Making the case - $$$$

How do you 'prove' the case that living sustainably really is a better way of life? What's the metric you use to gauge how much better this place is than say your average apartment, condo or suburban home?

But there are *tons* of different measures to use!!! Uh - I guess we get to pick :)
So - by what measures can we use to prove the case?

We have to look at the audiences.

Investors need rate of return, usually something higher than they can get elsewhere for risky or unproven concepts. So, measure #1 is time till the entire facility is profitable. Since we don't yet know how much this thing will really ultimately cost I can't really touch this yet.

Administrators want residual income. They want to know what's the facility going to provide each month and how much is left over after all the costs are considered. Cool thing about this place... since so much is cycled back into inputs for other aspects of the system... inputs like utilities Water, Electricity & waste management (things that cost money) are almost all minor - or, like in the case of residential trash - the bill is footed by the residents as they buy goods and dispose of the remains which then become resources that are usable and even sellable for additional income streams.

Now, ongoing income can come from a number of sources: Taxes & fees, the sale of any extra electricity generated, profit from sales of specialty goods, sales of the apartments & condos, but most especially - RENT. Rent of the retail areas, entertainment centers, parks, apartments, hotel rooms. Rent is the real profit center of this idea. Go figure... we're talking about bringing together 10 thousand people in the land area normally allocated for a couple thousand to a mere couple hundred residents. Densities rivaling, or at least aspiring to highly urban areas like Tokyo and New York.

Governments are going to want to know what the tax base will be and how much revenue it's going to generate. Mixed use development like this isn't common in most of the wide spaces of the US - especially in the south where land is plentiful and sprawl a way of life. Ensuring that the government gets it's share is an important part of this calculation. But to do that, we have to know what the property values are going to be... since a majority of the taxes collected by local governments are based solely on this measure.

Now lets look at the most important audience of all - the residents. Cost of living is a big deal and no matter how green this lifestyle is... if it doesn't appeal to a huge number of people - aka the masses - you don't have a real solution.

Examining my own 2008 monthly bills I see (approximations):

• Internet: $85 (I have a lot of bandwidth - yay for 15 Mb down)
• Electricity: $140 (hurray for low wattage CFL's)
• Phone: $95 (two cell phones)
• Mortgage: $1200 (1700 square foot building on .4 acre - 30 year loan with crappy interest rate + fees)
• Natural Gas: $125 (hot water, house heating, dryer and food prep)
  Ugh - that was $40 last year - /cry
  
• Water & Waste water: $60
• Auto: $500 (one payment)
• Gas (2 vehicles): $260
• Insurance: $180
• Home-Owner's Association dues: $200 (yes I know... a freaking steal but I don't get shit for that cash besides the occasional picture of a weed and a fee)
  

I don't have cable TV or a ground line phone - two common costs. Lets call that +$60 for the normal household considering likelihood that bundling these with the internet give a good discount.

Debt service & other costs - way too much; but as they have no bearing on the gaia ship's services or would be equivalent we're going to ignore those.

Total living expenses: $2745

Lets break this down

• Internet:
  
• It's all 1 building... if we don't run full Gigabit Ethernet (fiber) our residents would kill us. Lets just say it stays the same price though.
• Result $85 for 1000 Mb full duplex internet
  
  
• Electricity:
  
• Subsidized by our porch solar panels: (-) $30
• No AC costs - place is heated & cooled passively to a major extent: (-) $50
  
• Lights are fiber optic solar with hyper efficient LED's helping out: (-) $45
• Computers aren't insane power hogs - but we have more of them: no change in price
• Stove and other cooking is primarily electric: (+) $10
• Result: $35 bill!!!
  
  
• Phone:
  
• Phone == communicator - provided by others, not within the scope of the Gaia ship to provide... Perhaps we can tack on a small service fee for interaction with our infrastructure +$5
• Result: $100 for 100% portable communication & interaction with Gaia Ship Services
  
  
• Mortgage:
• let's just assume it's the same for a resident - it will fluctuate obviously and as some of the homes will be worth millions and others worth somewhat less. But, as we are aiming for the masses - and I consider myself a 'mass' (er...) we'll just leave it be for now.
• Result: $1200 bill
  
  
  
• Natural Gas:
• As we are trying to eliminate this particular resource from our situation, it doesn't exist as a viable bill. If you have a fire place that burns the waste gas generate from the trash and Bio machines... likely that's methane and would be vented to provide heat or electricity anyway. Let's call it a freebie given the 2ndary effects of having the residents burn it.
• Result: -zero- bill
  
  
• Water / Waste-Water:
• It's likely we'll want some cost for water usage, but this would be variable based on the amount of water collected via Rain-Water capture etc. Since it's hard to estimate - we'll keep it the same for now.
• Result: $60 bill
  
  
  
• Auto:
• We'll probably never eliminate the ever-present car payment, but if a normal resident has more than one vehicle I'd be surprised. With almost everything within walking distance - cars will be used only to leave the Gaia Ship when the light rail or commuter rail that goes into town won't work.
  
• Then again, why not cut into this with a ride-share. If you need a particular vehicle, you hit your communicator and say "I'll need a ride please" and one is assigned. No need to maintain the car, no need for a specific 'owned' vehicle.
• Result: $200 Ride Share & Tram fees
  
• Gas:
  
• Drastically cut due to locality of needs. Also, since the vehicles will be part of ride-share - we can make sure they run on our own diesel and electricity (plug in hybrid!!!) the gas costs are (within reason) rolled into ride share cost.
• Result: -zero- bill
  
• Insurance:
• Part of ride share cost
• Result -zero- bill
  
  
  
• Home Owners Association Dues:
• Yeah - we'll keep this around just because it's reasonable to have an organization that by design allows the residents say over their environment. Also, some method to pay for the cleaning and maintainence of the common areas is required. We may even need to increase this because of so much shared infrastructure - so bump it up a bit. hey, we've saved a bunch of cash elsewhere - we can afford this.
• Result: $300 bill
  
  
  
• Cable TV:
• Yeah, we'll still have TV... though likely with full gigabit connections to every household it will be more demand-pull instead of supplier-push. Lets' not change the price any though (those cable companies LOVE getting paid)
• Result: $60
  
  
  
• Phone:
• Ground line!!??! WTF!?!?! Nobody uses a ground line anymore. With individual communicators that never leave your person except maybe to shower and full video and audio communication via your insane internet connection... you don't have a ground line anymore. Poor AT&T.
• Result: -zero-
  

TOTAL GAIA SHIP LIVING EXPENSES: 60+300+200+60+1200+100+35+85

...drum roll please...

$2040

Thats a monthly savings of $725 for the average resident.

I'd say that's a pretty good deal! Totally green, luxury living - for about $700 LESS than standard suburban lifestyle. If you really want to own that car... I guess you can.
Oh and once they pay off the mortgage, only $800 monthly (now that's a sweet deal)


OK - Back to our Administrators

Since we now have a good idea of what the base 'masses' are paying ~$2000 in services. We can estimate how much the 'Administrators' are going to make off the residents for the first 30 years... (note that the admin are acting as mortgage holders here - makes the bank an 'administrator' for the purposes of this exercise)

150K
$2,000 monthly * 5,000 units = $10 million

Sweeten the deal with premium condos that sell for a lot more than $150K

$250K
$3000 monthly *2500 units = $7.5 Million

$750K
$4500 monthly * 1000 units = $ 4.5 Million

$1.5 million
$10,000 Monthly * 250 units = $ 2.5 Million

$10+ million
60K monthly!!?! * 50 units = $ 3 Million

Thats a total of $27.5 million monthly

Or - $330 Million annually
... for 30 years for a total of $9.9 billion

That allows for 1100 units of affordable housing and /or pure rental only apartments. They are worth more... but artificially restricted to allow for lower income people to live here. They are a bit of drag on profitability, but since they are embedded in the rest, it's not all that expensive to build them at the same time.

And that's only getting started - yes this place will be expensive to build, but with $27.5 million MONTHLY income just for having built the place and providing the basic services, I'd say it's beginning to look viable.

Add in retail rents, Hotel room stays (yes there is a hotel on-site), sales of electricity & left over waste oil. This is going to make a *ton* of money. Now, we have to figure out how much everything costs and if the money it can make as a result will provide enough of a ROI.

But it's almost 2:00 AM and I have to work tomorrow. Another time...

***All numbers treating inflation as irrelevant.

Living in a power plant - Microgeneration and the heat cycle

So, we've addressed the water cycle and waste management - and from the narrative that gives you a glimpse into a rainy evening we see even a bit more about life in this earth bound space station. But what really does it mean to live in an environment that generates it's own power, recycles energy and uses waste heat to generate even more power?

First - a bit more on 'waste' heat. Remember that the primary thing we're working on here is to introduce waste products from earlier cycles as inputs into later cycles. We did this with the waste water from thermal separation being fed into the living machine -- which is a support structure to the vertical farm -- which then feeds fresh water back into the potable water supply that our residents use which feeds back into the thermal separation... etc.

Heat in our current environment is something to be shed. Like rain water off a building current standards say we want to move it away... not use it locally. HVAC systems (Air conditioning) is built on the concept of piping heat out of the interior space and radiating it into the atmosphere.

Think about what energy usage is in the modern home - and the common, usually unwanted side-effect of using electicial devices - Heat. We use things in our homes that generate heat. Things like computers, lights, pumps, water heaters, TV's DVD players and even cell phones. In fact - all those device that have wall worts (the black transformers that take up way too much room on the plug) generate a significant amount of heat as they convert the AC current into DC that the device itself uses.

So - modern energy usage involves the generation of large amounts of heat. Currently we try to let the atmosphere take it away... resulting in the phenomenon of Urban Heat Islands. We have to plan for this heat when we think about electricity and the power cycle. More later on that...

Lets look at the original set of power production possibilities:

* Solar, radiant and Panel based
* Geothermal
* Hydro
* Wind

Let's take this piece by piece - keeping in mind that *every* method for capturing and re-using energy will be used in varying degrees throughout the entire complex. Why use all of them? Because any one item can likely only be used at specific times or circumstances - making the power generation highly variable and not always available when we need it. We have to level that generation curve so that the power is not only available when we need it - it's being captured for later use when we don't. Additionally, extra power generation could be a profit center for the facility (someone owns this thing - thinking a MUD). Selling the extra power to the city grid could be an excellent method to subsidize lifestyles or other more expensive options to make the place attractive to the masses.

Solar

Photo-Voltaic panels on every 'sun-shade'
By placing solar panels on awnings, overhangs and other places where we humans want to stop sunlight (happens a lot during a Texas summer) we give ourselves a quick way to leverage roof space that by it's nature can't be a planted 'green roof'. Note that I'm not outlining that we put up these great big arrays way off to the side - rather I'm integrating them into the overall design: covering awnings, window shades, walkways and entrance ways.

Solar panels could be used along walls wherever the windows aren't. Right now, we cover areas like this with glass over concrete or just paint it white to shed the light & heat. Why not make that 'wasted' space a solar collection system and harvest it.

Additional positive bits on solar panels being sun-shields - it's distributed power generation that can be 'owned' by the location's owner. For instance - having a set of panels over my back patio means that the power generated by my panels is mine - powers my stuff first, and if there is extra - gets fed (sold) to the buildings power grid. For modern convenience and energy usage, it's unlikely that this single point of power generation will be anywhere close to enough. So - we move on to more centralized and industrial scale power generations.

Solar Thermal
Alternately - instead of photo-voltaic and direct power generation on the walls of our towers, we can do solar heat collection via mirror based power towers, parabolic channels or just simple black-box solar water heating. Hot water systems are a major use of energy in modern homes. Harvesting solar energy directly into hot water bypasses a large drain on our other electricity generation. If the heat is high enough to make steam - we get electricity generation via steam/turbine technologies. Again - we're likely to leverage more than just one method with the Gaia-Ship. Whatever makes sense given the location possibilities.

Solar gives us good peak generation during the day - a time when cooling needs are at their highest and human electrical use tends to spike because we're all awake & doing things.

Geothermal

Geothermal systems are great for steady electricity generation or energy storage. By tapping into either deep well heat or using the ground as a heat sink - we can generate some amount of electricity or regulate temperatures for heating & cooling throughout the facility respectively.

Unless the power plant is really big however and the wells deep enough to tap into mantle heat, direct power generation doesn't look like a good option for an Austin based Gaia Ship's electrical need. However - move us to California or areas of volcanism where the mantle is a good deal closer and Geothermal power generation begins to show real promise for high amounts of power.
So, we're going to focus on the thermal heat sink capabilities of a geothermal system.


Hydroelectric

Unless we find a great spot right on a steadily flowing stream - it's unlikely that we'll be using a more standard dam system for power generation. Also - only with really large amounts of steady flowing water does this provide enough power to provide for plenty of homes. Instead we can use hydroelectric as more a power storage system in conjunction with our water pressure system. At the tops of our towers we place large reservoirs that have water pumped up to them when energy is plentiful and allowed to drain over turbines down to basement reservoirs when we want to re-capture that gravity energy. Additionally, these turbines could be used to capture energy from rain-water capture as the water drains into our basement lakes.

So, Hydro and Geothermal may not cut it as major generation points but rather, supplemental and energy storage systems. Again - more on storage below.

Wind

Ah that greenest of energy generation. Lets explore a few options:

• Ridgeline
  Most wind turbines are located on high natural ridges to get above the typical ground turbulence. Since we are in essence creating a man-made ridge we have the opportunity to line the top edge with that symbol of green energy generation.
  
  
• Canyon effect
  With buildings as large as the ones we're discussing - it's entirely likely that the breezeways built through the building could have generation possibilities. Have you ever walked past a building and had the wind go from a mild 2-5 miles per hour to what seems like a small hurricane? Buildings can be designed to channel typical and minor breezes into roaring walls of air. Most of the time, architects are attempting to minimize this effect - but what if we deliberately created wind tunnels and put big generators in them?
  Even the normal breezeway could have small micro-generators (fans) above the normal walking areas. I envision these breezeway fans to be both energy micro-capture devices as well as powered fans that could help exhaust an area of undesired heat, unwanted smells or pollutants.
  
  
• Man made Tornado
  It's more comparable to a captured dust devil but by harnessing the cyclonic power of atmospheric heat rising we can create our own steady wind based generation. Cooling towers are the more typical method of moving waste heat away from a large facility, but by using a vortex you get to reclaim power from the heat that is being vented into the atmosphere.
  Given the building design of a long winding ridgeline with towers rising above it in several places, we can place these artificial vortexes at the top of the towers to provide a facility wide heat exhaust system, a communal chimney for fireplaces, along with bathroom, kitchen and plumbing ventilation. The vortex creates a low pressure zone at the base of the cyclone which would draw air to it - heated or otherwise. This would be the sole method we would allow for heat to escape the clutches of our residential power plant.
  

Yup - there's more
More sources for electricity are needed you think? Yeah... me too! To many of the above sources are either not working all the time, or likely can't supply enough power to keep the lights on.

Our waste treatment plants provide the next major energy source. There's lots of stored energy in our trash and the thermal separation of that waste into Oil and Natural Gas provides a perfect source of stored power. If we don't need it and power is plentiful - say during a summer day, this oil is likely going to be used to make a form of diesel for vehicles. The natural gas will be burned in fireplaces and perhaps even in stoves for cooking (if it can be made pure enough) or separated into hydrogen for the hydrogen economy everyone keeps talking about. However, if we need it, putting it to use in boilers and heat generation is a very real option.
The nice thing about the thermal separation - it runs on only 19% of the natural gas it creates. That leaves 80% left for electricity generation for the rest of the Gaia Ship.

Our Bio machine - the artificial swamp - will be generating natural gases like methane that can be captured and put to use as well. Large agricultural facilities have already begun capping their animal sewage treatment ponds and using the vented methane to generate electricity to power their ranches or be transmitted to the nearby towns and homes. We'd do something similar here.

Stirling engines
Stirling engines work primarily on temperature differences. Neat thing about them is that they can work off really really low temperature differentials like your hand and the air above it. However - they work better with higher temperature differences.
Here is where we get to the heart of the power reclamation capabilities of a Gaia Ship. We've captured heat from many sources, channeled it into steam in some cases for turbines, hot water for others and now into a source for assorted Stirling engines.

By creating hot and cold zones we can use Stirling engines all over. Heat from solar thermal, burning oil and natural gas, wall warts, and human bodies all provide one side. Cooling from our water tanks, man-made glaciers (see energy storage below) and geothermal cooling provide the cold side of the mix. Any heat left over is vented through our artificial tornadoes.

Storing Energy

A recent conversation I had over easter dinner (Yay geek conversations at family functions) was on the different methods to store energy. One method I had read about was molten salt - but that requires some pretty hard-core infrastructure due to dealing with liquefied sodium a corrosive substance when it's NOT glowing like a lava flow. The method introduced to me at dinner was cold-storage in huge ice blocks. The idea is to use electricity to freeze water in huge volumes. Insulate it and it stays frozen for extended period with just the barest input of electricity due to the sheer volume of the ice. Kinda like why a glacier stays frozen all year long, even through hot summer days.
That ice could be used for cooling purposes (air conditioning) or as a thermal heat sink for Stirling engines. These man-made glaciers are really just large batteries that don't use any kind of toxic heavy metals.

Other more technical methods of storing energy include Supercapacitors and battery systems. Supercapacitors are going to be especially useful for our needs because we'll have such variable energy generation. Leveling it will be a big part of a large capacitor and transformer bank. Just setting up the supporting grid of electrical gear will be a major endeavor.

Given the expensive set up this is going to require, I really need to run some numbers to check and be sure that the combined power generation is at least 2x the peak needs of the 10,000 residents and guests. We gotta have some way to pay for this both immediately and long term.

Well duh!

So, popular news outlets are just now beginning to popularize the idea that "Hey... green building is a big part of energy conservation."

Scientific American, a periodical that used to be all about science and really high end technical content... and has recently decided to follow Pop-Sci's methods of attracting readership, has article after article about OMG - TEH GREEN!!! LOOKIE!!!

But - they get it right that building green is going to be a major deal and likely the cheapest method to calm climate change. However, making buildings efficient by replacing windows and unplugging appliances seems to be the limit of their vision. Too bad - so sad. Thank goodness there are people like me out there who want *real* change.

So - replacing windows is cheap huh... tell that to the suburbanite like myself who found that I have to rebuild the brick walls if I want to replace my fucking windows - OMG WTF!?! It would cost me less in the long run to buy a NEW house and have it built to my specifications with green technologies. This house was built in the late 1990's... that means that 99.999999% of the houses on the market today... and likely those still being built by tract developers are just like mine... irreparably inefficient as hell. /cry

So - if buying a new house is the better option... what about selling them a Gia-Ship Condo!!! Instant Eco-friendly - Yay. We win.

Now I gotta find a developer whos willing to break some real ground.