement it as well as possible. In the case of housing, this means a small number of very well designed square feet.
Because the most ecological solution is always the cheapest, profiteers will do all they can to steer the market in the opposite direction: towards the most inherently complicated solution, with the option of shoddy execution to "save money" (actually, ensure future income from repair and replacement sales).
Just like a big SUV is a more profitable than a small car, a big, feature-laden house is more profitable in every way. Like the impacts, the profits also multiply by the square feet. The construction industry knows they want lots of square feet, and they'll do everything to pass laws requiring more, bigger features, and brainwash buyers into thinking they want these things, too.
Do we see our homes as investment commodities, or the cradle of our family's soul?Even if you make houses and sell them for a living, you don't need them to have mass appeal. You just need one buyer who is in love with the place.
Like many of my fellow citizens, I feel a pull towards a large, valuable real estate holding. Considering how focused I've been on resisting it, to a surprising extent I accept the central tenet of the brainwashing, that "bigger is better," even though my life experience doesn't validate this point.
Vast, rectangular spaces with high ceilings and a correspondingly low level of detail work and craftsmanship are soulless and leave me cold.
On the other hand, I've noticed that the spaces I'm most comfortable in are cozy, well-fitting, generally old or self-built homes with "substandard" ceiling heights, odd shapes, narrow doorways, and smaller rooms, and maybe one bigger one for gathering. Interesting shapes, real materials, and a high level of craftsmanship, detail and hand work give a building soul. Such features are very expensive or impossible to implement in a large home.
Built on sub-hobbit scale, this was a surprisingly delightful family home for us as summer turned to fall in Northern California. Several skylights provided nice light. It has both a diminutive fireplace and a woodstove, bookshelves...all in about 110 square feet. Needless to say, it was easy to heat.
One summer my parents, sister and I traveled for three months in a 19 foot camper. We were all amazed at how much easier it was to live in a hundred and fifty square feet than 1500. You could reach the silverware drawer from the dining table and the kitchen sink. Cleaning was a breeze.
Living on various boats, I had similar experiences.
My wife, six year old daughter and I lived happily for a year of traveling in a two person tent—forty square feet (with lots of outdoor living space around it).
Traveling in other countries, I noted that norms for square feet per person are way lower.
Back in our house, a 600 square foot summer cabin, we could feel the house wasn't "working." Despite all the experiences above, I bought the standard diagnosis, that the house was "too small" (apparently I'm a slow learner).
Fortunately, as the first step towards adding on more space, we filled one room with building materials, functionally removing it from our everyday lives. Surprise!—without that room, our house worked much better! This was the experience that finally broke the marketeer's "more is better" spell that had me in it's thrall.
Now I seriously question the purported advantage of more space. What we really need is better designed space—something much less straightforward, but a much worthier pursuit. Fifty square feet of well designed space per person is possible, 200 square feet per person is generous. At 500+ square feet per person ecology is out the window and domestic help is no longer a luxury but a necessity.
Siting and orientation
Siting and orientation are also as important, but in a different way. If your house faces the sun, the solar design just clicks into place. If it doesn't, the solar design requires much more time and money to achieve less result.
I understand that you want a wall of windows to face that Northwest view, but this simply isn't compatible with your desire for a passive solar heated home. No amount of money (or wishfull thinking) can make a wall of northwest facing windows a passive solar asset.
(Putting a wall of windows to the south, with a few small, well sited and framed, insultated view windows to the northwest would enable the view to be enjoyed while the house was heated with passive solar. It is a myth that windows need to be big to make a view enjoyable. The most beautiful view window I've ever seen frames a long west view in a window well about thirty inches high by eight inches wide, and a foot and a half deep.)
The same with water reuse. If the wastewater generation points are a short distance uphill from the wastewater reuse points, the design, its implementation and use all take less time, money, and resources.
Dual plumbing in a small house might take 30 additional feet of drain pipe. In a large house with several bathrooms and other water sources, it could take hundreds. With only a few people living there, this investment can't be justified.
Lifestyle
Finally, lifestyle is the king of all the considerations. If the occupants are willing to alter their habits, this makes it much easier to design a low-impact house. A low-impact lifestyle is easier and more comfortable in a house designed to support it—this synergy can ratchet impacts down dramatically.
I hope the foregoing helps explain the reaction of myself and the other designers you've talked with. It's not that the straw bale guy and I don't want to help you make something ecological, it's that we can't make something ecological without ecological fundamentals to build on. It would be like...one of your commercial real estate clients wanting to buy something they didn't have the resources to buy.
So where do you go from here? I suggest you take a breath and really look closely at those fundamentals. I suggest you read Principles of Ecological Design (article), which could perhaps help make the leap out of the Santa Barbara mind set, which is antithetical to an ecological approach.
If your wife is not willing to concede an inch on comfort, perhaps she could be persuaded to try life in a very well-designed 2000 square foot house, with the option of adding more (already designed) space if she hates it. You could point out that she would probably not want for space if your family were to spend six months on a 60 foot yacht, and that your home could be equally well-designed, and twice as big.
Whether you go "deep green" or some degree of "green veneer" I suggest you hire a project manager with extensive green building experience to prevent yourself from going crazy with work overload and cultural isolation.
Wishing you the best of luck,
Art
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Stackable Metro Connector Cars
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originally posted at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/11/AR2007081101046.htm
Compact Car Technology Sparks an Interest
Officials Look for Ways to Ease Congestion
By Kirstin Downey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 12, 2007; C06
It's a compact electric car that can carry two people, with a range of 10 miles before its batteries need recharging. Commuters could pick up a car at one of the planned Metro stations serving Dulles International Airport and drive home, returning the car the next day. Or tourists could zip between downtown Metro stations and the Mall.
Inspired by prominent architect Frank O. Gehry and designed by a bunch of young Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, the personal vehicles they call CityCars could provide a partial solution to the region's transportation woes. Fairfax Supervisor Sharon S. Bulova (D-Braddock), who read about the cars in a magazine, has asked county transportation officials to investigate whether the technology would work in places such as Fairfax.
The underlying problem is that Metro doesn't take suburban residents close enough to their destinations, so they continue to drive on increasingly overburdened roads to get from place to place.
"We need to step back and look innovatively at transportation solutions, and this looks like an innovative way to handle passengers," Bulova said.
But are CityCars affordable, practical and safe? Would they run on streets or on bike trails and sidewalks? Would auto-loving Americans be willing to give up their big sport-utility vehicles and shift to mini-cars to get themselves to the train on time?
The 1,500-pound car is still in development, so no one knows how much it will cost. It was originally conceived by Gehry, who designed the strikingly modern, titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Spain and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The students, led by research scientist Franco Vairani, have spent years developing the concept. They received money and support from General Motors, a sponsor of MIT's Media Laboratory, which specializes in developing breakthrough technologies.
The four wheels on the car rotate, which make the vehicles easy to park because they all steer. Cars would be stored like luggage carts at the airport, with vehicles nesting into one another so that six of the cars fit in the space normally taken by one car. The CityCars would have digital locks that would be remotely accessible to avert theft.
CityCars could be available at Metro and Virginia Railway Express stations and could also be at major shopping centers, shuttling people from, say, Tysons Corner Center to Tysons Galleria. The possibilities are endless, especially in planned communities such as Columbia, Burke and Reston or anyplace in Washington with an extensive network of bicycle trails.
Passengers would swipe a preauthorized card to get access to a car, which they could ride home. Then they would recharge it before returning it. The cars could be owned by governments or shared, like the rent-by-the-hour ZipCars, and managed by a private company.
Although most of Bulova's colleagues on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors back her request for more information about the personal vehicles, Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) was skeptical of the concept.
"If we put these on our pedestrian pathways, I would raise significant safety issues" about them, he said.
Ronald F. Kirby, director of transportation planning at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, said he finds the idea intriguing but echoed Frey's safety concern. He worries that the CityCars wouldn't meet the crash safety standards required of regular automobiles if they went on roads, and they could add to bike path crowding: speeding bicyclists mingling with slow-moving children walking their pets and oblivious joggers listening to music on headphones.
"The No. 1 question is safety," Kirby said, adding that the general idea of shared vehicles is quickly gaining popularity. The idea of "publicly owned bicycles, where you take one and need to return it . . . is taking off in Europe," he said.
Ryan Chin, one of the MIT students working on the project, said he believes the problems can be solved through engineering and promotion of social etiquette that encourages sharing a vehicle.
"We know it's viable, and we know it could make a difference," said Chin, a doctoral candidate who is an architect as well as an engineer.
Some transit analysts said the personal vehicle could represent the future, because a "radical departure" from traditional transit planning is needed. Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that people have "a tremendous frustration with the transportation network, a near despondency," and are looking for innovative ideas.
"We've maxed out the traditional responses, which is building new stuff," Puentes said.
Bulova said she asked the county transportation department to review the concept after it was brought to her attention by lawyer attorney John McGehan, who serves with Bulova on the board of directors of the Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce.
McGehan, who read a magazine piece about CityCars, said they struck him as a solution to the question he had heard about how people would travel between the planned new Metro stations in Tysons Corner, Reston and Herndon and to their office complexes.
"Fairfax wants to present itself as cutting edge," he said. "This seems like a smart idea, really cool."
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originally posted at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/11/AR2007081101046.htm
Compact Car Technology Sparks an Interest
Officials Look for Ways to Ease Congestion
By Kirstin Downey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 12, 2007; C06
It's a compact electric car that can carry two people, with a range of 10 miles before its batteries need recharging. Commuters could pick up a car at one of the planned Metro stations serving Dulles International Airport and drive home, returning the car the next day. Or tourists could zip between downtown Metro stations and the Mall.
Inspired by prominent architect Frank O. Gehry and designed by a bunch of young Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, the personal vehicles they call CityCars could provide a partial solution to the region's transportation woes. Fairfax Supervisor Sharon S. Bulova (D-Braddock), who read about the cars in a magazine, has asked county transportation officials to investigate whether the technology would work in places such as Fairfax.
The underlying problem is that Metro doesn't take suburban residents close enough to their destinations, so they continue to drive on increasingly overburdened roads to get from place to place.
"We need to step back and look innovatively at transportation solutions, and this looks like an innovative way to handle passengers," Bulova said.
But are CityCars affordable, practical and safe? Would they run on streets or on bike trails and sidewalks? Would auto-loving Americans be willing to give up their big sport-utility vehicles and shift to mini-cars to get themselves to the train on time?
The 1,500-pound car is still in development, so no one knows how much it will cost. It was originally conceived by Gehry, who designed the strikingly modern, titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Spain and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The students, led by research scientist Franco Vairani, have spent years developing the concept. They received money and support from General Motors, a sponsor of MIT's Media Laboratory, which specializes in developing breakthrough technologies.
The four wheels on the car rotate, which make the vehicles easy to park because they all steer. Cars would be stored like luggage carts at the airport, with vehicles nesting into one another so that six of the cars fit in the space normally taken by one car. The CityCars would have digital locks that would be remotely accessible to avert theft.
CityCars could be available at Metro and Virginia Railway Express stations and could also be at major shopping centers, shuttling people from, say, Tysons Corner Center to Tysons Galleria. The possibilities are endless, especially in planned communities such as Columbia, Burke and Reston or anyplace in Washington with an extensive network of bicycle trails.
Passengers would swipe a preauthorized card to get access to a car, which they could ride home. Then they would recharge it before returning it. The cars could be owned by governments or shared, like the rent-by-the-hour ZipCars, and managed by a private company.
Although most of Bulova's colleagues on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors back her request for more information about the personal vehicles, Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) was skeptical of the concept.
"If we put these on our pedestrian pathways, I would raise significant safety issues" about them, he said.
Ronald F. Kirby, director of transportation planning at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, said he finds the idea intriguing but echoed Frey's safety concern. He worries that the CityCars wouldn't meet the crash safety standards required of regular automobiles if they went on roads, and they could add to bike path crowding: speeding bicyclists mingling with slow-moving children walking their pets and oblivious joggers listening to music on headphones.
"The No. 1 question is safety," Kirby said, adding that the general idea of shared vehicles is quickly gaining popularity. The idea of "publicly owned bicycles, where you take one and need to return it . . . is taking off in Europe," he said.
Ryan Chin, one of the MIT students working on the project, said he believes the problems can be solved through engineering and promotion of social etiquette that encourages sharing a vehicle.
"We know it's viable, and we know it could make a difference," said Chin, a doctoral candidate who is an architect as well as an engineer.
Some transit analysts said the personal vehicle could represent the future, because a "radical departure" from traditional transit planning is needed. Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that people have "a tremendous frustration with the transportation network, a near despondency," and are looking for innovative ideas.
"We've maxed out the traditional responses, which is building new stuff," Puentes said.
Bulova said she asked the county transportation department to review the concept after it was brought to her attention by lawyer attorney John McGehan, who serves with Bulova on the board of directors of the Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce.
McGehan, who read a magazine piece about CityCars, said they struck him as a solution to the question he had heard about how people would travel between the planned new Metro stations in Tysons Corner, Reston and Herndon and to their office complexes.
"Fairfax wants to present itself as cutting edge," he said. "This seems like a smart idea, really cool."
Body Heat Used to Power Electronics
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originally posted at:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/08/17/bodyheat_tec_print.html
Body Heat Used to Power Electronics
Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
Aug. 17, 2007 — It used to be that human-generated electricity meant riding a stationary bicycle, or some such thing, to power a generator. But couch potatoes take note: simply sitting around could one day generate enough electricity to power electronic devices.
Scientists have developed new circuits that are able to harness electricity from body heat that would otherwise be wasted to the air. The advance could lead to battery-less cell phones and medical monitors that draw energy from their users.
"The idea behind it is that you can replace the batteries or at least you can enlarge the operation times of batteries," said Peter Spies, electrical engineer and group manager at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Erlangen, Germany.
Spies and his team improved upon semiconductors called thermoelectric generators that produce electrical energy in the face of temperature differences.
Normally, a difference of several tens of degrees would be required in order to generate enough power, but the differences between the body's surface temperature and that of its environment are only a few degrees. That produces about 250 millivolts, while electronic devices require at least one or two volts.
A museum embraces the interactive experience.
Get more Discovery News video here.
Spies and his team devised a solution. They incorporated a component into the circuit called a charge pump. The pump temporarily stores the incoming millivolts until they reach 1.8 volts. At that threshold, an internal transistor turns on and delivers the higher voltage to a component that can transfer the electricity to a device.
"The idea of of generating some electric power from the heat of the body is a great idea, " said Matthias Ueltzen, an application engineer at Freiburg, Germany-based Micropelt, a developer and manufacturer of thermoelectrics. But, he says, the difficulties lie in the low temperature differences between the skin and the outside air.
"Only a very small part of the thermal heat flow can be converted into electrical power," said Ueltzen. And for that reason, the technology may only work for applications that don't require a lot of energy.
The technology has already been shown to work on a wireless sensor that could be used to constantly monitor a patient's temperature and send the information to a nurse's station. It could also be used to power a hearing aid or to supplement the battery power on larger electronic devices, such as a sports watch or a mobile phone.
And because the circuit essentially converts waste heat into energy, it could have applications outside the body. For example, it could be used to convert the heat from radiators, refrigerators, or air conditioning systems into energy that can be reused by a building.
Spies and his team plan to have an optimized prototype by the end of the this year and think they can get the 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch device down to 1/5 inch on its side.
============================================================================
originally posted at:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/08/17/bodyheat_tec_print.html
Body Heat Used to Power Electronics
Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
Aug. 17, 2007 — It used to be that human-generated electricity meant riding a stationary bicycle, or some such thing, to power a generator. But couch potatoes take note: simply sitting around could one day generate enough electricity to power electronic devices.
Scientists have developed new circuits that are able to harness electricity from body heat that would otherwise be wasted to the air. The advance could lead to battery-less cell phones and medical monitors that draw energy from their users.
"The idea behind it is that you can replace the batteries or at least you can enlarge the operation times of batteries," said Peter Spies, electrical engineer and group manager at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Erlangen, Germany.
Spies and his team improved upon semiconductors called thermoelectric generators that produce electrical energy in the face of temperature differences.
Normally, a difference of several tens of degrees would be required in order to generate enough power, but the differences between the body's surface temperature and that of its environment are only a few degrees. That produces about 250 millivolts, while electronic devices require at least one or two volts.
A museum embraces the interactive experience.
Get more Discovery News video here.
Spies and his team devised a solution. They incorporated a component into the circuit called a charge pump. The pump temporarily stores the incoming millivolts until they reach 1.8 volts. At that threshold, an internal transistor turns on and delivers the higher voltage to a component that can transfer the electricity to a device.
"The idea of of generating some electric power from the heat of the body is a great idea, " said Matthias Ueltzen, an application engineer at Freiburg, Germany-based Micropelt, a developer and manufacturer of thermoelectrics. But, he says, the difficulties lie in the low temperature differences between the skin and the outside air.
"Only a very small part of the thermal heat flow can be converted into electrical power," said Ueltzen. And for that reason, the technology may only work for applications that don't require a lot of energy.
The technology has already been shown to work on a wireless sensor that could be used to constantly monitor a patient's temperature and send the information to a nurse's station. It could also be used to power a hearing aid or to supplement the battery power on larger electronic devices, such as a sports watch or a mobile phone.
And because the circuit essentially converts waste heat into energy, it could have applications outside the body. For example, it could be used to convert the heat from radiators, refrigerators, or air conditioning systems into energy that can be reused by a building.
Spies and his team plan to have an optimized prototype by the end of the this year and think they can get the 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch device down to 1/5 inch on its side.
The skinny on Blackle and Various Screen type energy use.
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originally posted at:
http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-in-january-2007-mark-ontkush.html
The Full Story on Black Google, Blackle, etc.
Here's a Wiki-esque post that covers the full story on Black Google, I'm working on the Wikipedia entry but it's taking some time.
History
In January 2007, Mark Ontkush, the owner of the ecoIron blog, suggested that a large amount of energy could be saved if Google switched their home page from white to black. The initial savings was estimated to be 3000 Megawatt-hours a year; this was later rounded down to 750 Megawatt-hours, after an error in the calculations was found. At the time, ecoIron was receiving about 100 hits per day. The story was posted on Digg where it rapidly went to #1 on the main page, ultimately receiving over 4,000 Diggs. Tony Heap, the owner of HeapMedia, started the Blackle site shortly after these events.
Appearance and Functionality
The Blackle site uses the Google search engine and works in much the same way; users enter text into the box provided, and the query is sent to the Google search engine. The searches both use the same searching algorithm and are executed on the same hardware. However, it has been suggested that the result lists might differ. Blackle uses light grey text on a black background; this is in lieu of the customary Google layout of blue, black, and green text on a white background.
Since it is not owned by Google Inc., the Blackle site lacks many of the features of conventional Google, including the 'Cached' and 'Similar Pages' options, and it does not have as many of the corresponding links that can be found on the Google homepage. These links include items such as preferences, advanced search, language tools, images, groups, news and scholar. None of the Blackle links have a visited option, where once a link is followed it turns a different color. The iGoogle feature is also lacking in Blackle.
Energy Savings
The principle is based on the the fact that different colors consume different amounts of energy on computer monitors. Depending on the manufacturing technology, and to a lesser degree the brand of the manufacturer, these colors and energy levels vary. An explanation is provided below.
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Monitors
A CRT monitor uses a cathode ray tube to display images. The back of the tube has a negatively charged cathode, and an electron gun shoots electrons down the tube and onto a charged screen. The screen is coated with a pattern of dots that glow when struck by the electron stream. Each cluster of three dots, one of each color, is one pixel. Certain colors, such as white, require all three dots to be charged, and are energy intensive to display. Other colors, such as black, requires no additional energy to produce and consume the least out of all the colors. Therefore, power consumption for CRT monitors is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, and any given CRT monitor requires more power to display a light screen than a dark one. Other authors, such as Roberson et. al., have verified these results.
The amount of energy saved from switching from white to black varies considerably on the size of the monitor. In a 2002 study, Roberson found that between 4 and 30W could be saved by switching from a white to a black screen. This translates into an 18 to 88% power savings per monitor. The US Department of Energy produced similar results, stating an average 15W savings per monitor. Several informal studies have also been done, with results ranging from a 7 to 23W reduction when using a black screen.
In the first quarter of 2006, Display Search, an industry reporting service, estimated that CRT monitors comprise 25.3% of all monitors in the world. There are substantial regional variations; for example, the report mentions that as of 2006, 45.3% of the monitors in China, and 62.8% in Latin America, were still CRTs.
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) Monitors
A liquid crystal display (commonly abbreviated LCD) is a thin, flat display device. LCD monitors are suitable for many t ypes of devices, including computer monitors and battery-powered electronic devices. Unlike CRT monitors, LCDs rely on a constant source of illumination, commonly known as a backlight. Backlights produce light in a manner similar to a CRT display, with the difference that the backlight is always on. Backlights can be any color; monochrome LCDs usually have yellow, green, blue or white backlights, while color displays use white backlights that cover most of the color spectrum.
A pixel in an LCD display typically consists of a layer of molecules alig ned between two transparent electrodes. When a voltage is applied across the electrodes, a torque acts to align the liquid crystal molecules parallel to the electric field. This reduces the light shining through from the backlight, and the device appears gray. If the applied voltage is large enough, the liquid crystal molecules are completely untwisted; the results is that the backlight will then be completely blocked and the pixel will appear black. By controlling the voltage applied across the liquid crystal layer in each pixel, light can be allowed to pass through in varying amounts, correspondingly illuminating the pixel.
As such, LCD display technology is different from CRT technology, and the possibility exists that colors that are energy efficient to display on a CRT monitor (e.g. black) may not be as energy efficient to display on an LCD monitor. The Roberson study found that LCD monitors saved up to 3W by switching from a white to a black screen, and in no case did any of the LCD monitors use more energy displaying black than white. Recently, several informal studies have been done, with results ranging from a 2W reduction when displaying Blackle vs Google on an IBM Thinkvision LCD, to zero, up to a 1W increase.
Display Search estimated in Q12006 that LCD monitors have 74.7% penetration rate worldwide. Japan is the country with the highest rate; 99.3% of their monitors use LCD technology.
Plasma Displays
A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display commonly used for large TV displays, typically above 37" (940 mm). Many tiny cells located between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture of noble gases (neon, which are contained in hundreds of thousands of tiny cells positioned between two plates of glass. electrodes are sandwiched between the glass plates, in front of and behind the cells. Control circuitry charges the electrodes that cross paths at a cell, creating a voltage difference between front and back and causing the gas to ionize and form a plasma; as the gas ions rush to the electrodes and collide, photons are emitted. To erase a cell, all voltage is removed from a pair of electrodes.Every pixel is made up of three separate subpixel cells, each with different colored phosphors. One subpixel has a red light phosphor, one subpixel has a green light phosphor and one subpixel has a blue light phosphor. These colors blend together to create the overall color of the pixel. Plasma displays use the same phosphors as CRTs, and are bright, 1000 lux or higher being the norm. Plasma displays use as much power per square meter as a CRT, and consumption varies greatly depending on what is watched on it. Bright scenes (say a football game) will draw significantly more power than darker scenes (say a movie scene at night). Nominal measurements indicate 400 watts for a 50" screen.
Currently, plasma displays are not popular for computer monitors. However, since they operate similarly to CRT technology, the energy differentials are similar. A study conducted by G4TechTV using a Samsung 42" plasma display found a 191W differential for a white vs. black screen in normal mode, and a 138W differential in super energy savings mode. Plasma displays are particularly well suited for the large displays, outpacing other types of display technologies. However, recent improvements in LCD technology have contributed to falling prices, higher resolutions, and often lower electrical power consumption, making them very competitive against plasma displays. As of late 2006, analysts note that LCDs are overtaking plasmas, particularly in the important 40" (1.0 m) and above segment where plasma had previously enjoyed strong dominance a couple of years before.
OLED
An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is any light-emitting diode (LED) whose emissive
electroluminescent layer comprises a film of organic compounds. The layer usually contains a polymerpixels can emit light of different colors. substance that allows suitable organic compounds to be deposited. They are deposited in rows and columns onto a flat carrier by a simple "printing" process. The resulting matrix of OLEDs are used in television screens and computer displays; a great benefit of OLED displays over traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is that OLEDs do not require a backlight to function. Thus they draw far less power and, when powered from a battery, can operate longer on the same charge. No comprehensive studies have been conducted of a comparison a white vs. black screens, but due to the nature of their construction, it is probable that displaying white consumes more energy than black on a OLED device.
Effectiveness
The effectiveness of using the 'black web' technique to save energy is a subject of intense debate, much of which centers on the pros and cons of a specific implementation, and the scale at which the approach is implemented. Other discussions are focused on the amount of energy saved, both individually and collectively, and the trade-offs involved in implementing a solution of this type. A summary of the different approaches is provided below.
Governmental/Corporate Policy
One approach is to modify a color scheme of incoming web traffic at a high level, such as the corporate or country level. In this case, an entity with a large number of CRT monitors might intervene on their users' behalf to convert the color codes as they travel through the network, thereby producing a uniform color scheme for the entity as a whole. To date, there have been no reported implementations of this strategy. However, countries such as China or Brazil, who demonstrably have a large number of CRT monitors could save significant energy.
Single Site
This approach relies on a particular web site to change their primary color scheme; the net energy savings or loss can then be calculated by estimating four parameters:
* The amount of traffic the site gets.
* How long a visitor remains on that site.
* Percentage split of CRT/LCD monitors in worldwide use.
* The differential of how much energy is drawn by each monitor type in each color state.
Any site can be used; Google is often cited due to the sheer amount of traffic the site receives, but other sites such as Yahoo, MySpace, or YouTube could be analyzed as well. Ontkush took this approach in the original post, and used Google as an example. He used the following parameters:
* 200 million queries/day.
* 10 seconds/query.
* Monitor split of 25% CRT, 75% LCD.
* CRTs received a 15W differential from white to black, LCDs received no differential.
Using these parameters resulted in a net energy savings of 750 megawatt-hours per year.
Much of the controversy in using the this approach revolves around modifying one of more of the parameters, particularly the energy differentials and CRT/LCD ratio. However, even using generous, apocryphal numbers for these parameters still results in a net energy savings. For example, if one assumes a 10% CRT, 90% LCD ratio, and substitutes a 10W differential for CRTs and a -1W differential for LCDs, implementing the technique still saves energy; the large energy differential for CRTs overwhelms their market share. This, when multiplied by a tremendous amount of display time, produces the savings.
In July 2007, the Financial Times reported that, according to the Nielsen/NetRatings for May, users spent 2,557,000,000 minutes on Google websites; this translates into 511,400,000 hours of Google website use per year. The monthly figures for Yahoo (746M) , MySpace (7,535M), and YouTube (2,117M) are comparable.
U sing a Proxy Site
Another approach is to use a third party site to implement some functionality of an existing site, and then use an alternative color scheme. This is the approach used by Blackle and similar sites to mimic the Google site. In this case, users must deliberately use the alternative site instead of Google's home page.
Using this approach, the savings in energy is directly related to the type of monitor that the individual is using at the time, and how often they frequent the site. As indicated, if one is using a CRT, Plasma, or OLED monitor, energy savings will certainly be accrued. However, for LCD monitors the results are not so clear; studies have shown that LCD monitors either save or use a small amount of energy displaying a black page as compared to a white one, so the energy savings would be much smaller or, worse, the monitor could use more energy on the modified site.
Individual Efforts
A third approach is to use a script or browser option to alter the color scheme for some or all the pages one views. Again, this approach requires user intervention, and is subject to the type of monitor that the individual is using to view the pages. The advantage to this approach is that significant energy savings can be realized, as all incoming web traffic is converted to a low-energy format. There are several alternatives depending on the browser and/or operating system in use.
* Firefox
Users of the Firefox web browser can install a GreaseMonkey script called Google Dark which will automatically reverse their color scheme when visiting the authentic Google site. For a more generic approach, one can go to 'Tools > Options > Content > Fonts & Colours > Colours' in Firefox and change the default color background and text to any desired color; users who implement this option should uncheck the box that says "Allow pages to choose their own colors, instead of my selections above".
* Internet Explorer
In Internet Explorer, go to 'Tools > Internet Options > General > Appearance > Colors' to alter your personal color scheme. You will also need to go to 'Tools > Internet Options > General > Appearance > Accessibility' to override the default color options on the pages that you visit.
Criticisms
There has been both praise and criticism for this initiative, with its supporters citing it as a great example of environmental thinking, and its detractors pointing out usability and aesthetic problems, as well as questions about the scientific validity of the claims. Some of the issues are listed below.
* Since the technique is most effective on CRT monitors, some proxy sites have been criticized for not mentioning this fact. In particular, the Blackle site has been heavily criticized, as it is probable that they are generating an substantial Adsense revenue stream from implementing the concept.
* CRT monitors are being phased out; about 75% of monitors in active use worldwide are LCDs. Additionally, countries with a high percentage of CRT are replacing them rapidly; for example, Display Search projects that only 18% of the monitors in China will be CRTs by the end of 2007. Therefore, although the technique would be effective for a limited period, it is questionable whether the disruption would be beneficial.
* CRTs are generally darker than LCDs, and the text on many of the proxy sites is barely readable on monitors of this type. For example, Blackle uses a small grey font on an all black background. It is possible that these 'all black' proxy sites are only usable on LCD screens, and this would negate the energy savings.
* Proxy sites cannot handle the heavy load that high volume sites are accustomed to. For example, on August 1st, 2007 and several prior occasions, the Blackle web server was producing intermittent error messages for extended periods of time.
======================================================================================
originally posted at:
http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-in-january-2007-mark-ontkush.html
The Full Story on Black Google, Blackle, etc.
Here's a Wiki-esque post that covers the full story on Black Google, I'm working on the Wikipedia entry but it's taking some time.
History
In January 2007, Mark Ontkush, the owner of the ecoIron blog, suggested that a large amount of energy could be saved if Google switched their home page from white to black. The initial savings was estimated to be 3000 Megawatt-hours a year; this was later rounded down to 750 Megawatt-hours, after an error in the calculations was found. At the time, ecoIron was receiving about 100 hits per day. The story was posted on Digg where it rapidly went to #1 on the main page, ultimately receiving over 4,000 Diggs. Tony Heap, the owner of HeapMedia, started the Blackle site shortly after these events.
Appearance and Functionality
The Blackle site uses the Google search engine and works in much the same way; users enter text into the box provided, and the query is sent to the Google search engine. The searches both use the same searching algorithm and are executed on the same hardware. However, it has been suggested that the result lists might differ. Blackle uses light grey text on a black background; this is in lieu of the customary Google layout of blue, black, and green text on a white background.
Since it is not owned by Google Inc., the Blackle site lacks many of the features of conventional Google, including the 'Cached' and 'Similar Pages' options, and it does not have as many of the corresponding links that can be found on the Google homepage. These links include items such as preferences, advanced search, language tools, images, groups, news and scholar. None of the Blackle links have a visited option, where once a link is followed it turns a different color. The iGoogle feature is also lacking in Blackle.
Energy Savings
The principle is based on the the fact that different colors consume different amounts of energy on computer monitors. Depending on the manufacturing technology, and to a lesser degree the brand of the manufacturer, these colors and energy levels vary. An explanation is provided below.
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Monitors
A CRT monitor uses a cathode ray tube to display images. The back of the tube has a negatively charged cathode, and an electron gun shoots electrons down the tube and onto a charged screen. The screen is coated with a pattern of dots that glow when struck by the electron stream. Each cluster of three dots, one of each color, is one pixel. Certain colors, such as white, require all three dots to be charged, and are energy intensive to display. Other colors, such as black, requires no additional energy to produce and consume the least out of all the colors. Therefore, power consumption for CRT monitors is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, and any given CRT monitor requires more power to display a light screen than a dark one. Other authors, such as Roberson et. al., have verified these results.
The amount of energy saved from switching from white to black varies considerably on the size of the monitor. In a 2002 study, Roberson found that between 4 and 30W could be saved by switching from a white to a black screen. This translates into an 18 to 88% power savings per monitor. The US Department of Energy produced similar results, stating an average 15W savings per monitor. Several informal studies have also been done, with results ranging from a 7 to 23W reduction when using a black screen.
In the first quarter of 2006, Display Search, an industry reporting service, estimated that CRT monitors comprise 25.3% of all monitors in the world. There are substantial regional variations; for example, the report mentions that as of 2006, 45.3% of the monitors in China, and 62.8% in Latin America, were still CRTs.
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) Monitors
A liquid crystal display (commonly abbreviated LCD) is a thin, flat display device. LCD monitors are suitable for many t ypes of devices, including computer monitors and battery-powered electronic devices. Unlike CRT monitors, LCDs rely on a constant source of illumination, commonly known as a backlight. Backlights produce light in a manner similar to a CRT display, with the difference that the backlight is always on. Backlights can be any color; monochrome LCDs usually have yellow, green, blue or white backlights, while color displays use white backlights that cover most of the color spectrum.
A pixel in an LCD display typically consists of a layer of molecules alig ned between two transparent electrodes. When a voltage is applied across the electrodes, a torque acts to align the liquid crystal molecules parallel to the electric field. This reduces the light shining through from the backlight, and the device appears gray. If the applied voltage is large enough, the liquid crystal molecules are completely untwisted; the results is that the backlight will then be completely blocked and the pixel will appear black. By controlling the voltage applied across the liquid crystal layer in each pixel, light can be allowed to pass through in varying amounts, correspondingly illuminating the pixel.
As such, LCD display technology is different from CRT technology, and the possibility exists that colors that are energy efficient to display on a CRT monitor (e.g. black) may not be as energy efficient to display on an LCD monitor. The Roberson study found that LCD monitors saved up to 3W by switching from a white to a black screen, and in no case did any of the LCD monitors use more energy displaying black than white. Recently, several informal studies have been done, with results ranging from a 2W reduction when displaying Blackle vs Google on an IBM Thinkvision LCD, to zero, up to a 1W increase.
Display Search estimated in Q12006 that LCD monitors have 74.7% penetration rate worldwide. Japan is the country with the highest rate; 99.3% of their monitors use LCD technology.
Plasma Displays
A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display commonly used for large TV displays, typically above 37" (940 mm). Many tiny cells located between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture of noble gases (neon, which are contained in hundreds of thousands of tiny cells positioned between two plates of glass. electrodes are sandwiched between the glass plates, in front of and behind the cells. Control circuitry charges the electrodes that cross paths at a cell, creating a voltage difference between front and back and causing the gas to ionize and form a plasma; as the gas ions rush to the electrodes and collide, photons are emitted. To erase a cell, all voltage is removed from a pair of electrodes.Every pixel is made up of three separate subpixel cells, each with different colored phosphors. One subpixel has a red light phosphor, one subpixel has a green light phosphor and one subpixel has a blue light phosphor. These colors blend together to create the overall color of the pixel. Plasma displays use the same phosphors as CRTs, and are bright, 1000 lux or higher being the norm. Plasma displays use as much power per square meter as a CRT, and consumption varies greatly depending on what is watched on it. Bright scenes (say a football game) will draw significantly more power than darker scenes (say a movie scene at night). Nominal measurements indicate 400 watts for a 50" screen.
Currently, plasma displays are not popular for computer monitors. However, since they operate similarly to CRT technology, the energy differentials are similar. A study conducted by G4TechTV using a Samsung 42" plasma display found a 191W differential for a white vs. black screen in normal mode, and a 138W differential in super energy savings mode. Plasma displays are particularly well suited for the large displays, outpacing other types of display technologies. However, recent improvements in LCD technology have contributed to falling prices, higher resolutions, and often lower electrical power consumption, making them very competitive against plasma displays. As of late 2006, analysts note that LCDs are overtaking plasmas, particularly in the important 40" (1.0 m) and above segment where plasma had previously enjoyed strong dominance a couple of years before.
OLED
An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is any light-emitting diode (LED) whose emissive
electroluminescent layer comprises a film of organic compounds. The layer usually contains a polymerpixels can emit light of different colors. substance that allows suitable organic compounds to be deposited. They are deposited in rows and columns onto a flat carrier by a simple "printing" process. The resulting matrix of OLEDs are used in television screens and computer displays; a great benefit of OLED displays over traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is that OLEDs do not require a backlight to function. Thus they draw far less power and, when powered from a battery, can operate longer on the same charge. No comprehensive studies have been conducted of a comparison a white vs. black screens, but due to the nature of their construction, it is probable that displaying white consumes more energy than black on a OLED device.
Effectiveness
The effectiveness of using the 'black web' technique to save energy is a subject of intense debate, much of which centers on the pros and cons of a specific implementation, and the scale at which the approach is implemented. Other discussions are focused on the amount of energy saved, both individually and collectively, and the trade-offs involved in implementing a solution of this type. A summary of the different approaches is provided below.
Governmental/Corporate Policy
One approach is to modify a color scheme of incoming web traffic at a high level, such as the corporate or country level. In this case, an entity with a large number of CRT monitors might intervene on their users' behalf to convert the color codes as they travel through the network, thereby producing a uniform color scheme for the entity as a whole. To date, there have been no reported implementations of this strategy. However, countries such as China or Brazil, who demonstrably have a large number of CRT monitors could save significant energy.
Single Site
This approach relies on a particular web site to change their primary color scheme; the net energy savings or loss can then be calculated by estimating four parameters:
* The amount of traffic the site gets.
* How long a visitor remains on that site.
* Percentage split of CRT/LCD monitors in worldwide use.
* The differential of how much energy is drawn by each monitor type in each color state.
Any site can be used; Google is often cited due to the sheer amount of traffic the site receives, but other sites such as Yahoo, MySpace, or YouTube could be analyzed as well. Ontkush took this approach in the original post, and used Google as an example. He used the following parameters:
* 200 million queries/day.
* 10 seconds/query.
* Monitor split of 25% CRT, 75% LCD.
* CRTs received a 15W differential from white to black, LCDs received no differential.
Using these parameters resulted in a net energy savings of 750 megawatt-hours per year.
Much of the controversy in using the this approach revolves around modifying one of more of the parameters, particularly the energy differentials and CRT/LCD ratio. However, even using generous, apocryphal numbers for these parameters still results in a net energy savings. For example, if one assumes a 10% CRT, 90% LCD ratio, and substitutes a 10W differential for CRTs and a -1W differential for LCDs, implementing the technique still saves energy; the large energy differential for CRTs overwhelms their market share. This, when multiplied by a tremendous amount of display time, produces the savings.
In July 2007, the Financial Times reported that, according to the Nielsen/NetRatings for May, users spent 2,557,000,000 minutes on Google websites; this translates into 511,400,000 hours of Google website use per year. The monthly figures for Yahoo (746M) , MySpace (7,535M), and YouTube (2,117M) are comparable.
U sing a Proxy Site
Another approach is to use a third party site to implement some functionality of an existing site, and then use an alternative color scheme. This is the approach used by Blackle and similar sites to mimic the Google site. In this case, users must deliberately use the alternative site instead of Google's home page.
Using this approach, the savings in energy is directly related to the type of monitor that the individual is using at the time, and how often they frequent the site. As indicated, if one is using a CRT, Plasma, or OLED monitor, energy savings will certainly be accrued. However, for LCD monitors the results are not so clear; studies have shown that LCD monitors either save or use a small amount of energy displaying a black page as compared to a white one, so the energy savings would be much smaller or, worse, the monitor could use more energy on the modified site.
Individual Efforts
A third approach is to use a script or browser option to alter the color scheme for some or all the pages one views. Again, this approach requires user intervention, and is subject to the type of monitor that the individual is using to view the pages. The advantage to this approach is that significant energy savings can be realized, as all incoming web traffic is converted to a low-energy format. There are several alternatives depending on the browser and/or operating system in use.
* Firefox
Users of the Firefox web browser can install a GreaseMonkey script called Google Dark which will automatically reverse their color scheme when visiting the authentic Google site. For a more generic approach, one can go to 'Tools > Options > Content > Fonts & Colours > Colours' in Firefox and change the default color background and text to any desired color; users who implement this option should uncheck the box that says "Allow pages to choose their own colors, instead of my selections above".
* Internet Explorer
In Internet Explorer, go to 'Tools > Internet Options > General > Appearance > Colors' to alter your personal color scheme. You will also need to go to 'Tools > Internet Options > General > Appearance > Accessibility' to override the default color options on the pages that you visit.
Criticisms
There has been both praise and criticism for this initiative, with its supporters citing it as a great example of environmental thinking, and its detractors pointing out usability and aesthetic problems, as well as questions about the scientific validity of the claims. Some of the issues are listed below.
* Since the technique is most effective on CRT monitors, some proxy sites have been criticized for not mentioning this fact. In particular, the Blackle site has been heavily criticized, as it is probable that they are generating an substantial Adsense revenue stream from implementing the concept.
* CRT monitors are being phased out; about 75% of monitors in active use worldwide are LCDs. Additionally, countries with a high percentage of CRT are replacing them rapidly; for example, Display Search projects that only 18% of the monitors in China will be CRTs by the end of 2007. Therefore, although the technique would be effective for a limited period, it is questionable whether the disruption would be beneficial.
* CRTs are generally darker than LCDs, and the text on many of the proxy sites is barely readable on monitors of this type. For example, Blackle uses a small grey font on an all black background. It is possible that these 'all black' proxy sites are only usable on LCD screens, and this would negate the energy savings.
* Proxy sites cannot handle the heavy load that high volume sites are accustomed to. For example, on August 1st, 2007 and several prior occasions, the Blackle web server was producing intermittent error messages for extended periods of time.
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