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Solar Canals

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A 1 MW solar panel project has been built over nearly half a mile of the Narmada Canal in the state of Gujarat in India.  The state government has reported that, this project will not only produce electricity but also conserve land and water. The project is meant to show an efficient use of land in an agricultural region by putting solar panels over a waterway rather than over fertile ground. It also should reduce evaporation of the canal water by an estimated 237,750 gallons of water each year, the state government said. The Gujarat  State  Electricity Corp.  developed the project and hired U.S.-based SunEdison to build it. Figure 1 : Solar Panels over the Narmada Canal, India  The idea of putting solar panels over water to save land and water isn’t new, but it’s not widely deployed either. A   New York Times story   published in 2011 outlined several projects – including two at  California vineyards  – that have done so by installing solar panels over ponds. Over 
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World’s Largest Solar Towers

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California will soon be home to the world’s two largest solar towers through an ambitious project known as The Palen Solar Electrical Generating System. The United States Department of Interior states that the country was to add 1.1 GW to its clean energy capacity. California has estimated to have a third of their power derived from renewable sources by the year 2030. The new $2.6 billion solar project will be a joint development between Abengoa, a technology solutions provider for sustainable development and BrightSource Energy, a thermal technology company. Albengoa will build the plants as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor and will lead the operation and maintenance of the plants once online while BrightSource will provide the solar field technology and plant design. The two towers will be constructed on Federal land in a Department of Interior Solar Energy  Zone, Riverside County California. Each Palen Solar tower will stand 750 feet tall, allowing for
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Biological Concrete

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So far we are well acquainted with various green construction practices with regards to vegetated roof gardens and walls which help in stabilization of the indoor environmental quality as well as absorbing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Various buildings have been developed with living walls, such as the mossy office buildings in Amiens, France and Sao Paulo furniture showroom . However, some of these measures can put various structural stresses on the building facades and are also difficult to maintain to quite an extent. Therefore, the researchers from the Barcelona’s Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) have developed a concept of merging the vegetation with structural support through production of biological concrete i.e. constructing a living façade with lichens, mosses and other living organisms. According to the researchers, this concrete captures rainwater which will create a favorable environment for the growth of organisms on the surface. (Above: S imul
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Do building integrated wind turbines actually work?

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The integrated building turbines are definitely one of the emerging technologies in harnessing the wind energy. But there have been various discrepancies in the performance of the building integrated wind turbines. There is no question that they do make a green statement. But do they actually do what they say?  ( Above: Largest Building Integrated Power System Installed in  Oklahoma City . US) One of the biggest challenges of the turbines has been the air turbulence. The wind turbines often work efficiently only when the airflow is steady or also known as laminar wind. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), although it is pretty windy on the roof, it is more turbulent than steady wind. “A common rule is to elevate a wind turbine at least 30 feet (9 m) above anything within a 500-foot (150 m) radius, including the building itself.”(Stimmel) Various surveys were conducted to analyze the performance of the building integrated wind turbines. These sur
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Fly Ash in Sustainable Concrete

In my last blog I spoke about the Green Building scenario in India. While writing, I came across a construction practice which involved the use of Fly Ash in Concrete. In this blog I will talk more about some of the benefits of replacing cement by fly ash in concrete. Some of the primary reasons why fly ash is used are the cost benefits, performance and its growing contribution to sustainable construction. Basically fly ash is nothing but waste product that comes from coal fired plants. On an average over a 100-110 million tons of fly ash is produced annually. This waste is not at all treated properly and rather dumped without paying much attention to it. This has resulted to some severe   consequences . Instead of simply letting fly ash harm the environment, it can be put to use in mixing concrete by replacing Portland cement by fly ash. Costs were one of the vital factors the use of fly ash started over 30 years ago. Fly ash definitely is a lot cheaper than cement and th
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Green Buildings in India: Overview

The Green Building movement started in India in 2001, with the establishment of the Indian Green Building Council (hereafter referred to as IGBC). The IGBC was initiated by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) along with the World Green Building Council and the USGBC. The USGBC is a popular Green rating system which has been adopted by the IGBC to suit the Indian green building requirements. Since then, India has been intensively working on developing Green Projects all over the country right from home projects to LEED certified factory buildings. IGBC data has shown completion of several LEED certified buildings including hotels shopping centers, office spaces and the state infrastructural project such as the Indira Gandhi International Airport Terminal 3 located the capital city of New Delhi. The first Green Building in India the CII- Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre in Hyderabad was completed on July 14 th  2004. Apart from the business of information technol
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