Chapman Corporate Office is Platinum LEED Certified

Upon delivering a finish project to Chapman Construction/Design, I was given a tour of their fine office building. What quickly excited me was to find out that as a company in MA, they have taken the green initiative to heart and from the award proudly displayed a while ago. In 2009!

I like the way they intermingled the solar collectors for both electricity and hot water with their out door life style. Plus roof skylights to add natural light to the offices below.

All this on a natural building in Newton adjacent to a town ball field. Which will hopefully inspire our youth.  

Off of Chapman's lobby is this inverter room.

To learn more. Go the Chapman Design and Constructions web site. Thank you for the tour.

MAPLE RIDGE I WIND FARM, NEW YORK

Traveling through Ellenesburg, Chateaugay and Brainardsville NY I came across Maple Ridge Wind Farm.

Wind Turbines Growing Out of the Corn!

Farming Wind.

Did a little research and learned: Maple Ridge I Wind Farm, co-developed and co-owned with Iberdrola Renewables, is located about 75 miles northeast of Syracuse, New York. Phase I has an installed capacity of 231 MW - enough to power approximately 64,000 homes each year. The wind farm, which achieved commercial operation in June 2006, consists 140 Vestas V82 1.65 MW turbines. The wind farm’s electricity flows into the New York energy grid. Renewable Energy Credits are contracted to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority

A Sea of Turbines.

Harvesting wind and hay

Also got to see it at dusk!

Beautiful at dusk also.

LEED Platinum House!

Over the 4th of July I learned of a house that was LEED Platimum.
It is the Yannell Net Zero Energy Residence in Chicago. 
Well worth the read! 


Also took a summer picture of solar panels in a field :) 

FM Global World Headquarters is LEED Gold certification.

FM Global World Headquarters is LEED Gold certification.

 

Constructed by The fine people at Dimeo Construction and designed by the creative staff of Vision 3 Architect . 

Never Need to Focus Again! Game Changer ?

Shoot first focus second. New York Times story talks about Lytro's focus second camera. At the Lytro's web site you can try it yourself. Becouse it the focus is done later it will allow simple cameras to have no digital lag! This should be a game changer!

Testing Wind Blades Locally

The Boston Globe wrote a story about the state’s new Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown.
A project by Mass Clean Energy Center Another example of Making it in Mass. !

Bloom Box

60 Minutes did a piece on this and I found it really interesting.

(CBS)  In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that's inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard.

You'll generate your own electricity with the box and it'll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid, the way the laptop moved in on the desktop and cell phones supplanted landlines.

It has a lot of smart people believing and buzzing, even though the company has been unusually secretive - until now.

Read more: 

Here is a link to the video.

Bloom Box now powers Google and Ebay.

Speaking of Google, Google Invests $280 Million in SolarCity