Walgreens To Build First Self-Powered Retail Store 186
MojoKid writes "We hear about green deployment practices all the time, but it's often surrounding facilities such as data centers rather than retail stores. However, Walgreens is determined to go as green as possible, and to that end, the company announced plans for the first net zero energy retail store. The store is slated to be built at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Keeney Street in Evanston, Illinois, where an existing Walgreens is currently being demolished. The technologies Walgreens is plotting to implement in this new super-green store will include solar panels and wind turbines to generate power; geothermal technology for heat; and efficient energy consumption with LED lighting, daylight harvesting, and 'ultra-high-efficiency' refrigeration."
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:4, Funny)
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walmart owns walgreens
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
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WalMart owns Sams, Walmart owns Lowes.
Not pwn Walgreens.
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But lets be clear here, Walmart is doing everything to reduce costs so the family owners can scrape in more and give back less.
If they could use employee tears to power their facility at a lower cost, you know they would.
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And ironically enough, that means higher taxes for everybody else as they purposefully fail to pay a living wage or provide any sort of benefits. And, undercut the local retailers leaving no jobs either before they move onto a new community to suck dry.
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Walmart is quite cheap. Far more people work there than shop there. It's a net win - just like factory automation reducing the number of factory workers is a net win. Also, Walmart really pisses off hipsters, so it's twice as good.
Higher taxes for everyone else comes from voting for bigger government, not from Walmarts.
And, undercut the local retailers leaving no jobs either before they move onto a new community to suck dry.
Riiiight, just like the industrial revolution destroyed everyone's standard of living by putting all those local craftsmen out of work. Reducing the cost of products and services is called "technology" and it's a good thing, despite the workers it always displaces.
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"Reducing the cost of products and services is called "technology" and it's a good thing"
Reducing the cost of products and services is called saving money. Technology is applying scientific knowledge for practical purposes, or the devices that do so. Of course using tech can lead to savings but it's not automatic and there are other ways to reduce costs.
Not if the products are inferior in design, suitability, durability, or industrial detritus; or the services provide less service in amount, kind, or outc
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Yeah, I fucking replaced ten people with one robot, and I was the last manufacturing business in town. It's a win-win! Well, if you count me twice. Which I do.
Oh, Fuck. Off. When Walmart drives out all of the Mom and Pops where any slacker in the 90s could ea
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Walmart is quite cheap. Far more people work there than shop there.
Now that's quite the business plan. Less patrons than customers.
Also, Walmart really pisses off hipsters, so it's twice as good.
Higher taxes for everyone else comes from voting for bigger government, not from Walmarts.
You just got back from Palin's speech at CPAC didn't you?
Reducing the cost of products and services is called "technology" and it's a good thing, despite the workers it always displaces.
As long as it isn't a race to the bottom, on that we agree. This disruption is going to be pretty interesting. We're reaching the era where humans will be freed from any sort of manual labor.
I was listening to a TED talk today on what the future might hold. One presenter pointed out that the industrial revolution came along and allowed humans to extend their physical strength and dexterity in the production of devices. So much that it made a mockery of everything that came before. Now we are in an information age, where what we can know via our connections to the world. You and I can can access the same info that a dullard woth a smartphone can. Ther success or failure will depend on whether a person uses this new power to actually do something, or if they are contented to tweet and contact bff's on Facebook.
This will very likely make a severely striated two society system for some time. There will probably come a time when we try to figure out what people are going to do to earn their keep. I know that there aren't many professions now that cannot be performed by machinery. Beyond that, we'll settle down into a new world that will essentially make a mockery of the one we are in now.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
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When things are cheaper because of greater efficiencies, everyone involved wins.
In truly free trade, everyone wins. Whenever I am better at A's than B's, and you are better at B's than A's, then trading is of benefit to both of us.
Thats regardless of any other factors. For instance, I can also be better at B's than you are at B's, yet trade still benefits both of us because no matter how much better I am then you at B's, I am still better at A's than B's.
The complaints about companies like walmart are cloud and mirrors around the idea that you may not be good enough at either A's or B's to make a reasonable living (= low wages.) But this really isn't an argument against walmart.. the problem is skills. Those attacking walmart and corporations like it won't improve anyones skills, but may end up costing people their low skill jobs.
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I don't know about Walmart because I don't live in the US, but the objections to UK supermarkets are that they are impersonal and give bad service, combined with screwing suppliers. Farmers can't afford to produce milk ethically because their biggest customers demand factory farming level prices.
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That still isn't a knock against Walmart. It is a knock against our collective i
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That still isn't a knock against Walmart. It is a knock against our collective inability to accept that at some point, we just don't have enough legitimate work for everyone.
While there are people working and collecting double-overtime and working 7-day work weeks, the "not enough legitimate work" statement doesn't hold up. It may be true, but while workplaces either hold worker hours down (to avoid paying additional benefits like health care) or up (to avoid paying benefits like health care on an additional body), it will be difficult to get a clear picture on actual available work.
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Not having enough jobs leads to over apply of labor. Over supply of labor leads to a disproportionate amount of power in company hands. This disproportionate power leads to companies redefining 'salary' from 'pay to get the job done without counting hours'
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It's dependent on society as a whole. Together, we determine demand, minimum wages, the availability of spending cash, etc. So, he's right, but there are caveats - impediments, if you will. A logical focal point would be to analyze these impediments, unless the goal is to transform society away from the 'free market'.
For instance, if there are no limits to the accumulation of wealth by the rich, then more of the circulating money is bound to be in their hands, as has been the trend for decades. This equ
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Just because things are cheaper does NOT mean everyone involved wins.
Mathematically speaking, Wal-Mart is a huge vacuum sucking money out of communities. The profits they are making? It's money sucked out of communities.
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Yep. Money spent w/ a local Mom-and-Pop store will turn over 5 times in a local community on average --- money spent at Wal-Mart immediately goes over-seas to the Chinese manufacturers, into the Walton family pockets, or into the brokerage accounts of people who own stock (minus what their broker pockets).
It's not sustainable. Look at:
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/lif_wal_sto_num_of_sup_percap-stores-number-supercenters-per-capita [statemaster.com]
and compare it w/ how well local economies are doing. I know, correlation !
Generally no, not justified at all .... (Score:2)
Honestly, I've shopped at Wal-Mart for many years now, because I've always lived conveniently close to one, and it was open late at night when I had time to shop for things.
To a large extent, I think the chain is currently a victim of the "I'm too cool to set foot in there!" attitude. Web sites like "People of Wal-Mart" do their best to poke fun at the type of shoppers found there, while conveniently ignoring the fact that all those people don't just vanish into thin air as soon as they're done with their W
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I know everybody loves to bash Walmart, but is really justified? At the risk of greatly oversimplifying, you can help poor people by 1. getting them more money, or 2. making the things they need to buy cost less. Walmart is working very hard at doing thing 2. Do you think Walmart's margins are higher or lower than the retail industry average?
There are other sides to this, though, such as employment. It is taken as a given that Walmart's entry into a market places downward pressure on prices, and that there are benefits from this. However, their entry into a market also places downward pressure on wages. Making things cost less only helps if it isn't outweighed by reductions in pay. The price reductions from Walmart (generally a good thing) end up being distributed across the income scale, but the lower-income segments alone face the decrease in
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Walmart has also been very good about employing the elderly or otherwise unemployable (for whom part-time and few or no benefits is still better than being on welfare), and if an employee is left jobless by natural disaster, he is assured of a job at some other Walmart. They've also been leading the way in reducing their trash output (frex, outdated groceries are recycled as animal feed, not as landfill) and trying to generate their own power (some stores in windy areas now sport turbines in the parking lot
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...is it powered by the tears of employees?
Walgreens not Walmart
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If it WERE Walmart, I'd have to insert (pithy-reference-to-Soylent-Green) here.
Not in the pharmacy dept. (Score:2)
They never have enough employees working in the pharmacy. Any tears from them are long dried up after telling people their prescriptions are not really ready despite what the automated system told them.
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Yeah, I was wondering about the energy break-even point of razing and rebuilding, too. Those bulldozers and steel foundries don't run on unicorn farts.
Geothermal heating? (Score:2)
Re:Geothermal heating? (Score:5, Informative)
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They will use a geothermal heat pump [wikipedia.org] which is very different than geothermal heating [wikipedia.org] or geothermal electricity [wikipedia.org].
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There is lot of confusion, since the term "geothermal" is used for two different technologies. The first is digging deep to hot rocks and using water to extract the heat and doing something with it. This has been used for over a century, but has a lot of problems with it.
The other is going a few feet down to use the ground as a heat source or sink for a heat pump/air conditioner. The latter is what is used now. The problem is that the cost of digging and laying the pipes sometimes cancels out the energy
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Um, no. Geothermal heat means extracting heat from the ground, which may be done with *either* a
Re:Geothermal heating? (Score:4, Insightful)
The ground can be used as a source or drain, depending on the season. In winter, it's warmer than the atmosphere, and in summer it's colder.
But yes, essentially just a heat pump.
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Yes... they are trying to overhype the fact that they are going to start using HVAC systems from the 70's.... The decades old Heat Pump.
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Actually, your heat pump is probably efficient all the way down to about 20 - 22F. Any colder than that, and it's more efficient to burn natural gas or propane.
Even if it's running 24x7 at 30F, it's using less energy than burning fuel.
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I believe you're asking "where is the power for the heat coming from?" The power for the heat pump comes from electricity, but the heat pump is just moving heat from one location to another; in this case, from outdoors to indoors. It's literally operating just like an air conditioner or a refrigerator, except instead of wanting to climb in with the food to keep cold, you want to stand by the exhaust coils and keep yourself warm.
A pump pushes compressed refrigerant through tubing into an expansion valve lo
sweet, self powered store (Score:3)
that never has anything I want so I end up going to the CVS across the street. Never understood how places like kmart and walgreens stay in business, espectally wallgreens, which is a drug store, with less medical supplies in it than the grocery store.
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It all depends on where you live. CVS isn't located everywhere, for one thing. The Walgreens near where I used to live was always fairly well-stocked, and there was almost always one of those much closer to people than going to a full grocery store.
They serve a purpose, even if it's a limited one.
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cvs, right aid, whatever .. and yea they are well stocked, just with never anything I need, they are great if I need as seen on tv crap, paper towels, garbage toys, film processing or want to play "theres only 2 people working here, neither are at the cash register", but when I need some breath right strips and a bottle of HBP cold medicine I can never find it in the whole 3 half isles that dont look like a dollar tree exploded.
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Then you haven't been to very many Walgreens. They're pretty varied in size. Generally they're all going to be much smaller than Wal-mart or some other big box store, but many of the ones I've been to have been pretty well stocked, and at least as large as any CVS--a few a bit larger.
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yea the ones around here are pretty darn large, but CVS has over 1/3 the store dedicated to pharmacy stuff, wallgreens has the back corner and 3 half isles, in every single one I have been to, from here in the south to the Canadian border
CVS has their share of crap too, but it consumes almost all of wallgreens. If I want 6$ box of trash bags, a dancing santa and a hair-dini wallgreens, if I want medicine anyfreakingwhere else BUT wallgreens
wallgreens has 2 isles dedicated to as seen on tv crap, cvs 1 endcap
CVS? (Score:2)
I used to live in the midwest where we rarely saw a CVS but had Walgreens on practically every corner, so I'm very familiar with them. Now I live in Maryland where it's all about CVS (with a random Rite-Aid store here or there), and Walgreens is practically non-existant.
I was never that fond of Walgreens, especially when they made the HUGE mistake of trying to play hardball with Anthem insurance and refused to accept their policies for prescriptions. I watched their stores look like they were on the set of
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I never saw CVS until I visited the East Coast long ago, and got the impression it specifically targeted the people without the ability, will or knowledge needed to go somewhere more affordable or better-run. Unfortunately, it bought out the popular West Coast drugstore chain Long's Drugs [wikipedia.org] a few years ago, and transformed it to target the same population.
Doubly unfortunately, I have to pick my mother's medications up for her there, so I can't just use the grocery store nearby for everything... I haven't de
First? (Score:2)
Meanwhile, in the Car Park... (Score:2)
Those 20 or so cars pictured in TFA use up those 256,000KWh of saved energy per year. Hmmm...
Lighting Choices Are Not Extraordinary (Score:5, Interesting)
Daylight harvesting is a nasty misnomer - it really just means turning the artificial light down when natural light makes the space acceptably-bright. This is why Walmart stores built in the past two decades have skylights.
The 2012 IECC requires daylight harvesting or separate switching for daylight zones; complying with new codes is hardly a newsworthy achievement.
LED lighting for commercial spaces just recently reached a point where lumen output, specifically illuminance at the target work plane, can equal that of fluorescent for the same power input.
With a cost roughly double that of fluorescent fixtures, LED fixtures' lamp life allows the owner to spend less on maintenance labor, with a payback on the order of 2-10 years. A company as big as Walgreens would be foolish to use anything other than LED unless they expect to go broke before reaching their ROI.
I like what these guys are doing, but the PR spin is a bit much.
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Why did you fixate on only the lighting part of this story? Of course those two things you chose to comment on are widely used. What type of lighting would you think they'd use?
What about power generation using not one, or two, but three different forms of renewable energy? These walmarts you speak of. Are they generating enough power to be a zero power use facility too?
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Power generation is only using 2 forms. The geothermal is only a heat pump for temperature regulation not power generation.
They are still dependant on coal/gas/nuclear of course. Cloudy day + no wind doesn't mean that the store will be closed.
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Geothermal is indeed an energy extraction method, and the primary difference with wind generation is that it isn't turned into electricity between harvest and delivery. To say it's not "generation" is disingenuous.
The only reason they remain "dependent" on fossil fuels is that it's inefficient and expensive to build a giant storage device to keep the excess power they generate. The grid is a 100% efficient ersatz battery, and the only cost is a meter that spins in both directions. "Net zero" does not nece
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Using the grid as a storage device solves a very complicated problem in a very simple manner.
Consider the nature of electricity: the fuel has to be consumed at the same time and rate as the demand for the power, or the power has to come from storage. Wind and solar obviously cannot be adjusted to meet the demand. Insufficient generation means the power has to either be retrieved from storage or bought from someone else. Excess generation can either be wasted or stored; since waste is undesirable, storage
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I picked lighting because it was the most-obvious waste of words in the article for the sake of green spin.
The "geothermal" mentioned in TFS (who reads articles, really?) is likely a ground source heat pump rather than a subterranean heat source/sink. .
I like the efficiency numbers of such heat pumps, but am concerned about diminishing returns over time in areas with unbalanced heating and cooling seasons.
Evanston, IL is close to Chicago - 6450 HDD65, 750 CDD65
Assuming the target temperature is 65F (althoug
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You seem to be blithely unaware of the fact that heat flows naturally, and that deep underground is much warmer than shallow. The 'unbalance over time' is a creation of your own mind.
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I asked the manager at the Sam's Club about that when they put a hundred or so small wind turbines atop the parking lot lampposts. He said it amounted to around 5% of the store's energy needs -- which may not sound like much but is significant for a store that size.
And no, there were never any dead birds or bats in the parking lot, so scratch that argument.
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"This is why Walmart stores built in the past two decades have skylights."
And lowest bidder programmed light harvesting systems that dont have enough dwell time so they spend more money on partly cloudy days as the fluorescent lights turn on and off every 60-120 seconds. They have systems that are cool, but the companies they hire to install them dont have a competent programmer to set them up right.
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LED fixtures' lamp life allows the owner to spend less on maintenance labor, with a payback on the order of 2-10 years. A company as big as Walgreens would be foolish to use anything other than LED unless they expect to go broke before reaching their ROI.
If you don't have significant cost in changing bulbs, LEDs are generally not cheapest. I've seen a few comparisons with LEDs, and they tend to find the result from the company that commissioned them. Every one I've seen favor LEDs does not take cost of capital into account. "If you have the cash to do either and would put it in a 0% account if you didn't spend it" isn't a realistic assumption for a company build. Florescent is often cheapest because the fixtures are so cheap. The main time LEDs are win
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As an MEP guy I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Will I see you at next year's ASHRAE or LightFair conference?
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Meh, why not let them spin it to their heart's content? I mean, seriously, where's the harm?
It's not like this is an oil company that should be rightly scorned for PR spin covering up gross abuse.
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No need to bring a flashlight, they sell them there. Now, their plan is starting to make sense...
More seriously, they will still have sufficient lighting in the stores, if for no other reason than so the security cameras can watch everyone.
By 'they' I mean every store, not just Walgreens.
Kilowatts? (Score:3)
Engineering estimates suggest that the location will produce 256,000 kilowatts per year while using just 200,000.
Shouldn't that be kilowatt hours? Even if it was kwhrs the numbers are suspect. 200,000/ 365 days per year / 18 hours (12 hours open 12 hours closed using half power) = 30 Kw used in any given hour the store is open. That is equivalent to 300 100 watt incandescent bulbs. I would think a building would require much more than that.
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Re:Kilowatts? (Score:4, Informative)
You've got it backward, I'm afraid. Watts are a measure of power, while watt-hours are a measure of energy (power times time.) A device that uses one kW of power while operating uses 24 kWh of energy per day of operation
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Wrong. a 1kw/h device uses approximately 24kw/h per day (leap-seconds, daylight savings, etc.)
A kilowatt is an instantaneous measurement of 1000 watts. A device that uses an average of 1kW over a 1 hour period is said to be "1 kW/hr"
Re:Kilowatts? (Score:5, Informative)
A watt is calculated by volts (a measurement of electrical potential) time amps (a measurement of resistance). Notice that there is no time value in that calculation.
To correct your calculation;
a 1 kilowatt device used constantly for 24 hours uses 24 kilowatt hours. Notice watts time hours equals watt hours. The kilo is there just to reduce the number of zeros needed. for example a 1 watt device used for one thousand hours uses 1000 watt hours or 1 kilowatt hour.
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yeah I kinds screwed that up but I got the second part right.
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LED lighting needs only about 7-8% as much energy as incandescent, plus they are using natural light and you tend to need less with LEDs anyway.
This is the point greenies have been trying to make. You get better illumination, less waste heat, lower electricity bills and pollute less. It's win-win for everyone except the electric company.
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Lighting is only one small component. Here are a list of other electricity users;
heat pumps;
refrigerators;
fans,
cash registers,
automatic doors,
security cameras
By the way, natural light does not work all that well at night.
net zero power != net zero costs. (Score:2)
I just hope their local utility discounts the electricity they have to buy to pay for the infrastructure to distribute power to and from the store and the generation capacity needed to cover if the store goes off line for some reason. Most utilities do this but possibly not to the level required.
If one has a net zero cost for a power bill they better be putting in significantly more power that they are getting out.
Somehow methinks that (Score:2)
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To do anything else would be stupid.
Bad headline again. (Score:2)
Walgreens To Build First Self-Powered Retail Store
Notice there is no mention of electricity storage in the article. On a dark calm night the store will be drawing power from the grid and will not be self powered. Net zero power is not self power. To be self power they would have to be off the grid.
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The point is that when the building is producing excess electricity it is powering the grid. When it is not producing electricity it is being powered by the grid. Even by your definition, the fuel where the energy is being stored is not part of the building therefore the building is relying on something other than itself for power some of the time. Self power is self contained and does not rely on a power plant hundreds of miles away to provide electricity.
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If you've got a problem with that, perhaps you should be looking at the conservatives that insist upon subsidizing oil, but refuse to subsidize solar, and the numerous free trade agreements that make it hard for US factories to compete with foreign ones.
Solar is solar, and ultimately any progress made their is a step in the right direction, even if it isn't perfect.
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To a marketer, these people are known as suckers who is eager to part with his money for high margin crap as long as it has the word "Green" on the box.
Wait, so is China dumping solar panels at below cost, or are solar panels being sold with massive markups? I guess it just depends on which lie fits the situation best. That's the great thing about conflicting lies, when someone spends so much time and effort proving one false, their statements can be taken out of context to help support the other lie.
The simple fact is, solar generates more power than it takes to make the devices to collect it. It is a net benefit. Nothing has ever disproved that simp
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If I had a device that cost $1 to make, that generated $2 worth of energy, I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and everyone on the planet would have these things. This would also be a device with incredible efficiency....
Those exist today. They are solar PV cells. But reality isn't working out the way you assert. So should I insinuate that reality is a liar, or you?
The economic reality is that people pay for expediency. You pay $1 now, but get your $2 in 5 years. Screw waiting, I'm burrning puppies to stay warm. Apparently you assume purely rational people, or something like that.
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Why would I lease my property for 0$? Makes no sense.
I answered that question already. You chose not to see reality because it conflicts with your incorrect opinion. You've shown that more than once. Lease for $0? Because it's a fixed-term 10 year lease, where the improvements stay yours. He gets as much money as he can make off solar in 10 years, and you get a solar install for free (10 years old). If he's right, he'll make money in 10 years. If you are right, then you'll still have the install to sell/use at the end of the 10 years. And, you won't n
The secret of self powers store revealed! (Score:5, Funny)
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as the shoppers walk on it they squeeze these tubes and the air gets compressed and it turns a turbine that produces electricity.
Unfortunately truth is stranger than fiction. This is the first linked I picked off google. The technology has been around for a while.
Power-generating tiles to light Olympic walkway using footsteps [itproportal.com]
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And a while back I saw a proposal to do likewise with roadways -- get the traffic to generate power. Not really a bad idea if you can figure out how to maintain it in traffic like, say, Los Angeles has (wear and tear would be significant factors).
Maybe it says something about the grid? (Score:2, Interesting)
Out of curiosity, I pondered about the quality of service in terms of grid power at that location. So I did a little bit of Google-fu...
Evanston does make it to the first page on the list of Chicago suburbs with a lot of power outages. [caspio.com] (And that's being sorted by total outages.) So maybe it says something about how well ComEd is doing in Evanston? (Or at least that particular neighborhood where that Walgreens is located.)
Considering that many expensive drugs have to be refrigerated, cash registers go down,
This might be good for business (Score:3)
I mean, Wind Turbine Syndrome [wikipedia.org] can make their customers ill while they shop, creating even more business. Of course, health insurance rates might rise. /sarcasm
Transport (Score:2)
Concrete? Steel? (Score:2)
OK, call me cynical. How much energy will forging the steel, making the glass, and making the cement for the concrete burn? How much energy will transporting all these new materials to site, and transporting away the demolition rubble, burn? For how many additional years could you have run the old store for the environmental cost of building the new one?
Car analogy, since we like car analogies round here. Your new Prius may be wonderfully energy efficient, but creating it burned so much energy that keeping
One step at a time plz (Score:2)
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So, the fact that they're working to reduce their emission is somehow offset by the consumers' lack of interest in locally made items produced in a more green manner?
Because obviously, if they don't solve all their problems all at once, they're just greedy bastards.
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They're not off the grid. When they need grid power, they'll use it. When/if they generate more than they use, it goes back into the grid. The goal of net zero energy buildings is that over a year they'll put back as much energy as they take.
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The structure of the old building may have been in poor shape. It's usually cheaper to refit the building, and they would get more LEED points, so I'm sure they would have if they could.
If you're concerned about the energy used for construction, I would first look at the amount of embedded energy in that huge field of solar panels on top of the building. I'm surprised that much is necessary. And coupled with the low slope of the roof, I don't think they'll be very effective when it snows.