You’ve heard the old adage “where there’s a will there’s way.” Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Spain, just upped the ante on the meaning of those words.

Bless their hearts. Here’s an old historical village just outside Barcelona, full of tradition and deeply religious, that had the desire to produce solar energy but nowhere to place the solar panels. In a mountainous town of 124,000 people, crammed into a mere 1.5 square miles, land is scarce, especially flat, sun-kissed land.

There seemed to be only one answer: to turn a sunny expanse of graves into a solar power plant.

Over this sacred burial place you’ll find 462 solar panels spread over 10,700 square feet of mausoleums holding five layers of coffins. It has the capacity to meet the energy needs of 60 families. (more…)

Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) was designed to provide help to low-income households with a minimum of government bureaucracy and a maximum of involvement by civic institutions.

Federal dollars for LIHEAP are allocated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to the states as a block grant and are disbursed under programs designed by the individual states.

The program is administered at the state and county levels by governmental agencies and implemented primarily at the local level by community action programs (CAPS), local welfare agencies, and area agencies on aging.

How it works:

This program is for the neediest of needy who must be well below the poverty line to be eligible. The assistance helps cover residential energy for heating and cooling (gas & electric) during peak months of winter and summer. The target demographics are elderly and homes with children.

The band aid fix

Though the level of funding was high for fiscal year 2006, the HEAP program faced an ongoing crisis. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, between 1981 and 2000, the number of federally eligible households rose over 49%; however, federal fuel assistance funds rose only 22%. As a consequence, the percentage of federally eligible households receiving assistance has declined sharply.

The funds that are allotted to each state can’t meet the growing needs for heating and cooling assistance. In 2006, despite an additional $1 billion added to the budget, only 15% of households that were eligible actually received assistance.

A great beginning

Of the current programs available to assist low income families only one stands out as forward thinking and solution oriented; the Home Weatherization Assistance Program (HWAP). States may allocate up to 15% of their annual grant for low-cost residential weatherization or other energy related home repair and up to 25% if they meet certain conditions and obtain a waiver from HHS. The program reduces the heating and cooling costs for low-income families by improving the energy efficiency of their homes.

This is not brain surgery

I’m just an average tax paying citizen. However, I do understand the basic principals of economic efficiency and I’d like to think my taxes are going toward a long term solution instead of paying for heating and cooling bills every single year.

Since the number of eligible households rose over 49% and the assistance funds rose only 22% and the grant money can’t meet the growing needs for heating and cooling assistance then why, when a system is clearly not working, do we keep doing the same thing every year? (more…)

Using supercomputers, researchers at Ohio State University have accidentally stumbled upon a new solar cell material that is capable of absorbing all the sun’s visible light energy, translating it into a potential of almost 100% efficiency.

This solar cell material not only fluoresces, it also phosphoresces. Electrons in a phosphorescent state remain at a place where the energy can be siphoned off as electricity over seven million times longer than those generated in a fluorescent state. With the technology utilizing fluoresces comes the problem of solar energy retention in geographic locations where long-term overcast is an issue. During the winter, between the pole and the polar circle, there is a period that there is no intervening day between consecutive nights, making fluoresces technology useless.

Without getting too technical or confusing, the basic structure of this new discovery utilizes a material comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum, and titanium that can be captured and stored for future use.

Currently, traditional solar cell materials use fluorescence to gather electricity in what’s termed a “single state.” Excited electrons last only a dozen or so picoseconds, or a trillionth of a second. With the new discovery, the material that was created causes not only fluorescing electrons in the singlet state to be created, but also phosphorescing electrons in what’s called a triplet state that remain excited much longer. With this longer lasting state of free electron flow, their ability to be captured is significantly greater than current technologies. (more…)