Can You Really Build a Sustainable Olympics?

From IHT Rendezvous Blog:

From the beginning, Olympic games have left behind physical traces, whether in the form of the ruins at Olympia in Greece or, in modern times, in host cities dotting the world. Stadiums, stands and podiums often stay in place long after the last competitor has left the locker room.

Mark McDonald recently reported on the unused and dilapidated Chinese venues, which, just four years ago, during the 2008 Beijing summer games, seemed so shinny. Embarrassingly, the organizers of the Montreal summer games in 1976 didn't finish construction on some of the venues until well after the athletic competitions were over.

The ultimate sustainable architectural mark of the Games may be not leaving a mark at all.

Accelerated Bridge Construction

Did Someone Order an Instant Bridge?

Now here’s one really Smart use of Twitter

Do us a favour. Go to Smart Car’s official Twitter account for Argentina. Looking at their first few tweets, you’d think that a kid got in there and had at it with the keyboard. In reality, their social media team has come up with a genius little bit of marketing that required nothing more than a bit of creativity, some ASCII art and a lot of patience.

After you’ve loaded the page, hold down the ‘J’ button on your keyboard and see what happens. Scrolling down the page, you’ll see a bit of digital art come to life, much in the same vein of those little flip books we used to play with as kids.

Guide to the Specification and Use of Manufactured Sand in Concrete

Available from the Cement Concrete & Aggregates Australia website:

This guide is based on the findings of a two-stage research project on manufactured sand which was conducted by CCAA over a period of years. It provides the best information currently available in Australia on the specification and use of manufactured sands in conventional concretes. The reports presenting the data and recommendations of the research project are available and can be downloaded free here (pdf).

"Gravel on Ski Lifts"

The story of Energy Cache, a drop-dead simple energy idea

Last week Bill Gates briefly mentioned that he made an investment in an energy storage startup that he called “gravel on ski lifts.” Contributor Michael Kanellos put two and two together and guessed that Gates’ reference was to the startup Energy Cache. Well, following that article on Monday, we’ve done an extensive interview with the founder and President of Energy Cache, Aaron Fyke, and we wanted to give you the details of how the technology works, how the company came into being, where it’s headed and how Bill Gates and Bill Gross became involved.

The energy storage problem

Back in 2009, Fyke — a mechanical engineer out of MIT who has both cleantech venture investing and entrepreneurial experience — started tinkering with how to tackle the problem of energy storage. The power grid currently utilizes very little energy storage technology and constantly has to balance supply and demand in real time — that makes it pretty inefficient. In addition, with the development of clean power like solar and wind, which only generate power at certain times of the day, there will need to be a lot more energy storage technologies used to smooth out the intermittent generation.

One of the most widely-embraced forms of energy storage by utilities is currently pumped hydro, where energy is used to pump water up a hill and then when energy is needed, the water is released to flow back down the hill. This is one of the cheapest forms of energy storage — far cheaper than big battery farms that can store energy. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) says that there is at least 127,000 MW of pumped hydro energy storage projects globally, and pumped hydro makes up a whopping 99 percent of the world’s energy storage technologies.

However, pumped hydro technology has a few of its own issues. One is that it can only be done in very specific locations that have both a certain level of elevation and also reservoirs for the water. Another problem is these locations can take years to permit and cite. Lastly, pumped hydro is not all that flexible when it comes to being able to provide quick bursts of power to the grid to help it run more smoothly, called frequency regulation, because water flows can be difficult to stop and reverse quickly.

Straw-bale Home Designed for Future

Mill Creek triplex boasts energy-saving features

Why Interior Designers Matter