Scheme to 'pull electricity from the air'

Tiny charges gathered directly from humid air could be harnessed to generate electricity, researchers say.

Dr Francesco Galembeck told the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston that the technique exploited a little-known atmospheric effect.

Tests had shown that metals could be used to gather the charges, he said, opening up a potential energy source in humid climates.
"The work I'm presenting here shows that metals placed under a wet environment actually become charged."

Dr Galembeck and his colleagues isolated various metals and pairs of metals separated by a non-conducting separator - a capacitor, in effect - and allowed nitrogen gas with varying amounts of water vapour to pass over them.

What the team found was that charge built up on the metals - in varying amounts, and either positive or negative. Such charge could be connected to a circuit periodically to create useful electricity.

The effect is incredibly small - gathering an amount of charge 100 million times smaller over a given area than a solar cell produces - but seems to represent a means of charge accumulation that has been overlooked until now.

However, experts disagree about the mechanism and the scale of the effect.

"The basic idea is that when you have any solid or liquid in a humid environment, you have absorption of water at the surface," Dr Galembeck, from the University of Campinas in Brazil, told BBC News.
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Free solar energy panels

What’s the deal?

Alternative energy companies including Isis Solar, Home Sun, and A Shade Greener are offering free solar panels that can deliver electricity bill savings of up to hundreds of pounds.

Their offers typically include the supply, installation and maintenance of solar panels worth up to about £12,000.

Homeowners benefit from free electricity when there is sufficient daylight to power the panels, while continuing to pay for electricity from their existing supplier at other times.

Large, unshaded south-facing roofs are typically needed to fit the panels.

Is this good?

The Energy Saving Trust says that solar panels can save the typical home about £200 a year in electricity costs.

Consumer Focus, the watchdog, says the panel offers could be attractive to households who don’t have funds to pay for installation.

What’s the catch?

In return for free panels, the installers pocket the new “feed in tariff” – also called the “clean energy cashback” – of about £800 a year that can be earned under the government scheme to encourage renewable energy generation.

Homeowners are also tied in to contracts with installers for 25 years – so, if you sell your home, the buyer will generally have to take on the contract.

Also, installers could go bust, making it hard for homeowners to enforce maintenance agreements.

What’s the alternative?

Households could pay to have their own solar panels fitted, and then receive the feed-in tariff payments – which are tax-free and inflation-linked – as well as saving on electricity bills.

For a £12,000 outlay, households could earn £23,000 over 25 years, says Moneysavingexpert, the consumer advice website.
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All new homes to run on green power by 2016

Every new home is to be powered by a green energy plant to offset its environmental impact under government plans for zero-carbon living from 2016.

If a development is too small, remote or shielded from wind or sun for an effective renewables scheme, developers will pay a levy to the local council to create bigger plants nearby that would cancel out the carbon footprint of the homes, while providing green power. According to government figures, more than a quarter of all CO2 emissions come from residential properties.

All new homes are rated under the Code for Sustainable Homes. Where planned properties do not reach the highest level 6 standard – where their own green energy production offsets their emissions – developers would be charged a tariff of around £15,000 by the local council to fund infrastructure and local services. Part of this would also include contributing to a "buy-out fund" to pay for the construction of wind farms, solar panels or geothermal technologies in the local area, which would supply the new development with green power.

It is hoped the plan would result in economies of scale, where a larger renewable energy plant could offset the carbon emissions of several small plots of houses.

The housing minister, Grant Shapps, said: "We are committed to being the greenest government ever, and an essential part of that is to ensure that all homes in the future will be built without emitting any carbon. This announcement is an important and very significant step in that direction because for the first time we have described in detail how developers might be expected to achieve zero carbon, by connecting developments to local energy schemes."

Labour set the 2016 zero-carbon target in 2006 but did little to explain how it would be met, or even what the definition meant. The coalition has given £600,000 to the public-private body Zero Carbon Hub to begin testing new benchmarks for carbon emission reductions. However, even supporters of the scheme complain that the coalition has reneged on a promise to set out a definition for a zero-carbon home "within weeks" of taking office.

Simon McWhirter, from the conservation charity WWF, said the levy on developers was "really important" to ensure that new properties, such as flats, which cannot practically generate enough green power on site, can still be zero carbon. "The ability for small builders to pay into a pot which will then be used independently to deliver the emissions reductions elsewhere is a sensible approach to take."

Ministers are also being urged to ensure that building guidelines do not include measures to prevent loss of heat and power that make the homes uninhabitable, through overheating or poor ventilation.

Dr David Strong, chief executive of consultancy Inbuilt and a member of the Zero Carbon Hub's task group, said: "My big worry is as we start to build our homes to increasing standards, unless there is considerable care in the way they are designed and built, there is a real danger of a whole lot of perverse outcomes."

Nottingham City Council already runs a district heating system, in which domestic and commercial waste is used to provide electricity and hot water to more than 4,600 homes, the National Ice Centre, and two shopping centres.

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Tesco starts selling £10,000 flat-pack homes

Self-assembly ’Helsinki’ log cabins have five rooms, double glazing and a decking area

Tesco has moved into the property sector by selling flat pack homes for under £10,000.

The supermarket giant is offering shoppers a massive 19998 Clubcard points if they buy one of the new £9,999 self-assembly log cabins the store is now selling.

The Finnlife structures come with five rooms and a decking area as well as double glazing. It can be upgraded to include a guttering kit, laminate flooring and underfloor heating

The Helsinki model is only available from Tesco’s website and anyone interested in buying it online will have to pay a £5 delivery charge.

The product comes with step-by-step building instructions and the structures are being marketed as being straight forward to self assemble with no need to hire anyone to help. However, Tesco is warning prospective buyers that they may need planning permission

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